Nov 18 - the good, the bad and the ugly

Where should I start ? Well, let's take it in order ...

The good --

I can't believe it. Two, maybe three years ago I took the time to go through about 10 years worth of Amex transactions because there was a class action suit going against Amex for charging a premium over the exchange rate for foreign transactions and not telling anyone. I had it all on Quicken, but the number of payees was huge and I had to separate it all, since I'd used my U.S. Amex card heavily in Canada. I've got the submission in my files at the cottage, saw that 1/2" thick wad of paper again this past summer when I was looking for something.

Bingo -- I received a check yesterday (since it was in USD it's a check, not a cheque) for about $250. Naturally, or so the letter said, the claims outstripped the award and I'll bet that there were inflated claims in there too. I had all the documentation for mine but you didn't actually have to send any in, so I'm bettin' ... and naturally the lawyers likely took half of the settlement. Anyway, $250 out of nowhere is better than the bad and the ugly ...

The bad --

We left here about 8:15 yesterday, driving the M5, and I noticed that the temperature gauge hadn't hit half-way yet as we got to the causeway. I was thinking that the X5 comes up to temperature quicker with the new thermostat ... well guess what, it never came up to temperature while we were on the highway. It was warm out -- 72F -- so it wasn't much below the mid-mark, about half-way between 1/3 and 1/2 (5/12 ?) but definitely below proper op temp. Rats ! What's with thermostats these days ! The M5 only has 78k miles on it.

I did some research using my Blackberry while I was waiting for the doctor and the part isn't expensive -- $56 -- since it's just the thermostat, not the housing + thermostat on the M5, but I was betting that it's not an easy job. That's a very crowded engine compartment. Well, later on I looked on the M5board website and it's actually a lot easier to get at than the X5. Further research tells me that if the engine isn't getting over some threshold operating temperature, it starts sending flags and the "service engine soon" code reader will tell me that the thermostat needs replacing. In that case, since I'm not planning on taking the M5 out of Florida any time soon, I'll leave it.

These thermostats are designed so that when they fail or start to fail, they fail open, rather than closed. That's a good thing since it's much better for the engine to run cool than to overheat. I may tackle this at some point just because ...

The ugly --

I was doing that research on M5 thermostat replacement, staring at the monitor, reading instructions when all of a sudden I got a blank screen. What ? Well, my NEW Seagate hard drive had failed !!!???!!! Well, a while later I had it spinning up and was running the Linux equivalent of chkdsk on it, self-repairing some errors, but I hadn't expected this. I had plenty of backups and I took some more, but we're hitting new reliability lows !

In other news ...

My day started early, heading over to the Saxon house to replace the curtain rod that had been stolen. We'd left it on the floor of the house for the new people to fix but I didn't think that was fair. I'd decided to get over there and do the deed before they started moving in that morning. Well, Jason was already at the house unloading his trailer at 6:15 a.m. I slowed, saw that he was there, went on, decided that was silly and came back. He was fine with me going inside and putting up the curtain rod, which I did.

We had three appointments in Orlando -- first I dropped Sandy off at the hairdresser and then went to my doctor's appointment. He was running late so I had still not seen the doctor by the time Sandy called to say she was ready. The doctor (urologist) showed up shortly afterwards and said that he was running early, the nurse was running late :). Actually that was the case. It's been mandated (Obama) that all these medical records be automated so they're busy inputting medical history info for every appointment. It was just a routine checkup and I was out of there ten minutes later.

Gundian gets a little more chatty each time that I see him. He asked if we'd tried the new restaurant in New Smyrna Beach and amazingly enough I was able to say "yes". That's where we went with Patti and Norm. Everybody in Orlando loves NSB, apparently.

From the doctor I went back to pickup Sandy and then we went to St. James Cathedral and met Dan Wallace for the 12:10 Mass being offered for Alexander. After Mass we crossed the street and had lunch. This is the only time that I've seen Dan other than when he's manning Controls on brevets, so it was nice to have the time to sit and chat.

From there we headed home. Sandy was wiped from her workout with Christie the day before and had a snooze; I sprayed the plants outside because we have some sort of scale on some, then went over to Oceanbreeze to pick up the first rent check + the dog deposit. We'll setup direct deposit before the next go-around.

Sandy didn't feel like grocery shopping so we had pasta with a bottled sauce + chicken. It was fairly plain, but then most of our at-home food is fairly plain. I haven't had pasta since we were in Italy ! I yearned for fresh tomatoes, fresh porcini mushrooms ... mmmm.

Today, depending on the Doppler, I'll go for a bike ride. There are supposed to be scattered showers so I'll play that by ear. I could always do some hill-climbing practice at the south causeway if I don't want to risk getting dumped-upon.

Onward ...