In the Bike Lane

Could an Engineered Wing Sailboat benefit from Winglets?

2011-11-19T19:09:00.001-06:00

Recently, while I was on a business trip, I had the opportunity to see a presentation about the design and development of the Oracle AC45 wing-sailed Catamaran.

It was fascinating to see some of the history of the Americas Cup and how the ship designs have changed/evolved over the years. On the trip back, while looking out at the window of the plane, I saw the winglet at the end of the wing tip...
and it occurred to me -- could an engineered wing-sail benefit from a winglet as well? Winglets on conventional aircraft wings reduce the overall wingspan, which helps to reduce parasitic drag by recovering wingtip vortex energy. The difference in an aircraft wing and wing-sail is of course that the aircraft is using the wing for lift and thrust but for sailing the wing provides thrust. It would be interesting to see if a "sail-let" at the top of the engineered wing would provide a similar advantage. It would also be an interesting to see if the sail-let could protrude to both sides of the wing-sail tip or if it would need to be a single "sail-let" that change sides to provide the most advantage. Perhaps an AC45 with a "sail-let" could perform as well as the planned AC72? NOTE: this isn't an original idea on my part. By doing some google searching showed that others had the same idea/question.

Most recent Garmin logged bike ride

2011-06-07T21:21:00.001-05:00

My new winter sport

2011-02-22T19:37:00.004-06:00

Up until the last two or three years, the winters in Wisconsin had been mild enough that I had been able to keep riding my bicycle through the winter. It was cold, but the lack of snow kept the roads and trails clear. In fact I posted about it and some of the gear I used back in 2007. Since then the winters have been a lot snowier, so it was time I found an alternative sport for the winter. This year I found it, by taking up snowshoeing. The first weekend I rented a pair of snowshoes, and after that I was hooked. I ordered a pair of snowshoes the next day and had them in time for the next weekend. Getting them that quick was lucky, as here in the Midwest, we had some record snowfall (even a blizzard) during that week (Feb. 2nd). The next two weekends I was "shoeing" in my own pair of snowshoes.

Snowshoeing at Lapham Peak

This past week, we we had a pretty good melt, so snowshoeing was out, but my wife and I took our dog out to Lapham Peak and did some walking/hiking on the paved trail.

This week, we've had a little more snow, so snowshoeing might be back on the agenda for this weekend.

Diary of a reverse-engineer and the SPARC T3-1

2011-02-06T14:33:00.000-06:00

How does one get into the business of reverse engineering? For me it started at an early age, I loved to take things apart. Of course it's also desirable that, if whatever it is that's being taken apart was working, it should be again, once it's put back together. It took a little while before I was able to put them back together successfully. Sometimes the problem was that there would be extra parts left over during the re-assembly process. But the thing I always took the most pride in was being able to fix something that was broken.

In the late sixties it was old watches, transistor radios and telephones that were some of my first "projects". The old crank type phones were some of my favorites. I still have an old 5-bar magneto from one of those phones. As the years went by the technology changed, but my interest and curiosity remained, progressing into computers and programming.

So, this year I find myself doing some reverse engineering again, bringing the new Oracle/Sun SPARC T3-1 systems into an existing Solaris jumpstart environment. The first issue is that this environment is customized and the person who wrote the scripts is no longer around, thus that reverse engineering that I've been talking about.

First problem, the SPARC T3-1 wouldn't jumpstart in the existing environment because the custom scripts which try to specify the boot drives in one of two ways:

try to look up the drives in a disk map file based on the machine type and a wild card for logical disk names.
or use physical paths (assigned to a custom devalias) to look-up the logical path (/dev/dsk/c#t#d#) once the jumpstart is initiated.

In the product notes (821-2059-15) for the SPARC T3-1, it's stated that this system now uses a SAS 2.0 WWID (16 digit hexadecimal number) in place of the "t#". Of course this WWID is unique to each disk drive, so that rules out a wild card in the disk mapping file.

Option two was also a bust, because once the SPARC T3-1 boots, the physical path (whether using the format listing, or an "ls -l" command of the logical disks) doesn't provide the same physical path used at the eeprom boot level. This issue also comes into play during post jumpstart processing as well, when we try to write more devalias values for the root drive and its mirror. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Example: ls -l and partial format listing (both show the scsi_vhci as the path)

/dev/dsk/c05000CCA00AD91644d0s2 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca00ad91644:c

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:

0. c1t5000CCA00AD91644d0
/scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca00ad91644

To solve the first problem, I did two things, I modified the script that looks up the boot drives to recognize the devalias when they were given as a logical device, vs physical. This allowed the jumpstart to proceed normally and only involved a few commands from the "ok" prompt to determine the WWID of the disks that I wanted to specify. In this case I wanted to use the first drive of each of the two internal controllers.

{0} ok probe-scsi-all

/pci@400/pci@2/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0

#--------^^^^^ 2^nd controller

FCode Version 1.00.54, MPT Version 2.00, Firmware Version 5.00.17.00

Target 9

Unit 0 Disk HITACHI H103030SCSUN300G A2A8 585937500 Blocks, 300 GB

SASDeviceName 5000cca0150611a0 SASAddress 5000cca0150611a1 PhyNum 0

#-------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ this will be the root mirror

/pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0

---------^^^^^ 1^st controller

FCode Version 1.00.54, MPT Version 2.00, Firmware Version 5.00.17.00

Target 9

Unit 0 Disk HITACHI H103030SCSUN300G A2A8 585937500 Blocks, 300 GB

SASDeviceName 5000cca01502f6e4 SASAddress 5000cca01502f6e5 PhyNum 0

#-------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ this will be the primary root disk

These disks are in HDD slot 0 (for pci@1) and HDD slot 4 (for pci@2). Note, switch any alpha characters to uppercase, as that's how they are listed in the /dev/{r}dsk/ directory.

{0} ok nvalias boot1 /dev/dsk/c0t5000CCA01502F6E4d0

{0} ok nvalias boot2 /dev/dsk/c0t5000CCA0150611A0d0
{0} ok nvstore

Now the jumpstart could proceed as normal, but as I mentioned above, the additional post processing (more of the custom stuff) tries to create devalias entries for the root disk and its mirror. The problem here was the same as mentioned earlier, i.e., the "ls -l" doesn't provide the info needed to re-construct a physical path that would be valid at the eeprom level.

One other things to note, during jumpstart the normal post processing does write the bootpath to the eeprom "boot-device" entry. However, it includes the unique WWID. This can be problematic if that disk should need to be replaced (i.e., how do we know the WWID of the new drive?). The solution I used in this case was to write the values for the root drive and its mirror using the default paths of the devalias listing for disks0 thru disk 7 (this system has an 8 disk backplane vs 16).

Example of the devalis. Note: The disk#’s match the HHD#’s

disk7 /pci@400/pci@2/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0/disk@p3

disk6 /pci@400/pci@2/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0/disk@p2

disk5 /pci@400/pci@2/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0/disk@p1

disk4 /pci@400/pci@2/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0/disk@p0

disk3 /pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0/disk@p3

disk2 /pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0/disk@p2

disk1 /pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0/disk@p1

disk0 /pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0/disk@p0

So, at this point I decided to scrap the old method and create the bootdisk and bootmirror devalias values based on these default disk devalias values, and they are based on the disk "port#"/HDD# slot position and not the WWID numbers. Note the addition of the ",0:a" to provide a slice/partition selection (needed to support a possible live upgrade to an alternate partition).

{0} ok nvalias bootdisk /pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0/disk@p0,0:a

{0} ok nvalias bootmirror /pci@400/pci@2/pci@0/pci@4/scsi@0/disk@p0,0:a

{0} ok nvstore

{0} ok setenv boot-device bootdisk bootmirror

{0} ok boot

This solution should be short lived as we are currently looking at implementing a different method of provisioning Solaris systems. If anyone has other suggestions for a solution, I welcome them.

Fresh Cut Christmas Tree

2010-12-05T10:10:00.004-06:00

This year I wanted a little more nostalgic Christmas, so my wife and I went to Riehle's Tree Farm (Dousman, WI) and cut our own tree. As a kid we always had a real tree, but I couldn't remember actually going out to a tree farm, so this year we made our own memories. The folks at Riehle's made it easy, with a huge selection and help getting the tree baled and loaded on the van. We went with a Spruce, for the shorter needles and a more "filled out" look. Here's some pictures once we got the tree home.

Still baled and ready to go in the house

I trimmed the branches at the bottom first, to attached part of the base of our tree stand. The stand is kind of neat in that it has a two piece swivel base so that you can attached part of the base to the tree and then just drop it into the floor piece of the base. The swivel allows you to straighten the tree by stepping on a "release" lever. This came in handy as you can see from the second picture.

In the stand, but a little tilted

After a little adjustment it was much better, the tree is straightened and some LED lights are applied.

Straightened, lit and ready to decorate

Now I just have to remember to water it regularly, so far it seems to be needing about a quart of water a day. I'm sure some of that is just evaporation, but so far it's not losing a lot of needles.

Century Rides that were like Night and Day

2010-08-23T18:23:00.005-05:00

With summer winding down, I just participated in a couple of great cycling events. I usually try to do a couple of mid-summer Century rides, but with vacation and some other things that came up this summer I wasn't able to do the Heat Stroke 100 or Bay View Bicycle Clubs - Lake Country Classic.

These next two rides were only a week apart but they were like Night and day...

A little over a week ago I rode in the Cream City Cycle Club Century - Aug. 29th. This ride started out of Waterford Wisconsin and it wasn't bad at the beginning, but as the day wore on, the temperature and wind speed both started to increase. By the end of the ride I was close to "bonking". Not as bad as some, who required some medical attention, but I downed some fluids, ate the post ride meal (spaghetti dinner) and rested in the AC of the Waterford High School building before heading home. This was definitely a last ride of Summer with the heat, sun and wind to prove it.

Now fast forward exactly one week to Sept. 5th at Mt. Horeb, WI - actually Tyrol Basin Ski Lodge - to start the Wright Stuff Century (WSC). For this ride the temperatures were almost 35 degrees cooler (maybe 40 degrees at the start) and no wind for the first 3-1/2 to 4 hours. I followed a few tips on this ride that helped thru the day. Started with a 16oz sports drink about 2 hours before the start, I drank more during the ride (my hydration pack helps with that) and ate less at the rest stops. That's not to say I didn't eat, but I kept it to a piece of fruit and carbs with some protein; like a 1/4 bagel with peanut butter or I spread some peanut butter on a oatmeal cookie and then a banana or watermelon or orange slices. At the end of the day I had no cramping and felt a lot better. No doubt the lack of heat played a big factor it that, but the hills (and the number of them) are a lot tougher on this ride than the one a week early. The WSC was definitely the first ride of Fall (but not the last).

Safe riding all.

A walk at Old World Wisconsin

2010-05-24T19:14:00.006-05:00

It's been a while since we last visited Old World Wisconsin. I'm pretty sure one of the kids was still in a stroller the last time. So this trip was a lot easier, and the trams helped with getting us from one cluster of buildings to the next. We got there around noon and headed over to Caldwell Hall.

