Viable Hiatus the official Blog of Matt Gholson

I'm Off

2006-06-02T05:27:00.000-07:00

I've been out of school for 1 day and already my bags are packed and I'm about to head out. In about an hour I'll be on the road for Kansas and the Border Raiders bike ride. It's a 500 mile, week long ride that makes a big circle up to Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and back to Kansas. Expect a full report when I return.

HORTON HILL

2006-05-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

I climbed Horton Hill, last weekend, or almost all of it. The conditions were soft, but my new Swamp Thing tires never once slipped, the problem was that I was running out of steam to push them. I think the hill is about 3/4 of a mile long, at least, and its nothing but climbing, sometimes at a easy grade, sometimes at a very tough grade. The last 500 yards gets tough and I had to get off and push a bit to catch my breath. Once you reach the top its a fun somewhat technical rolling ride along the top of The mountian over to Eagle Mountain road, or you can go down at a couple other places, we took a messed up double track that was like some kind of crazy maze. The road is constantly splitting up and if you pick the wrong route it could lead into a 5 foot deep mudbog.

Proabably about 12 years ago I did this same ride on a fully ridged bike, I walked most of the hill then. My regular riding buddy did this ride about 12 years ago too. It pretty much turned him off of mountain biking for about ten years. I think its safe to say that climbing most of it on a 5 inch bike FS bike in the mud tells me I'm better now then I was then.

Mtn Bike tire reviews

2006-05-21T20:31:00.000-07:00

I noticed just how many mountain bike tires I have laying around, I thought I would write down what I thought of each one.

Mythos XC Slick. 2.1 This tire looks like it really shouldn’t be worth a crap in anything but the most pristine trail conditions, but looks can be deceiving. I found this tire to perform exceptionally well in a variety of conditions when I used it on the front and back of my bike for awhile during the fall of last year. The Mythos Slick has minimal tread on the top of the tire, just a short arrow like pattern. On its sides it has taller knobs for turning. The tire rolls fast in all conditions, in fact it performed very well in all conditions except mud, and real loose soil. I tried on of these as a back tire for awhile and it did great, except in mud where it spins and slides. In loose conditions the tire falls short again, even though I think the side knobs will help some. It seems to do OK on rock but watch out for wood, I stalled out a few times going over deadfall when the rear tire spun out on top of a log. When the tire does break loose it seems to happen pretty fast. A little bonus: the Mythos slick also works pretty well on pavement too.

Ritchey Z-max 2.1 I have only used this tire on the rear. But I did use it forward and backward. It did better backward. It pulled pretty well, but seemed to spin out a little more then it should. The Z-max is a medium tire and is for front or rear. It has a unique Z shaped tread design, that looks cool and seems to work well. It has a lot of rubber on its center and becomes a good roller. . It seemed to have good side bite, and usually when it broke loose it was under big power in slick stuff going uphill. I wouldn’t mind trying one of these up front. I noticed that after what I would consider mild use the tire was starting too look rough and a few knobs had broke off.

Maxxis Kraken 1.9 I tried a set of these for awhile. They have a ramped tread and looked like they would be pretty fast. I thought they might be kind of like the Mythos slicks, but with a bit more bite. I was completely wrong. These tire really only work in hard pack. They have very little side bite, and in the wet you might as well forget it. I crashed several times with these guys. Also their slightly smaller carcass makes them rough.

WTB Veliocaraptor. 2.1 For a long time I ran these front and back. They are an older tire, but work as well today as they did ten years ago. The front has a diagonal tread which seems to give it awesome side bite. The rear has flat bars for maximum forward bite. These tires probably are the best I’ve used for a variety of conditions. They work well in loose, hard, soft, rock, wood. They are also tough and last for a good long time. Rolling resistance isn’t fantastic but is pretty good considering the more aggressive tread design.

Hutchinson Python air light 2.1 I got these tires on a bike. I took them off after a few rides. They were horrible. First there is almost no side bite. When these tires hit something soft you might as well just bail, because when they slide its like ice. They loose traction so fast its scary. I also had several flats with them. ON a side note they did roll well and were very light, but I had better traction with the Mythos slicks.

Maxxis Wet Scream 2.1 I got a set of these for 10 bucks. They are Maxxis’ most extreme mud tire, and are on a downhill carcass. They are a flat top tire with a very spaced out, very tall and skinny knobs made out of the softest rubber. They eat mud, and throw it up all over the place, along with slicks, leaves, or whatever else is on the trail. Going downhill I have never used a better tire. Their long knobs are like tentacles grabbing rocks and roots, digging into the mud and sand. They made downhills easy and seemed to have traction to spare. But of course the rolling resistance was too much for me. Perhaps on the back a harder tire would help out. I only used these guys a few times and the back tire was already looking a bit wore. I’d like to ware a set of these half way out and see how it does then.

Maxxis Swamp thing 2.35 I recently got a deal on set of these and thought I would try them out. They are a mud tire and are similar to the wet scream in some ways. They have bigger knobs and the center ones are ramped to improve rolling resistance. Ride is similar to the Wet Scream, they inspire tons of confidence and even in very muddy conditions just don’t slide. Like the screams they clean out real good and throw mud up. Rolling resistance is bad but not in the real of terribleness that the wet scream is in. On the back the tire never spun out. The wider width gives you tons more stability in rocks and they seem to float better in soft stuff. I think I am going to switch to something small in the back and leave one of these in the front.

Where's me pot 0 gold

2006-05-16T04:36:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, May 14th there was a vibrant rainbow over Harrisburg, Luckily me and Shauna were just getting home from town when it started raining. It was a strange rain, almost like a mist, and the sun was shinning very bright. I large rainbow formed almost immediatly. I ran in and got my camera and started shooting pictures of it. For a short time it turned into a double rainbow. I have seen rainbows before several times, but usually they are nowhere near as complete or bright as this one.

Lance Armstrong's War

2006-05-05T03:03:00.000-07:00

This book is over a year old, but I just got around to reading it. I have read both of Lance's autobiographies and found them to feel, well kind of cheesy. They were good books, with lots of information, but I just felt like Lance was telling about a 1/4th of the story. Lance Armstrong's War is really what I wanted to read when I was reading Lance's books.

Lance Armstrong's War is a much more objective look at the powerhouse of American cycling. Daniel Coyle moved to Europe to write this book and must have been a constant fixture during the races that built up to the tour. He definitly did his homework and painted a complete picture of Lance Armstrong's 2004 season, but not only that he covered Lance's main rivals, Lance's trainer, the doping question and the sport of bicycle racing its self.

I would say that by now most people know about Lance's incredible story; Wild Texas rider gets cancer, fights death, comes back to become the greatest Tour rider of all time winning 7 tours, becomes a secular saint and sales millions of yellow braclets. In the Tour's over 100 year history, 5 guys had won 5 Tours, I believe it will be a very long time before anyone gets close to taking Lance's throne. Anyway most people probably just don't realize how hard it is to make it through a Tour, let alone actually win it, they also probably don't understand just how much of a control freak and jerk Lance can be.

I guess the highlight of this book for me, was finding out just how close Michele Ferrari is to Armstong. For those who don't know Michele Ferrari is an Italian sports doctor, who has been working exclusively with Armstrong since he recovered from cancer. Without Ferrari I don't think Armstrong would have won a single Tour. See I've always thought that Chis Carmichael was the key to Armstrong's sucess. Carmichael is Lance's coach and has the popular Carmichael Training Systems company. It seems obvious that Carmichael, at least now, doesn't have that much to do with Armstrong's career, other to appear together in ads.

You can't bring up Ferrari without talking about doping. Doping is the process of using drugs to enhance performance, steriods to build muscle and blood thickeners to help bring oxygen to those muscles. Cycling is infested with doping or at least has been for most of existence. (what profesional sport isn't infested with doping, and don't say golf, its not a sport just a waste of time) It seems like they have been testing the hell out of these guys now and are trying to get it under control. I guess you could say that Ferrari is a pioneer in modern doping having discovered how modern drugs could improve rider's performance, and once saying that there was nothing wrong with doing this. He claims he was misquoted, but if so it was a big misquote.

