Month: April 2005

VOIP

Regular readers will remember Sally, Donna’s friend that we visited in DC recently. She was heading for Kosovo, but that fell thru, so she was given a choice of several other garden spots around the globe, well she chose Windhoek, Namibia. She now has less than a week before she heads of to the other side of the world. Wanting to keep in touch, but also wanting to avoid HUGE phone bills, the friends at the State Department recommended she try Skype a free Internet telephony service. We downloaded the 6.4 Meg application and it installed with ease. The only stumbling block was I had to dig out the free microphone that came with the PC, tear it out of it’s plastic bag and plug it in.

Our first test call failed when she couldn’t figure out where the microphone was and how to enable it on her laptop. Call two went thru without a hitch as her daughter was there and was techno-savvy enough to get Sally going right. Talked for about 20 minutes and had only a couple of negatives. We had some echoes happening when she did not use her headset, but with the headset it was fine. Must be the location of the built-in speakers in relation to her built-in mike. Then we seemed to lose the connection for about 15-20 seconds towards the end.

All in all a very positive experience considering the cost. I can’t even imagine what AT&T would charge for a 20 minute call to, literally, half way around the planet.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 93

Relatively Recently

Took me about 20 minutes to get the set up of the MTrebuild “plugin” right and get the cron job figured out, so now if you want to see what song is playing* and the three previous songs played on Radio Paradise just take a look over to the right column under Mr. Sturgeon’s Law.

My Three Sons

Well not mine really, but the three sons of Bob Hall. Mazda has got a special edition of the next generation Miata traveling the country. At selected cities they bolt it to the top of a fire truck and drive it around that city. A stop is made at a fire station where money is donated and they unload the new Miata where people can get a close up and personal look and feel for the new car. At a stop in DC some of the enterprising Miataphiles parked one each of the first two generations of Miatas next to the new one so we could get a feel for how they all looked compared to each other. The red new one was in the middle with a silver 2nd gen to the left and a black 1st gen on the right. Well yesterday in Tampa they went that one better. They lined up all three gens in red and in order and snapped a few pictures. I asked the photographer for a higher resolution image and he sent me a copy at 1600 x 1200. I promptly turned it into my new desktop…

new_desktop.jpg

The Other Half Rotated

The folks at the neighborhood tire store were nice enough when I stopped in after work with my problem. I had to wait about an hour to get them to fix the cross threaded lug nut. When they tried to remove the seized one, the lug busted off, so we had to wait for them to get a new lug delivered. No charge.

Of course when I got home and finished the rotation job I had to use a breaker bar on two of the four lugs on the wheel they just worked on. Next time I go in there I will ask them if they know what the torque specs are for the lug nuts on a Miata. The answer is 66-86 foot/pounds.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 92

Recent Is A Relative Term

If you look to the right, just under Sturgeon’s Law, you will see a new addition – a list of Radio Paradise‘s Recently Played Songs. Some helpful soul over on the RP forums created a file that scrapes the recently played page and turns it into a feed. Now all that was needed was a way to display that info on my page.

First I tried the RSSFeed plugin. After a bit wrestling I got it to work, with one bugaboo, the only time it updated (read the feed) was when I rebuilt the index page. Not refreshed, rebuilt, as in posting an entry. This meant if you checked my blog in the afternoon, the songs listed as recently played would have been heard about 20 hours before. I guess if you are a rock, that is real recent, but in human terms that is like so yesterday. And in Internet terms, with recent meaning milliseconds, that is unacceptable.

The second attempt is using another plugin, GETXML that looked promising. It took a little more monkeying that the previous plugin to get going, but I persevered. Unfortunately it exhibits the same behavior as RSSFeed.

Some Movable Type forum searching turned up another plugin that might help either of the first by forcing a rebuild of the index file at predetermined intervals. That would keep the file list updated and recent. But I can’t seem to find it listed in the Plugins Directory and quite frankly, I’m getting tired of messing with this thing that probably has no redeeming value to anyone.*

Half Rotated

Decided to go ahead and do my own 22,500 mile service today at 22,204. The Owner’s Manual lists 3 items for this interval, replace oil, replace oil filter and lubricate locks and hinges. Done, well all except for the lock lubrication, I don’t have the correct lube for them, so they will just wait until next time.

As I usually do, I rotated the tires while changing the oil. Well I got them half rotated. One of the lug nut nuts on the right rear tire must be stripped. I got about 5 or 6 turns out and it started to be hard to turn. I applied a little muscle, but after about another turn I feared for breaking something, so I stopped. Tried to spin it back on, but it wasn’t going that way either. Funny thing about that wheel, that is the one I thought I had a slow leak in about 6 weeks ago, and my friendly neighborhood tire store had it off and on a couple of times during that visit. The ever cynical me figures they mucked up the stud and/or lug nut, so guess where I’m going during lunch tomorrow?

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 90

Put The Lime In The Coke, You Nut

About 2 weeks ago I got a really sharp pain when eating some pop corn. The next day I called the dentist to set up an appointment to have him look at it. The appointment was for the next week, but before it came around I got a hacking cough that would have made dental work nigh impossible, so I put it off for another week. Besides it only hurt a little if I chewed on that side.

The appointment was for this coming Thursday. Apparently the big pain was me cracking a tooth, as yesterday while munching on some peanut M&M’s (the Jedi mix) I completed the destruction and cracked off about 1/4 of ol’ #3. I thought that bite was kind of crunchy.

Although once the tooth is broke the pain goes away and I told them I could wait until my original Thursday appointment, they had a cancellation this afternoon, so in I went. The temporary is in place and I had to swear on a stack of bibles that there would not be a repeat of last August before they would let me out the door.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 87