Caldwell Hall
Education Center

The education Center also had a baby animal exhibit

Our next stop was the Crossroads village, where we went through most of the homes and shops, including a demonstration at the village backsmith.

Blacksmith Shop
- part of the Crossroads Village

From here we took the tram over to the Finnish area. This barn has some interesting construction with dove-tail joints (usually only seen in cabinet making) on the corners of the buildings.

Finnish Area Barn

The Rankinen farm was a little hike off the mail road, in the same Finnish area.

View of the Rankinen Farm House,
from the access road

It was a great way to spend a warm and lazy Sunday afternoon, in the midst of these 1800's era farms and buildings. We topped it off with somethings to eat and drink in the Clausing Barn Restaurant.

Maintaining your bikes Free Hub

2010-04-01T18:57:00.008-05:00

While riding out to Dousman last week, I noticed some intermittent vibration in the rear wheel of my bike. When I got to Dousman I pulled into the Bike Doctor and asked them to take a quick look at it. Luckily it wasn't anything too serious, my Freehub was in need of some maintenance.

After a quick rebuild and lube they had me off and riding smoothly again. Here's a link to a page for Freehub maintenance, that way if you're so inclined, you can give it a try yourself.

Vibram FiveFingers - a first run

2010-02-08T17:55:00.007-06:00

I decided to try this footwear as physical therapy. My left arch is high but weak, resulting in a flat foot. I also have scoliosis that seems to be causing some sciatic pain in my left leg.

Here's a few tips, if you plan to buy a pair of the vibram FiveFingers;

Go to a well stocked store so you can try some different models/styles and sizes. My ideal size was a 44, which was close to my cycling road shoe size (45). If they don't have the style you want, then at least you'll know your size for an online order.

I was told that your toes should just touch the front of the toe-pockets. You don't want them so loose that your toes pop out while running or too tight either.

I got the KSO's, but looking back, the Sprint or Flow might be a better choice for first-timers. Why? The KSO has a single top strap that loops through the back, but it's stitched at the back of the heal, making it a little harder to place on the foot. Where as the Sprint and Flow have separate top and heal straps, so they should be a little easier to get on.

I kept my first run short, I did about 1-1/2 miles on a treadmill, so that I could control the pace. My stride is still pretty much heal-toe, but I could feel times when I was making a more balance footfall. I didn't notice any unusual pain after the run, but I could tell that I was using calve and ankle muscles that I hadn't used in a while. I'm planning to take it slow at first, so I'll do my running every other day.

A Top Tech Device of the last decade: USB Thumbdrives

2010-01-06T20:44:00.009-06:00

I saw a lot of different technologies and devices listed for the "product of the decade", but this one was missing from a most of them, the somewhat lowly USB thumb drive.

Here's an early one that I saved (all 128Mb's)

I remember going to a Comdex in Chicago in 2000 and seeing one of the first USB drives (I think it was by JMtek). It's hard to imagine what we used before the USB drives (floppy disks, zip disks and CDs come to mind). But near the end of 2000 was when some of the first USB drives were announced and introduced. However, the USB drives remained for the most part, a novelty until approximately 2005. That's when the capacities became more usable, approaching that of CDROMs and later DVDs. Their popularity also increased partly due to Apple's abandonment of the somewhat de-facto standard floppy drive from their line of computers (also earlier in the decade) and the increasing number of USB ports that became available on laptop and desktop computers.

The rest is history, with the capacities jumping from mere MBs on the earliest drives to the multi-GB models of today. The ubiquitous thumb drives can now carry portable applications, pictures, documents and encrypted data. They can also be bootable, launch apps automatically, as well play the role of MP3 players, security device and/or forensic device, and the list goes on. The thumb drive is firmly entrenched into the technology landscape of today's modern world.

Home made cookies and bicycling

2009-09-16T19:09:00.004-05:00

There's something about baking that brings back the same kind of memories as riding a bike. At least for me, it's memories from childhood, my first bike ride, the smell of home made cookies or brownies, all hearkening back to simple pleasures (and simpler days). For biking it's the wind in your face, and for baking it's the smells and the taste, that link us to those memories.

So what does this have to do with Pedal The Kettle? Well, one of the first Pedal The Kettle's (then known as The Spring City Annual Tour), was supplied almost entirely with homemade goodies. I wasn't there, but you can imagine that it was probably like the days when you were a kid going to a family reunion. Little if any of the food was store bought (or Fast Food), everything was homemade, from the Fried Chicken to the desserts. Since then, we ask each of our members to supply four(4) dozen cookies, which are distributed among each of the five(5) Rest Stops.

So our goal with Pedal The Kettle is to bring back some of those feelings and memories, from the past, to the riders (our guests) here in the present. It's what keeps Pedal The Kettle a little bit unique and special among so many other local rides.

Safe riding all

A Century ride per week?

2009-09-07T14:03:00.006-05:00

The Wright Stuff Century ride was a ton of fun. A small group (three to be exact) from our bike club started and finished together. Initially it was cool and very foggy, so much so that we had to shed our glasses for about the first hour or so, due to the condensation. The temperature swing wasn't too drastic, starting out in the hi 50's to low 60's, but then after the Sun came out I think the peak temp. was in the low 80's. With the clouds and slight breeze, it made for an enjoyable ride, through some very picturesque sections of Dane and Iowa County.

My next Century ride will be a members only event (Sept. 12th), previewing our club fund raiser, Pedal The Kettle coming up on Sept, 20th. This year, we're following the trend of many of the bigger organized rides, with a "Grand Unified map and cue sheet" for all three routes. Here's a sample of the map that I've been working on.

Our All-in-One version of the map

If you're in the area and decide to participate, stop by and say hi, I'll be manning Rest Stop #2 (for the 66/100 mile routes) at Rome Pond Park, just before the 66 and 100 mile routes split.

Safe riding all

Preview of PTK

2009-08-16T11:40:00.004-05:00

Even though there was an Air Quality Alert, the conditions weren't that bad yesterday (Sat.) morning. There were four of us starting out from North High School to preview the the routes of the Spring City Spinners bicycle tour: Pedal The Kettle. Jackie did the 33 mile route, I did the 66 mile route and Doug and George did the 100 mile route.

The roads we use are fairly low traffic and over the summer, several segments of our route have been repaved.

All the reservations for parks/shelters have been taken care of, so the preview rides are mostly to make sure there are no obstacles (like major construction) that would require changes to the route(s). The only one we found was the intersection at Valley Rd (Cty B) and Hwy 67, just outside of Oconomowoc. But we're hoping that that will be done in time (Sept. 20th) for PTK.

Rest Stop List:

Cushing Park - 1st RS on the 66/100 mile routes
Rome Pond Park - 2nd RS on the 66/100 mile routes
Whitewater - 3rd RS for the 100 mile route
Palmyra - 4th RS for the 100 mile route
Ottawa Park - Only Rest for 33 mile route, last RS for 66/100 mile route

While taking advantage of the Cushing Park Rest Stop, I snapped this picture, bee'ing careful not to agitated the bee.

Safe Riding all

Completed Deck

2009-08-12T19:25:00.004-05:00

First, a plug for our contractor, Decks By Milt Charno , they did a great job. They had the deck completed Monday afternoon.

Tonight we broke it in right, I moved the grill into place just outside the door and cooked up burgers and brats. Maybe it's my imagination but the cedar posts and railing seem to be keeping the mosquitoes at bay. We enjoyed our meal on the deck with only a minor annoyance, our mini dachshund, thought he needed a brat as well.

Deck progress report

2009-08-08T18:58:00.003-05:00

More pictures, it's getting close to being completed, another day or two of work next week

should do it.

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

We're off to the Wisconsin State Fair next week, the big question is, should I try Chocolate Covered Bacon?

Re-Decking

2009-08-05T06:38:00.003-05:00

The new deck is taking shape quickly, the framing is complete.

Step 2 (framing)

Deck'ed out

2009-08-04T06:31:00.004-05:00

This project has been a long time coming, but it's finally started, the old desk is coming off and the framing on the new deck should start today.

Before

Step 1 (demolition)

More pictures to come as the construction continues.

Horribly Hilly 100K - badge of honor

2009-06-25T08:47:00.005-05:00

The heat that day got the better of me, so I scaled back from the 200K option to 100K. Here's my souvenir "badge of honor" from the event, on my trusty Camelbak (couldn't have gone as far as I did without that either).

Early in the ride I was fine, making it up the three major hills (Mounds Rd, Scherbel Rd and Barlow Rd. The first rest stop was a little tricky though, because just as we got there, rain from the previous day/night had weakened a tree which fell onto a power line along the climb to the Festge Park rest stop. I navigated around that, with many other rides, only to discover that the power lines that were down had also taken out the electric water pump at the rest stop, so we had to wait for water.

Maybe I waited around at the rest stop to long, but after climbing the hill on Barlow Rd, I started cramping. So when the option to split between the 100K and 200K presented itself I opt'ed for the 100K.

It was a great event and it was very well supported. Several members of our club, Spring City Spinners, participated in the event and it was great to see them having 'fun' as well.

I'm not sure what my next event will be, maybe just a nice relatively flat Century Ride.

Safe riding all.

Vacationing in the Land of Lincoln

2009-06-14T17:56:00.004-05:00

Specifically, Springfield, IL -- and what might you ask is in Springfield? Well as of 2005 the new Presidential Lincoln Library and museum are located in the downtown area near with the Old Capitol Building. Part of the reason for going was for my wife and daughter to do genealogy research at the Lincoln Library (which by the way led to some very fruitful findings).

We also went on several of the typical tours; Lincolns home, Lincolns Tomb, the Old Capitol building and some of the surrounding buildings, such as Union Station (also recent renovated - 2007) and the old Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices .

One non-Lincoln site that we toured (which luckily was re-opened recently as part of the re-opening of Illinois historic sites - no thanks to the ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich) was the Dana-Thomas Home (a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home from circa 1902-04). It's in remarkable condition, again thanks to tax payer money and a previous owner - Charles Thomas/Thomas Publishing who preserved it even while using it as office space for almost 40 years.

I did manage to get some bike riding in by contacting a local club (Springfield Bicycle Club) and rode with some of its members. On one of the routes I even crossed the historic Route 66.

This week will be a "tapering down" training week, with the Horribly Hilly Hundreds coming up this Saturday.

Safe riding all

Upgrades prior to HHHs

2009-06-06T19:17:00.003-05:00

After that first training ride at Blue Mounds, WI (on the worst hills of the route) I decided on a gearing change for my bike. Transitioncycle.com helped me out with a "like new" used chainring. For a better gear ratio I went from a 36T to a 34T. After the change (the following weekend) I had a second practice ride at HHH (200k) stages 2 & 3 last and it was a big improvement. Now the only problem, with a couple weeks to go before the event, is finding any hills around Waukesha for training that compete with those around Blue Mounds.

