Galactic Rebellion For Dummies

This movie was recommended to me on io9, but I still haven’t found out who recommended “Love The Beast” to me (8 folks asked so far.)

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 735

Morning Bobby

Several years ago it seemed like there was an abundance of people by the name of Robert who worked at The Valve Store™ and as a joke, myself and another coworker would always say, “Morning Bobby”, when we’d pass each other for the first time each day. His name is Joey and mine is, well duh, Brian, but we got a kick out of it.

Over the years the number of Roberts waned, Jims took over the top spot, yet we still kept up the ‘Morning Bobby’ routine. The number of folks named Jim hasn’t diminished any, but Bobs have made big advances again recently. My immediate supervisor is named Bob and his boss is named, yep, you guessed it, Bob. To differentiate between them they are sometimes referred to as Little Bob and Big Bob respectively. Our latest Industrial Engineer is also a Robert and usually went by Bob, but I think as a condition of employment, he had to willing to be known as Rob to avoid further confusion.

With them ceasing manufacturing at the home office in Florham Park, NJ we have had a few folks from up there make the transition to working here in South Carolina. The last two to join us are both named Bob.

Joey and I will may just start saying, “Morning Bobby”, whenever we pass anybody, because we will have a real good chance of being right.

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Love The Beast

Someone recommended this movie to me, even told me it was watch it now on Netflix. Last Monday as I sat watching it on the laptop, my wife looked over at me and asked, “What you watching?” I kind of explained what it was, here is the Netflix blurb:

Eric Bana makes his directorial debut with this documentary about his biggest obsession: his Ford XB Falcon Coupe, aka “the Beast.” The actor examines his auto fixation and chronicles his attempts to compete in the treacherous Targa Tasmania race. The Beast has been by his side for more than 20 years — but can it endure this grueling five-day affair? Jay Leno, Dr. Phil McGraw and auto expert Jeremy Clarkson drop by to share their thoughts.

She said, “I want to see it too.” We both enjoyed it immensely. I did because I’m a car guy and she did because she’s married to a car guy or maybe because she had recently seen Eric Bana naked (we had watched the Time Traveler’s Wife the day before.) Seriously if you like cars, still remember your first car wistfully or have ever wanted to soup a car with an unlimited budget and then drive it like a mad man (or woman) on closed public streets, see this movie. Stream it if you are a Netflix member. Before you do, watch a lot of Fosters beer commercials, so you can learn to speak Australian. Eric was usually easy to understand, but his buddies who haven’t ever been anywhere outside of Melbourne could be a bit tricky sometimes. Maybe if you rent it, it’ll have American english subtitles…

When I went back to work on Tuesday I thanked James for telling me about this movie. He said, “What movie?” I could have sworn it was him as he usually visits on his afternoon break and we compare movies. James said maybe it was Chris and he’d add the movie to his queue.

Chris is another Netflix guy and we do occasionally compare movies. The trick with him is that our tastes are nearly the opposite of one another, so if he likes a movie, I’ll hate it and so on. Chris had no idea about Love The Beast either, but he’d add it to his queue. Hmmm, curious.

The next person I thought of was Bob, my manager, who has been know to trade recommendations with me every once and a while. Same story, he had never heard of it, but would put it in his queue. Now I’m really starting to wonder, who might have told me about the movie.

Ah, ha! Had to be Dave and Autumn from the Miata Club, also fellow Netflixers. We usually find some time during an event to talk about what we had recently watched and we had to see a baseball game with them the week before. I dashed off an email. Wasn’t us, came the reply, but it sounds interesting, we’ll add it to our queue.

I’m beginning to think I might have dreamed getting that recommendation.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 727

27b/6

Got to 27b/6, sub titled “Go Away”, for some fun reading. You can while away several hours there (as I have done) reading very humorous bits and email exchanges that will make you literally LOL!

We got up at the usual time this morning and headed off to Edgefield to check out the breakfast place that we didn’t make it to last Saturday, the Ten Governor’s Cafe. After one small misdirection we made the 20 mile trip on a simply beautiful back road that dumps you onto the Edgefield downtown square under the watchful eye of a life-size bronze Strom Thurmond. Wouldn’t you know it, but the restaurant was closed for a week’s vacation and wouldn’t re-open until tomorrow. We are pretty sure we are going to use it, food untested, based solely on the great drive to get there, after all, we are a car club…

The moratorium on geocaching continues, we didn’t do any this morning having already found all we were going to last weekend and tomorrow morning we are going for a quick bike ride before the temperatures reach triple digits. We will then probably spend the rest of the day indoors watching le Tour, a Netflix movie (Frost/Nixon) and a couple of torrented TV shows or some Instant Watch movies or some old crappy movies that are playing on Starz or Encore.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 726

New Phone Book

I ducked my head into the mailroom this morning on the off chance I might have got something. Turns out I did and so did everyone else. All the mail slots had new AT&T Real Yellow Pages® phone book. And just like I do every year when that happens, I have to rein myself in from running through the halls shouting, “The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!” I bet there are quite a few people around my age who fondly remember the 1979 movie The Jerk, starring Steve Martin, who have to fight off the same compulsion too.

Navin R. Johnson: The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!
Harry Hartounian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing.
Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 – Johnson, Navin R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity – your name in print – that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

As I always do, I check to see if I’m in there. Yep. Not page 73 though, Bogardus, Brian & Donna appear on page 11.

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Comment Spam

I’ve talked alot about email spam here, but I get comment span at the Life of Brian too. Anyone who has a blog (or for that matter a web page that allows comments) know what I’m talking about.

There are several ways to fight it and here at LOB we use three different methods. Firstly, commenting is closed on any post that is older than 14 days because the spammers love to seek out the posts that are off the front page, so you won’t notice them. The second line of defense is the very first time someone comments, they have to have their comment approved before it gets published. This keeps the spammers out because it usually comes from addresses like ariana_monet_zc@xrea.com or scarlett.mathasi@oyps.com, but the next time they comment it goes right out there. The third way is using a plug-in that comes with wordpress called Akismet. It won’t like most email spam fighters by comparing the incoming comment’s email address, IP address and looking for key words and phrases to dump them into queue where I can review them. In May it caught 34, in June 35 and so far this month 28. Sometimes I think I don’t get many comments here, so maybe I should strip the links and email addresses and post them because they can be quite interesting. This morning I had four:

You need to seriously write some more about this.
Coming right up!

A gink begins cutting his wisdom teeth the initially without surcease he bites eccentric more than he can chew.
Of course he does.

You cover to be present a self-motivated person who is willing to bulge down and cause through the workload of every calendar day. You cover to be present prompt to take on lot in life of in rank, you cover to be present willing to hear a ton of concepts and tips and tricks with the intention of want sort you thriving by the side of making money online, and if you sort out all of with the intention of, at that moment you want start to go with a complete stage revenue upcoming made known of this.
Huh?!?

Thanks for the awesome post!
You are very welcome…

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