Rants

Why?

At ASCO both 1st shift assembly and fabrication workers starts work at 7:00 AM. One manager also starts his business day at 7:00 AM. When he comes in a little before the hour he parks where ever he can, along with the bulk of the other employees. Our small 3rd shift gets off work at seven and after about 15 minutes they’ve cleared out of the front couple of rows in the parking lot.

Donna and I start our work day at 7:30 and we always get there around 7:15-7:20. This means on most days as we pull into the lot we see said manager as he walks back out of the building, goes over to his car and moves it to a parking spot in the front row as close to the door as possible.

Why?

So at the end of the day he can get out faster? Nope. When he leaves work there are maybe a half dozen other office types leaving at the same time, no crowd. Plus the close to the door spots have a longer route out of the lot because they have to travel the whole length of a row before turning towards the exit.

So he doesn’t have to walk so far to get into his car? Nope. Maybe that is true for that final trip, but what about the whole *extra* trip out and back to move the car?

So why?

Doesn’t he know that every time he starts his car he is causing extra engine wear? By some estimates those cold starts account for 60% of all engine wear. What about the extra gas burned? the wear and tear on the door locks, ignition switch, gear lever, etc.

He is not the only one who pulls these kinds of parking lot stunts either. There are probably a half dozen hourly employees that rush to their cars at breaks and lunch so they can move up closer to the door if one of their fellow employees has left a spot open because they had to leave the building for some reason. Even if it is 20 feet because the spot is in front of them one row.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 420

The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)

Went for a “Bike to Breakfast” ride this morning and ended up at the Atlanta Bread Company. Mileage for the ride was somewhere between 10 and 15. I could get a more accurate figure for you, but I’m too lazy to walk all the way out into the garage and look. Besides, do you really care? My right backside from Thursday’s rollerblade crash landing didn’t bother me too much. It is just sore enough to make me put my wallet in the back pocket on the other side. Still no bright purple bruise.

My inability to contact anyone at ssWebHost or HappySupport to cancel my web hosting for mr-miata.com led me to 2CO who actually does the billing for them (I don’t know why I keep saying them, when I’m sure it is one nerdy little guy in a rundown apartment somewhere) and I left a message on their site.

I have tried without success to contact ssWebHost, but I have two open help tickets open since at least 3 weeks ago that have gone unanswered. The credit card used for this reoccurring bill has been canceled after some fraudulent charges were detected. Since they have been unresponsive I have purchased another domain and webhosting with another provider and wish to cancel my services with ssWebHost. My hope is that this will get some one’s attention over there so I can cancel as other methods of communications have not been successful. I have no intention of using their web hosting anymore, but if they would like to sell me the domain, mr-miata.com, that they purchased for me I would gladly pay a fair price for it.

I killed the brian@mr-miata.com email address and emptied out directories on their server. The only things I left behind were the custom 404 page and the index.php file that redirects the dot com address to the dot net one. This way if they close my account and forget about the files it leave behind the cookie crumb trail to the new me. This is what happened with the Barndoor Fan Club site. I canceled there nearly two years ago and my error file is still out there. of course those redirects lead to the soon to be defunct mr-miata.com…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 400

Wandering DNS Settings

Yesterday the laptop stopped being able to access the internet. Neither IE or Firefox would reliably pull up a webpage. When it was able to connect to some it was slow or it would never show the images. Moving from one part of the house didn’t seem to help much. One time sitting just a couple feet from the router it worked OK.

Today it still didn’t work on the internet. It saw the home network OK and I could FTP to the net just fine. Winamp played shoutcast streams just fine and Google Earth worked fine. I turned off the firewall. I emptied both browsers cache files. I ran Ad-Aware, Ewido Spyware & AVG Anti-virus. I plugged it directly into the router with a Cat5 cable. Still no internet, so I started poking around in the settings.

Under “network Settings” on the Control Panel, I right clicked for properties on Local Area Connection, selected Internet Protocol and clicked on the Properties button. “Use the following DNS server addresses” was selected and they were set to 85.255.xxx.xxx on the laptop while the desktop had “Obtain DNS server address automatically” selected. Changed the setting to automatic, repeated the process for the Wireless Network Connection and we were back in business surfing the web.