Once a non-rider started talking to me about how the snotty European's keep accusing Lance of doping and how they were jealous about him kicking their butts. I started talking about EPO and how it can only be picked up in tests a few days after being taken, and how many cyclists could take this without being caught, and how Lance worked with a guy who pioneered doing this. They just replied, "well, that may be so but Lance didn't cheat."

Lance has never tested positive, but that doesn't mean he never doped, I of course don't know if he did or not. I tend to think that what he did was awesome whether he doped or not. If he did, it probably put him on the same playing field as everyone else, if he didn't then he truely is amazing.

Anyway getting back to the book review, Coyle keeps the doping discussion as objective as possible. He kees his personal feelings out and just reports the facts about the case. Probably a good career move, since Lance loves a good law suit.

Thinking back over this book I just can't recomend it enough, if you have the slightest interest in either bike racing or Lance Armstrong you should read this book. Its 308 pages, which isn't very long, but at the end, I really didn't want it to stop. After reading this book I think its safe to say that, at least in bike racing, Nice guys may get second place, but they don't finish first.

Saul Raisin, cool name, super rider, brain damage

2006-05-05T02:46:00.000-07:00

So I started getting into bike riding again last year and with that came a renewed interest in bike racing. I've read many articles about promising new American talent and a name that popped up several times was Saul Raisin. One day I decided to check out Saul and found out that he had just had a crash and broke a collar bone and rib. Riders seem to be constantly breaking collar bones. It seems that the force of hitting the ground at 25+ miles an hour must be just the right amount to break that bone, in the 03 Tour de France Tyler Hamilton rode the whole thing with a broken Collar bone.

Anyway Saul got bashed up in a wreck but it wasn't anything to out of the normal, until it was discovered he had a Hematoma which is a blood clot between the brain and skull. The hematoma burst and he had a brain hemorage. He is lucky to be alive and recovering. Check out his blog to see how he is doing now and again. I wish him the speediest recovery possible.

Bicycling racing is a tough sport. Especially in Europe, where it is more like boxing. Just about every bike wreck I have ever had has come when I was trying to outride someone, just for fun. I have never had a wreck by myself. Saul's story makes me start thinking about wearing a helmet.

May 4th

2006-05-04T06:38:00.000-07:00

283 Thats todays lucky number. Would like to see this down to 279 soon.

Rode with my brother Mike the other night, I think he was trying to kill me. I don't understand how I could ride all winter and accumulate 3000 miles last year and he can ride every now and again and always be strong. Out of 8 hills he topped 6 before me, but my mind is always thinking up "mad strats" So when we hit 3 hills in a row I let him take the first two then I stormed up the third and blasted away from him.

May Day

2006-05-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

289

Guess what that number is and you get a cookie

Oh and here's a hint, it just went up when I ate a big plate of Taquitos.

Fracking food.

Eureka vacums suck

2006-04-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

About a year ago I bought a Eureka bagless vaccum cleaner from Wal-Mart. I was attracted to the neat swirling dust and the thought of never buying vaccum bags again. Not long after I had it the vaccum became incredibly plugged up with dirt. It was a big job to get all the crud out of the hoses, especially the hose down near the power head. Eventually I got it all clean and was able to use it again. It got a piece of string stuck up in the roller and melted down a plastic part that holds the roller in. That was after probably 4 months of buying it. Now its pretty useless.

Today I went to a rummage sale and bought another similar eureka baggless vaccum for 50 cents. I spent quite a bit of time cleaning it out. The stupid things seem to just get clogged up so easy. I took all the filters out of this one and now it has powerfull suction. Though I am not sure if I should use it without filters.

Back in the saddle

2006-04-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

I got my wheels and my new bottom bracket and hit the trail last weekend. Did about 6 miles on saturday by myself and realized my breaks were rubbing pretty bad. I had to add washers to get them centered up which I did on saturday night. Sunday moring we left to ride, but were one short. Our spiritual leader said it was too wet, it had rained over night. We showed up and started. About 100 yards from the truck the mud got thick and slick. My back wheel came around in front of me and I hit the ground hard going about 5 mph. I picked my bike up turned around and shouted, I'll be at the truck. That was enough for everyone so Sunday was our shortest ever ride, an entire 300 yards.

I just signed up for this ride http://www.borderraiders.com its a weeklong jaunt around Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri. Most days the mileage is about 50 there is an optional 100 mile day and the weeks total mileage is 500.

Before signing up for this ride I was totally unconcerned about my fitness level. I've been riding all winter road and trail. I'm in the best shape I have ever been in Spring. Then it occurs to me. I may have road all winter but I haven't been on my road bike for longer then an hour and 15 minutes at a time in 7 months. I've been riding mountain bikes sometimes as long as three hours, but I'm probably only on the saddle for 1.5 hours.

I despretly need to get some longer days in the saddle. I've got 5.5 weeks, and I don't want to get burned out so I figure I'll taper off the last week.

Broken Parts Everywhere

2006-04-16T22:24:00.000-07:00

It was a red letter today mountain biking. About half way through with the ride I busted up my freehub trying to climb a rather steep section of trail. The freehub produced a quite large clunk and would no longer coast. This put me in a tough situation as my favorite part of riding is coasting.

Upon inspecting the bike when I arrived home I found that the bottom bracket was uncharacteristically rough. Sure enough I can blame it on my poor performance on today’s ride and my poor performance in the last few rides. It really has felt like something is holding me back lately perhaps this grinding bottom bracket is the culpurit and not my precarious fitness level.

Tonight I purchased a new wheelset with XT hubs and Rhino Lite rims and a Raceface FR BB to replace my broken Deore hub and Truvativ BB. Had I been feeling particularly wild I would have splurged on the new LX crankset with Hollowtech 2 outboard bearings. Oh well maybe next time.

Trek Liquid review

2006-04-10T10:18:00.000-07:00

I've been riding a Trek Liquid for over a month now and logged enough miles to know what I think about it. First, it rocks, hands down the best mtn bike I've ever ridden.

Before I go any farther It is relevant to note what fork I am running. Since I allready had this fork and couldn't afford to buy anything else I installed my Rock Shox Duke XC. Its a 100mm air sprung fork with single rebound adjustment. The orignal fork should have been a 130mm fork I think with some adjustable travel. This short fork probably changes the geometry quite a bit.

The rear shock is the stock Fox Talas with travel adjustment.

When I first started riding this I noticed an immediate improvement in almost all areas of my riding. I rarely wreck, I don't get to many aches and pains, and I was riding more technical stuff then I ever had. The same trail that had bounced my out of the saddle and off the back of my FS XC bike was easily navigated on the liquid. The liquid is a 5 inch all mountain kind of bike, so it has more relazed geometry and it really shows in the decents, but what really blew my mind was the climbing. I had very little trouble climbing on this bike. In the small chain ring bob just disapears.

The heighth adjust feature of the rear shock may be useful to some who push the bike harder in technical decents but I think most riders will find it to be overkill. I have tried it a few times and really haven't noticed a difference. perhaps if I had a longer fork it would be more noticable.

Weight is certainly a negative feature on this frame. It seems rear heavy especially since its an air sprung shock. The weight seems to only bother me when I am lifting it onto a rack, or draging it up a bluff. If it was lighter it might be a little easier to yank the back end up and over logs, but it seems to just crash over them fine.

So far the rear suspension as been very durable, nothing has come loose and nothing squeeks. This is the way suspension should be.

The probably only weakness this bike seems to have for me is when the speeds increase and on long drawn out climbs. This is probably a weakness on most full suspension bikes and especially five inch bikes.

Overall this is an excellent bike for a variety of different riding. I think its most suited to just going out and and having fun on the trails.

