20 December, 2009
18 December, 2009
I'd like one of these for christmas, in case anyone was, you know, pondering. also willing to accept on chinese new year.
Motorcycles reconsidered via restructuring the questions.
We all love to curse about cagers and that guy that was morbidly obese and holding his cell phone between his enormous neck and his shoulder, eating fries with one hand, and one finger on the wheel from the other hand, due to the other digits being used to pick his nose. Or something.
The automatic retort we get from cagers is "do you know how dangerous motorcycles are?" The answer is that yes, anyone who rides has been terrified at least once, usually in the last month, while somebody did something particularly obnoxious or dangerous in a cage. So, yes, the cagers are the problem, I think we agree. But instead of identifying a problem, let's examine the details so we can have some perspective.
The guy is driving a 6,000lb thundercage from a factory in alabama somewhere and has giant super-swamper tires on the vehicle. He has double-wide mirrors from which to ignore you. The truth is, in any kind of confrontation in which you cannot tap down two gears and burn ass down the road quickly enough, the nose-picker wins. Every damn time. You're paste on a jersey wall and he may not even notice he's killed you. So let us examine why this happens.
Basically while he is an amorphous mound of fetid humanity, he has the benefit of 6,000lbs of metals and polymers protecting him from you. You may have very fancy leathers, even airbag-deploying leathers, the best goddamn helmet you can buy, elbow, neck, knee, ass, and back CE shielding, but the bike is both your best friend (in the case that you escape on one wheel rising up to 140mph away from the thundercage) and your worst enemy (in the case that it actually adds, in the case of a high side and some low side accidents, to the tonnage that is going to emulsify you with careful handfuls of cement and asphalt).
In addition to armor you may be wearing (and remember, kids, it's "all the gear, all the time."), you are your own cage, stupid. It's just a lot smaller and more fragile than the thundercage.
So in addition to riding, which really helps one stay fit, one should work on making sure they have a sturdy cage. You need to work on very important muscles that control your posture and will help you in a fall. That probably means that in order to ride at the peak of your ability, you need to be doing a routine, just as any athlete would. You may already be doing this via a regimen you took up to keep yourself, uh, prettier in the mirror (or?). But think specifically about strengthening your abdomen and lats/traps as well as quads, hams, and calves. Integrate a lot of stretching into your workout so that you can indeed hang off the bike like a dog out a window if you have to.
And, in the end, what this provides you is a force multiplier for your armor and for any safety features on the bike. The bike is still a win, but only if your cage is sturdy enough to handle being thrown at a wall at 60mph, or sliding 100ft on asphalt. If you haven't done either of these things, I humbly submit that these are much harder things to accomplish than you might think. Regardless of your leathers and armor.
The automatic retort we get from cagers is "do you know how dangerous motorcycles are?" The answer is that yes, anyone who rides has been terrified at least once, usually in the last month, while somebody did something particularly obnoxious or dangerous in a cage. So, yes, the cagers are the problem, I think we agree. But instead of identifying a problem, let's examine the details so we can have some perspective.
The guy is driving a 6,000lb thundercage from a factory in alabama somewhere and has giant super-swamper tires on the vehicle. He has double-wide mirrors from which to ignore you. The truth is, in any kind of confrontation in which you cannot tap down two gears and burn ass down the road quickly enough, the nose-picker wins. Every damn time. You're paste on a jersey wall and he may not even notice he's killed you. So let us examine why this happens.
Basically while he is an amorphous mound of fetid humanity, he has the benefit of 6,000lbs of metals and polymers protecting him from you. You may have very fancy leathers, even airbag-deploying leathers, the best goddamn helmet you can buy, elbow, neck, knee, ass, and back CE shielding, but the bike is both your best friend (in the case that you escape on one wheel rising up to 140mph away from the thundercage) and your worst enemy (in the case that it actually adds, in the case of a high side and some low side accidents, to the tonnage that is going to emulsify you with careful handfuls of cement and asphalt).
In addition to armor you may be wearing (and remember, kids, it's "all the gear, all the time."), you are your own cage, stupid. It's just a lot smaller and more fragile than the thundercage.
