Whatever

Who’s Guarding The Fort?

My sister and her husband live in a gated community so to deliver her the breakfast bagels we reminded her to call down to the gate house and let them know we were coming to visit on Sunday. So, when we turned into the access road to Carriage Park I drove right up to the left gate to identify myself to the person on duty. To my surprise, at 8:30 AM, it was empty. Hmmmm, now what?

I backed up 50 feet to the call box and tried to figure out how to get to their name using a keypad and no scroll bar. Donna said, “Just call the house.” Ooh, that’s right, I have a smart phone of my own now. I call the house phone. No answer1, so I leave a message, ‘We are at the gate, but there is no one to let us in, what’s the code?’ ” As we are idling there waiting for any sort of response, another car pulls in the access road and stops a few feet behind us. They must not live in the sub-division either or they would have driven up to the right-hand gate where their little transponder would automatically cause the arm to raise letting them in.

As Donna and I are discussing our options the car behind me loses patience and whips around me in a big hurry and sudden stops at the gate house to display his anger at my inaction. About this time a resident pulls slowly up to the right gate causing the arm to start to go up to let them in. I throw it in first and time my run to hit the opening at the same time as the back end of the resident’s SUV. We’re in! Leaving frustrated man stuck outside, now possibly even more so.2

Snap Crash Phhhhfft Thud

Tuesday is trash/recycle day in our neighborhood. It is also yard waste pickup day. If you have leaves or lawn clippings or tree trimmings all you need to do is leave them on the street where the city picks it up and takes it away. Usually in the fall they will come around a couple times wit h a big vacuum truck, but most of the time it is with an open top trailer with a claw arm like you see at the carnival where you waste a lot of money trying to pick up a small stuffed animal.

Over the weekend our next door neighbor cleaned the last of leaves out of his back yard and lined them up along the curb. When we came home, we couldn’t get to our driveway because the truck was parked in the middle of the street. We waited a few minutes, but you could tell he was going to be at it a while, so we backed up a few feet and took a cross street and went around the back to come in the other way. Donna walked out and checked the mail. The guy was still at it. I took a rake and swept a small branch off the roof over the front door which Donna then took out to the street to add it to leaf pile. We went inside and read through the mail, both snail and e.

We were both changing from work attire into our “play” clothes when we heard a series of loud noises: Snap. Crash. Phhhhfft. Thud. Donna asked, “What was that?” Me, “I don’t know.” She goes to the kitchen window and says, “There is wire down in the driveway! Come look!” I say, “That’s the phone line.”1 Her, “The guy must have hit with his truck. He’s still there, go tell him.” Me, “Let me get some pants on first.”

By the time I get dressed, put some shoes on and open the front door, the truck takes off down the street. We go out to survey the damage. The phone line ran from top of the end of the house along the driveway to across the street. It is still attached to the eave of the house, but it has been yanked off the line over on the other side of the street and wrapped itself around the tree partway down the side of the driveway. That is when Donna points over to the “natural area” on the other side of the lawn and asks, “What’s that?” It is the lamp that was on top of the post in the holly bush at the end of the driveway. As she put it, “That wire decapitated2 the lamp post.”

I went back in the house and looked up the city’s Public Works Dept. phone number ion the web. The page showed that their work hours were 8:15 to 5:00. It was about 20 minutes to five so naturally they didn’t answer the phone. So I left a message to call me at home, hoping that they would call before the day was over. You know what they say, “Hope in one hand, $%&@ in the other.”

Wednesday moring I called the number at 7:45 to leave another message to have them call my work phone. Someone answered on the second ring. I told the nice lady my story and she said, “Hold on, I’ll go get the supervisor.” Two or three minutes later she come back on, “I see his truck, maybe he’s in a meeting. Could you hold on a little while longer? That is in the other building.” Two or three minutes later she’s back, “Let me transfer you.” I get a quik ring and the supervisor’s voice mail kicks in; I’m out of the office until Monday the 13th (which is next week), leave a message or for immediate assistance dial 642-extention.

That was the same number I dialed in the first place, so I called it again. A different woman, who has obviously heard my story from the first, picks up the phone and says, “We don’t start work until 8:15.” So I say, “I know, was just trying to leave a message, but the supervisor’s voice mail says he won’t be in until next week and I wonder who I should tell about this problem.” “He is here. Hold on I’ll go get him.”

