hyperfood idea

it would be neat if i could go to the grocery store and buy some of these superfoods (like powerbars – lots of sugar, carbs, and other stuff that's supposed to be good for me, or those shakes, etc) with my choice (branded, of course) of, say, neuroleptics, benzodiazepines, modafinil or stimulants (not just caffeine, mind), or other useful pharmaceuticals.

Just a thought. Maybe FDA deregulation (while we're trying to save TEH ECONOMY from OMG DISASTER) we could re-coup some billions USD from, say, DEA. They don't need FLIR or ONIR or OTH. Really. They don't. They're fake police (working for the treasury; unless I missed them get absorbed into DHS), running around with guns and hypocrisy and, oh yeah, armed to the fucking teeth. It's paramilitary, chasing after marijuana.

Just a thought. Maybe these folks are beyond thinking. Maybe if Obama gets elected he'll start picking money from places that don't need it (DEA) and putting it places that do need it (NEA) or even, say, shoring up public debt, so people with a credit score less than 780 can buy a home.

Nah. Reason? From a career politician? Keep dreaming, Alex.

Squee!!

New version of Solaris out!!! Oh happy day! I am downloading with full anticipation that it will rock my socks. Because, really, that's what 9 did when I was using 8, and that's what 5.11 did when I'd been using 9. So, here's to ZOMG NEW SOLARIS.

Library consolidation in iTunes

short: itunes win, itunes fail.

Well, I've done what I had hoped to do. It took a very long time (overnight in fact), but I consolidated my iTunes library from three different volumes. I used the "don't copy music to my iTunes folder" option, and then corrected all the information in the iTunes interface. When consolidating, it placed e.g., Neon Genesis Evangelion in the right place ($itunes_folder/Music/Compilations/Neon Genesis Evangelion OST) and appears to have Done The Right Thing with everything else. Now I'm running through the onerous task of actually checksumming everything (this should wind up being 75,000 checksums times two, off four volumes total (the machine has about four terabytes at present, spread over nine disks, segmented into four raids and two monolithic volumes). I expect this to take all day, but at least they're running in parallel. Then comes the monstergrep to ensure that everything that's supposed to be there, is there.

In a similar, but less happy note, I purchased about $120 worth of stuff one evening via my AppleTV, only to find that the next time it sync'd with my Mac, the Mac said, oops! That stuff ain't here in my library, and zapped it. I've "reported a problem" via the iTunes application, but I'm not hopeful that Apple will fix this for me. (a certain Apple employee says that Applecare will let you re-download your entire history, once, but since I've got purchases going back to 2003, and well over 20,000 tracks, I rather doubt they'll do that.)

Now, I can clear off two of my raids, consolidate them into one GIGANTIC raid, and patiently wait for Snow Leopard so I can turn 'em into ZFS. I hope. Pretty please, Apple, gimme ZFS. We wantses it. Precioussss ZFS.

(and yes, I'll shut up. no more for today)

511 pants, yet again

It turns out the 511 pants have a pocket for neoprene inserts. Hey, cool. I'll probably get some Bohn CE-certified "sheets" of plasticized rubber along with a pair of 511 inserts, and cut to fit, and voila, have some armor in my 511's. Add to that some "adventure shorts," and you've got half-decent crash protection in a pair of comfy pants. Albeit some very gay looking (and yes, I mean that in the "effeminate" sense of the word, not "bad") armor, but then nobody really sees the stuff you're wearing under the pants. And it's worth mentioning that Kneedraggers has armor that looks like it would fit already (but doesn't look much sturdier than the 3/8" neoprene from 511).

A christmas wish, for Snow Leopard

I really, really, superduper please with sugar and a cherry on top wish somebody would go through and update the manpages in darwin. The first two that come to mind are newfs and iostat. Their manpages are just plain wrong. This has been a problem for at least two major releases, and maybe it's time to rectify that.

Heck, I like writing documentation, I'm looking for a job, and at the rate I'm currently accepting (this is a long story), I'm even cheap for once. Stock wouldn't hurt, but then I'd settle for a campus with grass on it, the ability to take whatever I like to work (re: transportation) and wear tactical pants or jeans or slacks. Why must I only be one thing? Sometimes I don't feel like slacks, and sometimes I don't feel like kevlar/steel/aramid/cordura.

Dear Apple,
    I know a guy.
Love,
alex

The leakage of "controlled" but "unclassified" data to the public

Quoting Federal Computer Week (not the world's most reliable source, admittedly):

DOD: Controlled but unclassified data is leaking (FCW, 10/27/08)

Controlled but unclassified Defense Department information is leaking to the public from thousands of Web sites sponsored by DOD, according to a recent memo by DOD Chief Information Officer John Grimes. In the memo, Grimes emphasizes the importance of protecting controlled unclassified information, especially in systems that are connected to the Internet with insecure protocols such as File Transfer Protocol or Peer-to-Peer sharing.