So in addition to riding, which really helps one stay fit, one should work on making sure they have a sturdy cage. You need to work on very important muscles that control your posture and will help you in a fall. That probably means that in order to ride at the peak of your ability, you need to be doing a routine, just as any athlete would. You may already be doing this via a regimen you took up to keep yourself, uh, prettier in the mirror (or?). But think specifically about strengthening your abdomen and lats/traps as well as quads, hams, and calves. Integrate a lot of stretching into your workout so that you can indeed hang off the bike like a dog out a window if you have to.
And, in the end, what this provides you is a force multiplier for your armor and for any safety features on the bike. The bike is still a win, but only if your cage is sturdy enough to handle being thrown at a wall at 60mph, or sliding 100ft on asphalt. If you haven't done either of these things, I humbly submit that these are much harder things to accomplish than you might think. Regardless of your leathers and armor.
I so admire Jane's view on the world.
She's just spot-on again. And really, there are people I like reading, but it's something more here.
Wow! Typing recovering!
I am now approaching the speed and accuracy of touch-typing I had before The Big Fuckup of 09.
Oh look! Is dat some IP there?
yes, i am tired and foolish. i do not know what friday holds. but i just bumped a bunch of shit into the skeleton of SFR. can't wait for the meat.
A big bunch of nerve spew forthcoming.
Without going into details, I've had a really rough month or so, culminating in a severe neurological, ahem, incident. I am just now compiling the things I've been thinking about in a discontiguous blob, asynchronously not always to my advantage. So I mostly codify where I can, expand where I can, and this means that there are probably between 3,000 and 10,000 words (figure, twenty and forty-five minutes of reading, respectively). I can't promise it's actually useful to anyone, but as they say, may you live in interesting times. I can only qualify it thus, that it will be interesting. Note that in this context, "interesting" is a curse. So it's probably not going to be pretty. But then, it never really is.
Just wanted to sort of beep at the rest of my group of peers & friends. I has a keyboard and manifest notebooks with scrawlings thereon.
Just wanted to sort of beep at the rest of my group of peers & friends. I has a keyboard and manifest notebooks with scrawlings thereon.
16 December, 2009
hopes from a cursed year
- a new pair of oakleys.
- some of the newer, smaller-me denim of proper origin.
- another, thicker, and longer, scarf.
- a set of sways, bushings, and springs for the sti, from eibach. (the whitelines are cooler, sure, but the eibachs are great and a whole lot less)
- new monogrammed pencils & pens for the sfr staff (to include me :( ).
- some friendly monetary gifts or investments in spun.
- a holster for my 1911.
- bjarke ingalls group looking over my own designs for a renewable hangar with exhaust exits, plane storage and rotation, offices, and a small area for overnight stays. (big.dk)
- more books from my favorite authors and prettier book shelves to keep the books on.
- a single, edible and not-unpleasant tasting, device to give me all of my drogas diarios in a single, maybe muffin-sized fluffy prescription goodness. po is so old fashioned, ya know?
13 December, 2009
A follow-up to an old post of my own
It would appear that more people than solely myself have noticed the epilepsy-suicide-bipolar-or-major-depression comorbidity. The latter study points out that among folks with bipolar disorder, four percent of them attempt suicide in a given year. That's terrifying if you think how many people that is, and how little is actually done to prevent it.
09 December, 2009
Minus the details (but still overly long)
short: where has teh alex been for all this time? why is he cranky, not returning emails or phone calls, and sleeping twenty hours a day? It's all right here. If you dare. I wouldn't. There are some fairly cool links throughout if you're the type to try to learn from the interwebs.
It is easiest simply to say that a week ago I experienced something very like a stroke, on my right side, and was admitted to the hospital (VHC) for observations and more tests. Like every neurological event I've ever had, all the results from EEG, PET, CT, MRI, ECG, were all normal. They kept complaining about my "pulse-ox" (I don't know what that's actually called) hovering about 88-89, which is normal for me. I don't breathe very deeply, and I don't breathe very often. It's just how I'm built. So, left to my own devices, my blood is not incredibly oxygenated unless I'm working hard on something (to include thinking hard about something; the latter is usually harder on my body than physical exercise for the same period of time). The last blood pressure reading they took before releasing me was 117/70. So, while I am a bit overweight, I'm not the least bit worried because, apparently, I'm the picture of health.
Except that little stroke thing. My neurologist has asked that I come back for a "nerve test" (he did not use any other term for this; I can only think EEG or EKG — which I've had — but maybe he has something in his neurologist toolkit I haven't seen (hardly). That's tomorrow.
