Year: 2010

Decimal Steps

Summer is here in Aiken, SC. This weekend the temperatures were supposed to hit the upper 90s, maybe even break the century mark, so earlier in last week Donna and I planned a weekend getaway into the state’s northwest corner where it is mountainous and cooler, plus we could finish up those final 2 counties and 3 DeLorme pages for those geocaching challenges.

As the weekend approached, like all good sailors, we kept a weather eye out on what was in store for northwestern South Carolina. It looked like there was not much relief to be had up there, maybe 4 or 5 degrees cooler with just as much a chance of afternoon showers, so on Friday afternoon we decided to save the couple hundred bucks (and I’d forgo having cinnamon buns for breakfast) by staying home.

Saturday morning we went for a bike ride and grocery shopped returning home by 9:00AM and not leaving the house again except for my trip to the mailbox to pick up the latest Red Envelope full of Law & Order: Season 1. Amazing who has popped up so far in guest starring roles; Samuel L. Jackson in a brief bit as a defense attorney, Philip Seymour Hoffman in his first credited role as an accused rapist, the future Lt. Van Buren, S. Epatha Merkerson, as a mother of a mistakenly shot child and TDTVS’s Harold Perrineau as a young drug dealer.

Sunday we stayed outside a little later, through lunchtime (although the top was up for the last couple of hours) doing some geocaching. We headed over to North Augusta to search for some on the Greenway, an old abandoned railway bed now paved over into a biking/walking trail. We started at one end and after we found one right near the beginning, we were quickly distracted by a cache down by the river, which led to a couple in a new park around some old ponds, which then again led to a new section of the Greenway which parallels real close to the Savannah River and we never really made it to the actual Greenway Greenway.

With our t-shirts soaked with sweat, looking like Jack & Kate after a trip into the island jungle, we called it quits and headed back to the car with 8 finds. Realizing that put us at 458 total Donna said we need two more to make it an “even” four hundred and sixty. We snagged one in a small park outside the Greenway entrance that we had DNF?d a couple of weeks ago then another in a park that we have passed a hundred times and never been in. When I got home and logged that last one I noticed that there was a second one in that park as well. Good thing we didn’t realized that at the time, because if we found it, we probably would have had to find 9 more to make the total even again?

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 677

New Phone

Well it is not really new anymore, we’ve had it for over a month, I’ve just never got around to writing about it, ’til now.

We’ve had a pay as you go cell phone from AT&T for some time now (it was still Cingular when we got it.) While we were genuinely happy with it, it was quite small and for those of us who grew up when phones had dials, phone numbers that started with words for the interchange and big handsets we never got used to not having the mouthpiece anywhere near our mouths.

Plus, whenever it would get dumped into Donna?s purse when on, it would come out with a display full of random numbers and we were afraid it might accidentally call someone in Kenya. The keys would get pressed from the phone being jumbled around inside there. It did have a key lock function and we tried using it, but it was more of a hassle before we were always forgetting to unlock the phone before trying to dial someone.

The solution to both those issues was to get a larger flip phone, but for pay as you go customers there is no phone upgrade path. I hunted and hunted around on the AT&T website and couldn?t find any way to do it. I then called their customer service and was told that it just couldn?t be done.

This time when we got down to zero minutes on the phone we thought, what the heck, there are only like 2 dozen people who know our cell phone number anyway, why not just but a new pay as you go phone with a new number? So we picked out a $50 flip phone (Samsung A167) that came with $30 worth of air time.

When the new phone arrived there was a large bright yellow sticker on it that says something to the effect, “ATTENTION AT&T customers just transfer the SIM card from your old phone to this one.” Cool, maybe that will work for me. I plugged the old SIM card in the new phone, turned it on and nothing happened. Not actually nothing, the screen displayed a line of text that roughly implied, ?Sorry Sucker.” Sigh.

So I took out that SIM and put in the one that came with the new phone and went online to the AT&T site and registered the new phone with the same contact info as the old phone and waited. It was supposed to take 30-45 minutes for the $30 airtime to get credited to my new account.

After an hour I checked to see if the minutes were there and they weren?t. For the heck of it I logged into the old phone?s account and what do you know there was $30 worth of airtime! So now we have and old phone we don?t want to use with big minutes and a new phone we want to use that has zero minutes.

