September 2005 Archives

I watched Layer Cake, a Netflix rental that's been sitting on Carole's dresser for two and half weeks. It's a bit like Snatch and Lock, Stock..., but a little less funny and a little more intense.

abseil

• To rappel
• A descent of a vertical surface, as a cliff or wall, by sliding down a belayed rope that is passed under one thigh and over the opposite shoulder or through a device that provides friction, typically while facing the surface and performing a series of short backward leaps to control the descent.

I've been playing with knots lately - a great way to quickly de-stress in the middle of the work day. The fact that it is somewhat sad that I feel a need to de-stress in the middle of the work day is not lost on me.

Here's some new ones I've been working with:

The double-figure-eight knot. As strong as a bowline, but easier to tie.

The butterfly loop. The best way to add a loop to the middle of a line when you don't (necessarily) have access to the ends.

I am a sailor and you’re my first mate
We signed on together, we coupled our fate
We hauled up our anchor determined not to fail
For the heart’s treasure together we set sail
Withnomaps to guide us we steered our own course
We rode out the storms when the winds were gale force
We sat out the doldrums in patience and hope
Working together we learned how to cope

Life is an ocean, love is a boat
In troubled waters it keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage
There was just me and you
Now gathered around us we have our own crew

Together we’re in this relationship
We’ve built it with care to last the whole trip
Our true destination is not marked on any chart
We’re navigating for the shores of the heart

Life is an ocean, love is a boat
In troubled waters it keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage
There was just me and you
Now gathered around us we have our own crew

Life is an ocean, love is a boat
In troubled waters it keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage
There was just me and you
Now gathered around us we have our own crew

   John Mcdermott

I've been using small, teaser graphics in the upper-right corner of many posts for a while now, but always just added the necessary spacer info directly to the tag - normally align=right style="margin-left: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;". Some of the teasers are in macros in the banner template, and some are just inline in individual posts.

This morning, I converted the teaser-specific formatting into a class in the style sheet. I changed all the macros to use the class, and changed the most recent inline teaser (lightning) to use the class.

I was startled awake - sort of - around 1:00am this morning by a tremendous burst of thunder and lightning, the kind that shakes the entire house, so close that the lightning and thunder happen at exactly the same moment, with no need to count one-one-thousand. It felt like a large bomb had been dropped right over my head. A second big one hit about 45 seconds later, and I rolled over very groggily to see Carole getting out of bed to check on Buddy. I wasn't really sleeping, but far from awake - that never-never land, half-and-half limbo that is sure to mess you up the next day.

Jon Peralez on the Quiller mailing list recommended this book, and found a review that compares it to Adam Hall's novels, which was enough to send me to Vroman's the next day to pick it up. I was not disappointed, even though the political background was somewhat dense at times. Here's the Quiller-related quote fromt the review:

"Tara is often likened to a female James Bond (she can drink, sleep around and kill just like a man), but she's really more interesting than the comparison would suggest. These are well-researched, intriguingly complicated, exciting spy novels in the tradition of Adam Hall and his great series hero, Quiller."

—Publishers Weekly

From kottke:

complaining is silly; act or forget.

I was feeling good - too good to stay at work after a long, stressful week - so I hit the road around 11:45am for a long ride through Lockwood Valley.

I stopped in Gorman for lunch, and started reading a cool new book - . About eight miles west of Frazier Park, Lockwood Valley Rd. cuts off to the southwest, and I moved the headphones from the XM to the V-1. I ride Mil Portrero and Cerro Noroeste a lot, other roads that connect Frazier Park with SR-33, but have never been on Lockwood Valley Rd. It was fast and very fun, except for four or five stream crossings along the way. The last one was weird - a small stream, normally about four feet wide, spilled over a concrete section of the road and spread into a thirty foot section of water on the roadway. I took it slow and easy, with my feet off the pegs, and made it through unscathed.