I don’t understand all I know about home networking, but how did those settings change? Malicious hackers? I put those addresses in there when I set up the wireless network and something changed Saturday?

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 399

One Cheek Landing

Went on my usual 3-mile rollerblading loop this evening. The middle mile is around the one mile walking track surrounds the city’s recreation center. I enter on one side and at about the 3/4 mark the trail it passes between the parking lot and the main road. Cars come in on one lane and they exit in two more, one for right turns and one for lefts. Cars are supposed to yield to walkers and skaters and almost always do. Today one of them didn’t for me.

As I skated towards the entrance I looked behind me so as not to be ambushed by a car swooping in from the road. I then looked forward and could see a big sedan coming out in the left lane and I slowed a bit to make sure he was stopping. When I saw that he was, I continued forward. Trouble was there was a smaller car coming in the right lane, I noticed late, and the driver didn’t even see me at all. I braked hard and it really wasn’t going to be enough, so I turned hard right into the space between the two cars. My right skate came out from under me, dumping me on my right butt cheek.

I got back to my feet and thanked the guy in the car that stopped and looked over at the one that didn’t, who was sitting at the stop sign before entering the main drag, and gave him the evil eye in his rear view mirror. I think he felt bad and was waiting to see if I was alright before going, but I just skated back on my way with wounded pride and a pain in the butt.

I’m still sore 5 hours later and I’m betting that sucker is going to be purple by tomorrow.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 398

Going To Puerto Rico?

Donna spent 2 years in Puerto Rico as a kid and has fond memories of that time. Going back there to visit has always been thought in her mind.

Well, a couple days ago her friend Sally (of State Department fame) emailed to say that once she is done with her tour of duty in Namibia next February she was going to be in the states for a few months before heading off to her next assignment. First she will be spending some time in Louisiana with family and then a fellow embassy friend was lending her their condo in Puerto Rico for a week. A plan was hatched to kill two birds with one stone, a visit to PR and get to see Sally at the same time.

We weren’t planning on spending a whole week with Sally just maybe an afternoon and an evening meal. Sally was going to be spending time with her mom and her daughter. Donna and I would spend a couple days in Fajardo were she spent her early teens when her father was a sea plane pilot flying a Gumann Goose for Antilles Air Boats. Donna actually studied Algebra in Spanish, which explains why she asks me to solve all the quadratic equations we run into in our daily lives. A visit to the only rainforest in the National Park system and a bioluminescent bay were also on the schedule. The next three or four days would be spent exploring the central mountains and the quieter south & west of the island. Saturday while out shopping we bought a book called “Let’s Go Puerto Rico on a Budget.”

That $15 may save us a lot of money.
Driving:

Traffic is heavy; many people disregard speed limits, neglect to use turn signals, and cut off other cars. Markers such as stop signs are treated more like suggestions than rules. – Carjackings are common in Puerto Rico, especially in big cities. To avoid nighttime carjackings they have passed a law that drivers do not have to stop at red lights from midnight to 6AM. Central mountain roads tend to be narrow with sharp curves, poor visibility and frequent one lane washouts. The greatest danger is not the roads, but rather the local drivers who often use the whole road in narrow spots and drive at high speeds around sharp turns.

Health:

There are no required inoculations to visti Puerto Rico, but travelers should have the following vacines up to date; MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), DTaP or Td (diphtheria, tetnus and pertussis), IPV (polio), Hib (haemophilus influenza B), HepB (hepatitis B). Make sure the food you eat is fully cooked and the water is clean for drinking.

Time:

Puerto Ricans have a much more laid back sense of time than most Europeans and North Americans. Things get done when they get done. Restaurants do not maintain strict closing hours and will stay open as long as people are still around. If an establishment is empty, it will likely close early. Museums and stores frequently change opening hours and will close if someone who is supposed to work happens to be sick or unavailable.