I've been tweaking the insoles of my bike shoes with a couple of different brands; Superfeet and Powerstep), I need the arch support, particularly in the left foot. Right now I use a Superfeet insole in the right shoe and the Powerstep Pro (3/4) in the left.

The last change is that I recently dumped my Polar CS100 and it's multiple sensors for the Garmin FR305. I've been using the FR305 for a little over a year, but I just installed it's accessory quick attach/detach bike mount. It's nice to have the display back up on the handlebars and to be able to pop it on and off the bike. I also added the cadence sensor, for the complete telemetry package.

That's about it, I'll be on vacation for about a week, hopefully I'll get some training rides in while down in the Springfield, IL area.

Safe riding all.

Practicing the "Horribly" of the Horribly Hilly 100s'

2009-05-24T12:32:00.005-05:00

Just a quick update. The HHHs are just 4 weeks away, so a few of us (well 3, including me) went over to Blue Mounds, WI to practice on some of the worst (or best) hills of the route. We did a modified version of the 100k route, which allowed us to get in a good practice ride. My fellow club members were all smiles at the start of the ride.

Laura - Club Vice President

Steve - Member at large

At the end I think we were just to tired to smile. Today's a recovery day with a cookout planned for this evening.

Safe riding all.

Punishing pixels or enhancing them?

2009-05-03T14:19:00.009-05:00

While going through the collection of slides that I had scanned a few years ago I ran across one of myself that I've always treasured. So now the hard part, do I post it as is or do I "enhance" it with the tools that are now available.

Here's the original (or at least as original as it gets from the scanning process). The originals are 35MM Kodachrome slides taken with an Argus C3 "Brick".

Original

Updated/enhanced version; rotated, blurred background, cropped and played with the exposure and saturation.

Enhanced (to much?)

Changing the topic to cycling, I finally got in, after 3 tries, to the Horribly Hilly Hundreds, so I'm working on getting training mile in for the next 7 weeks. This weekend it was a combination of hills and flats (with yoga in between). Plus a pretty good head wind coming out of the west, which meant (for a change) that I had a tail wind on the way home (that's rare).

Today's a recovery day. plus I'm getting some odd jobs done around the house, like a replacement ramp for our dachshund. It's a little over kill, with treated lumber 2 x 4's and rubber "tiled" surface, but that baby is going to last forever.

Safe riding all.

Mac Mini Media Center

2009-04-11T19:37:00.003-05:00

I decided to put an old Mac Mini to use as something other than a door stop. I had replaced my original Mini with one of the latest Intel based versions. Here's the spec's on the old one;

Mac Mini (G4) one of the early ones.
1GB Memory
60Gb Int. harddrive
Rowmote Software (using my iPod Touch as the remote for now)

I'm looking at implementing a more family friendly remote, using the standard Apple remote (from our iMac) and attaching an Infrared receiver (USB) from TwistedMelon to the Mini. Their hardware is called the Mantra TR1 and requires their Mira software, all for ~$32.00.

I'll be adding some external storage via the Firewire port at some point. For right now it pulls content from the other iTunes library's in the house and so far, with the Mini hardwired to our router, that seems fast enough.

The Mac Mini is connected to our HDTV (input 7) via a DVI-I to DVI-I cable. This resolved the problem where I was seeing a lot of video related noise using the DVI-D to DVI-D cable.

I'll do another post once I get the Mantra/Mira combo hooked up.

66 mile biking weekend

2009-03-26T20:58:00.003-05:00

Spring was definitely in the air over the weekend. It was "almost" perfect weather for riding, but even if it wasn't, it was close enough. Saturday was a hill circuit day with 3 sets out near Wales, WI. The next day I wanted a longer ride with a mix of hills and flats, so I went out around Ottawa Lake Park. The route has some moderate hills (Cty C & Waterville Rd) and a nice downhill and flats around (Cty ZZ, Z & CI) the park. The route is posted on Motionbased.com.

This weekend looks like it will be a little less than ideal, with snow in the forecast.

LEDs and Cars, what could be more fun?

2009-02-28T19:26:00.005-06:00

Here's one of the individual replacement LED "bulbs"

I just finished a quick project that was much easier than I thought it was going to be. All the dash bulbs had burned out in our mini van. The dealer wanted way to much (over $200.00) to replace them. So I decided to do it on my own and now I'm glad I did. Cost: $22.90 in parts (for LED replacement "bulbs") and ~20 minutes of my time. I documented the process as I went along and I just posted it on the Instructables website (here's a tiny url): http://tinyurl.com/led-instructable

Here's the dash, even in daylight the new LEDs shine bright.

Weird signage

2009-02-18T19:16:00.006-06:00

On a recent trip I took this photo of a sign at a community center. This is one of those signs that reminds me of a Jeff Foxworthy joke that goes something like: "You know there wouldn't be a sign unless someone had done it!".

Based on that, maybe I'll wash my hands elsewhere.

Random 25 things...the other 20

2009-02-14T18:07:00.003-06:00

06- I have a Raspberry patch in my backyard, it’s great to grab a handful of fresh berries on a summer morning for a bowl of cereal.

07- I've changed jobs twice in the last 3 years, it wasn't fun at the time, but I enjoy the job I'm doing now.

08- Ref. #2, I'm the webmaster for the Spring City Spinners Bicycle Club in Waukesha, WI -- http://www.springcityspinners.org and I just completed a total redesign of the site.

09- I met my wife Sue on a blind date, and we’ve been together ever since.

10- I have two children that I love very much, even though they seem to hate each other.

11- Ref. #2 again, I rode in 2 Century rides this past summer and 3 the previous year, I'm shooting for 4 this year.

12- We own a miniature Dachshund (he's been pictured here a few times), his name is Duncan and he may qualify as a third child.

13- I have a piece of brass shrapnel in my body (let the guessing begin as to the location).

14- I haven't had an appendix since 1969, but I've had the scar ever since.

15- Most people never notice (or don't believe) that I have scoliosis.

16- My wife and I have now lived in WI longer than we lived in IL, but we still refer to a trip to our parents and "going down home".

17- Photography is one of my latest endeavors, I got a nice DSLR last year add I'm still learning how to use it.

18- One of my favorite Sci-Fi movies is Forbidden Planet, it's very Star Trek like, but was made 10 years prior to that series.

19- I had several articles published in the now defunct “COMPUTE! Gazette” magazine.

20- I'm blessed (or maybe it's cursed) with an acute sense of smell.

21- My first personal computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 that I built from a kit.

22- My blog has suffered recently because I spend that time twittering.

23- My first job out of school was with GE Medical Systems where I spent 12 years, 15 years later, I'm back there again.

24- My ideal job would be to be part of a think tank, inventing, designing and innovating.

25- I'm really glad that's over, I couldn’t think of another thing.

25 Random Things about me (#1 - #5)

2009-02-07T20:30:00.004-06:00

I recently got tagged with the task of coming up with 25 random; things, facts, habits, or goals about myself. Here are the first 5 of 25.

01- I started doing some serious yoga a little over a year ago and enjoy it very much.

02- My interest in biking re-started several years ago as a way to improve my health, now it's a passion (or is it obsession?).

03- I have drawings I did for an art class of a clamshell "communicator" / cellphone in ~1979, several years before the StarTAC was introduced.

04- I grew up on a farm in West-Central Illinois.

05- I enjoy cooking and baking, which I owe to my Mom for letting me help with baking as a kid.

More to follow...

A View from the Exercise Ball

2009-01-27T19:55:00.005-06:00

While doing some stretches, it occurred to me that the view of the ceiling in the next room had a kind of stark appearance. So I grabbed the camera and took a picture from the same vantage point.

The winter here in Wisconsin has been especially bad for outdoor biking, so all of my miles, so far this year, have been indoors. Also, my blogging has been mostly quick posts to twitter, either directly or via Dailymile.com, while logging my training. This week I move into intervals of longer duration and change ups on the weekend with a long ride (2-3 hours).

My next project is going to be to build another camera mount for a bicycle (like the steadicam arm) and I plan to give it away. Details coming in future posts.

Christmas' long long ago...

2008-12-25T17:53:00.004-06:00

Well, maybe not that long ago, but it's kind a Christmas tradition on my blog to show one of the photos from my parents collection of 35mm slides that I had scanned a few years ago.

They don't make pedal cars like that anymore.
This one's a Murray "Holiday" Model from
around 1960

Looks like the drive up service was good too.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Thanksgiving

2008-11-30T14:44:00.007-06:00

I have a lot to be thankful for this year; a job, my family and my health, as for the actual day, we had an easy to prepare Thanksgiving dinner at home (thanks to Boston Market). Thanksgiving day was a small gathering of just our immediate family (wife, kids and my sister in law).

The day after I managed to get in a 1 hour bike ride, the weather wasn't too bad, sunny with temps in the low 30's and wind at around 10-11 mph.

That's my yearly total as of Nov. 28th

UPDATE: regarding my PolarTraining account, after a last attempt to contact Polar (with two different email addresses) I finally got a reply from them and now have access again to my account and all the data that was stored there.

On Sat. it was back to Transition for a RyJax (Spinning & Yoga) class. This week it was TT intervals to determine our power training zones.

Bike Computer Consolidation II ?

2008-11-10T10:33:00.006-06:00

A while back I posted an article about consolidating my bike computers into one unit, and at the time I choose a Polar CS100. But now, due to a problem with accessing their website, I can't login to my old account and I can't register a new account, (because the CS100 S/N is in use by my old account). I've tried emails to Polar, but so far no response and I hate to lose all the data I've entered. If I can't get access to the original account, I might have to think about a new cyclometer. I like my Garmin FR 305, but I'm not sure that I want to use it every time I ride. Any suggestions for a good alternative?

I may venture out tomorrow, it's supposed to be colder than it was today, but there should be some sun, with a chance of flurries. That makes it at least a 3 layer day, starting with the;

Feet - wool socks, shoes and shoe covers
Lower Half - Bike Shorts and CWX winter running tights (that's only two layers, but I should be ok)
Upper Torso - short sleeve base, long sleeve mid layer w/ hood and a jacket
Head - Hood, helmet and helmet cover.
Hands - Lobster Claw (Vulcan Salute) gloves

Its got to be better than riding inside on the CycleOps Trainer.

Safe riding all (no matter where you ride; inside or out)

Getting into the Halloween Spirit

2008-10-29T21:13:00.003-05:00

My "stem-nosed" jack-o-lantern and my daughters "mini-jack".

Blogs in the bike lane

2008-10-24T12:18:00.006-05:00

There seem to be multiple "In the Bike Lane" blogs out there lately. I started posting to this blog a little over 2 years ago (Aug. 2006), but what's interesting is the name seems to be very popular lately.

Trek likes it with their Life In the Bike Lane blog.

Bicycling Magazine also likes it with their recent In the Bike Lane blog.

Blogging for me is a type of journaling, to get thoughts from the brain into "print". One of my early posts expressed it this way;

"Sometimes life is like being in the Bike Lane; watch over you're shoulder, keep pedaling, heads up, stay in your own lane, pedal harder up the hills and coast down them, drink plenty of fluids and take a rest day once in a while."

