Tuesday, July 31, 2018

A Better Day Dawns

This day would prove to be infinitely better in every way than yesterday.

Mrs Stevie decided that conditions would be perfect for a trip to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure for the purpose of experiencing the water rides that can be found there. I admit I wasn't enthusiastic, but went along with the demented woman's plan in order to put a stop to all the pitiful whining and complaining.

"At least you've stopped that pitiful whining and complaining" she said as we drove away from the villa.

We set off in the bus for the 40 minute drive under the aegis of the new Garmin GPS, Mrs Stevie having decided to get rid of the Tom Tom. She claimed it was because the company was no longer supplying updates, but this was risible. Mrs Stevie has only once downloaded an update for the machine.

The real reason was she was being driven nuts by the "Keep left, then, turn right" instructions the thing would deliver on three lane highways, and its truly baffling need to take the user into NYC even when waypoints specifically avoiding that possibility have been laboriously punched into it. It also has a yen for Washington DC which only a madman would indulge.

Mrs Stevie had bought the Garmin in an Amazon Daily Deal and we had tried to use it on Monday. She tried to program it but couldn't figure it out1 so she passed it to me. I discovered that no sooner did I get the number and street punched in, the screen went blank preventing me from completing the route programming.

I had searched the internet and found similar tales, but no advice for this specific issue. I did find out that there were two settings for the screen brightness, one for battery power and one for when connected to external power. The first was set to "bright" and the second, bafflingly, to "pitch black". The trick seemed to involve being able to access the settings screen before the screen blanked.

I reasoned that the battery power setting worked fine, but there was no charge in the battery, requiring an external power hook-up that used the second, stupidly dark setting. So the fix would be to charge the GPS overnight using a phone charger and then see if I could get to the settings screen, where I could replace the dumb-ass factory default with what I am going to characterize as "a sensible value".

And for a wonder, it worked.

I also downloaded a firmware update and new maps and that took over an hour and required a software install on my laptop. It wanted even more, but I reasoned that if I gave in it would just keep pushing its luck.

Anyway, we decided to let the Garmin navigate us to Universal and it did a great job, taking us off the jammed-solid main drag and through less-crowded streets. It didn't have us yawing from left to right or veering onto the interstate towards Washington DC either. And the display was much better, albeit a bit crowded when it wanted to inform the driver about the proximity of gas stations and so forth. And the suction mount turned out to be even better than the after-market one I bought for the Tom Tom. An all-round rock-solid win.

Such were the levels of utility oozing from this thing that I began to fear that the accumulation of unrelieved suckage would result in a wheel falling off or the engine throwing a rod to equalize the karmic imbalance.

It told us to turn off the main drag Watery Funward and take a slip road.

Mrs Stevie began a litany of threats against the machine, but I suggested that we should give it a chance on account of it had been recently updated and might be doing us a favor, traffic-wise, rather than attempting to induce a thrombosis by making things worse. I could see that I4 was groaning to a halt and did not want to spend the first two hours standing still in traffic.

And wonder of wonders the machine guided us flawlessly thorough empty streets to Universal Studios in a trice, with none of the rage-inducing "At the next exit, keep left, then ... TURN RIGHT!" that the Tom Tom was so adept at perpetrating. "Huzzah!" we cried and because we were showing unseemly levels of happiness we were promptly flagged into a car park so far away from the park it would have been named "Pluto" had that not broken copyright.

Mrs Stevie and I made our way to the park entrance, she stomping in rage, me whimpering at the thought of the walk ahead. I brightened when I remembered the escalators and airport-style walkway belts2 after a few yards though.

The escalator was shut down, as was the first walkway belt.

Mrs Stevie had a few words to say on the subject. As I recall they were "Stop that pathetic whining and keep up, idiot!"

We stashed all our normal clothes, phones, wallets and so forth in a locker, stripping down to our swimwear and sandals. We had done these rides before and were well-prepared for the watery mayhem to come.

