WTF

Weather Takes A Holiday

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When we checked the 10 day weather this afternoon our eyes were immediately drawn to the Wednesday forecast. A high of 47°, a low of 28°! A 60% chance of rain. And underneath the rain cloud there is a little snowflake! Geez, that’s serious February winter weather in November.

After we overcame the shock of that we noticed something curious, there was no Monday weather. No just no weather, but no Monday at all. I guess the weather gets to take a holiday for Veterans Day.

Monday was still gone a couple hours later, so I got curious. I cleared the weather history, deleted any weather related cookies and restarted the browser. Still no Monday. I blew the dust off the shortcut and fired up Internet Explorer. There was Monday. I then compared the web addresses between the two browsers. The missing Monday URL had a b. between www. and weather.com. A little research yielded the answer, the b. signifies a beta page, a place where the Weather Channel folks try out improvements to their site. Something still needs a little more work.

Wishful Thinking

Got the “Payment Applied” email today from our mortgage company, we know we’re getting close to paying the note off, so Donna asked me to go online and see what was left. We are now about 10 payments away from owning this baby free and clear.

Citibank, being ever helpful, had a bright blue box in the middle of the loan details page that let me know that I could save over $600 a month if I took advantage of a 4.125% refinancing on a 15 year note. They’d even waive any fees associated with the loan.

Now let’s do some ciphering, $600 times 10 is $6,000 savings. OK that’s nice, but to the get those savings, all I have to do is make 180 monthly payments of $180 or a total of thirty-two thousand four hundred dollars. Uh huh.

Unintentionally Unpleasant Acronym

Remember those clear Lucite document holders that started to appear in the Valve Store’s(TM) restrooms a couple weeks back? Turned out they were more of the same as the others that had blanketed the cafeteria tables earlier, recruitment posters for the plant’s Emergency First Responders.

I never really paid much attention to the text of the message because rushing to the scene of an accident is not my cup of tea. It took my summer college student helper to point out to me today that what I have always called, or thought they were called, First Responders, the Plant Nurse has taken to calling First Aid Responder Team in her promotional material. I wonder if she is going to have t-shirts made up for them?

F.A.R.T.

Not A Lot Of Bugs, But A Big Surprise

Big Bug SlayerLast night was the 10th or 12th Master’s Miata Club Bug Splat that Donna and I have organized and while it won’t go down in history as a very buggy event, I predict it will be the most remembered.

We start at the south end of Whiskey Road in Aiken at the Red Bowl and finish up on the south end of Martintown Road in North Augusta at a Sonic. Both ends of the trip are definitely “in town”, but in between I try and get as rural as possible, both to avoid traffic and to increase insect impact chances.

Usually there are about 6 cars that show up, including us, so I printed out 8 maps in a fit of optimism. I should printed at least one more. We had nine cars run the route, including some brand new members, some hardly ever seen members and a previous member couple who had also previously won the Biggest Bug Trophy. But no worries, the maps are usually not used at all because Donna and I in the Emperor lead the train of cars along the route.

About half way through the trip, in the middle of a 3 mile section of a very backroad road I had to slow way down as there was a stopped vehicle in our travel lane. The 9 Miatas that started at about a 1/4 mile long line quickly tightened up because of the obstruction. As I got closer I could see that it was a PT Cruiser convertible with its top down. There was a man standing on the back seat facing the side of the road. At first I thought he was looking for a stray dog or something, so I checked the oncoming lane and proceeded to pass. As I started around I realized I was wrong, he was letting loose a mighty stream of urine out onto the side of the road.

Yes, you read that right, while his wife, girlfriend, possibly date sat in the passenger seat he decided to stand in the back of a PT Cruiser convertible and relieve himself.