Year: 2006

38,000 Calories

The monthly meeting of the MMC was held tonight at the local Red Lobstah. I had two refills of sweet iced tea, 1-1/2 cheese biscuits, a garden salad with 1/2 portion of blue cheese dressing and a main course of Salmon New Orleans (Pan-seared fresh Atlantic or King Salmon & shrimp seasoned with Cajun spices in a rich lemon butter sauce. Served with a side salad, seasonal vegetables & your choice of side.) This is about 38,000 calories, but I can’t be sure because the Red Lobster web site does not have a nutrition guide. Thirty eight thousand is coincidentally the same number the wounded Emperor’s odometer passed through on the way to the meeting.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 98

MLB.com Revisted

After rereading the blurb from the email:

MLB.com will honor any refund request for a seasonal subscription made within 10 days of the purchase for the current season or at any time before the subsequent season begins.

I haven’t missed my opportunity to get a refund, now is the time. My credit card was charged on Monday, so I have until the 13th to request my money back.

They’ve got it covered though, take the phone off the hook. I tried calling them 4 separate times today and all I got was a busy signal. I’m sure the phone is not off the hook, but their lines are overloaded by folks like me trying to get their money back.

Now I’m not so sure I want it back. While listening to tonight’s broadcast it was fine up until the 6th inning or so, then it started to break up. At the half inning I shut down the player, cleared IE’s cache, closed and restarted the browser, restarted the player and it has been fine ever since. Once is just anecdotal evidence, more experimentation is required.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 98

MLB.com, Here We Go Again

I pretty much ignore pre-season baseball, because well, it doesn’t count. Friday night I received an email from MLB.com reminding me that my Gameday Audio subscription was going to be automatically renewed. After last year’s experience I thought it might be a good idea to tun into the last preseason Red Sox game playing right then. Guess what? That’s right, the same issue I had with the WEEI broadcasts last year, annoying sound gaps, were present again. So I turned it off in disgust and fired off a reply to that email telling them that I wished to cancel my subscription.

MLB.com will honor any refund request for a seasonal subscription made within 10 days of the purchase for the current season or at any time before the subsequent season begins.

By Saturday afternoon I hadn’t received a reply to the email and time was running out. I dialed the 1-800 number in the email. After drilling down through the voice mail prompts to get where I needed to be, I was informed that I should call back during their normal working hours, Monday through Friday 9 AM to 8 PM and Saturday from 12 noon to 6 PM, then automatically disconnected. Wait a minute it is 4 PM eastern time, unless their phone support is in Hawaii, I was calling in their “normal working hours.” Very convenient, Sunday is the start of the season, so they have pretty much guaranteed that I won’t be able to get a refund.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 98

Catholic Parrots

A lady goes to her priest one day and tells him, “Father, I have a problem. I have two female parrots, but they only know how to say one thing.”

“What do they say?” the priest inquired.

They say,”Hi, we’re hookers! Do you want to have some fun?”

“That’s obscene!” the priest exclaimed. Then he thought for a moment. “You know,” he said, “I may have a solution to your problem. I have two male talking parrots, which I have taught to pray and read the Bible. Bring your two parrots over to my house, and we’ll put them in the cage with Frank and Jacob. My parrots can teach your parrots to pray and worship, and your parrots are sure to stop saying that phrase in no time.”

“Thank you,” the woman responded, “this may very well be the solution.”

The next day, she brings her female parrots to the priest’s house. As he ushers her in, she sees that his two male parrots are inside their cage, holding rosary beads and praying. Impressed, she walks over and places her parrots in with them.

After a few minutes, the female parrots cry out in unison: “Hi, we’re hookers! Do you want to have some fun?”

Stunned silence, from both the humans and parrots. Quickly the moment passes and one male parrot looks over at the other male parrot and exclaims, “Put the beads away Frank, our prayers have been answered.”

