Year: 2013

The Church Of Orphan Black

The Church now has two acolytes, the Accounting Manager and the Payroll Clerk of the Valve Store(TM). Both have finished watching all of season one and have asked for their own copy of the show so they can re-watch it. In trying to grow my little religion I have had the digital copies of season one placed in the hands of six other folks at work for a while now, but none of them has actually watched any of it except for the clip of the first 3 minutes of the first episode.

The two that are hooked are female, the six that are not are male. Are the guys not watching it because of the female protagonist? Did the ladies dig it because of her?

Having run out of men to try and convert and with my previous success with the ladies, this afternoon and gave a set of DVDs to a woman who works in engineering department out back in the same offices as I do.

As I handed Cathy her the discs I thought to myself, maybe it has nothing to do with the sex of my prospective converts but the media applied. So if she comes back on Monday having watched all 10 episodes and loves it, I’ll have to try and pass along the DVDs to one of my hesitant male prospects.

Fantasty Football Time Again

As Commissioner of the Valve Store’s ™ Fantasy Football League my duties are legion, one of which is confirming a date for Draft Day, which this year was akin to herding house cats. With that done, next up is picking the order of draft. Unlike the NFL it is not really worst gets first pick, but more like the worst team last year get to draw a piece of paper with a number from 1 to 12 on it which will represent the order.

Tonight when I got home I emailed everyone:

This year’s draft order will be chosen tomorrow, Wednesday, July 31st at 12:40 in the Engineering Conference Room. It will be hosted by Pat Sajak with the numbers being drawn by Vanna White and televised on the Ocho (ESPN8.) Draft Order Numbers will be drawn in the reverse order of last year’s final standings:

1 – Keith Gregory – Team Gregory
2 – Mike Lenio – SC Bone Crushers
3 – Tom Schelfaut – SC SWAG
4 – Kevin Falcon – Swamp Rats SR
5 – Mark Turner – Team TURNER
6 – Gregory Morgan – North Augusta Meatheads
7 – Evan Lenio – Aiken Ball Busters
8 – Bob Royer – Spoiled Rich Guys In Tights
9 – Brian Bogardus – Purple Whales
10 – Robert Arnone – May the Odds Be Evr in My Favor
11 – Bob Smyth – Team Argyle Pilgrims
12 – Brian Montgomery – Multiple Scorgasms

Team owner attendance is not mandatory, but you are welcome to audit the event in person. With written notice to the EZEFFL Office, 24 hours prior to the event, showing credible evidence that Pat and/or Vanna have “liked” an opposing team on Facebook or tweeted negatively towards your organization, you may be allowed to draw for your own number.

This is being sent to your home email address, but because not everyone checks their home email often enough I am also copying your work email. Because there are probably one or two of you who check neither with any regularity, I will be telepathically implanting this message in your dreams tonight at 3:14AM

Ugly Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Behold!
01-pininfarina-alfa

From AutoBlog: Take a good look at the picture of the Alfa Romeo 2uettottanta concept by Pininfarina, because the production Spider that will be a joint development with the coming Mazda MX-5 Miata isn’t expected to look anything like it. According to a report in Autocar, designers at Fiat\’s Centro Stile couldn’t figure out how to translate the concept to a production car.

To which I say good thing, so even if it did look sort of like this, later in the same article there was this: …but won’t have any body panels in common with the Mazda.

Maybe next year, if they regrow the passenger foot well and lower the door height to allow comfortable elbow resting again, a 2015 Miata might be in the cards.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1244

There Was Something Fishy About The Butler

Fishy

Probably a Pieces working for scale…

We planned a geocaching trip today with two different possible destinations, one was near Lexington and one was nearer to Columbia. Attached to each destination was a selected lunch spot and a selected used book store. So where we went, we thought, depended solely on what we really felt like having for lunch after we started heading east.

As it turned out we changed it around somewhat by going caching in Saluda Shoals Park in Columbia, dining at Uno Chicago Grill in Lexington and visiting both bookstores.

We had gone to Saluda Shoals back in November of last year and cached one half of it. Today we did the other half and we were less lucky in the find department this time, 6 out of 10, but I’m chalking most of the DNFs up to the fact that we couldn’t really concentrate on searching for the swatting at the clouds of mosquitoes every time we stepped off the trail into the woods.

Today’s photo is of one of the many blue metal abstract fish hanging in one area of the park.

Avoiding Rain

Last Friday we rode the tandem to work. The weather forecast called for a 20% chance of afternoon thunder showers and when we mounted up to leave for the trip home, we thought we were in big trouble. Looking off to the southwest, our predominate direction of travel, the skies were dark black. Not only did it appear grim, but there was a fairly brisk breeze in our faces, AKA a dadblamed headwind that slowed our progress. But the further along on the ride we went the skies seem to lighten as we went. With less than a mile to go to home the gray skies had receded and we didn’t even come close to getting wet.

This Friday we rode the tandem to work and the weather forecast called for a 30% chance of afternoon thunder showers. After last weeks dodge we thought for sure we could do it again. Quitting time is 4:00 PM and right around 3:15 it started to rain lightly. I checked the Weather Channel’s radar and there was an ugly cell of thunder bearing down on us. About 3:30 it was pouring down, but the animation showed that it was a small, fast moving cell and I had my fingers crossed that it would pass by the time we got ready to go. Sure enough when Donna and I changed and started to load up the bike, the rain had stopped and the roads were starting to dry. We did get a little damp on the trip home from a couple of small puddles near work and a few damp spots on the roads near home.

Next week I’m betting we get soaked no matter what the forecast.