Whatever

Deja View

It is Wednesday faithful readers and that means one thing, West Wing. It was a repeat of the season opener and for whatever reason I didn’t remember it – for the first 30 minutes anyway. I guess I must have missed the first half of the show way back when it was first on in September (or October or whenever.) I’m sure will rerun show number of the season where the find Zoey to wrap this story arc up before bringing out the new first run episodes for February. February is sweeps month the networks always save up the good stuff for then.

Oil Change – 1015 miles

Went out and drove around a bit to get the car warm. Came home and put it in the garage to change the oil. Seemed like I had to unscrew the filter about 10 more turns to get it off the engine compared to the old car. While the oil drained instead of rotating the tire as I usually do, I went ahead and checked the pressure – 20psi all around, it should be 26. As I aired up, I took the time to wipe off the wheels because they were dirty (whatever tire shine stuff the dealer uses really picks up the brake dust.) Thanks go to Mazda designers for these wheels, there are no nooks and crannies that you can’t get into to clean easily with a rage. Canceling out the thanks, is an ah shit, the dip stick is black, not chrome and this makes it hard to read the level even in bright sunlight.

Smooth Move Mr. Cyclist Guy

As mentioned the other day, I did in fact make the Sunday paper. I had actually forgotten all about it until I picked up the paper off my lawn this morning.

A picture of the cute kid who went to Camp Sertoma that is partially funded by the sale of the license plate he posed next to was at the top and the first one written about in the article. I snagged about 5 minutes of my allotted 15, by having my picture and words taking up the second half of the article. I wish I could link you to the article, but our little paper hasn’t posted the article yet (and when they do, they don’t do pictures.)

My plate is from the Palmetto Cycling Coalition which is a statewide organization to help promote cycling awareness, both to the general public and state government. Across the top is emblazoned “SHARE THE ROAD.” In the article I am quoted as saying that I hoped that this would make people aware that cyclists are people and not just something in their way.

Cut to several hours later…On our usual Sunday morning ride with some other ABC members we are coming back into town on the last leg of our journey. I was in the front of the group of five riding along close to the white line when a pickup truck blows by fairly close. As I look up to glare at the driver, I see him gesture with his hand towards the right, as if to say get off the road. Obviously he hasn’t read his morning paper yet. Usually, I just give a friendly wave as if I misinterpreted their intention, but for whatever reason today it struck me wrong, so I gave him the finger. He is about 30 yards up the road by now and returns my one-fingered salute in kind. And his brake lights come on, but just for a second. Perhaps his wife in the passenger seat was screaming at him like mine, who was riding right behind me, was screaming at me. Now I’m hoping he didn’t read the paper because maybe he would see my smiling face (and name) and put it together that was me on the bike.

Because yesterday was so busy, when I got home last night I barely had the energy to post, let alone read my usual blogs, so imagine my surprise when I read this blurb in Will’s blog and thought how close I had come having something like that happen to me.

You Can Call Me Dave

When I read the article about the fire at our plant in the Augusta paper this morning I noticed that the reporter got our Human Resource Manager’s name wrong. He was quoted as Dave Gustafson, not Mark. Upon arrival at work I made a bee-line for his office to introduce myself to the new HR Manager, Dave. Mark took my kidding in good graces and said let me tell you a story.

That reporter was being a real pain, I spent most of my time riding herd on him. Even after a polite request to him that I was the point of contact and if he wanted any information to come to me, I still had to break up him talking to employees several times. We had one female employee of the department the fire was in that was overcome by smoke and was being treated by paramedics on the scene. He husband had shown up and she was sitting in the passenger seat of their pick up while she received oxygen. The reporter had taken a couple of pictures and the husband told me about it and asked if he would tell the reporter not to print the photos. When I asked the reporter to not run the pictures, our fourth estate friend said something to the effect of freedom of the press and that he was allowed to be there and take and use whatever pictures he wanted. I agreed that what he said was true, but only if he did so from across the street, but he was on our private property and as such subject to our whims. That reporter was not there to cover the news, he was there to find a story.

Not knowing whose legal ground was firmer, I guess the reporter decided that he wouldn’t run any of those pictures. Seeing as most people love to see their name in paper, maybe he thought that that he could punish Mark by printing his name as Dave. But Mark is only to happy to be Dave as long as those unflattering pictures of one of his employees didn’t get published.

Vogue

Today was haircut day for both the Bogarduses. We go to a place called Sheri’s Hair Affair because Sheri was in the bicycle club with us at one time and she does a right nice job too. It is a typical salon and the place is just littered with women’s magazines for me to look at while Donna gets her hair cut. I hunted through the stacks until I found a relatively recent one to look at, a Vogue from March 2003. I actually don’t mind looking because they are usually chock full of cheesecake. It was my turn to hop in the chair. When I sat down, there on her table in front of me, was another issue of Vogue. About that time I became conscious of the music playing in the background, Madonna singing, pause for effect, Vogue.

SETI@Home Stats

I added my SETI@Home stats to the Miata Diaries site. I got it to work after several failures. I wanted to add it to this site as well, but I was stymied by the same thing that slowed me down on the other one, I couldn’t get it to work in anything but the root directory of the plog. So I had to use two copies of the PHP script and two copies of the XML file. For whatever reason the one on this blog doesn’t update. It still has last night’s stats.

So I tried once again to get it to link to the one file that is residing in the diaries directory. After one messy failure I think it hooked up to it, but it still shows the old stats.

I guess it wasn’t linked after all, I just deleted the supposedly not being read .php and .xml files and the script fails and outputs what you see on the left.

Back to the drawing board.

American’s Love Stuff

We have way too much of it. A majority of the people I know have two car garages and it is rare that any one uses them to park even one car inside. Those are really 20′ x 20′ storage sheds connected to the house. They are a place to keep toys, old exercise equipment, boxes full of old books, the lawnmower, whatever, just not cars. Once your garage is too full to even walk through you can drive, usually, less than 2 miles and for a small monthly fee, rent another 10′ x 20′ space to put the overflow. What is so amazing is that these places are hives of storage rooms, hundreds per location. Man we have too much stuff.

While watching TV this weekend I saw an ad for the latest in American storage solutions, PODS. now you don’t have to drive two miles to the hive, these people bring a cell of the honeycomb to you!