Currently I'm working on a re-design of the Spring City Spinners website, as the current one is getting a little long in the tooth.

Safe riding all (no matter which bike lane you're in)

Vote for the rock!

2008-10-22T22:05:00.002-05:00

Another shameless plug, it's a chance to win some really great gear and a photoshoot trip, you can vote for the picture here.

Sell photos on photrade | By FullCarbonBike

This photo was taken while on vacation at Walt Disney World and I admit that the 3D effect was a total accident (I was trying for the gazelles).

Busy cycling weekend

2008-10-12T18:05:00.007-05:00

On Saturday the bike club had one of its last scheduled rides of the season, our annual Chili Dump ride, to celebrate the success of the Pedal The Kettle fund raiser. We had several ride options, I picked the 30 mile route, out to Holy Hill and back. It was a perfect day, with very little wind and temp's in the high 70's. We shared the back roads north of Pewaukee with many other cyclists and motorcyclists as well. After the ride there was plenty of great food and conversation to go around.

Getting ready to ride

After seeing so many motorcycles on the road yesterday, my son and I decided to visit the new Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, WI. It was very impressive, not for just the shear number of bikes on display (which is huge in and of itself) but also the amount of information and history that's provided. We only had the morning for our visit, but could have easily spent the whole day looking around. Here's a couple of the many pictures that we took.

Exterior of the Main Museum Building

1903 Model #1 (under glass)

Safe riding all, no matter what type of bike you ride!

Barns of the Pedal The Kettle

2008-08-30T14:25:00.009-05:00

In previous posts I've mentioned that, as a kid, I spent a lot of time on my Grandparents farm. So the first time that I road the Pedal The Kettle route, I saw several farms that reminded me of those childhood days visiting the working farm. Today I decided to ride part of the PTK route and take some pictures of the barns on some of those farms. Here are of few of those pictures.

There are many more barns on the route, some in better shape than other, but it's a very scenic ride.
Hope to see you at this years Pedal The Kettle - Sept. 21st, 2008 - Waukesha, WI
As a member of the club I won't be riding that day, I'll be helping out at one of the rest stops (probably the Rome stop just before the 60 and 100 mile routes split).

Safe riding all

Cracked carbon frame - False Alarm

2008-08-29T20:27:00.006-05:00

I had a little scare last night, while checking over my bike I found a hairline crack in the left chain stay close to the bottom bracket. I was looking forward to some riding this weekend, so over my lunch hour I ran the bike in to my local bike shop. Luckily it's just cracked paint. But it took some punishment, while they checked it out, that I wouldn't normally try. While putting it back together they even trued up my rear wheel, Transition is a great bike shop.

Last weekend was a great time, I rode the 100 mile route of Cream City Cycle Clubs Century. The ride data is post here in my blog under the Motionbased section to the right. Here are a few pictures that my son took during the ride.

Yes I was bringing up the rear, I was averaging around 15-16 MPH

I'm somewhere a little over halfway into the ride

2nd shot of a quick "ride by"

The weather was fantastic with temps in the mid to high 70's and SW winds only around 8-10 MPH. I heard that Cream City had a great turnout with around 600 riders. Hopefully we'll have equally good weather for our clubs - Pedal The Kettle tour on Sept 21st.

Thanks Julbo

2008-08-05T19:33:00.003-05:00

On Monday I had a package in the mail, a replacement pair of the Julbo "Race" glasses. This was great service, I had sent the original pair of glasses back to Julbo on Jul. 23rd and had the new pair in hand on Aug. 4th. There was even a hand written note with the new glasses. Like the title says, Thanks Julbo.

Riding Glasses - The saga continues

2008-08-02T14:46:00.004-05:00

I've been pretty happy with the riding glasses that I got just over a year ago, the brand name is Julbo. In some previous posts I mentioned that I did have a problem getting the prescription insert (a mix up at the lab). Recently I've had a couple of things happen with the glasses themselves. 1) the rubber "friction" inserts at the ear end of the ear pieces have come out and were lost and 2) the screw in the hinge of the left ear piece keeps working it's way out.

The great thing about the Jublo line is the lifetime guarantee. I contacted Julbo and they said to send the glasses back and that they would take care of it ASAP. I sent the glasses out a little over a week ago, so I'm looking forward to getting them back sometime soon.

Tomorrow I'm leading a "chat ride" from Waukesha to Old World Wisconsin, near Eagle, WI. It's a scenic 45 mile ride with a rest stop at Old World Wisconsin.

Safe riding all

Shameless promotion

2008-07-26T20:00:00.004-05:00

I'm asking for votes, for my Instructables projects, to get either of them into the upcoming O'Reilly "Best of Instructables" book. All you have to do is just go to either of these Instructables links; Picoo-Z project or Steadicam bike mount project, login and then click the button labeled:

[vote now!]

That's it for now.

BVBC Classic Century

2008-07-16T21:23:00.003-05:00

It was still sprinkling as I got close to Oconomowoc, WI on Saturday morning. The Bay View Bicycle Clubs Lake Country Classic was due to start (for the 100 mile route) at 7:00AM. I pulled into the parking lot of the church that they were using as their start/end location at about 6:30AM. As I parked the car I saw Gloria and Laura, two member of the same bicycle club that I belong to, looking at the sky and trying to decide if they would ride or not. I went inside and picking up my cue sheet/map and the wrist band, and by the time I came back out the rain had stopped. As I was unpacking my gear and the bike a few more members of our club showed up for about 8 of us all together. One snag, somehow I forgot my helmet, but fortunately a local bike shop (Wheel and Sprocket) was on site and sold me one at a reasonable price. Our group pulled out to start the ride at about 7:30. My part of the ride was logged on my Forerunner 305 (posted in the right hand column of this blog). The ride goes through some very pretty country side, know as the Kettle Moraine. The rest stops were well stocked with water, Gatorade, homemade treats and even BW3 wings at one of the stops. Gloria and I pulled into the church at the end of the ride at about 2:30PM, we had passed the other group from our club, who had stopped to help with a flat tire. All in all it was a great day, a little on the cloudy side, but it wasn't cold and the sun did come out occasionally during the course of the ride.

This weekend Waukesha, WI hosts the Carl Zach Cycling Classic (part of the Super Week Pro Tour). Our club, Spring City Spinners, is a sponsor and we'll have a booth near the start/finish line in downtown Waukesha on Saturday, July 19th.

Safe riding all.

Life Options and my mission statement

2008-07-04T20:33:00.005-05:00

I took an interesting class a few months ago, it was called Life Options, it dealt with self discovery, dreams, and values. One of the things that I found was the my past jobs paralleled my love of cycling, so my mission statement was pretty simple;

Be the Ride Leader, by navigating, mapping or rerouting
around the obstacles in life, while helping others complete the journey.

As responsible ride leaders, we practice this all the time.

Posts have been a little scarce lately, I was on vacation in Disney World last week. I took some advise that I had read about doing things you don't ordinarily do and inversely, not doing things that you normally do, while on vacation. So, no computer and no driving while we were there, of course it helped that we stayed at a Disney resort. We took the buses, boats or monorail everywhere that we went. One of the more interesting things that we did was to take one of the unadvertised behind the scenes tours, specifically, "The Magic Behind the Steam Trains Tour", more on that in a later post.

Have a Happy and Safe 4th of July weekend

Miles logged with the ThudBuster ST

2008-06-19T21:25:00.004-05:00

Just a quick post, I've logged at least a couple hundred miles with the Thudbuster and for me it has lived up to its promise. I did ~60 miles over the weekend and it felt more like 20, so I'd highly recommend the Thudbuster ST. The "ST" is ideal for a road bike, and as I post before, it only added ~200G to my Specialized Tarmac.

Safe riding all.

Bike Upgrade Part II

2008-06-09T19:01:00.003-05:00

Someone commented that my "after" picture didn't include the "saddle bag". Well, I did switch the bag that I was using, to a slightly smaller one, but it still holds the essentials; a couple of pry bars, a CO2 inflater, a spare tube and a Crank Bros. Multi-17 tool. Here's an after picture with the bag attached.

I'm hoping to get another ride in tomorrow (the regular Tuesday night club ride), but the weather isn't looking promising. We've already had 8 to 8.5" of rain here in the city and more is expected tonight and tomorrow afternoon.

New Bike Upgrade - Thudbuster ST

2008-06-07T12:41:00.009-05:00

I know, adding weight to a road bike, sacrilege, but it's for a measure of comfort, so I thought it was worth it and it was only a net addition of ~200g. I purchased the Cane Creek Thudbuster ST -- ST for Short Travel (~1.3"), there's an LT version that has ~3" of travel. It claims you'll ride faster, longer and with less fatigue, so I plan to give it a try.

Unboxing day:

The box it came in was huge.

Once I opened it, you can see that there was a little over kill in the packing, but hey, better safe than sorry, thanks PERFORMANCE Bike.

The installation was pretty simple, the default urethane elastomer (blue), came pre-installed and was the the correct one for my weight, so I didn't have to change it. The ST comes with three urethane elastomers; grey, blue and black (the grey and black ones are on the box just to the right of the seat post in the picture below).

Getting started, here's the obligatory "before" picture, with the standard carbon seat post that came with my Specialized Tarmac.

The swapout was just a matter of removing the old seat post, changing my seat over to the new post and installing the new assembly. It took a little tweaking to get the height and level set up the way it was before, but as you can see there was plenty of length for the ST. Heck there was probably enough for the LT version.

The test ride was great, I took a route that I've travel before, it has a combination of flats and some rolling hills, and main roads and paved trail. I'd have to say that it lives up to the claim of less fatigue (not sure about faster) but I still felt pretty fresh after ~40 miles, so I could have gone longer as well.

You may want to shop around online, if you plan to buy one, but PERFORMANCE Bike had a good price (in fact they have theLT and ST versions for the same price).

Safe riding all.

Dipity Timeline

2008-05-16T20:15:00.002-05:00

Here's an interesting site called Dipity. I heard about on the Net@Nite netcast. It allows you to create a timeline from your existing blogs, twitters, feeds and other sources. This has the advantage of building a quick timeline without having to do a lot of manual entry. Here's mine based on my blog, my flickr acct, twitter and motionbased. It also allows for different views; standard timeline, flipbook (kind of like coverflow), list view and map view.

There are already quiet a variety of timelines on the site covering alot of different categories.

Latest ride data

2008-04-05T15:28:00.002-05:00

Here's a link to the MotionBased player I mentioned in my last post. The link is to the ride data from earlier today. The route is our bike clubs standing Saturday morning breakfast ride.

The roads are very gritty from all the sand that was used after the county ran out of salt, due to the harsh winter this year. Usually it's just the corners that are bad, but this year the roads have sand pretty much on all the road surfaces. It's starting to wash away on some roads, but there's still sand along the edges, right where bikes need to travel. So be a little extra careful when starting out this season.

