Year: 2005

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

Pixel Decor

Pixel DecorI forgot all about the photo galleries, they still had the Halloween theme, until tonight that is. I’ve got to go ahead and consolidate the CSS for this weblog and those galleries, so if I ever do change the look (Oh, I’m sure that will never happen again. ;)) everything will update in one fell swoop.

A long time ago on a internet far, far away I found a site that was chock full of 50’s retro designs, called PixelDecor. I asked for and received permission to use some of the images (Chunky & Eames come to mind) there as background for the MMC web site. Most recently I was inspired by the pattern called LiteBrite when I had the rounded corner look for this blog back when I was using MT. As part of my updating here I am hoping to get permission to use the image above to use as the background (where you see the dark blue now.) I’d say I’ll keep you posted, but you’ll know anyway on one of your next few times you visit.

Which reminds me, those Life of Brian chapters from the ol’ MT days still have that rounded corner look with those colors. Better get working on updating them.

Plus there is still the dusty morgue of 2002-2003 blog entries to wipe off and import here…

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

I Have Been Remiss

I was informed tonight at the MMC Monthly Meeting that I hadn’t uploaded the latest newsletter to the web site. Must have slipped my mind. I was also informed that I had a wrong meeting place listed for the Club’s annual Holiday Party (when I copied and pasted something I forgot to change a line.) So I told them if they didn’t like it fire me. They didn’t.

Guess I’ll get busy on that tomorrow instead of drawing valve parts…

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