March 2006 Archives

After my SS1K, I have a new wishlist for my motorcycle:

• Russell Day-long Saddle, all vinyl, small diamond pattern, with heavy-duty suspension and a rain cover
• Garmin 2730 GPS
• Techmount Stem Stand

Photos of my Saddle Sore 1000, on March 26, 2006. I left home around 5:30am, went to Barstow; Kingman, AZ; Phoenix; Casa Grande, AZ; Yuma, AZ; San Diego; and arrived back home at 10:30pm. See the write-up here.

I revamped the grey style to use larger, white letters on an grey-blue background. The header logo is now a background image, and the entire header is clickable to return to the home page, ala the LAPI site. I should convert all the style sheets to this type of header.

I did my Iron Butt Association Saddle Sore 1000 (SS1K) ride yesterday. An SS1K is 1,000 documented miles in less than 24 hours, for which you recieve a license plate frame, a pin, a certificate, and all the personal satisfaction you deserve for extending your horizons.

I'd mapped out a route months ago, waiting for my mind, body, and the weather to all reach a state of readiness. The headaches are mostly under control, I'd been exercising regularly, and the weather looked good, so Sunday was the day.

Home to Barstow

I spent Saturday getting things in order, and did some final packing first thing Sunday morning. I woke Carole up at 5:22am to witness the start of my ride. Originally I planned to go down to the WaMu ATM for my start-of-ride documentation receipt, but at the last minute I decided to stop at the 76 station at Duarte and Rosemead to top off. The gas receipt showed my official start time was 5:30am.

The 210 was fast, but the 15 a little faster. There were cool fingers of clouds hugging the ravines along the ridgelines from Glen Helen up to the 138, and I hit Barstow at 7:00am straight up. I filled up, got a small coffee and a blueberry muffin, and changed from the sweatshirt to the fleece underneath my Joe Rocket Phoenix jacket (with the liner in place).

Barstow to Phoenix

The head winds were fierce on I-40, and the occassional crosswinds made things interesting, in a horror movie sort of way. The winds also dropped my gas mileage way down, and I had to stop in Yucca, AZ (between Bullhead City and Kingman) to fill up, about 35 miles short of my planned stop in Kingman. I left I-40 for US-93, the main road between Phoenix and Las Vegas. People drive fast on this road - very fast. Wickenburg seemed like a nice little town.

I made good time until I hit the outskirts of the Phoenix metro area. Construction work slowed me down, and I mistakenly stayed on US-60 instead of taking the 101 freeway loop. I-17 south can be bad, even on a Sunday, but I made good time.

When I passed Sky Harbor I decided that I wouldn't make Casa Grande without more fuel. I stopped in Chandler to fill up, and went across the street to a Wendy's for a quick bite to eat. I also removed the fleece, the neck gaitor, and the jacket liner due to the increasing desert heat.

Phoenix to Yuma

I stayed on I-10 to I-8, and stopped at a Love's truck stop in Casa Grande/Eloy for a required gas receipt. (IBA rides with rectangular routes require that you document your stops in each of the corners.) I was a little worried about the pressure in my rear tire, so I topped it off here too, estimating that 42 cold would be 45 or so hot. A nice guy on a Harley saw me taking pics of my bike at the gas pumps, and offered to take a picture of me and the bike.

An FJR, a V-1, and an XM radio make the perfect setup for a run along I-8. It's fast, under-patrolled, with a high flow-of-traffic speed. I stopped for a bathroom break at a rest stop, but otherwise went straight through to Yuma. While filling up in Yuma, I chatted with a guy on a BMW with Oregon plates who was heading into San Diego. He left a couple of minutes before me, but I didn't see him the rest of the way.

Yuma to San Diego

Ordinarily, I would have been looking into the sun for this leg, but the clouds kept the glare way down. West of El Centro you climb up into the hills, and the warmth of the Arizona dessert was gone. I stopped at a gas station in Jacumba for a bathroom break and to put on the sweatshirt, neck gaiter, and jacket liner. The rest of the way into San Diego was uneventful.

San Diego to Home

I wanted to check my rear tire pressure again, but the Chevron in San Diego didn't have a working air hose. I grabbed a quick cheeseburger and strawberry shake at the In-N-Out next door, and got back underway at 8:10pm. By now, I was tired and a little sore, but knew I could grit it out.

In Anaheim I got to watch the Disneyland fireworks show from the freeway - a nice diversion. I stayed on the 605 to the 10, and headed back to the 76 station at Rosemead and Duarte for my ending receipt.

I straggled in to the house at 10:35pm, sore but happy.

I watched almost all of Vanity Fair this morning. A good period piece.

Today they asked me to try the new single-needed method. They put a lead into one arm, and the machine alternates between drawing and returning. It takes about 10-15 minutes longer than usual, but I had plenty of time.

My left arm has had problems with the insertion the last three or four times - the last two, Nicole had to poke and prod in there for 45 seconds, which wasn't fun. I signed up for single-needle next time, and am going to ask them to use the nice vein on the outside of my right arm, which has never caused any problems.

WASHINGTON - "Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," President Bush said recently.