First up was Popeye's Paradise Tours and Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges, a rather neat thing in which riders sit in a large, circular, twelve-seater raft in which they sail around a rapid-infested, waterfall-riddled course as onlookers squirt them from small water cannons. The raft is pushed on its way by rather larger cannons that work automatically. Every turn, dip and overhang results in water cascading over the gunwales (usually over someone's shoulders) or dumping on the crew's heads.

It is all great fun and very irrigating. The only things that stay dry are whatever people put into the small container in the middle of the boat. This is covered by a canvas tarp with elastic edges and is surprisingly good at keeping water out, as long as you batten down the tarp.

Mrs Stevie likes to tell the story of the elderly man who rode with his grand-daughter in the same boat as Mrs Stevie and the young Stevieling. He was from Yorkshire, and was wearing beautiful leather brogues. Mrs Stevie begged him to remove them and put them in the locker, but he just said "Oh no lass, Ah'm from Yorkshire and used to a bit o' wet". The boat was launched and according to Mrs Stevie every wave, waterfall and canon found the old gent. Not only that, the decks were awash from the get-go, and he left the ride with the prospect of walking the rest of the day in wet, ruined brogues. Apparently his face was like thunder as he stormed off the ride, kid in tow.

Those days are o'er, of course. Now, the kids were lining up to ride while texting on nice expensive cell phones. Most of them did not speak English, being Brazilian.

The nearest family to us had several teens, only one of whom spoke any English. We warned the family via this kid about the sheer levels of wet about to be visited on them. It took most of the queue to persuade them to start packing their stuff into their backpacks and watch the people getting off for a clue as to the dampness to come.

And it was a magnificent deluge. Everyone had fun and no-one's phone had its warranty invalidated with extreme prejudice. We climbed out of the boat, exited the ride, and immediately went on again.

This time we got talking to an English family. The father was weraing leather sandals and socks, and was carrying his iPhone. We began the warnings, and were laughed off again, this time in a Yorkshire accent. I broke into Mrs Stevie's impassioned reasoning and said "Look at us. We just rode this blasted thing. This isn't perspiration you know, it's bits of the ride that came into the boat for a hug. At least take your socks off. There's nothing so miserable than traipsing around the park in ringing wet socks."

After a few minutes of watching others get off the boats (it is hard to see until just before boarding) he became convinced and now rushed to de-shoe. Unfortunately, he was instructed by a stern 18 year old to put them back on. It seems that since Mrs Stevie's Yorkshireman Episode, mandatory shoe wearing was the order of the day. At least his sock were off.

And we shared a boat, and he got much the same ride as Mrs Stevie's Yorkshireman got. His little girl was laughing like a lunatic every time water sluiced over them. I might have been too.

We rode that ride a total of four times, until the line built up to half an hour, and then quit to ride the Dudley Doright log flume, on which I lost a pair of sunglasses many years ago when the back-blast as we dived through the shed tore them from my face and dumped them in the lake with about 20,000 other pairs.

Mrs Stevie suggested we ride as "singles" which meant we rode in different logs. This would have been a blissful escape except my log seemed to be full of lunatics who were yelling and screaming about the lightning one of them saw. It was Florida in the summer, and they were surprised that there was electricity in the air? I wasn't even tempted to ride that again.

Then, nothing would do but that we ride the Jurassic Park boat trip.

Mrs Stevie had been driven into a flat panic3 by news she had read that the ride was due to close down. Why this was such a tragedy is a mystery to this day, but it turned out that she had mis-read the article and the Florida version was not going to close, only the Californian one.

After that we wandered around for a bit, then decided to go and get our clothes and get some early afternoon tea in the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium. She had duck flatbread, I had a croque-monsieur and for desert she had a sundae and I went for a Nutella milkshake. All very good. The shakes in the restaurant are huge, served in large one-pint mason jars.

After which we waddled back to the car, drove back to the timeshare through a thunderstorm and flopped out to recover.

and so to bed.

  1. Having not read word one of the laughably inadequate instructions
  2. Or do airports have Universal Studios-style walkway belts?
  3. Like a regular panic except you must assemble it yourself

Monday, July 30, 2018

Space, The Unobtainable Experience

We rose late on Monday and had breakfast, then Mrs Stevie suggested we use the day to visit NASA and have lunch with an astronaut.

