Spel Cheker

We had breakfast at DD this morning and after walking out on Saturday morning because no one wanted to wait on us in a timely manner we were glad to see the little older woman behind the counter. She, unlike most of the younger kids that man the register, can enter our highly complex order* without hunting for several seconds looking for the right button to push. Not only that, she seemed to be the only person in the store and we got our food and drinks in a more timely fashion than usual.

On her badge, there was a label, right under her name with her title, SHEFT LEADER.

*Small Coffee, cream & sugar
Small hot Chocolate, no whipped cream
Coffee Cake Muffin
Plain Bagel, toasted with butter

All Hail The Saloon!

This a picture of the first 4-door automobile the Bogarduses ever owned. It is a 1981 Honda Civic all fitted out with our bikes on the roof rack. If you look carefully you can see Donna in the driver’s seat waiting patiently for me to get back in the car so we can go somewhere, possibly New Orleans. The building in the left background was the apartment building where we lived in Meridian, MS while I was assigned to the Naval Air Station there.

I was working second shift and Donna was going to school during the day so we needed two cars. The four door joined a similarly colored 1980 Civic 3-door hatchback in our stable*. The 4-door only stayed with us for a year and a half before being traded in on a 1983 Honda Prelude in, you guessed it, maroon. I could never really get comfortable in the 4-door because the seat didn’t go back far enough for me, while in the hatchback it did.

*I would have said garage, but that would have been incorrect because we just had spots in the apartment complex LOT and not even assigned ones.

It is also the last 4-door car we owned for 30 years. Until the Purple Whale came along, who by the way, got a nice little bath this afternoon.

Lazy Post

I only have so many words that I can type per day, so geocaching logs is where are all of them went today. Pretty pedestrian stuff, but if you only read one of these, let it be #6.

  1. Among the Palmettos – Parking coordinates, smarking coordinates. We pulled into a handy spot near the playground and took a nice little walk to the cache. We spotted the container in short order and in our usual fashion, then discovered the easy way out. Took a SC Parks clip and left a few small items. TFTC
  2. Lakes Region Challenge Hamilton Branch State Park – After finding Among the Palmettos we walked out to the point to find this one. Took an SC State Parks jar opener and left Chick-Fil-A fun book. TFTC
  3. Mt. Vernon Halfway House – Neat container! Swapped a couple of travelers. TFTH
  4. Rabbit’s Revenge – We were here in the park hunting the SC Parks Lake Challenge cache and we passed less than 1,000 feet from this one, so we thought what the heck. We took a Matchbox car and left some Mardi Gras beads. TFTH
  5. Lakes Region Challenge ? Baker Creek State Park – We too used Succotash’s coords and I made parking more difficult than the walk to or finding the cache, it was a good thing we weren’t in the Miata… Took nothing and left some Mardi Gras beads. TFTH
  6. Beans for Delightful – We were here in the park hunting the SC Parks Lake Challenge cache and this one was a little more than a half mile further along, so we thought what the heck. We were a few hundred feet from GZ when I noticed a large bird walking parallel to us through the trees. At first I thought it was a wild turkey, but it looked way too big and it was moving about 4 times as fast as any turkey I had every seen. I pointed it out to my wife who too got a brief glimpse of it before it was to far away to see any more. I kind of wish the park was officially open, so I could have asked a ranger if there were an wild emu (although the coloring looked more like ostrich) living here. Oh, yeah, we found the cache too. Took a kiddie book and left some Mardi Gras beads and a small Florida pin. TFTH
  7. Haunted Stump – We left nothing and the only thing we took was a worthless lottery ticket, all the while not disturbing the snail living on the the container’s cover. TFTH
  8. Lakes Region Challenge ? Hickory Knob – After finding the Haunted Stump cache we walked across the street to grab this one. We took a Matchbox car and left a kiddie book. TFTC

They Still Make Those?

Why yes they do, but they are getting harder to find every day.

Yesterday one on the setup guys from the shop floor came in looking for something for his counterpart on third shift. Not too long ago everyone had some lying around in spite of the Valve Store’s(TM) network. In the last several years when a new PC was purchased here at the plant they didn’t even have a slot on the front for them anymore. If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m talking about a 1.44M 3-1/2″ floppy disk.

Of the nearly 30 CNC machines we have on the manufacturing floor, only the four HAAS Mini Mills are not connected to the wireless DNC system for transferring programs back and forth, they still rely on the sneakernet.

