two notes:

The pre-amp out on the Macbook Air is even worse than the one on the Macbook. Oh Holy Cow, they found more dollars to strip.

Drinking whisky straight from the bottle, while a wicked affair, is indeed way more manly from drinking it from glasses. I may have to try this with bourbon and move to kentucky.

Medical diagnoses with Blackberry and Macintosh

The following is gross and you may not want to read any further.

I recently began coughing. Somebody I talk to about coughing is something of a "cough chauvanist" despite my more than adequate history with "coughs." Oh, I cough up that kind of shit all the time, I hear. Well, I decide to send an email with the following points:

It might well be yeast again. It is at least a small amount of "fluid" in the lungs. The first still is blood and mucus that came out of my lungs onto a napkin on my desk. this is stuff that was propelled from my lungs, not oh, cough, cough, into my mouth, splat onto the napkin. The second still is perhaps gross, but it is important. It shows that this is a globby yellow piece of phlegm (I provide it here so you don't think I'm being a hypochondriac, but take somebody curious like [censored] and ask him to show you the individual pieces of badness in that globule with contrast/exposure/saturation) with blood and other unhappiness in it. The other thing this shows you is we're not talking about some runny nose drippy gooey stuff, we're talking about a globule bigger than a 5/32 screwdriver, and that can just hang there because it's so sticky and gross.


I keep coughing this shit up. It's the same colour as yesterday when I thought I had pneumonia. I have a scale here, I can start weighing how much crap is coming out of my lungs, if you like. At the moment, when I get a big icky, I've been separating it into blood and yellow. I could even weigh both. I could also provide my buddies at NOVA a nice sample.

[I have removed some unpleasant comments from this email]

Oh but wait, it gets better. Because on my Air I have not seen fit to install Photoshop or Illustrator or anything, I have become something of a pro at using Preview to do most of my image manipulation. For the rest, I hope to use Graphic Converter, but since its interface is so horrible and its set of tools so close to useless to me, I suspect I may not ever pay its $35 price (and come on, Lemke, are you going to really get angry with me for using it once or twice a year?).

So I took a picture with my blackberry, using its LED flash, of the back of my throat. I thought I might be able to see something. Well, no.

What we see is (expectedly) blown out and mostly just "ew, is that a jellyfish or a cave or the front-end of a spider, or what? Gross! But after fiddling with it, I was able to see exactly what I wanted to show my doubting thomas: pustules.

You can see some dots that really don't belong there in pictures of healthy throats. That, coupled with the grey-green-yellow-with-blood shit coming out of my lungs, convinces me that biological warfare continues in my throat and/or lungs, even as it continues in my inflamed fucking knee. It may be that the whole process of coming off fentanyl has created a cough in the DTs, and this is comorbid to that. CH may be able to comment on that. But, it's all very interesting. Especially the fact I did this with my blackberry and a toy graphics tool on my Mac.

If only every ER Resident or Nurse had half the brain I do. Then, maybe I'd be thoroughly insulted and medicated before being treated effectively.

betrayal and the sexes; betrayal and the office

Basically, one person, who knows better, put two coworkers who were incredibly hostile to eachother and not working well together at all within a few feet from them in an office they don't normally work in – against my request – because he wants to meet an arbitrary date that he feels is probably more important than the possibility of these two employees actually getting into, say, fisticuffs.

And then there's this coworker. He's definitely the "wrong" type of coworker (whereas Matt and I were both the right type of programmer and got caught in a similarly unhappy situation years ago), and decided it would be real funny to make an ass of me to my coworkers, including deliberately giving me incorrect instructions for fixing a problem with his server, then fixing it on his own via rdp, and having the fucking nerve to send me this gloating email. "strange, sweetcakes, I [fixed it] in two minutes." I asked the users in questions if I'd done anything wrong and they were all shocked at this employee's behavior. Previously, we'd been friends. Another one of these situations where I stupidly, stupidly, stupidly trust men. They're fucking useless and should just not be trusted to do anything from manage latrines to marines, software development, or even be friends. They all fucking suck.

Our third example is not such a serious problem, but is an example of the typical male, "well, I know this is important to other male, and I did make certain assertions to him, but since he is also a male, he will undertand if I fuck right off and don't do what I said I would. How this relates to the previous two is not even academic. It's really kind of sad that it relates at all, and it all happens on the same day.

Fuck people. Fuck men in particular. To think I've said to my two closest friends lately, you know, I could really use a friend right now, and I got not only the clap-on-the-shoulder, duh, we're friends, but the smile-and-nod affirmation that, duh, we're friends, and if I need something I need only call. Because we're men. And men just don't let men down.

“I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” -- Jesus (John 15:15)

Fuck. Men. All of them. Starting with my one presonal favorite hatesicle, and ending with the last fucking XY out there.

bugs and how it makes your life suck

A pile of garbage will come forth. I may push the last bits from advogato forward to blogger because there's only a little bit left, and some of it is relevant today.

But this means that people with RSS readers will see these as "new" posts, even though they date from, like I said, 2004.

You may want to ignore me for a couple days.

Patches welcome.

Let's start this off properly, with some porn.

 Folks, this is the one you want to be using. There's a Sandoz product out there, it comes in a blue and green box, and you totally don't want it. Ask your pharmacist to buy the mylan product. Here's why:

 

I have upped the contrast a little bit here. And, original size is about two inches by one inch; sorry I didn't have much for reference. But what we have is the Sandoz product, on its second day. This was actually applied by a nurse in the emergency room, so I don't want to hear about it being applied incorrectly (swabbed, etc) or in the wrong place (back of the shoulder, so I can't mess with it, where it won't easily be disturbed by garments, etc). This product would have fallen off me in my sleep last night. And, I would have gone my third day – a day I was supposed to be getting 75ug of fentanyl per hour – without medication. Further, if I'd gone to my doctor or pharmacist and said, hey, that patch came off in just normal wearing (there was no shower involved in this one, either), I'd have been called a liar. That's drug seeking behavior. A sort of the dog ate my drugs. 