Safe riding all

Forerunner 305 GPS

2008-04-03T19:23:00.004-05:00

I finally got out for a ride last Saturday and it was a great day for a ride (maybe just a little windy on the way back), but that seems to happen to me every time I ride out to Dousman, but at least it stayed sunny.

On this trip I had a chance to try out my latest gadget, the Garmin Forerunner 305 wrist unit that I talked about in a previous post. The version I bought included the following; the wrist unit, heart rate strap, wrist strap extender, AC adapter, USB cable, cradle plus software (CD) and manuals. I used the wrist strap extender right away, otherwise it wasn't going to fit around my wrist over the sleeves of my base layer and jacket. The wrist unit is a little on the bulky side, but it's really not bad at all . I may consider switching to this verses my Polar Bike Computer.

Once I setup the "305" with my info; age, weight and custom heart rate zones (from my VO2 test), I was ready to go. When you first power it on it briefly flashes a screen with the logo and firmware version and then starts searching for satellites. Once that's complete you can press the start/stop button to start logging your activity and press it again to stop logging.

The real fun comes after the ride, you can then upload the data from the 305 to your computer to either a local application (called Training Center) which came with it or to the MotionBased website. You get free access to a limited version of MotionBased when you register your Garmin device on the Garmin website, just use the same login on MotionBased that you use at MyGarmin. Here's a sample of the kind data that can be viewed on the MotionBased site.

This particular site is a player, so that you can view the route you took and playback the ride with all the data points along the way; speed, HR, Elevation, pace and distance.

The next trip for the 305 may be this weekend, if the weather co-operates.

Safe riding all

Spoke too soon

2008-03-28T16:52:00.002-05:00

Little did I know that we'd get dumped on, on Friday March 21st. Here in Waukesha we had between 12 - 14" of new snowfall during that day. It put a real damper on Wheel and Sprockets Bike Expo that day (I know, because I was out there for a couple of hours).

Things are looking a lot better this weekend, so I'm hoping to get out on either Saturday or Sunday, to try out the Garmin GPS unit.

Safe riding all.

Garmin Forerunner field test

2008-03-16T20:47:00.005-05:00

As soon as I can I want to tryout this Garmin Forerunner 305. Yes, the snow is almost gone, FINALLY

It has the capability to store; heart rate, GPS data and altitude as well as being able to upload the data to either a local application or a website. I'm planning some vacation days within the next two weeks and hopefully the weather will cooperate, so I'll get something posted within that time.

This weekend was the last RyJax class, unless the weather stays crappy, in which case we'll play it by ear. But the first club rides start on April 1st. So another season of riding will kick off soon.

What does "practicable" mean?

2008-03-06T17:41:00.000-06:00

Answer: At least as it relates to Bicycle Law, would seem to be "feasible". The Wisconsin Bicycle Law, as it applies to lane positioning (statute 346.80[2](a) states; Always ride on the right, in the same direction as other traffic. Ride as far to the right as practicable (not as far right as possible). Practicable generally means safe and reasonable.

So why do I bring this up now. Well I see many cars and trucks try to squeeze by a bicyclist that makes the mistake of riding as far to the right as possible, instead of as practicable. I generally try to ride in what would be the "track" (if following a car) of the right wheels. This also puts the cyclist in the approximate position (for a car or truck) of where the right rear taillights would be located. So other drivers are used to looking there for turn signals or brake lights. This time of year (at least in the snowy regions of the US) the edges of the road are especially dangerous due to snow, ice, melting ice, sand and debris on the road surface. So practicable may be even be little further left than normal, at least until the street cleaners get out, and that's a few weeks out.

Safe riding all

Spinning and Yoga continue

2008-03-05T18:27:00.002-06:00

I think the majority of my miles this winter have been the ones I've logged within the walls of Transition Cycle. The weekly RyJax (Spinning + Yoga) have been a great way to keep fit during the miserable winter that we've been having this year. This weekend we take a break, although they are offering a long ride on the CompuTrainers and then the following week is the final regularly scheduled RyJax class. By then I hope the snow and ice (that's resulted from all the melting) will be gone, and we could do the spinning portion outside.

Safe riding all.

VO2max results

2008-01-29T17:47:00.000-06:00

I meant to post this sooner, here's the results of my VO2max testing plus a chart with my calculated training zones (below).

Maximum Heart Rate/VO2
- Max HR 185 bpm
- Max VO2 47 ml/min/kg.

2 Minute Recovery

153 bpm

Lactate Threshold
- LT Heart Rate 164 bpm
- LT VO2 34 ml/min/kg
- LT:Max ratio 72%

I've been using these zones along with wattage data to try and make my training more effective over the the winter months. So far it seems to be working out, but the only way to tell for sure would be another test to see if I've actually managed to improve my threshold HR.

The spinning and yoga class is finished for January, but I've found it to be very beneficial. It always helps to have a coach for the spinning, intervals, ladders, etc and the yoga has helped my overall flexibility.

Weather permitting (wherever you are) Safe riding all.

Currently reading: The Last Days of Krypton

2008-01-22T19:27:00.000-06:00

My latest read is "The Last Days of Krypton" by Kevin J. Anderson. So far I've found it to be very good. The level of technology in his vision of Krypton seems to be a little different than what I would have expected, but if it had been just the same old thing rehashed, it wouldn't be as good. It does deal with Brainiac, the theft or salvation of Kandor and with the "classic" Brainiac, being an outsider, and not a creation of Jor-el, as in some of the more recent generation of Superman comics. It also follows the exploits of Commissioner Zod and how he comes to be General Zod (along with the other characters in which he later shares the Phantom Zone from Superman: The Movie). I haven't quite finished it, but it's been hard to put down, so I'd recommend it, especially to any fans of Superman.

Back to biking on the next post, but the riding has been mostly inside the last few weeks due to the poor weather. Fog, bitter cold, Snow...but hey it's Wisconsin, guess I was spoiled the last few years with milder winters.

Undercover Dachshund

2008-01-07T19:33:00.000-06:00

Spoiled dog? You be the judge.

The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz

2008-01-05T18:19:00.000-06:00

Thanks Geoff, interesting quiz.
My Score: 85 credits, and it concluded that...
You're an extreme sci-fi geek! (big surprise there) You're probably wearing your very own homemade TRON costume right now!

It got that part wrong, not a TRON costume, Star Trek TOS. Hmm, could I have answered the Star Trek question wrong?

Blogger in Draft search widget

2008-01-02T15:04:00.000-06:00

I like the new Google Search widget (currently only available via http://draft.blogger.com). Unlike the Google Custom Search, which has been available for awhile, this widget puts the results into your site, instead of sending visitors offsite. You can add the widget to your existing blogger based blog, (i.e., you don't have to have a 2nd "draft" version running). The widget takes up a little bit of sidebar real estate, as shown here;

Once a search is complete you'll see the results displayed in the main section of your Blogger blog, above the latest posting;

All results will have this generic header.

You can also select from different options to show results from the five categories (listed above).

Even more snow

2007-12-29T15:41:00.000-06:00

Well, even more of that dreaded white stuff fell here in Wisconsin yesterday (Friday), around 7-8 inches of the stuff. The temperatures fell slightly after the snow, so it's still sticking to the trees (and the side streets). So it was back to Transition today for a long indoor ride. There were 8 of us on CompuTrainers and a couple more on rollers. Those of us on the CT's road a 56 mile rolling Australian Ironman course and watched The Bourne Identity on the projection screen. It makes the hills kind of a surprise when you hit them, but otherwise it was a great time and it felt good to actually do a long group ride for a change.

Winter riding

2007-12-24T10:48:00.000-06:00

Because of too much of this...

I've been doing a lot more of this...I just finished the 2nd month of RyJax (Spinning
+ Yoga), I may sign up for Jan. and Feb. classes as
well. It looks like I'll finish out the year with
about 4,500 total miles

A Silver Dollar Memory

2007-12-20T12:47:00.001-06:00

It's just a silver dollar, but there's a story behind this one, from the time that I first saw it.

We have to set the WayBack Machine to around 1964, to the days when my sister and I would sometimes stay over night or over a weekend at my grandparents farm. Grandpa Bryan's farm was one of those self sufficient farms, that have all but disappeared these days, except for maybe the Amish. The crops that they grew, for the most part, went to feed the cows, chickens and pigs. They could then sell the milk, eggs and pork to make extra money. As a side story my wife and I may have met when we were children, long before we dated, when her grandfather bought milk and eggs from mine.

Anyway, back to the silver dollar, it was on one of those weekend stays, when I was getting ready for bed. I was sleeping in the spare bedroom during this stay and happened to open a drawer of an old dresser, that held all kinds of treasures, at least for a 7 years old. There were old pairs of glasses, small tools, a watch or two and a box full of old silver dollars. These dollars were bigger than the coins that I was used to handling and a few of them were pretty badly worn. After looking at them I carefully replaced them in the drawer and moved a few things around in order to fold my clothes and put them away.

I thought about those coins over the years and they are probably what led me to a brief period of coin collecting when I was a teenager.

Recently, after the death of my grandfather, those coins were passed down to my mother, but she in turn gave them to me. I cherish those coins because of the memories of those visits to the farm and I carry one of the coins with me today, as a reminder of simpler times.

Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year

New Handlebars

2007-12-15T12:44:00.000-06:00

I'm thinking of getting an upgrade for my (Specialized Tarmac) road bike. I'd like to change out the existing handlebars for a carbon fiber bar. I'm torn between two choices, here are the two I'm currently considering;

First the Oval Concepts A910, this one looks very cool and the flattened surface on either side of the stem clamp area, is supposed to not only make the bars more aerodynamic, but provide a larger surface area for your hands, when you're not in the drops or hoods. One downside, you void the warranty unless you use their stem with the bar, which adds to the cost (~$309.00 list).

Features for this model;

Most Aerodynamic & Ergonomic Bar available
Incredibly comfortable - on the tops, drops and levers
One-piece construction ensures durability, stiffness and compliance
Integrated Kevlar layer acts like an airbag in case of catastrophic failure
Internal Cable Routing (ICR)
Bars can now be fit with clip-ons

Spec's

Shallow 130mm drop with pistol grips
Available in 26.0 or 31.8 bar clamp
400, 420, or 440mm width
75mm reach
240 grams/26.0mm, 250 grams/31.8mm clamp

The other one is the Zipp Contour Handlebars, which don't have quite as radical a shape, but provide similar advantages. I don't find and requirements on Zipps site about using a Zipp stem, so the Zipp Contour will come in for less than the A910, at about $200.00 list.

Features for this model;

Cutting edge technology
Aerodynamics, light weight, strength
Real world fit and function
Airfoil top section (with dual cable grooves)
No round cross-sections anywhere on the bar

Spec's

26.0mm diameter, in 42cm, 44cm, 46cm widths (outside to outside) or
31.8 mm diameter, in 42cm, 44cm, 46cm widths (outside to outside)
Weights vary from 220gm to 230gm
Drop = 149mm Reach = 85mm

Ok, so which would you pick? I found a couple of reviews for the Zipp bar, but none (so far) for the A910, but I'm still leaning towards the A910.

