Rants

?Que Dia Es Hoy?l?

The Master’s Miata Club holds it’s monthly business meeting on the first Thursday of the month. Because the members come from all over the general area we rotate those meetings between restaurants in Aiken, North Augusta and Augusta. This month’s rotation put us in Augusta. We because they had a back room we could use and the food is sort of cheap we elected to return to Mi Rancho for May. No one thought to look at the calendar to notice the date.

Turns out the first Thursday in May is the 5th. May not mean much to most of us Club members, but to Mexicans it is a big deal. Cinco de Mayo. The place was hopping. Even though a couple of groups started to join us in the back room they didn’t stay, so it worked out all right anyway.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 139

WEEI

Back on the 15th I complained here about my listening experience with WEEI and listening to the Red Sox baseball games. Go back and read it, I’ll wait. Ten days later isoxny left a comment on the post agreeing with me, he had the same complaint (probably found me via a google search.) That day I filled out another complaint form on MLB.com’s contact page with the same results, a quick flash back to the form page with no thanks page, so you didn’t know if anything really happened. And like before, no response.

Stirred to the point of aggravation by the 3rd inning tonight, I called the MLB.com customer support number. This time I gutted it out. I managed to stay on the line past the 10 minute mark of last time and finally after 25 minutes I actually got to speak to a person. Carlos was very nice and told me that they have had several complaints on this very issue and their (MLB.com) technicians and WEEI were working on correcting it. I asked if they had a timetable for fixing it and he said, “Give ’em about a week.” Although I didn’t tell Carlos, I thought, “Talk to ya on the 7th.”

April is Car Care Month

I know this because a flyer I received from Mazda today, the next to last day of April, says so in large letters on the back.

Inside are some coupons for 10% off on a couple scheduled services and a bunch of items with set prices and I can’t tell if they are really “deals” or not. I know one I won’t be using, the one for the Automatic Transmission Inspection Service. To be fair, the coupons don’t expire until the end of May.

For some Spring Reading they recommend that I read my Mazda’s Owner’s Manual to be acquainted with the operation of all systems.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 134

For Those Of You Keeping Track

In a near repeat of what occurred last October the water heater in the laundry room is dripping from the drain valve on the bottom. It started while we were away last week and when we got home the floor and throw rug was partially wet.

Yesterday I drained the water heater and unscrewed the plastic “valve” hoping a simple o-ring would fix it. Nope. It was some sort of molded in seal that was not broken, but it did seem worn. With no plumbing supply places open on Sunday I put it all back together and left a bucket under the drain. This morning it was still dripping, but at a greatly reduced rate.

Stopped at a place on the way home and asked for a new drain valve and the fellow handed me a plain old hose connection type valve. He said just use this. So, wouldn’t you know it, when I got home, just like in November of last year, it had stopped leaking on it’s own. FM.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 123

That’s Sneaky!

On today’s trip to the airport to retrieve Donna’s aunt I stopped into the book/magazine store and browsed around. I checked out all the car magazines, but I had seen most of them and the others I will see thanks to friendly co-workers. But there on the bottom shelf was was one called MPH, I hadn’t ever seen it before. Intrigued, I picked it up, that there was a photo of the new Miata didn’t hurt. I read the table of contents and bought it. On page 36 is an article called GPS Explained and they had this tag line to entice you to read it: How does it know where you are when you have no clue? They seem to be shooting for all irreverent humor, all the time. Maybe you kids love that, but I find a little goes along way. Not that I’m offended by some of the non-PC humor, I like it, but I think it might wear thin over time. When Maxim magazine first came out I subscribed and looked forward to every issue for the first nine months, then not so much. I let my subscription lapse.

Speaking of subscriptions, my copy of the magazine had 6 blow-ins begging you to subscribe to MPH. 10 issues, each only $10.00* Right below that they tell you it is $9.97* for a 10 issue year. So they rounded a little. There’s that asterisk again. If you look to the bottom of the card and the other asterisk you find that it says *Plus $2 shipping and handling. That’s sneaky. I think that is the first time I’ve seen them add a S&H charge to a magazine subscription (at least for US residents for US magazines.)

Check out a sample of their style at www.mphmagazineonline.com, might be right up your alley.

Squelch A Little High

I’m in my second season of listening to the Red Sox baseball game on the Internet. Something changed this year, the WEEI broadcast I get from MLB.com has got annoying sound gaps. Spots of silence between the calls from the announcers. When they are speaking, you hear them and the murmur of the crowd in the background, when they stop, nothing. It is very disconcerting. I wrote to the radio station via their contacts page:
As a transplanted New Englander and lifelong Red Sox fan imagine how overjoyed I was to realize I could listen to the Sox on the radio via the Internet. I listened to practically every game last year once I discovered Gameday Audio at MLB.com.

I signed up again this year too. But what the heck is wrong with your broadcast on MLB.com this year. It sounds like it is breaking up. The abrupt silences are annoying. Did you go to voice activated mikes or something? It is not my connection (I have cable Internet) as I can listen to any other game and their broadcasts are fine. I have taken to listening to the Red Sox games using the visiting clubs radio stations.

Try and imagine the pain, as tonight I an listening to WCBS…

Their response came quickly:
You’ll have to deal with MLB on that. We provide them with a clean feed. What they do with it, to be honest, we have no idea.

I think there is an email address on their website to contact them with regards to problems like this.

I appreciate your interest and am sorry you haven’t gotten the quality you’re looking for.

So to play the game, I wrote to MLB.com via their contact page. I quoted both the above emails and added more descriptions of my attempts to test and solve this on my own. When I hit submit, the screen flashed and I was right back on the contacts page with all the entry boxes blank. I wonder if they got my missive? I didn’t get directed to a conformation page…I’ll keep you posted.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 95

Recent Is A Relative Term

If you look to the right, just under Sturgeon’s Law, you will see a new addition – a list of Radio Paradise‘s Recently Played Songs. Some helpful soul over on the RP forums created a file that scrapes the recently played page and turns it into a feed. Now all that was needed was a way to display that info on my page.

First I tried the RSSFeed plugin. After a bit wrestling I got it to work, with one bugaboo, the only time it updated (read the feed) was when I rebuilt the index page. Not refreshed, rebuilt, as in posting an entry. This meant if you checked my blog in the afternoon, the songs listed as recently played would have been heard about 20 hours before. I guess if you are a rock, that is real recent, but in human terms that is like so yesterday. And in Internet terms, with recent meaning milliseconds, that is unacceptable.

The second attempt is using another plugin, GETXML that looked promising. It took a little more monkeying that the previous plugin to get going, but I persevered. Unfortunately it exhibits the same behavior as RSSFeed.

Some Movable Type forum searching turned up another plugin that might help either of the first by forcing a rebuild of the index file at predetermined intervals. That would keep the file list updated and recent. But I can’t seem to find it listed in the Plugins Directory and quite frankly, I’m getting tired of messing with this thing that probably has no redeeming value to anyone.*