She Said Yes

You Just Don't Get It, Keep It Copasetic

I saw on the news that someone robbed the main branch of the library in my city today. The library. The place where you go to get books for free. He got away with $40 (probably all the late fees for the past year). Way to go, genius. Maybe you should spend a little more time in the library actually reading the books, since this whole "crime" thing is obviously beyond your grasp...

Jaws Was Never My Scene

Goddamn, my legs are sore. I've been hitting the gym pretty hard lately - I'm officially in training. See, my best friend since age 12 & I used to be pretty active guys - camping twice a month, year round, for the better part of a decade, hiking, bicycling, all that stuff. Fast forward ten years and we're both a whole lot fatter and pretty inactive. We've been talking about getting back into more outdoor pursuits recently (he took the kids camping last weekend and has his eye on the Appalachian Trail) but I've convinced him to sign on to a harebrained scheme I came up with: We're going to get dropped off in Pittsburgh with bikes & gear, and make our way down the Great Allegheny Passage, across the eastern continental divide, and on to Cumberland, MD. From there we'll pick up the C & O Canal Towpath to Washington, D.C. The girls will meet us in D.C., we'll all spend a couple days there, and drive home. Overall it will be 316 miles by bike, camping the whole way, probably allowing 6-10 days travel time. Right now we're planning on August 2008, which is good, because I need to get in good enough shape to cover at least 30 miles a day on a bicycle and to accumulate the gear I'll need (like, um, a bicycle. Not to mention all that other stuff). I'm pretty excited, as it gives me a goal to work towards for the next year, and it sounds like a cool route with a lot of history along the way. Expect occasional updates regarding training & gear here, as the trip nears I'll probably create a separate blog dedicated to the trip...

Make It Shallow So That I Can Feel The Rain

The girlfriend and I took a couple of vacation days last week to unwind and visit her hometown, and to visit her mother's grave - she hadn't been there since the funeral, so she hadn't seen the headstone her father picked out. It was beautiful, but we were both surprised when we walked around and looked at the back of it:

Strangest Your Momma Joke Ever...

...from an actual conversation I had the other day:

"Your momma has qualities that are indicative of precipitation".

Project Files: Ridin' The Porcelain Bus

Sorry I haven't been around lately, but I took a few days off work. Where did I go on vacation, you ask? Well, put it this way: There was lots of water, high temperatures, and Bermuda Coral. What tropical location was this?

My bathroom.

The water was there already, the high temperatures were due to it being 90+ degrees in the Midwest for the past week, and "Bermuda Coral" is the trade name for the ugly Pepto-Bismol pink ceramic tile that was installed in my bathroom.

See, a few months ago I noticed a brown spot on my kitchen ceiling. I didn't really remember seeing it before, but I didn't know if it was new or if it was one of those "Has that always been there, and I just didn't notice it?" type of things. I kept an eye on it and it didn't seem to be getting any bigger, so I forgot about it. A few weeks ago, after seeing my girlfriend off to work, I noticed it looked a little... different, somehow. I went up to it and poked the ceiling with my finger. Which continued going through the ceiling until it hit a ceiling joist. When I pulled my finger out, it was followed by a few drops of water.

Shit.

I knew the grout in the bathroom was lousy, as the previous owners did a half-assed caulking job over top of the grout. I tried hitting it with the caulking gun again, which helped for about a week, but soon after there was a steady drip-drip-drip out of the hole in the ceiling whenever someone took a shower. I thought about calling one of those one-day bath remodeling places, but after checking around, it would be at least $2K, and that was if they didn't have to replace any drywall, which was a given. Nuthin' left to do but grab the prybar and start tearing shit out...

The lovely "before" shot. Notice the beautiful non-matching patch job on the tile behind the faucets.

After ripping out all the tile and lots of rotten drywall. Luckily there was no mold or nasty surprises behind the wall.

Another shot post-demo. The drywall behind this wall hadn't been taped or mudded at all - they just fitted patch pieces and stuck them together with caulking. There was a loose chunk of 2x4 wedged into the right side of the wall to support the drywall next to the tile behind the sink.

New greenboard hung, taped, first coat of mud. I left the upper section alone since it was still in good shape, and just sanded down the mastic.

Another shot.

The new enclosure was trimmed to fit and put up with construction adhesive. I cut the holes for the fixtures with my holesaw and for the spigot with a paddle bit.