Coupon Code for RoadID Products

2007-12-08T14:51:00.000-06:00

In my previous posting I mentioned that I joined an affiliate program for a product called RoadID and that I also ordered their WristID. We'll the folks at RoadID were kind enough to offer a coupon code for a discount on any RoadID product. The coupon code is;

ThanksDoug330021

or go to this link;

http://www.RoadID.com/?CID=ThanksDoug330021

The coupon is good for any Road ID order placed by 01/08/2008.

My WristID should arrive between 12/14 and 12/20.

Year to date bike mileage at +4000 miles

2007-12-07T14:25:00.000-06:00

This is an all time high for me, last year I did approximately 2000 miles, but this year I really blew that out. Part of it is that I'm getting more focused on a regular training schedule, so some of the miles are indoors, on the trainer. But I can only take so much of that, even with my recorded rides playing and the tunes cranking. The other part was that I got more involved with the bike club that I belong to (Spring City Spinners) and attended more Century rides this year than I ever had in the past. I rode at least 2 x 10o mile rides and 3 metric century rides this past summer. So all of that, plus weekly and weekend rides brought the grand total above 4000.

This week I fell a little behind my weekly average, due to my bike being in the shop, but it's back now and ready for the next month of RyJax (AKA Spinning & Yoga - it was called Spoga, but I think someone else registered that name).

I just joined an new affiliate program for a product called RoadID. I think the product is a great idea is and I have one on order. You can check them out yourself by clicking on the RoadID widget under my Profile on the right. A percentage of each RoadID you purchase is donated to charity (the website has an option to let you pick from several different choices).

Safe riding all (weather permitting)

In The Bike Lane (ITBL)

2007-12-04T15:37:00.000-06:00

Who would of thought that four letters (ITBL) could mean so many different things, it's amazing what you can find with a simple google search.

Most are acronyms for things like; Information-Technology-Based Laboratories, Immuno Tech Beijing Limited, Inquiry Through Blended Learning and many more.

I'm using the initials "ITBL" for my blog in some of my widgets, like my "Amazon Recommendations" (products that I actually own and use), just to shorten the widget title. I also thought that I might register a domain with the initials? But that's not going to happen, another search show there's someone "squatting" on that domain and they want ~$4K for it.

Search engines in general and how useful they have become is a whole other topic, which made me think about the first search engine (or search based tools) that I could remember using;

I think the first that I dealt with, on a regular basis, was a software product in the early 90's by Sun Microsystems for their SunSolve library of bugs, patches, infodocs, etc. Later, on the web, there was Altavista (which now seems to be part of Yahoo) and now, of course, Google.

What's on my iPod

2007-11-21T20:51:00.000-06:00

A sampling from some of the things I'm currently listening to on my iPod.

Audiobooks:

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (43 folders)
The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero

Podcasts:

TV Shows

Eureka (Sci-Fi series)

Video Podcasts

Webbalert

Music

American Pie
American Gaffiti
Classic Queen
Fleetwood Mac
Forbidden Planet (Soundtrack)
Mozart: Symphony No. 35

I tend to listen to the podcasts during long drives between the office and customer sites. Some of my favorites (listed above) are from Leo Laporte's "TWiT Network".

Laser Leg Alignment

2007-11-19T17:52:00.000-06:00

I've had some knee and IT band problems in the past, but it was always my left knee/leg that had problems and some pain. It wasn't intense pain and it was usually better after a day or two. The right knee and leg was always fine. So the bike setup seemed to be fine for my right leg, but not for the left. This would tend to indicate that the left leg had some kind of problem, like a difference in length.

However, my leg length seems to be pretty close, or at least not different enough to cause the problem I was experiencing. The problem is, I'm flat footed on my left, so I tend to have an internal pronation (my leg drift laterally inward slightly at the foot/ankle on the down stroke and straightens out on the up-stroke).

To correct the problem I tried shoes with more arch support, but even that wasn't enough. The next step for me was to try using a Bike Fit system called "The Wedge". It comes with a package of plastic wedges of varying thickness. The procedure for installing them is mostly trial and error, but I wanted to see if I could apply some methodology and documentation to test the results of trying different wedges. For the problem that I'm experiencing the thicker side of the wedge is installed toward the big toe side of the show (left side in the picture below) which raises the instep of that shoe.

Here's a "Wedge" from the kit installed
on my left shoe between the cleat and the shoe.

The video below was an initial test to document the corrected alignment. In this shot the camera is a little to close and the laser level is set a little low. I also used some white tape on the tights so I spot lateral movement at different parts of the leg. So far the smallest wedge from the kit seems to have made a big difference. I've ridden inside and out without the usual post ride pain.

Test of the laser alignment check.

Harry Houdini a Superhero?

2007-11-17T14:56:00.000-06:00

It's been a busy week, so not as much time on the trainer as I would have liked. I was out a couple of days for training, down in Chicago. However, the train ride down did give me the opportunity to get a good start on a new audio book called; The Secret life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero. So far it's been very good, exploring Houdini's early life, his early interest in locks as well as being apprenticed to a locksmith in Appleton, WI. I don't want to give to much away, but the authors paint a convincing picture that Harry was, by association, one of the first international spies for America's fledgling Secret Service. I'm about half way through the book, but so far I'd recommend it if you've had any interest in Houdini.

The third week of RyJax was the busiest yet. All the CompuTrainers were filled today and there were a few people who brought their own (cycleops or rollers) in order to participate.

RyJax: week two

2007-11-11T15:49:00.000-06:00

This weeks RyJax session (see previous post about RyJax) was pyramid endurance intervals on the bike followed by yoga stretching and relaxation. Which was then followed by Hot Chocolate and a scone at the coffee shop next door.

Trying out Snap Shots

2007-11-08T09:55:00.000-06:00

I just installed a tool on my blog called Snap Shots that allows visual previews of the destination sites.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

During this test period if you decide you don't want to see the Snap Shots, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of any Snap Shot and opt-out.

I'll try it out for a short time and any Snap Shares generated during the test will be donated to the Spring City Spinners Bicycle Club.

If it's particularly annoying, let me know, and it will go away.

Pedal the Kettle results

2007-11-05T19:11:00.001-06:00

The clubs annual fund raiser, Pedal The Kettle, did pretty well this year with ~300 rides. It doesn't sound like a lot, but we do the whole things ourselves with little if any outside sponsorship or assistance. We offered three routes; 33, 66 and 100 miles. Here's how that split our among the 300 or so riders. This year was the first time that we had offered online registration and about half of the pre-registration occurred online via active.com. The other half was through snail mail, and all tolled, both amounted to a little over half of the total registration. The data helps us with planning for next year and how to distribute the food to the various rest stops along the routes.

100 Milers - 26%
66 Milers - 39%
33 Milers - 35%

Spinning and Yoga = RyJax

2007-11-03T12:19:00.000-05:00

As a Changeup to my Winter exercise routine I signed up for a class called RyJax, at Transition, for the month of November. RyJax is a combination of bicycling (on CompuTrainers) for an hour and then an hour of yoga. I had the first class today and I would highly recommend it. It really lets you focus on your breathing and how it relates to improving your fitness with a "mind-body" connection.

For that first hour we practiced different pedaling technique as well as proper yoga breathing as well. We had a short 5-10 minute break in between to get the bikes moved out, change clothes and get the yoga mats in place. I've done some yoga on my own, but it's very different when there are other people around and a yogi to direct and correct the various positions.

I'm also using the results of my VO2max test to improve my training with the use of my HR monitor. For instance today during the cycling, we were trying to stay in Zone 2 (for me that's between 148 - 154 BPM). If it wasn't for the VO2max testing, I'd probably just be using a calculated HR based on age.

Last weekend was the last scheduled ride for our bicycle club. Sundays ride was fairly long (~52 miles) and it turned out to be a beautiful day. Some of it was familiar, following some of the same roads as the Pedal the Kettle ride and other parts were on some roads "less traveled" by our usual club rides, going as far south west as Mukwonago, WI.

Safe riding all

My top 10 Hot Wheels cars

2007-10-17T21:04:00.000-05:00

Many a Saturday afternoon was spent setting up the trademark orange plastic track for Hot Wheels races. Here's a top ten list of cars from my collection.

#10 - Red Baron - based on the Tom Daniels design

#9 - Torero - Blue seems to be a common color for cars in
my collection. This one has a sort of Corvette look to it
and it was fast on the track and through the Super-Charger.

#8 & #7 - The Snake and the Mongoose. These were models
of a pair of Plymouth dragsters that were popular at the time;
Don "The Snake" Prudhomme and Tom "The Mongoose" McEwen

#6 - The Jack "Rabbit" Special. This and a few others were
based on the short lived Hot Wheels animated cartoon
show. The show was about the "Wheelers", a racing family
(what else) and the Special was the car of son Jack.

#5 - Custom Volkswagon - This lime green little bug could
fly down the track as well. These cars were mostly metal
with the plastic limited to the tires, interiors and windows.

#4 - Silhouette - I'm not sure where Blue fell in the
production runs, but here's another classic Hot Wheels,
and it was one of the first in my collection on Christmas
that year.

#3 - Custom Corvette - The story on this car is that Mattel
debuted this model before the actual "C3" Corvette hit
showroom floors.

#2 - Whip Creamer - This was probably one of the heaviest
Hot Wheels cars up to that time (1969). It could soar down
the orange track and hold it's own through the banked turns
of a Super-Charger powered loop.

#1 - Mustang Boss Hoss - In Chrome was a Hot Wheels
Redline Club car. I don't remember the details, but you
had to send away for it. No Internet or package tracking
in those days, just long walks to the Post Office to see if
there was a "package" slip in the mail post.

My next PDA?

2007-10-03T10:16:00.000-05:00

I've had my Sony Clie TH-55 for about 3-1/2 years and it has served me well, but what will it's replacement be? I was considering the Apple iPod Touch, but there are some things that I can do on the Clie that can't be done (at least not yet) on the iPod Touch.

I use the Clie as my primary calendar entry device, so far the iPod Touch is read only and it will remain to be seen if I can sync it with our company calendar system. Also, I have a lot of applications and utilities, plus voice and movie recording capability, with the Clie. So how do the two devices compare? I found a forum with this very discussion at; http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133392

On the horizon (available for pre-order) there's also the Palm Centro, which would finally integrate my PDA and cellphone service. It looks interesting, and the price seems to be more reasonable than the iPhone.

Heart Health the VO2 max test

2007-09-28T14:09:00.000-05:00

I recently had a VO2 Max test done at a Transition Training Center. It used to be Transition Cycle, but they've expanded to include coaching and training as well the the bike business. I wanted to get an idea of how to make my training time more effective. I'm still waiting for the full report, but the post-test preview looked pretty good. I topped out at a HR of 185 BPM, which is, depending on the formula you use, about 10 BPM above the calculated MHR for a person my age (50). I'll post some more details when I get them. This seems to bear out the finding of another test / series of questions on Realage. My MHR comes in closer for my calculated Realage of 40. I'm looking forward to a great cycling weekend, the weather is supposed to be mild and our club has rides planned for Sat. and Sun.