“The Department of Defense is currently hosting thousands of such sites, and in spite of previous direction, Controlled Unclassified Information data is still publicly accessible from these Defense Department sites,” Grimes wrote in the memo, which was published by the Federation of American Scientists. Military officials have become increasingly concerned about the risks of failing to protect controlled unclassified information that may compromise battlefield strategies and technology. Some of that information is being put at risk by defense contractors, according to another document released by the federation. More

I think somebody just woke up to the idea that you can search for really interesting things on the web using simple search terms, which aggregate military assets and knowledge into comprehensive documents. This is as simple as applying "site:af.mil" or even just "site:.mil" or, conversely, "-site:.com". In this manner, we can look for everything out there that Google's found which is unclassified (or at least, publicly available) on, for example, Operation Argus , which is how I wrote its subsequent Wikipedia article (that, and high-altitude nuclear explosions like Starfish Prime).

It's kind of ironic and sad that this same organization that requires you to have twenty years of intelligence experience is failing so miserably to safeguard said intelligence, and yet refuses to bring on people who are actively demonstrating capability to exploit them because they lack that experience.

"Must have TS/SCI with CI Poly" as a requirement for a CI position is almost ludicrous when you think about it. We're trying to bring on counter-intelligence operatives who have been trained by the very same counter-intelligence operatives who are so badly failing the country? I'd call it buffoonery, but I think it's pretty clear that the fact the DOD CIO is just noticing Wikipedia contains more sensitive information than many SIPRNET sites (when such as been the case for years) does it well enough without my stirring the pot.

Welcome, DOD, and DOD CIO, to the wild west that is the internet. People without clearances are smarter than the people you've got with clearances. Adapt or be exploited. That's how it goes. Kids in China don't have your CI Poly, and yet they can figure out shit about your black projects people in your own office don't have need-to-know on. Enjoy your stay.

(it's kind of like the Romans required Roman citizens to run things, and then being shocked when non-Romans demonstrated an ability to topple their political structure or out-manouver their army)

Silliness in litigation

In its filing, IBM contends that Papermaster possesses knowledge of trade secrets which could be used by Apple. As such, the company contends that Papermaster is violating a one year non-compete agreement by taking up a position with Apple.

Much of the suit centers around Big Blue's Power processor architecture. IBM claims that Papermaster's work on the architecture has made him privy to a number of company secrets which could be of use to competitors.

Of course, somebody seems to be forgetting that Apple was using the POWER architecture for years and only recently switched to the CISC Intel chips. Further, that Apple went to the G5 and found it entirely lacking in the needs they had at the time: something they could put in laptops, something they could put in a machine with less than a one-kilowatt power supply (and liquid cooling!), and a company with a well-defined roadmap from where they were (two cores) to where they want to be (sixteen cores).

The other thing is kind of perplexing, in that the article states that this Papermaster dude was actually VP of Blade Development . This, I can see, being kind of important, given the heat and power constraints on blades, but only if Apple decides, hey, it would be really cool to put POWER5's or quad-core Xeon's in our laptops – which, I gotta tell you, they ain't.

Maybe IBM should think back to when they were sued by SCO for ludicrous terms, and just give up on this one. The major difference of course is that Apple is more likely to settle out of court, rather than pay the hideous costs of litigation here (and, essentially, pay Papermaster to do nothing for a year or whatever his NDA requires), whereas IBM wasn't likely to cough up billions to placate SCO. Google has done this with a couple of their employees, notably from Microsoft, but Microsoft has also elected not to go after employees like, for example, Mike Bradshaw (who was headhunted while I was working there – it still pisses people at Microsoft Federal off to even hear his name, but there was no suit).

Corporate nepotism, incest, and headhunting has been going on as long as there have been corporations. What is IBM thinking? This is ludicrous.

Bikes are like guns

The biggest problem is that you feel the need to own one of each of them. I'd love a shaft-drive cruiser with plugs for a heated suit, I'd love a 600cc track razor, a 1400cc monster for the street, and hypermotard for hooning in Arlington, a 125 or 250, also for hooning, but in a different way, and a respectable upright to bring to the office. And there's room in there for a 1098S Duc, too, because who doesn't want one?

And, of course, bikes are a lot like guns in that, while they won't call you a "bike crank," they will look at you, raise an eyebrow, and say, "oh, he's one of those guys. rides a bike, 'donorcycle', etc." Never occurs to anyone there are responsible motorcycle owners or gun owners. Afterall, when was the last time a guy with a concealed carry permit went on a rampage? Sure, SQUIDs get into high-speed pursuits with cops, but then so do guys in Ford Broncos.

Why do I find myself drawn to the smallest segments of society?

now I feel bad

The guy that sold my my 7 crashed his Duc Testastretta the very same day he sold it to me. So now he is bikeless, and I feel like I "stole" it from him, even though we worked our asses off for that money. I had just sent him an email to tell him what good care I was taking of his previous "baby," only to hear he'd lost one of his own. :(

Fate, she is a fickle mistress.

The smell of burning petroleum

I've always been enamored with the smell of the Z. It burns gasoline and oil, and the gunk that accumulates on the bottom of the oil pan and turbo downpipe, and so on. So when you get out of the car, you smell like you've been driving it.

With the 7, I'm starting to realize when I get off the bike that my clothes (especially cotton clothes exposed to the elements) smell like the bike. It's reassuring to get back to the bike and smell the sweet/pungent smell of rich mixtures and gasoline in general.

