Monday

Stating the obvious.

We bagged a total of 18 Post Offices this weekend bringing our total to 345, which is almost exactly 3/4 of the state’s 461 total. Pictures are up on Flickr! and the old-school gallery, but as usual on the Monday after, there are no descriptions yet.

Westville, SC 29175I shot most of the photos using the auto-bracketing feature of the camera and then ran them through the Dynamic Photo HDR program and I discovered three things: 1) no matter how hard I try I can not hold the camera still through all three exposures, but the software does a pretty good job of aligning images. 2) I really need to do the tripod with ±2 EV bracketing for best results and 3) the effect is cool, but the over saturation of colors makes it more of a gimmick filter, than a useful tool, but this last statement might be way wrong if I knew how to use the program better.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 494

Young Old Hickory

Young Old HickoryIn another Postal Safari serendipitous history lesson, we visited a state park that is located near Lancaster and is dedicated to the 7th President of the United States. The park encompasses the property that belonged to James Crawford, the brother-in-law to Andrew Jackson’s mother and is where Old Hickory grew up.

On the way into the park we had to stop and wait for a couple of white tailed deer to cross the road in front of us. There are a couple short hikes in the park and we decided to walk the one mile nature trail. I’m not too sure about the hunting regulations on state park land, so after about a half mile I took off my bright white Hilton Head Island ball cap and tucked into my waistband under my jacket.

We attempted to get a bagel for breakfast this morning after discovering that Rock Hill’s Durango Bagel had kettle boiled and oven baked, real bagels. We found their web site which let us know they moved, but no mention of hours. I called their phone last night, but there was no mention of hours on their answering machine. Mainly because there was no answering machine. Up and out early we pulled up outside the place a little after 7:00 AM. We could see someone in the back, probably cooking bagels judging by the smell outside. There were no hours posted on the doors, but there was a 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of paper with the text, “Since moving to our new location we have tried various closing times on weekends and have discovered that 4 PM works best for us, so we will be closing at 4 until further notice.” No mention of opening times though. We went out and shot photos of the other 2 Rock Hill Post Offices and came back 45 minutes later they still weren’t open. We ended up at Hardee’s. I really wanted a bagel too.

The USPS giveth and the USPS taketh away. Yesterday we found an extra Post Office in Clover and today we found one missing in Lancaster. After several passes along Memorial Park Drive looking for number 1979 and the Post Office that was supposed to be there we pulled into a likely strip shopping center, not there, but the building next door with only two small shops in it had the right number over the door to Hidden Treasures, a lingerie store with no sign of ever being a Post Office. When we got home I rechecked the USPS locater page and now there is only one PO listed as being in Lancaster.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 492

Not A Corvette In Sight

Bowling Green, SC 29703Bowling Green was one of 10 Post Offices we photographed today. The others included a going ghost town with a bunch of interesting buildings in the downtown (Great Falls), one that should have been open but wasn’t (Lando), one with a quite friendly Postmaster who made fun of me because I misspelled Edinburgh (Edgemoor), one where we had to bob and weave around the town’s Christmas parade to get to (Fort Mill) and one that was right where it was supposed to be, but turned out it was a CPU with a much larger one that wasn’t on my list closer to town (Clover.)

We are spending the night at a Courtyard by Marriott in Rock Hill and Donna summed up our experience so far by saying, “Maybe we should stay in Super 8 Motels, that way we won’t be disappointed because of our lowered expectations.” The first room we were put in the bathroom tile was missing grout over a large section and the floor underneath felt spongy. The second room was better, but the water pressure is weak and the wireless internet is lame, the connection is good, but the speed is hovering around only 5.5 Mbps, so I can’t even stream RP. Plus breakfast isn’t free here. Unfortunately there wasn’t a HIE anywhere near here.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 491

You Would Think I Would Learn — Part 2

You would think that if I would take anyone’s advice, especially if it was based on personal experience, it would be my own; but no.

We are off for a couple of days of Post Office hunting tomorrow morning, so I ducked out into the garage to give the Emperor a sponge bath (Meguiar’s Quik Detailer and an old T-shirt.) After I was finished I realized what the car really needed a full waxing, so in spite of a couple of previous lousy wax jobs in the garage at night, I went ahead and tried again.

Looks pretty good under the light of two 60 watt bulbs. We’ll see what it looks like in the morning sun…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 489

BellSouth DSL

Field (FauxHDR)Went over to a co-worker of Donna’s tonight to hook up her DSL. To start, I’m not too sure the DVD that they sent was 100%, as it would hang each time the Next button was clicked. The only way to get it to advance was to eject the CD and then reinsert it. Then when it did get to the next page the display was garbled in the install window — some blank spots and new text over some of the last page’s text.

At step 5 when you are to choose the modem to install I was greeted with 6 square buttons and only one had a picture in it, the rest were blank. By (the slow) process of elimination I found the button for a Netopia modem. Unfortunately it wasn’t the same model as the Netopia modem she had. I soldiered on installing that one as it was the only one remotely correct..

After hooking up all the cables the DSL Sync light was still blinking. Crap. I then swapped off the Cat5 cable and tried hooking up to the PC with the USB cable. Same results. Rebooted modem. Still blinking. Rebooted PC and modem. Blink – blink- blink.

Gave up and called tech support. I had to go through a troubleshooting song and dance with an automated help system. “Yes.” “No.” “Continue.” “Continue.” When the computer was satisfied I really had a problem I was handed to a person. Richard was probably his American name, but his English was better than quite a few people I deal with on a daily basis at ASCO. He ran line tests and told me there was a problem and that a technician need to come out, so Lisa scheduled one for this Saturday.

