There's no place like home

The difference between a pleasant ride and one which is unpleasant can be as simple as a matter of a few degrees Fahrenheit.

I was reminded of this fact today at lunch time.

When I rode my motorcycle to work this morning it was about 48 degrees out. I tossed on my Aerostich Fleece Jacket under my Aerostich Roadcrafter and was okay for the 20 minute ride in. I would not have wanted to ride much further than that, but it was okay for the short jaunt.

I had to run home over lunch, so I hopped on the bike and went. For some reason, I was really cold on the drive home. The temperture was about the same and I was dressed the same, but there was a cold breeze blowing in through my 'stich. I may not have had the zipper flap sealed all the way, as it doesn't seal very well, but I was freezing cold by the time I got home. I was even getting a crick in my neck due to the cold. Man, did that suck.

Since I was at home I decided to put on my Widder heated vest for the ride back to work. That thing may be the best motorcycle accessory that I own!

The ride back to work was so wonderful. I could have kept going for hours with that vest turned on. I was so comfortable. As a matter of fact, I wanted to keep going for hours.

The only thing that would have made it better was to have had some thicker socks on. My tootsies were getting a little cold.

Heated socks perhaps?

1&1 is handing out free .info domains. You can get up to 5 free for a year.

I'm not sure why I need .info domains, but just to be silly I registered the following:

• give-me-your.info
  
• aint-got-no.info
  
• its-all-about-the.info
  
• tell-me-your-secret.info
  
• whiskey-tango-foxtrot.info

Why? Who knows? But it's free!

Here is an easy simple way to turn a color photograph into a stencil in Photoshop!

Cool!

This is a site about creating stencils for T-Shirt art and other usages, so there are other stencil art related tutorials here.

I just posted two photo albums.

The first one is from the Saint Paul Irregulars trip to Chicago for HMGS Little Wars. You can view it here.

The second one is just some misc images.

This year is the year that my family is taking our biennial vacation to our cabins just West of Glacier park. But that's not what I'm going to blog about.

What I want to blog about is South Dakota.

I am on a mailing list for some motorcycle friends of mine. I made a comment that on my trip to Montana this year I would be going though North Dakota instead of South Dakota due to that state's backwards views on abortion. For those of you living in a cave, South Dakota just outlawed abortions.

One of my friends (who happens to live in South Dakota) replied to my comment with this response:

Cool. I sure hope you apply the same policy towards every other state that voted for officials you don't agree with. No? Thats more telling than anything. Selective outrage.

I let him have it with both barrels:

It is my right to have selective outrage. You don't have to agree with my selection of issues to be outraged about, you don't have to like my selection, but you should at least be able to admit that I have a right to be outraged by the issues of my choosing and I have the right to show my outrage in any manner I see fit.

So far, SD is the only state that I am aware of that is busy sanctimoniously pushing women back into the dark ages.

You should be embarrassed by the way your state is acting about the abortion issue. It's not just that they are outlawing abortion, it's the callous statements that your politicians are making about it and the fact that they (although SD is not alone in this regard) can't figure out that the way to reduce the number of abortions is not to outlaw them, but rather to try and stop the unwanted pregnancies before they happen by providing EDUCATION about birth control.

Providing EDUCATION about sex and birth control to teenagers does NOT increase teenage sex. But it DOES reduce teenage pregnancy and STDs.

Your politician says that the only case that a woman should be allowed to have an abortion is the following:

BILL NAPOLI: "A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life." (attibution)

How can any right minded person agree with a statement like that? I mean What the ever-loving Fuck? How can any right minded person even MAKE a statement like that?

This is one of my hot buttons and your off-hand denial of my right to be upset about it and of my right to boycott your state has got me all riled up.

I don't want to start an abortion flame war on this list, but if you want to rationally discuss this with me, please send me a private email

Hopefully this doesn't turn into a flame war, but still, how can anybody agree with what South Dakota is doing?

This is how I really feel about it - www.fucksouthdakota.com

There appears to be a rapper war going on in the cryptography set.

Bruce Schneier brought attention to MC Plus+'s rap about Alice and Bob. Some of the lyrics are here.

DES is wrong if you listen to NIS
Double DES ain't no better man, that got Dis'ed
Twofish for AES, that was Schneier's wish
Like a shot from the key
Rijndael made the swish
But Blowfish is still the fastest in the land
And Bruce used the same to ECB and I'll crack your ciper text
Try CFB mode to keep everyone perplexed

Then there is the rap by Monzy called So Much Drama in the PHd.