Modern cars lack so much character it's very hard to be excited about them, or to feel like they need to be ridden. After all, what are you riding but a plastic box with chairs in it?

i love novembers

looks like the holidays are going to rock this year. just like in 2004 and 2002.

...and business is good

short: ivory towers, commentary thereon.

Despite the rather morose and snide tone of late, I did find myself recently getting a haircut and manicure. I needed the former badly, and the latter as well due to the ill-fitting Icon gloves, working on the bike, and ... well, those damn gloves again. I have got to replace those. Would you believe I learned more in those three hours than I've learned in the last three weeks (excepting that concerning death, or perhaps how to make a motorbike behave better in a turn)?

My stylist was out sick, and I didn't know until I showed up, so I got to meet a new person. I might have waited until Jane got back, except for the fact that my hair was just so damn long that I risked lapsing back into the angry goateed and long-haired Alex of ca. 7/07. This new stylist had no idea who I was, or really anything about me, what my hair normally looks like, and this is always an awkward moment, because you really only get one chance when it comes to a haircut. So, she starts asking me all these questions about what I want and I find myself entirely lacking comprehension of her vocabulary. I stopped her a moment, and said, wait, how long have you been doing this? She says, eleven years (note: she knew exactly which shampoo I used by the smell of it, and it's obscure).

Wait a minute. I explain to her, this is how it works. So, I've been doing "what I do" just a little bit longer than you, and if I were to start explaining virtual slices and asking you how much swap you wanted allocated for the host vs the guests and whether you wanted "deeper" or "wider" cpu pipelines, you'd have no idea what I was talking about. Let's try to bring this down to a level I can understand.

She got kind of offended. I can understand why; that sounds incredibly arrogant. I then said, I deal with this situation every day. I ask people what their problems are, trying to help them, and I approach them at a level of vocabulary that is generally beyond their understanding, and I become frustrated when they cannot articulate what they want, or I cannot articulate what I need them to explain to me in a common language. She then understood, and we started working "down" towards a base vocabulary we both understood.

This is the first of two points about said ivory towers. It took her a lot of effort to help me understand how to explain to her what I wanted my head to look like, what was required of it (e.g., job requirements, the "special" requirement of living inside a motorcycle helmet), and other details. I am not often reminded of this, and it's very helpful to me to re-remember that I can and indeed do come across as arrogant or incomprehensible when I am trying to help somebody accomplish their goals (or fix their problems). I'd like to point out here, though, that I am rarely faced with somebody on the other side of the equation that has this same realization and gives me the help I need to help them.

So, from where I sit, it's easy to become frustrated or angry, but I should not default to attributing to malice or incompetence what may in fact be my own arrogance or failure to communicate effectively. She and I worked together very hard (for a haircut, I know, this sounds silly, but I learned a lot) to attain what is a shorter-than-either-wife-or-I-prefer, but sensible, adequate, and appropriate haircut for the office, and yet relaxed enough for being out with friends and also near immune to motorcycle equipment. I should really strive in what I do to emulate her, or at least to attain the process we did.

 

(that one on the right cut my hair)

But between her and the manicurist, I learned something else. In the business I work in, business is generally pretty good (extra credit if you know why I switched the AppleTV to Megadeth). Even Apple is doing pretty well, so wife and I are not suffering any effects from this economy other than, boo hoo, I didn't get a 2008 CBR600RR – I "only" got a 1996 Kawasaki ZX7-R which performs near identically. The price I've paid for this downturn in the economy is having carburettors instead of fuel injection on my motorcycle (and to be frank, having a bike that runs rich as a Saudi prince at idle and smells just as foul is actually kind of fun, in the same way an 8L V8 with dual four-barrel carbs is).

I asked my stylist how business was at the salon. She said business is "way off." She's now working two days a week. She says her paychecks vary as much as $1,000 (I suspect this is more than, say, a quarter of her income per check). I asked her who the primary clientele of the salon were (I've been going to that salon for six or seven years now, and I guess I never asked), and she replied that 85% of them were lawyers. Previously, they'd been coming in mostly every month, some of them every two weeks, some of them every week. The day I was in, there were five hours between my appointment and her next. Tips excluded, I can't imagine she made more than $200 that day. If you figure she makes 100% more in tips (not hardly), that's $800 a week, which works out to about forty thousand a year. Bear in mind, this is the District of Columbia we're talking about here, not Duluth, MN. In general, you can expect to pay about $1500, minimum, per single-bedroom apartment in the greater metro area, with nicer (read: safer) units being closer to $2000, and two-bedroom (she has a child) is a lot closer to $3000. Do the math.

I have a hard time understanding how K Street lawyers are cutting back (there's no way to avoid that pun, sorry) on haircuts to save money, rather than, say, selling the MB S63 and maybe getting a C320 or something instead (or hell, just commuting in one; none of these guys own just one car). But it's certainly a symptom of a trend – they are probably cutting back on other necessities like prostitutes, $2,000 dinners at Morton's or Smith & Wollensky's, and that board-of-directors meeting at Saint Thomas (maybe just the Outer Banks instead...).

