Year: 2008

Thanks For The Coupon

Every once and a while the local Mazda dealer will send me a mailing that is supposed to get me to come in and let them service my car. The one I got today offered a free oil change using a new filter and topping off of vital fluids.

Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Until you get to the fine print, then things get strange. “Plus applicable taxes.” Seven percent of nothing is…ahhh, let’s see, zero times zero point zero seven…carry the zero…is Nothing. Oh, wait a minute, I see how it is applicable, the next bit of fine print says, “Some vehicles may be slightly higher.” How much higher? Define slightly?

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 252

If I Had A Station Wagon

I would join the ASWOA and spend a substantial portion of my disposable income HERE.

While searching the web on how to say Happy Bastille Day I stumbled on this site, Uncertain Times, that is a web spelinkers delight. Oh, by the way, it is Joyeux Quatorze Juillet.

This guy is brilliant or certifiably insane: Ironic Sans. Which segues into one of my favorite TDPM quotes:

Will Turner: This is either madness… or brilliance.
Jack Sparrow: It’s remarkable how often those two traits coincide.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 249

What’s The Difference?

A lawyer runs a stop sign and gets pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy. He thinks that he is smarter than the deputy because he is a lawyer from a big city and is certain that he has a better education then any cop from this small town. He decides to prove this to himself and have some fun at the deputy’s expense.

The deputy says,” License and registration, please.”

“What for?” says the lawyer.

The deputy says, “You didn’t come to a complete stop at the stop sign.”

Then the lawyer says, “I slowed down, and no one was coming.”

“You still didn’t come to a complete stop.? says the deputy, ?License and registration, please.”

The lawyer says, “What’s the difference?”

“The difference is you have to come to complete stop, that’s the law. License and registration, please!” the Deputy says.

The lawyer says, “If you can show me the legal difference between slow down and stop, I’ll give you my license and registration; and you give me the ticket. If not, you let me go and don’t give me the ticket.”

“That sounds fair. Please exit your vehicle, sir,” the deputy says.

The deputy takes out his nightstick and starts beating the ever-loving crap out of the lawyer and says, “Do you want me to stop, or just slow down?”

My God, It’s Full Of Stars*

I am slowly (and somewhat reluctantly if you ask my wife) painting the middle bedroom. We have painted the walls in there a couple of times before, but never the ceiling. I decided to change that this time and give the ceiling a nice fresh coat of pink paint. But first, I had to prepare the surface, and that meant scraping off the seemingly thousands of glow in the dark stars we had stuck up there several years ago.

* Bowman actually says, “The thing’s hollow ? it goes on forever ? and ? oh my God! ? It’s full of stars!”, but not in the movie 2001, its in the novel by Arthur C. Clarke and does make it into 2010, the sequel.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 248

Serenity

Along with our Netflix membership, we are also members of a couple Movie Gallery video stores here in town, due mostly to our TDTVS addiction. Every once in a while one of them will call us and leave a message on our phone answering machine to say they haven’t seen us in a while and to bring us back we are entitled to a free movie rental. We got one of those calls on Thursday. A while? Ha! The last time we were in any of their stores was when Season 3 of Lost was released or the last time they offered a free rental.

Having just finished re watching the Firefly DVDs on Friday we decided to see if we could get the Firefly based movie Serenity as our freebie. Luck was with us as Movie Gallery had a copy on the shelf, so today we had “Lunch and a Movie.”

Well, both the Mrs and I love Firefly, but were disappointed with the movie — there goes our nominations for the Browncoat Hall of Fame… Part of the appeal of the show was the character interaction among the crew with the plot of each episode serving as a vehicle to move the developing relationships along. The movie, as I explained to someone (Hi Rae), was too movie-ish. Everything had to be bigger, faster, more and it was jarring. On TV they used what they called the mule, basically a tarted up ATV, to get around planetside. For the movie they had some sort of hovercraft with giant jet engines and seated four comfortably. Why? During the run of the show when ever there was encounter with another spaceship it was always just one, for the movie they pulled a George Lucas – Industrial Light & Magic with a final battle consisting of hundreds of vessels crisscrossing and dodging and weaving. Why, when a dozen would have done the trick? There were several other instances with over the top gun battles, hero vs bad guy one on one epic hand to hand battle on the edge of a precipitous drop and and some sappy feel good Hollywood romancing.

Fortunately the movie, when it was released in 2005, didn’t make a lot of money (according to IMDB it almost made back it’s $40 million budget), so they didn’t make any sequels. Unfortunately, it didn’t make enough at the box office to revive the TV series.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 247

Every Man Has His Price

And apparently mine is pretty small.

I didn’t vote for players for the baseball All-Star Game this year. Matter of fact I have never voted in all the years they have let fans do it. I don’t think it should be a fan based popularity contest, the players should be chosen by the league managers. They can vote for anyone they like except their own players.

The last couple of years they have even allowed the fans to vote on an extra player for the bench, pretty soon the fans will get to vote on what kind of pitch the pitcher will be throwing.

Anyway, I broke down and voted for the extra player this year because they were giving away a week’s worth of MLB.TV. Which is kind of a smart move on their part, because with the All-Star break in the middle of the giveaway week you only get to see like 4 games.

So right now I’m watching Baltimore put the hurt on the FRS in a small window while I blog. The video quality is not bad in a tiny window, but full screen it is very pixelated. Not something I want to pay $80 a year for. Besides I like the whole listening thing much better, it is easier to multitask.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 246

Gully Washer

Literally.

I went out and took off the cockpit cover, so I could put the top up around 2:00 PM. I had checked the radar and it looked like we might get passing thunderstorm in the next half hour. I was right about the storm, but wrong about the time, it took about an hour and a quarter to get to us. I was also wrong about the passing part, that sucker stopped over us. It was still raining hard at our 4 o’clock quitting time. We decided to wait a while, the way it was pouring we would have gotten soaked getting to the car, even with the umbrella.

It was still coming down in buckets at around 4:30 and there must have been a dozen or so front office types hanging out by the door waiting for the break in the rain that seemingly might never come. Not being able to take it any longer, one of the QC engineers shouted, “I’ll show you how it is done!” and sprinted into the rain, disappearing front sight within 25 yards. Next a woman from HR removed her shoes and walked out under her umbrella. The exodus began.

At the end of the sidewalk at the the edge of the parking lot there are the storm drains, but they were not keeping up and causing a section that was under 4-6 inches of water between everyone and their cars. Our feet got soaked right from the start. Because of where the Emperor is always parked we had a long walk across wind swept pavement while some extremely large, unseen, being sprayed us with his garden hose.

I don’t even want to talk abut the drive home, there were several places that we almost floated….

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 243