Stuff-mo-tron

Fri, 29 Sep 2006

Parked outside the window is a new-looking BMW R1200GS. A decent enough looking bike, particularly considering it starts at $15,000, and this bike has at least $2000 in extras on it.

Into view heaves a man, late 30s, sunglasses, dressed like a typical wage slave (blue button-up shirt, khaki pants). He's talking on a cellphone. I notice him because he's walked over to the bike.

He stands next to the bike, looking down the street. He glances at the bike. Back down the street. Back to the bike. By the way he's standing there, it doesn't look like he really deals with motorcycles normally, so I guess he's not the owner.

More standing and turning, looking around, talking on his little phone. He walks down the length of the bike, and I think he's going to open a sidecase and get out his helmet. Maybe he does own the bike.

Then he walks back up to the head of the bike, and looking up the street in the other direction, quickly plays his free hand all over the head area of the bike (where the handlebars, ignition and instruments are). His hand runs over the ignition switch, and down into the gap between handlebars and instrument cluster. Back out, and under the instrument cluster.

He quickly retracts his hand, and nervously tap-kicks the bike: on the front wheel, on the cylinder head, on the right footpeg. He walks away.

Now, if that had been my bike, and I'd seen this man do what he just did, I would have been out of the restaurant like a shot, with unpleasant loud words exiting my mouth, ready for a confrontation. It's not kosher to either fondle or kick another person's motorcycle, and it's a particularly poor idea in front of a picture window with 5 curious faces staring right at you. I have no reason to suspect this man owned the bike, and it certainly appeared that he had just fumbled looking for hidden ignition switches or stashed keys.

I looked for him when I left a few minutes later. He was nowhere to be seen, but there were multiple exits he could have taken without passing by me. Perhaps not the smartest move, khaki-man, the fondling of another person's motorcycle. That's a good way to get beat up.

On Ebay, there's this "feedback" system. It's pretty cool, allows you to let other users know of your experience with a buyer or seller. Seems like a good system.

See, here's how it should work. The seller of an item bases his feedback on two important phases of the post-close transaction: communication and payment. Once the buyer has communicated any necessary information to the seller, and sent payment for the item, the seller is basically done. At that point, feedback can be left by the seller, for the buyer.

The buyer, meanwhile, must wait until the item in question arrives, then he must ensure that it's in advertised condition. If it is, hooray. If not, he works with the seller to come to some kind of remedy. Either way, the buyer's feedback is based upon the item arriving, and how the seller resolves any problems. The seller's feedback to the buyer doesn't change, as the seller's experience has already been solidified in the prompt (or not) communication and payment.

The way it actually works now is that the seller waits until the buyer leaves positive feedback, effectively holding his feedback (a kind of payment in the Ebay system) hostage. If I don't leave positive feedback for something I bought, I never get positive feedback from the seller, despite my transaction having gone perfectly, from his point of view.

I can just see why a seller might want to withhold feedback until it's obvious the buyer isn't going to freak out about a non-existant problem. People do that sometimes. But to actually make a policy out of reserving feedback until positive feedback has been left? Seems like a shitty way to deal with people. What if I leave negative feedback because I ordered a book and all I got was the dust jacket? Do I get negative feedback in return, despite the fact that I paid quickly, and completed my end of the transaction effciently? Seems to be so.

Ebay: further proof that no matter how well you design a system, people still suck.

Thu, 28 Sep 2006

I am helping a certain production with some firearm training and supplies. One of the things I'm helping with is reloading the blanks once they've been fired (much cheaper, and considerably quieter than the full-power blanks). It's not hard, just pop out the old primers, and press in new primers.

I got a call a couple of days ago. It was the stage manager, asking for more blanks. No problem, says I, but I'm bicycle mounted today, so would you mind if we did it tomorrow? Oh, that's fine, replies he.

I got there last night (the "tomorrow" in question), to pick up the spent blanks. The stage looked suspiciously well made-up. At some point, I asked if they were expecting an audience tonight. He'd mentioned on the phone that they had enough for that night, which extrapolated out to mean that they didn't have enough for the next night. He replied in the affirmative to my question.

Ok, so there's a problem here. Let's go over the situation, from the viewpoint of, say, Monday. It's Monday, you have a rehearsal Monday and Tuesday, a preview Wednesday (with audience), and opening Thursday. You look into your bag of unfired blanks, and count out 5. You use 2 per rehearsal or performance.

You have a number of choices available to you. First, you could choose not to use blanks in the remaining rehearsals. This gives you five shots for the nights with audience, assuming your master-at-arms (me, in this case) has some schedule conflict which prevents him from getting you a fresh supply. Second, you could call the master-at-arms Monday afternoon, to give him a few days' lead, and warn him that there will be audience there on Wednesday. You could also combine these two choices into a kind of extra-safety option. Finally, you could call your master-at-arms late on Tuesday, and ask him for more blanks, with no mention of when opening happens. That's what just happened.

Of course, it's not as simple as all that. A stage manager has to be shockingly on-the-ball at all times, and it's easy to let some things slip. In particular, it's very easy to assume that everyone with the slightest involvement knows the schedule. Past performance on the part of the master-at-arms (ie, providing a one-day turnaround for fresh noisemakers) may lull you into a false sense of complacency as to his ability to deliver such speedy performance every time. In short, it's a mistake easily made.

