And so the day begins

400mg of modafinil, one uber-sized coca cola produced enhanced stimulant beverage (in shiny blue can with lightning bolts! ...or are those flames?), one "horse pill" of mucinex-d, a cepacol lozenge, and a few other unmentionable drugs that make me safe for consumption by coworkers.

This, of course, before I get on the 250 (the 7's clutch is toooooast) and ride out into the gloom of wet and cold.

I heart working for a living. If man had any sense he'd rise up and deny the validity of man governing other men on a planetary scale. But, sniffle, swallow that gobber of snot, and get back in the shower so you at least look presentable, me.

Barton Fink

I'm not sure why I've always been drawn to the Coen Brothers films. I was in love with The Big Lebowski and The Hudsucker Proxy long before I knew who they were. A friend of mine introduced me to Miller's Crossing a while ago and yet again, I found a film that was incredibly compelling, had everything to keep my attention, dialogue, scenery, acting, I mean, it was a complete picture.

Yet, until today I had not yet seen Barton Fink. It's a goddamn masterpiece. To think that this film was "fodder" for Miller's Crossing is absolutely mind-boggling. We should all be so lucky to have such relics in our slush piles.

I am become jealousy, covetous of other writers' works.

A tough decision

short: this doesn't matter to you. it's "inside voice." 

I've been pondering the data in Google Analytics, and I'm not sure what to make of the three top sources of traffic to this site of mine. The most popular page is a rather lengthy article on the ballistics of various high-powered rifle calibers. Following that, a brief missive on futanari (well, I suppose we can expect that), and then two that are kind of surprising to me. About evenly, the third and fourth most popular subjects are broken ribs and suicide. Granted, I've never actually talked about my own suicide, committing or attempted thereof, only its correlation with various other things in life (such as epilepsy, workplace trauma, et cetera). I've talked numerous times about broken ribs because I've had a couple chances to break my own ribs.

The rest if mostly my meandering about software or motorcycles, things like that. They get finite, but not spectacular traffic. And that's mostly a good thing.

It occurs to me, however, that on the suicide pages, I could be using AdWords to display PSAs, and do the same on epilepsy pages. I could also add AdWords to the caliber discussion pages for the NRA-ILA and other similar groups (although I'm not sure how to exclude things like the Brady Campaign from such groupings), and to trauma research nonprofits for the broken-ribs pages.

I don't really want the money, and Moeller once told me he made a few cents here and there from AdWords, but he mostly used it to track traffic. However, if I can turn a small-but-finite number of those views into a small-but-finite number of clicks and thus a small-but-finite number of pennies for said causes, well, isn't that A Good Thing?

However, generally I despise Google. The problem is, they have more ads than I could go out and find on my own (e.g., putting a "click here to donate" img tag at the bottom of a post), and they're better at targeting them (they know the referer[sic], I don't). They also (as I've seen, but not confirmed through their interface) have targeted PSAs.

Patches welcome.

And on a more positive note

What could be more wonderful than friends of yours, both of whom you care deeply for, being in love and getting married? It's such a nice thing to hear after weeks of being sick, a year of ickiness at work and all that other stuff. Congrats, you two. Really.

Ah, the recording industry.

I have the Pulse release on vinyl from Floyd. It's on the list of "cherished stuff." But today when I was checking out their boxed set, Oh By the Way, I notice that there is now a DVD. How, exactly, does one make a DVD from a vinyl box set? If it's a concert, why not call it something different, like they did with Live in Pompeii, or Dave Matthews' Live at Red Rocks?

Bill Hicks once asked an audience, "Are any of you in marketing? Oh? Yeah, okay. Kill yourself."

This sort of thing makes me sad, especially since Gilmour seems to be so passionate about the music, not overly concerned with money, and wanting to leave a legacy for the younger generations (the undertones of death and bodies becoming more fragile are incredibly apparent on On an Island).

One from the list of stuff I thought I'd never have

A raid striped across nine disks, which formatted down to about two terabytes. Half of it's for media (rich or otherwise). The rest, well, nature abhors unused storage. I'll probably start making netboot images, and I know we're certainly going to have virtual machines.

In other news, we're kicking the tires on Leopard Server. Man, this is nice stuff. Last time I used OSX Server was 10.0, and back then it was pretty ... uninspiring. I can't wait to see Snow Leopard. I've even been contemplating putting LS on my Air (silly as that seems, right?) because I like the interface for controlling services so much more. It's like the software understands there's a network out there, and it even wants to be a part of it. And, crucially, it's not anti-Windows.

Oh, and as for cutthroat bitch over there, don't ask. It's a long, long story.

Is breaking a stripe bad luck?

I know you're not supposed to break mirrors, but is it bad luck to break a stripe? I've just finished migrating data from two stripes onto one monolithic (concatenated) volume so I can repartition and restripe across all the volumes from both stripes. Of course, it's terrifying. But wait! Those are my Redundant Arrays!

I hate data migration. Even when we're working with a corporate budget and I have eleventy billion dollars to spend and can spend two weeks with rsync and random file tests and the like, it feels like you always miss something.

