Month: December 2007

Crashing Back To Reality

Watched Deja Vu on Sunday. I was right with them, even the whole time travel thing, up until Denzel gets shipped back 4-1/2 days. Fifteen, twenty minutes earlier they made a big deal of sending a piece of paper back. They said they had to keep the mass low and still the power requirements were so high that they blacked out the whole city of New Orleans doing it just as the paper was materializing. Everyone held their breath to see if the 3 x 5 scrap of paper successfully made the trip. How they manage to send back a 200lb man after struggling with the paper I just couldn’t believe.

I am usually happy to suspend my belief in reality for a good movie, but it seems lately that there is always a point in the movie that brings me crashing back. I’m betting there is a term for it in Roger Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary, but the best I can come up now is “jumping the shark.”

When we watched National Treasure I was happily enjoying the trip when they bust into the vault under Independence Hall or wherever it was that has been sealed for 200 years and they flick a cigarette lighter to the torches lining the walls and they light right up and burn brightly for the rest of adventure. Come on. Our founding fathers must have purchased them from the same place as the Pharaohs of Egypt because every time an explorer find a mummy’s tomb, the torches in there light right up after millenniums.

It happened in The Astronaut Farmer too. I don’t remember exactly what did it, but it was sometime late in the movie. I mean I even bought the fact that launching a rocket through the roof of a barn wouldn’t incinerate the barn. But I was jarred into reality somewhere and ended up shaking my head in disbelief.

I don’t think it will happen in the 3rd Jason Bourne movie, but it is possible. I hope it doesn’t happen in the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but it is probable.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 496

Fruity Spam

I haven’t written about spam in a long while. Not because I’ve stopped getting it (there is as much chance of that happening as there was of me winning the Miata raffle the other day), but because it has become routine. There hasn’t been anything new since I started getting spam in kanji.

For a while there 2 months ago the Postini report I get for my work address was telling me it was stopping over 200 pieces a day, but now it has fallen to an all time low of around just 25 a day. A few more seem to making it through the filter though, I get 4 or 5 a day when it used to be 4 or 5 a week. How they are getting past is a mystery as they are easily recognizable as spam. I got one this morning that I can see how it made it by, but for the life of me can not figure on its purpose:

From: Assistant [temp5@utlya.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 09, 2007 7:38 PM
To: Bogardus, Brian [ASCO/AK]
Subject: Information, as instructed.

Recipe: Overnight Fruit Salad

Ingredients

1 small head cabbage, shredded (about 5 cups)
1 15oz can pineapple chunks, well drained
2 11oz cans mandarin orange sections, drained
2 cups seedless green grapes
1/3 cups light raisins
1 1/2 cups cubed Edam cheese
1 8oz carton lemon yogurt
1 cup dairy sour cream

Instructions :

1. Place cabbage on bottom of large salad bowl.
2. Top with pineapple chunks, mandarin orange sections, grapes and raisins. Sprinkle cheese atop.
3. Combine yogurt and sour cream; spread over salad, sealing to edge of bowl.
4. Cover and refrigerate for 4 to 24 hours. If desired, garnish with lemon and lime twist, curly endive, and a grape.

National Association of Cabbage Producers raising awareness?
Del Monte trying to boost sales of canned fruit?
Terrorists delivering a toxin in seedless green grapes?

Record Heat

Help Me, I'm Melting!I don’t know about where you live, but here in Aiken, SC our temperatures are way above normal. Today it was close to 80º and all the snowmen in town have melted.

We walked to the Atlanta Bread Company for breakfast and when we got back it was almost 70º so I took this opportunity to lube up the Emperor’s power window tracks. The passenger side was noticeably slower than the driver’s side, so I read up about fixing it on my favorite reference site, Miata.net. After I lubed up the passenger side, it made the driver’s side seam slow, so I had to go ahead and take the panel off that door too. Man that black snot they use as an adhesive to hold the plastic barriers in the doors is a real pain to work around, there is still some under a couple fingernails even after a half dozen hand washings.

While I was out there I did a quick detailer clean up to get all the dust off the car. That is all it is, it hasn’t rained in so long the only thing the Emperor ever gets covered in anymore is road dust. I was going to try out my new buffer, but I’m still chicken. I did use it, the included foam application pad and some Crest toothpaste to clean off the film that had started to haze up the headlights. Worked like a charm and it wasn’t too hard to use, so next time I wax the car I’ll probably use it to remove the wax.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 496

David Hiller of Madison, Ohio is a Lucky Stiff

He won the new Miata in the International Motor Racing Research Center’s raffle that I had earmarked as the Emperor II. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to wait the 1,087 days until I’m due a new Miata, er MX-5.

