Why I still Haven't Made It To A MnStf Meeting at Dean and Laura's House.

[davidschroth]

The July 20 MnStf meeting was going to be at Dean and Laura's house, and would mark the combined celebration of the Apollo Moon Landing and Dean and Laura's wedding anniversary. I've never made it to a MnStf meeting at Dean and Laura's house, but I had every intention of making it to this one. I even knew where their house was (having visited it to have Dean turn reams of cover stock into lots of postcards), and had a reasonable expectation of being able to find it again without too much difficulty.

I had an appointment scheduled for 8:00 am on Friday. I'd risen earlier than I normally do, and at 7:00 am I was eating a bowl of cereal, almost ready to go. That was when Polonia and I engaged in a heated "discussion". I left, with matters unresolved, at 7:30. And was back in the house inside of ten minutes, as the Toyota refused to start. What's more, it was pretty clear it wasn't going to start. I tried to call and cancel my appointment - no luck, there was nobody in the office at that hour. Polonia insisted that I take her car. So I did. When I arrived home after the appointment, we agreed that we'd take some time during the weekend to finish the discussion. She then went to work, and I set about getting the Toyota towed to the shop and getting it repaired.

I got up at a decent hour Saturday morning, noticed that it was dark outside (due to the thunderstorm squatting over the area) and that I was still tired. So I went back to bed. I finally got up around 10:00am. After some discussion, it was agreed that after I paid for the Toyota repairs and Polonia finished taking care of the horse we would go to the Mall of America for lunch. And in due course, we did. We had a very pleasant lunch at the California Cafe. Polonia left me in the Apple Store while she did some shopping. After I almost succumbed to the temptation of buying an E-Mac (I removed myself from temptation by removing myself from the store), Polonia returned with her acquisitions, and we returned home. This was around 3:00 pm, and it seemed likely that the agreed upon discussion would not be happening on Saturday. So I started to pull myself together to leave for the MnStf meeting around 4:00 pm. And on my way to the kitchen, I started talking with Polonia about some innocuous matter.

The talking ceased around 10:00pm. The discussion had slowly moved from the innocuous to the very serious, and it stayed there for about four hours.

At that point, there didn't seem to be much sense in going to the MnStf meeting. Maybe next time.

Comments

eMacs and Toyotas

[webbob.livejournal.com]

eMacs are nice looking systems, but even with my Harvard Medical School staff status I only get $50 off the retail price from Apple.

MacConnection (&c.) will throw in another (needed) 128 MB of RAM and/or other doodads for the Apple Store retail price, so when you do succumb, go for a catalogue store. I'm thinking of buying one for my mother after my current financial straits widen a bit, and I will definitely either by from a catalogue or wait for a good price break on Apple-refurbished units listed on Dealmac or in a Small Dog Electronics mailing.

Btw, what did they say was wrong with the Toyota? My guess would have been spark plug wiring, and the distributor cap if the car has one.

Re: eMacs and Toyotas

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

They replaced the rotor, the cap, and the spark plug wires. This appears to have cured my dying starter problem, as well, although I'll need to actually drive the car for a while to verify this.

I mostly threw in the bit about lusting after an E-mac for Andrew - he thinks I am evially trying to seduce him into buying the G4 that he really wants, so I figured he'd enjoy seeing me struggle with the same desires (albeit at a lower price level). I looked at the G4s while I was at the Apple store. Way more power than I need, although I can sure see where a talented web designer/layout person could do truly wondrous things if they had one of these to work with ..

starters and spark plugs

[webbob.livejournal.com]

If the resistance to ground through the ignition system were low enough, it could sink enough current to impair the pull-in solenoid, the starter motor starting current, or both.

Re: eMacs and Toyotas

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

Further testing has confirmed that the starter is still dying.
So the repairs to the ignition system didn't fix the starter.

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Rachael, Laura Jean, Andrew, Shaun and I abandoned the deck very close to 2:00 a.m., so you could easily have squoze four hours of the meeting in. Laurel, Kevin, Dean & Laura were still chatting inside. Granted, the mousse was gone, the ice-cream cake was memory, but Dean was grilling marshmallows over the grill, and there were rumors of ice cream.

It was a most excellent meeting, but I suspect you needed the discussion more.

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

Hey you should have come we were still there and drinking and enjoying the TMI and PP personal porch Dean even stated grilling for us again around midnight. It was fun. Tried to call you but just got your voice mail.
Reason why setting a time and time limit for these talks is good.

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure TMI stands for Too Much Information, but what does PP stand for?

Unless it stands for Personal Porch (which leaves the question what is a Personal Porch).

I guess I've forever missed the opportunity to hear your answer to the question "What is the kinkiest thing you've ever done?".

Yeah, formally setting up the time and length of one of these things is a good idea. It just never seems to happen that way....