Here's the contrasting product in its original, unapplied form, with a quarter for size comparison:

 

 

This, incidentally, is the exact same size as the patch that was 50ug vs these 75ug patches. Note that the only thing on these patches is three pieces of transparent plastic (which you'll see in just a second). That's orange paper behind it, so you get an idea of contrast, etc. Here it is, applied:

I really wanted to bump up the contrast and exposure here a bit so you could see this better, but I figured it would be best if you could see it (almost) exactly the way it looks. I did adjust the contrast a tiny tiny bit, but it is almost exactly like that. Can you see the letters (fentanyl) on the patch? And again on the piece against the orange paper above? That gives you an idea of how thin these things are. They are almost exactly like Nicotine patches. They are nearly invisible to anyone who might see them if you're out-and-about (not with these 75ug units, lemme tell you), they're tiny, and they don't have all those stupid edges and weak parts that come off the Sandoz product.

I have posted this stuff, again, and with pictures this time around, because I really want is for clinicians and treatment facilities (such as the Virginia Hospital Center Emergency Room) to see how bad the Sandoz product is, and simply change their vendor.

The other thing I want to accomplish here is to vindicate all the people who have complained to me that, yes, the Sandoz product does fail like this and that yes, their providers are not providing for them. It's ridiculous. It's faintly rabbannical. It is certainly a pharmocracy, and it stinks.

Because I don't get to the hospital enough,

short: alex goes to the hospital.

I spent a little time there Wednesday night. While I won't get in to the details of how it happened (it had absolutely nothing to do with a motorcycle, or even a motor vehicle at all – it happened in my bedroom; take that for what it's worth), essentially, I "really broke stuff" in my right knee.

I have dislocated both shoulders and knees before, and while the shoulders hardly bother me anymore (I can dislocate a shoulder in my sleep and "get it back in" without even waking up), one knee in particular had been giving me trouble. I was supposed to go to PT for it, but I couldn't find time to do it, and my boss at the time was being something of a fascist about my comings and goings in the office. So I never went. But then, the knee started feeling better, and when it didn't, I wore this giant wonky orthopaedic brace. The brace was okay, but also had this side effect of making the joint weaker after I'd worn it a while. So, when I went back to the doctor, I just said, you know, I think I do better without the brace and I'll just wear it when I need it. He had said that was fine.

Now, the other thing he said, specifically as regards PT, is that I "might as well take it because if I get surgery anyways, I'm going to have to take PT afterwards." I'm kind of gun-shy about surgery and I try to not spend time in hospitals (ironically, because I do in fact spend so much damn time in hospitals), so I said, let's see if the knee works itself out, sort of like my shoulders, and it's no big deal.

But after a few months, it's bad enough that I can't get out of bed in the morning without dislocating it, I'm doing it accidentally at work, and so on. And it's painful. Less painful each time, but still painful. The shoulder has stopped being painful and is now mostly a curiosity (brain to shoulder: hey, you can move that way? weird. shoulder to brain: yeah, let me get that fixed, sorry). So I had told myself, since the knee is serviceable, the plan is to be careful with it this summer and learn to ride, then have the surgery this fall when it's going to be harder to ride and I am already going to be mopey (I may not have fully diagnosed seasonal affective disorder, but I sure do get grumpy in the winter).

Until last night. Basically, the fact that this knee gets dislocated so often means that whatever tendon (ACL, I think) that got torqued last night, got really fucking torqued and took everything with it. I think in a situation where it hadn't been so previously elongated, that it might well have just torn and that'd have been the end of that, surgery that night. Instead, everything got pulled all out of whack and I encountered the most serious pain I've had since I had an epidural blood patch applied in 2004 (this was enough pain that I actually passed out; at the time, I was hesistant to say it was "the most painful thing I'd ever done," because I'd done a lot of painful things, but it was really goddamn painful). I was screaming in pain. I'm normally very tolerant, but any semblance of composure ran out of me and I was bawling and screaming oh, god, it hurts so much.

Sandy has never really seen anything like this. In fact, she's rather surprised to see that I've often injured myself and not noticed, or that I've got some gaping wound and that I'm actually composed (Colin R. will remember the "That's going to need more than a band-aid" comment). So, she immediately says, we're getting an ambulance. Argh.

You know, this is the first year in a lot of years, where I hadn't been to a hospital or in an ambulance. I was doing good, and the year was half over. I really didn't want to go. So I laid back on the bed and asked Sandy to move my leg in every direction I could think of, a couple degrees at a time, along every axis I could think of, and it just would not go back in. Eventually I managed to use my left, uninjured leg, and my arms, to pull me up to see if standing on it would get it to Do The Right Thing. Well, it most certainly did not, and I almost hurt myself falling backwards to the bed.

And so it was that I, with lots and lots of help from Sandy, managed to limp to the car (basically, using her and the hallway wall as a crutch, as well as putting pressure on the far outside of my foot, and thus not stressing (many) of the ligaments etc in qestion), and was driven to the hospital. Because I refused an ambulance.

Thankfully, I got there, and they saw how much pain I was in and took care of me immediately. Within minutes I was given Dilaudid, and the doctor and I had a discussion about my heavy tolerance of opiates due to previous such injuries, and she and I agreed that rather than just pick some gnarly dosage to start with, we'd titrate the dosage. After the fourth shot, I was ready for X-Ray, although that was still incredibly, incredibly painful. (can you move left two inches? hold it there. okay, can you turn to your left a little? okay, hold it there.)

When I got back, they told me that there was an enormous amount of inflammation "everywhere in there," I had not torn anything. The doctor couldn't tell me how long the pain would last, but that there was nothing to treat it with, except advil. So, ibuprofen for the inflammation, and back to the fentanyl patches for the pain.

We went with the 75μg patches this time because last time, the 50's had worked, but the pain had not been nearly as acute. Well, the 75μg patches are some stern stuff, folks. It is hard to even type on that kind of dosage, which is why I've been so quiet of late. At any rate, here are the money shots:

 

Upon arrival, I am always the most cheerful patient. This is the "previous" brace, which had been duct-taped during transit to the hospital because even the tolerances afford by it were not enough to reduce the pain.