Here's hoping.

(for those wondering, I'm building an hfs+j+cs stripe across eight disks for home directories and media storage – we're waiting for snow leopard server to buy Big Storage like one of the LaCie S2S boxes, and hoping that Apple will give us zfs then, and I can do this all over again)

Well, a track suit for less than a thousand dollars.

It looks like Alpinestars makes a 1-piece track suit that should fit me just fine (I have the measuring tape here, and if newenough and kneedraggers have their sizing charts correct, I'll even have room for a kidney belt and better back protector). This is good because I've wanted to track the bike, but all the trackday organizations require that you wear not just leather, but a racing suit with appropriate armor. I suppose that's not unreasonable, but the cost of admission then becomes the bike (depending on where you start; a friend of ours started on a 250 because it's cheaper, but I might want to race my own bike, the ZX7-R, and now you're out more than a few thousand dollars) and the leathers. Add to that tires, brakes, the inevitable new set of fairings, and so on.

But where else are you going to learn how to contain the fury in that sub-one-litre mill? Certainly not on the street. How about tire adhesion? Or how far you can push the brakes before it locks up? With cars, it's pretty easy to take an HPDE. You buy a helmet, maybe a harness, and get a car capable of doing it (well, this last part is optional, but it's a lot more fun in an STI than it is in, say, a Fiesta). That car can and usually is your daily driver. But nobody's asking you to wear a full nomex suit or anything.

At any rate, I'm pleased to see A* has a suit I can wear. Now to get a set of those Pirelli Diablos on the bike, some galfer pads, lines, and rotors, and go to town. I've got all winter to work on the bike, hopefully by the time Summer comes around Summit or VIR will have track days.

Admittedly, I'll look as funny in a track suit as I do in a full wetsuit, but when you're tucked on to the bike, it's pretty hard to tell who "that guy" is.

gonna be nice tomorrow

you've been living in the mid atlantic too long when you look at the weather, see that it's going to be 39°F at 0700 and that there's 0% precip during the day, which will reach about 47°F, and you remark, "hey, cool, it's gonna be nice tomorrow."

so on the bike we go at 0700, across the death trap that is 110, at just-barely-above-freezing weather, to toil in the salt mines, only to do it again at 1700. (hey, wait, isn't that more than eight hours??)

snot

It appears the snot is clearing, after four days of being unable to speak. Lots of soup and theraflu.

On Bikes and IRAs

After checking in on Fidelity this morning, I'm not especially surprised, but the number is significant. At this point, I could have pulled all that money out when it was over a hundred percent ahead (about two years ago), and paid the early-withdrawal and income taxes on it and still be ahead of where I am now. At the moment, I'm torn between pouring a bunch of money back into it, with the hopes that it will recover, pulling it out (it's now worth almost nothing, but would let me buy that nicer bike I want), or just letting it wither to nothing. I suppose losing that entire sum of money is not going to hurt me too much either, and weighing the possibility that it's going to evaporate entirely vs recover to something resembling what it used to be has me leaning on the "probably will recover" side.

But if I ever wanted to pull out all my savings and buy a motorcycle with it, this would be the time, given motorcycles are not going down in value (and indeed will be going up in value in the next few months), and I'm not going to lose any money pulling this out – I'm taking a loss.

heat, use thereof

I metered out about 30ml of the fluid from my pulped habaneros yesterday into 16floz (2c) of vegetable soup. Yes, it was tasty. Yes, it was incredibly spicy. My original thought was, but I like vegetable soup to be spicy. However, this was not really "heroic" or "in the interest of science," any more than laika or the various other test animals throughout history have been either scientists or heroic. It was spicy like crazy. I may step back to 10ml next time I want to add "that habanero flavor" to something.

I've never actually had enough peppers to subtract out the liquid from the flesh before. This year we were "blessed" with something between thirty and fifty peppers (I think some over-enthusiastic bees found our plant, but she continues to bloom and fruit! now that she's been brought inside, so I'm not sure what is going on), so we've been trying to come up with ways to make use of them all. We've also never had the luxury of "pure essence of evilhabanero" distilled into so much water [and bourbon].

The first thought was pizza. Usually that takes 3-4 peppers. And then chili. That takes another 4-5 peppers. Then mac-n-cheese. Another 4 peppers. But between the pizza, chili, and mac-n-cheese, that's like three weeks' worth of food. What do you do with the other twenty peppers on the plant?

I've had to come up with some way to preserve them. Strangely, perhaps fittingly, adding Jack Daniels has proved a pretty good way of doing it until they're needed.



In other news, you know how sometimes you feel better when you eat a bunch of spicy food and you have a cold? Well, sure, even with this "scary goddamn hot" food, I felt better for an hour or two and woke up still feeling awful. So today I shall spend the day rearranging the raids on my mac and moving my iTunes library around. Because if there's anything that accompanies minimal brain functioning, it's complex tasks.



edit: 5ml in a cup-o-noodles is about as much as i can stand, and is indeed pretty decent. ahhh, it burns, but in a good way.