When I went to the back room to have my manicure done I had the occasional glance at the television (I don't get cable tv, and while I read a great deal of news, I largely ignore the specifics in economic trends, preferring rather to watch the larger trends and frankly look for opportunities or obstacles, rather than to see how "my fellow man" is doing). I notice that Chrysler is laying off about 6,000 employees. I assume GM is doing something similar. I heard from the manicurist Boeing has laid off a few thousand. Frank has been talking about this some, but I've been really busy with work and haven't had enough time to keep on top of my RSS pile.

So I think, wow. Wait a minute. Not only are the financial resources available to people (equity loans, credit in other forms, pay raises, interest rates and dividends on saving and investments) dwindling, but for many, at the same time, they are losing their job, and perhaps their home. I have not confirmed anything like it, but I have heard whispers that in certain areas of the country, the foreclosure rate is above seventy percent.

What does this mean? Well, the simple answer is it means that a whole lot of people are really fucked. If you are in middle management, marketing, advertising, human resources, low-level helpdesk/callcenter information technology-type jobs, retail sales, pre-sales, (some forms of) lawyering, and other things I certainly can't think of but are out there, you're doomed.

Point number two of two then, is that the business of killing people is never really going to hit a slump, so I'm doing okay, for now. For some reason, Apple seems to be doing okay, so we might even come out of this without much pain. But there are a lot of people out there hurting, and there is a much, much higher number of people who will be hurting, and soon (a certain society on 14th & M had issues the last time the market hit 8500 and advertising slumped; I remember this clearly). There's some good news in that above chart – the volume has a huge spike, so perhaps there will be a re-settling of capital, rather than a clean evaporation thereof – but the overwhelming picture is bad.

I normally consider myself to be one of the people brutalized by a "down" economy as a consultant, but as I am now W-2, substantially more senior than I was in 2002, and am working in a business that is booming (ha, morbid pun time), I might actually not be there. But to forget what it was like to be without a job from right around Thanksgiving of 2002 through April of 2003 was one of the hardest points of our life is probably a good way to blunder right back into it. That period damn near broke me, financially – another two months, and I'd have been one of those "rebound kids," despite the fact I'd been out of college five years at the time. I'd never have married my wife, my career might well have stopped there, and today I might be stoned on some friend's couch or worse. I am reminded of my very recent realization of how fickle life and circumstance are.

Read. My. Lips. (via dA)

Doug's a little bit of a troll (although I think he might use the term raconteur or muckraker), but when he pointed out this piece on the hundred items to disappear first in a war zone, it's got me thinking, I probably should re-stock my ammunition supply, and at least have alternate plans in mind for when the apocalypse comes to DC, 28 Days Later style. And I'm kind of reassured knowing that a lot of the "survivalist ethos" required to get through tough times is something that runs deep in the motorcycling crowd (because they are perpetually, and by definition, alone and must be self-sufficient for at least a little while at a time) and the military. And, to a lesser extent, IT. We who consider disaster recovery or survivable and robust software and networks just don't fuck around with halfass solutions when presented with the problem of "uh, the apocalypse is next tuesday at 0900."

So, I guess I learned, twice, in three hours, that I'm completely out of touch with reality on at least a handful of issues.

Now, do I sit down and try to write – fix some of my writing – wash my motorcycle gear, wash my motorcycle, take said motorcycle out (in the rain) to replace a broken tool, or fuck around on the internet like a dithering idiot for the rest of the day?

Surprising twists

For a company so busy taking my right to my own hardware and software away from me, they're awfully concerned about their carbon footprint, beauty, and civil rights.

Death

How do you grieve without a corpse? You can't keep the corpse. But in cases where there's a funeral or a protracted death, people come to terms with the fact that so-and-so is dying. I learned by SMS, and the corpse was cremated within twelve hours. There's nothing left to even look at with a broken heart. I'm supposed to wake up tomorrow and carry on, having "accepted death," and go on living.

I learned today that I have spent far, far, too long away from temple. I need to go make an offering, meditate, and think on things. It's really hard to do that in concrete canyons and supersecret rooms and stuff like that. It's even hard to do that in your home. What to offer? Incense? Sure. A pumelo? Doesn't seem to fit, but ritualistically, it works. I think I may offer valerian instead. I wish I could make an offering of sunlight.

I also learned that death is strange. One can die, for example, sitting up in an easy chair, and appear to everyone else to be simply resting, watching television, or whatever. It's not until you reach out to touch them that they're hard, cold, and, no, they're not waking up. Yeah, it really really looks like they could, but meat and the je ne sais quoi inside us are separate (even Dawkins would say at some level this is true), and they're just not going to turn over and say "oh, sorry, didn't mean to make you think I was, you know, dead."

It's almost like an illusion that's so comprehensive that you could get really shocked. For me, it's been unnerving enough that I can't seem to wash the death off my hands. I've washed my hands a dozen or more times, and keep at it with the purell, and I still don't feel "right" ("clean" isn't the word for the feeling).

Oh. And, no, nobody will ever replace him. Everyone's different. I could clone you and in thirty years, your clone would be different than you were when you were thirty. Just ask a pair of twins. So, yeah, all those idiosyncracies and character flaws you tolerated but constituted the "person" of a thing, they all go away, and they're gone, period. The good and the bad. And really, I am missing both already.