We've done this twice before and it sounded like fun, so we checked out the website and got the details of what was going on, and set out around 10-ish after Mrs Stevie bought year passes over the internet.

We got to NASA around 11am and were directed to park in the next state. It seemed NASA was more than usually popular that day. We wandered over to the gate and were buzzed through using the e-passes set to Mrs Stevie's phone, then we went over to "guest services" to get the actual passes and book lunch etc.

Which is where the suck started to manifest. There were two staff members on duty, but the line wasn't moving because no-one could persuade the inkjet printer used to actually print the passes to work.

By the time we got to the desk and were ready to be photographed, Mrs Stevie was getting upset and mentioned that we were hoping to get lunch with an astronaut.

"Oh, that's booked out solid for the next two months" the Guest Relationshipper. "You need to reserve that weeks ahead of time."

Both Mrs Stevie and I felt strongly that that little snippet might usefully have appeared on the website; say, right under the bloody announcement of the event.

We will pass over the irony of an organization gleefully trumpeting past triumphs1, singing up the vistas of new horizons provided by the new Orion spacecraft2 and the wonders of science and technology harnessed to send men to the Moon3 not being able to provide a working inkjet printer to their most public face - the yearly pass purchase line.

The nice lady went on to tell us that we wouldn't be able to use the other special premium a yearly pass entitles the holder to: a guided tour. They were also booked out for the next two months.

Eventually the printer was supplied with ink and persuaded to work, our passes were printed and we wandered into the Kennedy Spaceport to see what was new.

There was an astronaut training experience, where ordinary people get to work on the sorts of things astronauts do. Actually there were two; a straight astronaut training course with tumbling chairs and endurance tests and so forth, and a Mars Base training thing involving hydroponic horticulture and various other science stuff under simulated conditions in a putative Mars base. Each comes with a hefty added cost over and above the entrance charge and take all day.

All booked solid for two months and more of course.

So we went to the new 3D IMAX film, which turned out to be stitched up from older IMAX films with connecting material voiced by Jean-Luc Stewart. There was a glitch in the movie that manifested as a thin black horizontal line the width of the screen, and twice one of the projectors briefly blanked out causing a disorienting "black flash" in my right eye.

Then onto lunch, which now involves selecting stuff on a touch screen at a terminal and paying for it, then picking up the food from the counter. Very space-age, but totally confusing for first time users which was, er, just about everyone.

Such was the aggravation served up while attempting to order a cheeseburger and fries that when a beleaguered lady who spoke only a few words of English implored my help I was forced to deny her on account of I was involved in my own life and death struggle to order food in a World Gone Mad. I felt bad, but it passed very quickly when my attempt to order macaroni and cheese for Mrs Stevie turned into something akin to a cross between debugging a compiler and reading income tax instructions.

The food was surprisingly good when it finally was in my hands. Now I have experience with the NASA Cafeteria Refreshment Terminal I will undoubtedly find it easier next time. Unless of course NASA refits it in the interim.

Then we attended the astronaut presentation, a talk by an astronaut covering his or her career, with a question time. This astronaut, who I won't name, could not connect with the younger members of the audience, had no amusing things a ten year old would find interesting, and pretty much put the school party to sleep. He was passionate about the need for an American human-lifting solution, but he couldn't communicate at the kids' level at all. A shame. He had had an interesting life.

And then we did the Atlantis thing, an audio video presentation culminating in being shown the Shuttle posed like a giant Revell kit. I recommend this to anyone visiting NASA.

It began clouding over around 3:30 pm so we decided to leave, vowing to return in six months with reservations. Mrs Stevie stopped at the gate to ask how we should go about that and was told that we had been given "paper tickets" with our passes that were our credentials.

We, of course, had been given no such tickets by the lady with the misbehaving printer.

Mrs Stevie returned to Guest Services to clear this up and I sat on a bench with a coffee and the various bags of stuff we had accumulated (photos of us with an astronaut, mostly), as the rain began. An hour later Mrs Stevie stomped back into view having done battle with the NASA drones who thought that somehow we must have used the tickets and were now trying to defraud them. They were curiously resistant to the logic of year passes bearing today's date and all the ticketed events being booked solid for weeks, but buckled under Mrs Stevie's relentless outrage eventually. I just got wet.