Epson 820 JUNK

2006-04-07T06:07:00.000-07:00

I made the mistake of buying a used printer that was in "excellent shape" from ebay recently. This Epson 1270 arrived in terrible non working shape, the sad thing was that I had to pay return shipping to get my money back for the printer. Which I now have gotten back. Now you know from my last post that I have a photo printer, an Epson 820, but I have a strong want to print some wide format photos.
After careful examination of my finaces I realized the best move would just be to make due with what I have and forget about the wide format printing. So that works and I am enjoying using my 820, but I just went three days without printing anything on it. I tried to print last night but the cyan and yellow nozzles were completely clogged while all the other nozzles were completely clear. What was most frustrating of all was that the remaining ten percent of my black ink was used trying to clean the heads. After three head cleanings half of the cyan and yellow nozzles were working and I was out of black ink and could no longer clean the heads.

Peering under the cover with a flashlight it looks like some of the ink waste pads may be mangled up so maybe I have a fixer upper project.

Epson Photo 820, Junk or Diamond in the Rough

2006-03-31T09:00:00.000-08:00

I've owned an Epson 820 photo printer for about three years, but I really haven't used it much. For the past few years I've been more focused on displaying my images on the web as opposed to print. One reason was that my photo printer generally just ticked me off anytime I tried to use it. This printer has a bad reputation for head clogging, and its a reputation well deserved. I would wager that half of these printers have been smashed into little parts by their owners.

A few weeks ago I upgraded cameras to a Canon 10D, the pictures it takes are so much better then what I have been using, (DCS 520) that I was oblidged to print a few out. I had no color ink but one spare black so I made a quick ebay purchase, three color carts. When I installed the new color my black that was in the printer was almost completely full. After several cleaning cycles I was still getting terrible nozzle check patterns and getting frustrated. By the time I had a clear pattern I had used half of my first color cart and 2/3s of my black. I wasn't happy.

My first prints came out horrible. Colors and saturation were way off. I attempted to get some control over my color management, but without a monitor calibration device it is almost useless. Nonetheless with some trial and error I have now got prints that match my monitor's color. They key was getting some updated ICC profiles from Epson and using the right one, as well as lowering the saturation about 15 steps befoer I print.

The good news is that my prints are now comming out magnificent. The bad news is they probably won't last long. The 820 prints with dye ink instead of pigment, it is no where near as durable as the newer inks. I have some prints hanging on my wall that were made about a year and half ago and they have hopeless faded into obscurity. I can't remember if those prints were made with the original ink or the cheapo replacements I bought.

Last night I made an intersting discovery. I found in the basement where I had made several prints when I first got this printer. The colors on these prints were as vibrant as the day I printed them out. I know these were made using the original inks. If that is the case then these prints made with the original ink will stand the test of time. There is another possibility. If light is the primary fader of inkjet prints then being in the basement would explain why they still look so good. Its also important to note that none of my prints were under any kind of protection at all. No frames, no lamination, nothing. I did experiment with spraying 2 prints with clear acrylic enamal. One faded and one didn't. The one that did fade was mostly black.

Since I started using the Epson 820 again I have had a much more pleasant time. here is a compilation of various things I read on the internet that have improved my time with this printer.

#1 Turn the printer off when you are not using it. I think this helps quite a bit, turning it on and off seems to do a quick head cleaning.

#2 Push the print head as far right as it will go when you turn it off. You shouldn't be pusing against any opposing force here, I beleive that poor manufacturing tolerances prevent the print head from going as far right as it should when parked.

#3 If the bands of white ink don't match up on your nozzel checks each time you probably don't have a clogged head, you probably have air traped in the ink lines or cartridge. If several head cleanings keep producing random lines it may be best to stop head cleaning and give the air time to work out.

#4 DO NOT USE 3rd PARTY INKS its hard I know, but unless you don't care how your prints turn out or don't need them to last for more then a few weeks don't do it.

#5 Try to print every few days. This was probably my biggest problem with this printer. I would print up a fury then not use it for a couple of months. If you could print every now and again it would go a long way to avoiding clogs. It may help to just turn it off and on every few days.

#6 When printing borderless 8.5x11 use the output tray extender

#7 Get the newest ICC profiles from epson and understand how to use them. Make sure your image editing software is defining the appropriate color space and that you use ICC with no color corrections on the printer driver.

I believe that the Epson 820 is one of the best deals ever in photo printing. It can be had on ebay for less then what the shipping will cost. I bought mine for 150 bucks brand new. The prints it produces look just as good as photo lab prints. Considering that most of Epson's printers now use up to 8 carts at 12 dollars each and you can easily get both genuine carts for the 820 on ebay for for about 30 bucks, printing with the 820 is probably cheaper. Having said that I plan on saving up for an R1800 so I can print wider format, but I have all ready purchased some new geuine epson inks for my 820 to keep me satisfied until then.

LEARN TO MASTER THE GUITAR IN 60 MINUTES

2006-03-20T18:03:00.000-08:00

.download page

You could pay this guy 30 dollars for his "program" to learn to play the guitar in 60 minutes or some such BS. or you could just go here and download it for free from his ever so secure website. You'll be glad you didn't pay when you see how lame it actually is.

For 28 dollars he will sell you his full proof method to master the fretboard in under an hour, and bonus dowloads worth 317 dollars.

In truth his full proof method consists of a simple mnemonic device delivered in about a 6 page Flash player file.

The 317 dollars of free guitar software is nothing but a collection of programs that could easily be found for free on the net.

Don't be scammed like someone I know

Canon 10D

2006-03-20T17:44:00.000-08:00

I bought a canon 10D not to long ago and have been blown away by just how much better Digital SLRs have gotten, and the 10D is already a few years old.

The first thing I have done with it is take it out at night mounted on a tripod for sone long exposures. With the 30 seconds as the longest exposure possible with the onboard settings I found the camera to be nearly as good as film. With my DCS-520 anything longer then a few seconds looks like crap.

The pictures I took on this clear Late summer night were OK, but had I been using my brain I could have done much better. With all my excitement of using a new camera I didn't use the self timer to trip the shutter, many of the shots I took were out of focus from camera shake.

To remedy this I went home and bought a remote shutter release from Hong Kong since the one from Hong Kong cost about a third of the one from America. that was 16 days ago and I haven't got my release yet. Did get an email saying it was shipped about 6 days ago, so I may get it in the next few days?

Anyway being out amoung the stars got me thinking about astronomy again. I like astronomy, but expect to much from it. I always expect to see great things, when the truth is that just seeing anthing is often times a victory when looking in a telescope.

I'm thinking about buying a motorized telescope to take star pictures. But of course I probably would be better off to not spend a ton of money.

The story of an RC car Champion

2006-03-12T19:44:00.000-08:00

Every sunday morning without fail in a pole barn in Southern Illinois some men get together to race radio controlled cars around a track. And every sunday morning there is a guy in his familiar seat saying hello as I walk in. This guy is worth mentioning because he possesses qualities that I belive are very lacking in many people this day and age, including myself. Let me tell you a little bit about this guy:

The first time my brother and I went to the track to race this guy was there. While many of the other races ignored us completely or acted like we were in their way this guy didn't, instead he spoke to us. I remember the words, "I'm glad to see some new racers here today so I won't get dead last again. He introduced himself, and started talking. He was very helpful in explaining how things worked and didn't mind to go out of his way to help out a new guy. He was wrong though, he did get dead last that day.

You see this guy is just not a good racer. He has been in the RC car hobby for years now, but he just doesn't get any better, thats not true actually he has improved some.

Heres the thing about this guy, I have never seen him get mad, I've never seen him get so disgusted with the hobby that he just quits racing. In fact I don't think he has missed a race day, ever. He is one of the first people at the door when the track opens.

Its not that this guy hasn't improved for lack of trying, he has spent tons of money buying the best equipment and he practices more then anyone else I know. He just doesn't seem to get any better, and yet he continues.