As for now I am mostly back to normal, trying to get exercises done and stretching to stick to the PT regimen, though I have missed a set of routine toradol injections, and one session of PT. My arm and hand are working again. Writing is a bit of a chore as the "pads" (the area used in a fingerprint) of my fingers alternate between "pins and needles" and "numb", as though I had a blood problem in my brachial artery or something. This has, according to ER staff, been ruled out, but I've also been told I should start thinking of myself as a heart patient and do the possibly-effective 85mg of aspirin a day, but again, my pulse is rarely over 70, my BP almost never exceeds 130/80 (migraines).
The doctors fiddled with my "normal" meds (mostly stuff for headaches and myrecent back injury) and told me that "stress" had caused the event. Well, if the MD could just write me an Rx for $85k, I'd be a happy camper and probably be a lot less stressed. But as it is right now, I am not even sure I could go back to being the Unix Samurai on duty because of the injuries both to my head and the rest of my body. So, taking stress out of this is hard to do, and I am getting SAFT (notice I've been using the term for a very long time, but I think the author of that definition or discussion has a fair claim on "coining" it as the jargon and other "lingo" or "vernacular" sites/lexicons don't have it, really) of these "surprise!" neurological events.
To deal with some of the pain in my back (my very upper lats, just underneath my scapula, and just above my sacrum on either side of my spine — which is actually the location of a broken vertebrae), I have been using a TENS unit which seems to work fairly well. It's really not unlike having a taser zap me continuously for about thirty minutes at a time to desensitize nerves that are screaming that I should really not be walking around the Udvar-Hazy center, when really, people should be required to do so:
My long time friend Colin (who can recite Ezekiel 25:1 in lolcat speak!) and I looked at the Enola Gay, and had a discussion on the aircraft. To behold it from the second story, you kind of get a picture of how enormous the vehicle it is from up there, and you can see the clearance between the props (yep, no BUFFs back then), the colossal wingspan, and just how beautiful a plane it is. We took the stairs to have a look at it from below (mind you, I see this very aircraft 2-3 times a year, sometimes more, because the Udvar-Hazy annex to si.edu is kind of like a calling to Mecca/Makkah to me). It really does touch the soul to see the work of humanity to defy gravity and defy the air, tame it, blaze trails into space, and the ingenuity that goes into the infinitude of engine configurations…I'll stop now.) and you are again struck by just how enormous this bird is, but how meticulously she was cleaned before being put away and how shiny she looks with her, ahem, checkered past. It's very hard to separate an absolutely beautiful aircraft with a similar great name, Enola Gay (which would even make a great name for a boat) from the horror of what she wrought on Japan. In Burrows' work, Deep Black and in Schell's The Fate of the Earth, no fewer than a million casualties were wrought between both bombs, and while we are staring at this beautiful, strikingly feminine-appearing B-29, Enola Gay (picture above via Flickr via afagen and Creative Commons license) it is impossible to extricate the million or so people who were vaporized, poisoned, or otherwise very rudely and painfully killed. This is not to say whether the decision was right or wrong (most people don't know that the insane general Curtis LeMay — I keep wanting to write a counterfactual short story about this fucking tool of a man — actually suggested "warning" the Japanese by detonating a "trinity"-sized weapon over Tokyo Bay. Doubtless, there would have been large casualties, but perhaps LeMay himself might have cut the war short.
At any rate, I have digressed because the subject of the aircraft, its mission, its aesthetic, the men who designed and flew it, the men who designed and built the "gadgets" which the Enola Gay and what could be called her "sister in crime," Boxscar which was similar incidentally to the byeman name (actually OXCART) of the later SR-71, A-12 — especially in this case, which the Agency referred to as "Archangel", "Avenger", "Black Shield", and of course the "official" but not as, you know, fear of death inspiring: OXCART — but the CIA A-12 program was scrapped for SR-71's. The final part of the strategic reconaissance conflagration, was the D-21 drone, which was clever, until you realized it was a great way to kill pilots and break very expensive plaines. Anyways, this digression is just for the (very) for the curious. Sometimes, it seems that these byeman names aren't chosen as randomly as they are supposed to be, and it's not uncommon to hear flights of long-range bombers flying out of Nellis with the callsign "Death." Flash-Video-Container link, but relevant quote is thus:
I really have no idea how all this stuff came together into one huge post other than to say that I've sustained a brain injury (another…) and it all kind of made sense as I traipsed from a stroke to the Enola Gay to Mojave to the Boxscar to OXCART, Byeman Names (which nobody even seems to know the name of — the naming process, not the names themselves) and so on. The D-21 is kind of a sad moment in this great bird's history. I'll be posting a comparatively large update to Spun, as we had a board meeting this week and have some interesting new design ideas. More vegetables.
