Rants

French Toast

The MMC meet for their monthly breakfast event here in Aiken at the Sugar Magnolia Cafe (not to be confused with Sugar Magnolia’s Cafe in Lompoc, CA) and we got a nice turn out of 10 people in 7 cars, 5 Miatas and a Sebring (which counts as two Miatas), a much nicer turn out than the November one there which was just Donna and I.

Frakking Sony DVD player. I spent most of the late morning and early afternoon trying to get William & Mary burned on a DVD. No matter what I tried, none of the 4 discs produced would do anything but play the No Public Display warning, the production company logo and the “pirating is stealing” PSA before halting and giving an out of region error message.

All the forums posts I found on the net said that the programs I was using should take care of the Region Coding. Then I searched for a way to set the Sony DVD player to region free and found that there were no sure fire way of doing it with my model, but there were a couple of ways that I could try that worked on similar models. Ha, close, but oh so frustrating.

I’m not sure what prompted me, but about 3 o’clock I took one of the, what I thought were toast, discs into the other room and tried it in the old JVC player. It worked perfectly….

The JVC was exiled to the back bedroom a few months ago because it was refusing to play DVDs or lock up with increasing regularity. We bought a Sony DVP-NS57P for $40 at Walmart to replace it and it has been great; until now. I’ve moved the JVC back into the living room, now the two of them sit on top of each other in the cabinet ready for anything.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

Windows 7 May Not Be For Me

Nothing really wrong with the interface and it seems that Microsoft took the complaints (or at least that Hi I’m A Mac commercial) of those annoying and prolific “Are You Sure You Want To Do That?” dialog boxes seriously, but I think I have a video driver issue. Try any full screen video and it locks up, not just Ctl+Alt+Del locked up either, but hold down the power button for 5 seconds to shut it off locked up. The Netflix streaming movie viewer didn’t even have to get to full screen, just a mere attempt to load and it was reboot city.

I thought an updated video driver might help, but Dell only offers a video driver in the XP flavor for my laptop (it’s what came preloaded from the factory.)

I wonder what I have to do to undo the installation without having to reload XP all over again. Maybe I can just format the partition and edit the boot loader file? Off to Google to see…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

85,000 Tourist Trolleys

Just about 5 miles outside the touristy St. Augustine, Florida the Emperor passed by 85,000 miles. We stopped in for a brief visit and all those ubiquitous trolleys were nearly empty of tourists. We parked in the lot of the Fountain of Youth, but were too cheap to spend the $7.50 each to get in, so we asked for a tourist map of the town so we could find our way around. We parked at the visitor’s center and the next place we were too cheap to pay admission ($6 ea.) into was the famous Castillo de San Marcos. We did take the walk all the way around the perimeter of the fort and that was good enough for us.

We then wandered the old city and almost didn’t need to eat lunch as a couple of the restaurants had people handing out free samples to entice us into eating there. The pizza nearly had us, but we ended up at Casa Maya and we’re glad we did, the food was fantastic.

Tonight we are staying at the Longboard Inn, a B&B in New Smyrna Beach (I wonder where the old one went?) It is only a few dollars more expensive compared to the Holiday Inn Express outside of Savannah we stayed at last night, but the breakfast will be leaps and bounds better (cinnamon bun excepted.)

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 62

Sky City

I just saw a trailer for the new movie Australia and is it just me, but did they totally rip off that theme from TDPM?

Do you think the newest versions of the Chrysler minivans (which don’t seem to be too mini anymore) with it’s more angular look is meant as retro in the same mode as the new Beetle or the new Camaro?

Dear Fox, I downloaded the the illegally copied & shared bitorrents of last three episodes of the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles because I couldn’t watch them directly from your site. I used to be able to watch shows directly, but something has changed since last year. The video herks, then jerks and then the audio becomes unsynced. At first I thought it might be my high speed connection had slowed, but I can still watch stuff on ABC.com. Ironically when it usually happens is at your minimal commercial breaks, even the ones where there is no actual ad there.

Started upn, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 38

No, It Is NOT OK!

When AutoCAD crashes it pops up a dialog box that reads something like this – FATAL ERROR: Unhandled Access Violation Reading 0x000c Exception at 654bdec7h – and underneath there is one button to push, the button that you know when you push you will lose all the work you’ve done in the last half hour, and that button is labeled OK.

No, it is not OK. Maybe it should read We’re Sorry or You Are So Screwed or maybe it should read my personal favorite AutoCAD Crash Slogan – It Always Goes Faster The Second Time You Draw It.

I’m A Winner

Thanks to the insistence of a co-worker (Hi Mark!) I registered at drpepper.com to play along with their current promotion. I have so far steadfastly refused to sign up for any of these soda company promotions as it seems as if the value reward is nowhere near worth the effort. (I can’t say the real good payouts are too far between to warrant participation because after all I’m plunking a buck down twice a week in the state lottery.)

Don Draper when asked how he likes smoking pot: I feel like Dorothy, everything just turned to color.

The Dr Pepper promotion promises “1 in 6 Wins! Fantastic Prizes.” so how could I resist. After a couple weeks and entering 5 codes from 20 oz. Diet Dr. Pepper bottles all I had ever gotten was “Sorry, try again.” I figured that number six would be a winner, they promised. Bastards. Liars. “Sorry try again.”

When I tore the box up from my 12 pack in the home fridge to throw away I noticed that there was a game code on the inside. What the heck, I’m already signed up and besides now it becomes a test to see just how long it will take to win something.

Didn’t take long as seven was my lucky number. What did I win? The Grand Prize, a trip for two to a college football conference championship game? Nope. Third Prize, an Aero Tailgater Chair? No chance. Seventh Prize, an XL Dr Pepper t-shirt? Hah! Tenth Prize, a Dr Pepper Cell Phone? No sir. I just won 1 of 23,028,000 Fifteenth Prizes, a Dr Pepper Football Computer Wallpaper (Average Retail Value: $.99)

Yippee!

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 27

Have I Learned My Lesson?

I’m going to say no. The FRS forced a deciding game seven in their series with the Rays by winning last night’s game. But tonight, if the Sox are trailing by a bunch of runs in the late innings, I’m going to bed at 11. Tomorrow is an early start and the 5:00 AM alarm will come quickly.

I’m kinda glad I don’t have HDTV, John Lester’s sweat salt encrusted hat is ugly enough in plain ol’ analog TV.

Although I like the theme of the Brooke Shields commercials for the new Volkswagen minivan, I just wish there was some actual German engineering behind the Routan aside from figuring out where to paste a big VW logo on a Chrysler Town & Country.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 384