Side view.

All taped off & ready for caulking. This was a pain, but gives waaaay better results (especially since I'm lousy at laying down & smoothing caulk on the fly). Also, I wanted to use silicone caulking over polyurethane, but silicone can get real messy - the tape prevents the mess from getting too out-of-hand. I also bought a $4 caulking tool on a whim, which turned out to be the best investment ever.

I had to tear off the course of bullnose tiles along the edge of the shower...

So I cleaned it up with a piece of 1/2" trim. I caulked the joint afterward and it looks great, but I forgot to take a picture. Notice the swanky surfboard soap dispenser on the sink...

Which ties in with the new surfboard shower curtain. All the surfboard-themed items are available at Wal-Mart, in the aisle that sells stuff for kids' bathrooms.

So that's how I spent the better part of the past week. I bought all the matching surfboard accessories - I'm gonna do a whole Endless Summer-themed bathroom (who says bathrooms have to be all "elegant" (read: boring), anyways?) Luckily my girlfriend is totally on board (har har) with the idea.

I was pretty proud of how this turned out - I've always been pretty handy with minor repair stuff in the past, but this is the first place I've owned, and this is the first "major" job I've done. The rest of the bathroom will be done sometime in the near future (rest of the tile is coming down, new flooring, new sink & vanity, paint, etc.) but that's gonna have to wait until I save up a little more money & catch my breath...

Perhaps They'll Listen Now

Vintage Motorcycle Days has come and gone, and I didn't win the Vincent Black Shadow. Oh well, I didn't have space for it anyways... sure is pretty, though.

Canned Heat In My Heels Tonight

Call For Super Chicken

Met him over the weekend - He was a very friendly guy. For a chicken.

Life Sucks, Wear A Helmet

The worst thing about about this season if I have a major case of new bike fever - I spend most of the day browsing Cycle Trader, looking for my next bike. Logically, this should be something that will fulfill all my needs (bigger, comfortable, suitable for distance, somewhat sporty) - so far I'm leaning towards the Yamaha FJR1300, Honda ST1300, or a used Super Hawk, Interceptor, or BMW R1150 RT. The problem is I can't (and won't be able to) afford ANY of these bikes for a while, so I start browsing Craigslist for one-sided trades on dirt bikes or salvage sites for ratted-out sportbikes that have been crashed by the squids (both of which would be a bad idea) - anything to get a new-bike fix. Oh well, I guess there's always the lottery...

In other news, I got a new lid today:
It's a Nolan N41 in wine. Kind of a compromise between my full-face, which I've been wearing almost exclusively lately, and my beanie, which I never felt very secure riding in (news flash - cruiser guy picks function over form! Film at eleven!) I'm not crazy about the color (I wanted the silver or flat black) but I got a deal I couldn't refuse on it - something along the lines of 90% off retail. The color is actually much darker in person, so I can live with it (I passed up a similar deal on a N41 in fire-engine red 'cause I knew I'd never wear it). My full-face Bieffe is going on ten years old and has suffered a few drops, including being thrown by a friend at the local kart-racing track during a spirited discussion with an official ("Rubbin' IS racing!") so I figured it was time to step up. I really wanted the N42 with the N-Com headset and bluetooth goodies, but that would've run me in the $600 dollar range by the time all was said and done. If I fall into some disposable income maybe I'll get a custom paint job for it - it kinda reminds me of another helmet from my childhood:
Hell yeah. Ace Goodheart FTW, bitches.

R.I.P. VW Bus

Some of you might remember that I sold my VW Bus back in January. I was actually kinda happy that it went to a prolific member of a local VW club. Since I still love VW's I kept subscribing to the mailing lists, and saw the following tragic message:
---------------------------------------------------------
"I was cruising down the road on Saturday in my "new"
72 Westy when this stupid teenager in his big old
Thunderbird pulls thru a stop sign and directly into
my path...WHAM!!! The Westy nailed him doing about 45
MPH!! The good news is that me, my wife, and my
stepson were all un-injured, HOWEVER, the bad news is
that the nose of the bus got CRUNCHED!!!! Probably not
fix-able".
---------------------------------------------------------
I know John (the bus' new owner) had put one of his engines in the bus, sorted all the mechanicals, and was happily driving it - so at least she went out in action, instead of rotting in a yard. And if I know John, he'll have the sense to part out anything he might be able to use again, so parts of her will live on... I actually came across a wooden pullback shifter knob and VW suicide steering-wheel knob in a box of parts the other day, maybe I'll mount 'em on the Impala as a tribute...