That doesn't really make it any better when you have to perform in front of an audience with empty guns.

I managed to pick up my first flat tire on a bicycle in a long time last night. Of course, it was as I was half-way to where I was going. Naturally, I had all the requisite components to fix the problem. At home. Sigh.

Fortunately, I had given myself a lot of time to get where I was going, so walking the rest of the way was a viable option. Fortunately again, I had already been planning a trip to REI, which has an extensive bicycle department, on the way home; the trip to REI on foot only took 15 minutes. I bought all the requisite stuff, ending up with a nicer collection of tools than I have at home, so it wasn't a total loss. I felt silly buying $70 worth of stuff I already owned, though.

The cause for the flat seems to have been old age. When I was wrestling with the front tire a few nights ago, I ended up using a tube I had lying around. It was a 700c tube (the size used on road bikes), which means it was at least 7 years old, and more likely 8-10 years old. The last road bike I had was sold early in 1999. Anyway, the leak was caused by a tiny nick in the tube, facing right into the rim. That means there was nothing on the road which could have caused it, and there was nothing on the rim. It must have split from old age.

Ah well. It was hardly a disaster. And now I'm equipped to deal with flats, so hooray for that.

Wed, 27 Sep 2006

Back in the dawn of time (I can feel my parents rolling their eyes), I was an unhappy, angsty little boy. I didn't know (and still don't, for the most part) what made me unhappy, but I was unhappy. No one seemed to like me in school, the one and only social outlet I had. That's actually not true, I had a small group of friends, and we spent a lot of time together. I would hate to slight that. At the time, though, it seemed like I was the least popular kid in school.

For a variety of reasons, I didn't get interested in so-called popular music until I was nearly in high school. I had no peer pressure on the musical front: my parents were and are classical musicians, and so classical was my musical upbringing. My friends had wildly diverse musical tastes, which I only partially shared. They never really pushed music on me.

One day, possibly while working at my early job of backing up a computer system (insert 5.25" floppy disc A; run back to terminal and press enter; 3 minutes pass; run back to disc drive and swap to disc B; repeat for ~30 discs), I was listening to the radio. I don't recall what station, possibly KUBE -- this was back before they'd gone to the all hip-hop format they have now, and they played top 40.

Soon there emanated from the radio a song which caught my attention. I think it was the "compressed" singing which first caught my notice -- I've always enjoyed what I think of as "interesting noises." This usually means sounds which aren't to be found in nature. In any case, this song caught my hear. I strayed by the radio until it was done, suddenly interested for the first time. The DJ called out what he'd just played, naming "my" song as "Peekaboo" by a band called Suzie and the Banshees. I committed the name to memory, and determined to look for it the next time I was at a record store.

Look I did, and although I didn't find any Suzie and the Banshees, I quickly found Siouxsie and the Banshees, which I correctly deduced was the same band. I located the album which contained Peekaboo, and bought it. I'm sure I listened to the whole thing many many times, and found myself going back to the record store when possible, and buying as many of the band's albums and singles as I could find. I also bought numerous posters, an interview picture-disc, and a scrapbook sort of publication. I developed what can only be called a crush on the British singer. I didn't know anyone else who knew about the band, much less liked them, so I began to think I was a fanbase of one.

Siouxsie and the Banshees (along with The Cure and a number of other bands) became a soundtrack for my late teen years, intimately associated with many aspects of my life. I have any number of memories which are triggered by listening to this music again, and which can only really be remembered with particular songs scoring them.

Fast forward a few years, from 1988 to 1993. I now had all Siouxsie albums produced thus far, and many singles, either on LP or CD. I was now going to college at the Evergreen State College. At Evergreen, I was finally given access to this "Internet" thing I'd heard some of my more computer-literate friends talking about. Specifically, I had access to email.

I signed on to the SATB-L mailing list (which I probably discovered via either Usenet or Gopher, a predecessor to the WWW). I'm sure I made many embarrassingly uninformed posts and displayed a ridiculous amount of innocence.

Regardless, at some point members of the list began an ambitious project: we would gather together all the singles, live recordings, whatever we could find which constituted "rare" Siouxsie recordings, and create a set of self-recorded CDs using recently introduced CDR technology. At the time, the cost of this set of 4 CDs, just for the media, was ridiculous, perhaps $50-60. This doesn't consider the many hundreds of dollars a single-speed recording CD drive cost. These CDs would be burned, and then passed from member to member, with additional CD sets available to anyone who could afford to supply the media. The project coordinator also offered to create tapes for those who couldn't afford the CDs. The tapes would cost $26.

As I was a poor college student, spending $50 on a set of CDs was completely out of the question. $26, though, was just within my budget, and a very attractive (if expensive) proposition. I made out my check and sent it off to the guy making the tapes, at some college on the far side of the country. I was giddy with anticipation, since this collection represented a vast treasure trove of music I'd never heard before, and desperately wanted to hear.

