Category: Driving

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Driving Travel

The Major’s Drive-A-Thon

I’m back home. Here’s a look back at my recent road-trip / vacation:

1.  From start (early Thursday morning) to finish (mid Sunday afternoon) I drove a grand total of 764 miles from here to there and then back again. That’s 372 miles on Thursday, 0 miles on Friday, 23 miles on Saturday, and 369 miles on Sunday.

2.  I filled up with gas twice on this road-trip – both times at the same exact Chevron station on North Wickam Road just off I-95 north of Melbourne. I basically filled up there on Thursday afternoon, drove 326.6 miles, and then filled up there again on this Sunday afternoon. I paid $3.679 per gallon both times. I averaged about 29 MPG on this road-trip. That’s down a bit from previous road-trips, but then again my car is middle-aged now (over 5-years-old). 

3.  Much of East-Central Florida received anywhere from a foot to two feet of rain due to Tropical Storm Fay a couple of weeks ago. It looks that way along I-95. The median and road sides are green, lucious, and overgrown with a lot of standing water all around. I’ve seen this area during brush fire season in the middle of a severe drought. What a complete turnaround from that time !

4.  My fellow drivers up and down I-95 were unusually polite during this road-trip. There were the usual suspects – such as the speeders and the tailgaters – but all-in-all it was a pleasant drive to and fro the northeast of Florida. Traffic was light to moderate during much of the trip on Thursday and on Sunday. I expected it to be much heavier due to the holiday weekend.

5.  My longtime ‘old-school’ Sunpass device that I’ve had for all of these years CRASHED at the start of my road-trip on Thursday. It worked fine for the first tollbooth north of Homestead on Florida’s Turnpike, but then it stopped working after that. It basically burned up (internally) in the hot sun. I had to use cash from that point forward. I was rocking the dedicated change lanes like it was 1999 !

Categories
Driving Home Movies Travel

Saturday Morning Shenanigans

Here at my undisclosed location somewhere within the great state of Florida I’ve been able to go to bed early – during the 9 PM hour – and wake up late – during the 7 AM hour. I’m certainly not getting a MASSIVE 10 hours of sleep, but I am getting plenty of relaxation time whether it’s sleeping, laying in bed, or chillin’ on a chair watching television. It feels great to be on vacation, but I also can’t wait until I get back home again where all of my junk is. It’s only been about 59 hours (as I type this at 5 PM on this Saturday afternoon) since I left my junk behind, but I already miss it all. No worries though, for I’ll be back home again in less than 24 hours from now. I always appreciate Homestead once I’ve been away for awhile.

This morning I took the ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’ to the regional-famous Orange Park Mall (southwest of Jacksonville Florida). I saw a movie at the constantly-busy yet well-maintained AMC-24 there. There were a whole bunch of comedy movies that I wanted to see this weekend (such as “College“, “Disaster Movie“, “Hamlet 2“, “Pineapple Express“, “The Rocker“, or “Step Brothers“), but I ultimately decided on the sleeper smash of the late-summer box office season – “Tropic Thunder” – based mostly on my brother‘s glowing recommendation. I agree with him. I laughed hysterically all throughout the movie in unison with my fellow movie patrons. It was one of the most star-studded original screwball comedies I’ve seen on the big screen in awhile !

Those are my ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’ for this 5TH and final Saturday of August in 2008. Be sure to catch me next time – ‘At The Movies’ – for some more box office monkey business !

Categories
Computers Driving Food Sports Television Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  Category 1 Hurricane Gustav made landfall earlier this afternoon in southwestern Haiti very near that country’s capitol city. I am forecasting it to eventually intensify into an extremely dangerous Category 4 Hurricane threatening the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida on Labor Day Monday and Tuesday. If you live anywhere between New Orleans and Panama City Beach then I would start preparing now. Don’t panic. Prepare.

2.  I ate a MASSIVE Lunch at this place late this morning. As usual it was a ton of great food – hot and plentiful – with excellent customer service. If you don’t know the Beef’s then you just don’t know what’s good for Lunch !

3.  I’ll be driving well over 800 miles from this Thursday morning through this Sunday afternoon. That’s the most driving that I’ll be doing in nearly 18 months – since March 2007 when I drove to and from north of Atlanta Georgia !  Back then I was paying between $2.40 and $2.70 per gallon of gas.

4.  I’m constantly watching cable television on my sparkling new desktop computer system. My favourite part of it all – pausing LIVE TV and then resuming it when I feel like it. I now know this – A 30-minute TV show recorded on my hard drive takes up 1.87 GB of space. That’s nearly one-fourth of one percent (0.25%) of my entire hard drive !

5.  I didn’t watch the Olympics at all. I got caught up on previously-recorded television shows on VHS and DVD. In addition to my 3 VHS VCRs (‘Andrew’, ‘Barney’, and ‘Charley’) I also have my DVD recorder (‘Danny’) as well as my new HP computer (‘Eddie’). I know. I’m weird. Who isn’t ?

Categories
Driving Hoaxes Internet

Thursday Night Internet Hoax Hall-Of-Shame

This – my friends – is yet another Internet HOAX !

Beware folks. This is news you can use.

THIS HAS BEEN CHECKED ON SNOPES

A friend’s son came over yesterday – he had to go to Canada for work last week. One of the other engineer’s traveling to Canada with him, but in his own car had something happen… that I need to share.

While traveling he stopped at the roadside park, similar to what we have here with bathrooms, vending machines etc. He came out to his car less than 4-5 minutes later and found someone had gotten into his car, and stolen his cell phone, laptop computer, gps navigator, briefcase….. you name it.

They called the police and since there were no signs of his car being broke into – the police told him that there is a device that robbers are using now to clone your security code when you lock your doors on your car using your key-chain locking device. They set a distance away and watch for their next victim. Since they know you are going inside of the store, restaurant, or bathroom and have a few minutes to steal and run.

The police office said… to be sure to manually lock your car door-by hitting the lock button inside the car, that way if there is someone setting in a parking lot watching for their next victim it will not be you.

When you hit the lock button on your car upon exiting… it does not send the security code, but if you walk away and use the door lock on your key chain- it sends the code thru the airwaves where it can be stolen.

I just wanted to let you know about this… it is something totally new to us…and this is real… it just happened this past Thursday June 19th to his co-worker…

so be aware of this and please pass this note on… look how many times we all lock our doors with our keys… just to be sure we remembered to lock them…. and bingo the guys have our code… and whatever was in the car… can be gone.

This came from a friend……

This is very troubling what lengths people will go to to steal what doesn’t belong to them! I do almost 100% of the time lock my car on the door lock inside when I exit the car. Little did I know that is the best way to lock your car.

Read more about it.

Read even more about it.

DON’T give in to the Internet hoaxes. Hit that big [DELETE] key !