"There are some really decent people," the president said earlier this year, "who believe that the federal government ought to be the decider of health care ... for all people."

Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made such assertions.

When the president starts a sentence with "some say" or offers up what "some in Washington" believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows.

The device usually is code for Democrats or other White House opponents. In describing what they advocate, Bush often omits an important nuance or substitutes an extreme stance that bears little resemblance to their actual position.

Long URLs can be a pain. If you send them by e-mail, they often wrap, making it tedious to cut and paste them back together. Amazon URLs are notorious, but in the course of any busy day on the web, you're bound to come across others.

The solution is to create a shorter equivalent for the long URL. TinyURL is the most cited example, but there are tons of other sites that do the same thing. The problem with external services like TinyURL is that you do not control your own destiny &mdash if they change their TOS, or even just go out of business, all your shortened links are now worthless.

My solution was to build a URL shortener on my own site, under my own control. I call it microURL, and it consists of five parts:

• a database table to hold the URL data
• create.cgi, to create the shortened URL's
• u.cgi, to handle the redirection from a short URL to the original site
• .htaccess changes
• a bookmarklet

Database

For my setup, I create a new MySQL database named goption_url, and then a table named conversion:

+---------+---------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field   | Type    | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+---------+---------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id      | int(11) |      | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| fullurl | text    |      |     |         |                |
| hits    | int(11) |      |     | 0       |                |
+---------+---------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

create.cgi

1. First, check the database to see if the long URL is already in the table; if so, it's id is used;
2. If this is a new long URL, insert it into the database:

   INSERT INTO conversion (id, fullurl) VALUES(NULL, $fullurl)

   id is auto_incremented on the insertion. The id for the new record is used;
3. The id from either step 1 or step 2 is converted to base 62 (using the characters 0-9, A-Z, and a-z), and the result is appended to the base redirection URL:http://goption.com/u. So, the first record created has a short URL of http://goption.com/u1, and so on.

u.cgi

This script handles the redirection for a short URL. The short URL tag is converted from base 62 back to decimal, and the result is loaded from the database. The hit counter for that URL is incremented, and the CGI.pm redirect function is used to go to the original, long URL.

.htaccess changes

To make the short URL as short as possible, .htaccess is used to rewrite the short URL into an equivalent call to u.cgi:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^u$ u.cgi
RewriteRule ^u([0-9,A-Z,a-z]+)$ u.cgi/$1

This changes a URL in this format:

  http://goption.com/uaZ

into this format:

  http://goption.com/u.cgi/aZ

A Bookmarklet

Finally, to make it easy to create a new microURL, create a new bookmarklet like so:

and load it onto your Bookmarks Toolbar. When you're viewing a target page, just click on the bookmarklet to create a microURL for the current URL.

This is a simple, flexible way to create my own short URLs that last as long as I want them to - under my terms. Full source after the jump.

Update: The original version of create.cgi did not accept long URLs with embedded ampersands - a major limitation. I reworked it to use CGI.pm's query_string function when it's called from the bookmarklet, to get the entire URL (which is decoded into a normal URL string).

In honor of Mandy, who recently made a first solo sky dive jump, here's a photo of 400 skydivers in a synchronized jump.

Cold. Very, very cold.

Bob Shonborn convinced me to go out to Riverside to work the Section All Star playoffs on Saturday. The first game was at 9:00am, meaning we had to be there by 8:30, meaning we had to leave no later than 7:25. I grabbed some food on the way, and did a high speed run in Jeremy's car, and made it to the referee tent at 8:28am - not bad, if I say so myself.

Bob centered the first game, a GU-12. We took a break, then Nelson did a GU-14 game at 11:00, and I did a BU-14 game at 12:00. The temperature was in the 40's the whole time, with 20+ mph winds and the occassional rain shower, just to make it fun. Running around made it fun, though.

I watched the first hour of Junebug this morning. Pretty interesting - I'm looking forward to finishing it.

I finished it on my computer over lunchtime. The film gives you a view into a mostly dysfunctional family, but lets you fill in the gaps, and develop your own opinions. Different, but effective.

My favorite line from the movie: After arguing with her obnoxious husband Johnny, Ashley tells him...

God loves you just the way you are. But He loves you too much to let you stay that way.

I'm tentatively planning on my SS1k ride in a few weeks, and needed to put some miles on to make sure I'd be ready. Carole and Mandy were meeting Michael at Gladstone's, so I mapped out a ride that would get me there in time for lunch.

It took a little longer than usual to get ready. My rear tire was way low of pressure, which took a while to correct. The RAM ball in the left mirror mount broke off, so I had to mount the new double ball on the left lever mount so I could use my radio. I finally pulled out around 11:20am.

Once I hit SR-138, the XM just would not pick up a signal. I fiddled with it off and on, but wound up with no music until just about Santa Clarita. I'm looking at either a replacement antenna, or trying to pick up another Roady 2 unit - it's really nice to have tunes on a long ride.

Gladstone's was okay - food was good, but I had a headache that I just couldn't shake. The ride home was uneventful.

I spoke with a principal at Reprise today about their new license manager. It has some definite possibilities.