Two weeks passed, then a month, then two months, then six months. Despite repeated emails to the tape creator, I never heard from him again. The check was quickly cashed. I was a sucker. I actually do think he'd intended to make tapes, but he got overwhelmed, and wasn't very good about returning people's money (or he wasn't able to after spending it). In any case, I was out $26 -- a lot of money to me -- and mad about the whole thing. I didn't want anything more to do with the project or the list, and unsubscribed myself shortly afterwards.

Years passed after this little fiasco. Occasionally I would spot the project again, once spying a set of discs in a store, inexpertly produced in Finland or somewhere equally exotic, for the princely sum of $20 per disc (there were four). $80 was equally beyond my budget at the time, and I still felt cheated that I had already paid for this music yet didn't own it. I continued collecting Siouxsie and the Banshees albums as they came out, including whatever singles I could get my hands on.

Fast forward again, to 2006, several weeks ago. I was poking around at random on Google after trying to figure out on which album a particular song had appeared. I found my answer, but I also found a Siouxsie album I hadn't heard of before: Downside Up.

I clicked the link and read the Amazon entry with a growing rushing sound in my ears -- this was the professionally-produced version of that rarities collection from years ago! I noted with what approached glee that Amazon was charging list price for it, which meant I could order it from my friend Steve, who runs Quimpersound in Port Townsend with no qualms.

In less than 5 minutes, I had the album ordered and on the way. $45 shipped to my door.

And I still haven't listened to it. I'm even now ripping it so that I can put it on my MP3 player (which is how I listen to music at work), but that's just putting it off.

Honestly, I'm kind of afraid to listen to it. I already know about 1/3 of the music on the album, from owning the single where it was originally released. But that other 2/3 (of four discs!) represents new, never-before-heard music to me. From a band which was important to me 10 and 15 years ago. It was so important at the time, and particularly at the time of the tape fiasco, it would have meant a great deal to me to even hold this thing in my hands.

But... What if it doesn't mean much to me now? What if I'm distracted while I'm listening to it? What if it becomes background music!? (I used to lie on my bed in the dark, just listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees albums, concentrating my whole attention on the sound coming out of the stereo.) What if that long-dormant crush on a singer 20 years older than me comes rushing back? What if it doesn't?

I'll just have to listen to it and find out. Still, it doesn't stop me from feeling like I'm a character in Amelie, rediscovering a childhood treasure hidden in a cigar box.

Tue, 26 Sep 2006

I was swapping out tires on the new bicycle today (the first one? 2 hours, lots of swearing, blisters in odd places; the second one? 10 minutes and I barely noticed). As part of the process, I dug into a box of bike stuff which has been languishing in the garage for years.

In said box, I found a near-miraculous unused innertube, which saved the day with the 2-hour tire swap. I also found some documentation on the old bike, and on a whim I started digging through it. Wait a minute, what's that? A receipt!? Cool!

In case you've lost the thread of this particular saga, I discovered about a month ago that my old bike (the Norco in question) had a crack in the head tube. That's where the steering pivots, and a crack there means the bike amounts to so much trash. I called Norco, since someone put the thought in my head that they might offer a lifetime warranty on the frame. Indeed they do, but they require the original receipt. I went through all the likely places, but it was nowhere to be found. I'd resigned myself to selling the thing to the used bike shop for $10 and a roll of Mentos. However, I held out the faint hope that in going through boxes (which I would be doing anyway), I might find the receipt. Behold, hope fulfilled!

Mon, 25 Sep 2006

Oooh, I just saw that the video intros from this year's SketchFest Seattle are available on the SketchFest website. Download 'em now while they're still fresh! Congrats to Josh for creating some quality introductory video.

The next day, Thursday (we're following the saga of SketchFest Seattle, see previous theater journal entries), started early. I was freaked out about that projector. I had promised the groups coming that we would have at least rudimentary video available.

Even so, I sent an email out to everyone that morning (entitled "Video doom") explaining what was going on. I got a couple of sympathetic emails, one half-smarmy, "you should really test this kind of thing sooner than the day before the festival" email, and a half-frantic call from the group which was planning on utilizing video heavily for their show. Believe me, if there were any way to test this kind of thing sooner, it would have been done. You organize and set up all technical aspects of a major two-week comedy festival, and get back to me when it goes off without any problems.

Anyway, I knew the day was a total loss to work, so I called up my boss. He was sympathetic, and let me take the day off. I immediately started burning up the phone line, calling around to see who would rent us a projector, and for how much.

Obviously, the really cheap rate we'd gotten from the other theater company was out. No way we'd see that matched anywhere. I ended up calling 4 different rental houses (well, 5, but only four of them had projectors to rent). Between them, we quickly reached a consensus on what was needed: a Sanyo XP55 or XP56 projector, with a custom lens. Sound cheap? Nope, it wasn't.

One place said, "well, normally it'd be $500 per day, but because you need the special lens, we have to charge $150 per day for that extra." I did the math in my head real quick, and came up with a jaw-dropping $3900, before tax. I apologized, and explained that we just didn't have that kind of money. The next place I called wanted $500 per day, and $125 per day for the lens. The next only wanted $450 and $150 (I had been warned that they were horribly expensive, so I was surprised when they came in so cheap -- I was also horrified when I realized that I was now considering $3600 "cheap").

