Updates, Take 2

I wrote something like this at work, but it is probably still sitting in the cache because I got interrupted by two of my team. One needed to test a Set-top box on my server - three different times, the other needed me to double-check some bugs she was seeing on the box which each of us was testing.

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So, thanks for all the comments on GPS units. A little background here - I have been using Garmin in the car for years, I am on my 4th one, a  nüvi® 1490T, which was a mistake - the screen is unreadable in direct sunlight, audio is weak and there is no way to pipe it through the car speakers, it takes too many button presses to do anything except "go home". Traffic is a joke - but this is true of most GPS systems - it tells you traffic is heavy ahead once you're stuck in it. It's also so heavy it pops the suction cup loose, especially in hot weather. But the bottom line is the other brands are worse, and all I really needed was a better Garmin. So there's a nüvi® 885 on its way.

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Called Kaiser, they confirmed that they now have the right expiration date for my COBRA in their system, and will send me a Cal-COBRA application.

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Worked till 7, hung out at Starbucks intending to change my Maui car rental reservations after the last three Avis Preferred experiences were messed up. Canceled Avis from work, but the usual reservations aggregation services kept saying that 10 pm arrival time was past their bedtime. So instead I "watched" the World Series on Yahoo Sports, which was seriously lagged. I folded up the laptop at the bottom of the 8th, with the score 10-4. If any team could blow a big lead lke that I figured it would be the Giants.

Turned the game on in the car every now and then, when it got to 11-7 I switched to music. I figured it would go extra innings, if SF was lucky.

Home, turned on the TV and was surprised the game was already over, and 11-7 was the final. Someone needs to tell Brian Wilson that his beard is only feared because the Billy Mays coloring job is so obviously phony. Fear Clairol's Just For Men. Harumph.

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Home, took care of the car rental.
Plan A: Change the hotel reservation to one day later at Kaapalani and stay near the airport my first night, and pick up the car the next morning
Plan B: Take a taxi for $90 and fake it.
But what happened when I went to Amex, which is where I had booked the flight and hotel, is they showed three well-known rental agencies at OGG which were open till 11, and would wait for delayed flights. At about half the price of Avis. I'm not too keen on driving an unfamiliar car at night on unfamiliar roads, but it beats the alternatives. The advantage of waking up to an ocean...
So I'm set. I have the plane, hotel and car booked, as well as a dolphin boat tour and a luau. Anything else I can book from the hotel, but I mostly plan to hang out on various beaches.

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The political ads are really flooding the place now. Some are actually informative. Most not so much. It is so much fun to see Meg Whitman looking as skeletal on Jerry Brown's negative ads as he looks on hers.


Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Maybe make a stab at the DVD on Roxio

Snippets

Tuesday it was so cold and windy I installed the cat door into the sliding glass balcony doors, which had been open about as wide as the cat door panel. Good move, because it blocked 90% of the cold air and made a huge difference in keeping heat in the bedroom next door.

Wednesday night I came home to a crying Domino standing outside the front door. The cat door panel had been lying lengthwise on the balcony floor, effectively blocking the gap between the bottom of the balcony wall and the floor. It's not the first time Domino had fallen through, but it had been some time. So I gathered up some spare shelving and re-blocked that gap. We're good now. Tonight was mild after a 75° day, so it's warm upstairs again, but comfortable.

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The car gets its 30k mile check-up tomorrow, so I grabbed a tall kitchen bag and went to empty out the paraphernalia which had accumulated over the last several months. I had no idea there were that many plastic water bottles. It actually took two bags, which I'll go through this weekend. Maybe 1/4 of the stuff is garbage, the rest are things like CDs, beach towels, gloves, bungee cords, etc.

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No huge interruptions at work today, but most of the tests were of the "wait 5 minutes" variety and many took some setting up time. The two meetings I actually look forward to were canceled, so boo hiss.  Left on time for a change, parked at Starbucks and read until commuter lanes opened up. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.  I think it's a forgery because there are no pictures. Or maybe Sir Terry actually wrote it (It's fairly clever in spots) while Gaiman sat in a corner with his coloring books.

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There's a not-at-all-fine line between racism and and learning from experience, and I am about to cross over it, so ( don't read this if you want to remain PC  )

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 Looking at the envelope my brother in law sent from Israel with the last insurance documents, and the stamp commemorates the invention of Voice Over IP.

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Meg Whitman's latest hate mail showed someone who looks like Jerry Brown dressed for golf, the message being he is going to get rich off of his lavish government pension. What an idiot - Brown can only collect that pension if he loses the election, and besides, he's already rich off his father's pension.

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Listened to the bottom of the 8th on the drive home tonight. Wow.