And so we drove home, disillusioned and annoyed, had dinner somewhere so unremarkable I can't remember it at all and went back to the villa.

And so to bed.

  1. in most cases long past triumphs, but we will pass over that too
  2. More than a year over schedule, but who's counting?
  3. 46 years ago, but who's counting?

Sunday, July 29, 2018

Lazing On A Sunday

We rose late and surveyed the lay of the land over coffee.

The villa was much the same as the last time I was in it, about ten years ago. We have shifted the week about so many times in the past that we haven't stayed in our own unit (these are freehold properties) for a long time. There were many memories of this one even so

I remember standing on the fairway outside with about eight others in 1989, watching what I believe was Columbia, mission STS-28R, race across the sky. It was memorable because it was the fastest damn thing I had ever seen in flight, and an elderly lady sliced a golfball right through our group and was baffled by our yelling at her. We had all pulled the old CRT 37 inch TVs out on their telescopic stands and turned them to face the golf course so we would know when the launch started.

During a later visit I sat with a young Stevieling with a couple of slices of bread and lured a family of ducks across the width of the fairway to feed. The ducks, a mother and two yearlings, waddled about three hundred feet because they were too lazy to fly. The Stevieling got to see the thought processes of the wary mother duck who wanted the bread but was scared of the people (us). Slowly the bread became larger in her tiny brain than the danger and the Stevieling got to see that decision process on the surprisingly expressive face of the duck.

On another occasion I was alone in the unit with the sliding window open and two Peahens walked into the room while my back was turned. I caught their motion in the corner of my eye and span around and let out a manly shriek. Jurassic Park had been released a few months before and the walking birds moved exactly like the movie's Velociraptors.

I pulled the drapes to find that the fairway had been replaced by a huge sandtrap that had flooded from all the rain to form a small lake. Oh well.

We went for breakfast at the not-so-local Cracker Barrel, but the wait was four years or so, so we switched to a different Perkins from last night (it was nearer). Then we drove off to Coliseum of Comics for a look-see at what they had, where I bought a graphic novel1 and some dice to add to my collection2, and thence to a couple of sneaker outlet places so I could buy some shoes.

Funny thing. The Rack Room Shoes store next to the Nike Discount Outlet was less-crowded, had better Nike sneakers at lower prices. All round better deal and way better experience. In the Nike store I was battling endless numbers of Brazilian teens3 for the privilege of looking at eye-hurting neon sneakers4. Same in the Converse Outlet. But I scored two pairs of very nice Nike sneakers next door in half the time and with less single combat required.

Then on to Disney Springs, what used to be called Downtown Disney, the bit with the Lego shop and Ghiradelli's Ice Cream Parlor. This latter was our target for the day, and we dined on delicious ice-cream as we people watched outside. My only regret was that we were meeting the kids later for dinner and so I couldn't indulge myself with my usual Banana Split sundae - it is just too large for a snack.

I did make a stop beforehand in Pop Gallery, the same store I had picked up my splendiferous Glass Eye Volcano paperweight last year, where I picked up another going under the title Caribbean Reef, an illuminating plinth for it and some ear-rings for Mrs Stevie.

After that we rendezvoused with the Stevieling and the Stevilingbeau at Universal Studios Boardwalk and had a very nice dinner in a restaurant disturbingly called "Cowfish", which specializes in Sushi, Sashami and burgers. Sounds silly but the Japanese/American fusion dishes were actually quite surprisingly good. And The Stevieling got chatting to one of the staff (remember, the Stevieling works in one of these restaurants too) and we found ourselves seated in an observation floor with a wonderful view of the surroundings. I was truly sorry when we all had to go home.

And so we returned to the villa, through a thin drizzle.