The last place I talked to, A/V Pro, finally said, "look, why don't you call up your money guy and figure out how much you can actually spend. We can fudge numbers on the equipment, but not on labor. So if you do your own labor, we have a lot of latittude." I averred that our budget was going to be a paltry fraction of the lowest price I'd heard so far, but called the money man anyway.

After suitable consultation with the exotic, multi-headed deities of financial mathematics, he called me back and named a figure which was, indeed, far below the figures thus far named. I called A/V Pro back, and repeated the figure, like a man about to be hanged names his final request. To my absolute incredulity, the voice on the other end of the connection immediately said, "oh, we can do the whole rental for thus amount," naming a figure $200 lower than the one I'd just said. (Pardon my vagueness, I don't know the etiquette surrounding discussions of budget numbers -- suffice to say that we were working with an amount which was barely a noticeable fraction of the $3600 price of entry.) I had a moment of stunned silence. "Are you sure?" "Yes, I'm sure. If you want to spend another $100, you can keep it between weekends." "Done!" I practically barked. I paused a moment, and said again, as if in a dream, "we're talking about two weekends, six performances here, right?" "Yep. You can pick it up today," and we were into mundane details.

So I ended up heading down to A/V Pro within the hour, to retrieve the suddenly-affordable video projector (if you were wondering, list price on an XP55 projector is $9995, who knows how much the lens would cost). It came in a big road case, which I loaded into the sidecar after a brief exchange of happy words. It was also while I was down at the shop that I got the call from the video-heavy group, so I was able to pass along word that the video situation was resolved.

I headed up to the theater, to set up my new prize. It worked exactly as it was supposed to (I'd given my picture and screen specs to the shop so they could pick the right lens). I guess renting something for far less than the going rate is still better than not renting it at all. A valuable lesson to keep in mind.

Teching the groups

At this point, I started running the tech sessions for each of the groups. I won't go into much detail on the individual techs, since they were all about the same thing.

Each group was given 60 minutes for their tech rehearsal. During that time, we had to set up light cues in the board (which was programmable, so once it was all set up, you just hit the GO button to switch between cues; very slick), set sound levels, and do anything else which they needed done. This is standard fare for a travelling show, but the groups' readiness for the process varied considerably.

Some groups came in with excellent scripts, fully annotated and ready for me to use. Others came in with marginal scripts. Others came in with my recommended "tech sheet" format, listing a few lines before each cue, then the description of the cue. No one came in unprepared, which was nice.

Probably the biggest variable in getting each group set up was their ability to convey to me what they wanted. Some had a dedicated tech liason, who worked with me more or less constantly to get light looks and sound levels set. Some groups ended up making lighting decisions (like, where should light cues occur?) on the spot. We managed to get through all of them, but for some of the groups it was a struggle.

Opening the Fest

Techs out of the way, I got myself out of the theater for a spot of dinner. Tech rehearsals had started at 4, but I'd been going all day, getting the video projector situation squared away. There's a great restaurant just down from the theater, called Honey Hole. They make delicious sandwiches. One in particular, the El Guapo, prompts me to think I've finally found a sandwich to displace the fabulous Vegetarischer Croque from Eden (a bar which I hear has gone out of business) in Hamburg, Germany. Good thing, too: Honey Hole is a lot closer.

7 pm and then 8 pm rolled around, and the Festival was on. Honestly, the rest of the Festival is something of a blur at this point. There were no groups which stood out as particularly excellent, although there are moments which stand out. Dusty Warren's "All American Push-Up Party," as he stood there in character, uncomfortably explaining his bed-wetting while his hands treaded water of their own will, and he winced away from imagined sharks. A Mark Twain sketch in which we switch back and forth between East Coast dandies discussing his work, and Twain himself providing lurid and lascivious counterpoint. Two elephants looking at paintings in a museum, discussing elephantine stereotypes. Two Vikings dancing an elaborate choreography to Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House". It was an excellent set of shows.

After I got the lights set up at the Erickson, for SketchFest Seattle '06, it was time to set up the video.

Through a connection on our staff, another theater was willing to rent us their video projector for what amounted to a length of string and some empty bottles from the last party. It was perhaps not the ideal projector, but for the price, we'd make it work somehow!

The Cyc (white) and scrim (black, in front of cyc) at the Erickson

I got the projector up in the booth and hooked up to the PlayStation2 we would be using as our video source (high tech, I know!). We were using the little 10x8 foot spandex-n-PVC screen I built for Speechless lo these many years ago (it's gotten a lot of use in that time!). The idea was that we'd project video onto that little screen, which would be placed at the foot of the audience. When the video was done, two eager stage hands would hustle it offstage, or at least away from the center of the stage. We had these great video intros for each group, produced by Josh Knisely.

So the screen was put in place, and we marked its location so I wouldn't have to re-aim the projector every time. I leapt up the stairs to the booth and fired up the projector.

The image was considerably larger than the screen. I adjusted the limited zoom control on the projector to no avail. The smallest setting left 40% of the image spilling off the screen.

I briefly flirted with the idea of shooting the image on the fabric at the back of the stage (which is called a "cyc," short for cyclorama). However, there was a scrim (like very tightly woven fishnet) in front of it, which rendered the image this awful confusion of moire patterns when seen from anywhere which wasn't directly in line with the projector (ie, everywhere). In addition to that weirdness, the image was too big, the top 10% being cut off. Argh!