Surplus heat

I have about 200ml of just the fluid from habanero (red savina) peppers. I harvested the crop sitting on the tree at the moment, and blended it, strained it through cheese cloth, and added a couple tablespoons of Jack Daniels' to thwart bugs (I figure whatever is going to be done with it will involve cooking, so the EtOH content is probably negligible; at any rate, it's Gentleman Jack, so it's not so bad). This is wicked, wicked stuff. It's being stored in a corrosion-resistant container – it will destroy standard plastics – but can be easily poured / metered into whatever insane concoction you choose. I am thinking buffalo sauce.

But wait a minute before you get interested.

I also have about eight floz (1 cup) of the actual pulp of 25-30 fully grown peppers. Since they were strained, this is puree, mostly, not minced or diced, and can be added to pico de gallo or whatever. I had about 1/4 teaspoonful just to verify that it wasn't, you know, insane, but that it had indeed retained its spiciness and habanero character. This last bit was kind of a mistake. Yes, it's spicy. There's absolutely nothing I could have done to prepare myself for how spicy it was. I've eaten habaneros – whole – but never have I pureed them and added a solvent (EtOH) to pull the good stuff out, and eaten that. It took a while to get the fury of that stuff out of my mouth/nose/sinuses.

So, anyone who'd like some of either is welcome to them, as I certainly can't use both (we generally use 1-4 chilies per dish, and I've got about thirty here). They'll keep, but don't hold on too long. You know how to reach me.

Well, I guess that answers that...

Apparently, the mujahedeen already hate Obama. This clears up at least one important question. It seems that I'll still have a job in the killing business, despite our new, less-kill-friendly administration.

It should be noticed that the big-eared-one seems to idolize Kennedy, who was, shall we say, a huge fan of ISR. Not the best consumer of it, to be sure, but when you change ISR to C4ISR (&T), you don't really have to send in a quarter of a million troops when PGMs and force teams can get very specific goals accomplished. Maybe we won't have a "bay of pigs" style attack or anything so silly. One can only hope (in this industry, that is), that we see an explosion of spending on intelligence and surveillance to prevent us from getting into nation-sized wars to begin with. Maybe, even, that will be more appealing to the liberal weenies. Can you not see the rationale?

Before, we used to drop bombs indiscriminately[1] on entire cities [ed: presumably, like Fallujah, although forgetting entirely Dresden and Tokyo], and now we send in small groups of men to remove people committing atrocities against freedom [ed: or substitute here, women, minorities, any other group that gets weepy-eyed support from the left-wing] without endangering civilian lives unnecessarily.
– Peacefrond Earth Muffinfart, Berkeley, CA
[1] ask anyone about the difference between a single F-16 using four 250lb SDB's versus an entire strategic bomb wing dropping "sticks" of 500lb bombs and incendiary/HE mixes during all previous conflicts, and they won't understand that this has been the most precise, most bloodless large-scale conflict in history.

Add to this and his promises to make a "green energy economy," the man has the opportunity to create not just the five million jobs he promises for American industry for reforming our energy infrastructure, but by creating new sensors (such as ONIR and higher fidelity OTH and SAR), and by creating jobs for people to analyze and collate that data into strike packages that effectively quell such problems before they become into wars. Have we had a president yet who was not involved in some war or another?

Could this man's legacy be that he did not actually deploy more than 5,000 troops during his entire sixteeneight year presidency? And that he created 10 million jobs in industries that were going to collapse (defense contracting, aerospace, "the big three," energy corporations, and so on)?

Certainly those are the low-hanging fruit. I have a hard time believing he's against reducing the size of the military, although I'd like to see him scrap plans for future CVN's and CVBG's in favor of smaller, more agile, faster-deployable vehicles like the DDX and LCX. And, my favorite, space-based deterrence. You don't gotta bust open a can of Rods From God on a bad guy if you can send their embassies pictures of troops outside their uranium enrichment facilities tying their shoelaces.

And, wait, why is it we're not doing this already? I'm frankly not sure why Bush has not already shown the world the vast superiority of our sensory capability. Maybe because he's worried they'll find new ways to hide. But, if we cut back on spending on the super-warships and ultra-long-range stealth bombers, and focused instead on global rapid precision strikes and global intelligence, I have a hard time seeing even the most recalcitrant former kidnapper prime minister saying "oh these must be doctored. That man has grey hair. We will continue our peaceful uranium enrichment program."

And, lastly, wouldn't this give us what everyone (especially Doug) what they've wanted? That big tall guy in a turban? Yeah, you can see that fucker from space. It's kind of like that movie, Blue Thunder where the silent helicopter is watching chicks getting nekkid outside their apartment, only the silent helicopter is actually a silent space asset and it's 300+ miles above them, seeing through walls, but still seeing nipples and cameltoe. Really.

Speaking of, I have heard no mention of nipples on either side of this debate, or in the first weeks of Bush's lameduckcy or Obama's president-electedness. Where are the boobies? My god man, where are the nipples?

