Steerage

I think people complain too much about air travel these days. What more could you possibly want on a three-hour flight -- than this?

It is, after all, a premier snack mix. Its sustenance is an embarrassment of plenty.

Just look at the size of that pretzel. It spans nearly two keys.

TWO keys!

Great Salad!

Should I care that there's no punctuation on the protective seal of a store-brand jar of mayonnaise? Probably not. 

It's not so much that I care, but I love what happens when you read the label literally:

"Convenient shatterproof jar makes a great salad."

Hmmm...  Delicious, BPA #2 plastic makes for great salad fixins.

Eat up!  It is the holidays, after all.

It really is the little things that make all the difference

Of late, I'm not much of a birthday person. I guess it's what happens.

So when people ask me what I want for my birthday, I usually reply, "Nothing." Because to me, it's silly at this age to reward someone for having completed yet another year -- or for beginning a new one, whatever your perspective.

Some months ago, my wife asked about the contents of a box in my office.

This box:

With glee, I took it down and opened it up.

 I explained that when MotoGP came back to the US (500 GP was a different series, but was held in the same regard) in 2005, it was a very special time. It was huge for the American riders in attendance; it was their opportunity to really shine for their home fans. Most of the American riders had one-off paint schemes on their motorcycle, special leathers and one-off helmet designs. 

One of those riders was Colin Edwards, shown at-speed coming down The Corkscrew, with his resplendent helmet design:

This design was so popular, and the representatives from the Arai Helmet Company received such paralyzing demand for this helmet design, they decided to make a commemorative, limited edition of this helmet. It was called the Edwards Legend - Laguna. There was a similar design, but in white, that Edwards wore in Valencia Spain; not surprisingly, this version was called the Edwards Legend - Valencia. 

In the summer of 2006, I had an opportunity to buy one of these helmets. So I did.  I truly think it's one of the most beautiful helmet designs Arai have ever pulled off. It so perfectly complemented the historical Yamaha livery, but it also stands on its own as a special.

So back to the box.

I open the box and give a similar explanation of the helmet's significance. 

"If it's so great, why don't you wear it?"

"Because it's a limited edition helmet, and if I wear it, it'll get messed up -- I mean, I know that's kinda' silly, but it's a piece of artwork to me."

"Well if you like it that much, why does it just sit in a box? You can't look at it in the box..."

"I dunno...

I guess I could get a helmet display case, but they're pretty expensive."

"Jerry (a friend of mine with another fabulous helmet from Arai commemorating Joey Dunlop -- the best TT road racer ever) got one from... I can't remember; some place on the west side."

And that was that.

In spite of my self-proclaimed ability to notice most things in life that others don't, I never noticed that the box was turned 90 degrees from how I left it. I guess I didn't think much of it, as my mother in-law is constantly rearranging furniture and everything else that's not bolted down in our house.

Now, comically enough, the day of my birthday, my son said, "I'm not gonna tell you what mommy got you for your birthday, daddy..."

"Can't tell you about the helmet-thing..."

Truly, I think he did great -- for a four year-old.  I mean, you can't really tell a four year-old a secret, tell him it's a secret, and that he shouldn't tell anyone else. 

The rest of that day, I'm thinking:

Helmet-thing...  What helmet-thing?  Did she get me another helmet?  How would she know what to look for?  Ah, well...  We'll see what it is when it's time, I guess...

The helmet-thing, turned out to be this:

And really, it's one of the best presents I've gotten.  Ever. The resourcefulness and attention to detail she paid to this gift can't be overstated. The wood is cherry, and unlike most cases that use plastic or plexiglass, this one uses glass for crystal-clear, distortion-free viewing.

It's one of the many reasons that I love her more than words could ever explain.

Snapshots

As a former photojournalist, I never much cared for snapshots. I still don't, really.  They often feel so contrived; so forced.

I think that I fought it too much. Sometimes a snapshot is all you need.  It won't fill four columns of newshole (which is so often what daily photojournalism is relegated to -- filler).

It can, however, be a bounty of love.

A snapshot can show us the embarrassment of riches we have, drawn on the bank of love. And until now, I may not have ever realized it.

I don't believe in luck, but I am fortunate. My wealth far exceeds any dollar value I could ever show on either side of a balance sheet. 

It's hard to imagine how life ever felt complete before I had my amazing and beautiful wife, and my boys. Especially my boys.

Even the mightiest fall, eventually

Studs Terkel died today.  He was 96.

That would be a great enough accomplishment all by itself. But Terkel's power of obeservation, combined with his peerless command of language made him one of the mightiest.

I came to know him late in his life. In 1992, I was taking a theatre class in college, and the instructor loved Terkel. I, too, came to love him. As if that wasn't good enough, he was a regular on one of my most favorite public radio shows, A Prarie Home Companion.

Studs Terkel was one of the good guys. A liberal for whom even conservatives had a great deal of respect. How could you not?

I am sad, but I know Studs wouldn't want it that way.

