Kechman8 - Just saw this - I would like to get one. I sent you a PM.

Thanks!

 

Over the weekend we took the Mini to Kansas City to visit friends and attend the KC Triumphs Club 30th Anniversary Banquet Dinner. It was our first chance to get on the road with the Mini and it was great. We have friends in KC who are classic Triumph owners and in the club. They invited us up for the weekend and to attend the celebration. While we don't have a classic Triumph, we thought it would be appropriate to at least show-up in a British car...

It's about 200 miles to KC from where we live in New Melle (near St Louis) and it took about 4 hours with a stop for lunch. We have been very happy with the MCS as a daily driver, but she's just as much fun on the road. The two of us with our luggage made no noticable difference in performance. She just purrrrrred right along at 70 - 75 mph on I-70 - even fighting a strong headwind. Just as stable as could be...

Returning on Sunday, we took some great Missouri backroads from KC to Columbia and enjoyed being off the interstate. We drove some very nice motoring two-lane roads and saw parts of our state we'd not visited before.

Highlights included lunch Saturday at Biffles BBQ (in business over 100 years) in Concordia. Attending the KC Triumph Club 30th Anniversary Dinner with friends, meeting many great folks and hearing stories about their cars. Driving through Crown Plaza to see the Christmas lights & decorations. The drive home on the backroads from KC to Columbia. Gasoline in KC was $1.32 - the lowest we can remember in a long time. Driving our Mini over 400 miles with a trip average of 32.8 mpg.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend too! Get Out and Motor...

 

Great! So far it's RoadTrip and PhantomMC. That leaves 6 more!

Just to be clear, I am not charging for these dog tags ... consider it a token holiday gift from me!

 

I sent a PM too !! Hope I am one of the lucky 7!!

 

Just checking in... not much happening in Ohio. The weather has been bad, and Phantom is filthy dirty right now. I'm hoping to be able to get him to a car wash place this week - assuming the weather is warm enough and there's no rain (a combination that appears to be unlikely at the moment). Anyway, I feel bad for him every time I go out to get in him for a drive.

I saw a silk green Mini yesterday... first time for that. What a striking color! Would have been even more striking except for the road grime that is on every car around here now. We had snow this past Saturday so the aftereffects of that (road salt) are covering everything. This has been an unusually cold December here so far.

Many thanks to Kechman8 for sharing the Week 32 "dog tags" he had made. That's part of what this community is all about.

 

I found a decent touchless car wash down the street from work. It doesn't come close to a hand wash but it'll help with getting the salt off the car. It's supposed to be 50 tomorrow so I'm hoping I can get in a hand wash and then a wax.

 

I checked out a relatively new place that has 1 touchless bay and 2 self-serve bays ($1.75 to use the do-it-yourself). It looks like it will be about 50 degrees and dry on Saturday, so that's my target to get a hand-wash and Hydro dry done. Now, if the weather doesn't change....

 

It was 50+ here yesterday, so I ran the Mini through the automatic touchless in town. It does an OK job of removing the salt residue, but much prefer handwashing when weather cooperates. At least she's cleaner than she was, but it's supposed to rain today and get colder with chance of light snow tomorrow. Oh well, it is winter...

 

Sounds like you had a great MINI drive RoadTrip2!

I've been using hand washing techniques. It's been a bit quiet on the tread, I hope everyone is doing okay!

 

Ditto on the alerts, I don't seem to get them all the time!

 

Did you find out what caused the warning light? Have you checked under the seat for loose wires?

 

The way alerts work is that once you receive one, you will not receive any more for that thread until you visit the forum. All you have to do is visit and not necessarily the thread you got an alert for. You have to -- of course -- be logged in when you visit (I just have NAM set to remember me when I visit and do an auto login).

If you are subscribed to only one thread -- for example -- and ignore an alert that a post was added, you could never get another one again...unless you visit again at some point.

 

I think the idea is that it notifies you once, or maybe a few times, about updates, and then stops to cut down on traffic from the email server. If you're not logging in, then clearly you don't care about the notices, etc.

Maybe?

 

I find the easiest way to keep up is to subscribe to the threads you are interested in, and set up NAM to automatically log you in when you select their URL. Then click on the "User CP" item in the menu in the left column. NAM will display any threads that you are subscribed to that have new postings since you last visited. I turn off all automatic notifications since I don't want them piling up in my email box. Just one way to manage things...

 

GMail + Custom Filter + Skip the Inbox =

 

Or...

I use Mail on Mac OS and turn on threading. Then all my notifications show as a single inbox line for each thread I'm watching. Once I get around to following the link I just delete the whole thread. Very easy to manage.

 

That sounds like a fun setup, I'll have to check my wifes Mac. Usually I use Evolution on my Linux to read e-mails, I must admit I haven't really looked at what kind of management options it has. I don't get spam anymore since I stopped using windows for e-mail and surfing.

 

There's nothing about Windows per say that causes you to get spam. You can get it just as well with a Mac. It's how you filter it that makes a difference. You can do it just as effectively on Windows or mac, or Linux, or...

Here's how I avoid spam. I use gmail. All my non-Gmail accounts are forwarded to Gmail. I use Mail.app on my Mac as an IMAP client to Gmail. Works beautifully since I get GMail's spam filtering for all my mail accounts, not to mention I can always access my email as long as I have internet access.

 

GMail ftw.

 

I'll have to study up on my setup! I use the windows for my drafting application and Linux for everything else. I didn't want to deal with the continuous security updates and so on. I had windows once install an update a couple of days before a mojor project was due and it took down the whole system. My windows hasn't had a major update in years and works perfectly fine now, but I limit it's exposure to the web. It was just a business choice that has saved me a little money. My Linux doesn't need virus detection and all the programs such as virus detection or any applications I can download for free! I don't have anything against windows, but cost saving are important especially in a small office where work doesn't come in every day.

 

I really hate Windows. I've used i for a long time and still find it lousy from a usability standpoint. I like to think of it as the poorest excuse for an operating system I've ever had the misfortune to use. But I have to use it for work to access corporate mail and IM. So I do everything else with my Mac, and use VMWare to run Windows XP in a virtual machine so I can have Outlook and Office Communicator running.

 

Pretty much the same goes for me as well.

 

I'm planning on installing a program in Linux that would allow me to run windows through my Linux and do away with the dual boot senario. VMWare is the program I downloaded a little while back, but have not gotten around to installing. Is it tricky to install?

Ps I didn't want to be quite as frank as you about windows, but I never liked the blue screens and constant updates required to run the system - and I didn't want to start and op sys war either!! Many systems are better, but better doesn't always win. Besides I like just like the concept of open software.

 

It can't get much simpler to install, but I can only speak for the Mac version. Not sure on Linux. I've installed Wine on Linux before, but that only runs some apps and isn't a full Window install.

 

That's what I read about Wine, it won't run AutoCAD, but WMWare should. Mac and Linux should be pretty similar due to their UNIX relations! I just need to cleanup my system and do some checking and build up the courage to do the install!!