All posts by Rick

I'm living in rural Florida (USA) with my wife, son, two cats, and quite a few computers. I actively work in several areas of interest but still find time to manage several websites, execute home improvements, ride the Harleys, and play with cool toys. I'm reasonably fit for an Old Guy, equally comfortable wielding a keyboard, torque wrench, or spatula. I've got a scary-low tolerance for bullshit.
Motorcycling

2008 Dyna Parts Manual Typo

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Yesterday I found that the 2008 Parts Catalog for the Dyna, publication number 99439-08A, contains a typo.

On page 64 there is an illustration (duplicated on page 66) of the front fork. The screws for the axle holder (end cap) are shown as having different lengths and index numbers. Index number 1 is listed on page 65 as part number 4042, which is correct. Index number 31 is listed on page 67 as part number 46614-06. This is incorrect, as are both illustrations.

According to an H-D tech I spoke with yesterday, you should use two part number 4042 screws to secure the end cap, even though the illustration shows a shorter screw on the trailing side of the cap.

It logically follows that the lockwasher, index number 3, part number 7062, should be used in both places as well.

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Smart Bathrooms

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My dad was fiercely independent until his last days, turning away all kinds of help even though accepting it would have certainly prolonged his life as well as improving his quality of life. As his health declined after his strokes I found myself with a growing interest in technology-based assistance.

[bummer, the link died]
http://www.pcworld.com/article/160752/bathrooms_become_smarter_with_touch_screens.html

Blather

Off-Season

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Let’s face it, there’s not much reason to hit the Jersey shore in the middle of the winter. But that’s exactly what I did the other day.

Since I had business nearby I decided to visit Asbury Park and see how preparation for the upcoming summer season was progressing. It wasn’t! I expected to see nothing but asses and elbows, but found a ghost town instead. The only action was in the old Paramount Theatre, where preparation for a Tom Jones show that evening was underway. The roadies paid us little mind as Pam and I wandered around. We wanted to have lunch but everything was closed. The town seems poised to lose yet another season and in this economy that just might spell doom. Too bad.

We continued south. I thought it might be fun to take the Jeep down the barrier island. I was surprised to see the Island Beach State Park was charging a five dollar entry fee. (“All year, every day,” the attendant confirmed.) It didn’t seem worth it to drop a fin simply to drive in and out so we circled back through Seaside Heights. The town was a flurry of activity, plenty of local contractors busily sprucing up for the season to come. We wandered the boardwalk a bit. It sure is a different place midwinter!

p2270013

By then, I was out of time. I finished some business in Eatontown and continued back into the central part of the state. It was almost like returning to civilization. Almost.

Blather

Grocery

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I hate grocery shopping. I’ll try just about anything to minimize the time I waste in grocery stores. So I was delighted when I recently encountered Stop & Shop‘s new Easy Shop system. (ed. 13-Mar-2009: The system is called Scan It!, not Easy Shop, in our area.)

All you need to do is swipe your customer card at a kiosk, pick up a hand scanner (ergonomically designed, high contrast color screen, made by Motorola), collect a few empty bags (paper or plastic or, for you greenies, use your own reusable bags) and go hit the aisles. Scan your items as you shop and load your bags the way you want them loaded. Along the way, the scanner periodically spams you with relevant special deals that might interest you. And when you’re finished, the scanner quickly uploads its list to the register. A quick credit card transaction and you’re out the door!

Naturally I was interested in what others had to say about the new system, and I wasn’t surprised to find that many (most?) don’t like it. After all, out here on the Web we love to complain! (Google “Stop & Shop” and “Easy Shop” and see for yourself.) One of the big complaints seems to be that it would put cashiers out of work. Do you really presume to think that by assuming a tiny bit of inconvenience you can preserve someone’s position? Besides, I love to talk to anyone and everyone and I have not met a single cashier yet that actually likes their job. Other users don’t care for the random audits, feeling like they’ve been singled out. I don’t know what triggers an audit and I’ve only used the system once (no audit), but I don’t know how else they could detect shrinkage or ensure customer honesty.

There is an RFID-based system being developed – I think it’s being tested in Germany – whereby you simply load up your cart and push it out the door. No hand scanning is necessary and your entire order is tallied en masse as you exit, billed automatically to your credit card. It sounds intriguing but I think we’re safe for a while.

Oh and before you ask, yes, I have tried Peapod. The service is well worth the fee, but the product selection is… suboptimal.

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Tweet Tweet

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Okay, so I’m a little slow on the uptake, so what. Yeah, I know about the thing, yeah it’s been in the news for a longass time, but I never figured I’d have a use for it. And to be honest, after dickin’ around with for a day or so that hasn’t really changed much, either.

Friends have been telling me to get on and companies seem to be letting me know they’re on so I figured I’d give it a whirl.

Just to squat on it, I’ve taken my company name (sshhhh – squatting violates Terms of Service), and I’ve also taken another for personal use, whch is where I’m doing some, um, evaluation. Yeah, that’s it.  Evaluation.

Find me on Twitter here.