More sick time

I'm pretty sure I've exhausted my "sick time" at this point, although unfortunately, most of this has been to my breaking my knee and doesn't have much to do with my actually being "sick." I've been trying to kick the bug for about a week now, losing time on Monday, and a week from today. I really hate to not be getting the stuff I need done at work, but getting the extra sleep, fluids, theraflu, etc., are helpful.

Lots of soup and juice. That, and another ten hours of sleep have made me feel a little better, and just sucking down theraflu.

As a consequence, we caught up on our Rozen Maiden episodes and UND pilot training (and Anthony Bourdain).

I really wish somebody made a suitable side-stick + throttle + rudder configuration for less than, say, $5,000. All the planes I'm interested in flying are non-yoke, and side-stick just seems like the way things are moving in avionics. But to have to invest $5k plus another $1k for monitors and another video card, plus another $2k in ram to get the Mac (8 procs, but only useful with 16+gb of ram and 2x 512mb video cards and 4 displays) into a sort of "useful" configuration, without really knowing whether it would be worthwhile is kind of a bit steep.

I wonder if there are people in DC with x-plane caves they'd be willing to show off.

a thought on the safety of motor vehicles

I managed to dislocate my shoulder while driving the Subaru home last night. I spun the car on an onramp due to inadvertently thumping the wheel left. This was very dangerous, of course, and risked not only the lives and car of myself and Sandy, but of the other people on the road, one of whom I know and have been talking to about the event. It's a good thing he understands what happens when good joints go bad.

I have long wondered about the safety and practicality of the motorcycles versus the Subaru. I am very hard pressed to find the Subaru actually safer than the motorcycles at this point. When I think about how the same situation would have played out on the bikes, I realize that it would never have happened. Lately, I've been kind of wondering aloud about how easy it was to get back on the motorcycle after my knee broke earlier this year, and how I still have trouble with the car. The answer is that the bike has much less freedom of movement, and while it requires more concentration and more precise (or faster) judgment, it does so without requiring I contort myself into various differing shapes.

I will probably work all these thoughts into something approaching a rant comparing the two (three, four, whatever) vehicles, including why I have this gnarly green bruise on my left leg, but right now the very idea that the bikes are safer than the cars is still kind of torquing my noggin.

amazing

To cope with the added complexity of a system primarily designed to make someone else's life simpler, I am keeping my tps reports in subversion, and managing their "deployment" with software. This is getting ridiculous. I'm now taking more than 5% of my total time at work just writing about working. We have single-handedly reduced the effectiveness of the entire department by 5%; I wonder if we actually gained a finite increase in effectiveness from the new overhead. Frankly, I wonder if the latter is measurable, whereas I know the former is (take forty pennies, put them in a jar, then take out three. how many are left in the jar?).

A sad comment on history.

I used to privately scorn people who said that dilbert resembled their office. Especially when I worked in these offices. Nonsense, I thought. It's funny, but really, dilbert is hyperbole from end to end. And yet, Charlie has the nerve to bust that notion up by mentioning that I was wrong all along.

overwhelmingly:

dont work, just write your fucking

tps reports!

 

You had me at "operator"

Actually, I would have said "omg yes" if you'd just used the word "kwajalein" in a job description. Unfortunately, my RSO experience is not as a range officer for "resident space objects," and even though I have experience with "US military weapons ranges," I suspect Quantico WTBN is not what they had in mind.

Holy crap, it's cold.

It's about 35-37°F today in Northern Virginia, and on the way to work this morning the pen I normally carry with me froze in my pants. When the neck warmer thingie I have shifted slightly, it felt like somebody had poured ice water down my back. It's cold, man.

Doom

It's always been amusing to see people insist that there be better morale among their ranks. Don't be so negative! and Not a team player!, all with the threat of discipline or firing. Yet, hapless managers get stuck in this all the time.

I was just talking to someone who was telling me about the culture in her company, where people are being called in to “talk” about their attitudes. They’re being warned that if morale doesn’t increase, and if their griping doesn’t end, there will be repercussions. I couldn’t make this up.

What is it that I'm reading that these people are not?

exhaustipation

Between working Too Damn Much and having spent several hours on the bike in the rain/cold on Thursday, I've managed to either contract a bug from a friend (who told me he was sick; it's not one of those why-did-you-even-come-in-to-work things) or develop my own strain of ick. I think the combination of sheer exhaustion from work with the addition of unfriendly weather conditions have collided to produce an overwhelming tide of the usual mucosal suspects.

Tried to get out of the house today to see the new Macbooks (I don't know why they haven't been using the word "billet" to describe the new cases), and realized upon getting there – I couldn't breathe – it was just a really bad idea. Also learned that, despite now being able to manage stairs, I can't do "sitting" for  very long. I need to be able to keep my foot up or move my knee around or the knee starts to ache. The bike mostly keeps it in a static, but loaded, position, and I move around a lot more than you'd think on the bike. Maybe not, you know, feet in either direction, but the ups and downs and shifting of weight is enough to make the difference between a sustained ache and the joint actually working sufficiently and without pain. It's a strange sort of injury, that requires the joint to actually be moving and working or it will get inflamed and be painful. Normally, I'm accustomed to the other way around.