  1. Gaiman's Study In Emerald if you must know
  2. It's an obsession. I theme dice for the various games I'm involved in
  3. Who have an absolute right to be in those stores buying the colors of sneaker they prize. They simply trigger my claustrophobia with their youthful enthusiasm
  4. As Cotton Mather wrote in Ye Malleus Cobblerium, Ye shoes worne by ye people shalle be of sombre color and playne design. Ye colors that do glowe during evensong lyke unto ye Will-o-Wisps of ye grayte swampes or leave thyne eye burning as after witnessing ye thunderbolte stryke Shoulde Notte Bee

Saturday, July 28, 2018

The Journey Continues

We rose early and got rolling for the final stretch, which was mostly traffic-nice, all to the tale of Terry Pratchett's Maskerade. I had intended to cue-up Making Money, which starred the same cast from Going Postal, but couldn't find it owning to the daft filing system in the iPad having stashed it in the wrong place under the wrong author, but I only figured that out days later.

Mrs Stevie arranged for us to meet the Stevieling and her beau at their place before we got to our timeshare1, which might have worked out better if I hadn't been fried from driving, the rain hadn't been pouring torrentially for the last hour or so and we had been able to get to a restaurant for dinner as planned. As it was we visited for a bit until I started to fall asleep and then I pointed out that I didn't want to be unpacking the bus in the dark and the rain, making me the villain of the piece, and we drove on for an hour or so to the timeshare, with Mrs Stevie at the wheel this time to, as she put it, avoid a repetition of the missed turn fiasco of last January.

I elected not to join her at the timeshare check-in, and so was not present for the customary duel in which a young sales rep tries to get the checking-in guest to commit to touring the timeshare with a salesperson eager to get the younger guests to buy in or, if they are like us and already bought-in, buy up. This never goes well for me as I have no patience for it after hours of driving, but Mrs Stevie sometimes wants to see what's what.

This time she apparently did not want to see what's what, but had been directed to a more-than-usually keen salesdrone who refused to admit defeat. I imagine carnage was the result to judge by the crumpled state of the car parking pass. The salesdrones actually dispense these only when they are convinced you are either sold or irrevocably unsold, and it seemed this time the young man had no "unsold" filter, fueling a rage reaction usually not experienced without the application of about a pint of Mocha Face-Punch Clawhammer Blend Espresso to judge by the footprints Mrs Stevie stamped into the asphalt on her return to the bus. All in all, I'm glad I missed it.

The villa was a welcome sight, and in no time at all we had unpacked, had a quick argument and dashed out to attempt to get dinner. I say "attempted" because the first place we went to, the local Cracker Barrel2 had us seated for three quarters of an hour, with the waiter occasionally returning to our table to inform us that another part of our order had somehow fallen off the menu and ask us to make another choice. We eventually walked out of that place and drove to the not nearby Cracker Barrel3 where the wait was estimated at four days.

We then moved on to a nearby Texas Roadhouse4, where the wait was declared as 20 minutes. I asked about take-out, and was told the wait for that was also 20 minutes. I am still trying to work out how the wait for a table was the same length as the wait for a take-out order. For this to be true the kitchen would have to be cooking at capacity even for diners already seated and eating. Oh well.

We finally ended up in a Perkins, a breakfast all day type restaurant and had a very nice meal, after which we went back to the villa for some too-long delayed sleep.

  1. Using her cell phone while I was driving and too busy avoiding other people to argue
  2. Mrs Stevie's favorite franchise restaurant
  3. There is one about every three miles in this neck of the woods
  4. Mrs Stevie's second favorite franchise restaurant, and usually a wise choice

Friday, July 27, 2018

The Journey Begins, Eventually

My morning ablutions were accompanied by the occasional hiss of the upstairs toilet refilling. So the valve replacement had worked about as well as could be expected. Fbleep it.

Mrs Stevie vanished with the bus to get it washed (something I thought should have been done when we arrived if the aim was to impress Floridians since we would be driving through approximately 1700 miles of bugs before we arrived but what do I know) so all I could do was stack totes full o' stuff until she arrived back in theater.

One of the things I like to pack is a selection of board games for those times when we aren't frantically rushing about "enjoying" the Orlando area attractions and are in the villa together. So I dug out a bunch of easy-to-teach stuff from my huge collection of largely unplayed games. It was sometime during this process that I accidentally found my original copy of Splendor, a rather excellent and addictive boardgame I had been unable to locate for about 18 months.

