I'm starting to get annoyed with this car of mine. Not so much the car, but the anti-theft system on it. Just yesterday I drove to the movie theater, after the theater I drove to a nearby bookstore, once I got my books I came back out but I couldn't disarm the system with the little transmitter. I couldn'tg get the car started and it made this awful racket, so I gave up and waited. Three hours later (after trying every half hour), the transmitter finally was able to disarm the system.

By then the sun had gone behind a building, leaving my car in the shade. So my guess is that it at least partially has something to do with the sun. This has happened to me before, usually after the next stop after I go to the movie theatre. My car is usually in a car port and I get out of work long after the sun goes down normally so there's no problem there.

My guess is that after a short trip, starting from the sun, the receiver stops getting any signal from the transmitter. It seems to be fine once it cools down, although not in the sun. Worse is that this also happened today. After I drove to gaming and we ended early Dave couldn't disarm the alarm. Five hours in the sun after a 30 minute drive (my usual commute is an hour).

Dave suggested it might be the solar activity, which is particularly high this year. He was joking a bit, but I've looked it up and the solar activity is heavy enough to degrade communications. Which means this might go away by next year, although that's a long time. I'm thinking that I should just shut off the active alarm (you can't shut off the passive anti-theft system). But I don't want my car stolen again, so I guess I'll wait to see how bad it gets...

Writing about today, we went to dinner (which we seem to be doing more often after the first Sunday game). Looking for an Indian restaurant, we stumbled upon Spenger's Fish Grotto which apparently has been reopened. It had been closed down a year or two ago, a rather sad event that made it to the local news since it was such a venerable and popular place.

Anyway, we decided to eat there. It seems to be much the same as I rememeber. The bar is dark, we ordered the appetizer sampler which was a lot of seafood prepared in various ways. Seared Ahi, Salmon sushi, shrimp cocktail, oysters on the half shelf, crawdads, crab, muscles, and a couple of other things. Not to complain too much, but raw oysters are pretty sick, even more so than raw fish which at least isn't as slimy.

So we were seated at our table an ordered. I got the Pecan Encrusted Catfish, or something like that. It came with some string beans and jasmine rice. Maybe I'm used to the rice I use (and maybe it's just too easy to nitpick), but the rice was a bit too hard. The fish was great though, although I prefer my vegetables cooked thoroughly, which doesn't seem to be the custom for American dishes.

Woo got the Surf and Turf, a piece of steak and three prawns, mashed potatoes and string beans. It looked good, but there was a lot of empty space on his plate. Dave got some small fish, so they gave him three of those, plus the mash potatoes and some vegetable. Fulton got the New York steak, commenting about having had enough of the seafood. It came with quartered potatoes, homestyle I think it is, and some vegetable. He only ate the steak, although that may be because he had enough from the appetizer.

After that Woo and I were still hungry so we got dessert. I got the Apple Crisp, which is like a messed up apple pie except the crust is really crispy, served with a scoop of ice cream. Very good. Woo got some sort of cake thing with ice cream which looked good. After that I was quite full. Total was $175 for the four of us. Once we got back to the car it was getting dark so the I was able to disarm the alarm easily enough.