And now what?

Will the mujahedeen claim that Obama is propped up by AIPAC and "the jews" in their continued violence on the US and the West At Large? I suppose it's possible they will stop. Obama has said, of course, that he wants us out of Iraq RFN, but will that actually reduce the attacks on the West? Will there be some new cause brought up, like "centuries of oppression," or "hedonistic lifestyles," to fight against?

It seems unlikely that even "regime change" here, and in the UK (both of which are underway, of course) is going to result in the sea change we seem to be attempting to effect elsewhere with regime change.

I am simply curious which cause people will rally behind for hatred now that we have a "minoritally enhanced" executive, a liberal majority in the congress, and we're, apparently, trying to change.

It's also kind of funny that Obama had his own little beerhall putsch with its incrementally small donations to an ambiguous movement of change.

Two kinds of management

Management A:

We're not really having any problems or missing any deadlines. You see, we have some shitty employees working for us, and as soon as we get rid of those lazy bastards, and get some real bright people in here, we'll turn this sinking ship around.

Yes, that was marvelous work done over the weekend. It required seventy man-hours of the people who work for me, and if I hadn't provided that excellent leadership on Friday night before going home, we wouldn't be having this discussion today.

Management B:

We're struggling with a number of issues right now. Primarily, we don't have enough employees, and the employees we have aren't paid enough. Increasing the budget for salary will allow us to hire new employees who are more skilled to begin with, as well as to train and retain the employees we have on board. Secondarily, decisions which have been made without our guidance or against our advice are costing us time, and the company money.

Over the weekend, we had a substantial outage, during which employees A, B, and C came in to the office and worked substantial hours through the night and away from their families to restore functionality. It is only through their hard work that we were able to return to business on Monday morning unaffected.

Who would you rather work for? Young, incompetent managers are terrified of people seeing them for being the incompetent buffoons they are, and rather than prop up their employees to improve their own image, they point the finger away from themselves, and blame their employees for their own failings. Unfortunately, this is a vicious cycle, as by blaming his employees, the manager never learns or admits to their own failings.

Better managers, although not always older (I've met at least one very good, young manager), understand that their job is to manage and without their employees, they are nothing. It is always in the interest of a manager to help their employee, even when they are beholden to their own managers. To do otherwise is cowardice and unproductive.

If you are a manager, and there's a bad employee on your team, you don't need to be the one telling the world about it. The chances are very good that people will come to you and say, "manager, why are employees A, B, and C so terrible?" However, if somebody comes to you and says, "manager, why are you not getting your job done?" The answer is never "because my employees suck."

The human optimist in me wants to say that this dichotomy arises from a lack of training in management, and not because of flaws in human character. However, I have met enough of these cancers to know that they do get together and metastasize and choke the life out of organizations, of entire departments, and of individuals. They are terrified that people may see the flaws they have, and do not believe they are redeemable – or they would be trying to improve, rather than shift blame – and so will throw anyone under the bus to prevent others from seeing what they see in themselves.

Sick, people. Sick. Why you folks get into management is beyond me.

passive aggression

I find it amazing how hard people will try to go out of their way to not get in touch with you when they're "supposed to be." For example, you've called your sister about her part in your wedding, and she is pretty vexed about the whole thing. So she'll wait a day or two (which is reasonable) and then send you a brief email that says "hey, let me get right back to you on that." Then, when you're clearly asleep or away from your phone or otherwise indisposed, leave a voicemail that genuinely appears to care about the whole situation. Of course, this is followed by a testy email that says, "well, I called you, but you weren't there." This can go on for weeks. It's amazing to watch just how far they'll go, what methods they'll employ, to reach you when they know you cannot be reached. Like leaving a note in your mailbox. Or not answering when it's them on caller ID.

I have no idea what to do with these people. That's the whole point of passive aggression. I just wish I didn't have so many of these people in my life.

Notes on riding

This is a really, really long post. It's not intended to be a "post" as such. Rather, I want to share some of the things I've learned, and leave some notes for myself on the things I need to work on. I intend to edit it as I learn more, and I suspect people will comment (please, actually), and either correct me, or give me pointers.

So skip this if you don't ride. If you're new to the bike, consider that I've only been riding a season, and there are better sources than me. But I think this is reasonable information and it may help. Knowing what I am trying to improve on might also give you some ideas about how to improve your riding.

Things I've learned on the bikes (riding) or from others.

1. Cagers don't know that you're soft and fragile. To them, if they smack a jersey wall at 80mph, they're going to be okay. You might be a smear. You may not die this time, you may not die next time, but people on bikes die all the time. Usually it's not the biker's fault, but you're just as dead.

2. The gear you buy to "pass" the msf class is shitty. It really, really is. see, that "first shop" wants to sell you, and you're a sucker at that point, unless you can shell out top dollar for Dainese or whatever. Consider this wasted money. You will replace all of it. Oh, and you will always be buying gear. You'll rip your gloves (or just wear them out), you'll realize you want stronger armor in your jacket, you'll want a warmer pair of pants or gloves, and so on. You are always buying gear. This is expensive. Consider it punishment for those $10 tanks of gas.