 

And you can see here everything is entirely red and unhappy, but that there still is a patella, it's just, you know, moved.

From above you can see the red area above the patella where everything got pushed up, and on the left (blackberry) side you can see things completely more expanded than they should be.

And now, the pictures you've all been waiting for...

I've got to figure out how to get this monstrosity (and I don't mean the one under my hand) into a pair of jeans, or something, for work.

Then we can has surgery, and then we can has PT, and then we can has bike again.

Oh, and there's another Sandoz-vs-Mylan fentanyl patch review forthcoming. The hospital uses Sandoz because they're the "brand" ("duragesic," I think). It's terrible, as I said before.

Love, Hate, Apple, Steve, Television, and other fun things

short: if you're not a Mac fanboy, stop reading.

We have an AppleTV. It's connected to our reasonably sucky 42" Plasma that has an HDMI port that doesn't work. Originally, we had a CoreDuo 1.8ghz 2gb mini attached to it, with a (expensive!) DVI to HDMI cable. Couldn't get it to work, and none of our DVI laptops would do it either. Sucky. So we got the AppleTV and traded the mini to a friend, and now we use its composite output to talk to the tv (we could have gotten DVI to composite, but whatever).

Now we have all this music storage (5x 250, 1x 640, raid) that's FW800, so we need a Tower. Which is good, because Sandy wants an Air, so she'll sell the MBP she has, buy a Tower with the proceeds, and buy an Air with all the money she made from overtime selling all you assholes new iphones. Mostly, this setup should be nirvana. N wap, two airs, one tower, one ATV.

Here are some problems.

I have an iPod. It has 30gb or whatever of storage on it. I can't, can't, can't, get that sucker to talk to my AppleTV. Can't plug it in directly (although that port will charge my Jawbone, that is nice), can't plug it into an Air and share it. This sucks, since I have been trying so hard to keep my machine organised and music off it (currently, it's got a little short of 30gb, but I'm using Time Machine should something dangerous happen before we reach Nirvana).

Speaking of USB ports, we are all aware that I cannot attach a disk full of tunes to listen to on my AppleTV, nor can I give it a bigger drive to store all my stuff. Even if I own it, and the AppleTV has the right credentials.

Next gripe. I can buy content on my AppleTV. Cool. I have to do this with my iTunes ID (and have to pair the device with my mac to begin with), but I cannot actually get items off the AppleTV after it's there. They're paid for, they're associated to my account, and I can't get them onto my Air, or onto the as-yet-not-extant tower (which should have all the storage and chunes). That's crap. This is the kind of thing that got Steve fired the first time around. Steve, you can't be a prick. You gotta let your users have their stuff.

Also, the AppleTV is not an Airport Express. Why? The cards are tiny. Why not have a "big" and "little" version, as Apple is so fond of doing? I'd like to attach speakers to it, and play things to it like I already do. But you can't really do that (just like, and take note you iTunes developers, you can't play video in iTunes and have it go to Airport Express speakers – which are way better than the ones on the Air of course).

Speaking of access, the AppleTV does not strictly need internet access, but insists on having it. See, when I authorise my Air, it will play purchased content when I am not connected to the internet because it has my tokens stored. Rather like Kerberos tickets (I'd link to Kerberos here, but if you know how it works, you don't need it; if you don't know how it works, you really don't want to read the document). My credentials are cached, and my Air can give my AppleTV all the credentials it needs to play my own content. The reason these suckers have internet connections is so I can buy content from Apple with them. Which I'd rather do with my laptop.

Lastly, the AppleTV cannot play DVDs on its own, nor can it play a "shared dvd" like my Air can mount a shared disc from another machine. Oh, but this will compete with the mini, people say. Well, duh. Combine the AppleTV, the Mini, and the Airport Express into one device. Call it the Apple Media Center. Make sure you can play iPhone/iPod games on it. And make a version that doesn't have a wireless card, one that has a smaller disk, and so on. And charge $600 for it, or whatever. Hell, charge $900 for it, and people will buy them.

Apple, Steve, people are right now using Mac Minis as AppleTV's because the AppleTV has many failures. I understand the need for a Mini, because we're trying to get people on to Macs with low-commitment. But displays are starting to look more and more like tv's and vice-versa. With wireless accelerometer-having input devices (kb, mouse), you could sell a Wii competitor, XBox competitor, and all those other media centers that "dont quite" work.

This seems to me to be so simple, I'd actually be surprised if it didn't happen within a couple years. This is a device so simple, so dead-easy to use, my own Mother, who is not big on these things could not only buy, configure, and install the thing, she could convince her husband, who is a die-hard digital-cable fan. AppleTV, or Apple Media Center, or whatever, has the potential to crush those devices.

Wood refinishing

short: guns, specifically leverguns, restoring wood, some photography, mild money ranting, and mild job rantingBoy, I've been goddamn prolific lately, haven't I? Sorry.I took the Marlin apart last night. It was a pain in the ass – I probably haven't done it in a year or more. I wasn't able to get the barrel unscrewed, I may have to use a vice for that, and I ain't got one. But I got all the wood off it!

There are some great links on refinishing older (WWI and WWII in particular, but also Viet Nam and older, flintlock rifles) weapons, and I see in my Marlin the potential to make a nicer rifle than it is. As I've mentioned, we bought it at a pawn shop, and it's chambered in .44 Magnum so, should I ever get that revolver I want (and I decide the Casull is too much – but I love me some Casull), they share the same ammo, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than the ultramagnum rounds.

The above photos were taken with my blackberry and show you the two (!) pieces of wood I have to work with. It's hard to see the grain of the wood, so I have taken two pictures with the D200 (well, I took a bunch, because wood grain is hard to get right, but two turned out pretty good). I also did some color correctionenhancement by adding brightness and contrast and bringing the exposure down a bit and the saturation up a bit. So they don't look this nice in person, but it gives you an idea of what they can look like when I actually get them finished. Here they is:

Hopefully these will display side-by side. If not, sorry for the awkward formatting.