No one in the office had one laying around and while they used to always have a box in the office supply cabinet, there hasn’t been any in there in quite a while. We looked on line at a couple of office supply places and a search for “floppy disk” pulled up plenty of labels and mailers for such a thing, but it didn’t return any actual disks. We did find some for sale at Walmart and Best Buy, but they are not authorized suppliers for our company. Finally someone in purchasing found a supplier and they deliver. $6 for 50.

That reminds me, I have a bunch of those disks here at home and now that I have the new Inspron 620 sans floppy drive, no way to read them…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 1114

Happy Fat Tuesday

Today is the last day of Mardi Gras. The day before Ash Wednesday and the start of the 40 days of Lent for those of a western Christian beliefs. Donna grew up in New Orleans and remembers while in high school actually participating in some of the parades.

When Donna and I lived in New Orleans in the middle 80’s my idea of a Mardi Gras parade was more of the ones put on by small artsy organizations that marched through the French Quarter. I really wasn’t too excited about the whole St. Charles Avenue or Metairie big parade thing. If I was still living in the Big Easy today I probably would have wanted to attend the Krewe Delusion parade on the 4th, but I definitely would have attended the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus parade last Saturday.

One year my mom and her sister took the train down from New England to New Orleans to enjoy the festivities. We had a good time showing them the sites, dining on spicy seafood and taking them to a couple of parades. But I think both women felt that the party atmosphere on the train trip down generated the best stories and oddball memories from the trip.

From left to right in the photo above: a small glimpse of our 1983 Honda Prelude, me in my quasi-Miami Vice attire, my Mom, and Virginia, Mom’s sister, my Aunt and mother to Martha and Louise.

14,000 Orange Trees

The return trip from the Land of Orange Trees was an adventure. First I forgot to create a pocket query for the three remaining counties we wanted to get in south Georgia. Then we couldn’t find free Wi-Fi anywhere for me to get online to make one. When we did find free wi-fi at Mickey D’s the charge on the laptop battery was so low it was insufficient to get the query information downloaded to the GPSr and PDA.

We walked over to a Cracker Barrel from McDonalds for lunch and as we were led to a table Donna asked if there was one near an outlet (so we could charge up the laptop.) The hostess made a sharp left and seated us across the room from where she was original intending to place us. This turned out to be a little good, wall plug, and very bad, because when our waitress arrived with Donna’s water and my sweet tea she promptly spilled both big glasses on the table and on me. Donna didn’t get wet, but I got a kind of wet/damp on one sleeve and both upper pant legs.

After the pre lunch “bath”, things were nothing but better, as we were now out of Florida, off the awful Interstate and onto the beautiful back roads of Georgia. But first, one of the caches we needed (Lowndes County) was within walking distance of the Cracker Barrel. As a bonus it turned out that not only did it satisfy the county, but was also worth a needed Delorme page.

Cache number two, which was for Lanier County, took us to the lovely small town of Lakeland, GA. The “Welcome To” proclaimed it was the the Georgia’s Historic Mural City. On our circuitous route through town on GA135 we didn’t see any murals…until we crossed Main Street where we noticed a lot of folks dressed up and several Model A Fords parked. We quickly parked, jumped out and walked towards the excitement. They were filming something with the towns folks posing near a building with one of the murals. We asked a couple of the locals who were watching like we were, but didn’t get a real solid answer. Once the thing broke up we wandered around a bit found a few of the apparently many interesting murals.

The last cache we found counted for Atkinson County and was called “Willacoochee Choo Choo” and I’ll let my geocaching.com log do the talking here:

Just from the title I was worried about this one. Little Red Cabooses are our kryptonite and we had already lucked out and found one on this trip, so I just knew we would never find this one! Thanks for this not being a magnetic key holder stuck somewhere on the thousands of square feet of metal on the undercarriage of a train car.

It was just a plain ol’ 35mm film canister well integrated into the environment.

Covey of Cousins

You met my cousin Louise, the woman on the left, back in January when she passed through South Carolina on her way to Florida. The woman on the right is Martha, AKA Muffy, the other half of my known universe of first cousins.

Muffy is down in Florida visiting her sister, so we all met at Donna’s sister’s house. Friday evening we got together for dinner and drinks and then again on Saturday for more food and story telling. Both of my cousins are a few year older than I, so it was interesting to get their perspective of my parents from their visiting them before I was old enough to actually form memories.

To add interest to my miniature family gathering, there were Canadian cousins from Donna’s side passing through for lunch and a visit today between their cruise return and Mouse World. Two of them, John & Margret, we had met before, last September at the Gatlingburg Gathering. With them were their two kids, their respective significant others, plus two point five grand kids.