I headed south on SR-33 for more twisties. There's a couple of places where one lane is still washed out from last winter's storms; stop signs control access to the single remaining lane. It seems to work - there's never a lot of traffic on those stretches.

I went back to the XM when I hit Ojai, and cruised back home. Lane splitting was necessary from Calabasas all the way home - there's few better ways to get focused on a motorcycle than splitting Friday afternoon traffic on the non-carpool-lane sections of the Ventura Freeway. S&T says the trip was 234 miles.

I watched Bridget Jones's Diary. A nice way to spend the morning.

TWILKIN650 posted a great solution to the FJR's tie-down problem on the FJR Forum.

Here's a picture of the most important step:

and a link to a description of the beer knot needed to construct the loops.

See the forum entry for complete details.

UPDATE: I installed these on my bike on Saturday. They stay under the front seat during normal operation, ready to break out as needed. I still need to find the plastic tubes to protect the rear rack.

The FJR Forum had a post from a guy who created an under-seat helmet lock, using a hose clamp. He wrapped the clamp in moleskin to minimize chafing on the seat.

It has some advantages. My helmet locks on the license plate require a glove or some fancy twisting to keep the helmet off of the exhaust pipe, and expose the inside of the helmet to rain, sun, and cold. Plus, my locks cost around $70, while this one runs about $2 for the clamp and five minutes to drill it out and install it.

The Darwin Awards recognizes "individuals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion." The short descriptions of various episodes in stupidity make it easy to pick the book up and browse for a few minutes at a time.

Tears of the Giraffe is the second in a series of books about Precious Ramotswe, a woman in Botswana who opens a dectective agency in the town of Gabarone. The gentle prose captures the day-to-day life of a small African village through the eyes of Mma Ramotswe, her fiancee J.L.B. Matekoni, her secretary, and various clients. Very enjoyable - like a warm cup of bush tea.

Tom Rios of CD Chivas USA sent me this logo. It's posted here for future reference.

While I waited for the epoxy to dry on Carole's headlight actuator motor, I rewired the SAE plug on the FJR to be grounded to the power block behind panel C, instead of directly to the battery's ground. This was supposed to stop the ground noise I hear when I connect either the XM or the V-1 to the Amplirider.

Unfortunately, results of my initial tests are not good. I still get ground noise from the XM, although it seems different from the previous noise. Noise from the V-1 is also bad, but maybe not quite so bad.

I'm going to play around with it a little more before I contact the Amplirider guy for more ideas.

The left headlight in Carole's Corvette has had an annoying problem for about six months - when the lights go off (either manually or automatically) and the headlight retracts, the motor would run on for about twenty seconds, making a horrific noise.

I've been meaning to fix it for a while, and finally ordered the replacement kit from Top Down Solutions, a well-run one-man show over in Hacienda Heights. I placed the order online on Friday afternoon, and the package arrived in this morning's mail.

The installation instructions were easy to follow (most of the time), and the entire job took about two hours, including 45 minutes for the epoxy to dry. You remove the light housing from the car, then remove the actuator motor; pry off the glued-on cover, replace the cheap plastic gear with a nice, heavy-duty brass gear from the kit, epoxy the cover back on, let it dry, then reinstall everything. Skinnier arms would have been helpful - it was tough to reach some of the mounting bolts.

I made Carole go out and see my manly efforts before I put her car back in the garage.

Companies with ties to the White House and the former head of FEMA have clinched some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

I use the open source tool dailystrips to create a personalized daily comics page on this site. Recently, the long-standing definition used to load the comic For Better or For Worse stopped working, because the contract between the author and United Media lapsed.