So you can see with some proper work (sanding, re-oiling, epoxying, re-oiling, and a lacquer, and possibly waxing – none of this I could do without the help of said book). It's also going to get a better recoil pad (a LimbSaver) and maybe a cartridge trap (scroll about 2/3 down). Why the epoxy? Looking at the rifle, it's pretty clear it doesn't have any dings or marks that sanding can't take care of. However, I'd like to glass-bed the rifle. I think I'd also like to pillar-bed the rifle, but I am not sure the stock has enough material to really make that worthwhile. Besides, it's not supposed to be a lethal 600+yd marksman rifle. What I expect to get out of it is a serviceable hunting rifle, fun for target shooting, that either I or someone else will enjoy. 100-200 yards max; besides which, it's not like the 44 can do more than that.

What's really neat is most of the cost is stuff I do myself. If I get a 100yd duplex scope that only has to handle 44 mag, I could probably even go with a pistol scope, and spend very little money. I could even go with a reflex sight of some kind, but that feels wrong on a levergun.

Brockman's Beast is what I really want, but I just don't have $2,000+ to spend on it, the .45-70 or .450 Marlin is probably way outside Sandy's comfort range, and I'd rather spend the $2,000 on a barrel and action for my ultramag gun (or motorcycle gear even!). The bottom line here is, the ultramagnum gun (my .338 that I've been planning and have picked the parts out for) is on indefinite hold until I get a job that pays more. And as we've seen in the past, those jobs don't work out well for me (and are seriously bad for my health – my neurologist and several ER docs have said, if you get a higher-stress job again, it will kill you.).

So maybe I'll never get to build it. But the levergun sure can be fun, and any work I do on the .44 is translateable to the newer Marlins (like the laminated stainless 308 Marlin – oooooEEE, does that give me a chubby) or just a new cowboy action (i.e., just like mine) in .450 Marlin or 45/70. Ain't it great when new technology takes old tech (cowboy guns) and makes them awesome (400 yd 308 rounds)?

Weaver mounts

Anyone wondering (it's kind of hard to find the information on the web because there's a big argument between what "picatinny" and "weaver" mean) what a weaver base looks like, the holes are drilled 5mm, and they're 10mm between eachother. That is, from the outside of one to the outside of the next, it is 20mm. On my personal rifle, I have another set of two 5mm holes, 10mm apart, 43cm from the outside of the second of the "first" holes. So the "second" holes would be from 43-48mm, followed by 10mm, followed by another 5mm, or 58-63mm.

The rifle in question is a Marlin 1894S chambered in 44 Mag/44 Spl. Weaver is kind enough to provide a base for this rifle, and while it's longer than the 63mm (and will thus stick "forward" of the action a little, this doesn't bother me. I could always have it machined anyways.

Incidentally, Weaver has pretty competitively priced optics – both riflescopes and spotting scopes. I'm at the moment torn between the Leupold FX-II in 2.5x28 (Brockman's preferred scope) and the Weaver 4.75x40. Both have that "look appropriate on a levergun" look, both have a duplex reticle, and the Weaver has a much bigger field of view. On the other hand, if I start spitting 450 Marlin out of one of their guns, the Leupold may be a better choice.

I've also been thinking of replacing the iron sights on this rifle (I bought it used at a pawn shop) with Brockman's tritium ghost ring sights, and essentially make this a 100-yd tack driving rifle.

Or I could get a 450 Marlin, they're not so bad (my .44 needs some repairs...) and that damn 308 Marlin is awful sexy. And while it's a cowboy rifle, and I'm gonna get me a Stetson and boots, the stainless with laminate has me all lubricated in my drawers. I wonder if Brockman can work with an XLR. I'd love me a blue laminate with an SS body in .450.... nnngh.

Why this bike?

edits: "blogger in draft" seems to be having issues with photos, so I've edited/reedited this more than a couple times. sorry. short: this is going to have a lot of pictures. the previews will be modest, but the "full size" pictures hover around 1mb in size. I have the original NEFs if anyone is interested. Also, some colors etc have been adjusted because the lighting at the show was hard.disclaimer: the bike in this picture is the 2008 Ninja 250R. It is styled very differently from the 2007 (or, ours, the 2001 – which hasn't changed much until 2008). They (Kawi) are bringing it in to line with bikes like the ZZR's (which are about as close to secks as bikes, uh, come):

But, the 250 was lacking. It had kinda pokey styling, and really, the 2001-2007 bikes really still did. But then Kawi went and sexed them up. Here are the pics of Sandy on the 2008:

The first time she gets her tush on the bike. I think the ass fell in love first.

Here we see that she has great ground clearance. Her biggest issue finding an appropriate seat height. The dirtbikes and dual-sports (the ones I like) and the sportbikes (the ones she likes) are both too tall, and too wide for her to sit on and still reach the ground. She's got a lot of room on this bike. Really.

This is deceiving for a non-rider. You can see her legs are bent here; she's hugging that bike with her thighs, and her knees are still really bent. She can put her feet on the ground, and this makes her a lot safer in traffic and "slow speed turn issues" (which bikes are terrible with)

And here we have great peg position. Many sportbikes have small pegs so you can drag the bike around turns. The pegs on the "baby Ninja" are a lot more generous (which is useful with my size 15 shoes!)l Note, again, how close her foot is to the ground.

Now here we see another important aspect. The handlebars are not very aggressive at all. On many sportbikes, they're really angled back towards the driver, making them very "twitchy" (which is great on a high performance bike, but not so good for learning).

Last image of her on the bike, I promise (at least not till we have her on her bike in her pink leathers!!). She has a very upright position here for a sportbike. Great reach to the ground, great peg control, great handlebar control, easy reach to the levers. All around, this bike is fantastic.

She did ask me to sit on the bike, and I obliged. I said I felt a little cramped (which is to be expected; the seat height is 32 inches and my inseam is 33.5 inches), and my knees were way up by the handlebars. Of course, since they're not canted back so far as the ZZR bikes, this doesn't matter much. She saw no point in taking a picture, evidently. Instead, I explained that I really liked the pegs and seating position on the Yamaha R1s:

Note this is more or less terrible posture on the bike, but that it is much bigger and just fits me better. My legs aren't anywhere near as compressed. But that's a litrebike, and that means danger. There's an R6, which might be not so bad (it's kind of like the gixxers and the ZZR's).

