Monochromatic Outlook

I went with my rid­ing group through some of the twisties in the San­ta Cruz moun­tains. One from the group, Tim, very kind­ly offered to swap bikes with me so that I could get a taste of what else is out there.

So today for a half-hour that went way too fast (in more ways than one) I got to ride a Ducati Mon­ster 750.

I was already get­ting the feel­ing that I might be out­grow­ing my Vira­go. This not … Read the rest

A guy who earns more than three times what I do and who has been doing web­dev work for over five years just respond­ed to a bug report in his code by sug­gest­ing that my brows­er was mis­in­ter­pret­ing an if state­ment in PHP.

Some­times I feel like a com­plete idiot when talk­ing to peo­ple who real­ly know their stuff, like , and then I see that peo­ple are out there work­ing and get­ting $150/hour to not even know what … Read the rest

Tonight was my first ses­sion of the Basic Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance Class at Sub­ter­ranean Cycles. What a blast! Yes, I sort of under­stood the the­o­ry behind an inter­nal com­bus­tion engine, but I nev­er had any idea how the parts go togeth­er or work. I still have only an inkling, but I’ve seen behind the cur­tain and have been shown the basics of what goes on inside. No longer will I have to stare blankly when peo­ple make ref­er­ence to com­mon con­cepts … Read the rest

Shuf­fle play has brought me Killing Joke’s Mon­ey is Not Our God fol­lowed up by Juno Reac­tor’s God is God.

If the next song is “Hel­ter Skel­ter” I’m in trouble.

God is God—Juno Reac­tor… Read the rest

On the top­ic of God doing for me what I can­not do for myself, it looks as though the house­hold will be going its sep­a­rate ways when the lease expires in July. Yeah, it’s been fun, sort of. Well, not real­ly. It was great hang­ing out down at Mud­dy’s at Church and Mar­ket, and hmmm… I have a motor­cy­cle which I usu­al­ly ride down to Mud­dy’s any­way. I could keep doing that no mat­ter where I live. I come back … Read the rest

http://www.subcycles.com/BMMC.html

Some­how I man­aged not to inher­it my father’s mag­ic touch with all things mechan­i­cal, but heck, maybe that’s just because I nev­er tried.

Don’t wor­ry, I’m not going to try fix­ing an in-war­ran­ty bike myself. I just want to learn the fun­da­men­tals. Looks like fun, eh?… Read the rest

It’s with regret that I am announc­ing that because of a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors that I will not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Escape from Alca­traz Triathlon this year.

Thanks to every­one that I coerced into sup­port­ing me for this event. I hope that you’ll be will­ing to help me get into the event in 2006.

Since I was not select­ed in the lot­tery, I would have had to gath­er vol­un­teers. Many of the peo­ple who were will­ing to help need­ed … Read the rest

Say what you want, my new­ly-pop­u­lat­ed ant farm is fascinating.

They’ve only been in there for a cou­ple hours and already they’ve tak­en a siz­able chunk out of one cor­ner of their habi­tat and turned it into small piles.

I knew the iSight and iSight­Light would come in handy some­day. Although I wor­ry that the con­stant light from one direc­tion may be affect­ing the ants’ work habits. Note that it’s the cor­ner near­est the light that’s been chipped away.

Emo­tion—… Read the rest

When I stopped for din­ner tonight and parked my bike in front of the restau­rant where I could keep an eye on it, I went to lock my new hel­met to the bike and found that the lock would not close. While not imme­di­ate­ly vis­i­ble, on clos­er day­light inspec­tion it’s clear that the hel­met lock was pried open. It’s bent and tool-marked. So, that means that did lock the hel­met, and not just space cadet leave it to be taken.

Cold … Read the rest