Whatever It Takes To Make It Hardcore

Stupid, but fun... via S.F.V.I.S.B.F.

Fresh Ink

On The Road Again

...as I mentioned in my (bitchy) last post, I completed the MSF Course the other weekend. I enjoyed this one much more than the last time I took it (7 or 8 years ago, I think?) Smaller class, better instructors, cooler classmates. This was a pilot course being offered for the first time this year - instead of a two-day class, it's one day only for people who have extensive experience on a permit (1K+ miles) or "... experienced riders who are returning to riding with or without their endorsement after several years of non-riding". This worked great for me, because, well... I never technically had my endorsement. (Now you know my horrible secret!) I would just go get a new set of temps every year, then never get around to taking the test. (This is more common than it sounds - my brother-in-law has been doing it for 5 or 6 years, and his father did it for 25+ years(!)). Anyways, now I'm completely legal and don't have to be paranoid about getting pulled over at night (daytime only, no passengers on temps in my state). I took the test in the middle of a thunderstorm on a ragged-out 250 Nighthawk and it was easy as pie - much easier than the last time I tried it on my bike, a cruiser with 36" beach bars and cut-down seat.

I finally got around to getting the bike out of drydock and took it for a ride... I did a quick safety check before riding - checked the brakes, signals, etc., felt the tires and they didn't seem low. Went out for a while and thought "Hmmm, steering feels a little sloppy". Came home and checked the tire pressure with a fancy professional-style tire gauge I picked up at a too-good-to-be-true price over the winter - turns out it really was too-good-to-be-true, 'cause the damn thing's broken. Dug up one of the cheapie pen-style gauges out of tool box and tested it - 5lbs. That can't be right. Found another one and tried it - 5lbs. Oops. Should be 33lbs. Got lucky on that ride. Went to do an oil change, discovered I need a lift or a stubby wrench to get at the drain plug. *Sigh* One of those days, I guess. Spent a few hours cleaning her up, taking a trip to pick up some tools tomorrow...

How To Spend $1300 Without Really Trying

My weekend:

The girlfriend calls me Friday morning and says, "I need to talk to you when you get home". Of course, my first thought was "Oh sh*t, she's pregnant". I jump in the car and race home, and she says, "I think something's wrong with the TV". I turn it on, and the screen is just green wavy lines. I get down on the floor and start taking the grille off the front to inspect it, and it's wet. Her dog (which, I was assured when she moved in, was impeccably housebroken) took a leak on my 52" HDTV. Directly into the gun array (it was a rear-projection TV). For the second time in a month. She's hysterical and crying, thinking I'm going to take the dog to the pound. I calm her down and send her to work and go to bed. That night, we go out and she buys me a new 37" LCD TV - or rather, we try to, but the store declines her credit card (we called & checked the balance before we left). So, she has to stand there at the cash register and call the credit card company - of course, it takes her half an hour to get a real person on the phone, and they tell her that since she never makes large purchases on her card, it was flagged as a "potential fraudulent purchase". Okay, whatever. Card gets re-swiped and goes through, we take the TV home, haul it inside, and go to bed.


The next morning I woke up early and left to take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation advanced rider course. Of course the last two hours of that are in the pouring rain, so I get soaked to the bone (it was still fun, though - much better instructors than the last time I took it). On the way home I stop to get gas. As I'm getting out of my car, my cell phone slips out of my hand and lands square in the tub of windshield-washer fluid mounted to the trash can next to the pump. My immediate thought was "You gotta be f@¢king kidding me". I fish out my phone and it's shot. Go to the cell-phone place and of course they won't give me a deal since I'm in the middle of a contract, chalk up $300 for a new phone.


The next day I go to move the old TV out of the house, and as I'm pushing it into the kitchen from the dining room, I rub up against the kitchen door slightly - which rips the door off the hinges. I take the door off and look at it, seems the previous owner must have done this before, and repaired the edge of the door with cut-down paint stirrers and wood glue, then painted over it so you couldn't tell. I throw the door in the dumpster and get ready to throw the TV in, of course as I was doing that I smashed my thumb between the TV and the edge of the steel dumpster.