And I don't need to regale anyone with tales of the bike that not only fits me perfectly but fits my style perfectly, is stunningly beautiful, and powerful enough to haul my ass around but not so powerful I'm liable to get into any triple-digit tussles with some PFY on a CBR1000. Although, I may see if I can find an R1150GS that hasn't been beaten up too much and isn't too expensive. I am very interested in shaft-drive and paralever/telelever setups, just being the geeky sort. Most people hate these things. All the better for me, right?

This is the GS. I shamelessly stole this image from this dude. Sorry.

We will have pictures of our (read: her) Ninja up as soon as it sees daylight. At the moment, it's a garage queen.

First ride on the Ninja

short: we have a bike. I rode it. It's mostly Sandy's. The next post will be image-heavy, and this is all text.

Sandy recently spent about the sum total of the cash she works so fucking hard (and god, she works hard! All you assholes who want iPhones – she's the one you're bitching about its stupid color or font or whatever. I wish you'd all die so I can have a happy wife) for on a 2001 Ninja 250R. It seems like a small bike, but it's our first bike (I've never ridden either), and when our good friend Colin brough it home for us (from Hagerstown to Arlington – 79 miles, including interstates 270 and the dreaded 495 as well as the George Washington Parkway, he at one point had the thing up to 85 (Maryland is a weird place where people are really aggressive drivers, and drive really fast, especially on 270), and while "the wind is its master" at that speed, the bike was capable of it. It should be quite sufficient for puttering around Arlington on surface streets (I rarely get above 55 around town, and rarely above 65 on the freeway – although there are of course the occasional jaunts into way triple-digits).

When I failed my MSF course (Sandy and I took it at Apex), it was the dreaded figure-eight. For the uninitiated, this is turning a figure-eight in an eight-by-eight foot box (although I think Apex uses eight-by-sixteen). The problem is that motorcycles are pretty bad at speeds below 10mph, because they don't have all that force keeping them up. So there's a delicate balance between leaning and steering, and I just wasn't ready.

I won't say I conquered it today, but I will say that I managed several slow-speed turns (forty eight; twenty-four in each direction of a square parking lot, times six laps) and only once did I feel a little iffy, and I didn't have to put a foot down (which is safe at low speed, but looks like you're a rookie, and will fail your drive test). I learned how to do this, interestingly, on an MSF dirtbike course DVD we rented from netflix (although, curiously, I can't find it there...). What the instructor, Jun Villegas, told the "new riders" (actors) was going around a dirt turn, feather the clutch a little. You gotta lean in, and (real importantly) look where you want to be, not where you're going, and if you stay on the throttle it's going to want to fold up on you or high-side you. Maybe in more advanced riding, when they have better bike dynamics and so on, they can power right through turns dragging knees. But for me, feather the clutch a little, keep a constant speed (although keep that constant speed with light application of the rear brake), and throttle out of the turn (also taught in the dirtbike course).

This may be because I learned to drive in dirt pits, but I doubt it. I think the Apex instructors, while dedicated, had too little time, and too many students to pay particular attention to students with problems (like my slow-speed-turns thing).

The bike is also really touchy in first gear. As careful as I was with the throttle (and, as a newbie, I'm of course pretty ham-fisted; gawd I'm glad we didn't get a gixxer), the bike was always in fits-and-starts, and felt downright unstable. Always weight transferring front to back, back to front, and so on. I learned very quickly that shifting up into third was about the right way to do it in the parking lot, which is kind of surprising given it was mostly 10mph (although I'm not ashamed to admit I had it up to 30 once, mostly to test the brakes, but also to test the oomph of the 250; it is more than enough). The engine was just a lot smoother. Feather the clutch when necessary (this, for you slushbox drivers, is way different than how you drive a car), easy on the throttle, two (or one) finger on the brake, same with the clutch, and don't be afraid to use the rear brake.

The bike didn't get too hot for me, but Colin complained on the freeway the engine got a bit hot and the cans got real hot. With appropriate leathers, I think we'll be okay. But speaking of leathers, even though I took the weather liner out of my mesh Joe Rocket jacket (it's basically a vinyl liner that prevents it from getting wet, but is otherwise a nylon mesh with internal armor, so air can flow through to the cyclist), it was hot. This may because of the low speed and the 83° F temperature in the garage, so I'm hoping that out on the road, the "leathers" (nylons, really) will do the trick. I had my visor up, and the helmet didn't get so bad, but hair got real wet and I think I'd have to have grooming supplies at the office.

Performance deserves its own description. First is pretty short, as I said, and it makes the bike kinda touchy. Second is better, and it may make better sense to just keep a finger on the clutch and start in two for the most part. It's approximately as fast as the STI, really. The STI is a real beast and has no less than ten times the displacement (and a turbo!!). But for the most part, in this garage, I keep in first and hover around 3,000 rpm (at which speed, the STI is explosive – that's when it comes on boost), mostly because I'm lazy, but also because it kind of lugs in second and third. For comparison, the bike pulls in third fast enough to scare me (sort of like the STI in first at 3,000). I don't know how tall the Ninja's third is, but my guess is it's more than enough to get to freeway speeds. For those who have been reading this for a while, what I've really wanted is a car that scares me. The bike may be the solution until I can make the Z the beast it deserves to be.

We have been waiting a really long time to get here (about a year and a half now), and I think that we're both adult enough to handle the responsibility now, would enjoy this new hobby, and it makes perfect sense with the petrol situation. And, since I was a teenager, bikes (and gear) have gotten a lot safer. Back then, (and even as recently as, say, twenty) bikes were "forbidden fruit." I'd have died on a CBR600RR or something. I once hit 177 in the Z, imagine the evil things I could do with a bike.