New Camera= New Fun

New Camera= New FunMy picture taking had really slacked off recently, but now that I have a new toy the “magic” is back. We were at the local Honda dealer this afternoon and inside their showroom they a meticulously restored 1973 600 Coupe. I used the 23mm wide angle lens to take the picture and then added a Kodak EasyShare fun filter called appropriately, cartoon, to get the finished product.

This car is famous in my memory because while stationed on Guam, one of my VQ-1 squadron mates owned one. When Super Typhoon Pamela made a beeline for our tiny little island in July of 1976, he had to be on one of the squadron’s planes that flew off to safe harbor in Japan. He left his car parked with those of the rest of the aircrew near the hanger, which was in plain sight from the back of our barracks about 200-300 yards away. On the typhoon’s way onto the island, it was best to be holed up in your barracks room, but after the eye passed the wind shifted so that the back stairs were in relatively quiet air and we could stand on the landings and watch the winds wreak havoc on the airfield buildings and hangers.

As some of us watched 4 x 8 sheets of corrugated tin roofing get peeled off an older hanger, my roommate pointed back towards our hanger. There rolling down the tarmac was that poor little Honda 600. It got rolled onto one side, then onto the roof and then over on the other side before coming to a stop pressed up against the squadron’s duty pickup. To add insult to injury, the wind then pushed a nearby dumpster sliding along the pavement until it mushed into the roof of the tiny 1200 lb car. Needless to say the car was a total loss.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 98

A Day In The Woods

This morning Donna and I went for an atypical walk in Hitchcock Woods. Instead of wandering semi aimlessly, we had a definite destination, the centrally located horse ring. Today was the last day of the 90th running of the Aiken Horse Show.

Our neighbor’s daughter competes and we thought it might be nice to see if she was going to be there. When we arrived at the ring we looked and looked, but didn’t see her. As we were leaving the area near where all the horses were, she came running up. When we asked when she was riding she shrugged and said later. Aaah, youth. She knew Mom would tell her when. Turns out it was much later than we had planned on staying, but what the heck we have some time. Unfortunately at the last minute they shuffled the schedule, delaying her start into the early afternoon and we didn’t have that much time. Plus we didn’t have the money nor the desire to eat from the “roach coach.”

I did get a chance to shoot a bunch pictures with the new camera, including a few using the panorama function.
Horse Ring
Clicking on the image will take you to a 40% reduction of the 4576 x 1220 original.

Seeing this is April you may see another one of the shots in the Hitchcock Woods 2006 gallery later this month. While you wait, check out March’s entry from about three weeks ago.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 96

The Last Olympus D-40Z Picture

The Last Olympus D-40Z PictureNo I haven’t given up taking pictures, there on the left hand side of that photo you will see the LCD of my new camera, a Kodak V570, displaying the EasyShare System logo.

The couple of negatives I didn’t like about the camera, proprietary battery & no direct USB connection to the PC, were over ridden by the positives, seperate 23mm wide angle lens, very small (about 2/3rd the size of a deck of cards) , 2.5″ LCD and short shutter lag.

I have always loved the look of wide angle shots, so the separate 23mm lens was the big factor in the decision. The other lens is the typical 35-105 found in most point and shoot digital cameras. The big factor for my wife was the short shutter lag. It has always been a thorn in my side, but after Donna struggled mightily to take picture during the BMW Ultimate Drive last week, she said, “You’ve got to find a better camera.” This camera has about a 2/10 second shutter lag which feels positively instantaneous compared to the Olympus.

The rechargeable battery gets juiced up as long as the camera rests in the dock, but I’ll probably buy a second battery somewhere down the line, they’re only $20. The no direct USB connection to the PC will be solved by getting a SD card reader for the laptop to take along when traveling. The camera has 32MB internal storage, but I bought a 512MB SD card when I picked up the camera last night.

The Olympus had a panoramic mode where you could take several shots and then you knitted them together using the Olympus software on the PC. This Kodak has a panoramic mode where you take 3 shots and they get knitted together right in the camera. With the 23mm lens you can get a little more than a 180 degree picture. I experimented with it this morning when we were in the woods. I may go ahead and add a panorama gallery to the website.