Two or three minutes later she’s back with a male voice on the speaker phone. I tell my story again and the man says, “What’s your adress, I’ll go by and see what we have to do, then call you back.” Within a hour he calls back. “I couldn’t find a light just like yours at BBHIW #1 or BBHIW #2 or Ace Harware. Do you want me to send you some pictures and you can choose?” I tell him, “It really doesn’t matter much to me, just as long as it is similar, i.e. black, 4 clear sides, whatever.” “OK, I’ll get you fixed up.”

I took Donna home at lunch as she was taking a half day off and when we pulled into the driveway there was a lamp already on top of the post. It wasn’t lit up though, there was no bulb in it. About that time, a City of Aiken truck pulled up and our male voiced supervisor popped out. “I had to go get a different bulb because the original one I picked out didn’t fit.” While he was installing the bulb he mentioned that he had called AT&T for us so they could come out and fix the wire.3

The whole light assembly is smaller than the one it replaced, but doesn’t look too bad. The bulb they put in it is super bright, when I looked out the window this morning when it was still dark out, it looked like we had a lighthouse at the end of the driveway, just not rotating.

1. This is no great loss as we get our phone service through the cable company.
2. As it might have done to any humans standing in the driveway had the truck pulled away about fifteen minutes earlier.
3. I wonder how long it take for that to happen? See #1 above.

Twenty Seventeen

Didn’t do real good on that though of writing on Wednesday did I? Well, I have a good excuse. After I got finished polishing this turd, I thought maybe I could do the same for the MMC’s website.

WordPress usually adds a nice shiny new template as an option with each major release of the software. They typically name it after the year of release, so the latest is called, unsurprisingly, Twenty Seventeen, an man is it cool. The page opens to a large image (or video if you are so inclined) and then you scroll down to the next page and there is an image to transition across to each new page. Check the demo page, then come back.

I downloaded a a program called InstantWP which allows you to install a portable version of your site on a USB stick. Not as simple as it sounded, I had to tweak a couple of PHP files to even get the Club’s large database loaded. When I finally got that sorted I fired up the web site. The side bar is on the right and we have it on the left, that was a project in itself. Countless internet pages later I got that sort of working. Several widgets didn’t work as they did before, but I thought maybe I could work around them or find substitutes.

But one of the widgets killed the whole deal, the calendar plugin that we rely on for event planning would not work at all. Sigh. I knew this day was coming, the plugin was last updated in 2009, but at least it still works on the current site. It is the next one that is really worrying, there will probably come a day when an update to WordPress itself will cause it to stop working. Look like finding a replacement might need to get moved to the front burner.

Happy 2017

For the first time in the recent (and not so recent) years Donna and I actually welcomed the Gregorian New Year while awake. Not only were we not sleeping we were not even at home, we were at someone’s house, at an actual party, with a flute of champagne in our hands.

What started out as a small intimate affair for the Valve Store’s Accounting Manager’s family on their 26 acre bit of country, has morphed over the years, as their kids have grown, into a a decent size gathering of extended family and friends. This year she invited us and a few other ASCO folks to join the fray to even out the young adult to adult ratio.

These folks do it up right too, plenty of food and drink, a huge bonfire and a crap ton of fireworks. They start small with roman candles and large sparklers at just dark and build up slowly at intervals to the big finish just before midnight.

We split not too long after the finale and made it home and into bed around 1 AM. We didn’t sleep too well though. Apparently there is a quite a difference in how the human body reacts to consuming large quantities of non-alcoholic (and some alcoholic) drinks, plus food, up until around midnight and then just jumping into bed less than an hour later from when you are 30 to when you are 60. Next year we may have to come home and spend an hour or two watching a movie to wind down some.

Best Of

When I sent out my regular season wrap up to the owners of teams in the EZEFFL last night the first paragraph read:

The six title contenders have been selected leaving the rest outside looking in, but there is still plenty of fantasy left to be had for everyone. For the playoff teams there is a pot of gold (in diminishing increments) for the top three and for the Consolation Ladder there is the fabulous “Best of the Rest” trophy to the winning-est losing team.

And when I wrote the words “Best Of” I thought to myself that maybe I needed to start blogging here more, because if I didn’t I wouldn’t have anything to use for this December’s best post. That is when I looked over on the left and noticed that I didn’t have a Best Of for 2015 at all.