I had purchased a second copy from Coliseum of Comics in Kissimmee about 18 months ago so that we could play with five or six players without the game dragging to a halt due to lack of resources, then found upon returning that I had lost the original. I turned the place upside down looking for it and concluded that I must have left it somewhere else. It is a popular game and I often carried it to events for emergency merriment. I only realized I had found it when I was sorting through one tote and found myself in the position of holding the game in one hand while staring stupidly at it in the bottom of the tote in which I was rooting around. So that was good.

I also stacked my paints, a toolbox and a box of unpainted lead miniatures for those days when I was alone and not rushing about etc etc etc. I had finished painting my old project used for this purpose, only taking about four years to do so, and decided to try something smaller and more manageable this time.

Then my Strumstick and my new Autoharp 1 went on the pile and I was done.

Mrs Stevie returned and opined that most of this stuff was unnecessary. I said maybe, but one could not exist culturally on a diet of large anthropomorphized mice and wedding arrangements (part of the reason we were going was to start working seriously on options for the Stevieling's upcoming wedding reception). There was a lot of foot-putting-down and posturing and whining and eventually it all worked and Mrs Stevie gave way to my demands. By then it was getting on for 10 am.

I found something useful to do - shocking the pool, turning off the water supply2 and other things that kept me well away from any lifting, carrying and loading duties. Something had put Mrs Stevie out of sorts and I reasoned that she would welcome the solitude.

By the time we got underway it was almost 11am, and traffic had built nicely in Queens, Staten Island, pretty much anywhere we needed to drive, with the result that traffic jams caused by police speed traps3 cost us 90 minutes for what should have been an hour's trip at best. Then there was the bit where the road opens out out before the toll gate from Staten Island into New Jersey and the lane markings go away so the drivers assume there are infinite numbers of lanes and immediately try and fill them despite the clear evidence that there are only six gates. Yet another needless traffic jam. And once through the gates there was the bit where everyone is on the wrong side of the road so they fight to cross each other's paths and enter the turnpike in the direction they intend to travel, so - you guessed it - another traffic jam.

New Jersey flew by, with only a stop for fuel.

On to Delaware, which normally takes about 15 minutes to transit, but by combining the infinite lanes toll gate feeding two lanes of traffic idiocy (See: Staten Island stage), road works and a stalled and abandoned bus c/w massive towtruck, cones etc cost us another 90 minutes. We were then dropped into rush-hour traffic in Maryland and Virginia. More delays.

Suffice to say that by the time we had found our "halfway hotel" in Lumberton (just north of the North Carolina/South Carolina border) we had spent 13 hours making a 7 hour trip. The only reason I wasn't completely wigged-out was that we had been listening to Terry Pratchett's Going Postal Since New Jersey.

And so to bed.

  1. For when my muse took a more musical turn
  2. To forestall plumbing treachery. After being ambushed by ankle-deep water in the basement one time too many on returning from Florida I installed inline valves in both the hot and cold water lines. Now, each vacation starts with me looking like a u-boat chief as I pull the overhead valves to lock the pressure out of the house. I used to connect the sprinklers to a sillcock that exits the house between the mains stopcock and this arrangement but found that they could spring ingenious leaks and flood the basement through the exterior window well despite my measures, so I don't do that any more. The lawn would just have to take its chances with the weather
  3. How? How could anyone speed in this traffic?

Thursday, July 26, 2018

The Kind-Of Inevitable Post Smiting Smitage

After a day of Bloody Long Island Railroad suckage and work suckage I returned home and dug out the stuff I'd bought at Blowes from one of the stacked totes I'd bought, which turned out not to be rain-proof after all.

All the items inside had soaked overnight in a shallow pool of rainwater, releasing them from their cardboard-backed/plastic bubble packing, normally a job requiring heroic measures and the sacrificing of a fingernail or two. Of course, any instruction leaflets were now pulp. Lose/win I guess.

I replaced the leaky toilet valve1, added the mounting hardware to a plank Mrs Stevie wanted to give the Stevieling, baled out the totes and added my clothes to them.

And so to bed.

