X 475

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 721

Slight Price Increase

One of the vending machines at work has had a sign on it for a couple weeks now letting us know that there was going to be a price increase. Last week they put up a new sign on each of the machines that dispense chips and candy bars and the like, saying that on July 6th the items in the them would experience a slight price increase.

The standard bag of chips went from 70¢ to 85, the smaller bags went from 50¢ to 60 and the occasional $1 item went to $1.15. That is an increase of 21%, 20% and 15% respectively. A quick survey of co-workers on what percentage would they consider “slight” and 10% was the highest number I got, while fifteen per cent was what we would have called moderate and twenty & twenty-one per cent was considered bordering on substantial.

The drink and coffee machine prices remained the same.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 719

BANG!

This morning as I opened the garage door there occurred a loud BANG! Over my head the garage door spring banged into the support bracket. I was headed out to wash the car, but instead I made a trip to Home Depot. Bought new springs and a couple of new eye bolts. I really needed just one to replace the one that got mangled when the spring smashed into it, but figured why should one new spring be jealous of the other over an old eye bolt.

Inside the box with the springs were two long pieces of wire that were probably there as some sort of safety thing, but the instructions on the box didn’t really spell out how they were to be used. I installed the new springs and because they were a little shorter that the current ones I had to adjust the cables a little. It wasn’t until then that I figured out how the cables worked. Trouble was to install the safety cables I would need to totally disassemble what I had just completed. That was not going to happen. I may have to engineer something to retro fit the safety wires. I got lucky this time because I didn’t have the safety wires and the spring broke on the end it did. If it had busted on the eye bolt end and not the pulley end it might have hit the door and bounced around instead of just slamming into the support.

The reason I was opening the garage door was to go out and change the Emperor’s oil and rotate his tires which I now proceeded to do, just a couple hours later. While I had the car up on jack stands with the wheels off, I did a couple of maintenance items. I have had a high pitched chirping noise that was only noticeable in the early morning when driving through our quiet neighborhood. It would totally disappear when I pushed in the clutch pedal. The most common cause of this is the clutch actuating fork vibrating against the slave cylinder’s operating rod. The cure for this to slap a bunch of grease on the fork where the rod hits it. Luckily I had some bicycle wheel bearing grease in the cabinet that fit the bill. The other thing was to check and see if the brake slider pins needed lubricating.

Last year when I had the stuck pin someone at work recommended using a copper based lubricant instead of the usual tube of whatever that you get at the auto parts store. I checked with the hive knowledge of the Miata.net forums and while I didn’t get a unanimous opinion that it was a great idea, I didn’t get enough negative comments to rule it out, so I decided to run a test, one side got the usual lube and the other got the copper stuff. Today when I checked them one side was fine, but the other was stuck pretty good. Guess which one was bad? Go ahead guess. Right, the one where I used the non-traditional copper based anti-seize lube. I could back out one pin by twisting and pulling. The other was going to need more persuasion, so I unbolted the bracket and locked in the bench vise. I grabbed an open ended wrench and a hammer and started to tap on the wrench to force the pin out. After about 3 or 4 taps is wasn’t moving, so I decided to hit it a bit harder when BANG! I hit my thumb. I did a little dance accompanied by some vocals before returning to the task where I did get finally get the pin out. I now have a pencil eraser sized black spot on my left thumbnail.

One pin was pretty scarred up and the hole in the caliber bracket the pin slides into wouldn’t come clean either. To fix this I cleaned up the easy to remove pin, a pin I had extra from last year’s brake job and I re-used last year’s bad bracket (which had been cleaned up and saw a brief stint as a napkin holder.) After getting everything all buttoned up I made a tour of the neighborhood to test out the brakes, they worked just fine. I am going to take the scarred up pin and bracket into work and drop them on the desk of the fellow who suggested the copper lubricant…

To finish off the Emperor’s spa day I gave him a bath and an interior vacuuming tonight.

I bet you’re wondering how we did geocaching today. We didn’t have a single DNF, of course we didn’t have a single find either because after our extreme up and down days on Saturday and Sunday we figured a day off might be good for our mental health.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 717

Sometimes You Get The Cache & Sometimes The Cache Gets You

Yesterday we were 10 for 11 on finding caches. We should have taken today off.