I normally try to keep the ouchies and deep personal stuff to a minimum, but I've spent so much time trying to be the pillar wifey needs right now that I haven't had my own time to come to terms with what's happened.

You people, you friends of mine, who read this, don't you fucking die on me, okay? Just don't. Really. I've frankly had enough. And forget having any goddamn kids. I know how many times I came real close to death (primarily at high-triple-digit speeds on the freeway), and if I were to ever procreate, and have to go through with that person, what I went through today, I don't know that I'm strong enough to come out the other end. What happens then?

Normally I "cope" by writing. I write about death a lot. Death in my writing is always a tool, and I've never written about death in any sense that actually addresses the notion of grief, or social repercussions, or anything like that. I may go write something new, or I may go update some of my "death work," but I may also just go home, hug my wife, and sob quietly while she sleeps.

Darwin and RAID

short: oh, woe is me, i gots ta change my storage pools from one format to another and even though it's a better format and i like the new software, i still gotta complain. go ahead and ignore this if you're not a mac person who cares about unix.

 

My living room used to look like this. Really.

As anyone who reads this drivel even remotely frequently knows, I struggle with MacOS and its lack of advanced storage, or storage configuration utilities. In a nutshell: the command-line tools are out of date or missing, DiskUtility.app doesn't even have the shine the redhat-config-lvm utility that ships with RHEL4 has, and setting extended attributes for filesystems is only barely emerging. And then there's HFS.

Anyways, the current state is we're happily booting off a mirrored 320gb raid (just two of the OEM MacPro drives, configured as a mirror from DiskUtility during the install process – the "OS" doesn't seem to really recognize this, but DiskUtility will tell you if you ask it very nicely – and we're storing most of our important data on a large (large as in an array of many disks; it's not more than two terabytes) raid 5 (without spares; DiskUtility was unable to configure five drives plus one spare as a raid, for whatever reason), we use TimeMachine to back up our home directories and stuff to a large single drive (but between the mirror for slash and the monolithic external, I figure we're covered). We also have "spot backups" of data from the raid 5 (like wedding photos and other irreplaceables) in other places.

What I'm wondering at the moment is whether OSX Server (yes, we have a licensed copy) will boot off a 40gb or so raid 5, where the slices are actually the "leftovers" from other disks that are themselves part of another raid 5. This configuration is working fine for storage, as in it's formatted, mounted, and stable, but I wonder whether the OS would actually boot from it.

Why bother? Well, for a number of reasons. First, with eight cores, the machine is going to be doing virtualization, and the EULA for Leopard Server lets us do that (right now, it's not). Second, Leopard Server is supposed to have ZFS support, which would render a lot of my storage concerns entirely moot, especially if they made DiskUtility.app suck less. The principle is simple: you're never going to reduce your storage requirements; why not simply start with a filesystem that can "grow with you" and add slices from heterogeneous environments (e.g., nfs, smb, fcal, usb, 1394b, hell, even DAV). ZFS even lets you do really seriously evil things like spit the filesystem itself out over a pipe (sort of like my favorite 'tar cfp - foo | ssh host tar xfpv -' trick, only straight in the goddamn filesystem!).

Alas, as I read more, it looks like Sun kinda jumped the gun when they said that Apple was going to be using ZFS in Leopard Server. I think they meant "Snow Leopard." (this is a stupid name, Steve. Microsoft isn't calling their next OS "Windows Vista White". Stick with cats, different cats, and even use mythical cats if you gotta – who wouldn't want to own a copy of Voltron Server?) Which means that even if I do persuade Leopard Server to install into that wonky slice-of-a-slice-of-a-raid, I don't get to start consolidating data onto ZFS volumes.

Worse, when SL Server arrives, I'm going to have to buy some (something on the order of a terabyte or so) "scratch" storage so that I can reformat my arrays as ZFS pools... and then copy all that data back onto the arrays, where they're safer. Sigh.

Where is the virtualized leopard server?

Now that we've purchased a copy of Leopard Server, and we're looking to consolidate storage (hopefully with ZFS), I find myself running up against brick walls in Virtualbox. Is June still the state of the art? The host in question is a beefy Ubuntu x64 Xeon host with plenty-o-ram, not a Leopard machine, and thus I'm not going to run Parallels, and of course Fusion (whose betas apparently may run virtualized Leopard) is not going to work. Add to that I have no interest in using VMWare's product to do this as it costs a ton of money and is ... well, I'll bash VMWare elsewhere. It needs its own rant.

5.11 Tactical's tacticalness and re-review of the Cortech DSX

short: fashion, bikes, and bikes.

I picked up some 5.11 Tactical pants because I was told that wearing "cargo" pants to work was more acceptable than wearing jeans. After giving them to the tailor to have them properly hemmed, the "jeans" restriction was more or less lifted as my Cortech DSX jeans are armor for the bike, and I think people at the office understand that armor on the bike is more important than my looking pretty. At any rate, I keep a pair of pants and shoes at the office if I need to change.