3. A 250 ninja will power wheelie on a hard 1-2 shift. You won't expect it. It will happen. The important thing is, don't panic. What do we learn here? Even little bikes, that are supposed to be friendly to beginners, have such a serious power to weight ratio that they will, when provoked, do things that are very dangerous to beginners. Sometimes this happens in traffic. Every cubic centimeter (or inch, for you cruiser tools) you add to the equation, this gets more true. My 750 will do insane things on hard 1-2, 2-3, and 4-3 shifts. You don't gotta be maximum effort, all the time, even though it feels like you have to because the cagers are trying to kill you. Keep cool, you'll wind up in front, and you don't gotta do it on one wheel.

4. The two most important pieces of gear I own are my neck warmer (military thermals polypropylene; a wool scarf works just as well, but is thicker) and my RevIt! gloves. I didn't know this when I started riding, and I bought cheap gloves and was freezing on the bike. You might not think that 50F is cold, and really, it's not. But, when you get up to 70mph, your knuckles will be really cold, and air has a tendency to get up under your chin and around your ears, and it totally sucks. I live in the mid-atlantic, so ymmv in California or whatever. Oh, and I have a pair of Sidi Doha's. My god, I love these shoes. I've stopped wearing sneakers. I either wear "work shoes" or the Dohas unless I'm hiking or it's obscenely wet out. They're not the best protection out there, but for the money, and comfort, and marginal support, they just can't be beat. Sidi is, in my opinion, the best boot out there.

5. People in cars, for some reason, expect you to be speeding, especially if you own a supersport. This is not a reason to speed. Stay within reasonable range of the speed limits and let them move around you, but if they're being unsafe (following too close, boxing you in, etc), you have enough power to get out of an unsafe situation. Do so. I usually just change a lane to the right, wave them forward with the clutch hand, and they get moving to wherever they're urgently going to.

6. In a car, you can do a 4-2 downshift in a turn and smash the throttle. On a bike, you will drop it. Don't do this. You need to know the right gear for the turn, going into the turn. If you're coming from a manual transmission in the car, this is unintuitive, especially if you drive a monster (300+hp). On the bike, however, you have to consider this: what gear do I want, coming out of this turn? If you can go into the turn in 2, and keep adequate throttle and lean, but you unsettle the bike by having to shift 2-3 as you exit the turn, you're better off going into the turn in 3, and pressing just as hard. You'll have more control, and coming out of the turn, you'll be ready for anything you need to do, speed wise. But, of course, we're not trying to be coming out of turns at 110 mph on the street, right?

7. You can hang off the bike, you can lean, you can do both. It's usually better to pick one or the other. Just remember you're not trying to prove anything, you're riding on public streets. Nobody cares how far down your knee goes, and the people in the cars around you will probably be scared of that crazy motorcyclist who thinks he's Valentino-fucking-Rossi on city streets or freeways or whatever. Note, also, that both of these are perilous. Lean too hard on the throttle, you're lowsided the second you hit a patch of bad traction. Hanging off the bike keeps the bike more upright, theoretically giving you more traction and resisting the sort of low-side stuff, but you're also a lot closer to the ground, and you really don't want to hit the ground knee-first. Furthermore, you don't want to have to correct your lean angle when you're also hanging off the bike because it leans really, really, quickly, and your radius decreases so fast you are damn near guaranteed to find yourself in a different lane – or smacking somebody's door.

8. Your helmet is important. This is a truism, and we all know it. When I started riding the 7, and tucking down under the bubble, it changed the angle of my face in the helmet, and it no longer fit as well. My chin was pressed against the lower piece of the helmet. I'd break my jaw in any kind of fall. So, when you buy a helmet, if you can, put yourself on the bike you ride, and make sure that it feels right the way you'll be wearing it, more than just in the store. An example of this is Arai helmets being a little more "oval" shaped (longer front-to-back than ear-to-ear) whereas the HJCs and Shoeis are much more round.

What are the things I most need to work on as a rider?

1. I really need to work on my posture. My arms and wrists get tired because I forget that my legs, abdomen, and back can actually hold me to the bike, especially at low speed, and I can have a near feather-touch on the controls, yet still maintain control of the bike. When it's moving, it wants to stay up, so you can relax your arms a bit (and if you don't, it doesn't feel good). Of course, with weight transfer (braking, suspension load like turning), you put a lot more pressure on the bars. This, you gotta live with.

2. Similar to posture, I really need to get my "tuck" figured out. The first thing I learned was counter-intuitive. When it was really cold here, I wanted out of the wind, so I tucked down under the bubble, brought my arms in, and grabbed that tank with my legs as tight as I could. The intuition is if you're trying to tuck out of the wind stream, you keep your jaw parallel with the tank, and "look forward." This is incredibly tiring on your neck. Guess what. You can actually "look down." You can point the chin of your helmet down to the tank (that is, perpendicularly), and use your eyes, rather than your whole neck, to look through your visor. You'll get lower, there is less buffeting, and as far as I know this is the way to do it. The MSF people of course never tell you how to tuck into a superbike.

