March 2008 Archives

Last December, some of the senior guys on the FJR Forum put together a discounted group buy for new suspensions with a well-respected shop in the Portland area. GP Suspensions spends the spring, summer, and fall doing race and track setups for sports bikes, so they agreed to a nice discount to get some business during their slow winter period.

My original suspension is nearing the 36,000 mile mark, and really needs to be changed. I never really got a good setup going with the OEM shock and forks, and the new aftermarket pieces are top-of-the-line. Most of the guys in the group buy had their parts shipped to them, but the shop also offered a discount on installation service, so I decided to head up to their shop to have them do the work.

I've been trying to get up their for about six weeks now, and have just not been able to find an opening in the weather. I was all set to go a week ago Wednesday, but a storm rolled in at the last minute to blanket the passes in the Siskiyou's.

Here's today's highway cam pic of the Siskiyou Summit on I-5, six miles north of the California border in southern Oregon.

Crystal, Michael, and Alexis left for Washington, D.C. and New York yesterday, and left Logan to hang out with us. Logan's all-star basketball team has a tournament this weekend — in Twentynine Palms of all places.

Carole and I worked out a plan to get him there with a minimum of fuss and expense. I left work early on Friday, picked Logan up at the house, and drove him out to Twentynine Palms for his 6:00pm game. Afterwards, we stopped at a Carls Jr. in Banning, and he had a Double Western Cheeseburger and a vanilla shake. Overall, we spent just short of six hours of driving for his 32 minute game. The final score was 31-2. His team made a couple of free throws.

Today, Carole left with Logan for the second game, at 11:00am. They're going to spend the night at the Motel 6 in town. Sunday's game is either at 10am or 11am, depending on today's results.

He's a really cool kid.

My cubicle at work is the same dull, drab looking cubicle that everyone else has. The fabric is beige with gray highlights, with pseudo-modern gray plastic panels. The ceiling tiles are white. The office walls are so drab that no one could name the color - we finally decided it was antique white, or maybe ecru.

Our previous location had a nice variety of paintings and graphics on the walls, and it added a lot of contrast. When we moved out last August, a couple of savvy staffers took the pictures home, knowing that the Facilities brown shirts would confiscate them otherwise.

A few months ago, we came in one Monday to find a nice selection of the old pictures hanging on the office walls. The mounting was done with care, and the picture selections were chosen with a designer's eye. Everyone enjoyed the colorful break from the ecru monotony. No one admitted to doing the work for fear of bureaucratic reprisals, but we applauded them nonetheless.

Last week, the Data Center had its second power outage in as many weeks. Apparently the professionally engineered UPS system would not revert back to building power after an outage - even one of less than a second. Once it kicks in, it will run everything for 15-20 minutes, then shutdown when the batteries run out - even though building power was quickly restored.

The head of Facilities and her sidekick came up to deal with the power problems. While they were here, she decided to enforce the unwritten edict against hanging pictures, and made the sidekick take them all down and load them in the company truck. So much for bright and cheery.

I've been talking about getting something to brighten up my cube. I thought about covering my fabric panels with some bamboo fencing, and Carole and Mandy suggested a small bamboo plant to add some greenery. Last weekend I poked around Home Depot, but they only had fencing in 20' rolls.

Carole said to check at Cost Plus for the bamboo plant. On a lark I checked for locations near my work, and found one about five blocks away at Glendale and Wilson - a nice walk on a sunny, almost Spring day.

I grabbed some fish tacos at Rubio's, then hit the Cost Plus. They didn't have any live bamboo plants, but they had some bamboo shades and other fabrics that might work for covering my panels. While I was browsing, I noticed this woman looking at me and smiling. She was nice looking, early thirties or so, so of course I wondered why she was smiling at me. I nodded at her, and went back to my shopping, gratified at the implications.

A few minutes later, I came across the same woman again. She made eye contact and smiled again. As we get older, we all enjoy this kind of innocent attention, so I smiled back, and she said... "Do you work here?"