It is easiest simply to say that a week ago I experienced something very like a stroke, on my right side, and was admitted to the hospital (VHC) for observations and more tests. Like every neurological event I've ever had, all the results from EEG, PET, CT, MRI, ECG, were all normal. They kept complaining about my "pulse-ox" (I don't know what that's actually called) hovering about 88-89, which is normal for me. I don't breathe very deeply, and I don't breathe very often. It's just how I'm built. So, left to my own devices, my blood is not incredibly oxygenated unless I'm working hard on something (to include thinking hard about something; the latter is usually harder on my body than physical exercise for the same period of time). The last blood pressure reading they took before releasing me was 117/70. So, while I am a bit overweight, I'm not the least bit worried because, apparently, I'm the picture of health.
Except that little stroke thing. My neurologist has asked that I come back for a "nerve test" (he did not use any other term for this; I can only think EEG or EKG — which I've had — but maybe he has something in his neurologist toolkit I haven't seen (hardly). That's tomorrow.
As for now I am mostly back to normal, trying to get exercises done and stretching to stick to the PT regimen, though I have missed a set of routine toradol injections, and one session of PT. My arm and hand are working again. Writing is a bit of a chore as the "pads" (the area used in a fingerprint) of my fingers alternate between "pins and needles" and "numb", as though I had a blood problem in my brachial artery or something. This has, according to ER staff, been ruled out, but I've also been told I should start thinking of myself as a heart patient and do the possibly-effective 85mg of aspirin a day, but again, my pulse is rarely over 70, my BP almost never exceeds 130/80 (migraines).
The doctors fiddled with my "normal" meds (mostly stuff for headaches and my
To deal with some of the pain in my back (my very upper lats, just underneath my scapula, and just above my sacrum on either side of my spine — which is actually the location of a broken vertebrae), I have been using a TENS unit which seems to work fairly well. It's really not unlike having a taser zap me continuously for about thirty minutes at a time to desensitize nerves that are screaming that I should really not be walking around the Udvar-Hazy center, when really, people should be required to do so:
My long time friend Colin (who can recite Ezekiel 25:1 in lolcat speak!) and I looked at the Enola Gay, and had a discussion on the aircraft. To behold it from the second story, you kind of get a picture of how enormous the vehicle it is from up there, and you can see the clearance between the props (yep, no BUFFs back then), the colossal wingspan, and just how beautiful a plane it is. We took the stairs to have a look at it from below (mind you, I see this very aircraft 2-3 times a year, sometimes more, because the Udvar-Hazy annex to si.edu is kind of like a calling to Mecca/Makkah to me). It really does touch the soul to see the work of humanity to defy gravity and defy the air, tame it, blaze trails into space, and the ingenuity that goes into the infinitude of engine configurations…I'll stop now.) and you are again struck by just how enormous this bird is, but how meticulously she was cleaned before being put away and how shiny she looks with her, ahem, checkered past. It's very hard to separate an absolutely beautiful aircraft with a similar great name, Enola Gay (which would even make a great name for a boat) from the horror of what she wrought on Japan. In Burrows' work, Deep Black and in Schell's The Fate of the Earth, no fewer than a million casualties were wrought between both bombs, and while we are staring at this beautiful, strikingly feminine-appearing B-29, Enola Gay (picture above via Flickr via afagen and Creative Commons license) it is impossible to extricate the million or so people who were vaporized, poisoned, or otherwise very rudely and painfully killed. This is not to say whether the decision was right or wrong (most people don't know that the insane general Curtis LeMay — I keep wanting to write a counterfactual short story about this fucking tool of a man — actually suggested "warning" the Japanese by detonating a "trinity"-sized weapon over Tokyo Bay. Doubtless, there would have been large casualties, but perhaps LeMay himself might have cut the war short.At any rate, I have digressed because the subject of the aircraft, its mission, its aesthetic, the men who designed and flew it, the men who designed and built the "gadgets" which the Enola Gay and what could be called her "sister in crime," Boxscar which was similar