morrowlife

Here’s what the driver sees just before he gets into my new/old car. Check out those highly-optional chrome sill plates. Wow. That’s a thing of beauty. Truly Great Art.

It’s a sad day for Loyal Reader Number One. His beautiful hard disk installation job has to be undone – sort of. You see, there was this unidentified magnet just sitting in the case near the optical drive. It dropped out when he was in the middle of the teardown, and since the wonderfully clear instructions didn’t say anything about a magnet in that particular location, we decided to leave it out when he put it back together. Bad idea. It turns out that the magnet lets the computer know the top is closed so it can go to sleep. No magnet, no sleep. He’s going to take it apart again Real Soon Now. You’re always taking a risk when you take on a project like that, but there’s every reason to believe it will go very well again.

On a positive note, the new hard disk definitely cured the problem, so hooray for that.

I got a note from the Miata lady today. She’s hard at work on getting the car ready for me; she’s fixing everything we agreed on and the few things I noticed on Saturday as well. Seems like a really nice woman and a True Enthusiast to boot. I’m excited to get the car.

Took care of Loyal Reader Number Twelve for a few minutes this evening. The boys went to Battle Axe lessons a little after 7:00 and Loyal Reader Number Four got home about half an hour later. In the meantime, I was on my own. I’m surprised they trusted me, but I guess you’ll do just about any crazy thing when you get desperate enough.

It’s not quite 9:00 yet, but I think I’ll quit and actually have a life this evening in the short remaining time before bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a beautiful pile of Mac Minis from the Macworld Expo the other day. What a thing of beauty. Great Art? You be the judge.

Boy, the Loyal Readers are getting restless! Two typo corrections in one day. And by my dear old friend Anonymous to boot. I appreciate my Loyal Readers’ ongoing quest for perfection. After all, that’s why they’re Loyal Readers. Of course.

Fine weekend. Dropped off the deposit for the Miata on Saturday afternoon. It sure looks nice. We think it will be ready to pick up next Saturday. Woo hoo!

LRN1’s hard disk died on him on Friday and Saturday. It was a slow and painful death. He tried everything to get it working right, to no avail. He found an excellent website explaining how to get the hard drive out of an iBook, complete with printable sheets to organize all the tiny parts. Sunday was teardown day. Success! Nothing broke. I dropped by Fry’s this evening on the way home from work and found a nice 120 GB Toshiba (tried to make a link to their website, but it freaked out my browser, so no free advertising for them!) for a very attractive price – the exact same amount as an 80 GB drive, in fact. As of this writing, he already has it installed, the machine is back together, and OS X is just finishing up installing. On top of getting the fix done, he’s upgraded from 30 to 120 Gigs, so it’s all good. We’re still keeping our fingers crossed, just in case there’s something else wrong, but we’re pretty sure we pinpointed the problem. After he took the old one out, we hooked it up to my Mini to check it out. It worked for a few minutes and then crashed the Mini exactly like it had done to the iBook. QED.

While I was at Fry’s, I finally bought an enclosure for my DVD-RW, allowing me to permanently hook it up to my Mac. Sadly, while it works great in USB mode, it doesn’t work at all in FireWire mode. Since I sort of want to get what I paid for, I’m planning to exchange it later this week. Dang. It sure works great when it works, though.

Not much else to report. Loyal Reader Number Six came up this weekend. He and Loyal Reader Number Five went to a Napa Valley bed and breakfast for his birthday weekend. Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve are going down to Big Bear next weekend (I think that’s when, anyway) for LRN5’s birthday weekend. Lots of travel for those three. I’m staying put.

And that’s it for a cold, sunny Monday on Lardville. See you tomorrow and thanks for the typo reports.

Here are Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two at Macworld Expo in San Francisco this morning. We had a great time! We saw lots of neat Mac and iPod stuff and just enjoyed the atmosphere.

We saw perhaps the ultimate iPod accessory:

That’s definitely for the person who already has everything else. We heard it play, so we can at least confirm that part works. Somebody else will have to confirm its other functions.

The trip was made possible by this being my day off from work. I hope things went well for those guys at the office.

In the afternoon, Loyal Reader Number Four and I went to Riverbank and looked at another Miata. It looks just like this one, except that it’s not brand new. Otherwise, identical – color, accessories, and trim. Anyway, I bought it. Or at least promised to buy it. The woman who owns it (and many other Miatas for sale, by the way – she runs a Miata business out of her house) still has a little bit of work to do on it, so it won’t be available for another three or four days. And of course I have to give her some money. But not too much. I’m looking forward to getting it and starting to have fun, fun, fun. As I believe I mentioned yesterday, when you spend most of your free time in your car, a car is a pretty good hobby. That and my computers. And my websites. And my reading.

Anyway, this will be my fourth convertible. I really like this one. It’s a black ’92 special edition with leather, cruise, power windows, BBS wheels, headrest speakers, wood shift knob and parking brake handle, power antenna, and maybe a few other optional extras I can’t remember. They just put a new windshield and top on it, along with a bunch of other things. It doesn’t need anything right now – or at least it won’t need anything by the time I get it. Of course, it’s old enough that I’m sure it will need some things soon, but that’s all part of the fun.

It’s late and time for bed. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you on Monday.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve ordering one of her minions to bring her nourishment. “You there! Bottle! Now! Or prepare to suffer the consequences!” Photo courtesy of Loyal Reader Number Five, as you might have guessed.

No post yesterday. Wednesday nights are just hard these days. Fortunately, the Loyal Reader outcry has been restrained.

Not much to post today either. It’s late already and I’m afraid the Loyal Readers will just have to be happy with little more than another cute baby picture. But isn’t that enough?

Loyal Readers Numbers One and Two and I are going to the Macworld Expo tomorrow at the Moscone center in downtown San Francisco. It’s something we’ve often wished we could do in the past and now that we live nearby, we’re going. LRN1 scored us some free tickets, so we’ll just have to pay for gas, parking, and meals. We’ll take some fascinating Great Art pictures and maybe even post something here if it’s sufficiently interesting and Artistic.

I’m thinking of buying a hobby car, but am having a hard time making up my mind. It’s a 1999 Miata, just like the one I used to have except white and with more wear and tear. It also has fog lights (one of which is broken) and a hardtop. It only has 46,000 miles, which is a big selling point. Very low for its age. The price is excellent but it’s still a lot of money for a hobby. Still, pretty much the only time I have for a hobby is my driving time back and forth to work, so it’s appropriate. We’ll have to see.

And goodnight. See you tomorrow.

Here are Loyal Reader Number Two and Loyal Pet Number One staring at the camera. LPN1’s eyes always freak me out in photographs. Devil dog. LRN2 is kind of prone to the same thing too, although not nearly as badly, of course.

Nothing else to report today. I looked at a few old sports cars online this afternoon but didn’t buy any of them. A few look promising. We’ll have to see. I’m kind of looking around for a fun project car – not a restoration, but a tasteful modification. Miatas seem like likely subjects, as do Rangers and Jeeps (totally different uses, but the same basic idea in my warped mind). Porsches don’t seem promising at this point – too much money to buy and WAY too much money to fix/modify. There’s no hurry, though. In fact, I’m not theoretically ready to buy for another year and a half, but when did I ever let a little fact like that get in the way?

Nobody was home when I got here this evening. The boys were away at Battle Axe lessons and the girls were away at Book Club. The Loyal Pets and I were it. We made the best of it.

And it’s already time for bed. See you tomorrow.