Month: November 2005

Oh! Charlie

Aiken added another chain eatery to its lineup the other week, O’Charley’s. Tonight Donna and I sampled the place. The menu was pretty much like all the others in the casual dining category. There wasn’t anything there that you couldn’t get identically or really similar someplace else. Whatever their signature dish is, the one every one thinks of when they think of O’Charley’s, I hope we didn’t have it, because our dinner was totally forgettable. Matter of fact, we have after one meal decided that we may not ever need to go back. The place was packed, but that is more attributable to the fact that it is new, than the food and or atmosphere.

Not that the food was bad. We split a side salad, whole rack of ribs, fries and slaw. We started off with a bowl of potato soup that no less than two co-workers said was to die for, and I wouldn’t suffer through a paper cut for any more. More cheddar cheese and bacon pieces than potatoes served luke-hot. The ribs were advertised as “Fall-Off-The-Bone”, but they needed some coaxing to let go of the bone. Fries are fries and the cole slaw was slightly better than average.

Within a mile of O’Charley’s is a Chili’s, a Ruby Tuesday, an Applebee’s and they are building a Fatz Cafe which are all the same kind of eatery. Also within the same radius is an Outback, a Red Lobster, an Atlanta Bread Company, a Ryan’s, an IHOP, about a dozen different fast food places and the usual smattering of Chinese, Mexican and Pizza places. I wish them luck, put they probably don’t need it because although Donna and I probably won’t ever darken their door again there are definitely enough others that will.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347

Circle Flies

A cowboy in Texas got pulled over by a State Trooper for speeding.

The trooper started to lecture the cowboy about his speeding, and in general began to throw his weight around to try to make the cowboy feel uncomfortable.

Finally, the trooper got around to writing out the ticket.

As he was doing that, he kept swatting at some flies that were buzzing around his head.

The cowboy said, “Having some problem with Circle flies there, are ya?”

The trooper stopped writing the ticket and said, “Well yeah, if that’s what they are. I never heard of Circle flies.”

So the cowboy says, “Well, Circle flies are common on ranches. See, they’re called Circle flies because they’re almost always found circling around the back end of a horse.”

The trooper says, “Oh,” and goes back to writing the ticket. Then after a minute, he stops and says, “Are you trying to call me a horse’s ass?”

The cowboy says, “Oh no, officer. I have too much respect for law enforcement and police officers to even think about calling you a horse’s ass.”

The trooper says, “Well that’s a good thing,” and goes back to writing the ticket.

After a long pause, the cowboy says, “Hard to fool them flies though.”

On This Date In History

1805 Lewis & Clark 1st sight the Pacific Ocean.
1867 Madame Marie Sklodowska Curie was born.
1918 Billy Graham was born in Charlotte NC.
1922 Al Hirt, famous jazz trumpeter born in New Orleans LA.
1932 CBS radio presents 1st broadcast of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
1943 Detroit Lions 0, NY Giants 0; last scoreless tie in NFL.
1962 Eleanor Roosevelt Former 1st Lady, dies at 78 in NYC.
1962 Nixon quits politics saying, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around.”
1964 Dana Plato is born in Maywood CA.
1972 President Nixon is re-elected, defeating George McGovern.
1978 Gene Tunney former heavyweight boxing champ, dies at 80.
1980 Steve McQueen Slater MO, actor, dies at 50.
1982 Liz Taylor’s 7th divorce (from John Warner) is finalized.
1989 Brian Bogardus takes delivery of his first Miata.
1991 Pee Wee Herman pleads no contest to charges of indecent exposure.
1994 The Electrical Engineering Times discovers flaws in Intel’s Pentium chip.

Random Event Reinforces Moronic Behavior

Sitting patiently, second in line behind an Acura MDX at a stoplight tonight and after waiting for what seemed a long time, but was perhaps only a couple of minutes, he crept up a foot or so in what I can only assume was a threatening gesture towards the light or perhaps just frustration at having to wait for practically no vehicles, when the cross traffic light goes yellow and ours soon follows by turning green.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347

What’s Past Is Never Past

I uploaded the “highlights” of the first half of 2003. Not every one is a gem, there are a few polished stones and a couple of rocks left in the mix, but guaranteed there are no lumps of coal nor dirt clods. If you ever want proof that there are folks who have a duller life than you, it is right there for you in my archives.

I wonder why when I imported those 6 months the plugin that displays them skipped the first two table cells?

Update: I uploaded all of July 2003 and one post from August and the table straightened itself out.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347

How’s That Work?

Donna and I went for a bike ride this morning and ended up for breakfast out again. This time we switched things up a bit and went south of town, so instead of eating at the New Moon Cafe we dined at Best Bagels. We get one bacon, egg & cheese bagel and a second plain toasted bagel. We each then get one half of each bagel and swap tops and bottoms with half the B,E&C split between them. We learned long ago that getting two bagels loaded with breakfast food stuffs is too much for us to eat, not that we couldn’t do it, but it makes the last 3 miles home on the bike more difficult.

How is this for a neat trick, I went for a 10.8 mile ride while she went for 13.2 and we rode the tandem! Turns out her new cyclecomputer has two separate settings, so it could be swapped back and forth between two bikes if you were so inclined and somehow when I set the tire size calculation number I entered it for bike number two and the computer was set to number one. I broke out the instructions and set #1 to the same number tire size as #2, so no matter what the computer is set for, it will read correctly.

Shade Awning Mechanic

Did the 30k service this morning. Donna and her mom went out to a couple local festivals and I put the Miata up on jack stands under the awning where mom’s MSV usually resides.

Changed the oil and filter. I have been changing these items in my Miata every 3 months or so for nearly a decade and a half and it never ceases to amaze me how much oil will drain out of a horizontally mounted filter. Even more puzzling is that I try and place an old t-shirt in the same spot in an effort to catch this flow and occasionally I succeed and others I stain the concrete driveway in several, sometimes large, spots.

As usual I rotated the tires while I change the oil. Checked their air pressure and topped off at 29 psi (60 in the spare) where required. I even sprayed the tires with some ArmourAll foaming tire cleaner. As an experiment I sprayed the inside of the wheel wells with the foaming stuff too. Worked a lot better, blacker, than when I use a sponge in there when washing the car.

Changed the air filter. It was quite dirty. The manual says clean it at 30k, but I think the 8 bucks for a new one is the least I can do for his highness.

Changed out the spark plugs. The old ones didn’t look too bad, I probably could have re-gapped them and put them back in, but a fresh set of NGKs is, like the air filter, cheap medicine. I also installed 2 new spark plug wires. That’s right two. On the old Miatas there was a coil pack with the typical 4 wires running to the 4 spark plugs and the OEM ones were notorious for starting to break down after 20 to 40k. The 2001-2005 Miatas have a coil directly mounted to two of the plugs and a standard wire from those coils to the other 2 plugs. Recently I have been noticing a slight bit of engine roughness in the mornings when the car is cold and it seemed like new wires were called for.

I also dumped a half a bottle of fuel injector snake oil into the gas tank.

For good measure I “washed” the car using some Quik Detailer and a towel.

Tonight when Donna and I went out for a drive and some clothes shopping, the rough running was gone. Was it the plugs, wires, fuel injector cleaner or a combination of all three?

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347