More Miata, Shifting opinions, Stopwatch in hand, prep time

I swapped vehicles with Cindy yesterday so I could do some more work on her Miata.  The rear finish panel on the car has been broken since she bought it.  It was the major exterior flaw on the vehicle.  The Miata has had a number of mechanical issues that took priority over this visual flaw until last night.

I found the replacement panel on Ebay, it is from a 96 Miata, luckily the panels from 1990-1997 are all compatible.  From what I read, the first couple years of production, the plastic used for this panel was not great and became brittle.  By the time 1996 rolled around they switched to a higher grade, more flexible ABS style plastic.

I was really impressed with the replacement part.  The seller packed it VERY well, ensuring it would arrive undamaged.  The part itself was in great shape, looking practically brand new despite coming off a 17 year old Miata.

The replacement process was not difficult, the funniest moment was when I pulled part of the broken finish panel off and found an abandoned wasp nest inside of it. After removing the busted up old panel I had to move some of the mounting hardware to the new panel before mounting it.  All in all the swap went very smoothly and it really cleaned up the look of the back end of the Miata.

I didn’t see any other how to videos pertaining to this on YouTube so I had no choice but to create the first one.

So the situation in Syria has been in the news quite a bit.  The latest information casts doubt on John Kerry’s seemingly irrefutable evidence that the government was behind the chemical weapon release.  The UN is urging that inspectors are allowed to complete their investigation before any additional action is taken.  Britain whose leader, David Cameron, was very gung ho about military action, has now officially backed away after Parliment voted it down.

My initial reaction on Monday, supporting military action, was based on several presumptions, that there was  iron clad proof that Asaad was behind the attacks and that any military action would be a joint effort by multiple nations.  Despite the absence of both of these things now, there is now talk of the US going it alone and striking out at Syria.  I do NOT think that is a good idea.

There is a clear and recent precedent for our intelligence being incorrect (or us being outright lied to) and using that information to get the country into a long, pointless and infinitely expensive military conflict in Iraq.  I have no doubt that capability for the government to deceive is still there even with a different face in the oval office.  I would find it hard to believe that the Iraq lesson would not be heeded.  Going into another Mideast conflict on questionable intelligence, solo would be pretty stupid, frankly.

Let the inspectors finish their job and depending on what they come back with, reevaluate from there.

Tomorrow I step back into the race timing saddle.  The Labor Day weekend event is a pretty good size, we should have 400+ runners participating.  I am testing out some new integration with this event.  If it works as hoped, I will be posting finish results right from the finish line, providing runners with the ability to check their results online instantly using their smart phone. I also am testing pushing race results to runners via email or text messaging notifications that they were able to sign up for.

I am hoping it all works as planned, crossing my fingers.

This long weekend will be put to good use preparing for my upcoming road trip.  I have a list of things that need to be taken care of.  Unfortunately that list only resides in my head currently, not the safest place for it to be with my sometimes hit or miss memory.  I probably need to jot some things down.