She only had one phone in a jack and I placed a filter on that one. I tested the long phone cord I brought with me with her phone to make sure it was OK. I plugged her phone in the jack the DSL line was plugged in to make sure the jack was OK. I figure it has to be a bad modem, because even if I didn’t have the exact correct driver from the CD I would still get a sync light if the line was good.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 488

You Would Think I Would Learn

There is a new Italian restaurant in town that took over the spot where a Chinese place was for the longest time. In between these two it was a Thai place, but for less than a year. The nice thing about this location is it is in a shopping center that is walkable for us, a little less than a mile away from home.

Now that they have been open for a little over a month and the crowds have died down, we went there for dinner tonight. We didn’t walk, but maybe next time. And the next time will be at least another month or more away though, because they still haven’t worked out all the kinks.

The hostess offered us a table, but there were several empty booths and we requested one. This stopped her in her tracks. I’m sure she was trying to steer us towards the tables to be fair about wait staff distribution, but she was literally paralyzed, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. A waiter was there and whispered something to her and then seated us at one of the booths. After not too long our waiter arrived and took our drink order, two waters. As we usually do, we didn’t let him get away, and gave him our dinner order right then as well. Two small garden salads and a 14″ supreme pizza. He seemed in a rush. After he left us he took a pizza order from the table behind us and then there was a big gap. No waters. The guy who seated us noticed and asked if we had ordered drinks and we replied positively, he rushed off too. About a minute later our waiter arrived with the glasses of water and remarked about the sloooow ice machine.

I counted 6 waiters or waitresses and about 35 diners, not too bad a ratio, but all of the wait staff seemed to be in a big hurry when they moved and it still seemed that not a lot was getting done fast. Our salads arrived and they were the right size for a small and had a nice mixture of different lettuces and vegetables. Then there was a long wait for the pie. A few couples that came in after us and ordered spaghetti or ravioli or whatever got served well before us. Across the restaurant a pizza was served to a table, but a short time later was returned to the kitchen. From where we were, we couldn’t hear what the issue was, but the one person of the group who got a meal was served and the rest of his party had to settle for watching him eat.

More waiting. Dinners came out of the kitchen frequently, but no pizzas. Finally, because Donna could see the kitchen exit, she said here comes one. Maybe it is ours. Nope, it stops at the table behind us. Our orders went in at the same time, so it will be a non-issue as long as our pizza is not too far behind. The guy behind us says, this isn’t the pizza I ordered, so the waiter returns to the kitchen with it. Donna goes over to him and asks what the problem was. He replies, “It looked delicious, but there was too much stuff on it.” She tells him, “It was probably ours as we ordered a Supreme.”

Sure enough, the waiter returns within moments and brings us our pizza. Worth the wait. There is heaping helpings of mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, ham, sausage, onions, bell peppers, olives and mushrooms on a crisp not too thin crust. The only thing lacking was it needed a little bit more sauce.

Good salad, good pie, less than a mile away, if they get their service smoothed out, Ferrando’s may have met his match.

In spite of a brief detour back into the kitchen, the pizza was served piping hot. So hot that I burned the top of my mouth in a couple places on the first few bites. After all the years of eating pizza, I still manage to burn the top of my mouth on melted mozzarella or boiling sauce 80% of the time. You would think I would learn.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 487

A Thesaurus Falls Into The Wrong Hands

At ASCO, management takes communications seriously. Once every other month the Director of Operations, along with the HR Manager meet with a dozen or so randomly selected hourly employees to answer questions on issues of importance to them. The names of the employees chosen to participate are posted on the bulletin board so anyone who has an issue can bring it to one of the chosen to be presented at the meeting. Some questions get handed in after the meeting for various reasons, chief among them for anonymity. The questions run the gamut for why don’t we get bigger raises to we need more chairs on the assembly line. A couple weeks after the meeting the minutes (both the questions & the official answers) get posted on the bulletin board for all to see. Sometimes they make amusing reading, but this question handed in anonymously at the November meeting takes the cake:

16. While I would not overtly accuse anyone within this establishment of prevaricating, there appears to be an effervescence of obfuscating in regards to these interrogative vituperations. Incredulous though it may be, the difficulties with the Communicator-Hub (programming upload/download system as mentioned in the previous two communication meetings) have, for the most part, mysteriously made their egress. I submit, that the system as of yet is still not functioning as advertised?alternative means have not necessitated themselves of late. I maintain that protestations to the contrary as previously disclosed, are controvertible at best.

Managements answer, basically, “Huh?” I would have chosen to quote Captain Barbossa here, “There are a lot of long words in there, Miss; we’re naught but humble pirates. What is it that you want?”

The person who wrote that also penned a half dozen other questions in a similar vein, those were decipherable, and were answered. At one point management decided to fight fire with fire:

19. I may merely be a cognitively challenged troglodyte lacking a diurnal existence, but I found myself in somewhat of a quandary within the stockroom. There was placed a sign, upon what I presume to be the appropriate document table, requesting that any papers, once completed, were to be filed into the yellow bin. Imagine a simpletons chagrin when, after reading these instructions, they are confronted with not one, but 3 yellow bins with a variety of papers within each. Whilst pondering this newfound dilemma, it occurred to said troglodyte to perhaps label the aforementioned bins, apropos to their pertinent documents.

The answer this time — The amber bins interpolated in the depository have been incontrovertibly identified to abrogate any misconception that anyone may have in the morrow. Or I think we changed the bin color.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 487