I dug in, and developed a new definition that allows dailystrips to get the latest posted version. Here's the definition:

strip forbetter
  name For Better or For Worse
  homepage http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix
  type search
  searchpattern \     <img.+?src="(/strip_fix/strips/\d+/\w+/\w+/\d\d.+?\..+?)"
  baseurl http://www.fborfw.com
  provides latest
end

My to-do list for the FJR grew to the point that I put all the little things I wanted/needed to do onto individual blank business cards. I set aside Saturday and Sunday to get a few things done:

• Mount the XM radio
• Re-hang the Magnum Blaster horns
• Install the radiator guard
• Test out the Amplirider

XM Radio - I pulled panels B, C, and D - unless you need to get to the fuses, it's best to leave panel A loose but otherwise intact. There was a nice spot above the left headlight inside the cowling for the voltage converter used by the XM hard-wire kit; I used adhesive velcro to keep it in place. I soldered on spade terminals, and screwed the wires onto the positive and negative power blocks. The wiring ran up the outside of the left handlebar wiring loom, with cable ties to hold it in place. I rewrapped the 20' of antenna wire into a tight little circle about 1 3/4" in diameter, and secured the loop with three cable ties, then put the loop around the top of the RAM short arm - I think it worked pretty nicely.

Magnum Blasters - one of the first changes I made to the bike was to install two Magnum Blaster horns in place of the weak little OEM horns. Instead of using the original horn's brackets, I chose to use the brackets included with the Magnum Blasters. The horns have always worked fine, but they sat two close to the forks, and just didn't look right. Today, I switched to the original mounting brackets, per Warchild's write-up. The right horn did not require any changes to the under-fairing cowling, but I did have to use a Dremel to grind about a few millimeters on the left side.

Radiator Guard - I got a radiator guard from John Mortenson of the FJR mailing list before I left for BC in late August, but couldn't mount them until the Magnum Blasters were re-hung. The unit installed without a hitch, until it came time to put the ties on. The example picture John posted had ties on the bottom, about an inch in from each side, but I couldn't find any holes in the radiator mount to let that happen. I finally put one tie horizontally around the lower radiator mounting bracket, then put a second tie through the bottom center of the guard and through the first tie. Once the two ties were cinched down, it seems very secure.

Amplirider - I wired up the Amplirider inside my tank bag, with the MixIt still installed, and gave it a test. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the sound. I pulled the MixIt, installed the Amplirider with Kieth's shaft extender, and connected everything up. I added a couple of rectangular lids from Tupperware that closely matched the dimensions of the inside of my tank bag; one sits on the bottom of the bag, with stick-on velcro patches to hold various things in place, and the other sits on top of the electronics and wires to provide a separate space on top for miscellaneous items.

I went on a ride on Monday to test everything out, with mixed success. By itself, or with the Shuffle, the Amplirider works great. Unfortunately, when I connected either the XM or the V-1 I got some ground noise. It was a lot better than the noise from the MixIt, but still too much. I sent an e-mail with all the gory details to the guy who built the Amplirider, asking for suggestions. Once I get the ground loop fixed, my sound system will be in excellent shape. I'll be able to choose between the XM and the iPod, with the V-1 protecting me from the bad guys with the radar guns.

A couple of weeks ago, I got two complementary tickets to a Chivas USA game at the Home Depot Center. Tom Rios, who has volunteered in AYSO for many years, is the Community Relations manager for Chivas, and gave everyone who attended the August Area 1/C Board Meeting two free tickets.

Jason and I drove down for our first visit to the Home Depot Center, arriving about 10 minutes before kick-off. Chivas draws a largely Hispanic fan base, who were very knowledgeable about soccer, and passionate about their team. The seats we had were fifth row, about mid-way between the half-line and the goal line, so we had a great view of the action. I saw a bunch of other people from the Area board at the game.

The Chivas defense broke down mid-way through the first half, forcing the keeper to come off his line in desperation, and the Crew led 1-0. The same thing happened twice more in the second half, and the Crew won 3-0. Chivas had a lot of great chances, but their finishing touch was non-existent. The left wing shanked promising shots and crosses at least four or five times.

All-in-all, a good time.

I watched the first half or so of The Upside of Anger. I'll need to finish it - what I saw was pretty good.