Yo, MC Plus Plus, my rhymes are so phat,
I'm PSPACE-complete but I'll reduce you to 3-SAT.
My crew is so hard that we roll in NP,
And bitches dereference my pointer for free.
When I'm linear probing they're like, "Damn that's gigantic,"
I showed it to your mom and she used Hoare semantics.
She jumped like JNE up onto my erection
And I picked up that ho like straight garbage collection.
("That's right, mark-and-sweep on these nuts, bitch.")

Buncha nerds, all of them.

Back when men were men and there were no lawyers there existed the Turbonique rocket assist systems for your drag racing pleasure.

Total pure insanity. And way too much fun.

Read all about it at the IowaHawk blog.

Thus begins Mr. Jalopy's blog entry about going to the Maker's Faire.

There are four types of people in the world:

1. Those that will never remove an exhaust manifold bolt AKA the Lucky Few
   
2. Those that have broken an exhaust manifold bolt
   
3. Those that will break an exhaust manifold bolt
   
4. Those that lie about whether or not they have broken an exhaust manifold bolt

I have broken exhaust manifold bolts. It sucks.

Mr. Jalopy goes on to describe fixing two broken manifold bolts two days before driving to the Maker's Faire. It's a great write up.

He then goes on to describe his road trip in his 1960's vintage automobile:

Road trips in old cars are different. There is never a complete relaxation. Automobile journeys used to be harrowing and they still can be when you are driving a 40 year old car. I think of cars from the '60s as being comparatively modern, but there is no denying the decay of materials over time. Old cars get old. After driving for about an hour, you can feign relaxation and even dramatically stretch your arm across the generous front bench seat but you still can't let down your guard.

Every scent, noise, shimmey, knock, ping or tug must be carefully examined and evaluated as most catastrophic automobile failures are prefaced with a scent, noise, shimmey, knock, ping or tug. The attention that an old car requires becomes a sixth sense as you are able to track issues faster than you can think. It means there are a lot of false alarms. When you hear a crow or smell carne asada tacos, before you are even able process what you are smelling or hearing, you leap to immediate terror mode.

'What's that! What's that smell!? Tacos! Is that my car? Are tacos a car smell?! Do cars make a cawww like a crow before the trans goes up in smoke?!'

This is how I feel when I ride my 1982 BMW motorcycle across the country. But I also believe, like Mr. Jalopy, that if it breaks, I can fix it.

He talks about reading the Byte Circuit Cellar columns when he was in high school. I loved reading Byte magazine when I was in high school!

I really love this blog entry, and I really need to add HooptyRides to my daily read list.

Mr. Jalopy has the same attitude about making things and fixing things that I do. I'll end with this quote that sums it up for me:

I am not an expert in sheet metal. I am not an expert in anything. But it doesn't keep me from doing it anyway. When you have a broad base of mediocre skills, you twist and fit your projects to your materials and abilities.

Go read the rest of it.

What would be your choice?

I got the new exhaust installed on the hack last night. It's a MAC 4 into 2 setup that looks close to stock.

I was hoping that it would be quieter than the ProSport 4 into 1 that was on the bike when I got it.

I don't think it's quieter. The exhaust note is deeper and more pleasing to my ear, but it might even be a little louder than the 4 into 1. (Not that I don't like a nice sounding kind of loud exhaust note - but it's right next to the sidecar passenger.)

In any case, the bike runs better now. There was a huge flat spot from about 3500 to 5000 (right in the 5th gear crusing range) that is now gone. The bike used to have trouble accelerating from 55 to 70 and now it just goes.

It also feels like there is more low-end torque available, so I can short-shift it in town and cruise in 4th to keep the noise down.

So I went from a raspy, anemic sounding, power robbing exhaust to a (maybe) louder, deeper note, power giving system.

I guess that's a gain.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the MPG. I was getting about 27 MPG. I need to fill up this afternoon, so I'll know in a few days.

The best part was having to beat on the side of the exhaust cans with a hammer to make some clearance room for the axle.

Thus again proving that all aftermaket is junk.

Although it's not the same as actually being there, the new eHikes on the Glacier Park web site are pretty darned cool.

Lots of info, video and beautiful photos.

Well worth some time.