Caught a rerun of Sports Night this morning on Comedy Central. That was such a well written show. At least I can still get my Aaron Sorkin fix this Wednesday on the season premier of The West Wing. The again maybe it is a good thing it went away after 2 seasons. It went out at the top of its game, like Jimmy Hendrix. We were spared the decent into mediocrity of other things that hang around too long, like The X-Files and the Rolling Stones.
The little dark blue swirls are not as noticeable nor as plentiful as I first imagined, changing my course of action from hurry and clean/re-wax to “watchful waiting.” I mean if this was harmful in a permanent way they still wouldn’t be selling this stuff. While I was doing Miata stuff yesterday I also replaced the two (upper & lower) shift boots. Both of them were broken and cracked horribly. I guess there is less cockpit heat…. While I was in there I notice the oil in the turret was brown and very thin. I guess it is time to change that out. I think that maybe I will buy a couple of quarts and go ahead and change all of the transmission fluid while I’m at it. Maybe next Saturday’s project.
Started down, still down
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 255
Turtle Wax Color wax has made all these dark swirl marks on my car. I’m sure they are temporary, but after waxing the car today I noticed streaks of darker blue in places on the paint. I’m hoping it is just because I inadequately wiped off the dried wax. I used the wax once before and didn’t get this problem, but this time I applied it a bit thicker. Tomorrow I may just re-wax it with a cleaner/wax product and see what happens.
The last 2 days have been about the end of my free ride on the internet. Here is my thoughts on free services: If you intent is to give away something for free on the internet, there comes a time when you have to limit the number of people who can use your free service. If you can spend $100 a month providing this service and it cost $1 a user, stop at a hundred. Don’t go to 200 and then say to your self, “Damn, I’m spending too much money, I better start charging.”
Of course I never attended any business courses in college, maybe this is the way to get into business, get people used to using your service for free and when they are so entrenched that they can’t live with out it, charge ’em. I mean, it works for drug dealers, right?
Back in the wild and wooly days of blogging, 6 months or so ago, I signed up with enetation to handle the commenting on my 2 blogs. They promised me free comments for my blog. Just like the exponentional nature of growth on the internet, in that short time enetation has now decided that comments are free, but if you want your comments without a tagline that begs for money, you shall pay. They want 10 quid or around 14 bucks a year, while that in itself is not a princely sum, added up with all the other fees I now pay to keep what was once free, ad free, we are fast approaching the amount at which I have to consult with my Budget Director (AKA, wife) about before spending.
Put the top down for the trip to work, but almost didn’t make it. After we came back out of the bagel place it was sprinkling. Got going in a hurry and for a second there it came down hard enough for us to consider finding a place to put it up. Passed out of the rain and by the time we got to work it had stopped, so we threw on the cockpit cover. Keep in mind the weather channel insisted that the only chance of rain was a 30% afternoon variety. We discovered on the 10:00 walk around the parking lot that sometime during the morning it rained enough to really wet the pavement. The cockpit cover worked wonders this time, the inside stayed totally dry. The top went up this afternoon because Donna went swimming by herself and the clouds still looked ugly. This evening the skies cleared up enough that we went back out for a drive under the nearly full moon.
Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 255
Back in the wild and wooly days of the internet, 10-15 years ago, I signed up with a cool service, bigfoot, that promised me an email address for life for free. They gave me an address and what ever email was sent to that address, they would forward to any email address I chose. This was a thing of beauty, I gave it out to all my friends and family, it was my address, Brian_the_Red@bigfoot.com. Bigfoot grew and and offered more services, one of which I found really handy was distribution, I could have all the mail I got come to home and work. The internet grew and email grew and it became all about the money. Bigfoot cut back on all their services except the original forwarding. The other stuff was still available, but for a fee. Earlier this year they put a cap on the amount of mail I could get for free each day to 25. This is probably a reasonable amount for personal use. I have probably never gotten 25 pieces of mail on one day that was important to me. The trouble is SPAM. I have been sprinkling the internet with this address for the last 15 years and the SPAM just rolls in. Every day that I exceed the 25 limit, I get a nice little email from bigfoot reminding me I’m missing out on getting some of my mail. It seems like like I was getting one everyday. On some days I know I’m not getting 25 emails even with all the spam. Yesterday I got 2 warnings I was over 25? The end of an era (at least in internet time,) I’m giving up on bigfoot. I sent everybody a change of address and after a while I’ll quit even checking it.