The local Honda dealer bills himself as “Your Straight Talk Dealer.” Apparently the straight refers to just the talk. Tonight coming home from the Master’s Miata Club meeting we were behind a new Accord recently purchased there and the 3 x 5 inch sticker telling me where he bought the car with the words Straight Talk in bold was plastered on under the left tail light at about 5% off from level.
Well, not really hate, more like aversion.
For some reason, the local SC NPR station has changed into “Your NPR News Station” from “Your Classical NPR News Station.” Doesn’t sound like that big of a change, but to me it was. I now have lost a big part of my workday background music. I used to record Echoes every night from 10 to midnight in MP3 format and take into work on my little thumbdrive. But no more, they have replaced Echoes with Carolina Jazz. First in September I lost Thistle & Shamrock on Saturday evenings, now this. Those folks can just forget about my pledge this year.
I’m seriously considering a new digital camera. My current Fuji is a 2 MegaPixel and I’d like to double my pixel count. The more the merrier for me, as my in camera composition skills are seriously lacking. Thank heaven for Paint Shop Pro.
I’ve got it narrowed down to two cameras, the Olympus D-40 and the Minolta S414. The Olympus is discontinued already according to their web site, but it’s pluses are it is small, uses just 2 AA batteries, uses the same smart media card that I already have and has a remote control for the shutter. The Minolta has a 4x zoom and is slightly cheaper.
Now that I’ll listed the pluses for each it seems a no-brainer, Olympus. I’m still about $100-150 short of the money I need to buy the thing though. I was all excited to find the Olympus for <$300 at several places on the web, but came crashing down to reality when I noticed that this was from marginal dealers and refurbished to boot. The Minolta is more readily available and about $50 cheaper. Come back in a month, I'll let you know.
My X-Files DVDs from Netflix arrived in the mail yesterday. I got Season 1, Disc 1 so I can start watching a episode every Sunday night at nine. I also got Season 1, Disc 7, which contains some special features, mostly Chris Carter yapping about how smart and lucky he was.
While watching one of the special features they mentioned that the pilot episode first aired on September 10, 1993. This got me thinking, should I just wait until September 10th of this year to watch the pilot, exactly 10 years to the date? Maybe I should watch all of them on the 10th anniversary of their original air dates, I’m sure there are some fan sites still up that have that information. September 10th this year falls on a Wednesday, that is not a good night. The first 4 seasons the series aired on Friday nights, so should I watch these on Fridays, before moving to Sunday for the last 5 seasons?
No, I want to watch them on Sunday night as the dessert following the main course that is my weekend, so that is what I’m going to do.
Today was mail the Master’s Miata Club newsletter day. Our sponsor pays for postage, so we headed over to Rader Mazda to run our 38 envelopes through their meter. Upon arrival the office manager told me their meter was down, smoked by lightning the other day. Parts were on order and it should be fixed by next week.
Plan B was to go to a post office, buy the stamps and then get the Club to reimburse us. Donna suggested we go up Washington Road to Evans where we used to have the P.O. Box. I said, “Let’s compromise and go to the Martinez one that is half as far away.” “Make it so,” she replied. We have driven by the entrance to this post office a bunch of times, but had never actually used it. I pulled in and park at a left hand building even though Donna said I should go to the hand one because there was a postal van out front. I countered that it was just delivering mail there as there wasn’t any sign out front say the post office was there. As we walked to the front door, I commented that it didn’t look like a post office. That is because it wasn’t, it was someplace called UniWay. Glad we didn’t go in and ask for stamps.
We got back in the car and continued down the street until we came to the real P.O. As we walked inside we knew we were in for a long wait as about a dozen people were in line with boxes and such. Not having to actually mail these things just yet, we u-turned out of there and headed 4 miles up the road to the Evans Post Office.
You can see the Evans P.O. from the road before you have to turn into their lot. As we got ready to make the turn I did some fast visual scanning and made a command decision, I u-turned the car and got going away from the masses that populated the parking lot. And the 68 cars waiting at the exit of the parking lot to return to the road I was already on.
After lunch as we headed home, I thought of another Post Office to try, the one where the Club’s current box is, North Augusta. As we approached this one, we both could see that we would pass right on by, as it’s lot was so full that people were causing a traffic jam on the side street to get in.
There are 2 Post Offices in Aiken and I flipped a coin and chose the southside one as it caused a more scenic route home. Even though it meant resigning myself to having a slightly longer wait.
We finally caught a break, as we left the valley to head towards Aiken I spied a tiny Post Office in the tiny town of Bath. Pulled right in as there were only two other cars in the lot. As we entered the building those 2 folks were checking their P.O. Boxes, we stepped right up to the counter.
My replacement tire arrived from Onlinetires.com, but it was not alone.
I ordered the tire on Monday evening and specified 2 Day Shipping (for which I paid almost as much as the tire for.) Figuring they would pull and ship my order on Tuesday and I would get it on Thursday. When Tuesday passed and I didn’t get a tracking number I wasn’t too worried, they are in California and there is that pesky 3-hour time difference thing going on.
By midday on Wednesday and still no tracking number, I figured I had paid two-day shipping rates for three-day. I called and the fellow that answered the phone said he would tell shipping to email me my tracking number. It finally showed up later that day with the disclaimer that it wouldn’t be active until later that night. Now I was sure the tire wouldn’t get here until Friday.
This morning I clicked the tracking number and lo and behold they were shipping it FedEx overnight, that meant I would get it on Thursday, I was pleased (and surprised.)
This evening we I got home from work there was the tire and it brought along a companion to keep it company for the cross-country trip. I guess the new guy in the shipping department saw that the packing slip said one and figured that meant one bundle of two tires.
Had they not got my tire to me on time I might have kept the second tire as payment for aggravation, but seeing as they did right, I did right. I called their 800 number and asked them if they wanted their tire back. They did and will get a FedEx guy to come pick it up.
There is an intersection on my way to work where a street with a 35-MPH limit turns onto a street with a limit of 30 and to make it “easier” for people to negotiate them they have rounded them off more. I can now take these turns and not have to slow down. This is OK in a Miata, but when bigger cars do it they still can’t keep it on the road. They either cut more off the turn and run over the persons lawn or they get their left side tires off the left side of the road. Traffic engineers will analyze this intersection and probably round the turn off more. This will encourage more speed and the cycle will repeat. What they need to do is sharpen up the radius and either put a curb on both sides of the road or better yet, a ditch.
They also need to narrow some of these streets down. The bigger road encourages bigger speeds. There is a section of road that I sometimes travel that goes from 2 lanes to four and the speed limit stays the same 35-MPH. Yet as soon as traffic hits the four lanes the speeds jump about 10 MPH over the 40-45 they were already traveling.
Wider lanes also mean less attention needs to be paid attention to lane discipline. Another bit of road I frequently travel passes through the horse/historical district of town and because of that it still has the same narrow lane width it had in the 40’s. When driving on this stretch people travel slower than they do when the road widens because they have to pay attention to whether they are on their side of the white line.
Then again if I had my way, they would only allow Miatas on the roads and all the lanes would be narrow and windy.