We ran through options, but none of them made much sense. Put the projector in the audience (to get it closer)? Too dangerous from a cord-tripping standpoint, and we wouldn't be able to control it. Hang it from the lighting grid? Again, no control, and we didn't have cords long enough. Rear projection? Well, maybe, but we'd have to get it off the stage at the same time as the screen, requiring yet another person to help out.

That projector looked like it was out. Aaaand we'd already been through all the reasonable options for getting another one.

I made a few tense phone calls, just in case any of the options we'd explored might have changed. Nope. Crap!

I did what I could that night to finish up, mostly getting microphones set up, and making sure all the equipment we had was playing correctly through the sound system. It was, but I was seriously bummed about the video situation.

Thu, 21 Sep 2006

For the second year in a row, I was the Tech Director of SketchFest Seattle. It was interesting, stressful, fun, tiring, invigorating, annoying and completely fulfilling.

It all started last year, when I said I'd do it again. But it really all started on Wednesday the 6th. We piled into the Erickson Theatre Off Broadway to get everything set up for the arrival of the first group on Thursday.

My biggest priority was to get the lights and video projector set up. Val (Artistic Director, second board op, generally helpful person) and Rachel (Stage Manager, also generally helpful person) both joined me for the Wednesday setup. I looked over what lights were available, and decided that they were about right as they were. I wanted different gels (color filters) in some of the lights, and I re-aimed a few, but I didn't ultimately do that much to them. The worst part of that was getting to the instruments over the audience.

Audience seats at the Erickson

The audience in the Erickson, as in many theaters, sits on a slope which rises away from the stage, so everyone has a good view. That's great for the audience, but it makes getting to the lights above the audience a bloody nuisance. On top of the aforementioned bloody nuisance, the only ladder which would fit up there safely was this amazing extend-o-ladder. Great ladder (I have already forgotten who makes it, of course), but it must weigh 75 lbs. So I found myself wrestling this incredibly heavy extend-o-ladder between rows of seats, laboring to keep it from opening too far, lest it should lock open. If it locked open, it would be permanently wedged in the seats until I could figure out how to release the pressure on the locking mechanism and unlock it (which is normally supposed to happen as it's lying on the ground). Not, really, the best option as far as ladders go.

However, despite all the odds, I did manage to get the lights gelled and focused, roughly to my satisfaction. The words, "you can change anything you want, but you have to put it back when you're done" kept ringing through my head, discouraging me from doing very much to the lights.

Tue, 19 Sep 2006

On Sunday, I realized that I finally, finally, finally had time to wash my riding suit. Finally. It's been far too long. So gross.

But I digress. So Sunday was spent washing, and washing, and washing... and drying, and spraying. Then I had to wait four hours for the first coat of ScotchGard to dry, but it was already 10 pm. No way I could afford to stay up until 2, so I determined to work from home on Monday.

That plan went off without a hitch, and I got the suit all prepped on Monday. I'd thought I was going to have to run an errand at lunch time via motorcycle, but Jesse showed up with his old, crusty XS650 that he'd sold to someone in Alaska -- he wanted my help getting it to the shipper. Perfect! We threw my rental return in the truck and headed out.

This morning, I awoke to the "sssssSSSSSsshhh!" sound of cars driving by on a thoroughly soaked road. I just looked out the window, and sure enough, it's pissing rain out there.

Good thing that riding suit is all clean and freshly waterproofed. Hooray for serendipity!

Sun, 17 Sep 2006

At long last, I was able to wash my riding suit today. That Aerostich has been through a lot, including a lot more Summer riding than normal, in the last 6 or so months. Maybe it's been longer. Whatever the case, it was time. I think it may have developed a method of communication based on the subtle shifting of mangled insect corpses on its surface. It certainly showed a propensity for interesting scents.

I tried a slightly different method this time, partially because it was so very encrusted. Two washes in full strength mean ol' detergent, two wash cycles with no soap to rise, and a cycle with the wash-in stuff from Nikwax. It's out in the garage now, stinking up the place from its first coat of Scotchgard. It certainly looked a lot better after the gentle caresses of the washing machine.

It's never a good thing when you think to yourself, "gee, I should wash this," and then you repeat that same thought to yourself for months on end. The first one should have been the action date. Sometimes life just gets in the way, particularly when the washing process takes the better part of 24 hours to complete. As it is, I could only get in one coat of spray-on waterproofing tonight, so I'm going to have to do the second one in the morning and work from home until it's dry.

Sat, 16 Sep 2006

Regardless, it's a great starting platform. I already have one upgraded disc brake which I bought for the old bike, and I'll probably get another and sell the ones which came with this bike. That's the general word I'm hearing from everyone I ask.

So, the first stop is to take the wheel I bought back to Recycled Cycles, where I'll have $50 of store credit to blow. A new computer is the likely outcome of that situation.

Tue, 12 Sep 2006

I stopped into Gregg's Cycles on Aurora today, and took a look at some of the bikes there. The first one that caught my eye was the Gary Fisher Utopia, which was on sale for $600, vs. the normal $720 price (and $760 for 2007, I later discovered). I handed over license and credit card (apparently de rigeur in any larger cycle shop these days), and took it out for a spin. Pretty nice! I had actually gone in to look at recumbents, but that Fisher struck me as being a good deal.