The bottom line: I'm good with mechanicals, and I understand the mechanics of the bike well. It still scares me; I worry constantly I'll drop it because I will do something stupid. I think when I worry less and focus more on riding, I'll be a better rider. And, really, I love it. It's a blast to ride. This is gonna be a fun summer. I can tell we're going to argue over who "has" to ride to work.

And yes, I'll get a picture of the bike up soon, with Sandy in her pink leathers. She's just so fucking cute, I want to ride with her with a sticker on my helmet with an arrow that says "I'm with the hot chick on that bike."

280zx travails

short: gory details on 280zx suspension

So the 280ZX has these cursed four-bolt hubs which means tire rack doesn't even bother to stock wheels for them. I'd like 16x7 on the car, but I don't have a lot of choice. Now, the 300ZX has 5-lug hubs, and the "spindle" (the part that connects the hub to the knuckle") is the same diameter on the rear of the 300ZX and 280ZX, but on the front, it tapers to a bit wider diameter. Hopefully this isn't because of catastrophic suspension failure.

At any rate, if I lathe two 300ZX front hubs, and supply two 300ZX rear hubs, I can use their brakes, their bolt patterns, and – thank god – their wheels.

All I need is some goddamn machine shop work. See also this reference (which is slightly different than mine):

Front Race Version
On this version, I wanted maximum diameter rotors for racing applications. Thus, I bolted a 300ZX rotor (4 bolt) onto my Z hub (this is again a direct bolt on replacement for the Z rotors), then mounted the assembly onto the spindle of the Z strut. Next, I took the 280ZX front calipers and placed them over the new rotors, and with the aid of air pressure applied to the piston, held the caliper into a position similar to the old position of original Z calipers. Because of the 300ZX rotor's larger diameter of around , the caliper mounding holes on the strut and the caliper, do not match up. Thus I measured the difference, disassembled the entire assembly, and proceeded to weld up the old caliper mounting holes in the Z strut, added material to the outside of these bosses, and then drilled new holes for the caliper to bolt on in the new, extended position.

Insipid music required

 short story: new music... caution: itms links abound.

I like to pride myself on listening to a lot of pretty cerebral music. While from my last.fm profile, it might appear that I get a lot of mental cheesecake – you don't have to look far to find it in my "chart" – that can be kind of misleading. To listen to Jesse Dangerously, for example, is to listen to both poetry, Canadian political issues (!), the social stigma of being a young gay male, and others. One can't listen to Alkaline Trio without the frankly crushingly- and so very well crafted lyrics of suicide and anger. Nouveaux Punk, if you will (although I'm sure I'm abusing somebody's idea of what that term actually entails).

There's also a fair amount of what most people would consider classical, with Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and so on, but I think it takes a greater man to compare these traditionally intellectual composers with the less-traditional we have today, up to and including Eminem, who is entirely capable of being very intelligent in his chosen style of music (rap, of course, for those who've been living under a rock).

And then there's Electronic Music. I grew up raving in Southern California, so please, don't tell me I don't "get" it. I do. Really. How does one even typify or describe the complexity that goes into modern goa trance? Daft Punk, while most definitely in the "house" category (which is almost entirely bereft of anything involving thinking – preferring rather anthemic melodies and snare spirals and breaks) is enormously complex in their composition. A lazy listener would miss, for example, the incredible complexity of the oft-criticised track, Around the World. How the reviewers managed to miss the subtle blending of so many different instruments in a rhythmic, almost "cylindrical" (hence the name) melody? How about Aphex Twin and specifics of his such as Polynomial-C and Fingerbib? Music, especially electronic music, has merged with math in ways nobody really considered. And, if you're the kind of person who wants to listen to something that makes you think, Electronic Music is a treasure trove of thinking music.

I could go on, but I think rehashing Bowie or early Nine Inch Nails would be not only repetitive with everyone else talking about music, but I think it's pretty trite to say that Reznor's (I'd have added links here to the amazing Sin single and the Fixed remixes of Broken, but I can't seem to find them) "Closer" pushed the envelope of what could be done and said in music – in general, not just in his genre.

So I derive no small amount of enjoyment from music. It makes me think, it motivates me to write, and I have indelible associations of music with books (10,000 Maniacs "Our Time in Eden" with Clive Barker's Weaveworld, and Air's 10,000 Hz Legend with China Míevile's Perdido Street Station – both the album and the book still give me serious shivers).

But lately, primarily at work, I find that I am so intellectually (or at least physically, in the sense that what I do requires thought and correlated labour) drained by the ups-and-downs, ins-and-outs of the field, and trying (with some success, even) to manage the interpersonal relationships in a very diverse organisation (everyone from marines and airmen all the way to former intelligence officers turned project managers, if you can imagine). I am frankly too exhausted to listen to Alkaline Trio's "Trouble Breathing," which, while not the world's happiest tune, is so hauntingly written that I both love it and fear listening to it again (, and again, and again...). This is repeated over most of my musical library. Even Cake is so full of puns it requires thoughts to understand what's really going on. Even frickin' Matisyahu.

And I can't switch that off!

So, what to listen to in the office? A number of constraints pop up. First, I was listening to a lot of Velvet Acid Christ, which is pretty simple, has lyrics (when it has lyrics at all) that are insipid and mostly christianity-focused. Who cares, really? Well, it's serious industrial/goth-metal, and if that's coming out of the speakers in my office, when one of our more straight-laced employees shows up to tell me the internet down, the response is, "what IS that racket?" Explanations fail, of course. There is a huge generational gap (usually), an unwillingness to understand, and an entire lack of a frame of reference (how do you explain VAC to someone who loves classic-rock-"oldies"?)

I realised I needed something saccharine, poppy (so as not to really offend coworkers), not really too intellectual, and fast enough that I didn't get lethargic during the day (caffeine only goes so far). Kind of like Basement Jaxx or Aqua, only without being so... Aqua. That, and I've really listened-out Crazy Itch Radio, and I'm even really tired of the remixes.

