Highway of broken cars

SAGINAW, Mich. — So I’m still here. My car decided to breakdown before I could leave town.

To be honest, it could’ve been a whole lot worse. While I was on my way to the highway out of town past the woefully named TheDow Center (no, I didn’t forget a space), my car starts making this crunching, screaming metal on metal sound. I obviously can’t drive home with my car in that condition. Turns out that my right rear tire’s bearings are going out and need to be replaced. The guy at the shop, Nevin, said the bearings could’ve failed completely with the tire popping off of the axel. So the car’s in the shop until Monday morning at the earliest.

I do count my blessings in a lot of ways. I’m thankful the breakdown occurred while I was driving around town and not on the highway and not on the way out West. I’m glad I was able to get it into the shop before they closed (Thanks, Tuffy and Nevin!). Also, my car seems to be aging gracefully. Although repairs are necessary, the car is still a trooper after more than 10 years.

I’m also extremely thankful for the generosity shown by my friends Erin and Steve who’ve allowed me to stay at their apartment for an additional two nights. I don’t want to impose on them in a negative way and I hope that I can repay their generosity (or at least show my gratitude in some way).

It’s interesting that both my car and Garrett’s car suffered breakdowns while traveling downstate. Garrett’s car broke down when he visited a couple of months ago. It’s almost spooky (but not).

But hey, the weather yesterday was spectacular with the blue skies and the gentle late Winter crisp that merely hints at the season instead of bludgeoning people over their heads with snow and freezing climes.

The Final Frontier

It’s been a couple of days, so the reality of the ending of Star Trek: Enterprise has settled in. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be more of a blip on the radar except for some of the Web sites I frequent (and help out on). While for the past 18 years, the Star Trek franchise has encouraged millions to “boldly go,” perhaps it is time for the long-lived series to do the same.

After a disappointing experience with Star Trek: Voyager, I was never fully on board with a new series set before the original missions of Capt. Kirk, et. al. After four season, the show never truly won me over. I liked a lot of things about the Xindi arc from season three, but starting off the fourth season with space Nazis was bordering on ridiculous.

I’m sure there’s a lot of other sites lamenting the series’ passing and I feel for those who are losing their jobs. At the same time, I think the science fiction and TV worlds have moved passed Trek. Hopefully, with a little time off, Star Trek will come roaring back into a dominant place in the media universe.

Voices on the street

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SAGINAW, Mich. — I’m on the verge of my swan song in the Copper Country. So, after a stop in Ann Arbor, I visited my friends Erin and Steve at the “New Amadore Apartments.” Their voices can be heard herein.

I hope that I can work with them on a blog collaboration in the future. We’ll see.

Walking on sunshine …

wooooahh!

Anyway, I’ve been in a pretty good mood. I don’t know if it’s the gloriously sunny weather or some things happening in my real life (more later). After a few dark months things are starting to look pretty bright. So bright, I’ve got to wear shades.

Hey, is it against the law to reference more than one cheezy song in a post. I hope not. 😉

Four years in

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Reflections on being in the Copper Country for four years en route to the Perkins restaurant parking lot. I moved to Hancock on Jan. 28, 2001.

For the love of Mike…

So I just recommended statetaxfreedom.com for most people in my age and tax bracket to get taxes done quickly, easily and — best of all — free. Alas, I start my tax return and this message tells me that my browser (Mozilla 1.2) isn’t supported. At the same time, there were several things about this message that confounded me.

First of all, you can’t say “Mac OS 9.0 or higher” when the browsers you support don’t work in Mac OS 9.0. Second of all, AOL for Mac OS X? You guys don’t support Firefox or Mozilla, but you support AOL as well as Mozilla’s commercial cousin Netscape 7.x? Something’s rotten in Denmark.

It’s true I’m using an older version of Mozilla on an old version of Mac OS (9.2.2), but I generally don’t have a problem with browser support. After all, my version of Mozilla is still pretty standards-compliant.

Oh well, I still like the service so I’ll probably try and find a Mac OS X computer, *sigh* use a Windows-compatible PC or go back to H&R Block’s rival service. As a quick aside, here’s the IRS page for free online tax filing. Good stuff.

The tax man cometh

Every year, I’m the one in the office encouraging my fellow co-workers (who are all about the same age as I) to get their taxes done. I print out forms, visit Web sites and basically help them get it done before the big April 15. This year, I don’t have an office and most of my co-workers have left so I’m going to help everyone on my blog.

I know that April 15 seems like an eternity away, but it’ll be here soon enough. If you’d rather be a Ned Flanders and get your taxes done early (but maybe not on January 1), the State Tax Freedom Web site is a great place to go.

That link is to the State TurboTax Tax Freedom Web site which includes a quick test to see if you’re eligible to file your state taxes for free (as well as your personal federal return). Essentially if you’re earning less than $35,500 a year, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use this site for free.

This is a slightly different site than the main Tax Freedom site which essentially buries the fact that you can process and file state taxes for free in many states (including Michigan, Idaho and 17 other states). Hopefully, the link to the State Tax Freedom site will save some confusion and hunting and pecking.

Going through TurboTax’s online program is quick, thorough, and easy as pie. I’ve personally filed online for free since I started doing my own taxes back in 2002.

Still, things haven’t been the same since Intuit discontinued Mac-in-Tax. I’m just kidding, I never used that program. It’s just fun to say. 😉

Sweet anti-spam tool to stick it to spammers

Finally, there’s some technology that automatically gets spammers about as quickly as they get us. I’m extremely fascinated by Project Honey Pot as detailed by the Detroit Free Press’s Mike Wendland in Sweet new weapon enters war on spam (Published Jan. 28).

One of the easiest ways that spammers can harvest e-mail addresses is by skimming Web sites looking for fully formed e-mail addresses (i.e. joeblow@asdf.com). The easiest way to avoid that is to not use the atmark (@), but a lot of people still write out their e-mail address. (I don’t, BTW. My address on this site is formatted as ryan -at- rtomedia.com.)

Well, Wendland describes as project that will include some dummy code that the automated e-mail harvesters would trip over. As I understand it, an automated harvester who tries to send an e-mail to the fake address in the code will get their computer knocked off the e-mail network. It doesn’t necessarily stop them, but it makes things harder for them.

Wendland’s tripped up a dozen harvesters so far. It sounds really good, but I wonder how quickly the savvy spammers will come up with a workaround (as they almost always do). It’s a “war” out there.

Chilly indoor conditions

It’s been very cold in my apartment over the past couple days. My feet get so cold (even right next to the heating duct) that I’m wearing my shoes in the house.

It’s a puzzlement why things would be so cold. All right, it’s currently 8 degrees outside right now and I’ve got the thermostat at 56 degrees. I’d turn it up, but I feel so bad for my landlords (who are elderly). I get such a deal in rent, I want to help out in some other ways and that includes not turning the thermostat too high.

Anyway, during the winter, I like to leave my bottles of soda on the floor by the door. It’s cool enough to keep the drink chilled but not frozen like when I leave it in my fridge.

Weird happenings

I’ve been battling with my iMac sound cutting out at weird times. I could have iTunes playing something perfectly normally, and then my computer’s built-in speakers just stop playing. My iSub continues playing just fine in the meantime.

It gets weirder when I open the Sound control panel and tinker with the settings. I can get the main sound back for a while, but it’ll eventually cut out again. Just freaky.

BTW, did you ever notice that Apple likes to append a lower-case “i” to the products they sell? For example, iPod, iBook, iWork, etc. You’d almost think that was intentional or something. 😉