I did also test ride a recumbent for the first time: a Rans Velocity Squared (a mere $999). Interestingly, Rans is a company which makes recumbent bicycles, and kit airplanes. Hmm, interesting coincidence of interests...

Anyway, riding the recumbent was interesting. I felt a bit like a young colt taking its first steps: wobbly, hesitant, not really knowing quite how these legs work yet. The recumbent gave me the same uncomfortable, how-do-I-balance-this-crazy-thing feeling as the one and only time I rode a cruiser-style motorcycle. In other words, it didn't positively impress me.

I was impressed by how much power I could get out of my legs since I was able to shove them against something other than gravity. If I were riding longer distances, a recumbent would be high on the list, simply for the improved aerodynamics and mechanical efficiency afforded.

The bike I rode was a long wheelbase model, which is not my preferred style -- I think I'd like the short wheelbase better. However, I'm glad my first ride was on a LWB model, I probably would have fallen off a SWB. I also think I would prefer under-seat steering, while this bike is over-seat steering. Part of my discomfort was surely having the handlebars be the end of a lever, instead of at the pivot -- my normal balancing inputs didn't work quite right, which really didn't put me at ease.

With any luck, I'll be heading out to ActionBent soon, to test ride a SWB model they have, as well as a trike. The trike sounds utterly fascinating, but largely impractical for the riding I want to do. I still want to check it out -- if it gets me excited about riding, it might be worth the price and impracticality.

Anyway, after I got back, the Gary Fisher bike was still sitting there, and after some deliberation, I put a $20 "hold it for 10 days" deposit on it, since it's the last one in the store, and a good price. So unless I find a better bike in the next ten days, I suspect that Fisher will become my next bike. If the Fisher ends up not being quite my thing, the Raleigh Mojave 8.0 I rode yesterday is also a strong contender.

I think the thing I like about the Fisher above the Raleigh (other than having generally better componentry) is the 29" wheels. They're much more appropriate for city use (vs. trail use). I just hope that the whole 29er trend doesn't fizzle like Betamax.

Jamis Exile - A nice bike, but $800 for an '06. Well spec'd, with good components and a steel frame. Higher quality components than I'd really be able to appreciate.

Raleigh Mojave 8.0 - This is currently the top of the list, hitting all the things I care about, mostly disc brakes, wide tires, and a suspension fork with lockout (making it nearly as stiff as a non-suspension fork). Plus, it's only $550, considerably cheaper than the Raleigh.

Cannondale F800 - Alright, I guess, but I didn't feel like I fit on it all that well, and it was the "right size" for me. Again, fairly pricey, at $870. The coolest feature was the front suspension, which had the slider inside the headtube (in the frame), and was adjustable for rebound and lock-out on the fly -- no need to stop, get the weight off the fork, then lock it out or release the lock. For the price, I didn't think it was the right thing, at least partially because high-end components are lost on me.

It's been interesting, looking around. Next up, I'm going to look at recumbent bikes tonight, and will hopefully soon be looking at a recumbent trike (the ActionBent Tadpole Trike). I don't think a trike is seriously in my future, but they're utterly fascinating. Major cons are that they're too low for any visibility at all, and they can flip over if you take a curve too fast (not an issue I'd even consider on a two-wheeled bike).

The one thing which appeals to me about trikes is that they're so different, I might be inspired to ride much more often. They're spendy, and they're weird, and they have their downsides. But if they inspire me to get on them and ride more often, that's a net gain for me, my health, and my energy consumption.

Mon, 11 Sep 2006

We were coming north on Highway 99 today, from south Seattle. As we passed by Queen Anne, where they've recently constructed a shiny new pedestrian overpass.

There, directly under the pedestrial overpass, was a hapless guy with a bicycle, and no lights. Under the ped overpass. In a section of road which is marked 40 MPH, but which everyone takes at 50-60 MPH. With no lights. In the dark.

Sun, 10 Sep 2006

I don't think I'd mentioned it on here, but I went ahead and ordered some stuff to convert my Norco Cypress mountainbike to use a disc brake in front. I've got an Avid BB7 caliper and rotor, and Rock Shox Dart 3 on the way, and I found a used front wheel with a disc hub at Recycled Cycles. While I was in Recycled, I also picked up a used stem, to see if getting the handlebars a touch closer to me would make the bike more comfortable

So, that's cool and all. Hooray for disc brakes. But I went to put on the stem today (easier than I'd feared), and noticed what seemed to be a little line of dirt or oil or something on the head tube (the steering pivot point on the frame). Hmm, I thought. I rubbed it to get it off, and noticed that not only was it not rubbing off, but it was also quite rough.

Upon closer inspection, I realized it was about a 2" crack running from the upper bearing race to the middle of the tube. D'oh!.

In other words, the frame is toast. It's not safe to ride, or sell to anyone else to ride. It's almost certainly not repairable, since you'd have to weld right at the bearing surface, in aluminum. Not really practical. It'd certainly be worth recycling. There's a faint chance that this is covered under warranty, but my receipt certainly went to the great filing cabinet in the sky years ago, so it's probably a moot point.