3. I need to follow further from cars. RIDE magazine explained it this way. If you follow closely, if you want to overtake, you must tap down, say, two gears (4-2 or 5-3), quickly come out to the lane you're overtaking in, and hope there's no traffic there. Usually you have enough power to make the pass, but it's dangerous, and you wind up with several large weight transitions and suspension loadings. Instead, follow further away, and use a single downshift to accelerate to the point when you're ready to overtake, and pull gently ahead, rather than be "that biker" who passes at 12k and swerves into the lane, rather than changing lanes. Following further back also lets you see further ahead in the oncoming lanes. Lastly, and this is obvious, it gives you more room to brake. I have read stories of people that intentionally lowsided their bike to avoid hitting the rear of a vehicle with their head. Two things wrong here. First, you can out-brake a car, but if you're making this decision, you're way too close, and you probably don't know how to handle a bike with a locked front wheel (hey, this ain't any fun, so I'm not going to complain about this). But bikes also move very, very quickly, and avoiding is almost always going to be better than a seriously hard brake, or, heaven forbid, lowsiding the bike (no, I've never dropped any of my bikes). I follow more closely because I'm accustomed to doing it in cars.

4. I need to work on clutching. I ride with two fingers on the brake, and two on the clutch. Usually, I make pretty reasonable shifts, but occasionally, I have let off the clutch too much when the gear engages and I get that awful "stack of quarters in a blender" sound. This can't be good for the transmission, and I really don't want to buy a new one. The other problem of course is a really hard shift (even perfectly executed) in an up- or down-shift (on my 750, this is 4-3, 3-2, 2-1, and 1-2, 2-3, and sometimes 3-4), say, switching from 13,000rpm and dumping down to 9,000rpm, the bike comes up. It really, seriously, wheelies. I'm nowhere near experienced enough to handle this situation, and it's unexpected. I usually make shifts like this because I'm afraid of what traffic is doing near me. Add fear to the equation, and it's a seriously dangerous situation. Merging on one wheel at 90+mph is not necessary.

5. Speaking of high speeds, I have a hard time keeping track of my speedo/tacho and where I'm going. When I look down, I take my eyes off the road, and a lot of things can happen in a third of a second on a bike. This, I am told, comes with time. You get a feeling for the rpm of the bike, and how fast you're going. I've got this absolutely down in both my cars (both beasts), but that came after years of experience. With the 750, and even the 250 (which I've had my own hairy moments on) I'm just not experienced enough to know what rpm I'm at without looking, and can't tell from the exhaust note, other than "yup, fast." This is how those really hard shifts happen, and I accidentally get up above 70mph. I need to lock this down or I'm going to get a serious ticket, or hurt myself pretty good.

6. I need to get the bike on the track. With a superbike, you can't even scratch the surface of its performance on the street. There might be a few places in your area where you can drag a knee or really get leaned over on the throttle (and I have my own favorite spots, don't get me wrong), but if I'm going to be perfectly honest, I have no idea whatsoever what the limits of the bike are. I have no idea how far it can lean without falling over. I have no idea how much rear brake I can use before it locks (or the fronts). I don't know how it works at speeds > 120mph (yes, I had one excursion up to 120; I've been to 180 in cars, but that's a real different situation). Wind is really, really serious at those speeds, and I need to know what to expect.

7. Ride, ride, ride, ride. I ride every single day (I've missed three days on the 7 since we got it), and yet just yesterday I was really surprised how much of a difference a full tank of gas changed the handling of the bike. To be fair, I'd spend 75 minutes in traffic, and it was a totally different situation to pull out of an intersection and accelerate up to 45, but it's inexcusable to be surprised by simple things like this. By correlation, the bike behaves very different when the tank is empty, and I haven't noticed this, either. So, all I can do is ride. As much as I can. I don't need to necessarily push or challenge myself, but every mile I ride on the bike is one mile I am more familiar with it. It also helps me learn which gears are right for a given turn. I try to ride a lot in my local area. I also use Google Earth to plan routes that challenge me. I turn on weather, traffic, and topo, and try to find curvy roads with elevation in wooded areas, areas of traffic, and areas of higher speed, and I try to get all of these on one ride. Maybe 75 miles. It's pushing myself a little bit, but I'm not being timed, I'm just trying to get more familiar with the bike.

8. Find people to ride with and learn from. You probably know people to ride. Are they the right people to ride with? Almost all of us know a guy on an R1 that thinks doing 150 in the HOV lane is a great way to get into the office. Then there's the guy that thinks every turn should be taken at maximum lean. And the guy that likes wheelies. And so on. I need to find riders I can trust, and ride with them. My hope is to ride with them in front, and behind, so we can feedback on what we're doing or not doing, and just have an open dialogue about riding. This may take time, but it's really hard to learn in a vacuum.

9. Term life insurance. Hey, you don't want it to happen, but it's cheap when you're young, and gosh, if "it" happens, there are going to be some hurting people left behind.