The Hamburger/Hotdog Semaphore

I can't really say why, but after going up to the cafeteria at the job site I've been going to for the past three months now, and getting entirely too much ketchup for the entirely too-much food-for-lunch-for-one-person, I must be trying to send some sort of subliminal message by way of Hamburger/Hotdog Semaphore.

And on the way back to the small office in which I work there, a matronly lady stopped me to say that I had a large wiener [on my plate].

It's the simple observations by common folks that brighten my day.

The day American Superbike racing died

Dean Adams reported today in superbikeplanet.com, that the deadline imposed by Roger Edmondson and the DMG for the open RFC has come and gone with silence from the manufacturers. This means no Factory Superbike for the 2009 series.

I believe that this is the beginning of the end to factory supported motorcycle roadracing in America. On John Ulrich's site, Alan Wilson, a well regarded motorcycle racetrack designer and operator noted that without the manufacturers, there is no real money available for the series, and without money, it's hard to operate a series.

There's much more to this morass than I can get into here and now, and I'm glossing over some of the important details. But in short, I feel that Roger Edmondson, with the help of the pariahs of the outgoing AMA who handed him the series on a silver platter, have steered this ship aground. In an act of desperate, foolish pride, they set it ablaze and told everyone that it was too far gone to be saved.

When Roger E. came in, he didn't ask the OEMs for input on how the series should be run. He dictated his masterplan of a NASCAR-style marketing campaign where the riders came first, the sponsors, second and the manufacturers, third. No one cares that Tony Stewart drives a Toyota. He's still a crybaby. That doesn't work in motorcycle racing -- it can't work.

In motorcycle racing, none of the technology is lost on die-hard fans. Among my favorites was Honda's fabulous RVF750R RC45. It oozed with technology, and even though it enjoyed limited success on the racetrack compared to the equally fabulous VFR750R RC30 it replaced, what the bike stood for is what made it special to me. It's hard to argue with 190 hp out of a 750cc motor configured in a way that no one else (until the MotoGP machines came out) thought was worth the trouble.

I don't disagree that the AMA series needed to be changed in some fundamental ways. But it's now been changed in such a material way that I doubt if anyone will even care that it exists.

Roger Edmondson has proven once again that he ought to seek employ in another industry. Fifteen years ago he was at the heart of another sickening battle within the AMA. What made it worse is that his tiff with the AMA fleeced its members out of millions of dollars, proving that the AMA isn't good for much of anything -- riding, rights or racing.

Sound v1.2

I think that truly, few people really know who I am and what makes me tick.

Tick.

Hmmmm.... I'm not sure that that even does it justice.

Tick. No, tick definitely isn't the right word.

Pulsate? Vibrate? Hum? I wouldn't so much call it a tick. Ticking, as a clock does, is rhythmic. Predictable. Boring. I think the *it* we're talking about -- that thing that defines existence as we know it -- is much more pervasive.

Go to the quietest place you can find. Close your eyes. Lie very, very still for a few minutes.

Tel me what you hear.

No, it's not nothing. Listen. REALLY listen. Find that sound and latch on to it. If you can suss it out and isolate it, it'll drive you mad in a minute or so.

Do you remember what televisions did from the 1970s?

They made a high-pitched sound; it was something to do with how the electricity behaved inside the cathode ray tube. Some people's hearing isn't fine-tuned enough to hear it. I've always had very acute hearing, even though I've abused it over the years.

That sound -- the high-pitched sound -- could be a peripheral descriptor of what I hear when it all gets quiet. But that's just the beginning, because what I hear... It's so much more. Take that high pitched, constant broadcast, and put it somewhere you can find it.

Now go to a piano. Step on the Sostenuto pedal -- or, the one in the middle that *would* be the Sostenuto pedal on a Steinway. It may just be a half-blow pedal, but for our exercise, it'll work just as well.

Step on it.

Now, as much as you can, press all of the piano keys at once -- firmly. If you can't press them all at once, press as many as you can at one time, then press the remaining ones.

Keep the pedal depressed.

Wait for a minute or two.

Wait for the sound to quiet down. Wait until it almost completely dies out.

Try to weave your mind in and out of each key as the sound dies out. Try to isolate each key. You can do it if you focus.

SEE the sound. Visualize it.
You have to be able see the sound three-dimensionally.

Now go get that sound I told you to put aside just a little while ago -- the high-pitched broadcast. Mix it in with the Sostenuto-pedal-damped piano's cry. Take that.

Magnify it.

Magnify it.

Make it 1000-times louder, and then triple it.

And that's close. That's close to what I hear when it all gets dark and quiet inside my head.

It's never the same, but it's always there.

I'll know when I'm dead, because it will be gone.

When I try to describe to people, they usually say, "How sad..."

I think it's quite the contrary. I can SEE sound -- anticipate it.

I watch it rise and fall, breath and grow on the black palette of my mind. The colors are more brilliant and vibrant than any you can find in the visual spectrum.

It's a gift.

It's how I'm able to fully enjoy Vocal Trance.

Certainly, that's not the only outlet, but an excellent example of the very thing that drives my being.