Safe riding all.

BlogRush and Morning Breakfast ride

2007-09-22T16:31:00.000-05:00

I came across BlogRush in the blog of another Ex-Sun blogger, Mike Harding's Musings from the Coast. It seems like a good idea, but I agree with Mike, that the categories could stand some added granularity, to zero in more closely to like-minded blogs. I decided to try it at least for a little while.

I rode the clubs standing breakfast ride this morning and the weather was ideal. I just needed my arm warmers for the first half of the 37 mile ride. We skipped the breakfast part this morning, lately the breakfast stop has been very busy. It wasn't to bad this morning, but everyone had stuff going on and needed to get back a little earlier than usual.

Safe riding all.

A Pedel The Kettle Rest Stop Diary

2007-09-16T18:31:00.000-05:00

Sept. 16th, 2007
Day of the Spring City Spinners fund raiser event - Pedal The Kettle

4:20AM - I woke up 10 minutes before the alarm was due to go off, oh well, it's only 10 minutes.

5:00AM - My wife and I arrive at the Spring City restaurant for the event day volunteers breakfast.

6:30AM - After breakfast we stop by North High School and help distribute a few of the PTK shirts to some of the early bird riders before heading out to our rest stop.

7:00AM - This is the early start time for the 66 and 100 mile riders.

7:30AM - We arrive at the Pond Park rest stop just outside of Rome, WI. This is a nice spot, the shelter area is brand new and there's some road construction (bridge) going on that kept the regular traffic to a bare minimum. We're Rest Stop #2 on both the 66 & 100 mile routes.

Before we start the setup

8:00AM - We start cutting bagels and bananas, as well as making Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches and of course we started unpacking all those homemade cookies and treats. I also made up the first batch of Gatorade and filled the water container, so we have 5 gallons of each available.

8:30AM - We're open and ready for business. It's a little cooler and cloudier than we had hoped, but thankfully there's no rain.

9:00AM - The first three riders pull in to the rest stop, not bad, considering that we are at the 40 mile mark and these guys started at 7:00AM, so they were averaging ~20MPH.

10:00AM - We're now on our ~50th rider through the rest stop, and we get word that just over 300 people have registered.

11:00AM - Now we're starting to worry just a bit about our food supply, we've seen ~110 riders and we know that about 150 went through the rest stop before ours. Luckily we get a re-stock of bananas, cookies, grapes and bread, (those PB&J sandwiches were very popular).

12:00PM - We've now had a ~180 riders pass through our rest stop, it looks like some of the riders skipped or missed the first rest stop.

Nearing the end, things slow down a bit

12:50PM - 189 riders went through our rest stop, the last one leaves, to continue on the 66 mile route, at 12:50PM. He's got one more rest stop ahead of him (at Ottawa Lake State Park) and about 26 total miles to reach the finish, back at North High School in Waukesha, WI. We went through somewhere around 10 gallons each of Gatorade and water, about 2 loaves worth of PB&J sandwiches, ~130 bananas, 4 dozen mini-bagels, lots of grapes, and probably 24 dozen cookies.

1:00PM - We're now on our way to the Ottawa rest stop to drop off what was left of our food. Ottawa gets the leftovers as they get riders from all the routes: 33/66/100.

2:00PM - Arrive at North High School and have some food, same post ride meal as the riders (Chili, chicken salad sandwiches, some veggies and of course a couple of cookies). I also drop off the Rest Stop "kit", empty water bottles and signage. It's time to go home and get a nap.

A special thanks to the friends and supporters of the Spring City Spinners Bicycle Club; Transition Cycle, Kurt's Steak House, Wisconsin State and City parks and North High School.

4th Century this year

2007-09-11T20:25:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was the chance for members of the Spring City Spinners to preview the ride (Pedal The Kettle) that we'll be supporting this coming weekend.

On Saturday I got up early and started to have my usually pre-century ride breakfast (oatmeal, eggs, toast and Orange juice), but we were out of eggs. I also got the start time wrong, so I was a half an hour late. I got started on the 100 mile route at about 7:30AM. About an hour into the ride I did take a slight short cut (~4 miles) and caught up to the rest of the group in Sullivan, WI at a rest stop.

We had a great ride, the weather was fantastic with the temp.'s in the 70s to 80s during the course of the day. The only problem were the mosquito's at the Whitewater rest stop. The cooler temp's this week should take care of most of them before the ride on Sunday. Speaking of the Whitewater rest stop, normally during the preview ride, we stop at a gas station or a park near the place in the route that will have the official rest stops. During this preview ride one of our members "Bunny", was nice enough to provide fruit, cookies and PB&J sandwiches at the Whitewater rest stop.

So I got my 2nd 100 mile ride in for the summer (2 - 100 mile centuries and 2 - metric centuries).

Like I said, if you happen to participate in the PTK, stop by and say hi, one change, I'll be working the Rome, WI rest stop, it the 2nd rest stop on the 65/100 mile route.

Safe riding all.

Another year older

2007-09-10T06:44:00.000-05:00

Yes this marks the year that I hit the big Five-O.
I thought the cake was great, the Grim Reaper was
only there for the cake.

Pedal The Kettle is approaching fast

2007-08-31T15:18:00.000-05:00

The date for our club fund raiser, Pedal The Kettle, is coming up fast: Sept. 16th. Our club uses this event to raise funds which, we in turn use to promote safe cycling and to contribute to local charities.

As the webmaster for the club I was playing around with Google maps to make a sort of promotional map for the club website and created the following;

View Larger Map

Initially I used Google maps to determine approximately a 3 hour travel time from Waukesha, WI to several major cities within a 4 state area (WI, MN, IA & IL). Then I used the custom My Maps feature to draw the highlighted area and add the push-pin for the start location. I was really glad to see how easy Google has made it to publish a custom map within a blog or website. All you have to do, once you have a map created, is click on the "Link to this page" and you'll get an option to customize and preview the embedded map. From there it's basically a cut and paste of some code embedded in an iframe.

If you happen to participate in the PTK, stop by and say hi, I'll be working at the very first rest stop of the 65/100 miles routes.

Safe riding all.

3rd century this year

2007-08-27T14:54:00.000-05:00

Well actually this was a metric century, so I've done the following; one(1) - 100 mile ride (BVBC Classic) and two(2) ~62 mile rides; one adhoc and the other was this passed weekend, the Cream City Cycle Club Ride. I started out intending to do the full 100 miles, but I felt a cold coming on (and today confirmed it), so myself and two other members of our club (pictured below) decided to do the 62 mile route. This route had one of the best downhills I've been on in Wisconsin. I topped out, speed wise, right at 44 MPH. But what goes down must climb out, and it was a good hard climb as well, luckily the rest stop wasn't far away.

Here's Gloria and Ron enjoying some cookies at the last rest stop in East Troy. Only 18 miles to go at this point. We finished at the Waterford High School and took advantage of the post ride meal. Spaghetti and meat balls always tastes great after a long ride. Now I just have to get over this head cold, and get in some more riding, summer's almost over.

Safe riding all!

Riding Glasses: followup

2007-08-22T14:26:00.001-05:00

Just so you don't think everything was perfect with these glasses, I did run into a couple of issues once I started using them more regularly. From my previous posting you know that the Rx insert got off to a very rocky start. But once that was resolved there's just been some minor things, like one of the hinges has always been a little stiff (harder to open and close one ear piece compared to the other) and it's been working the screw out of that hinge. So I have to re-tighten it occasionally. The other issue is keeping them clean, I have to removing the Rx insert after almost every ride in order to clean the Rx insert lens and the photochromic lens separately.

Duncans recovery and the PTK

2007-08-21T11:38:00.000-05:00

After yesterdays visit to the vet, Duncan is now free to move about the cabin. He still needs to limit his activities (no bounding or jumping) and his back muscles are very tight, so he's on a muscle relaxant. He's VERY happy about being out of the kennel and he may be up for some short walks if it would ever stop raining. We haven't had as much as some places, but it's sure putting a damper on the bike riding.

The bicycle club that I belong to is busy preparing for it's 16th annual Pedal The Kettle Tour. The club members staff a fully supported ride (SAG, rest stops, registration, and post ride meal) with 100, 66 and 33 mile options. It a kick ass ride through the Kettle Moraines of Waukesha and surrounding counties. Check the website for more details including online registration via Active.com. Funds raised by the event go towards supporting local charitable organizations.

Duncan is walking

2007-08-08T16:20:00.000-05:00

Duncan is walking but he's still a little wobbly, so we're continuing the meds for a few more days (per the vets instructions) and keeping him on kennel rest, which he really hates now that he's more mobile.

Dachshunds are an interesting breed, in that although they are primarily a scent hound, they can and do participate in a sight hound sport called lure coursing, which we saw demonstration on Monday and the Wisconsin State Fair. Basically the lure is a plastic bag attached to a string, which is fed along a course of pulleys and driven by a 12-volt starter motor. We saw one experienced dachshund that was actually able to anticipate the path, cutting off the corner and catching the lure. The herding dogs were the best at this, but the course inside the coliseum was smaller than a standard outdoor course, so their speed was limited, but it was still very entertaining. Several dogs broke away from the sidelines, unplanned, to join in the fun.

Duncan on the road to recovery

2007-08-03T09:53:00.000-05:00

Just a quick Duncan update. He's still under orders to stay in his kennel except for bio-breaks and food/water. So yesterday my daughter had Duncan in the backyard, keeping an eye on him while he took care of business, when suddenly a rabbit appeared and Duncan instinctively bolted after it. He's not up to speed of course, but it surprised my daughter that he was able to get away from her to chase the rabbit out of the yard. It's looks like he's going to make a full recovery, but for now it's back to kennel rest, where he can only dream of catching those rabbits.

Things to be thankful for...

2007-08-02T09:55:00.000-05:00

I have a lot of things to be thankful for, but in light of the Minneapolis bridge disaster there was one added to the list yesterday, and that was that my daughter was home for the summer. She graduated from UMN Minneapolis/St Paul this past Spring and she had driven that bridge many time as part of her part time job for the UMN Library system, picking up and delivering books in the metro area.

Also, Duncan seems to be making progress towards recovery without surgery. This morning the vet said that he had some improvement in his reflexes and that we should continue the kennel rest and medication through the weekend. The vet will then evaluate his condition on Monday to see how he's doing.

Sun Alumni/Community site migrating to Planets

2007-08-01T14:03:00.000-05:00

I sent an email off the other day regarding a problem that I was seeing on Community.Sun.Com (CSC) and I got the following in an email response.

The aggregator that runs community.sun.com is being replaced by planets.sun.com. The community.sun.com (CSC) team will then redirect CSC to http://planet.sun.com/alumni/group/blogs/.
But in the meantime, could you please point directly to the planet.sun.com (PSC) URL?