Ever the tinker, I take the new SIM card and put it in the old phone. Turned on the phone and it works, no minutes to really test it, but when I check the Own Number in the phone?s menu it reads the new number. So I put the old SIM in the new phone and it works! In spite of everyone saying it can?t be done, it was, I have successfully upgraded my AT&T pay as you go phone.

Now if I only hadn?t erased the contacts of the old SIM in the process of looking to donate it to Cell Phones for Soldiers?

Started down, went up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 675

Christmas In June

We went out for a drive to check on a geocache that someone DNF’d the other day. Ordinarily we wouldn’t worry about a single DNF, but this cacher had over a thousand finds and although the cache container is bison tube, it is hanging under one of the eyes of a Forest Face!

About 5 minutes into the drive with radio down low I could swear I heard Christmas music. Turning up the volume resulted in confirmation, Here Comes Santa Claus was playing. I’ve talked about the Emperor’s music delivery system here before, but for sake of my numerous new readers, music in the Miata comes from a 10 disc CD changer that plays MP3s and now that we were listening to Yuletide Tunes again it meant that it has taken over 5 months to listen to the other 9 CDs (or approximately 1700 songs.)

Maybe time to swap out for new CDs, or I could just leave them in there and the Christmas music might next roll around right on time for the season…

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 672

Round Numbers?

After we finished caching on Memorial Day we had a total of 444 finds. I felt that that total was perfect and if we never found another cache I would be happy. Four hundred and forty four seemed like a nice round, even, perhaps circular number. Donna thought otherwise, she was disappointed that we had a DNF, and felt that 445 would be a “rounder number.” After the MMC meeting on Thursday there was a cache one block away, so we went over and found it giving us 445.

This morning we went for a bike ride to pay the bills (electric, water & cable) with a stop at the Atlanta read Company for breakfast after. When we got home it was only 8:30 and a bit too early to cocoon for the rest of the day, so we grabbed the GPSr and hit the road. We picked up 5 caches taking us to 450, a number we both agree is a round number.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, down again, up once more, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 669

Network Weasels

Last week I received this email:

Periodic audits by IT indicate that you have Mozilla Firefox software installed on your computer. Unfortunately this is not Emerson approved software and must be removed. John Smith* (our in house colateral duty IT guy) will schedule a time for removal of this software.

*his actual name

The best I can figure out the reason they wanted Firefox off is they couldn’t figure a way to prevent folks from viewing embedded video on web sites with it like they can with IE. So now I was stuck looking at annoying ads when going to websites andhaving to dimiss a several warning dialog boxes that a website was trying to connect to the intranet that was never a problem with Firefox.

I thought maybe just leaving a thumbdrive with Firefox Portable installed on it was pushing the limits, so I tried Chrome Portable. Chrome may be the fastest browser, but it was pig slow off a thumbdrive, so I gave up after 3 days. Now I just live with Internet Explorer…

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 664

Yo Saf Bridge Returns To Space

After a stint as a con woman that was a pain in the side of the crew of the Firefly a couple of times in the early 26th century and recently seen stuck on Madison Ave, Earth in the middle 20th century on TDTVS2, Christina Hendricks returns to the ‘Verse sometime in the far future where space travel costs an arm and a leg, literally, as an android in a music video from Broken Bells.

The Emperor got a well deserved bath after work today.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 661

Frustration

While returning from Hendersonville on Saturday afternoon I witnessed the true definition of frustration.

We were zipping along south on I-26 somewhere south of Spartanburg with Donna at the wheel and me watching the world go by at 70 MPH. Up ahead I could see three turkey buzzards right on the edge of the shoulder moving back and forth towards the road. One would take a couple steps towards the right lane and then quickly hop back. Then another would do the same thing. When we got right next to them I could see what was going on. There was a small piece of roadkill about 2 feet into the right lane and after a car passed, one bird would take a few steps towards what it considers food, he would get about 5 feet from a tasty morsel, then another car would approach making it hop back to safety. Trouble was, traffic was fairly light and there were single cars in the right lane spaced evenly about 200′-300′ apart, so there was never enough time to get a nibble safely.

Started up, went down, went up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 659