After yesterday’s ten finds we were at 480 for our total. I said, “Hey, let’s get 10 tomorrow and 10 on Monday and we’ll hit 500.” Ahhh, the best laid plans. There were 5 caches over on the Greenway in North Augusta that we still had to get, so I figured we would cruise down SC421 through the valley where there were 10 caches to try and get. For good measure I added two more along our route to the Greenway parking spot. We had a total of 17 on the list, surely we could come up with ten.

We have been avoiding the ones along 421 because most of the hides are near businesses and are micros in high muggle areas. Donna and I really enjoy the walk in the woods finds because there isn’t much chance of being seen and you don’t have to try and be stealthy. Figured we would be OK on an early Sunday morning, not much chance of too many people being out and about. The first place we stopped was at a small cafe. The restaurant was closed and the parking lot empty, but right next door was a very busy quick stop store. We had only half our attention on looking and the other half hoping nobody would call us on what we were doing.

It went downhill from there. Every time we would stop somewhere that appeared deserted, cars appeared like yellow jackets around a trash barrel in a picnic area. We missed the second one. We DNF’d the third and fourth. We drove right by #5 hoping to change our luck, like a batter in a hitting slump might change the way he ties his shoes. Didn’t work, we DNF’d the sixth. Donna just stayed in the car for number seven while I bumbled about. Good thing she did, as it gave her time to stare off 100 miles in the distance pondering our ineptitude, enabling her subconscious to spot the hide. Yippee, the streak was over.

Not for long though, as we promptly didn’t find the next three. We skipped the first one on the way into North Augusta as it was at a car wash and every bay was in use. The last one before the Greenway was a difficulty of 1 and a terrain of one. A person in a wheelchair found it 2 weeks earlier. We did not. So at that point we were the exact inverse of yesterday, we had missed 10 of 11.

Our funk continued on the Greenway as four of the five hides were by someone know for his creative containers and we have had trouble with his in the past. We missed 3 of what he called his “fantastic four” series.

Here is a representative of how bad we were at this caching thing today. The Greenway passes over a busy Martintown Road with a 75′ long metal bridge nicknamed the Greene Giant. There is a cache there by that name and because we needed all the help we could get, the first thing we did was read the hint because the last line of the cache description read: The hint is a give-away spoiler, so use only if necessary! Here is the hint: Very SW corner of the bridge, inside the fence, waist high. It still took us ten minutes to find the damn thing because we couldn’t figure out which way was southwest with a global positioning satellite receiver.

I consider us very lucky to have found the car where we had parked it, so we could drive home. Caching stats for today: 17 planned, 15 attempted, 12 DNFs, 3 finds and 2 abstaining.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 715

That’s Entertainment

Le Tour started today with the Prologue Time Trial. A zippy little 5.5 mile jaunt around the Dutch town of Rotterdam. Lance Armstrong is in 4th place 22 secs back having completed .25% of the total mileage of the race. I know Lance is fourth because it was posted on Google News (from the New York Times) in the Entertainment Section.

We hit the road this morning with the intention to check out a possible location for the MMC Breakfast drive we lead later this month. Destination was the Ten Governor’s Cafe in downtown Edgefield. Of course there was some geocaching involved too. After we found a couple of them at Exit 11 of I-20 we were going to drive to Exit 1 where we had planned to start the breakfast run, but we were getting hungry, so we opted to head up the Bettis Academy Road to US25 thereby shortening the trip by 20 minutes or so. A couple miles up the road we passed by a small airport community where folks have a giant garage, otherwise known as hangers. We actually know somebody who lives in there, someone from our old Aiken Bike Club days. As we drove by we both noticed the small white building with a couple of cars out front that had a sign that said Airport Cafe! We’ve driven this way numerous times, but never noticed that before. We looked at each other questioningly and Donna said, “Turn around.”

There were maybe 6 tables for four inside and two of them had people at them. We picked one of our own and sat. It was two person operation, her (waitress/cashier) and him (cook), so service was kinda of hit or miss, but the food was hot and good tasting, plus cheap. It certain fit the bill of Club’s Breakfast Drive originator. We may be the biggest group they ever dealt with, but I think we found our spot. Next weekend we may go check out the Ten Governor’s Cafe as a back up plan.