After that I went to meet an old friend from out of town for lunch - I told him my story, and he said, "Well, I was gonna show you my new car, but you're not allowed anywhere near it". Oh well, nowhere to go but up from here I guess...

Little Mac says 'Help me, Doc!!'

via xkcd.com

...so I finally broke down and ordered a Wii - I swore I wasn't going to be blackmailed into paying for a "bundle" where I had to buy six games with the console, but then the Dell store (where I have a credit card) got a bundle in stock that had almost all the games I wanted, so... there ya go. I am forcing myself to not open some of the games (Madden '07, Zelda) until the quarter is over in a couple of weeks, for I fully expect to lose a month of my life to those games.

One thing I can heartily recommend, even if your not a fan of video games: Wii Sports boxing. If you have any tension in your relationship at all, there's few things as therapeutic as KO'ing a cutesy 3D rendering of your significant other. It's like an episode of Cops without the trailer park or domestic violence charges. The only thing that's more fun is watching two people play Wii boxing, as they look like two people having epiletic fits with game controllers in their hands.

As I said, the quarter is over in a couple of weeks - from here 'till there I have three tests, one lab, one paper, one HUGE project, and a job interview (for a promotion at my current employer). I have the MSF course coming up in a couple of weeks, I might try to sneak my digital camera in there and document it for you all, and since the Wii plays GameCube games, I have an interesting project planned for my old GameCube that I hope to write up here. Stay tuned...

Picture Book, Picture Book

After getting my tax return, paying off bills, and putting a chunk in the bank I actually had a little bit of money left over - I have been thinking about getting a digital SLR for a while now, so I sprung for the Pentax K100D. This lets me use all my old glass - I have been tempted to make the move to Canon for while so I can get an EOS-1Ds & a XL2 and share lenses, but I don't have a spare eight thousand dollars right now, so this'll have to do. Last weekend I took the girlfriend on a date to the conservatory and put the new camera through the paces - here are the shots I liked best...

Take A Long Ride On My Motorbike

Hmmmm, seems like the only post I make anymore is the "sorry I haven't posted in so long" one. School is again kicking my butt, although in a good way (I am working on a very involved project that, for once, might actually translate into the real world - as well as give me a project I can put in my portfolio). Hopefully summer will be less hectic - I plan on only taking one (online only) class.

In moto-related news, I got lucky and snagged a spot for a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course in about a month. I must have caught a cancellation - I checked the web page on Sunday and all classes were booked until the end of September, I checked again the next day and there was exactly one spot open for a class at the beginning of June, so I jumped on it. This is actually a new class that they just started this year - it's an abbreviated one-day version of the basic class, for people who have been riding on a permit for multiple years or have been riding on-and-off for several years (sadly, that describes me to a "T"). I took the class about 9 years ago, it'll be good to get a refresher. Maybe I'll sign up for the advanced class next summer...

RIP 1922 - 2007

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything."

When She's Ten Feet Tall

Hey all, not too much new here. We did Easter at my place this year, my first honest-to-goodness hosting of a holiday meal since becoming a grown up (allegedly). It went really well, except we forgot that if you let a sixty-pound dog eat an entire hambone (which he can do in about five minutes flat) , he will wake you up by yakking on your bedroom floor at 4:30AM.

The GF's dad had peeling forearms due to having the Goldwing out all last week during the nice weather, and her brother even managed to get the ancient CD350 he bought off eBay last year out for a day. Needless to say, I felt like a slacker - I still need to make a trip to the BMV before I can get my bike on the road. I did show it to them and we resolved to get together for a ride sometime this summer, maybe head up the road to the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum. I'll be sure to take lots of pics...

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Hey all, lots of real-world stuff happening lately... I finally finished the classes that were kicking my but this quarter, and the girlfriend is moving in this weekend. On top of that there's been dealing with all the paperwork for the new car, tons of work stuff, playing referee between her pets and mine (don't ask), and some really nasty weather on top of it all. Some storms rolled through last night and actually blew out some of the support poles in my motorcycle shelter, so I had to take it halfway apart and get it set up again, but it definitely fired up my urge to go for a ride - hopefully I'll be able to post some reports soon...