Apparently, my new beige and green island print shirt made me look like a Cost Plus employee. I politely said, "no, sorry", and moved on to the cookware section, my ego returning to its proper inflation.

When I got back to the office, empty handed, there was news. The VP of the department that includes Facilities had called my friend, one of the senior developers, with news about the pictures. He said he was sorry that the pictures had been removed, that it was absolutely not the policy of upper management to not allow pictures, and that they would be returned and rehung shortly. My friend asked if the rumor was true, that the pictures had been destroyed. The VP said if so, there would be serious repercussions.

It was kind of amazing - as this news spread, a buzz went around the suite, and everyone was smiling and laughing. A little bit a joy bloomed, like a flower in the desert.

The tragus is the small flap at the front center of the ear. A couple of weeks ago, I was at Dr. Voron's for a check-up on my arm, and asked him about a couple of problem areas on my face - one on the left side of my nose, and one just above the tragus on my left ear. He wasted no time in numbing both areas and cutting out samples, and told me at the time that the ear looked problematic.

A week ago his staff called — the lab had confirmed that the spot on my ear was a basal cell carcinoma (of the superficial variety). BCC is a common problem, and this one was caught very early, so the prognosis is excellent, but I did have to have surgery to remove all traces of the problem.

Both times the anesthetic injections hurt like a son-of-a-gun. For my surgery last week, I had to wait 15 minutes after the injection for the epinephrine to take hold — it's used to reduce the bleeding. The nice PA Suzanne put a drape over my ear, and the doctor did his thing. It took about 30 minutes, and both Dr. Voron and Suzanne said it went very well. The doctor made a flap incision, cleaned everything out, then sutured up the flap. This is supposed to leave only the smallest of scars.

For this kind of surgery, samples are sent off to the lab to make sure that everything necessary was actually removed.

Suzanne spent a long time bandaging over the stitches. I'm not supposed to get them wet, which makes showering a challenge. The bandage is still sticking pretty well, except for a section that covers my beard area just below my sideburns.

I was originally going to go back next Monday to have the stitches removed, but my plans to take the FJR up to Portland for suspension work fell through when a fresh storm hit the Siskiyous. I'm going in on Friday now — it will be nice to take a shower without having to cover my ear with a plastic tumbler.

A lot of people know the shortcuts for testing divisibility by 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9:

• 2 - Even numbers are all divisible by two.
• 3 - Sum up each digit in a number; if the sum is two or more digits, continue summing each digit until you get a single number result. If that single number is divisible by 3, the original number is divisible by 3.
• 5 - If a number ends in 5 or 0, it's divisible by 5.
• 6 - If an even number is also divisible by 3 (see above), it is divisible by 6.
• 9 - Sum up each digit in a number; if the sum is 9, the original number is divisible by 9.

This article has shortcuts for testing divisibility by 7 and 11:

• 7 - For 7, the trick is to successively subtract twice the last digit from the other digits to the left. If you get a number that is divisible by 7 during any stage of this process, then the original number is divisible by seven.

  Here's an example:

  Is 8638 divisible by 7?
  863 - 2*8 = 847 (subtract twice the last digit)
  84 - 2*7 = 70 (subtract twice the last digit)
  70 = 7 * 10, which is divisible by 7 -- therefore 8638 is divisible by 7

• 11 - group the original number into pairs of digits starting from the right, and then add these pairs and check whether the sum is divisible by 11. If the resulting sum is in 3 (or more) digits, repeat the process until 2 digits are remaining and see whether the digits are the same.

  Here's an example:

  Is 13574 divisible by 11?
  1 + 35 + 74 = 110 (add pairs)
  1 + 10 = 11 (add pairs again)
  11 is divisible by 11 — therefore 13574 is divisible by 11

Carole had a focus group on military recruiting (for the record, she's against it...) out in Santa Monica last night. Knowing I wasn't feeling all that well, she asked everyone else if they wanted to go out to the beach, but no one was free. After taking some medication (including my second straight Imitrex), I was feeling pretty good, so I told her I'd meet her on my bike.

