Year: 2002

Under The Nearly Full Moon

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

Bigfoot

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.

The Research Continues

Made it to work with it down, but put it up. It did rain for most of the day, thereby negating the wash job, but what did I expect. Got an email from Moss Motors, the short shifter kit is on backorder and they don’t have an ETA on the next shipment, so they cancelled my order. I think that it is a good thing. I read some of the reviews on Miata.net and now am slightly confused as to which way to go. The Brainstorm one sounds like the right one except for the disclaimer on their site about letting in more transmission noise. Shift boots came today, guess I’ll just put them on this weekend as the research continues….

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 252

Dust

My wife watches way too much HGTV so she is prone to fits of “redecorating.” Last night she decided that she wanted me to move my CDs out of the living room and put them in the computer room where they would be closer to me. She wanted me to clear off the shelves on one side of the room that were full of books and put my music CDs on them. She wanted the selves in the living room to put her teddy bears on. For now the books reside on the floor in the computer room.

If you don’t use the books for a while it is amazing the amount of dust that gathers on them and the selves they reside on. Dust disposal takes on two forms at my house: 1) When Donna is around, you have to wipe the dust off with a damp washcloth, so it doesn’t fly everywhere. 2) When she is not around I just wipe it off onto the floor (where I could vacuum it up later) I know I read somewhere that dust is mostly dead skin that has sloughed off of you, but what else is it? Really, really small dirt? Tiny meteorites? Insect shit?

Ordered The Short Shifter Kit

Washed the car this afternoon even though it is supposed to rain tomorrow. It was just too filthy not to. It was covered in an even coat of gray, except where I had placed the little RoadsterChat & Master’s Miata Club magnets, it was perfectly clean under them.

Ordered the short shifter kit from Moss. They are proud of their Shipping and Handling department – $15 to UPS that 2 lb. shifter….

Started down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 250

Mr. Smart Internet Guy, Huh?

I have been accessing the internet since before there was an Internet Explorer even. Most people I know when they have a question about the Net, email, viruses and computers in general come ask me. I don’t know everything, but I do know where to find the answer to almost everything. So tonight in a brilliant show of just how smart a guy I am, I sent out a change of email address via email to everyone in my address book, nearly 200 folks, and gave the wrong suffix on the email addy. I had dot com instead of dot net. So all 200-ish people got 2 emails from Mr. Smart Guy tonight.

Two Rubber Shift Boots

The car is way filthy from driving around in the rain all weekend. I couldn’t wash it because Donna needed it to go swimming. Busy after work week, so it may be all the way until Friday before it gets washed. Ordered the 2 rubber shift boots that go on the transmission under the leather boot you see. When I installed the leather a few weeks back I noticed that the top one had a big tear in it. I didn’t place too much emphasis on it until I was lurking over on the Miata.net Forum and discovered that those torn boots would lead to extra heat in the cockpit. It was then that I put 2 and 2 together. The transmission has been radiating heat for a while now, I just thought it always did that. Now I think that after reading the procedure for changing these boots I will have to move up the purchase of the short shifter kit so I don’t have to do the job twice and potentially pay for the bottom boot twice.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 249