The 5.11 pants were still at the tailor's when I realized that I really needed a beefier belt to hold up the Cortech jeans. The cowhide/textile/CE foam armored pants, along with the really heavy denim have a tendency to slip off my butt. Not such a big deal when one is "in the saddle," but you look kinda silly when you have to hike your pants up to get on the bike at the gas station or whatever. The belts I had at home weren't cutting it, either, being mostly "dress" belts.

I'd been holding off buying a belt from 5.11 as they're nylon (black, OD, or "coyote") and are clearly not office wear. They also have a leather belt, but it, too, looks pretty un-office. So I looked around at the other belts out there that were sturdy enough to hold up to motorcycle use, and found, unsurprisingly, that there was a lot of convergence in the "service belts" category (that is, load-bearing and holster-supporting belts) with motorcycle gear. So I wound up buying a 5.11 leather belt with a nylon or acrylic (or some other kind of Fancy Polymer) core, with a 1.75" width. It's enormously rigid, and is hard to even "wind up" for convenient storage. In fact, it's so rigid it's kind of hard to get it to "bend" when it's being put through the buckle. At any rate, when it's buckled, it stays put and is solid as a rock. It feels a little, uh, "metal," but it really doesn't look that bad other than the white stitching on black leather. And I've no doubt it would handle an IWB or paddle holster when called upon.

The belt does a marvelous job of holding up the Cortechs, which have sturdy belt loops (and are themselves stitched and constructed fairly sturdy). As far as the 5.11 pants, well, here's the interesting thing. I have no idea what the pants are made out of. 5.11 claims they're made out of some sort of ballistic-resistant, tear-resistant superfabric that only police and the military should own, but it feels a lot like a sturdy linen or cotton with polyester or something in it. But, today on the ride to work, it was about 40F, and at 65mph the 5.11's were warmer than the heavyweight denim of the Cortechs.

So at this point, I'm considering getting full-height boots and maybe knee or hip protection to wear under the 5.11's for casual riding (although I don't suppose the Cortech are anything but casual), or when I don't want to draw too much attention. On the other hand, the 5.11's have pockets frickin everywhere (nice to have lots of concealable pockets, pockets designed to fit knives, tools, etc, and frankly this adds "cargo capacity" to a bike which has approximately 1.5L of cargo capacity), so they kinda stand out. But, in black, slate, and this darkish blue I'm wearing, they're not so bad. Even with a polo (yes, 5.11 sells polos, but I'm just wearing a very un-tactical Landsend polo).

Tactically useful? Eh, maybe. I'm finding that they're more useful as motorcycle gear. My suspicion is this supercop fabric they use is pretty resistant to asphalt, and being able to carry a powerbar or sandwich in a side-pocket of the pants is nice when an all-day ride is planned.

It's really interesting where you find synergies with the motorcycle industry. One obvious place I didn't expect was with the bicycling community. They use a lot of the same chains we do (some of their bicycles cost more than my motorcycle did!), they have the same requirements for cargo and backpackery, as well as for compression shirts and wicking fabrics and also for nighttime visibility. The tactical gear convergence I absolutely expected. The military has long been looking to modularize everything, and that's of course what motorcyclists want to do. They want a modular system that lets them take a 1-hr commute or simple day-trip, or be able to strap on additional pieces to their backpack (á la Osprey) or panniers for all-day or multi-day trips. Their first aid needs are similar too. If a marine is wounded in combat, there's very little that can be done at the site of injury; the goal is to get them to the CASH. So you see lots of "small" first aid kits that include things like tourniquets, sterile gauze with quik-clot, compression bandages, superglue, things like that. All nice stuff to have if you have a mean spill on the bike (and you're still alert enough to apply aid to yourself; it's useless if you're out cold).

So, the tacticalness of 5.11 is pretty dubious, but they make comfy and warm and presentable office pants, add valuable cargo space to the bike, probably some token protection, and their belt can hold up even really heavy stuff like leather/denim/textile pants with knee armor.

Ah, darwin

zsh: segmentation fault  sudo newfs -b 16384 -f 2048 -i 102400 -m 0 -v raid /dev/disk1s3

I see how you are...

On the way to work this morning, I happened upon a guy riding a Burgman for his morning commute. Ordinarily, one can excuse scooter owners as being, well, scooter owners. But the Burgman is a little different, in that it's a 600 (650?) and will easily do 100mph. That, and it's bigger than my bike. At any rate, I pulled up behind him at a light – he was taking the entire lane – and he sort of made this disgusted glance back, like "ew, heathen biker scum."

What he didn't realize is I recognized the boots, jacket, and pants he was wearing. The man rides a motorcycle, but I guess today he was just feeling more pussscooterish than usual.

Oh, and I did recently rant about the "no wave" motorcycle guys. Well, a guy on the other side of 110 gave me a very pronounced wave, and I completely ignored it. I felt bad, but then I was leaned over pretty hard, and taking the "down" hand would have almost certainly resulted in my high-siding (mind you, not because it's impossible to do that one-handed, but because I don't have the skill to take a turn that hard with one hand). So, okay, sometimes it's okay to not wave. And, sorry other guy. Cheers.

Yeah, well, I'm an Apple whore, so it was expected, right?