incidentally to the byeman name (actually OXCART) of the later SR-71, A-12 — especially in this case, which the Agency referred to as "Archangel", "Avenger", "Black Shield", and of course the "official" but not as, you know, fear of death inspiring: OXCART — but the CIA A-12 program was scrapped for SR-71's. The final part of the strategic reconaissance conflagration, was the D-21 drone, which was clever, until you realized it was a great way to kill pilots and break very expensive plaines. Anyways, this digression is just for the (very) for the curious. Sometimes, it seems that these byeman names aren't chosen as randomly as they are supposed to be, and it's not uncommon to hear flights of long-range bombers flying out of Nellis with the callsign "Death." Flash-Video-Container link, but relevant quote is thus:These 2 B-1's departed LSV at 8:20PM with a callsign DEATH and climbed to assigned FL190. […] obviously they are afterburners, just because the wings aren't swept back doesn't mean anything. You can see his flaps are still down showing that he is still trying to get some lift. Try and picture a B-1 taking off with its wings swept at such a slow speed. And another thing, the small things you see in the front of the B-1 are canards not the landing gear […] I shot this from between the RWY's during Red Flag 09-2. […] Also, don't forget to check out the channel for videos of Military exercises, Fly Bys, Air Shows, Spotting videos, and regular flying ops at Nellis AFB. All of the new videos will be in full HD! Some or all of my videos may have pictures to go with them, to see them visit my website at http://www.nellisspotters.com
[Edited by myself; original text with youtubespeak and bitching and moaning at above link]
I really have no idea how all this stuff came together into one huge post other than to say that I've sustained a brain injury (another…) and it all kind of made sense as I traipsed from a stroke to the Enola Gay to Mojave to the Boxscar to OXCART, Byeman Names (which nobody even seems to know the name of — the naming process, not the names themselves) and so on. The D-21 is kind of a sad moment in this great bird's history. I'll be posting a comparatively large update to Spun, as we had a board meeting this week and have some interesting new design ideas. More vegetables.
02 December, 2009
daft.google.com
- clutch and pressure plate kit (exedy)
- exedy "stage 1" flywheel (14lbs) - the original was torched.
- front and rear sways (20 & 24 mm) with urethane bushings from whiteline
- stainless brake lines (f/r)
- stainless clutch line
- front and rear brake pads - Hawk HPS (the porterfields don't do so well when cold)
So since google is ever so good at aggregating things into useful lists, how is it they have such an obtuse approach to Froogle? It's like selling a car without doors. Hey, it's fast as shit, and it's all slick and Viper or Z06 looking, but, if you can't get into the goddamn car, it's totally fucking useless. So, google, thank you for today's story of Fail. I am sure since you've tacked your ever-present "beta" sticker on it, you may indeed change the site to not, how to say, inhale the donkey.
But I ain't holdin' my breath.
30 November, 2009
Saw the new boondock saints movie.
Go see it. Seriously. It was a great movie. (desert eagles notwithstanding)
27 November, 2009
Drives, MTBF (lies), Redundancy, and presents
Sandy has purchased for Thunder (the Mac Pro) four 1.5tb drives, which should comprise two separate 1.5tb mirrors, depending on how SL Server handles LVM. I could be in for a surprise. Still no goddamn zfs, which makes me sad, but there's also no OCFS, which I'd be equally as happy with. Instead, AAPL assumes users are stupid (well, they're kinda right, but still) and don't need complex LVM. By god, it's Unix, people. If you want to format in XFS and have RAID 23098420, you should be able to.
So provided I manage to get the data off the drive looks kaput, we'll be moving it to the new array and decomming the older drives. 7200rpm ain't the best, but it'll work, and I'm hoping Apple will latch onto the Sunacle bandwagon and give us a 64gb flash card on the PCI bus for instant boot, leaving the drive for more important stuff.
We shall see. I fucking hate doing data recovery when it's a) my data and b) very, very valuable.
So provided I manage to get the data off the drive looks kaput, we'll be moving it to the new array and decomming the older drives. 7200rpm ain't the best, but it'll work, and I'm hoping Apple will latch onto the Sunacle bandwagon and give us a 64gb flash card on the PCI bus for instant boot, leaving the drive for more important stuff.
We shall see. I fucking hate doing data recovery when it's a) my data and b) very, very valuable.