  1. but had to scavenge the float-on-a-chain part from the original valve because the chain itself was different to the one that would actually fit the flushing lever. So much for "universal"

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

The Smiting Continues

So we are due to set out for Florida in the MrsSteviemobile on Friday.

Yesterday the Steviemobile's check engine light started glowing brightly. This means that - if the engine doesn't explode in the next two days driving back and forth between Chateau Stevie and the Wyandanch Commemorative Sea of Tranquility Recreation and Station Car Park - I will need to use the day I set aside for decompressing after the return to Chateau Stevie for sitting in the Dealership1 waiting for someone to figure out which sensor has gone nails-up this time2.

Today the left side nosepiece of my glasses fell off and got lost somewhere, so now I have to make an emergency dash to Costco to get a new one installed instead of doing the last-minute errands I had scheduled for tonight.

I wonder what new hell tomorrow will bring?

  1. Assuming I can schedule an appointment that is
  2. It is a given it won't be any of the thirty seven that have been replaced in the last two years which are still under warranty

The Suckage Goes Ever On And On

So I went round to Costco to get my glasses fixed, prior to doing all the things Mrs Stevie had added to the last-minute task list before we depart for pastures Floridian.

They were having fun, trying to process two customers' orders but unable to persuade their printer to disgorge the evidence. Thus a two-minute fix (the broken nosepiece is a snap-in affair) took closer to twenty minutes.

Thence to Blowes where I purchased yet another "universal" flap valve for the upstairs commode1, some hanging hardware for a three-and a half foot painted plank with which Mrs Stevie wishes to smite gift the Stevieling and Stevielingbeau, and three plastic totes.

We use these totes to carry stuff in the Bus o' Merriment as we argue our way down2 scenic I-95 and I have about a dozen of them standing in for furniture. Four hold collections of board games. Three hold certain elements of my Goons Wonkshop hobby fallout, several hold selections of T-Shirts3. But I didn't want to empty old totes to use for the trip, so new ones were bought.

Just as I made ready to leave Blowes the heavens opened and a year's supply of rain fell in about ten minutes. It didn't look like ending this side of Easter, so I waded to my car and made my way home, and thence to bed after drying off.

At least I didn't get struck by any of the lightning zooming across the sky.

  1. The last universal flap valve didn't fit this particular toilet tank, leading me to conclude there are some pretty eleastic definitions of "universal" in use by the perfidious After Market Toilet Repair Fittings Illuminati
  2. and - a week later - up
  3. One, for example, holds my collection of I-Con shirts. At the con, I would do as others and wear a shirt from a previous con as a sort of minor brag. Since I-Con is likely dead and buried, those shirts will have fewer outings and may go into storage

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Good Grief, Is It That Time Again?

Seem like only a year since I went though this the last time.

Still, it's a good excuse for brunch I suppose.

The omeletes were very good.

Friday, July 20, 2018

And It Was Going So Well Too

I just received an email from The Bloody Long Island Railroad:

Due to a ticket stock issue, there are some changes to your August monthly ticket.

MAIL & RIDE CUSTOMERS: Your August monthly ticket will be printed on purple ticket stock and will have the year "19" printed on it. Mail & Ride customers who purchase the joint MetroCard ticket for August will not see their MetroCard values impacted in any way.

CUSTOMERS USING TICKET MACHINES AND TICKET OFFICES: Your August monthly ticket will be printed on green ticket stock from 2016. Please disregard the 12/31/16 expiration date and discontinued M/F designations. In addition, only $25 MetroCards will be available to purchase. Customers will be unable to add value or purchase $50 MetroCards.

We encourage you to purchase August monthly tickets using MTA eTix.
Thank you for understanding as we work to resolve this issue.

Anyone here want to trust the e-delivery of a monthly ticket from a website maintained by the same crowd who orders the paper for the ticket machines?

And let's not entertain the thought of a flat phone battery just as the guard comes down the aisle.

I Suffer For My Art

What with my birthday looming ahead and my old Autoharp hors de combat for lo these many years in need of refelting, I decided to get myself a nice new Autoharp.