I could learn a lesson or two from this guy. In many things that I have tried to do in my life I found the going to be difficult and instead of perservering I have gave up. If I had put the effort into RC car racing that this guy has then I would probably be really good.

I think the biggest lesson we can learn from this guy is that you don't have to be good at something to enjoy it. I'm sure he will be enjoying it for many years to come in his familar spot every sundaay morning.

Seperating you from your money

2006-02-24T10:03:00.000-08:00

It should be glaringly obvious to everyone that nearly everything in the world is designed with one purpose in mind. Seperating you from your money. SUre that has been the goal for as long as we've had money, but they are getting better at it. Here's an example. Ebay, its a good system to get rid of stuff you don't want, but selling things on ebay seems to keep becoming more and more costly. Just getting the forms filled out keeps getting more complicated. Ebay is constantly adding new widgets you can add to your auction, BOLD, HIGHLIGHTED, SUBTITLE, all these stupid things that serve one purpose, take money away from you.

Windows Vista will now ship with 7 versions, they will probably all suck, and I won't pay for any of them, but how many people are going to be standing around staring at the boxes thinking, do I need standard, Ultimate, Home business edition. Again all they need are two products, home and pro.

Photoshop: Its like cheating

2006-02-17T16:41:00.000-08:00

I don't consider myself a photoshop wizard. I can fix up some photos and I can do some cutting and pasting, but sometimes I think its just so easy that it should be illegal.

Take these two photos for example. The same shot taken with my DCS 5220 Digital SLR. One is straight out of the camera. The other has had significant post processing. I basically used Fred Miranda's excellent photoshop actions to balance and warm up the colors, increase dynamic range and contrast, remove artifacts and sharpen the image. www.fredmiranda.com

Rocking Out or ahh, making noise?

2006-02-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

I have had an acoustic guitar for about a year. I practiced regularly when I bought it and learned some chords and easy songs. I quit trying to play it sometime in summer and it has sit around since then. I started playing here and there this winter and noticed I hadn't really forgot anything. My uncle just bought an new electric guitar and showed it to me. He doesn't know how to play yet but I showed him the little bit I know. The electric seemed so much more fun to play that I had to get one too. So now I am making noise with a Fender Strat.

Mine eyes do bleed

2006-02-08T20:38:00.000-08:00

My photographs and website have been recieving some attention from me lately and let me tell you, its alot fo work.

I just spent the last few hours fiddling with a group of photographs I recently shot at Dixon Springs park. I ran a multitude of photoshop filters on them to try to correct problems that my camera put into the photos. My Kodak DCS-520 is an old Digital SLR. One of the first ones actually. Its about 8 years old now, and I'm focused on replacing it. I still love the camera, and its great for some things. Put a good lens on it and shot things in front of the camera and it makes excellent images, but open it up with a wide lens and the 2 megapixel beast shows its age.

I plan on sticking with Canon and buying a used D/SLR, either a 10D, 300D, D6o, or 350D, probably the 10D is the most bang for the buck.

If I was a bit more serious about photography, or thoght I might getting into doing some commercial work, weddings and such, then I would probably opt for the 5D which seems to be current technology/price leader.

2006-01-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

TREK!!!

Was messing with some photo lights I got from ebay the other day, took some photos of Shauna and me. Heres one of best.

NO GEOCACHING - WTF Forrest service?

2006-01-22T18:38:00.000-08:00

(Ed note, just want to warn you of excisive use of WTF acronym)

Me and Shauna had an excellent trip geocaching this weekend. We found two excellent caches and had a great time hiking about. I've been spending much more time in the woods (Shawnee National Forest) lately. My activities are limited to riding my mountain bike and hiking around. Since I’ve been in the forest more often I’ve been thinking about the wilderness areas.
I am very glad that 75 years ago the government realized that the land in the Shawnee should be publicly owned, if it hadn’t been for this then most of Southern Illinois would probably be divided up into private hunting and horseback camps. We are so lucky to have the government land, but while the whole Shawnee is a forest, only select areas are considered wilderness areas. This is very beneficial, since the wilderness areas have different rules the rest of the forest. The Wilderness areas have signs that say, no mechanized vehicles, no bicycles, no hang gliders. Hang gliders, WTF forest service. It’s important to note that Horse traffic is OK in these areas. Generally the wilderness areas are attractions where the forest service has built up an investment and want to keep it from getting tore up.
Beyond these wilderness areas there are special areas called Natural areas that prohibit everything but walking. These natural areas just seem to spring up at random around the forest.
It’s really all a load of crap.
Anyway we were geocaching and when we came back I noticed a note on one of our well maintained trail bullet boards. Where someone had wrote no geocaching. Now if it was a problem I would understand. If you couldn’t take a walk without tripping over a geocache, if hordes of cachers were wandering around following their GPSs like zombies, if it had one tiny bit of negative impact I might understand. But it doesn’t, there are probably less then a hundred caches on the 270,000 acres of the Shawnee. Most of these have only been visited 20 times or less. All of them are much better hidden then piles of horse shit, beer cans, and assorted bits of trash that many of the other forest users leave. So I say WTF forest service, go drive around your green trucks and leave us be.

It just occured to me that perhaps NO GEOCACHING was writen by a over zelous environmentalist and if that is the case then sorry forest service.

A New Ride

2006-01-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I purchased a Trek Liquid frame. I've taken it on a few rides now and while I'm not familiar enough to give a review I can say this. This bike rocks. Its the very first Fully suspended mountain bike I'ver ever riden that doesn't bob. When you are cranking the pedals with any pressure the rear end virtually locks up. I can climb on this 5 inch bike better then I could climb with my hard tail. Its heavy but it doesn't seem to matter much. I haven't experimented with the shock heigth much yet, but on one downhill where I lowered the rear end I noticed I could get into a lower postion. Basically as long as this rig doesn't break I am set.

Rio Nitrus Review

2006-01-18T21:06:00.000-08:00

The Nitrus is a small size mp3 player made by Rio.  I bought this device about a year ago and feel like I can give a very accurate review of its pros and cons.   I can’t say I’ve used the Nitrus all that heavily though, I don’t walk around the streets jumping up and down Ipod style or anything like that.  I originally bought a mp3 player to listen while bike riding.  When I started riding  in February 05 I was doing so by my self a lot and I thought a little music might motivate me.  I probably carried it on 20 or so bike rides.  I took a week long bike tour across Nebraska last year and it traveled with me, usually smashed in my bag, which was smashed on the bottom of 50 other bags all smashed into a tractor trailer.  Lately I’ve had such dedicated riding partners that I don’t ever ride alone and out of respect leave my mp3 player at home.  My only other major use of the device is listening to music before bed, sometimes while I sleep.

First off lets talk user interface.  The Nitrus interface works but leaves room for a lot of improvement.  First off the there are two volume buttons, a menu button, a power button,  a click stick, a lockout lever and a wheel.  The click stick is basic player controls and also can navigate menus.  The wheel scrolls through menus and can also change track information displayed.  The volume buttons adjust the volume.  This all works fairly well, it just seemed to me that the wheel would have been perfect to adjust the volume instead of pushing and holding down the small buttons.  The click stick is OK, but very easy to hit if the unit isn’t locked.  Basically you need to just get everything the way you like it and hit the lock out lever.  When you are going through menus setting up the options you use the wheel pressing it selects the current menu, but after you selected the option and set it to your preference clicking the wheel again will cancel your change and take you back out.  You have to click the click stick to save your changes.  I always found this annoying since you just used the wheel to do everything else.

The most useful menu feature is the play music menu.  You can select music by title, artist, genre, year, album, new music, or play lists.

The units display is small but I don’t recall ever having problems reading it.  It is back lit and very bright at night, I could use it as a night light in my tent.  It gives you track and artist information, a timeline, battery symbol, and volume level.   You click the wheel to change what information is displayed at the bottom of the screen, either time and date, track encoding information, or track duration and number.  I have no problems with the display.

