I think it rained all night last night. When I looked out of the window at 4AM it was torrential and I figured that there would be no Cars and Coffee event this morning. so I went back to sleep.
At 6AM though I was wide awake and it had stopped raining.
By 6:40 I had left the house and emerged into a cloudy but drying morning on my way to Cars and Coffee
Once more, cardomain are covering our coverage of Cars and Coffee !
Check out their coverage here
or go to our gallery here
Visitor numbers for our site have been growing month on month for a long time, but each time the photo’s are covered like this we get a visitor ‘spike’ of incredible proportions. Visits are up 278.31% today and up 45% for the week.
Due to a couple of groups of photograph sales, the hosting fees are now paid for the next few months, so for once we are ‘in the black’. Now lets hope that the traffic brings customers and the hosting is paid for a few more months.
One of these days I am sure that the site will cover the costs of the coffee we drink along with the hosting fee’s 🙂
My faithful old Canon G7 Ă‚Â died an unspectacular death recently. The poor thing died in its sleep one day, I assume it was a painless death. It was heavily used, but still in very nice condition.
The great thing about the G7 was always its speed and ability, with results that were virtuallyĂ‚Â indistinguishableĂ‚Â from a DSLR and really great image stabilization it was pretty much perfect for ‘better than casual’ photography where the bulk and ‘look at me factor’ of a DSLR was simply not an option.
The later G9 was barely an upgrade, but the G10 and then subsequent G11 are much better in all regards. Ă‚Â Selling a number of photographs, a couple of which were taken with the G7, this week tipped my decision. Rather than replace it with a smaller Canon, I would get it fixed.
So this morning I went to the Canon service center in Irvine, CA to see if it could be resurrected.
I have been an XM subscriber since July 2006, in that time the monthly fees have risen from ‘about $9’ to $15, while many of my favorite stations have been lost or have transformed into something that is barely worth listening to.
A couple of months ago I realized that I am not using the service at all and decided to try to cancel it. At the time I had three radios signed up and I was spending $45 / month. On radio !
I ditched one of the radios and XM offered me ‘three months for $40’, which was not a bad deal, so I took it. Yesterday we found that both of radio’s were no longer working. Coincidentally I also got the renewal notice.
I picked up a rental special Chevy Impala earlier today.I am not used to driving Chevy’s, I have very little problem hopping into almost any car and simply driving it, but this Impala is something else. It took a long time before I was comfortable and even after an hour I still had no idea what most of the buttons do, nor even where they were.First impressions count for a lot and sadly they are almost entirely negative.After driving my MINI I would expect to find anything big, but really, truly this is a big car that does nothing at all to disguise it. From the drivers seat there is no mistaking that you are driving something that is ‘real man sized’. It really feels much larger than it is. It is also very long yet the interior space seems to somehow hide that. Oddly it is slightly claustrophobic in the drivers seat.Which brings me around to the first of many issues. That seat is rubbish.
The seats are, well, short in the leg. I have a 34” inseam and the seat cushion sort of ends several inches short of my knees.
I get in trouble a lot because I have very little faith in others.
I tend to ‘assume the worst’ because my experience is that in general, people are not really that nice.
Case in point……
On Tuesday (yesterday as I write this) PJ called me, in tears, her car was ‘broken’. Eventually she managed to explain that she had parked in the local CostCo parking lot and when she got back to her car found that someone had crashed into her car. They had not stayed, nor left details, nor even a ‘sorry’ note.
They mashed the rear fender and rear lights on the passenger side. Luckily I was off today so I knew that I would be able to assist with the insurance / rental car / repair shop stuff. In order to do so I went to the mall early to get my final couple of pieces of Christmas shopping before the rush started.
When I got back to the MINI there was broken mirror glass and bits of plastic on the tarmac…….