Rants

Lawnmower?

After work today I decided to take the Emperor down to the local Advance Auto and have them read the battery. I hopped in the Miata and as I have been want to do lately, had to reach back into my front pocket and take out the key after I couldn’t locate the push-to-start button on the dash. As I turned the key to start all I got back was rrrr_RRRRR_rr r  r    r_click. Good thing we bought that other car a few months back.

I disconnected the Miata battery, took it out of the Miata trunk and put it in the Sonata trunk. On our way to grocery shopping tonight, we stopped in to the aforementioned Advanced Auto. When I hefted it up on to the counter and asked if they would put my car battery on the tester, the fellow behind the counter, Will, said, “Car? Looks like a lawnmower battery.”

He hooked it up to the magic box and because there was no indication of what the battery’s cold cranking amp rating was, he used the number off their replacement battery, 370. He said, “That really is only a little more than a riding mower’s 340.” “Your battery is bad, the voltage is a little low at 12.4v, but the cold cranking amps reads 90.” I thought to myself, kinda figured it would be low, cause there wasn’t much cranking going on in the garage a little while ago.

He said, “We have two of these batteries in stock.” I thanked him as said I’d let him know. You see there is this sticker on the top of the battery that says ‘Limited Warranty’ and under that are the numbers ’36/60′ and I wonder if that means 36 month replacement and up to 60 months prorated discount. Going to call the Mazda dealer’s parts department tomorrow to find out what the deal is.

Another Reason Why I’ll Never Own A Hybrid

We had some unseasonable cool weather on Monday, so we drove the Miata to work. It was cool enough in the morning for me to almost want a light jacket. It was sort of cloudy at quitting time, so we even made the return trip home with top down.

Both times I started the car it seemed to turn over a little slowly before catching. Battery going dead? The original battery lasted 5-1/2 years and this one is only a touch over 2 years old. Maybe there is a small amount of dark current that drains the battery, but it was never noticed because the car was a daily driver and the constant charging kept it going. I may duck into an AutoZone or similar and have then analyze it later this week.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1044

Rutting Netflix

We have been two at a time Netflixers since way back when. A couple years ago they threw in streaming from the cloud for FREE. At first they limited the amount of time you were allotted by how many DVDs your plan allowed, then they bumped it to unlimited streaming (still FREE.)

Today I received an email from the fine folks at Netflix:

Dear Brian,

We are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into two separate plans to better reflect the costs of each. Now our members have a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan, or both.

Your current $14.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into 2 distinct plans:

Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month
Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs, 2 out at-a-time (no streaming) for $11.99 a month

From $15 to $20 on September 1 for the same thing, that is a 33% increase. The folks that were in it at 1 DVD and unlimited streaming got zapped for even more, they are going from $10 to $16 or 60%.

Our 2 DVDs were separated into 1 for TV shows and 1 for movies. But we are running out of TV shows we want to watch, Law & Order (The Mother Ship) is the last one and while we are only on Season 8 of 20, #8 is the last one available on DVD. The rest are tied up with exclusive rerun deals with cable TV. So today I went ahead and changed our plan from 2 to 1 DVD at a time and kept the streaming portion. Even with the downgrade in service it will still cost us a buck more when the price goes up in September.

I’m going to see just how much we stream per month, which is mostly me on the laptop watching stuff that wouldn’t appeal to Donna. Maybe we will just drop the streaming altogether and go back to getting 2 DVDs at a time for the $12.

I think if they eased up the price, in what I call The How To Boil Frog Method, it wouldn’t have been too bad and maybe not have inflamed users like me into doing something rash. After all, how much does it cost per month for HBO? $20?

Black Gum Pond

We went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods this morning. I can’t tell you how far we walked because for some reason the GPSr stopped creating a track part way. It was still on when we got home, but the green line only went about a 1/4 of what I perceived we walked. Weird.

After the walk I headed out back to finish pressure washing the deck. I had done about 1/3 of the job on Thursday night and I got another 1/3 done today before the brass nozzle in the end of the plastic wand was spat out and disappeared onto the lawn. I made a short search of where I thought it might have gone before giving up looking. The last time this thing broke it was at the handle and the local Big Box Home Improvement Warehouse had not repair parts, so had to buy the handle, hose and wand assembly online. I had little hope of getting the pressure washer fixed today, but I was pleasantly surprised that the first BBHIW I tried not only had a universal replacement wand for $20, had I needed it they also had hose & handle replacements on the shelf too.

Anticipation

I have a question for all you vending machine designers out there. Why the long wait for change?

You feed 2 bucks into the bill acceptor and punch in the letter C and the number 4 for the 20oz Diet Dr. Pepper. You watch as the as a little bucket on an arm moves smoothly up and over until it stops under the appropriate slot. The row of bottles is pushed forward, forcing the front one off the ledge where it drops the 6″ into the bucket. The arm then glides over to the left and then (in this case) drops down until top edge of the bucket catches on the ledge above the dispensing chute. This allows the Diet Dr. Pepper to slide down into holding area and then rests for a second until the round plexiglass door rotates 180° until the drink is exposed and you can pick it out. With your selected drink now in your hand, the round door rotates back sealing off the dispensing area. A few seconds later 75¢ in change plops down one quarter at a time. Elapsed time between picking a selection and receiving the change is probably 30 seconds.

The only thing I can think of for making you wait is so that your attention is not diverted from watching the nifty dispensing dance.

Oops I Did It Again

In my quest to prevent door dings by parking way out or way to one side of the parking lot has its downside, like the sacrificial anodes used to protect deep sea oil rigs from corroding away, the poor wheels of the Sonata forfeit their beauty. I curbed a wheel parking yesterday. Not just any old wheel either, but the same one I scraped the day after we bought the car. Was I lucky enough to hit the wheel in the same spot? No, of course not, I blemished a different 3 to 4 inches of the edge.

I guess the only thing left to do now to even things out is to keep hitting that same wheel until I have scraped the entire circumference of the rim.

If when you read the title of this post, the first thing you thought of was Britney Spears, shame on you, Louie Armstrong did it first way back in 1932 – Oops I Did It Again!.

Not Fair

Last Friday when I posted about the stove, the last line “Inau?gural meal pre?pared on our new range ? pizza.” was going to have a link to the Home Depot page of the range. But when I went to the page for it I came away shocked, we had bought the stove on Sunday the 19th and on Tuesday the 21st it went on sale for $101 less.

Donna called the store and spoke to someone in appliances who told her that all we had to do was bring in the receipt within 30 days and they would refund the difference. Saturday morning we headed into HD with our paperwork and a print out of the web page showing the new price. The first person we spoke to at the service desk was unsure of what to do, but a person who seemed to be in charge or at least more knowledgeable arrived, heard our story, said so & so will take care of you and disappeared into the office. So & so got part way through the process and then stopped stumped. She hailed over person number 4. This person said, “Oh we aren’t supposed to do that.” We planted our heels and Donna said, “Well, the person I spoke to in the Appliance Department last night said we could.” “Who?”, she asked. “Didn’t get a name,” Donna countered.

She chewed her cheek for a while with her fingers hovering above the keyboard, before saying, “Follow me.” We went over to the Returns Desk where she refunded us the cost of what we paid, then sold us the stove again at the sale price and gave us the difference back on a store gift card (a different one from what we used to buy the thing, so now we have two.)

If we had been turned down for getting the sale price, we were going to borrow a pickup from a friend and return the darn thing, telling them it didn’t work or something. Then take the money and go buy a new one at the sales price, even if we would have to wait another week for the 2nd stove to be delivered.