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Product Discontinuance

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Some time back I wrote about Chocolate Skittles. Well, the other day we stopped at a supermarket on the way home from the gym and Pam spotted this on the shelf.

022209_17041

It’s not very often that a product is discontinued even before the package changes to lose the ‘new’ moniker (the yellow blob to the left of the product name), but there it is. I can’t say I blame Mars one tiny bit for shutting this product down! It simply could not have sold very well at all. Incidentally, I don’t think a 33% discount is near enough.

As to the quality of the image, well, all I had available was the camera in the phone. It might have helped if I had remembered to wipe the lens off a little before shooting.

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Everyone gripes about the weather, but nobody…

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Y’know what?

I’m absolutely, positively sick to death of the weather we’re experiencing this winter. I hate the cold. I hate the snow, the half-snow and the freezing rain that alternately assault us. I hate the pea-gravel that my boots track into the house. I hate warming up the car, and scraping the hoarfrost from the windows before I drive. (I hate sharing the roads with the dopes that don’t bother clearing their windows of ice while they ‘drive’, phone in hand, in a hurry because they didn’t leave adequate time to reach their destination.) I hate the potholes caused by the water that seeps into the ill-maintained roadways. I hate the pile of clothing I shed before crawling into bed. I hate the layers and layers of additional clothing I need when I ride. I hate waiting for the shower to deliver warm water in the morning.

I think you might get the general idea. But if not, just ask.

How I long for the hazy, hot and humid summer. Give me a hundred plus degrees and get ready to hear me say, “What? That’s it? Is that all you got? Bring it on!” HHH? Uh uh, it should be HHHH with the extra H standing for Hellish.

Here’s my standard for perfect weather. Close your eyes. Now, stride into the ocean. Can you tell where the air and water meet? If the answer is negative, the weather’s perfect.

Did I mention I hate winter? Well, I do.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
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My Mutant M&M Collection

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My Mutant M&Ms
My Mutant M&Ms

Did you ever notice that M&Ms usually have incredibly good quality control? You don’t see many that aren’t very regular, perfect in size and shape. This past Halloween I had a bunch of those little mini-packs, though, and it seemed to me that way too many of them were poorly built. Or the sorry mis-shapen speciments hadn’t been culled by the quality control process as usual. So I did what any normal techie would do: I began to collect them!

None of these are altered in any way, they are just as they fell out of the package. No, silly, not all the same package – but it sure would have been cool to get one pack containing nothing but mutants. Now that would have been something to write about!

The incidence of mutants has fallen way off lately (but every now and again someone will point one out to me). I hypothesize that Mars ramped up production while simultaneously reducing costs as the economy went into a tailspin, and quality predictably fell off. What do you think?

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Buffer Dump

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There’s one emacs buffer I always have around to keep catch tidbits of stuff. It really does help to keep those scraps of paper on the desk to a minimum, well, for text anyway. Now and again I need to go back through it and clean out the junk – not unlike looking at those scraps of paper and throwing them into the shredder bin. This time I thought I’d share a little. Got a few minutes for some diversions? Good. Go grab a fresh cup and waste a little time.

mugFirst up is this collection of help desk tickets from hell – and beyond:
http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/ [broken link]

Those of you that ride know how tough it can be to catch the attention of cagers on the road, seemingly single-minded in their desire to ruin your day by killing you. Well, how about this nifty holographic projector priced just a tad over five large. The folks over at Aerostich like to have a little fun with their catalogs by adding fictional items. Gotta love their sense of humor.
http://www.aerostich.com/catalog/US/Holographic-Vehicle-Projector-p-17408.html [broken link]

With all the uproar over DRM it’s always nice to find good music from good folks with a good attitude, and www.ucalldatmusic.com is just such a place. Here’s a sample:
http://www.ucalldatmusic.com/mp3files/naked.mp3

And if that ain’t enough then there’s this oldie-but-goodie that always gets a smile:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwxBt1sW63c

Hot on the heels of my mention of OS/2 under VMware, I had some fun looking back at old GUIs at Nathan’s Toasty Technology site. Go have a smile. Or a grimace. Your choice.
http://toastytech.com/guis/

Wondering where you can get that mug that’ll show you mean business at your next infernal staff meeting? The folks over at Think Geek will fix you right up.

There! That felt better than what’s really on my mind. I swear, I can’t get through the morning news anymore without blowing a gasket. I mean, with all this bailout crap I feel like I’m being penalized for deciding decades ago to live my life in a fiscally responsible manner. I’m thinking I should have partied it all away instead and let others pick up the pieces. Might have even gotten a bonus……

Blather

OS/2

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OS/2
OS/2

I was cleaning off my desk today, picking up some of the clutter and carting it down to the basement archives when I ran across this sheet of stickers that made me smile. It got me to thinking…

Some months back I was participating in a discussion of old operating systems and talk turned to OS/2. I decided then that it might be fun to try to install Warp in a VM for goofs. Back in the dark ages even though the bulk of the install was from CD you needed to boot the install from floppy. It took some searching to find an old laptop that still had a working floppy drive, but find one I did and soon had the required floppy images.