Construction of the unit feels cheap.  It’s a plastic that isn’t overly solid.  The top and sides are rubberized for some reason.  I think with the Nitrus Rio went with a flexible roll with the punches strategy.  Instead of being reinforced and solid, it is flexible and tough.  After a year of use my unit shows very little scratching and no dents or scars.  I find it to be plenty tough.

The Nitrus wasn’t my first mp3 player, a few days before I bought it I got a cheap 128 MB sport type player from Wal-Mart.  I found it lacking and returned it for the Nitrus.  My biggest problem with the cheapy player was playback.  It just didn’t sound good.  The Nitrus on the other had sounded great.  I should note that they came with the exact same headphones.  I am not an audiophile, but the cheap player just seemed to lack any punch of volume.  When I was riding with it I had the have the volume almost all the way up to hear it over the wind and cars.  The Nitrus on the other hand had a clear strong sound and though doesn’t get as loud as other players, is pleasant to listen to.

The Nitrus has a 1.5 gig micro drive built in and can’t be augmented in anyway.  I thought that would be plenty of space until I realized that most of my songs are larger then average.  I encoded most of my cds at 192 Kbps some are larger.  The Nitrus currently has 213 songs and a little empty space.  If I ever get another MP3 player it will have at least 5 gigs of storage.

The player has proven to be reliable.  Only one time has it ever had a hiccup, it got stuck shutting down and just hung there.  I had to trigger the reset button which reset everything back to factory settings and lost all my songs.  I wasn’t very happy since getting songs onto the Nitrus is its major downfall.  You have to use the Rio music manager which indexes your music files.  I don’t like this.  I don’t need this.  I already have my music arranged, I don’t need a program to do it for me.  I really wish you could just drag and drop files onto this thing without the aid of a client.  I can’t remember what formats the Nitrus plays and I really don’t care.  I don’t want to listen to FLACs or OGGs or anything else, I am completely happy with MP3s.

The battery time is great.  Many times I have turned it on at night and woke up with it still playing 8 hours later.  I think I remember reading it should only last 6 hours, but as long as remember to plug it up now and again you’ll have no problems.

The last thing to hit upon is value.  I paid 150 for mine from Wal-Mart.  I could have bought one online for 100 bucks but that was a refurbished one.  I’m sure now there is much better cheaper players out there, but I have to say I am pleased with my Nitrus and have never thought about replacing it.  It is perfect for my purposes, light enough to carry while riding my bike without even noticing it and holds enough music to go hours without hearing the same song twice. If I was buying a player now I would go with the Rio Carbon which is very much like the Nitrus but addresses most of its shortcommings

PROS:  Light, Tough, reliable, decent value, sounds good, battery

CONS:  stupid software, interface is clunky, limited storage,

Mongoose Pro Massif Review

2006-01-09T20:12:00.000-08:00

Mongoose Pro Massif review.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time reviewing this bike but I feel like it merits the time in case some one in the future considers buying one of these.  I’m also not going to make any broad claims concerning the quality of Mongoose Pro bikes or Pacific bikes.

I only rode the Massif about ten times before it broke and I can’t say I really experienced everything it has to offer, but I think I learned enough for this assesment.  I’m including all the Mongoose Pro Hotlinks bikes in this review, the Sommit, Triumph and Massif, since they are all the same frame and probably handle similarly.

The Mongoose Hotlinks design in interesting to look at.  It is a 4 bar with a true horst linkage, but instead of the standard swing arm coming out around the bottom bracket the hotlinks design uses a complex series of pivots so the chainstay moves more vertically instead of pivoting.  The propaganda says this is supposed to create a virtual pivot point and somehow stop the frame from bobbing.  Someone needs to tell them it didn’t work.

The bike bobbed as bad as any full suspension I have ever ridden.  Much worse then the Schwinn Rocket 88 I used to ride.  If you were as smooth as possible on the pedals then you might be able to keep the bob down to a less annoying level.  Anytime you start putting some pressure on the pedals it was like being on a boat.

Because of the bob it was very difficult to climb on the Massif.  It would seem to load up on the rear shock on an incline.  I felt like I had to struggle to keep my weight forward and the front wheel down.  I think this led to back pain. Hills that I had once been able to climb I couldn’t even get half way up.  Bumps would stop me dead in my tracks and sometimes even on a non technical climb it would be impossible to continue forward momentum.

My next problem was a low bottom bracket compounded with the suspension bob would cause me to be constantly bashing my pedals and crank arms, usually on small obstacles on the trail, but sometimes just on the ground.

As I stated it seemed like when climbing I would load up the rear end, and it seemed like I always on the back of the bike, what isn’t clear is why my hands were hurting.  Seems like I was carrying to much weight on both my hands and on my butt, it didn’t really add up.  Or some reason I was never very stable on the Massif, I feel off the bike several times, usually for no real reason, I had trouble riding technical stuff and staying on the bike.  Once I fell off just by standing up.

Fit and Finish on the bike was sub part, the paint had no clearcoat and scratched extremely easily.  The stickers weren’t sprayed either, and were all starting to peel off after a month.  The welds looked beefy, but I think the bike suffered from to many welds and not enough solid metal.

The components spec’ed with my 1300 dollar Massif had good and bad points.  The good: RS Duke front fork, it seemed to be a solid performer and I am currently using it on my new bike.  The Truvativ Stylo cranks seem fine.  The Magura stoppers work well, as well as the wheels and the XT rear derailleur is a solid unit.  Titec Seatpost, stem and bar seem all right.  The bad: Deore front derailleur sucks, can’t shift under the least bit of pressure.  The Fizik Nisene seat was real uncomfortable.  The Deore shifter pods feel cheap and don’t have a real smooth action.

Whoever assembled the bike didn’t do to well.  The crank bolts had been over tightened and no amount of force could break them, they had to be drilled out.  The cables were all cut off right next to their binders and left without a cap.  The cable housings were all cut too short, as well as the rear break housing.  The rear suspension bolts didn’t have any loctite and loosened up a lot.  All minor things but stuff that shouldn’t be on a new bike.

I would like to try to include something good in this review, but right now I can’t really think of anything.

Finally it broke at the swingarm pivot on the seat tube.  I was surprised having never broken a frame before, and after only owning the bike for two months.  Yes I am a fat guy who rides a bike pretty hard, but I don’t do anything crazy,  I consider myself lucky that it broke on a flat easy section of trail early in the ride.  It could have been bad if it went on a downhill.  Pacific customer support wasn’t too supportive saying I needed to go to a dealer.  I’m not sure if my frame was defective and had a bad weld, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.

To sum up my review avoid this bike.

CRACK!

2006-01-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

On a ride this week my frame broke. Most of the time frames develop a crack that starts creaking, mine just broke. I was riding a fairly smooth trail, I stayed seated when crossing a small branch maybe a couple inches off the ground. I thought my seat broke because I felt myself move down a bit. I checked my seat and found it fine. I kept riding and within a few minutes felt myself fall another inch or two. A more careful inspection revealed that my seat tube was seperated.

At least I lucked out in that I wasn't flying down a hill when it went. I could have had a serious accident.

Looks like I am replacing this frame with a Trek Liquid. I hope I am not making a mistake. I would probably be best off with a hardtail but I can't seem to resist the bling factor of a Dual.

Skatin on 26s

2005-12-24T10:17:00.000-08:00

The bike riding has been plentiful this christmas break. The conditions are somewhat wet but that is to be expected in winter. Here's a shot of my bike parked at a overlook near Lake Glendale. The Glendale trails are some of the smoothest and best maintained trails in the Eastern part of the shawnee, in fact around here lots of riders find them too tame. For me they are about perfect.

