Standing On Boxes

This is what the 318is (A 91 E30) looked like the morning after a 300 mile trip from NY back to NH, after Thanksgiving, 2002.

I miss driving my E30. At this point, it has been sitting still – in storage – for so long that it would take quite a bit of time and money to get it running.

Okay, new tires on the red buggy at 129,663 miles – Yokohama AVS dB S2 in 225/60VR15 (That’s a V rated, 15 inch tire), replacing the Dunlop SP Sport 5000 Symmetrical that went on 16 months ago @ 110K miles.

Hopefully I’ll get more than 19K miles out of these.

Just another name for ‘pop rocks’ – more politically correct? Who do they think they are fooling?

Black olives aren’t actually black… they get that color when they are processed… to be made milder.

Why wasn’t I told?

Okay… got the wireless networking to ‘work’ – needed to change my WEP password – it doesn’t seem to like a hex key. Changing it on my iBook was actually harder.

The UMD sampler:

• video from assorted games – Zzzz…
• movie clips … not from any movies I would go see.
• music videos – Who the heck are the “Zutons”? (And they are the only one even close (at least within shouting distance) to the kind of music I listen to. A woman with a saxophone? Different…) Or any of the other groups here? That one with the drummer with the mohawk sounds almost familiar…

I must not be in the ‘target audience’ – big surprise there…

And the ‘free’ movie? Spiderman 2 ? I watched the opening… but since I never saw #1 I guess it can wait.

Okay… just because it is Good Friday and you have a fish symbol on your car, no matter what Jesus, that Jewish liberal Darwinist from Galilea, would have thought about THAT… doesn’t mean you need to practice your Easter Sunday driving skills during rush hour on I40 in TN.

The 80% of the rest of TN that didn’t spend the afternoon in church would like to get home!!

Offended? Get it line… I’m offended by people claiming to be Christian, which one would like to believe means a follower of Jesus’ teachings, being intolerant and bigoted.
Jesus would have thrown them out of the “temple”, along with the money lenders. He certainly wouldn’t reserve them a seat on “The Rapture Express” like so many of them think would happen. They REALLY need to read the parts of the Bible that he is in… instead of believing in a literal interpretation of the parts that Jesus obviously objected to.

And no, I don’t need to be “saved” or “born again” It’s against my religion (If I admitted to actually having one anyway).. Many Popes have said so over the last two thousand years.

Okay… enough with the annual “I hate it when religious holidays I grew up with are turned into commercial events for the benefit of the rich industrialists” rant. Go back to whatever you were doing.

The server my blog is on… suddenly started honoring case sensitive url’s. That’s not very nice! And new…

The only thing I know happened is that I applied an Apple security update last night.

Now a lot of my fanfic blog links are broken! Going to take a day or two to fix/find them all…

Why, that is the universal indicator used on modern, portable, battery powered, consumer electronic devices used to indicate that the battery is charging. On my iPod it turns green when fully charged… on a Sony PSP… it is supposed to turn off… we’ll see.

Okay… finally had a chance to play with it… only 1 game (Ridge Racer)… gonna need a couple more to justify the cost . No Tomb Raider episode for it (And with Eidos up for sale… might never be).

Things so far:

• Easy to get finger prints on it… and very easy to see them.
• I bought one of those “film screen shields” – wasted the money… got a spec of dust on it where it touches the PSP screen… and now I can’t use it. Urgh!!! I think it’s a good idea but… not if you can’t get the thing on it…
• It’s too “cute”/ “techie”… will I be willing to let anyone else use it? Afraid it’ll break…
• Very tiny gadget… only slightly bigger than my PDA…
• a keyboard would be nice… the on-screen phone-like thing is annoying.
• Couldn’t get it to work with my home wifi network… I think it’s an issue with my WEP key – it can see my home net (and the neighbors). But all it told me for an error was some number.

  I wonder how long it’ll be before someone figures out how to get it to play PS2 games? Or PS-One games? Will probably require a large memory stick-thing and special UMB. Sony won’t like it… they want everyone to buy new games for $$$$.

The red buggy needs a new set of tires… there is still tread on the Dunlops (A 225/60WR15) I bought back in 2003 but after 19,500 miles (approx.) in 15 months the traction is a bit wanting. Good thing winter is basically over.

I was going to get another set of Dunlops but they wore badly on this car (I like them on my E30 but it’s a much smaller car) and recent reviews/comments on Tirerack.com for that brand/model are not encouraging. Looks like it was a good tire a couple years ago but not now.

We’ll see how the Yokohamas (A 225/60VR15 – lower speed rating but since I’m not likely to ever exceed the rated speed for V or W rated tires – it doesn’t really matter) I ordered do. Neither tire is rated highly for snow traction but if I plan on spending any time in a snowy climate I’ll get snow tires…

Okay, the prologue to “The Bond Girl” is basically complete. It’ll get posted to assorted places when I have a chance to double check it for spelling/other errors.

On ‘Unwrapped’

Fish burgers! And we’re not talking about those greasy, breaded fish things you can get at the grocery store. These look like hamburger “patties” from the meat department. But are made out of expensive fish. From… Omega Foods?

Some restaurant called “Denny’s”(?) (Not the chain) has a 10 pound burger (6 pounds of meat,4 of bun and the fixin’s) – When the show was filmed – They’d sold over 200 of them over the years but no one had ever finished one within the 3 hours and it’s free challenge. Just the thought… makes my stomach hurt.

An annual tofu festival in Little Tokyo in LA – we don’t really need to think about that do we?

Part 3 of “Bond Girl” still has Part 4 attached to it. Or it will for a few more minutes until I update it with a few lunchtime changes…

Okay… all fixed… 5600 words of fic – twice as long as I’d planned – also posted to TtH. The last part of the prologue (4) still needs attention and then it’ll be posted also. Not sure if I’ll get it done before tomorrow… or when I’ll post them to ff.net.

I’m having a ‘I wanna draw’ kind of moment. I’m feeling the need to illustrate one of my fics. Not sure why… but it hit me last night… I really want a picture of one of the characters in one of my stories… and no-one else is gonna do it…

I can draw… I’ve taken assorted drawing classes over the years… but I’m not an artist. I’ve never been good at people and animals… most of my sketchbooks over the years… are filled with inanimate objects….

So… on the way home tonight… I stopped at a bookstore and checked out their books on “how to be an instant artist” – mainly the manga (Japanese cartoon /comic book characters) ones (I saw a cheap book on drawing manga characters this weekend and thought I would buy it tonight… but looking at it tonight… it wasn’t a how too. More like a “Look at what I can draw, you can draw it too.” without the whole ‘technique’ cluttering up the pages. In other words… useless…

I eventually found one that covers the basics – in a technical way – and even explains things… but it wasn’t as cheap.

We’ll see what happens…

Okay… skimmed the book to get the basic idea… dug up some real pencils, paper, and an eraser… 45 minutes later… resulting in very ugly people…

Obviously going to take more effort than that to draw anything useful. Which I expected. Just wanted to see where I was starting from. But that’ll give me something to keep the brain going on the days when the verbiage doesn’t wanna flow…

Yes, I did neglect to mention one of my fics on my “needs serious attention” list. “The Two” is waiting for me to start writing its’ apocalypse. I have a good idea how it’s going to go but haven’t written it yet. Other fics keep jumping the queue. Soon…