I was out late last night helping a friend to get his wife’s new laptop to print wirelessly to the printer connected to her Windows98SE desktop. It was not easy. Microsoft removed native printing support to Win9x machines from Vista. I kept getting an error message. Searching the web led me to a solution, but it didn’t work the first time and rebooting both the old desktop and the new laptop seemed overly long. Uninstalling and reinstalling the software for the HP all in one was not quick either. But I persevered, and I’m pretty sure it will print now, but even that is slow to happen. I don’t know why, here at the Bogardus Estate the XP laptop wirelessly to XP desktop prints as quick as the from the desktop to the directly connected printer. If they complain about speed, which I doubt will happen based on the speed that things move on the Vista laptop, I’ll look into it.

Mmmm. Presents.I was out sort of late tonight at the MMC Holiday party. Had a pretty good time. Donna ended up with a Christmas Snow Globe and I took home a cheapy 6″ random orbital buffer. The anal retentives over on Miata.net in the Car Care Section of the forum would recommend I spend a hundred and a half on a Porter Cable and then more on pads and such, but that is too steep for my blood. I still plan on applying the wax by hand and just using the buffer for removal. I’ll let you know how it works.

Remind me tomorrow to tell you about my Emergency Room visit this morning….

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 496

71,000 Lights

Christmas TreeWould you believe 7,100? How about 710? 71? There are probably somewhere between those last numbers decorating this spectacular Christmas tree on the back wall of my cubical/office. It is two sections of mesh net lights that go on the shrubs in front of a house. They used to grace our old artificial tree, but now that we have a smaller tree they are obsolete. When I first put them up I just hung them as a big ol’ rectangle. It looked awful, but I didn’t know what else to do. When my wife showed up for lunch she suggested the tree shape by letting the top panel hang from a center point. Smart girl.

Christmas DecorationsWe gathered some small bits of discarded valve parts for decorations, but more was needed. So I brought in a box from the attic at home that contained all my old drafting supplies from way back in the day — pre-computer. I probably have the only tree decorated with circle & lettering templates, pencils with different grade leads, technical pens of varying line widths, a compass for drawing big circles and a pocket protector. Plus there are even some small actual Christmas ornaments on there.

On the way back from checking the MMC P.O. Box in North Augusta tonight the Emperor clicked over the 71,000 mile mark.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 495

Wednesday

This silly little holiday themed joke didn’t start out as my Wednesday post when I put it here this morning, but…

When four of Santa’s elves got sick, the trainee elves did not produce toys as fast as the regular ones, and Santa began to feel the pre-Christmas pressure. Then Mrs. Claus told Santa her Mother was coming to visit, which stressed Santa even more.

When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two others had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where.

Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the floorboards cracked, the toy bag fell to the ground and all the toys were scattered. So, frustrated, Santa went in the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum.

When he went to the cupboard, he discovered the elves had drank all the cider and hidden the liquor. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider jug, and it broke into hundreds of little glass pieces all over the kitchen floor.

He went to get the broom and found the mice had eaten all the straw off the end of the broom, just then the doorbell rang, and irritated Santa marched to the door, yanked it open, and there stood a little angel with a great big Christmas tree.

The angel said very cheerfully, “Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn’t this a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?”

And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

…things conspired against me having any time to peck out a real post, so this is it. To bad too, as a lot of exciting things happened today, a haircut, putting up Christmas “decorations” at work, a summons to jury duty in the Aiken County Court for the first week of next year and much, much more.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 495

Tuesday

Posting Avoidance Syndrome strikes again. PAS – another acronym to add to the sidebar maybe? Too bad I couldn’t figure out an ‘s’ word to put on the end to make it PASS.

I spent the evening adding captions to the latest Post Office photos and locating them on my Flicker map. I now need to find a photo representing heat for the Tuesday Challenge. I’m seriously considering using a photo I used for a meme in the long ago past, but will probably use the HHI sunrise photo from a couple weeks ago, at least it is a little more current.

I can’t even come up with descriptive titles.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 495