I had recommended an Oscar Schmidt OS45CE model to a friend as a possible present for his partner, and in doing so I fell in love with the thing myself. It's a very pretty thing indeed.

I had originally intended to purchase the harp from Amazon, but was disturbed by the number of reviewers remarking on rusty strings and complaining of them breaking when tuned up. This would be a significant purchase for me and I wanted to make sure I got an instrument in the best condition possible.

It was while searching for places that could supply a replacement set of strings I rediscovered The Autoharp Store, and realized I could buy any model Autoharp in production from them. I had some trepidation in making a deal with people I had no prior relationship with, but my experience has been so good this time that I shall be buying my spare parts needed to renovate my other autoharp from them, and I have no hesitation in recommending them to all my readers (two at the last count).

The instrument is far more beautiful than pictures suggest, with a high gloss finish and strings gleaming and new. It arrived in the original Oscar Schmidt packing along with two massive bags of silica gel desiccant. Job done properly.

Naturally, it was badly out of tune when it arrived, and it was then that the vile anti-musician demons of Chateau Stevie manifested to make fiasco from the fabric of extreme happiness.

I managed to find my Boss TU-12 electronic tuner lurking in the Basement of Forgotten Projects, and switched it on to be confronted with a flashing "batt" light. Grimacing, I popped off the battery door, but for once was not confronted with burst batteries and foul chemical encrustations so typical of a battery device left on a shelf for a couple of years. Mistaking this for Good Fortune instead of the Opening Movement of the Symphony of Suck I pried out the 9 volt battery and pulled off the connector.

One of the battery posts popped off the connector. The other popped off the battery.

I tried prying with my Swiss Army Knife, then deployed my Leatherman Wave pliers, Class Four Words of Power that set light to the curtains, goose grease, cat o' nine tails and Nurse McReady's Surgical Bruise Lotion, but nothing would persuade the blasted claw-like battery post to let go of the connector. Best guess is that it is welded on with the afore-mentioned chemical encrustation.

So, in order to enjoy my new autoharp, I first had to cut off the connector to my classic and now unavailable Boss tuner - thus rendering it less collectable, solder in a replacement connector and shrink-wrap the repair, only to find it wouldn't work afterward.

I let forth some Class Threes and stamped off to see if I could replace the tuner. Turned out I could, but it would cost about $100 for the latest iteration. I nipped off to eBay and bid successfully on a secondhand unit of the type I already had for about $40, but was told it wouldn't arrive until the end of next week. Blast.

Then I had a brainwave and downloaded a tuning app to my phone. In a trice - about 15 minutes - I had the autoharp in tune (ish) and was able to coax some lovely music-like noises from it.

And so to bed.

This morning I pried the case of my old tuner apart and poked around and it started working again. Huzzah! For though the phone app is tres spiffy indeed (something called "Pano Tuner", find it in the Google Play store) it isn't able to be coupled to the pick-up and thus is not usable during noisy get-togethers. Not only that, for reasons I've never understood the acoustics of my old autoharp play hob with the discriminator circuits in mic-type tuners, causing the needle to bounce all over the place, especially in the lower registers. That's why I like the Boss TU-12; it couples inline between the instrument's pick-up and whatever amp one is using (if any).

My old harp desperately need refelting1 and other work doing, but right now I have nowhere to work on it. The footprint of a dismantled Autoharp during refelting is about the size of the average 10 seater dining table. So I think I might spring for a set of replacement chord bars from The Autoharp Store. Expensive, but worth it to get the old girl up and singing again. A new set of strings wouldn't go amiss either. That will probably cost about 2/3 the price of a new autoharp. New bars come in at 7 bux apiece and I'll need 21 of 'em, and a full set of 36 strings come in at a shade over 70 bux.

All for the love of music2.

  1. The autoharp works by using felt pads to mute some of the strings, leaving others to ring when strummed and sound chords. The felt gets ridged and goes soft over the course of the years and eventually needs to be pulled off the bars and replaced. This involves heating the bars to unglue the old felt, gluing new felt in place, and cutting notches where the strings you want to sound are. You did remember to make a diagram before you pulled the old felt off, right?
  2. Or as Mrs Stevie calls it "Stop that bleeping racket"