After reading all that and reading a bunch of web reviews of tours, tourist spots and accomodations we have pretty much talked ourselves out of going.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 390

Backyard Burgers

After our morning’s shopping both Donna and I needed a little snack. At the exit road of the shopping center was a little gas-n-go place, so we pulled in and got me a Coke and her a bag of chips. As we leaned on the fender of the car we both could smell charbroiling hamburgers, mmmm. Sharing the building with the quick shop was a Backyard Burger place.

It was a little early for lunch at 10:15 AM, but we had an early breakfast. The smell of cooking burgers was too much, we were now hungry. Dang, they didn’t even open until 10:30. We left and started our way back to Aiken. As we drove we tried to come to a consensus as to what to have for lunch when we got home, but we kept coming back to those burgers.

So we drove around Augusta aimlessly for a while and by the time we got back, the Backyard Burger place was open for business. We were actually their first customers of the day and it took a minute or so before someone came from out back to take our order which consisted of two 1/3lb. burgers and a small fountain drink. The fellow gave me a receipt and told me my ticket number was 134, the time was 10:34 AM. I almost made a smart ass remark about good thing he gave me a number, what with all the people in here, I’d hate to get the wrong order, but held my tongue. I sat down and Donna went off to use the rest room. It seemed like it was taking her a while, but they had a TV in the corner, so I watched some inane college football pregame show for a bit. Donna came back and we chatted for a few more minutes, we were still the only ones in the place. What could be taking so long? Finally, not wanting to shout out “134” to a nearly empty room and/or perhaps to give himself something to do, our order taker brought the two burgers to our table.

While tasty, the burger was not really hot or fresh and it should have been considering the amount of time it took to get it to us. I think the patties we were eating were probably the ones we smelled cooking at 10:15 and they had been lazing about under a heat lamp for the last 40 or so minutes.

The Honeymoon Is Over

I signed up for web hosting yesterday with HostGator. Last night I had no problem logging in to my Cpanel. I even uploaded a php snippet that sent anyone stumbling on the .net site right over to this, the .com site.

Today I received an email saying asking me to call HostGator’s support line. They had an issue, the recorded IP address location from where I signed up was several hundred miles away from my home. I explained to the nice lady on the phone that I had signed up at work and all our internet goes through the corporate servers in St Louis, MO. After confirming my information, she said I would get another welcome email.

I never got that second welcome email and now at home this evening I can no longer log into my Cpanel nor is the web page I uploaded yesterday showing. mr-miata.net is 404. I went to the support site and opened a ticket stating pretty much what I said above and went and had dinner. An hour later I checked back on the ticket and it was still listed as open. Right below it was another ticket that they had started saying my domain was on hold and it read like this afternoon’s email.

Called the support number again and got a nice fellow who was true to his word, within a minute of him saying he would send me a new welcome email I heard a beep from my Gmail notifier. Trouble is I now have to go change the name servers at Yahoo’s Domain Control Panel to the new servers and wait for internet propagation.

Enough about me…

A co-worker purchased a Kodak EasyShare digital camera about 3 or 4 years ago. He thinks he probably spent about $300 on it and it has served him well, up until he went on vacation last week when it quit working. Nothing happens, when he turns it on the power light comes on and then just fades out.

Today he called the support line at Kodak to find out how to return the camera for repairs. The woman on the phone told him that they don’t repair those anymore. But that all was not lost, if he returned the defective camera to them in a couple weeks he would receive a voucher entitling him to a big discount on a newer re-manufactured Kodak digital camera. He was given an address to send the camera to and a list of four different cameras and what they would cost with his discount.

After hanging up in order to get an idea of which camera he would get and its feature he did a little internet research. The first model he looked at on the Circuit City website had a price there of $180 which the Kodak folks had offered to him at $220. Nice discount, more like profit for Kodak. The other three cameras were priced the same way, the new camera was considerably cheaper on the street than Kodak’s re-manufactured camera direct from them. This left a slightly bitter taste in his mouth. Guess who won’t be buying a Kodak digital camera this time around?

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 382