Since, the PSC application meets the need, we won't be debugging the CSC application.

Please let us know if you have any further questions. Thank you.

Regards,
Sun Blogs Support

So my next question was, will this mean that the Community site will look more like the BSC site, which just had some updates like "Most Recent Tags" and "New Bloggers", but alas the PSC site doesn't have those feature. But there may be some hope, I got this as a reply to the "new look" question.

There is a redesign in progress for the sun.com community venues, so community.sun.com will have a new look -- I'm hoping the roll out will happen by the next quarter.

Duncan Update

2007-08-01T13:53:00.000-05:00

So far the steroid meds aren't helping his condition, so it looks like tomorrow we'll find out how much it costs for a dachshund to have back surgery.

Our dog's story

2007-07-31T21:56:00.000-05:00

It had been many years since I had a dog as a regular part of my life, in fact it was probably at least 20 years. Then, one day about 7 years ago, I came home from work and was greeted by my wife, kids and a 12 week old Black and Tan Dachshund. We voted on a name and out of a couple that we agreed on we settled on Duncan. Duncan was supposed to be a miniature Dachshund, but due to a quirk, he's actually a "tweeny", somewhere between the full size and the mini's. Why Duncan, well we decided that if we got a dog, there could be only one.

He lived in the kitchen, for the most part, during the first few months and it wasn't long before I realized that we didn't want to carry him down the steps of our deck to the enclosed backyard. So one of my next tasks was to build a ramp from our deck to ground level so that he didn't have to navigate those steps.

Duncan has had quite a few adventures, he's caught and eaten his share of bunnies in our back yard. He's also taken the occasional tumble, his front legs were in a cast sometime during that first year or two. He also has a special backpack called a Dog Gone Device for taking bike rides with the family (otherwise those little legs just can't keep up). He's always traveled well, ever since that first day when he made his journey in our mini-van from his birthplace near Portage, WI to his new home in Waukesha, WI. He's made frequent trips to Illinois to visit his human families relatives.

But just recent prior to our vacation, Duncan was in pain, so we got him in to the vet right away and he apparently had suffered some type of trauma to his back. They gave him some morphine to take care of the pain and said that he was ok to travel, (we were leaving that day for one of those trips to Illinois). The next day he was walking with a strange gate, as if his back legs weren't working quite right and then the next day he could use them at all. After a visit to a local vet, the diagnosis was that Duncan probably had a slipped or ruptured disk in his lower spine and that if he didn't improve within a week or so, that he would need surgery.

So Duncan now has until Thursday of this week, to see if he recovers his reflexes in his rear legs, otherwise we'll need to make arrangements for him to have back surgery to relieve the pressure on his spine.

More to follow on Duncan's progress...

Vacation

2007-07-30T21:34:00.000-05:00

I was gone for the past week on vacation in central Illinois. My wife did some genealogy where she had some good luck and I got some bike riding in, nothing huge, the longest single day distance was a metric century ride between Galesburg, IL and Blandinsville, IL. This wasn't a supported ride, it just turned out that the route that I picked (staying off major highways) came to a little more than 62 miles. I actually felt much better at the end of this ride than I did at the same distance on the 100 mile ride a few of weeks ago. I even averaged a mile an hour faster on this 62 mile ride than I did on the 100 mile ride, which was pretty good considering I was carrying a change of clothes/shoes and all the food and water that I needed for the trip.

Dual ported printer dies

2007-07-15T20:14:00.001-05:00

Well. it was bound to happen eventually, my old Epson CS 760 finally bit the dust, but replacing it may be more difficult than I originally thought. The diagram above shows the basic connections that allowed my Mac Mini (and prior to that an iMac) to print to the Epson CS 760 via the USB port. At the same time I was able to allow other Windows based computers to print to the same printer via the network via a Hawking Technology print server (PN7127P). So when the 760 died I thought I'd be safe buying another Epson printer as long as it had both, a USB and a parallel port. The Epson Stylus C88+ does, but so far I haven't had any luck getting it to work with my print server. It could be that I was taking advantage of an undocumented feature of the old printer. If anyone has any suggestions or can point me to a good webpage on the topic, I'd a appreciate it.

Weekend Century Ride

2007-07-10T14:45:00.000-05:00

There were 18 members of our club (Spring City Spinners) participating in Bay View Bicycle Clubs "Classic", this pasted Saturday. The day started out in the mid 70's, but it was clear, so the Sun was beating down throughout the day. Several of us did the 100 mile route, starting out of Oconomowoc, WI at ~7:15AM and working our way southwest through Waukesha, Jefferson and Walworth counties. The rest stops were well stocked with fresh fruit, cookies, brownies, and other high carb snacks, plus plenty of water and Gatorade. Our only complaint was that as the day wore on, the fruit (and water at the last rest stop) had been left in the sun. Nothing worse than being at mile 83 of 100 and having hot fruit and hot water for refreshment.

BikeBlogs and Bicycle Design blogs

2007-07-06T21:39:00.000-05:00

I ran across a couple of interesting sites while looking for two different things. First I wanted to find a site that aggregated bicycle related blogs, I found it, at BikeBlogs.com but the last posting was in 6/2006. I did some research (basic WHOIS lookup) and found a contact, the short answer from the site owner was that the site wasn't worth the time it took to maintain, so don't looks for any updates, unless things change.

The other site was related to a search for radical bicycles and the site I found is Bicycle Design. This site has some very interesting postings related to bike designs, give it a look if you're interesting in that type of thing.

I'm prep'ing for a century ride tomorrow morning. We want to get started as early as we can to try a beat the mid-day heat. Several members of our club, Spring City Spinners are riding to support our coalition partner club BVBC.

Safe riding all.

RAZR Communicator on Instructables

2007-07-03T09:28:00.000-05:00

Instructables seems to have stabilized, so the RAZR Communicator project is now posted.

In posting the preview here, I noticed something odd (bug?) about the Digg submit button code. Even though I specified the specific posting in the "digg_url = 'WEBSITE_URL'", replacing "WEBSITE_URL" with the Star Trek RAZR posting URL, the Digg button references an older Digg posting that referred to my overall blog site and not the Star Trek RAZR posting.

Star Trek™ Communicator edition RAZR

2007-06-30T17:29:00.001-05:00

The Instructables site seems to be having some issues right now, when those get resolved I'll finish and publish my "case-mod" to my RAZR phone. Here's a sneak peek ...

Finally the glasses are complete

2007-06-26T13:09:00.000-05:00

From previous posting you know that I had purchased the Julbo Speed/Race sunglasses and the problems that I had getting my prescription filled into the Rx clip. Well the stars must have finally aligned correctly, because yesterday the clip came back from the lab. It was intact and had the proper prescription. Also, the Eye Group SC did right by the price, due to all the problems, and basically gave me the Rx for the clip. So, tonight barring hail or high water (and I've seen both on Tuesday night rides) I'll get a chance to try them out.

Now I'll have to change my Blogger Photo to show the new shades.

Safe riding all

Dark Matter/Dark Energy

2007-06-21T09:56:00.000-05:00

I ran across an interesting article on SLAC's website* called The Search for Dark Energy . It sounds like Science Fiction, but researchers will be conducting over 2 dozen experiments to find that missing 70% of the stuff that makes up our universe.

* It's interesting what you find while looking up something completely unrelated. I went to SLAC's website because of a Sun blogger talking about SLAC getting one of the first Sun Blackboxes.
(Full Article)

Riding Glasses: Part V

2007-06-20T10:47:00.000-05:00

Here's the latest, as I mentioned before, the lab screwed up the prescription initially, so my optometrist tried to expedite a fix by sending the clip to a local lab. But, the local lab broke the clip! (OMG) So I ordered a new clip last week and got it Monday. The optometrist now has the NEW clip and I should have it returned with the correct lenses by Thursday (I hope).

The weather was great for our clubs Tuesday Night ride, it was a tad windy, but the dew point was low, so all in all a nice evening for the ride.

Safe riding all

PicooZ Update

2007-06-19T11:15:00.000-05:00

Just a couple of notes on the PicooZ front. Silverlit Toys, the patent holder of the PicooZ mini helicopter, has updated their website, at least since I was last there. From their main page, click on the Products nav button and then on the PicooZ panel. Or just go to the page from here -> PicooZ specific page Click on the "FEATURE" thumbnail for a flash demo of the PicooZ controls and operation or click on the "LINKS" thumbnail for links to other pages with discussions groups, performance tips and more.

There doesn't seem to be a PicooZ II on the horizon just yet, Silverlit has probably been to busy with legal battles over all the PicooZ knock-offs.

Field Testing the new Sunglasses

2007-06-15T09:55:00.000-05:00

First off, as I've said before, all the items that I review I have purchased myself, so there's no paid promotion here.

Here's what shipped with my order:

The Julbo Speed/RACE glasses inventory

Julbo Speed Race glasses w/NXT + Photochromic (cat 2-4) + Anti-fog lenses
a hard case (nice surprise, I thought it was going to be a soft case/bag)
head-band strap
Owners manual

Not included, but ordered as a separate item

Optical clip for Rx lenses

I'm still waiting for my prescription to be fill into the optical clip (more bad news here, but I'll save that for another post), but my prescriptions isn't so strong that I can't do a little riding on the bike trail. So I tried out the new sunglasses this morning and I have to say they are great. The wrap around angle of these lenses and frames leave almost no gaps for stray light to leak in. They fit great, and I didn't need to use the strap that came with the glasses.

Photochromics: This is the best part in my mind, from the time I put them on till the brightest part of the ride, the light that reached my eyes always seemed consistent, in fact I'm really missing that with my regular glasses.

Tint: These glasses have an amber tint that helps enhance the view of the road or trail.

Ventilation: The edges of both the right and left lenses have a gap (see photo from my previous post) near the hinges to allow air to escape, so there's no moisture buildup between your eyes and the glasses.

Hard case: As I mentioned earlier, the glasses came with a "hard-case", really just rigid plastic. The inside front of the case, that makes contact with the lenses, is lined to protect the glasses. One other side benefit of this case is that is was large enough to fit into and be held tight in a water bottle cage. I used the case to bring my regular glasses with me on the ride and with some other stuff packed in my jersey I used my spare cage to hold the hard case.

Anti-fog: I headed out early this morning to purposely try out the Anti-Fog aspect of the glasses. I've gone out on some morning where I've had to stop to wipe my glasses off if the fog hadn't burned off yet. Today wasn't that bad, but I did have a little fog buildup on my rear view mirror, but I didn't see any on the glasses. I'll have to try this again to see just how fog resistant they can be.

Conclusion, I really like these glasses and once I get my Rx clip I'm sure I'll be able to see even better. I haven't found anything that I would complain about. The quality of the glasses seems to be very good. So overall I'd recommend these glasses to anyone looking for a good quality pair of sport glasses that can accept a Rx clip.

One note, the lenses aren't polarized, so if you want or need that as an option, you might look into the Julbo Nautic/Race version instead of the Speed/Race glasses.

Safe riding all.