Oh, one more thing

For the curious, we've been running 100% on Leopard Server for the last couple weeks or so. Painless transition. I guess we need to wait for Snow Leopard to get ZFS support, but that's okay. I think we're going to pick up a pair of those $100 terabyte drives, stuff em in our two free bays, consolidate some stuff, and then reinitialize six or seven disks into a single ZOMG ZFS pool. Neato.

And as soon as we get 16gb of ram in that poor machine, I'll finally have my virtual Veesta machine so I can run Windows Office for Outlook (no, we don't get Outlook on the Mac, and that means I can't do all the calendaring shit the PC folks can, among other things).

Plans for the weekend

short: bikes!

I have been so burned out at work that I literally don't know what to do with weekends. I wake up on Saturday at 0600, ready to head in to the office at 0700, and can't shake the feeling, all day long, that I'm somehow late for work, or that I'm playing hooky or something.

However, I think tomorrow I will wash and wax the Ninja (the 7) because it is positively filthy from this rain and all the riding it's been getting (we've gone down from an average of 40 miles a day to about 15; most of this is done as pleasure riding, as my commute is just under three miles). I should really check the tire pressure, too, as I haven't checked that in a while. The bike has been absolutely a bear to drive in DC traffic (I make the commute from Key bridge to .. whatever that road is through Georgetown to 33rd, to Wisconsin (or something like that, I forget the order). But there's a lot of sitting in traffic, a lot of sitting stopped on a hill and slipping the clutch to get the thing moving. Heat soak kills the poor thing. When it's that hot, it stalls a lot easier, and it seems that even when the fan comes on, it doesn't do enough. I'm concerned enough that I may look into an aftermarket radiator (tough, as the one on the 7 is curved; I can't just go buy a Griffin. However, a better oil cooler may help too, and that's simple). Since the coolant is 50/50 water/glycol, I may make that more like 75/25 or less, since the bike is never parked outside a garage.

Going to also have a look at the rear brake, which seems to fade on me a lot. I know, I know, you're not supposed to use the rear that much, but the front brakes are insane on the 7, and all the weight is up front. Add to that, my weight is enough that the weight transfer of me to the front of the bike loads the front suspension and she stops, quick. I haven't locked the front yet on the 7, but I've done it on the 250, and that sucked a lot. The 7 weighs over 200lbs more, and, well, has a tendency to go a lot faster than the two fiddie.

While there, I'll have a look at the pads up front, too. Galfer makes front rotors that look like they'd resist fade (not a problem on the front) but the compound is also better (again, not really a problem, but if the OEM stuff is ready to be replaced, I am not sure I want to go with kawi parts).

If I have time, I'm going to see if I can have a look at the "emissions control hack" and see if I can properly set up the suspension (adjustable coilover for suspension travel). I've been having substantial testicular poundage on the bike when going over seams, potholes, manhole covers, etc., in the road. I mostly now stand on the pegs going over these, but I'm concerned the local 5-0 are going to see this as stunting or something and pull me over. Because, really, dudes on sportbikes in black leathers are evil, right? Who do they think they are? Batman?

But that's a lot of work for two days and Colin may need me for that sprocket/chain job. On the other hand, if we get the chain and sprocket done, having extra hands makes the rest pretty easy.

Folks, it's not goddamned hard.

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Why did I have to un-fuck my xorg.conf when it was WORKING FINE before the intrepid upgrade? Granted, I'm pleased with KDE4.1, but, please, DONT FUCKING BREAK X when I upgrade. For fuck's sake, people.

A gentle reminder to my friends across the Atlantic.

Dear Amazon.co.uk,

Please stop sending me emails recommending Neal Fucking Asher. I reviewed the one book of his, giving it the lowest possible rating, and wrote a review here, and on your site, saying it was one of the worst books, in-genre, that I'd ever read. So, I think it's fair to say that I have asked politely that you stop fucking recommending his books to me.

On the other hand, you seem to be rather good about recommending me Stephen Baxter (although his "Solaris Book of New Science Fiction" seems kinda dodgy – but I might wind up in such a place one day, so I don't want to throw stones), Tony Ballantine (who is pretty good to "good"), and authors I don't know about, like James P. Hogan.

The same, by the way, goes for Chris Moriarty. Don't send me any more recommendations, notes that "I'll like" his books; the last book of his I read I literally became so disgusted with that I threw it across the room (where it still sits) and said, "no fucking way am I even going to finish it" – a courtesy I did give Asher.

This isn't hard to figure out, and I could write a better algorithm asleep after a fifth of whisky than the one you're using to make recommendations. Richard Morgan, of course, has a new book out, Matter has probably made it to paperback, and Charlie Stross has a bevy of new books out. And, hey, I buy those books from you, pay you with obscene quantities of my worthless dollars (I might as well be spending dinars or pesos), and pay the horrendous rates to ship them across the Atlantic, because the copies we get here suck. (I'm sure Peter Hamilton has published the second installment of The Void Trilogy, but I'm not sure I'm going to read it) So it's not as if it's unclear who and what I read, and Asher ain't fucking it.

Okay?

Yours most sincerely,

Alex

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