-D_G

The New Whip

Hey all, sorry for my extended absence, but school has been kicking my butt this quarter. I'm struggling to maintain a low-"B"-to-high-"C" in my first programming class, and my other class is in the early afternoon, right in between two days that I work third shift - meaning I leave work, go home and sleep for three hours, get up, go to class for three hours, go to the computer labs, go home and sleep for a couple more hours, get up and go to work. None of this would be particularly fun even if I wasn't nursing a pretty severe sleep disorder in the first place. Thankfully, it'll be over in a few more weeks, and next quarter will hopefully go a little smoother.

The other thing that has been taking up a lot of my time lately has been car shopping. As much as I love the CRX, it was starting to show it's age of seventeen years, despite all the spit 'n polish. It was also less-than-ideal for road trips given it's small size, what with both mine & the girlfriend's families living an hour away. And she didn't find the spartan accommodations (power nothing, 5-speed, no A/C) nearly as charming as I did.

I drove an F-150 (I'm not a Ford guy, nor a truck guy - I've owned them in the past, but really don't have a need for one, plus the cost of gas woulda killed me), a couple Jettas (too small) a couple Passats (too expensive) and decided to look at a 2005 Impala at a dealer near me - I snuck away from studying for a few hours on Sunday and drove to the dealership, only to find I drove to the wrong one - they actually had two locations for used cars. The salesman told me he had a 2006 Impala, but no 2005's. This was discouraging to me, as 2005 was the last year of the cool round taillights ("Why would they do away with an Impala trademark?!?") I wondered. The salesman encouraged me to take a look at the '06 anyway and pulled it around: It was white. Probably my least favorite color for any car. I told it was out of my price range anyway, but he encouraged me to drive it, and to my surprise, I really really liked it. I even decided the white looked pretty good on it, especially if you tinted the windows. Even the new taillights were starting to grow on me a little bit. I had already received financing from my credit union and knew where I wanted my payment to be, so this car wasn't even a possibility. The dealership convinced me to let them run my info through their system, and they got me a rate two points lower than my credit union (which I just assumed would be my best option). Boom, $2k more car for the same payment. I yanked my stereo equipment out of the Honda and drove it home. (I originally wasn't going to trade the CRX - I knew I could easily get $2K for it, but only after I dropped $500 in it for new shocks & brakes, plus a whole weekend's work of detailing... I decided for a few hundred bucks difference, I would rather just be done with it. Of course, now my friends are coming out of the woodwork and berating me for not giving them first refusal rights). I give you the new whip:

(That's a stock photo of course - mine's already too dirty to be suitable for photography)

It's quite different to drive - remember, I've only owned one other car built in this decade, and that was a Jeep Wrangler with zero options. It has all kinds of power stuff and digital geegaws and doodads and blue LED's everywhere and a jack to plug my iPod into the radio. When the temperature dropped below 32 degrees tonight, it actually warned me that there could be ice on the road. Between that and the remote starter, I feel like Michael Knight. I'll probably get the windows tinted as dark as I can get away this summer, and might look into finding an SS spoiler for the trunk, but that's about it.

The other big difference was when I filled it up - $35.00!!! If the CRX was on fumes I might squeeze $15 into it. And that would last me a week (46 mile round-trip commute to work 5 days a week, plus 30-odd miles to school and back 3-4 nights a week). That's gonna take some getting used to...

I Remember As If It Were A Meal Ago

Leaving Just A Memory

Something I noticed today: Every semester, for the past year and a half, I completely forget how to write batch files. I'm not retarded, I can write large chunks of code in various languages from memory, but for some damn reason I can never remember how to do a simple logon script.

On the other hand, I can listen to the metal station on satellite radio, hear a song I haven't so much as thought about since ninth grade (today it was Exodus' Toxic Waltz, last week it was Megadeth's In My Darkest Hour) and I remember every goddamn word. If I can ever cross-link the IT section of my brain to the hesher section of my brain, I'll be golden...

I Felt Like This On My Way Home

Well, the Bus has new home. The buyer came down one New Year's Day to look at it and wrote me a check, he will be back to pick it up next weekend. I'm sad to see it go, but I need to focus on more important things right now. The buyer is actually one of the founding members of a local VW Bus club, so I'm happy it's going to go to someone who loves VW's and will get some use out if it. Someday I'll be able to afford a new RV (the girlfriend is actually totally on board with this as a long-range goal) and a couple small bikes or scooters to tour the country with, but first I gotta buy a place to park it...