I’m not feeling well today – I don’t think I’ve been getting enough sleep lately. So, I stayed home. Not that I’m staying away from work… I’m on a conference call right now, in fact.
What I need to do is actually get used to going to sleep at a decent hour…
After realizing that my “junked” trackbacks were in the order of 40,000 or so, I thought that maybe my site might be slow for a reason. So, I have completely disabled trackbacks and am in the process of purging them from the site. I may even move to using a “real” database instead of the BerkeleyDB like MySQL. Too bad none of these blogging engines allow me to use the MSDE or Microsoft SQL Server 2005 – I can get those for free, you know.
And, if I go with a database like MySQL, I might as well migrate to WordPress…
Maybe that’s not the word, but the shop that did the service last week on my bike will send out a driver to come pick up the bike and take it to the shop. That will be a big help and they even offered to pay for the tow if the problem was something they caused. If not, it still helps me get the bike to where someone can do something about it – which is much better than leaving it in a parking lot where anyone else can tow it away.
I’ve been reading about some common electrical problems that these bikes have, and it seems that mine has fallen to the inherent weakness of the wiring harness. Maybe. I’ll know more later when they look at it.
I may have been “back on the bike” this morning, but the bike stayed at the office. I had trouble starting it, and after an hour or so of removing cowlings and parts I had thought that I had removed the offending circuits [which I thought ran the headlights]. I took off out the gate, but got about 20 feet before the bike died. At work it stayed.
Seems the parts I removed were starter relays and maybe there’s some kind of short in there. Now, I have an out-of-commision bike with a shiny new chain and rear tire…
Tomorrow, I’ll be calling around to the closest dealers to see if they have the parts and if this is a common problem. I hope it’s something I can fix easilly…
Don’t know if you notice, but things are changing on my site. They will change slowly as I have time, but change they will. Right now, I’m experimenting, so the changes may or may not be permanent. Please have patience… and let me know what you think.
Today, I’m back on my bike after it went through an expensive service interval. It normally isn’t expensive to service the bike, but my back tire was almost bald and my chain was so stretched out, that it could be just lifted off the sprockett. Well – glad I told them to change it. While the bike was there, they also changed the back brake pads, so we have severely depleated our “emergency fund”, which is supposed to eventually hold 3-6 months of living expenses. Of course, we had just started it, so we didn’t have much in it.
I will say that it is good to have the bike back in prime shape. There were vibrations caused by the stretched out chain which made riding uncomfortable. The bike feels tight and comfortable. My main concern now is to be careful not to stretch out the chain again. That wil cost me too much in replacement costs.
Now, the journey continues past 16,500 miles [which is quite a lot of miles for a bike – not really, but most idiots buy a bike and keep it for years while putting only 5000 miles on. Not me! I intend to go past 40,000 miles, maybe even 60,000…].
Last Friday, I was prompted to download and install an update to Windows Vista Beta 2… which I foolishly did. Now, I’m rebuilding my laptop from scratch. I tried a newer build of Vista, but was unable to get the VPN to connect, so I downloaded the absolute latest build [5473 for those of you who care or know what I’m talking about] and I was able to connect to the office VPN. So, now, I’m downloading Office 2007 Beta 2 [yeah, I know: more beta software, but that at least seems relatively stable] so I can check my work email and do my job.
I’m hoping that this build will correct several of the other problems I have noticed with the Beta 2 version of Vista. Seems to work fine so far…
Yesterday, Laura and I along with a couple of friends from chuch [Phil and Troy] went to the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington, DC. There are a lot of lilly ponds and other marshes and plants. This was actually a good trip and my first dedicated “photo outing”. I think it turned out quite well. I ended up taking 170 pictures before my 2GB card filled up. Laura was using the Canon Elan 7n [our 35mm film camera] and one of her rolls was slide film, so we haven’t seen those shots yet.
All in all, though, we got a lot of good shots and a lot of “blah” ones which will be deleted – never to be seen again…
I’ll post the pictures as soon as I finish processing and sorting them… [which might be a while as I’m still rebuilding my laptop].
Today, I had a flat in the car. The front right tire went down. Luckily, I only got out of the driveway. I put on the full-size spare [gotta love those] and went to work. Now, we have to get a new spare tire.
This is just as I am staying off the motorcycle this week because its rear tire is so close to gone that I feel uncomfortable riding it. I’m getting a new one on Friday.
There goes the emergency savings…
Since obtaining my new phone, I can’t seem to put it down. Laura has already had a few comments about that, but I keep wanting to play with it. Over all, I’m happy with it, but I still have much to get used to. I’ve enable “voice dialing” for some numbers, which I have to say is amazing. [could do this with my old phone, but I can do much more with voice on this one and I’m not limited to 10 numbers.]
It’s hard to put down a new toy, but I know I have to periodically. I love gadgets – I just can’t let them take over.
::: jeffphillips.org ::: 