We looped through Trenton (1 find), Edgefield (1 find, 1 DNF), back to North Augusta via Martintown Rd (3 finds) and on to the Greenway (5 finds.) One of the Greenway caches was the last of the Bread Crumb series, The End of the Trail – North Augusta. Donna wanted me to just say as little as possible so as not to raise the ire of the CO, but you know me:

Last Saturday we didn’t have the minutes portion of the hide’s coordinates (we did have the degrees & and the decimal minutes portions) and because we thought we had done this one earlier this year we walked right by the cache. After we gave up trying to remember where we were before we headed home. It was there we realized we *hadn’t* done this before and what we were remembering was the final of the Color Code Series…

I plotted out about 10 different combinations of possible locations of the final using any north & west minutes that kept us in North Augusta, but figured the best chance of finding it was near the end of the Greenway, close to where the Question Mark showed. And that is where it was.

Thanks for the series. My wife and I thoroughly it enjoyed it and will wonder for a very long time what the heck were those containers for the finals.

I hope I didn’t knock off the scab…

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 714

Friday Night Clean Up

On our First FTF we were almost second. Someone else had searched for it earlier in the day, before us, and logged a DNF. They are very new at this, only 4 finds so far, so I can understand how they might have missed it, the cache is covered in pine straw under a bush. At four finds I’m sure we would have had trouble too.

I did the right thing and called the cable company, so now I have all the HD Channels I can stand and none of those tiresome movie channels.

And check out this Greg Peltz’s blog for some more awesome “steampunk” Star Wars images. Hurry before he gets a cease and desist letter from George Lucas…

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 712

It’s Digital Cable Month 2010

Stopped off at the cable place on the way home from work today. Saturday the Tour de France starts and to get Versus, the network that carries the race, we have to upgrade to the Digital Plus tier. It costs and extra $20, but it is worth it for the three weeks of Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin narrating the bike race and watching the beautiful French countryside glide by. While my CSR was filling out the “paperwork” I picked up a channel guide and noticed something called “Value HD” which offers most of the usual cable channel’s HD versions. I asked her how much more would that be, $4.95 came the reply. What the heck, we have a HDTV this year, it’ll be worth the extra five spot to try it out.

We got home and quickly realized that we had no real place to put converter box. It is a lot larger than last year’s model which fit on top of the tube TV. At first I figured I’d place the flat screen TV on top of the converter box, but it was full of holes for cooling and I didn’t want to melt the TV’s plastic base. Even if there was room, I couldn’t place the box sideways because there were holes there as well. Next we thought that we could just place it on the floor in front of the armoire, it’s only for a month. I doubted the remote would work with it there without having to hold it high over our heads to get the proper angle to clear the coffee table. Didn’t matter, the cables weren’t long enough. It ended up on the empty shelf to the left of the surround sound/DVD player, the only down side to this is we have to keep that door open when watching TV. Small price to pay.

The remote they gave me didn’t match the instruction sheet they gave me, so at first I couldn’t program the cable remote to operate the TV. That meant we now needed two remotes, one for channels and one for volume. I did a internet search for the model number of the remote and found several helpful sites that would offer me the manual – for a fee… But then I decided to RTFM and there on page 3 of the cable company’s booklet were instructions for the remote. Now we are making progress.

I then started surfing through the HD channels and of the approximately 40 available it seemed like every 4th or 5th was viewable. That’s no good. So I then checked to see if we could get Versus, the whole reason for getting the converter box, and we could (unfortunately it isn’t offered in HD though.)

As always the Digital Plus comes free with the half dozen of each Encore and Starz movie channels. I checked them out seeing if I could find something to watch and as I surfed them I kept on going past and discovered that I could also watch all the premium channels, HBO, Cinemax & Showtime.

So, should call and complain about the missing HD channels and take the chance that when they correct that they will also yank the free premium movie channels? or should I keep my mouth shut and enjoy the movies and learn to live without the missing 2/3s of HD channels?

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 710