Month: March 2011

Here Birdie, Birdie

When I first moved into the new digs in the back of the plant and I realized that I had a window, I have wanted to put a bird feeder in said window. We had looked a few places for a small feeder with a suction cup and have not found anything. Last week we were in Wal-mart and passed by the pet section and what did my wandering eye spy, but just the thing. It was dirt cheap at only $2.99, here were two left on the shelf, so I bought them both (the small bag of bird feed cost more than the two feeders.) I put one in my window and the other one went in my cubical neighbor’s window (Hi Mark!)

We have been waiting patiently for the birds to come flocking in to take advantage of the smorgasbord, but they have been reluctant to show. To be fair, where we are located is not the most bird friendly. There are no nearby bushes or hiding spots and there is also a lot of 18-wheeler trucks doing deliveries close by. Mark swears there was one bird that approached his feeder and flew off with out dining (at least a salesman in his office on Monday said it did.)

So, thinking like a duck hunter, on Monday & Tuesday evenings I made a Java Sparrow decoy.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 971

No Dam Blogging On Monday

Last night I didn’t watch House and I didn’t download the torrent today either. The show is now officially dead to me. It started a couple weeks ago with the dream sequence show, during which Dr. Taub showed up to deliver a machine gun for blowing up something while driving a Hyundai Sonata. At the next commercial break, guess which car company had the first ad? Right, Hyundai, you get 20 points. And ended with the movie/musical very special Greg falls off the the wagon into a bottle of vicodin because Cuddy might die and she rewards his mis-guided concern by breaking up with him.

Instead of House, I watched something more “exciting”, the last couple of innings of a spring training game between the FRS and the MFY. I did not recognize a single player name mentioned for either team.

The rest of last night and then again tonight was spent vacation planning. We are going on another trip out to the west coast. Nine days of visiting western Washington, western and central Oregon with a brief foray into northern California (as long as the radiation levels are not too bad.)

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 969

CREEK XING


You found [Traditional Cache] Victoria Bryant State Park
The water didn’t seem too high as the Miata made it through fine with just a touch of belt squeal post creek crossing. This is our favorite park so far out of the 17 we’ve visited. We took a heart shaped BB game and left a Gingerbread Man watch. Dropped Mickey Mouse TB. TFTH


You found [Traditional Cache] Froggy
Our GPSr led us right to a likely spot. We searched and searched and came up empty handed. We read the clue, well, this spot certainly fits the description. Oh, wait, the clue applies reasonably well to the other side of the trail too. Bingo! There it was. Took nothing and left 3 frog shaped erasers. Found as part of the Georgia DeLorme Challenge (GCZ8XQ)


You found [Multi-cache] The King of Bridges!
We found this in spite of ourselves. First off, read the whole page through and secondly pay attention to what you read. I thought we needed ABCD to fill in the coords for the final so we figured with the clue included in the last paragraph we could wing it without having one of the digits. Sure enough we located the final stage only to be greeted with a combination lock! Huh? Re-read the cache description page and discovered that ABCD is for the lock and the final coords are right there on the cache page. Well we have three of the numbers, we’ll just try those and ten tugs on the hasp with the ten numbers on that last dial. Didn’t work. So we walked back to read the missing number off the green sign for B that we didn’t get on our first try. Turned around and walked back to the cache again. Entered our four numbers and it didn’t unlock. Now we are questioning our counting of reflectors on the bridge. My wife then read the questions out loud to me and when she got to D I had to do a Homer Simpson forehead slapping, “DOH!” That was the ticket. We took nothing and left a Matchbox car and a couple of pencils.


You found [Traditional Cache] Shaking Rock
We almost didn’t stop as we were tired from a long day of caching and still had many miles to get home, but boy are we glad we did. What a neat place. Left a book and took a Travel Bug. Thanks. Found as part of the Georgia County Challenge (GC1B074)

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 968

119,000 Drops of Water

The Emperor passed the 119,000 mile milestone just outside Thompson, GA this afternoon on his way home from a geocaching adventure in northeast Georgia. We marked off three State Parks, three Counties and two DeLorme pages in two days on one tank of gas.

RE: The picture above, “What were you thinking? Where are you driving to?”

Started up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 967

All The News

We don’t get the local paper, we get our news through Yahoo (Donna) and Google (Brian.) On the Google News page there are the main stories on the left and in the right hand column there are headlines from various news outlets. These headlines get tailored to your tastes, both content and source, after time and to fill up tonight’s post I will give you excerpts, and then a link to, from 4 New York Times articles that I have interesting in the last week.

1) A more accurate description than ?100 percent natural whole-grain oats,? ?plump raisins,? ?sweet cranberries? and ?crisp fresh apples? would be ?oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.? – How to Make Oatmeal . . . Wrong

2) As anybody who has ever worked in any institution ? private or public ? knows, one of the primary ways employee effectiveness is judged is the performance review. And nothing could be less fair than that. – Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You

3) Consider what?s happened with lighting over the past three centuries. As people have switched from candles to oil-powered lamps to incandescent bulbs and beyond, the amount of energy needed to produce a unit of light has plummeted. Yet people have found so many new places to light that today we spend the same proportion of our income on light as our much poorer ancestors did in 1700… – When Energy Efficiency Sullies the Environment

4) The affected men were, in each case, those who?d trained the longest and hardest. Spending more years exercising strenuously or completing more marathon or ultramarathon races was, in this study, associated with a greater likelihood of heart damage. – When Exercise Is Too Much of a Good Thing

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 963

Kaia

Another Marshall Alexander creation.

It is 57° and raining in Aiken right now and the little red square ■ tells me it is 44°. By clicking on the square, I get the weather page for Alexandria, Virginia, where it is cloudy now, later tonight & tomorrow it will be rainy and mild. You know, now that I have complained about it, I’m almost hoping that they never fix it. The little red square ■ creates a kind of armchair tourism, whisking you away magically to different destinations. I only wish tonight it would have taken me to Oahu where our surfer girl is from.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 963

Monster Commute

Our commute is by no means monstrous at 6.5 miles, but there are some folks out there have long or tough or long and tough ones, well, for those of you, here is your very own steampunk mode of locomotion to make your trip a little more pleasant.

Random Temperature on Weather.com Update. Last night I got this response:

We understand the frustration, I can assure you the issue is being worked on and a fix is soon to come. We appreciate your patience and value your business.

Thanks,
TWCi Customer Support Staff

Right now it is 56° in Aiken and the little red square ■ reads 28° (the temp in Fairview, MI.)

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 963