I have an Air. I like it. Word bogs down on it a bit, and as I start to get more work published (and have more work being worked on at once), I spend a lot more time in it. A 2.8ghz Core 2 Duo is pretty nice, but it's still only two procs, and at 15" it's still kinda cramped. I get 4 pages up on my left monitor at home in Word (Garamond, 12pt, single spaced), and all my "writing aids" on the right screen.

But it's also $2800. That doesn't sound so bad. I could probably get $1k or more for my Air as it is, and I know that the 15" MBP would fit in my backpack (important on the bike). But that 1440x900 resolution is killing me. If they had a 1920x1080 option, I'd be a happy man and I don't think there'd be any question about whether I "needed" a new Mac. Especially since Dell and everyone else has been doing that on 15" laptops since, oh, 2004 or so. I'd like a full page up, or two, side-by-side, scaled.

If they're not going to do that, there's no point in my having a beefier laptop if I have a damn eight core desktop with two displays.

And then, for $2800, I could probably buy either all the gear Sandy and I need (new jackets, gloves, shoes, pants), or I could buy the Muzzy exhaust for the Ninja and a set of airtech (or snakeskin) fairings and paint it black with kawi green accents.

Why didn't Apple release something closer to the Wind or the Eee?

AppleTV, again

You know, for something that's supposed to be a brainless appliance, it's sure a bitch to set up. At least they included AirTunes in it, this software revision. I'm sure there's some sneaky DRM in there with that update I haven't caught yet. Curse you!!

sync

short: blather, only interesting to those interested in, uh, me.

bikes: I've been riding the bike to work, more or less, without exception for a month now. I've been averaging about a hundred miles a week on the 750 (which is a lot more than I put on the 250). Sandy and I have been going out when we can – because I'm riding so much more than she is, I need to be careful not to exceed her capabilities, so I don't, for example, take her out at night until she feels she's ready – but we don't get a lot of time together, and frequently when we do, it's not during "riding" weather.

I've figured out the issue with idling on my bike. It's twofold. The first, I was indeed right on. It's the carbs that makes it hard to idle. Basically, the way to get to "stage one" (it's a car thing), you update the intake (e.g., with a K&N and other intake goodness) and re-jet the carbs so there's enough fuel when you're at WOT. Problem is, carbs aren't very smart, and there's no O2S, so it's not like it can figure out that it's running way too rich when it's at low speed (you almost feel like fuel's getting spat at you standing behind it).

The second, Colin noticed. There's a sort of "stickiness" as you turn the throttle. As you get your wrist into it, there's a little resistance before it cracks open, and that little "crack" includes 1k-2.5k rpm. Past that, the bike spins up to 3,000 (which is the minimum rpm it's really happy at), and it feels like you're going to dump the clutch into a bike that's ready to jump. The answer is, no, it's not going to stand on one wheel and tear ass if you slip the clutch out at 3,000rpm. Different matter if you slip it in at 6-8k (yes, wheelie all the way up to and past 100mph). But that "stickiness" leads to it being kinda difficult at low speeds, and even Colin, who's about the most experienced rider I know, stalled the 750 on his first spin on it. I may get different grips or something (I need something wider for my hands, anyways), and an increase in diameter would fix that. I'd also like adjustable levers so I can make the throw a lot shorter, and the tension a lot lighter (I like driving with two fingers on each lever). But I kind of struggle with "should I keep it stock?" as I hate seeing ads on craigslist or ebay for a bike with a dozen or more "mods" that basically make it perfect for someone else, but potentially a problem for me. Oh well.

Speaking of the Ninjas, we got the 250's oil changed today, which is good. It really needed it. Not the worst oil I've ever seen, but it was definitely low. The bike runs better now. We'll see if it's burning oil or if the PO just neglected it. The 250 has a "captive" oil filter, much like a diesel Mercedes, whereas the 750 has your standard screw-on filter. The 750's oil filter is also located right inside the headers (it's a four cylinder...), so taking the filter off is guaranteed to get a few drops of oil on the headers, which will in turn smoke when the bike gets hot. But, it's easy enough to get at after you get the goddamn fairing off! I swear, I haven't had this much difficulty since changing spark plugs on a VG30. And PO on the 750 went all Incredible Hulk on the drainplug, and my 17mm spanner just didn't have the length for me to unscrew it. So, old oil remains in the 750. I borrowed a 1/4" driver with a 17mm socket, so hopefully I can teach that drain plug a lesson in the morning before the group ride we've got planned.

Which is the other thing – Sandy and I have been out before, but I've never gone out with anyone who had the ability to keep up with me – I went out with a friend today on an SV650S. While his bike isn't the crushing power of the ZX-7R, it's not like I'm hitting 90 on surface streets, and he kept up with me just fine, even when I was being "creative" in traffic. He's been riding a lot longer than me, and it was a lot of fun to be out with somebody who could both keep up and really ride well. Although he speeds a lot more than I do. I generally don't do any more than ten over, and he, well, he is happy to go whatever speed he's comfortable with. Tomorrow we may have five or six people out. A couple of SV's, a few Ninjas (250, 750, 636), and I don't know about the others. Should be fun. Let's hope nobody drops a bike in gravel or wet leaves or whatever.