My mountian bike is a Moongoose pro, not a brand that carries a great deal of prestige. The paint job is white with a few stupid stickers on it. There isn't clearcoat over the stickers so if I ever want to take them all off it should be easy. Shortly after I bought it I came across some ink jet bumper sticker paper I had bought and never used. Since I really didn't care how the bike looked I thought why not and started making stickers to stick on it. It's very easy. Print the sticker, spray it with a acrylic clearcoat then stick it on the bike. They are water proof and the clearcoat makes them somewhat tough.

You can find the stickers here and download them. Some I made myself, others I reconstructed from sample stickers, and some are blantent rip offs. What I like to do is make a 8.5 by 11 inch blank canvas in photoshop then layout stickers on it for greatest effenciey. The stickers are all around 300 dots per inch and about the print size to stick on an oversized bike frame.

I recently tired some regular sticker paper, not the bumper sticker paper. The regular sticker paper is much thinner, and has a much more paper like surface, but its also way cheaper. It would probably work about as well if you remember to spray it with clearcoat, otherwise when it gets wet it will absorb the water.

I finally realize I don't like MMORPGs

2005-12-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time coming. A realization that should have happened about 3 years ago. A realization that MMORPGS, or massively multiplayer online role playing games are not for me. I have played almost every major one, UO, AC, AC2, EQ, EQ2, DAoC, EVE, SWG, WWIIOL, WOW, a lot of games, a lot of time, a lot of money and I have almost nothing to show for it.

I always thought that an MMORPG was the holy grail of gaming, but I always found that something in a particular game held it back. So I would look for another game, and then find something wrong with it. For instance, Everquest 2 was supposed to be great. I hated it. It was so corny, it lagged so bad, the gameplay was boring, I didn't even use up the first free month before I had moved on to something else.

Sometimes I wouldn't even find anything wrong with the game I'd just quit playing. For instance, EVE is an awesome game, I always enjoyed playing it, but sometimes I just wouldn't even think about it and then before I knew it I had paid a month's fees and hadn't even logged in. World of Warcraft is another example, its a nearly perfect game, very fun, lots of players, usually smooth, easy to level, but I never got past level 18. Just lost interest.

The biggest problem I have with these games is the monthly fee, paying 15 dollars a month to continue to play a piece of software sucks. I am not a hardcore player and sometimes a whole week would go by and I wouldn't even log in. So why the hell should I pay 15 dollars a month for sometimes as little as 15 hours of game play. Especially when I am not the punk who is constantly bugging customer support and game masters over stupid crap.

I wish an MMORPG would consider a per hour account option. Of couse I know they won't but when I can play battlefield II online for hours a week for free and have way more fun plugging terrorists with my 50 cal then clunking bunnies over the head with my rusty pickhammer I think the MMORPGS have lost a customer.

Giving Thanks, for a weekend of riding.

2005-11-28T09:20:00.000-08:00

I managed to ride Thursday and Saturday and I am glad. Both days we went to Palestine, it was mostly dry and warm. No wrecks, and nothing broke. I was eagerly hoping to see good things from the Mongoose Massif and wasn't let down. The rear shock performed much much better aired up properly. The bike had very little bob, but was harsher. The negative chamber on the sid is loosing a little air and will need to be aired up probably about every ride. The Postive chamber is still strong.

My back is killing me on the climbs. Its hard to keep this bike going straight on climbs, it ends up wanting to pull to the right or left. I have to bend over and it causes my lower back to feel exhausted. When I am not climbing I am fine.

I replaced the stock Hutchinson Python Air light tires with a Heavy Velocaraptor up front and a Ritchey Z max on the the back. The python's were light and fast, but anytime I hit a slick spot it was like riding on ice, it was crazy just how fast they lost traction, they were horrible in any mud. The velocaraptor has bigger lugs and while it will still slip some in mud it is much mroe controlable. The Ritchey never lost its grip once.

The front fork is a Duke SL and it is performing admirably. Its stiff, adjustable and has super smooth action.

The Massif must have a lower bottom bracket then any bike I've ever riden, I seem to bash the pedals on stuff more often and the chainring catches wood on even smaller logs.

The Magura Julie brakes have plenty of stoping power for me, and way more modulation then any rim break. This is my first bike with disks and I must say I am impressed.

The frame handles similarly to the rocket 88 I had, but with much less bob. It's very solid downhill ride. After beefing up the tires and handlebars the bike is a bit heavy, even though its not a lightweight to begin with.

I crashed for the Massif for the first time Saturday. I was getting tired, my back was aching. On a downhill after a hard climb, and a trail with lots of logs, my upper body was wore out. I had to slow down to find my way around a washed out section. After getting around I stood up to get back on the gas. I guess I was to aggresive and my upper body to tired. I stood up and got too much weight on my hands. I started to go forward but absorbed my forward moment with my arms. It should have been easy to sit back down, but my arms gave out and I fell off the side of the bike. Was laughing the whole time.

Next weekend is second deer season so It'll probably be a weekend with no riding.

The mystery of the sid rear shock

2005-11-24T06:20:00.000-08:00

Weight check 279: This is good since I have a winter time urge to eat every single thing I can find!

My new bike is equpied with a dual air Sid rear shock. This shock has two air chambers, the postive which sets how much force is needed to compress the shock, and the negative which sets how senstitive the shock is as well as force needed to compress the shock. This was my first time messing with any air sprung suspension so I had no idea what I was doing.

The instructions say to compress the positive air chamber first, then sit on the bike and measure sag. After adjusting the sag you are to add air to the negative chamber equal to the postive. I first put about 200 lbs of air in the positive chamber and sit on the bike, it fell really spongy. I put 200 pounds of air in the neagtive chamber, that caused it to firm up some, but it still felt spongy. To try and make it tougher I took some air out of the negative chamber and added some to the postive, now I has about 200 in the positive and 175 in the negative. This seemed to make it worse, but I road with it anyway. The bike had terrible bob, climbing was downright terrible, going downhill the backend felt all weird and noodly.

I went home and increased the pressure, I made the postive air chamber 250 and the negative 220. I went for another ride, it was better, but it still had bad pedal bob and felt spongy.

My brain started operating and I started considering the facts. First off the adjustments seemed to be having the opposite effect that they were supposed to have and the negative air chamber seemed to hold alot more then the postive. It dawned on me, the air chambers on my shock must be labeled wrong. When I got home I went to google and started looking for sid rear manuals. Every single one I found showed the postive air chamber on top and the negative on bottom. The sticker on my shock was upside down. I haven't actually done any trail riding yet now that I have reveresed the set up on the shock, but just riding around it seemes to have way less bob. I'm going out to the woods today so I should know soon enough.

Friggin Cold

2005-11-18T21:09:00.000-08:00

I rode my bike last night. It was about 1 degree above freezing when I left and about 1 degree below when I got back. Left at 5 PM and road for an hour. Went with a couple of guys, I think we all showed up trying to catch the others wimping out. It really wasn't that bad.

I don't really have the right clothing for this, my cold weather strategy is to layer up what I have. I had about 4 layers for upper body: poly pro shirt, long sleeved shirt, warm pull over, light jacket. On my legs I had a pair of tights and a pair of sweatpants. I wore my regular riding shoes with some ducttape on the toes and and an extra pair of socks. My feet were cold, very cold. My toes were numb when I got home. My legs were cold but not quite as bad. I was warm up top.

Looks like I need to find something warmer for my feet and legs, I was told Neoprene shoe covers is the way to go. May look into some thermals for my legs.

Its looking like i may stay in shape this winter!

New Bike

2005-11-15T09:33:00.000-08:00

Took my new full suspension mtn bike out for a couple of rides this weekend. Rode about 9 miles Sunday and about 5 on Monday. I was really excited to see how the bike did. The machine in question is a Mongoose Pro Massif, a 4 bar type full suspension design. The fork is a RS Duke and rear shock is a RS Sid. I have mixed feelings right now. The bike handled the flats and downhills well enough. The magura hydralic disks had more power and control then I am used to. The front fork was set up maybe a bit stiff but performed much better then the undampened pieces of crap I am used to.
The problem was going up, the biek didn't seem to know how to do it. It seemed like the rear shock would just compress up on a climb and I would have almost no control over where the bke went. I wasn't able to climb not because I ran out of steam but because I ran into stuff. I was bending over alot trying to get my weight on the front wheel and I guess that caused my back to hurt. Hopefully I can do adjustments and get the bike to climb better.

