Another Milestone

Well, Counters, this olelongrooffan has been reaching a bunch of milestones over the past few months.
It all started with By The Numbers celebrating its birthday back in May of this year.

If you have been Counting Along With Me, you will remember that this olelongrooffan let his longroof go on down the road to that Hoon on the Space Coast.

Subsequent to that sale, this olelongrooffan, after several vetoes of my vehicle choices, was able to acquire my latest daily driver, the Indian. An interesting note about my latest and greatest four wheel drive. As was mentioned in that blog, this is the second six cylinder MJ this olelongrooffan has owned. In the comment section of that blogpost, thehorsefarmer revealed that he too owned a six cylinder MJ back in the day. Well from all of the search results I can find, there were only around 30 of the six cylinder versions of the MJ produced for the initial 1986 model year. Between thehorsefarmer and this olelongrooffan, we have owned 10% of the production total for that version of the iconic MJ! I know that is a trivial fact but hey that's why By The Numbers works for me.

Just a short time later, my 89 year old neighbor, yeah he had a birthday on October 4th, bestowed upon this olelongrooffan "Bert's Car" which I was able to flip overnite for a cool six Benjamins. The milestone here? It was the shortest time I have ever owned a car and the shortest distance this olelongrooffan has ever driven a car I owned!

Ironically, the same day this olelongrooffan sold "Bert's Car" to sweet Mary, I met up with Mr. Williams who hooked me up with a new job in a new industry, gave me the sorely needed break this olelongrooffan was looking for and for that I will be ever grateful to him.

I also have moved into the modern ages and have gotten a touch screen cell phone.

Now lest you Counters think this olelongrooffan is squibbling precious fiscal resources, know there is a story behind my acquisition of this piece of modern technology.

And of course I am going to share it with you.

Last year, 2009, I knew I was not going to be able to afford a trip to Fantasy Land to spend Christmas with my daughter, Jessica, in addition to buying any type of gift for her. I had been down just before Thanksgiving and we talked about this and she was okay with it. "Heck, Dad, it is just a few weeks away and I totally understand the situation we are in." I love that girl.

Anyway, on my drive back to the Birthplace of Speed, I did some mental calculations on how much I could spend on her gifts, while still meeting my monthly expenditures, and it amounted to about fifty bucks. Sh*t! Fifty Bucks for a fifteen year old girl? What a pittance.

Well, lo and behold, as always seems to happen to this glass half full olelongrooffan, on that very same drive across the hinterlands of the great state of Florida, my cell phone vibrates with notice of an incoming call. It was from a client to whom I had submitted a proposal for Manuel Labor and this olelongrooffan to work some wonders on their kitchen. I was awarded the contract but the catch was it had to be done between Christmas and New Years as they were going to be out of town that week. I hemmed and hawed, did some mental calculations while following an orange toting semi truck, and ultimately agreed but at a cost premium to my clients. They were so elated they agreed and Jessica's gift budget was greatly increased.

When I was down there visiting with my beautiful Jessica, I got to meet several of her 15 year old girlfriends, all of whom are really sweet. This olelongrooffan did notice that all of them had touch screen phones, except for Jessica whose daily driver cell phone was a basic, camera equipped, provided by Dad, flip phone.

So this olelongrooffan knew what Jessica's gift for Christmas, 2009 would be. The touch screen phone you see in the above image.

Now I am sure you Counters are wondering how this olelongrooffan came to be in possession of it?

Well, Jessica lost it once in April and again in August. The first time I forked over the insurance deductable and Fed Exed her that phone. The second time, her Mom had changed her email address and when she emailed me about the loss, that email went straight to spam and it was promptly deleted by this olelongrooffan. As I did not respond, her Mom switched up her family plan and got Jessica her own touch screen via the process. As, by this time, this olelongrooffan had over three hundred bucks invested in this piece of modern technology, I simply filed another, legitimate insurance claim for Jessica's lost phone and had Metro PCS activate it with my phone number and filed my old daily driver flip phone in the cabinet with six, or so, other cell phones. But as this was an insurance claim, no operations manual or accessories were included. Luckily this olelongrooffan has alot of patience to figure it out and a charger for one of those obsolete phones fits my new one.

As an aside, thejeepjunkie showed up at Happy Hour today with a new company provided Blackberry, replacing his daily driver flip Nextel.

Finally, this olelongrooffan fan was able to survive another year and reached a milestone 51 years of age one week ago today. It was a quiet celebration but know there was one.

So, anyway, what is the latest milestone in the life of this olelongrooffan?

Well, Counters, some time between around 9 Eastern Daylight Time last evening and around 4 this afternoon, October 6, 2010, the number of visitors to By The Numbers passed the total of

100,000.

That's right. 100,111 to be exact.

As By The Numbers was first published on May 19, 2008, that means that on the average day, By The Numbers gets 115 hits. I would suspect that many of them are from my rather large family but I am still stoked. Last time I checked, I was getting around 30 hits a day.

Thanks Counters.

And where would these potential Counters be from? The last few on this list this olelongrooffan got for free from somewhere says they are from:

Springfield, Missouri...I know that is family...
San Fernando
Waterford, Michigan
Oberschefflen, Baden, Wurtenberg
Monterrey, Nevada
Albany, California
Wasilla, Alaska...I sh*t you not. I guess she really wants me.
Amsterdam
Lexington, Kentucky
Knoxville, Tennessee
Toronto, Canada
Willington, New Jersey

Man, what a variety of locations.

But know this Counters, having all of these milestones occur, plus the fact it is one of my two Friday nights per week at my new job, sure lets this olelongrooffan

Celebrate Life.