Month: October 2004

They All Do That

Donna’s mom took her Civic to the local Honda dealer to get the oil changed today. I asked her while she was there to have them listen to the brakes. For the last month or so they have been making a ticking sound whenever you come to a stop. It is speed dependent. It starts out fast and as you slow the ticking frequency slows, but the noise duration increases slightly. The brake power doesn’t seem to be affected, but the noise is disconcerting. They told her they all do that.

It didn’t do it when she first bought the car back in May. As a matter of fact, if I recall correctly, a couple of years ago we had this same noise on her previous Civic. It didn’t do it when she came from Washington to here. It started right after they did some brake work on the car. It always stopped fine, but it made a ticking sound. They told us the same thing, “They all do that.” Not as loud as on this car, but it was annoying. Maybe I should call Click & Clack…

Plastic Surgery

The Miata is staying overnight at the recovery room/body shop. The instructions say: The vehicle may not be driven in the first 12 hours to the gluing. (wash road at the earliest after 48 hours). And at first, I interpreted that to mean don’t drive it for 12 hours and don’t wash it for 48 hours, but I think they really mean, don’t drive it at all for 12 hours and don’t drive on rough roads for 48 hours. They were supposed to silicone on the spoiler this afternoon and I tried to call and find out the progress, but Liza was apparently too busy to call back, so I’m not sure if they did it or not. I’ll find out tomorrow morning and see if they did get it on. If they don’t glue it on until tomorrow, I might not be able to pick it before Friday as the silicone needs to set. Donna’s mom needs her car back for Friday to go to dialysis, but I guess at worse case I might have to duck out in the AM and drive her.

Comet Incubation Period: 12 days

One Down and Ten To Go

The Bosox won game one of their 5 game series this afternoon against the Angels. Just ten more wins and the thing that has eluded them since 1918 will be theirs, a World Series victory. It would be sweet if we had to beat the Yankees to get there, but with history solidly on their side, I hope Minnesota knocks the Yanks out first.

Of course 3 losses in the next 4 games and I could very well be saying, again, wait until next year.

1/2 The Velcro

I tried a variation of something I read on Miata to cure my annoying tick-ticking sound coming from the passenger area. I bought some tan velcro at the store this weekend and glued the fuzzy half onto the edge of the seats where the seatbelts hit them. It was easy to know where to put the velcro because the black seatbelts were leaving black marks on the tan seats. I may have to readjust the positioning downwards some though, the seatbelt hits right in the middle when in use, but it hits the very bottom of the velcro when you first buckle up causing it to lift the velcro off the seat. And get the edge of the belt sticky.

Comet Incubation Period: 11 days

Calm Before The Storm

The regular season is over and now the nail biting starts:

Game 1 BOS @ ANA Tue. Oct. 5 4:00 p.m. ESPN
Game 2 BOS @ ANA Wed. Oct. 6 10:00 p.m. ESPN
Game 3 ANA @ BOS Fri. Oct. 8 4:00 p.m. ESPN
Game 4* ANA @ BOS Sat. Oct. 9 TBD TBD
Game 5* BOS @ ANA Sun. Oct. 10 TBD TBD
* If Necessary

I was kind of hoping for Oakland because we pretty much owned them during the regular season, but maybe it is a good thing, because my expectations probably would have turned around and bit me on the butt with an Oakland 3 game sweep or something equally horrible. The Sox took the season series 5-4 from the Angels, but if you believe this article, “Clash has the makings of a classic” the series will be exciting. And at least if games 4 and 5 are needed they will be on the weekend, so for this series there is only one late night, Wednesday.

16,000 Miles

On the way home from work today we passed through the 16K barrier.

Dropped of the spoiler at the paint shop at lunch today. It will get painted tomorrow and then I’m going to let them do the mounting on Wednesday. I’ll pick the car back up Thursday, just in time to…

Mount the new tires on Friday. Donna and I have the afternoon off so that will be a convenient time for getting them mounted. Even though the FedEx website didn’t say out for delivery this morning, about 5:30 this afternoon a white truck pulled up and out came 4 Toyo T-1S tires.

Comet Incubation Period: 10 days

Bye-Bye Netflix

After nearly 4-1/2 years as a customer of Netflix I’m going to cancel my membership this week. We really haven’t been watching movies at a rate to warrant paying them the $23.31 a month. I have been keeping track of all my rentals over that time in an Excel spreadsheet worksheet. Here are just the highlights:

1567 Total Days Member
317 Total Movies Watched
72 Movies Not Finished
22.7% Percentage of Movies Not Finished
6.1 Average Movies Watched Per Month
$3.48 Cost per Rental
19 Average Days Out