I’ve got to get a mountain bike.

2005-11-07T13:37:00.000-08:00

Weight Check 279.5 going in the right direction now

I’ve got to get a mountain bike.

I went to the bike surgeon and rode a Kona Stinky this weekend. I have never rode a bike like that, and even though I only spent about ten minutes on it I figured out it wasn’t the bike for me. First off there is no reason to have a bike with 6 inches of travel unless you plan to ride hard and fast down things that you normally wouldn’t. Yeah sure I would be able to ride more things with that bike but at what cost. With all that travel I don’t really see myself being able to climb up anything, and in the Shawnee you can’t go down without first going up. The kind of riding I like to do I suppose you could just call all mountain riding. I don’t get in a big hurry, generally take the easiest path through obstacles and keep the wheels in contact with the ground all the time. Sounds boring but believe me there enough rocks to keep you busy just trying to get around them.

I generally like my bikes to be light and nimble, which is Ironic considering I am fat and clumsy. I really enjoy riding my hardtail, if it was just a bit bigger and didn’t have some annoying problems I would stay with it.

I am trying to decide if I want my new bike to be full suspension or hardtail. I think some rear travel could allow me to ride longer and not get sore, but I am worried about the bushing holding up.

My last mountain bike was a Schwinn Rocket 88, I liked that bike, but was worried the suspension bushings were going to ware out. I traded that bike off for a recumbent. It made perfect sense at the time since I wasn’t mountain bike riding but wouldn’t you know a few weeks after I trade it off I start mountain biking.

I spent some time working on the www.shawneecycles.com website Sunday. I am revamping the site for the stores big move. I think the new design I worked up yesterday is a whole lot better.

Riding at Night

2005-11-04T09:30:00.000-08:00

I've taken two night bike rides this week. Each time we lefton the Tunnel Hill trail at 5:00 and road about ten miles before turning around. The first time my light went out about half way. Anothe guy had a light so it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. Sure I could see OK, but not being able to put a beam of light where you wanted it down the trail was frightening. This time of year the trail is covered with leaves in places, so riding at night when it is hard to tell what is underneath adds a new dimension to it.

When it starts to get dark at 5:30 and you don't get home from work until 4:30 you either stop riding or get a light. My light is a old mine light connected to some RC car batteries. It works pretty well, when it works. I get about a 2 hours out of my battery. The actual bike lights are hard to understand. They range from around 20 dollars to 500 dollars. The twenty dollar one are just a small handlebar mounted flashlight. The more expensive ones coem with rechargeable batteries and high tech bumbs. I don't see spending several hundred dollars for a light when you can get a decent rechargeable hunting light for under a hundred.

Cheap Gas

2005-11-02T09:17:00.000-08:00

Weight check 282.5

I just got a chain email from someone about gas prices. The gist of the message was that we could strike a blow to the oil men by not buying from EXXON and Mobile stations. This seems hopeless to me. Lets say 300 million people boycot EXXON MOBILE stations, big deal they'll just lower their prices a few cents and boom business as usual.

The thing most people don't seem to realize with gas prices is that demand is at an all time high. We use more gas now then we ever have, not just in the US, but the rest of the world as well. Demand keeps going up supply stays the same or goes down, prices are going to get out of control. There will be a time when people will be begging to pay 5 dollars or more gallon.

There is one way we could stick it to the man. This way is the common sense way that would actually work. We use less gas. That means we buy more fuel efficent cars. That means we avoid unneccasary driving. That means that we live closer to where we work. That means we look for coworkers and friends to share rides with. Thats means the government starts creating incentives to encourage fuel economy. That means the autocompanies make fuel saving technology affordable. That means that the energy production companies start throwing time and money into alternative fuels.

Exxon Mobile just made 100 billion dollars profit last quarter selling gas. Do you really think they are going to seriously consider doing anything else with their time?

Gay road shoes

2005-10-31T14:40:00.000-08:00

Weight check 285 this morning. Bah, stupid scale!

Made some ebay bike purchases recently. First are these gay looking Adidas Road shoes. I got them for 25 bucks so I figured that was a pretty good deal.

Another thing I bought was a pair of Shimano Ultegra pedals. I had just looked at the newer SPD-SL pedals and then went on ebay just looking at all pedals. I found some that said Shimano Ultegra for 5 bucks. I quickly bid on them and won the auction. Today I looked at the pictures again, I was actually showing them to my brother, they were SPD-R pedals. The sad thing is that I just sold a pair of SPD-Rs only a few months ago.

The legend of the fat bike rider

2005-10-30T18:32:00.000-08:00

This morning I got on a scale, I weighed 284.  I had my weight down to around 276 in summer so I am not to happy about this.  From now on I will weigh every morning and post my current weight on the blog.

Today I went on a Mountain bike ride.  It was a good ride, had 4 people and everyone is a  good rider.  I only fell back a couple of times and managed to ride over some things that I hadn’t been able to before.  We went to Palestine, not the one over in the middle east, but the one in Shawnee Forest.  I only managed 2 wrecks which is good for me, and had no major problems.

I just kept thinking how much easier this would be if I weighed about 40 pounds less.  It really sucks to be a fat bike rider.  Its like being a skinny little linebacker, it just doesn’t make sense.  Sure I can ride OK, but 40 pounds is a lot of weight,  and if I didn’t have that strapped to me, man it would be nice.  Especially when trying to climb a rocky fireroad, or soft singletrack.

Weight loss is something I have never really took seriously.  I don’t think I have ever really considered a diet.  Maybe this should be the winter I really take it seriously.  A lot of guys don’t start worrying about their health until they have some kind of problem.  I guess I could get a jump on them.

BOOKS, Tad Williams vs. Neil Gaiman

2005-10-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading two books, Tad Williams' Otherland book 2 and Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. Here is some thoughts.

Tad Willaims Otherland book one caught and held my attention. It had some problems but those were easily overlooked. I had dreaded even starting this series since it is 4 books and easily 2000 total pages. The first book I breezed through, reading every chance I could get I easily finished it in a couple of weeks. The second book was different. I read the first 200 pages but I had to force myself to set down and read. I was begining to feel like I was watching filler episodes from the X-files, it was OK but didn't really go anywhere. I've been stalled out for a few weeks at 200 pages.

I started reading a Tad Williams book earlier, it was Called "The Dragonbone Chair" another first book in a 4 part series. It was excellent, but I never finished it. I think it was around 700 pages and I got to about 500. We'll come back to Tad but now...

Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys was a must read for me since I loved American Gods and Neverwhere. I'm about half way through it and and been reading for about a week. It's around 300 pages. I'm finding myself picking it up even when I know I only have ten minutes to read. It's really got my attention and I'm even happier since I know when I finish it I'll be done and not have another 3 books to read.

So the point, it seems like lots of Fantasy/Sci-Fi writers feel like then need to write a huge long winded series. Robert Jordan for instance, has the wheel of time ever ended, last I saw there was ten books. I read the first three of them before i realized it was a never ending extortion scam. Tolkien's classic work was three books, each around three or four hundred pages. It had tons of characters, a huge plot, a whole new world, yet he only needed around 1000 pages to tell one of the greatest stories ever told.

Daewoo AHHHHHHHHH!

2005-10-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

So last night we took Shauna's Daewoo Lanos on a trip about an hour away. When we got there it started belching steam from under the hood. Under examination I noticed that the thermostat housing had come undone. I took the car to a nearby autozone and found that the thermostat housing was not available for sale. The manager after ignoring me for several minutes mumbled something about gluing to together then walked off. I followed him around and asked what kind of glue and he said, "glue is in isle 5" This guy was some kind of dick. The glue held the part together just find, but didn't seal it up so it was still leaking antifreeze, but we managed to get home without burning it up.