4chan's /mu/ (and before you assholes get worried about rule #1, the secret is out. The honeymoon is over. Mootles is no longer teh sex.) was somewhat helpful, pointing out Crystal Castles, which I dig, but was really mostly interested in Vanished and Tegan and Sara's "The Con" (and this seems to not be an unusual perception of the duo). But I think they (/mu/) missed what I was really looking for (being music elitists, something like myself, and having little ability to come up with something insipid). They tired of me, and I tired of them, and in their defense, it's hard to ask elitists to come up with unelite stuff on command (they're quite ready to point it out when it's visible).

Enter Alice in Videoland (warning, music on load). I may discover a deeper depth to this music, but for the moment, it's quite upbeat, it's musically complex – but not too complex – and it has high-strung, sometimes vocoderised, vocals. Yay. It's kind of like Gwen Stefani was asked to do some vocals for Legion of Boom or I'm the Supervisor. I feel I have to say that Wide Open from Legion is one of the most amazing tracks Method has produced, despite it being sort of out of their genre, since I've mentioned Legion by name. Anyways, Alice in Videoland is pretty groovy. Pretty much what the doctor ordered. You have to check out the Outrageous (caution: music) album, but I'm pretty happy with She's a Machine, too.

Also is another one I'm not too sure about. Blind Faith and Envy is capable of some mind-warpingly intense techno tracks (and has a phenomenal goa trance mix of one of her songs) but can also be Sarah McLaughlin slow, and they have some Enya moments. We shall see. I hate to say it, because it kind of makes me a male pig (right?), but it may be a "chick thing." I clearly don't know, having a deformed chromosome.

And, then there's Futon. Who can resist gay club music? I absolutely loved Jonny McGovern's Dirty Gay Hits, but I've kind of listened it out. I picked up a couple tracks and considered it a win. Interestingly, it's part of a soundtrack from some HBO show along the lines of "HBO's XXX Thoughts." A compilation, which I normally detest, but, wow, has a lot of really cool shit, when I'm in this particularly braindead sort of mood. Sometimes, I suppose, not having cable has its drawbacks.

It will be a while before I bemoan "over intellectualism" again, so don't worry that I've become arrogant or anything. Pwomise.


(and there are probably lots of typographical, grammatical, and even insensibilities in this particular treatise; consider it irony and the fact it was awful complex to put together with all those links)

Anger management

Note to self:

Vulgar display of Enya may be better than Vulgar display of Pantera.

And if you get that not-quite-joke, you win one internet.

Moving up in the HR organisation

Frank Roche has a great piece on the kinds of people that get in to HR. In my time at Archstone-Smith, we had extensive experience with Ms. Michelle Levix. It's really kind of funny that, being the sort of punishment-type that she is, she is promoted and goes to work for Archstone corporate human resources. Undoubtedly, her primary goal will be to recruit more people just like her. With the winning sort of personality she has, it's no wonder that the web is full of complaints from their residents, the misdoings of the company, and the sort of feudal we-own-your-home setup they force upon those unfortunate enough to not own their homes. It's like being back in the 1700s again.

So a dvorianstvo gets her comeuppance, and uses it to further the power she so vindictively wields over her vassals, and even further, to recruit others like her. It's really no wonder the company is the thinly-disguised wage-slavery we had decades ago with share-cropping and plantations.

Such is the life of the renter.

Why do you need all that military stuff? You're a civilian!

Some friendly civilians armed with military weapons. See, they're being responsible.

Especially when the Feinsteins, Boxers, and Pelosis of the world start flapping their gums, the continual squealing is always "but that's military equipment! the military uses the M82A1! the military uses fully-automatic weaponry! civilians don't need military equipment!They're partially right on the gun front. I don't really need an M82A1, or an M24/M40. But here's the point. The military doesn't fuck around with equipment (although there have been concerns about the M-16 and the .223 round which I won't go into here), and when they make a decision on a weapons system, they tend to pick the right weapon. So, when it came time for me to pick a weapon to take to the range (I don't hunt; I'm a hobbyist), I picked a rifle almost identical to the M24 or M40. And I love it. When I build another rifle, it will be damn near the same thing, and if I had the money, I'd buy an EDM Arms Windrunner or a MacBros Tac-50, and I'd shoot that 50 BMG and enjoy the shit out of it. It's not really about whether civilians need military weaponry. Ladies, it's about whether they need to justify owning them. I just don't have to justify owning them. Not to you, not to my neighbors, or anyone else, really. And, to paraphrase Scalia, it's the constitution, stupid.

So what about other items? I own a USMC "boonie hat." I bought it because it's very good at its job. It's also very useful when keeping the sun out of your eyes when you're looking through high-powered optics on that "military rifle."One thing this war in the desert has brought us is a plethora of new technologies, be they garments or devices and compounds to keep particulates out, and so on. For better or worse, war tends to push the technological envelope.

And so I find myself buying what sounds almost laughable – tactical jeans. Yeah, denim pants, and they're "tactical." The main point here is they have an extra pocket for my leatherman (which I use at work, not to slit throats), and they have a little room in the back for an inside-the-waistband holster which fits a Glock 21 (which isn't to say I'm always carrying; rather the Lands End jeans I normally wear are not so accomodating). They also claim to be stronger due to some twisted weave or other (a good thing, I guess), and also wick sweat away better (Northern Virginia is absolutely wicked in the summer).

It gets even sillier. I bought a tactical belt. The reason for this is not that I'm some special forces dude who needed to attach extra magazines and such to my waist line, but rather because it's lighter, stronger, has a simpler clasp, is designed to fit my tactical jeans, and I think that's just great.

What about a MOLLE backpack? Fact of the matter is, MOLLE works. And the Camelbak gear not only "just works," but it's been through shit I'll never come close to putting it through. So why bother buying some REI or other fancypants outfitter's idea of what hiking in style is when this so-called "military equipment" is perfectly suited to civilian use?

I'd like a "drag bag" for my rifle and a shooting mat, and my god, they might even be in desert tan or OD green. Them's military equipment, too. Where does it end?

I'm no huge fan of McCain, but I seriously worry about an Obama administration, a new "assault weapons ban," and his ambiguous stance on these issues.