So I fixed both things tonight. The Best of 2015 is live and I created a second post for December. Not that this post will make the year’s best (at least I hope not.)

Making Everyone’s Dreams Come True

Posting has once again gotten really light, another whole week between posts, but behind the scenes the pace at Life of Brian HQ has been hectic. The Board has met with the regional and local VPs. Managers have powwowed with minions. And through the power of group knowledge (and a little luck) we have solved the unsolvable conundrum.

Brian & Donna dreamed of a trouble free Miata. Brian dreamed of no Check Engine Lights. Donna dreamed of not having a monthly car payment for the next 5 years. Brian and Donna dreamed of a Miata that was just like the one they have, only better. David dreamed of more garage space.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 209

Brian Sees A Fiata1

It has been a few months since we’ve been to Brueggers Bagels for breakfast. The main reason for this is no matter what we tried, those bagels we brought home never tasted as good as they did on the day we bought them. We froze them, we froze them in the store’s special freezer bags, we kept them in plain paper bags (both in the fridge and on the counter) and by Friday they tasted just like the “bagel” we could get at Dunkin Donuts.

Ever since Donna had declared the new Miata ugly, I have been waiting for the new Fiat 124 to arrive because it is basically a Miata in an Italian designed body hoping that she just might find it handsome. Of the two, I prefer the Miata, but the Fiat was very nice looking in pictures, so I kind of wanted to see one up close for my self as well. The 124 Spiders just started arriving at dealers in early July. Right now they are all automatics for whatever reason, but that was OK, I just wanted to look.

A couple of weeks ago some of the Fiats began showing up “close” to us like Charlotte and Atlanta which were way too far away to just pop over and take a peek. JTs Fiat in Lexington is the closest one to us in Aiken at 40 miles and they received their first 124 Spider, in black, last weekend. JTs was literally right next to the Brueggers, so when Donna suggested that maybe we should get a bagel for breakfast on Saturday, I readily agreed.

When I pulled into the bagel place I noticed that the building was still there, but there were zero cars in the lot. They had pulled up stakes and moved somewhere else. It had to have been extremely recent though as the dealer’s website still has that next door address on it and the map still shows that spot as the destination on their contact page. Donna asked, “Do you want to try and find the new place?” “I have no idea where to start looking,” I replied, “but we could head a little further east to get on I-20 to go home and maybe we’d stumble on it.”

A mile and a half later we passed a brand new car dealership on the left that had popped up in the last 3 months. It was a Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealer and it said JTs on the building. Maybe I was imagining it, but I could have sworn I saw a Fiat 500 parked amongst the SUVs. Then the proverbial light bulb illuminated and I put Fiat owning Chrysler together and said, “I’m making a U-turn.” It was early enough still that the dealership was not open for business yet, but there were a few cars already lining up at the service department. I cruised past them and made my way over towards where I thought I saw the 500. They had some of the gates still closed, so we parked the Miata and started wandering through the huge side lot (I’m betting salesmen will have to drive you out to look at cars on golf carts.)

There, way in the back, were the Fiats, a few regular 500s, lots of insect looking 500x Trekkings and the lone black 124 Spider. It hadn’t been fully prepped yet, there was still plastic wrapping on the interior bits and it was dirty, but I liked the looks. It could definitely be my fall-back car. I asked Donna, what she thought, she said, “Not impressed.”

Thinking it had to do with that color and my plans for a black Miata, then spending more to wrap it a different color, I thought if I offered up a different color… “How about in red?” I asked. (Donna had once suggested the new Miata in red) There was just the one black Spider on the lot, so I pointed at a red 500 nearby, “Like that.” She glanced where I was pointing and said, “No way.” Feeling slightly frustrated by this whole process, I blurted out, “Now you are just making shit up to not let me buy a new car.” And maybe because I had a smile in my voice when I said it, it fortunately cracked her up with laughter.

When she stopped laughing, Donna asked me, “Well what do you want?” So I said, “A range from at the top of a black Miata wrapped in bright blue… she said, “No way.” before I could go any further… to a white Miata, to at the bottom, a Fiata in any color you’d find acceptable.” She laughed again and nothing further was discussed on the new car, the rest of the way home.

1. As long as I’m a Miata owner this car will always be referred to as a Fiata, but if I ever end up with one, I will try and make sure I call it by its proper name, 124 (Spider.)