When I got to Santa Monica she was just finishing up, and we agreed to meet at Gladstone's. They weren't especially busy, but had short staff, so we had to wait a little while. Carole persisted on the worst table in the house (which they occasionally make mysteriously unavailable), and they finally relented.

Carole had her filet, and I had a swordfish steak that was good but not great. Afterwards, we walked on the beach, staring at the stars and listening to the waves crash. The moon was a cool waxing crescent with the crescent on the bottom, out over the ridge to the west.

A very nice evening with my lady.

by Bill Weaver

Among professional aviators, there's a well-worn saying: Flying is simply hours of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror. But I don't recall too many periods of boredom during my 30-year career with Lockheed - most of which was spent as a test pilot.

By far, the most memorable flight occurred on January 25, 1966 (SR-71A 64-17952).

Jim Zwayer, Lockheed flight-test specialist, and I were evaluating systems on an SR-71 Blackbird test from Edwards. We also were investigating procedures designed to reduce trim drag and improve high-Mach cruise performance. The latter involved flying with the center-of-gravity (CG) located further aft than normal, reducing the Blackbird's longitudinal stability.

Monday morning I went in for a check-up with the oral surgeon, and the nice nurse wound up tightening my screw - a lot. I thought she'd never finish. It was moderately uncomfortable, but probably better than getting a shot of novocaine.

Afterwards, I got a bagel and some coffee at Goldstein's on Santa Anita, then went into to work. Around 11am, I noticed that I felt really cold. I asked Cory if he thought it was cold, and he said no - it felt just right to him. Everyone else in the office was walking around comfortably in their shirt sleeves. I shrugged it off, and went back to work.

Fifteen minutes later I realized that I was shivering, controllable only with great concentration. My arms and lower legs felt cold, but other than the shivering I felt good — no headache, no congestion (well, maybe a little bit), no aches. After a few more minutes, I knew I had to go to the car to get the fleece jacket that Pat gave me last Christmas. On my way out of the building lobby, the nice security guy asked if I was feeling okay - I guess it was apparent that I wasn't.

I put on the fleece, and went out the west doorway to get some warm sunshine. I walked around for a few minutes, then stopped by Subway for a tuna sandwich. Back at my desk, the sandwich didn't appeal to me, and my attempts at work were unsuccessful. I noticed I was getting a little spacy, so I booked out of work quickly knowing that getting someone to come pick me up would be a logistical headache.

I got home, and immediately got under the down comforter in my bed, with the fleece still on. I took some Advil and Tyelenol Sinus, and Carole helped me take my temperature and babied me the rest of the afternoon. She called the oral surgeon, who said it wasn't their fault (of course), and called Dr. Liao, who basically said to wait it out and come in if it didn't get better soon. My temperature ranged from 98.3 to 99.6, but never more than that.

I stayed in bed most of the afternoon and evening, but couldn't really sleep. Overnight, I kept waking up every hour and half or so, and my back was aching from the long bed rest and the fever (even if it didn't really register on the thermometer).

I took some Extra Strength Tylenol at 4am, and got back under the covers, still feeling cold and shivery. I kept warm, and was sweating a lot, and somehow I managed to break the fever. I felt much better when I woke up at 5:45am — still achy, and my normal headache from lack of good sleep, but no shivering.

I poked around at home, then rested some more from 8am to 9:15am, but I was tired of laying in bed so much. I got up, took a shower, and headed into the office for a little work time. (My Stochastics project is coming along nicely, and I wanted to make some progress.)

Around 1pm I started feeling cold again — nothing like yesterday's shivers, but I put on the fleece to get comfortable. It's 2pm now, and I'm thinking I might head home soon.

I hope I can get a good night's sleep tonight.

Justin and I rode up to Santa Ynez, then met Carole and Mandy for dinner at Joe's in Santa Barbara. A fun day — but a little cold.

More to come...