Haven't made a whole lot of progress on the skunkworks. Been thinking about it, but been real busy with work (doing the NISPOM stuff is just absolutely mind-numbing, but required before we can move forward on SuperSecret Project X). The more I think about it, the more I really want to tell the story. I've even got some places where I want to develop one of the characters a little more (the one I really like but had to kill).

Another reason I haven't made a whole lot of progress is that the poor Mac is busy converting NEFs to JPGs for me. I used Automator to do it: apply a color profile, gamma correct, save as a jpg. However, it has mostly brought the machine to a halt. Which is peculiar – it has eight processors, and it's not using any of them 100%. This makes me think that while some parts of the OS are very MP-aware (quicktime), others really aren't (automator, Preview, Quartz, etc). So I've got eight cores at 35% CPU and thrashing ram and disk, so everything is on hold till those NEFs get converted. Word really likes to have its own machine (even eight cpus of machines), so I'm going to get back into the skunkworks after I'm done with those damn NEFs. Maybe what I need is 64gb of ram and eight of those 2.5" dual-drive enclosures in the tower. Yeah, when I've got an extra couple thousand bucks sitting around.

Lastly, wee, Gupta is getting published. Next year, July. Good news is, SFWA wants three credits, and I'd really like to be able to tack on a SFWA number to my submissions. I suppose that means I could also get nominated for SFWA awards, but I'm not anywhere near as awesome as Charlie, so chances are it won't happen. If it does, though, I might just wear a kilt.

Six hundred posts of worthless garbage!

It is on this six hundredth post of worthlessness that I celebrate the second publication of my works. Gupta is finally being published. It won't appear until late next year, but it's been specifically requested, and I'm pleased to finally see it in print.

And then there were two.

So we have both the 250 and the 750 (a ZX-7R) now. I'm really kind of at a loss for words. Taking the 750 out is both exhilarating and terrifying. It would be less terrifying if I knew Arlington PD would let me drive as fast as I "needed to" (note: not "wanted" to). The bike is so fast, it's kind of boggling. First gear is an exercise in keeping the front wheel down, and below 3,000rpm, it's a fight to keep it from stalling (I'm going to blame the carburettors for this one) – unless it's idling.

If you really grab the throttle and just open it up, it really moves. Fast. I guess we've all seen motorcycles pass us on the road when we're driving in cars. There's that check over the shoulder to make sure you're not too close, then a tug on the throttle, and the sort of sway-and-correct into the lane. I don't pass people because I want to go faster. I pass people because sitting behind them is dangerous, sitting next to them is dangerous, and at least if they're behind me, I can sort of see them.

But if you're doing 55 in a 45 (which everyone does), and you want to pass someone like this, on the 750 it's very easy to get up to 70 or 80mph without even really thinking about it. In second, in fact, it would happen almost instantly. That's the problem, of course. A "slow pass," where I would, in this case, speed up to say, 60, and then pass, is a problem on the bike because there's always an asshole on the road who doesn't want to be passed and will speed up when he is being overtaken. So you make sure you have enough go in the bike to get past them, but then you're being seriously Naughty. What's worse, is when you're there, the bike feels great. It really becomes a stable, road-carving platform above 8,000rpm. It's also loud as shit.

This means that everyone behind me, and everyone in front of me, knows that somewhere, near, there's a motorcycle, misbehaving. One of them is going to be a cop one of these days, and I don't know how to explain that. You admit culpability when you acknowledge you were traveling in excess of the speed limit (by a lot) and you did it to pass traffic, but does the cop understand that motorcycles and cars just don't mix well, and motorcycles just try to get out of the way? My guess is the roar coming out of the bike between 8-12k is enough to convince the cop that I had no intention of ever slowing back down to 55 (which I do, of course. just not as close to the guy who was on my tail.).

I've done lots of unintentional wheelies trying to get throttle/clutch sorted out, one of them up hill (hills are particularly tough for motorcycles). And then there's that vicious lift in first gear. If you have enough room to wind out first (you don't need a lot, but realize you'll be doing 70 when you want to slow down), the front wheel will come up and stay up if you slip the clutch a little getting in to gear, which you kind of have to do anyways with this bike.

I've ridden it about a hundred miles in two days. I know that it has a lot more to offer me, but I really don't know where its limitations are, whereas they were pretty easy to find on the 250. One huge difference is that rear tire, and I've leaned over further on this bike than I did on the 250, and at higher speeds. The bike felt solid, but I wasn't really comfortable cutting a line around a turn, hard on the throttle, at an angle I wasn't familiar with. So I backed off. It will take a lot of time, I think, to get used to the expanded capabilities of the bike. Right now, I kind of feel like I'm hanging on to some angry beast when I'm on the throttle, and I don't feel as balanced as I like when I get into higher angles of lean than I'm used to.

But then, it's only been two days. Here's to a sunny and dry (if cold) winter.

Faster than a speeding 250!

 

It's nice to have a second bike. Now we can go out together.

My first thought as I opened to WOT the first time was, whoa, shit, I'm not attached to this thing and I'm going to fly off the back! Where's my seatbelt????