Let the record show

That I have in fact found my TDMA module, that it is in fact mostly complete, and not only do I understand parts (parts!) of it, I have even fixed me a few bugs. Awesome, huh.

sub new {
    my ($class, $zeroh, $epoch_time, $frame_number) = (@_);
    my $frame_start = ( $epoch_time / $FRAMES_PER_EPOCH ) * $epoch_num;
    my $slots = bless [
        $zeroh,
        $frame_start,
        $epoch_num,
        [ map TDMA::Day::Epoch::Frame::Slot->new(
            $zeroh, $frame_start, $frame_number, $_
        ), 1 .. $SLOTS_PER_FRAME ],
        sub { 1 },
    ], $class;
    return $slots;
}

There may well be bugs there, but then bugs are everywhere. It should be noted that perl is nowhere near fast enough to actually create a full TDMA-segmented day in one "slot" (1/128 of a second), but that you can redefine the granularity of your time division, and one day, perl may actually be fast enough to do it. So, take heart, this isn't just another useless module.

synctoy

Is there a tool/applet/whatever that lets me sync an iTunes playlist to a machine (e.g., my Air), which doesn't have the space that my "main" iTunes library does?

I would be a very crappy hamper if somebody had something like that.

Perils of dynamic storage

I may have lost that TDMA module I wrote in the switch between my Macbook and the Air. Which sounds insignificant, except that code was really cool, and I totally don't remember what it looked like.

Mirroring indeed. Fuck.

Organisation in an unorganised world

short: move along, nothing to see here

I've been trying extra-hard to keep myself organised with this laptop, as every time I move from one machine to another I have a brutal time of making sure I get everything from the current machine to the next machine.

Years ago, when my primary machine was a server sitting on a T1, I actually just kept my entire home directory in cvs. This grew very quickly into something unmanageable (although whether it started as manageable is open to debate) because of a few factors: churn, binaries, and size.

To address cvs' problem with binaries, simply moving to subversion is sufficient, and I've been very happy with it.

For size, I've been trying to keep things logically compartmentalised so I am only backing up what I want backed up (so, for example, I can back up my Documents/ directory without backing up my Pictures/ directory – at least on in version control). Subversion is also less balky with larger-sized repositories (I'm using fsfs; I don't know about the other options).

For churn, svn seems to also do a pretty good job of managing lots and lots of commits. However, there isn't a great way to make sure that new files get committed when they're added and files get deleted when they're removed. I could probably write a cron job that finds stuff that isn't in svn and emails it to me daily, or something. But what a pain in the ass.

So I think I have a reasonable system, by running stuff into subversion. This, combined with being fairly anal about file placement (having a Projects directory helps me keep piles of stuff organised) appears (after a couple months, I guess) to be working, as long as I'm religious about keeping stuff where it belongs (e.g., no 'crap' folder on my desktop).

But the missing component here is a good interface for the whole thing. Unfortunately, I'm juggling two (or three, depending on how you look at it) different interfaces for these carefully-laid-out files.

XCode, on the left, and TextMate on the right

I like XCode's interface a lot. I have a reasonably good editor (which is to say, it's not vim, but it'll do in a pinch), a reasonably good file manager (approximately as good as the finder), and some additional tools, like "make in this directory" or "find where this subroutine is defined." Unfortunately, it's pretty bad with perl code, and it doesn't know what to do with e.g., Word documents (I also keep all my writing in subversion, and manage it with a TM project).

I like TextMate's interface less. Substantially less, I think. However, it doesn't really get in my way the way XCode does, and it does the right thing when I double-click on a document it doesn't know how to work with (Word, etc). And it has support for subversion, and it understands perl. But its bundled packages are kind of clunky, and I don't like the way it formats text/syntax (yes, I know this is customisable; that's besides the point – the idea of this whole enterprise is to simplify things; If I have to create custom setups for each of these interfaces, I haven't simplified much at all!). Its management of C (& ruby, etc) projects is nowhere near as shiny as XCode's (and XCode is free!!).

So, unfortunately, I'm using both. I have TextMate organising files into its preferred project format (.tmproj) because it can keep a bunch of stuff in one pane, and preview in the other pane (with hilighting!) and it will DTRT if I doubleclick a document it doesn't know how to work with. One such document would be the XCode project format, .xcodeproj. So I have "parent" "project" files, which are viewed in TextMate and "sub-project" files, which are viewed in XCode. Boy, what a pain. Things are organised well enough, and both editors do what I want them to do (within the limits of their "responsibility"), but I can't help but being a little worried that I'm depending on two different sets of document management schemes.

As a footnote to this, when I explained this to Sandy, she told me that "you're always going to be stuck with a vendor." The correct response is, of course, "not on Unix...". In Unix, I'm happy to use vim to manage all this stuff, tar and cvs/svn to move things around, wget/rsync/scp to push/pull, $EDITOR to edit, and so on. At the same time, though, it feels kind of stupid to not be using all the shiny tools Apple has given me, especially since I supposedly pay a premium to get their fancy hardware and their fancy software.

At any rate, wasn't NeXTStep supposed to take all these individual tasks and make plugins for a Grand Unified Interface? So many of these tasks are common: file management, editing, store/retrieve, diff/blame/co/ci, etc., why do we still have so many programs that do some, but not all of them? I realise I can mount a subversion repository, over DAV, like I would any other filesystem. But the implementation of client-side DAVfs is slow and buggy, and I would still require something in the Finder that would give me a reasonable editor or preview pane, and some sort of "click this to commit/update/check out." I hope, as Apple attempts to court developers with all these fancy free SDK's, that they tie more of the functionality for developers into the user interface.

Maybe it's time Apple actually separated out the "more advanced" stuff (scm, etc) from the basic interface, and had some toggle mechanism to switch the advanced stuff on so as not to frighten the non-advanced-users. For a very long time, they steadfastly refused to use multi-button mice, or to have hierarchical displays in the Finder, and they've been slowly rolling back the "keep it simple" in particular places of the OS. As they begin to garner a bigger and bigger segment of the userbase, at some point, they're going to have to start providing the new Mac users the tools they want to use and previously were using Windows or Unix for.