It's the first thing to go wrong on the car and we've had it for three years. The Lanos is a small car, kind of like a real cheap Honda Civic. Compared to my Monte Carlo or the Lumina I had before there is a huge difference in quality. The Daewoo feels cheap, the seat is hard, there is nowhere to put your arms, and there seems to be an overabundance of cheap plastic.

On the outside it's a different story, the car looks good, the paint still looks good. Everything matches up. It really looks like a nicer car then it is.

In the performance department the 1.6L engine is proabably on par with most 4 cyclinders, but seems like it really has to wind up to accelerate. When its cold the transmission is really jerky, once its warm I don't notice it. This car, like most small underpowered cars, I think would be worlds more fun to drive with a 5 speed stick. The smaller tires feel kind of weak in big turns but it does have decent road handling characteristics. The steering isn't as responsive as my Monte Carlo but more then the Fords I have driven in the past.

I guess it was well worth the 6000 we paid for it in 2002. It's hard to find a nearly new car from a dealer for that.

Bills suck and Bizaro Battlefield

2005-10-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

Bills Suck.
When I got my Associates degree some fellow gave a speech. I can't remember who he was but soemthing he said stuck in my mind. He said, "In a few years most of you are going to be making more money then you ever dreamed possible. But you'll be spending even more money then that."

He was so right. I paid my bills last night and they hit an all time high. I about fell out of my chair. It seemed to happen so slowly. My first job I made 4.25 an hour and barely cleared 50 bucks a week. All I had to do was remember to put a little money back to pay car insurance and buy some gas. Well now ten years later, I spend more a week then I earned in a quarter. Oh well.

Bizaro Battlefield.
I've been playing Battlefield 2 now for a few months. I play probably 6 hours a week, thats alot for me. The game keeps track of your score online and gives you rank accordingly. I have been a lowly private trying to get up to Private First class now for all that time. I finally made it a few nights ago. Then I updated the game to v1.3 Now it seems like I gain a rank every time I play. Kind of takes the fun out of it. Also the game was super smooth before I updated it. Now after this patch it seems to drag alot and stutter more. Thing is I really don't see any difference.

SONGS.
Two songs I've been listening to over and over again
Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins (Simese Dream)
Sharing by Radiohead (Amnesiac)

I got Pwnd like a n00b in Scorched Earth

2005-10-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

So me and my wife got real bored yesterday and went to Wal-Mart. Shauna made a off hand comment about getting a Nintendo to pass the time. The last game console I owned was a SuperNes, oh and I still have a TurboGrafix 16 that hasn't seen the light of day in a decade.

We checked out the game systems and saw the Gamecube was 99 bucks. I probably would have bought it but she saw the games and the controler and said she wasn't interested. There was a new X-Box 360 being played so I watched that for awhile. Shauna thought it was Battlefield 2 which I have been playing religiously. I was suprised by how similiar Call of Duty 2 looked to Battlefield.

Anyways we went home and out of nowhere I got an idea. If Shauna wanted to play games then we would play the mother of all games, SCORTCHED EARTH. I used to play Scorched Earth with a friend many years ago, for those who don't know it is an addicitng little missle command type game. The best thing about it is the huge range of weapons and stragies. For instance you can try to blow up your enemy, or knock the ground out from under them. You can bury yourself for defense and move your tank around.

Naturally having previous experience I dominated the first round but once Shauna figured it out she started tearing me up. She bought Funky Bombs because of the name, and found that they didn't have to be to accuate to blow up the enemy.

I on the other hand focused on earning money to buy shields and defenses. Out of 5 matches I won 2 and that counts the first match where she didn't know how to play.

Scorched Earth should be easy enough to find but here is a link to the game hosted on my website since I had to download it from File planet and I hate those jerks. To get the game to work on my WinXP machine I had to delete the scortch.pif file, it has a red and blue MSDOS icon.

World of Warcraft, better late then never!

2005-10-23T18:19:00.000-07:00

My big mountain bike ride today was rained out so I had to spend my day playing World of Warcraft. Yes, I hate it, but I am becoming addicted to that game. If you have ever wanted to play a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) I would highly reccomend World of Warcraft (WOW). Today I played for a few hours and in that time I never once got bored. In fact I was half mad when I had to quit for awhile.

What sets WOW apart from just about every other MMOG I've played is three fold.

Number 1: the sense of Story; my character, Loudsilence the Elf is running around taking part in a story and helping others in the world (sure they are just NPCs but Loudsilence doesn't know that) The fact is that WOW has more content then any game I've ever played.
Number 2: The sense of Purpose; There is always something to do in WOW, there are so many quests that keep you running around and doing things it makes you feel, well useful.
Number 3: The sense of Fun; So far WOW has not really forced me to grind at all. I did for a short time, but I figured out quickly that it doesn't make sense to sit and kill things over and over again in WOW, you can get farther faster by participating in the storyline.

So it took me a long time to finally try the game but I am glad I did.

A Bridge too Far or an Hour too Long

2005-10-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

Last night a buddy came over and along with my wife we watched “A Bridge To Far” Oddly enough my wife rented this movie, even though war movies aren’t her typical choice. It didn’t take me long to figure why when Robert Redford rolled past on the opening credits.

It’s really fun watching a war movie with my buddy Chris since he has a masters in History specializing in WW2 he can fill you in on all the little details. It’s fun to have a historically accurate conversation on the relative success of the Marker Garden Operation with someone who knows what he is talking about.

Ok to make a long story short the movie is a three hour epic recounting an Allied attempt to blitz into Holland with airborne soldiers and secure bridges and roads leading to the city Arnhem. Because the planning general underestimated Nazi forces the attack ends up becoming a disaster.

This movie was made in 1977 and didn’t do well in the box office. I can understand why, it is not a very fun movie to watch. Yeah there are a few interesting parts, great battles, but for the most part it seems more like something you would watch in a history class.

It is my opinion that a movie like this will never be made again. There is a huge talented cast, but it is spread out so thin over Holland that its hard to remember their names, what they are doing and where they are at. Redford doesn’t even appear until the last 25 minutes of the movie making my wife all kinds of mad. There is no lead character, and no human story outside of the retelling of the battle.

Something that struck me was the effort that was put into filming some scenes, like the paratrooper drops. The screen was full of hundreds of parachutes, and I wonder today if scenes like that would be computer generated or left out.

I suppose I can’t call it a total lose, it did have some excellent moments and some great actors. It had no foolish heroics, well it did have some short bursts of heroics but the would be heroes were almost always mowed down mowed down. I would admit it was the most accurate portrayal of a broad battlefield I had ever seen and I went straight to my computer afterward to play some Battlefield 1942.

Gatt Molson is F'ing Metal

2005-10-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

Hey, so damn it I give up. I might as well just dribble on the internet like everyone else. So here is my blog.

First off, my wife, she hates Sci-fi. SO imagine my suprise when I made her go see Serenity with me and found it not to be terrible. My suprise grew even greater when She wanted to watch the episodes from the series. So I get to enjoy them all again. It really is a testament to how good of a show Firefly was.

Secondly, took my first mountain bike ride in god knows how long the other day. Went to One Horse Gap with some guys. I had to buy my old mountian bike back. It had been setting in a building for about a year and half so it needed some maintaince. It did great, except the seatpost kept sliding down. Mountain bike riding is lots of fun, but hard on a person. Doesn't matter how good of shape your in. Riding in the Shawnee on horse trails will put a powerful hurt on a man.

Thirdly, if your out at night in H-BURG and see some idiot riding his bike around with a big headlight its probably me. I rigged up a mine light and some RC car batteries and made a really nice bright light for riding.

Well thats enough for now, don't want to over do it.