Anyway, I guess that means I'm in the market for a new bike. I'll keep my eyes out, who knows what I might find.

Fri, 08 Sep 2006

Who would have guessed that he was the Incredible Hulk? (Yes, he's really lifting that bike.)

Thu, 07 Sep 2006

I felt compelled, for a number of reasons, to take the sidecar rig to the opening night of SketchFest tonight. Mostly, I had to carry a big heavy projector which wouldn't have fit happily on the Ninja.

I came out at the end of the night to head home, and what do I see but someone back into the space ahead of the rig. I don't give it a second thought until I get closer, and see that this car has gotten really quite close to the rig. Wait, he's still inching backward... And now the hack is bobbling back and forth in that uneasy shimmy every vehicle undergoes when another one taps it while trying to parallel park.

I put on my best angry voice and yelled "HEY!" loud enough to wake the dead. I got up to the car window, and this little face looked out at me, and said, "sorry about that." He got out of the car, and I found myself looking at what appeared to be a 13 year old asian kid. His car was a blue, late model Honda Accord, with blue tribal-style flame decals along the side. Great. And his car was still resting wearily on the sidecar's nose.

It didn't seem worth the effort of tirading at him, so I just told him to let me out and I'd be leaving shortly. He made some comment about how this was the fourth time he'd had to do this. "What, run into my sidecar?" I thought to myself.

I just got my helmet on and got out of there. I could see that his car had knocked a small chip of paint off the sidecar, but it had many cousins from road debris or flying rocks or whatever. Not worth the bother of intimidating him into giving me his insurance info (assuming he had any -- it seems anyone who gets into any kind of automotive altercation has a 95% chance of being uninsured).

Hey, thanks for a great night, kid! Learn to park, or get a smaller car, or something.

If it had been a motorcycle, he would have knocked it over, and then we would have been in angry-Ian land (fortunately, there was a cop less than a block away, and it would have been very satisfying to drag him into it).

Mon, 04 Sep 2006

I've finished up the Montana ride report. Take a gander. I've got a few finishing touches I'd like to add, but it's pretty well complete as-is.

Sat, 02 Sep 2006

I still ride my bicycle occasionally, but not anywhere near enough. Even so, it's got 1000 miles on it since I bought it new, in 1999 or 2000. I brought it into Free Range Cycles a couple of weeks ago, and asked them about replacement chains, figuring I was due. Sure enough, the guy measured my chain and said that it was just at the point where it should be replaced.

I asked how much a replacement chain was, expecting to hear $70 (motorcycle chains start at $80 and go up for anything decent). The guy pulled a chain out from behind the counter, and as it hit the countertop, he said, "that's $16." "Sold!" quoth I.

So, now, probably a month later, I finally got around to it. Getting the old chain off was more difficult than I'd been hoping -- the motorcycle chain tool I have was not as universal as I'd guessed it was. It worked eventually, but I really need to get a proper bicycle chain tool if I do that again.

After a minimum of false starts, I got the new chain on, and routed correctly. A quick ride around the block suggests I did everything right, so hooray for new chains!

In a related note, I was discussing "peak oil" (well, peripherally, anyway) with my friend Josh the other day. Roughly, the theory is that we're right near the point where all the easily-found oil has been found, and to get any more oil will be increasingly difficult.

I'm not interested in debating anyone about peak oil. However, it did start me thinking about our society's oil usage in general. It's frightening. The one I didn't know, which really got me, is that apparently the agriculture industry is hugely dependent upon hydrocarbons in the form of natural gas, which they process into fertilizer. Without that fertilizer, our overworked soil will cease being productive. Just let that sink in for a moment -- when gas runs out, not only does it become expensive to transport food from farm to market, but it becomes expensive to even grow the food in the first place.

I don't know about you, but that's an absolutely horrifying thought. That means that our way of life will have to change drastically, no matter how much monetary wealth you have.

Ok, so horrible, depressing world-view aside, how does that apply to me? Well, I'm already doing a lot of my part to reduce energy consumption -- I ride a 50+ mpg motorcycle, I live close to work, I keep the thermostat turned down to 66° F in winter, I take short showers, etc. I could ride my bicycle more, and that's one of my goals. I need to figure out to what extent I could continue to live my life normally if I rode the bicycle more. My guess is "mostly," but I would have less freedom in terms of absent-mindedly leaving something at home.

But the big one is, does it make any sense to devote 5 years of my life to building something which is, at its heart, a huge gas guzzler? I speak, of course, of building an airplane.

The airplane I rent now uses about 9 gallons per hour. At that consumption rate, it probably flies 110 mph, so that's 12.2 mpg. Ouch. The biplane I would build would cruise at about 85 mph, and use about 5.5 gallons per hour, depending on which engine I ended up using. That works out to 15.45 mpg, which is better, but still hovers in the "horrible SUV" range when compared to land vehicles.

I haven't discounted the idea out of hand, but in light of my lifelong efforts to be more efficient with resources, it seems kind of non-sensical. A highly correllated issue is the price of a gallon of gas in 5-7 years. If we keep going at this rate, it's going to cost $6-7 per gallon of avgas. That means that every hour of flying will cost as much as $38.50 in gasoline alone. That compares with $4.50 now, for $24.75 per hour. Of course, that's not the total cost of an hour of flight, but it's the most variable cost.