It didn’t matter. The install failed.

That was under VMware Server 1-point-something-or-other. I soon learned that VMware didn’t support loading OS/2.

Oh well, it could have been fun.

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Obama-Nation

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Oakey-Dokie, then. The good ‘ol USofA now has a new President. So why do I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach? Hold onto your ass with one hand, dear friends, and your wallet with the other; we’re in for one helluva ride.

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The Newest Build

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There were two main reasons to build this computer. Damian’s laptop, a hand-me-down almost 8 years old, had been showing signs of impending failure for some time. No surprise, he runs it 24×7 and the heat has physically damaged the finish on his desktop. And Pam, who plays Sims2 on her relatively recent desktop-replacement laptop, had been grumbling for a little more oomph. A plan was laid and by Christmas each would have their upgrades.

The Core i7 CPUs were just hitting the shelves and I briefly considered going that route. The on-board memory controller, new for Intel, meant new motherboard designs and chipsets. With reliability (not to mention my wallet – the i7s are kinda pricey today) in mind I chose the Core 2 Quad Q9550 instead. Well-supported, I’ve heard of folks pushing the 2.83 GHz part to 4 GHz and beyond. Cooling is always an issue but I didn’t want the hassle of liquid systems so an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro was added to the list.

The Gigabyte GA-EP45T-DS3R motherboard has been getting excellent reviews for its tweakability and DDR3 memory support so it was added to the list. Everyone knows that memory is king. I started with two sticks (4 GB) of Corsair 1333 Mhz DDR3. It’s an easy no-loss jump from there to 8 GB. And if swapped for 4 GB parts, this board will hold 16 GB so there would be some headroom left for the future.

The next choice was the GPU. Wow, things had come a long way since I last paid attention! After an evening of digesting reviews a choice was made: the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 from EVGA. The 896 MB NVIDIA-based unit turns in solid performance for the price and also has some potential for tweaking later.

Key to user satisfaction is a good monitor choice and one in particular has always stood out: the HP w2408h. 24 inches of HDMI, 5 ms, high-contrast saturated colors with a native 1920×1200 resolution. Sometimes you’ve got to just swallow hard and go for it, and this was one of those times. Pam would be delighted with this monitor, and that’s what I was aiming for.

The rest of the component choices were rather pedestrian. A DVD-RW drive for loading stuff, a Western Digital SATA drive for holding stuff, a Microsoft wireless laser mouse for pointing at stuff, and a WLAN card to avoid a new cable run. A nice-looking, well-built Antec P182 case would hold all this nicely with plenty of room for expansion. Oh, yeah, and an OEM 64-bit Vista Home Premium. Y’know, buying a copy of Windows always leaves my stomach a bit unsettled and this was no exception – not to mention that this would be the first Vista box in the house. Well, at least it shipped with SP1…

A bit of back-of-the-envelope power analysis called a power supply of 650-700 watts, so a BFG Tech ES-800 was added to the list. (This PSU would end up failed in less than a month, hmmm, more on that in a future entry.)

The final order was placed with Newegg and soon the components were coming in. Between these and other Christmas shipments our UPS driver was becoming a daily visitor!

Physically, the build went quite uneventfully, easily even, thanks to component standardization and that well-designed Antec case. Oh, there were the usual share of driver issues, a BIOS change or two, a few ‘trial’ Windows installs, stuff like that, but nothing that couldn’t be handled. Vista reported a base score of 5.9 for every subsystem, the highest available as this is written.

Pam named her new rig Thor. Then the machine-shuffling got started in earnest.

Overall I’m pleased with the result, but there have been a number of… interesting… things that I’ll talk about in subsequent entries. Like that failed power supply, for one. Stay tuned.

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One-Car Garage

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  • two Harley-Davidson motorcycles
  • one Jeep Wrangler
  • three adult-sized bicycles
  • two unicycles (24-inch and 36-inch wheels)
  • two floor-to-ceiling sets of shelves (spanning entire back wall, packed full)
  • one hydraulic motorcycle/ATV jack
  • one bolt-to-the-floor tire changer/bead breaker
  • two air compressors on carts (one a 2-cylinder commercial unit)
  • one eye-height tool chest (wheeled, full)
  • one vacuum cleaner
  • two 35-gallon recycling containers
  • lumber (approximately 120 cubic feet)
  • one folding workbench (yep, folded)
  • one set of two medium-duty automotive service ramps
  • three aluminum ladders (16-foot extension; 24-foot extension; 16-foot folding scaffold)
  • one 10-ton hydraulic log splitter
  • one 65-gallon trash can
  • assorted yard tools (shovels, rakes, hoes, brooms, and so on.)
  • and more small stuff (too various and numerous to mention)

The garage is packed kinda tight tonight.

There’s a storm coming that could dump a foot of snow – the largest snowfall here in about two years. I’ve got space outside to park the pickup, but I want the Jeep off the street.

It’s positively astounding what you can fit into a tiny space with just a little bit of planning!