Number 47 on the list of things you don't really need to let me know about

Really.

The Bing Logo

Dear Microsoft,

Fix this damn logo. For something that you intend to be as ubiquitous as Google, you could have at least not stretched the ever-loving shit out of the type. It’s really that bad.

Thanks, Henry

The Windows 7 Experience(tm)

It still sucks.

Tried installing a fresh copy of Windows 7 on my pc. Got to the point of selecting the hard disk and the installation fails with a nice cryptic error code - 0x80300024. No error text at all.

After a bit of quick googling, it turns out Windows will helpfully spit out this little bit of awesome if the disk you are installing Windows to is not the primary disk in the machine. Ridiculous. I can’t imagine this is at all an uncommon system configuration. Even if there is some stupid Microsoft voodoo which will ever prevent this configuration from working, they could have at least given a half-decent error message.

I can’t wait to see what other gems Windows 7 will bring…

Painting MX-5 Miata Center Caps

The center caps on my 99 MX-5 have been starting to show their age, so I decided to try re-painting them, considering how expensive replacing them would be…

I found some wheel paint in the local crap emporium. According to the tin it’s especially formulated for wheels; more resilient and a bit thicker compared to regular touch-up paint. It was $17, a bit more expensive than the other paint I was considering (metallic silver touch-up paint), but I went for it anyway.

First step is to remove the caps from the wheels. Easily done with a flat-headed screwdriver and some moderate force. Just be sure not to mark the wheels. It helps if you can pry them off a few mm, then stick the screwdriver all the way in and press in one of the side clips, then it comes off very easily.

I gave them a good wash in warm soapy water, then rinsed them in warm water. Make sure to scrub them really well, considering the rough, pitted surface would probably be filled with heaps of road grime and other crap.

After letting them dry for an hour, I took them outside to paint.

Painting the concave curves on these is a bit tricky, more-so considering it’s where most of the pain is missing from. For this reason I set them on a box covered in newspaper, and painted them from the side, turning after I’d done each side. Some needed a bit more on the edges so I touched them up while it was still wet. There had been enough over-spray that there wasn’t much needed on the top, so I just gave them a few very light coats.

They came out pretty well imho. Though the first one must have got a drop of something on it (sweat probably - damn you humidity!), but I’ll try touching it up later. The wheel paint reckons it takes 2 hours to harden, so sit back and watch that paint dry…

Recent Family Additions

Here are some photos of some recent additions to our family. It all started with Manny (grey male cockatiel). Then we just had to get him a mate (Audrey, cinnamon pied female). Of course they wound up doing what they wanted, and we ended up with some babies. From biggest to smallest we have Charlie, Frankie, and Lulu. We’re not 100% sure of the sex of any of them at the moment, but our biggest hunch is that Charlie is a female. Either that or he just loves cuddles.