So, my 40 hour flight testing regimen will cost $1540 just in gasoline. Of course, building the plane will probably cost $30k-40k, so $1500 is kind of a drop in the bucket. However, money aside, it's going to use a lot of gas.

This is all a set of thoughts I've had in the back of my head about the airplane project, but I find them coming much more strongly to the fore now. It bears more consideration. I still really want to build an airplane, but maybe what I should focus on is building an airplane, getting some flying fun out of it, then passing it on to someone else who really wants a biplane. That will definitely be an expensive hobby, since I suspect I won't come close to breaking even if I build an airplane then sell it.

Anyway, a lot of interesting things to consider. I'm glad I got over my initial funk about the whole oil consumption culture thing, it had me seriously down on Thursday.

Fri, 01 Sep 2006

I believe it would be an understatement to describe last night as an improbable, mildly choreographed dance on the edge of disaster.

"Awesome" will be putting on noSIGNAL at Bumbershoot this year, and last night was our allotted set-up time. They gave us from 6:45 to 9 pm to get set up. By the time we got in, it was already past 7:10.

To put this in perspective, we were attempting to do in two hours what had taken us 20 the first time we did it. We're certainly faster now, having worked out a lot of the bugs in the first tech week, but we're not 10x faster.

We got our stuff loaded in pretty quickly, and introductions were made. Stormy (spelling unknown) was our stage manager, and these were our sound, light, projection folks, and these were our stage hands. Everything passed in one ear and out, as every member of the group stared more or less slack-jawed at Stormy. She was perhaps 28-30 with long auburn hair, and for some reason utterly captivating. That's great and all, but I could feel our time trickling away. (I was no less captivated, don't get me wrong, but I was also frantically aware that we needed to be working fast.)

First things first, let's get those lights set up. Great, progress! Oh, wait... Why is that light bar coming down? What's going on guys, why are we patching lights? 20 minutes of futzing later, the lights were sorted out. By the time we actually got to being able to write cues on the light board and start setting up sound (which necessarily happened simutaneously), it was already 8 o'clock.

A frantic 45 minutes of slowly building light cues later, and we were maybe 1/3 through the cues I knew we wanted to build. You'll notice that this put us at 8:45 if you've been keeping track. We had 15 minutes to finish the other 2/3 of cues. No, actually, Stormy informed me, you have 10 minutes, because we need you out at 8:55, so we can shut down the theater. Oh, great!

Dustin and I kept plugging, slowed down to the speed of cold treacle through the whole thing by a complete unfamiliarity with the lighting set up. There were four of us on headset, trying to get cues set: Gary in the booth, actually hitting buttons; me, trying to stay out of the way and occasionally shouting out cue numbers; Dustin (our light designer) trying to muddle his way through the "magic sheets" the theater had provided; and someone else (Warren?), the theater's light designer. It was cacophonic and difficult. Add onto that that I occasionally had to go off headset to shout something at the actors, or answer a question from someone else (about 2/3 of the way through any of these given distractions, Dustin would tug on my sleeve and make it obvious that lights were more important to him than anything else going on).

On top of all this, I (and everyone else in the room) couldn't stop glancing back at Stormy, who continued being captivating whether we had a ton of work to do or not, and regardless of how much or little time we had left in which to do that work.

Finally, at about 8:53, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and Stormy leaned down to tell me that she was extending our tech time to 9:25. Hooray! I wish it hadn't felt so much like the state had just moved my execution date out a week.

Dustin and I got back to lights, feverishly plugging them into the board. Things were going faster as he got used to which lights were where, and as I looked at the light cues in my book, and ruthlessly crossed them out one by one. 2/3 of the cues left quickly dropped to 5 cues left under my smoking redaktionsstift.

Finally, light cues were done (but not before we'd had to pause for 3 minutes while the band played at full volume, completely cutting our ability to hear each other). I jumped up and announced we were done. The band cheered. They got on with their final sound check. I called out, "5 minutes! No, wait... 2 minutes! We have to clean up and be out of here in 8 minutes!"

There followed an immensely frantic collecting and packing of props, instruments, accessories and cords. I gathered up a load of stuff, following after Stormy as she showed me the small bathroom which she had deigned to let us use for storage.

Then it was the quick-paced baggage train, getting all our stuff into the tiny bathroom. Fortunately, it was capacious enough for twice the stuff we had, and we were done by about 9:27. Thank-yous were shouted all around as we bustled out. I was out the door before 9:30.

We met there outside the loading dock door, in the cool, calm night air. I felt like I had just come out of a war zone. I heard others trading jibes ending in phrases like, "but I already have a wife," which was my first clue that I wasn't alone in finding Stormy completely distracting. (I had been too busy doing everything else to pause long enough to read others' stares.)

We worked out a plan for Saturday and split up, but not before The Distraction Herself and the rest of the theater's crew filtered out the door and to their respective transport media.

Still feeling shell-shocked by the whole experience, I rode my Littlest Ninja home, where I got to spend a lovely hour or so reconstructing my sound work from 5 months ago to send to our sound designer -- I hope he got those files. I think I was finally in bed by 11:52. I'm sure I was asleep before the clock ticked over to midnight.

Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.