Year: 2009

Idiot

While on vacation I used the credit card for everything, but because I am so used to using the debit card, I moved it to a slot of the wallet that was out of sight and put the CC up front. The only time the debit card was used was to take out cash every other day or so. The cash was for drinks, snacks, trinkets and lunch if it was cheap enough.

As we were leaving Cortez, CO towards the end of the vacation we filled up with gas and then went inside to grab some cash at the ATM. I swiped the card, punched in my PIN and the machine whirred for a while and spit out a receipt. No cash though.

I called out to the woman behind the counter, “Is this thing out of order? I didn’t get any cash.” She said that they hadn’t had any complaints. Like ever even, it always works. She said the store wasn’t responsible for the machine, but she walked over with her cordless phone and asked if there was a phone number on it. I read her the 1-800 number and she dialed it.

About then I took a good look at my receipt:
Requested Amount: $60.00
Dispensed Amount: $0.00
Invalid PIN

I told her, “Go ahead and hang up and I apologize, it was operator error.” I had swiped the credit card and typed in the debit card PIN. DOH!

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 180

How Was Your Day?

I need to swap the bedroom set to the summer bedroom. I need to clean the pine pollen off the back deck. The garbage disposal in the kitchen has stopped working, so I need to take it apart and see what has jammed it up. I still have 12 days of vacation photos sort through.

So what did I do today? We went geocaching, on a Time Speed Distance Rally with the MMC, watched two episodes of West Wing and I’m listening to the FRS on the internet.

Oh, and I have to order a new battery for the Miata.

We finished a disappointing tied for fifth (out of 6 cars) in the rally this morning. We made one error due to a misleading statement from the rally masters misinterpretation and another because of a missed a clue. We felt that we had kept track of the time and mileage overruns, but even subtracting them from our totals we were still way over and lost big points. The capper was I worked a pounds to kilogram conversion the wrong way and blew the bonus question.

After lunch at the BBQ place one of the Club members had left his lights on and the car wouldn’t start. That is a picture of three of us trying to push start him. After about 4 or 5 attempts we gave up on that and went inside to see about borrowing some jumper cables. The jump start work its magic and off he went.

On the way home Donna and I stopped at a quick stop store in south Augusta to get a bottled water and a Sprite. When we got back in the car I turned the key and was met with silence. Hmm, did I have the clutch all the way in? Tried again and still nothing, but radio display flashed as I went by. The dome light was on, so I figured it wasn”t a dead battery. Funny thing was that with the ignition switch in the ACC position the radio display would flash and there was a clicking sound (like 2 relays) coming from the instrument cluster.

Pulled out the cell phone and called Rudy (AKA Clunk) (or is it Thunk) and his first thought was battery, even after I described the symptoms. He said hold on, I’ll get the truck and come take a look. Thirty minutes later Rudy and Patti pull up. He brought some wrenches so we could remove the battery and (for what I figured was for testing purposes) the battery out of his Mazdaspeed Miata. We swapped batteries and the car started right up. According to Rudy the newer batteries don’t give you any warning, like they used to in the olden days. now they just up and die. We called a couple places to see if they had any batteries for the car and one said we don’t carry ’em, called the dealer and the other had one, but for $90 and he was all the way on the other side of town. Rudy has his truck and Patti just got a new Lexus, so he let me babysit his battery for a while.

It is still going to cost a hundred bucks or so for the battery, but it won’t be a generic replacement from Autozone, it’ll be a quality Westco replacement that is designed for the Miata.

Thanks Rudy.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 180

Blogger’s Night Off

The barbed wire fence was little deterrent as this water tank along NM14 and it got a very colorful paint job. There was a geocache just a little further north along the fence.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 178

Going Paperless

Didn’t have time to work up a post tonight because I’m busy playing with my new toy, a HP iPAQ HX2495b. We borrowed a PDA to use on vacation for paperless geocaching and liked it so much that I bought on off fleabay. I got one with the bigger battery, so it should be interesting to see how long it will run compared to the borrowed unit. It didn’t come with a stylus (through oversight or on purpose by the seller), so right now I’m using a q-tip with the fuzz cut off to navigate around. I wrote the seller and we’ll see if he drops one in the mail or I have to buy one.

I also started weeding out some of the 551 pictures we took on vacation to get it down to some sort of managable level for posting online here and sharing with friends and coworkers (without boring them too much more than it already will just by its mention.)

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 176

World’s Largest Pistachio Nut

Don’t take my word for it, believe the folks at Roadside America.

On our way to Alamogordo, NM to visit White Sands, we stumbled onto rows of small skinny trunked trees along side of the road. An orchard of some sort. Than we say this giant statue and put two and two together, they were pistachio trees. We stopped in at Pistachio Tree Ranch AKA: McGinn’s Country Store & Arena Blanca Winery for some nuts and souvenirs.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 146

90,000 MPH Winds

While traveling the roads of Nebraska, New Mexico and eastern Colorado you will see various forms of this sign. This picture is from New Mexico, but my favorite is from Colorado where it reads WINDS MAY BE GUSTY. While they probably hope you interpret the sign as “WINDS MAY BE GUSTY“, for some reason I read it as “WINDS MAY BE GUSTY”. Like they weren’t sure there was such a thing as gusty winds.

Trust me though, there *were* gusty winds and they were powerful enough to make it difficult to drive in a straight line for me in a Mustang. I imagine it was a lot harder on 18 wheelers and motor homes to stay in their lane.

More often than not, less than a 1/4 mile after the gusty winds signs there was a big sign giving a toll free number to report suspected DUI drivers. Just how were you supposed to know? Everybody was bobbing and weaving…

Before I got to the end of our street on the way to work this morning the Emperor flashed past the 90,000 milestone.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 176

Satellite Radio

Here at home, music is served up in the Emperor via MP3s recorded on 10 CDs stored in a changer in the trunk. I have not listened to over the air radio for, well, as far back as I can remember (which due to repeated drug use in my youth, is not far), so what was I to do for two weeks in a rental car. It will be a base model, so would it have an iPod interface? Doesn’t matter, don’t have one anyway. Probably have a CD player, but all my audio CDs are long gone. Satellite radio? Doubtful. Hey wait a minute, a friend in the Miata Club has an extra Sirius unit that I could borrow, brilliant.

For testing purposes I temporarily hooked up the Visor in the Miata. Not bad, there were a couple channels I could enjoy and even a few I could listen to for a while, nice.

The expected Chrysler Sebring turned into a Ford Mustang and it had a CD player that read MP3s. I had brought along a couple of my Radio Paradise MP3 CDs for listening to on the laptop in case of spotty internet or whatever, so I popped one in and off we went.

The Mustang even had an extra ciggy lighter socket along side the external input jack in the console which would make powering up the Sat Radio real easy. My intention was to at the first early evening stop to install the Visor. Well one day led to the next when we weren’t done driving and seeing the sites until 7:00-7:30 at night, so I didn’t even get a chance to try the install until the sixth night of vacation.

I ran the antenna cable from the trunk through the rear seat backs gap, plugged in the power cord, hooked both into the unit and hit ON. Nothing. OK, maybe the key needs to be in run before the aux power jack is hot. Nope. Dang, did I break the radio in transit? I plugged it into the primary cigarette lighter in the upper center of the dash and sure enough the satellite radio came right on.

So what gave? Was that port broke (blown fuse?) or was it there but not hooked up because the car didn’t have a certain option package? Anyway, I didn’t want to drive around with the wire draping down the middle of the front of the dash and I didn’t want to have to worry about unplugging it every time we stopped where any nefarious individuals would think there was something worth stealing, so in the end I wrapped the Visor unit all back up and stored it the luggage.

I think we ended up playing those 2 CDs four times through (alternately) for the 2 weeks. Each disc holds about 170 songs, so it really didn’t come off as too repetitious.

Thanks anyway Rudy.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 176