I seem to have lost control

Unquestionably, I've lost control of the time I used to control quite well.

Time has been short lately, and there's no let-up in sight.

More as time permits...

Quite possibly, the best thing I've ever heard

I attended a meeting yesterday that really felt like it could be two or three notches above my pay grade. I was asked to attend by our COO, so I wasn't going to question it. Our former CTO was in attendance, because apparently, some people think he knows something. Certainly, no asked me, but I'm not among them.

About an hour into the meeting, the former CTO and one of the sales engineers from the company courting us to become a partner got into what I would call, "dick waving." Nothing was really being said, neither party was listening to the other, and it quickly devolved into simple case of, "I think know more than you do, and I'm going to make all these people believe my side of the story."

This went on for about 15 minutes.

It was quite the volley, and I think we all enjoyed watching the verbal masturbation -- who doesn't? At the end of this, the SE from this company latched on to one of the former CTO's comments. It was then, that I heard the greatest statement ever:

I know you think you understand what you believe I said, but what you heard is not what I meant.

Realizing that this could be the greatest thing ever, I wrote it down verbatim, right then. What's odd is, if you plug that statement into your favorite search engine, there are numerous iterations of it.

What kind of person would lift that kind of drivel from someone else, and be proud to repeat it in a high-level, multi-million dollar meeting?

"I'm sorry, sir, you'll just have to take a bath..."

On a recent trip to Birmingham, AL, I had occasion to stay at the Comfort Suites in Fultondale, AL. I was there with a friend to see the second round of the Honda Superbike Classic at Barber Motorsports Park in Leeds, AL. As with anything a Barber, it was resplendent.

We checked in to the hotel on Friday evening. There was much confusion about our room, and despite my confirmation materials, they didn't have the room I requested. In the end, after some haggling and hand-wringing, they gave us a room close to what we were after.

Saturday morning, I went to take a shower. There was no way to physically turn on the shower. I could run the water and fill the tub, but the pull-up actuator which diverts the water from the tub spigot to the shower head -- was missing. So I called down to the front desk:

"Yes, hello... I'm in room 318, and I can't take a shower [insert above explanation of why here]."

"Sir, I don't think any of the rooms have that little thing you're talking about."

"So what do I do?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but I guess you're going to have to take a bath..."

"You can't be serious."



"Yes, sir...."

It was eventually rectified, but the hilarity of it all shan't be forgotten.

Sound v1.1

One of the best musical performances I can think of, isn't really performed by a musician -- or a singer. He's an actor. The distinction is unimportant, I suppose. And really, I guess by virtue of performing in this feature, he's a singer.

I think one of the most underrated pieces of film of the last decade is Moulin Rouge. It's not that it wasn't well received. It won two Oscars, after all. But I think it deserved more.

Ewan McGregor's (EM) performance in this film, as well as the soundtrack, is just stunning. Nicole Kidman's performance was admirable, but EM just left her behind.

Aside from the music, Baz Lurhman's portrayal of this story is a sensory assault. At least for me. There are so many subtle elements in this film that, for me, are a sledgehammer. The operatic moon, the bald composers poring over the musical score, the way the camera pulls back during one of the songs to reveal the Parisian skyline -- pure artwork.

I've just spent the last hour and a half (not that you'd have any way of telling) perusing YouTube, looking for examples of the elements I think are most poignant. I can't. There are too many. But it's such a staggeringly beautiful film for me, I really have to watch it alone.

There's something uncomfortable about being in the presence of others while tears are streaming down my face.

Maybe it's more Sight and Sound 1.1 than just Sound 1.1.

I don't care whom you're married to, you still suck

A relative of mine last night proved once again that no matter how much lipstick, a pig is still a pig. Put another way, you can use all the pretty euphemisms in the world, but it doesn't change the fact that this person is still a racist.

"She's a black lady, but she's still nice."

Lovely.

I don't see why this person didn't just come right out and say,

"She seems like a decent enough person -- for a nigger."

This person then went on to refer to Barack Obama and his pseudo-Muslim upbringing as the reason for not wanting to vote for him. The reality is that this person's reason for not wanting to vote for him is the color of his skin.

I went away completely disgusted.

That's the brakes

Seven thousand or so miles ago, halfway to 130,000 miles,

a set of new brakes didn't seem out of the question. In fact, I thought it was downright silly that the need hadn't arisen sooner. Between pulling a trailer -- sometimes approaching 2000 pounds -- and all the other varying types of driving I do, a fresh set of brakes should've been in order a while ago.

Anyway, two months ago was the day. Bad weather was coming, and I didn't want to be laying on the garage floor when outdoor ambient temperatures sank to somewhere near my I.Q.

More than one person asked me, "Why not just take it to the dealer; pay someone to do this for you?" Its a fair question with an easy answer. I can't bear to pay someone to do something that I: a. know how to do; b. have all the required tools to complete the job. Because there are many times when I don't know how to do something, or I don't have the proper tools for the job, or both. I can't readily work on the air conditioning in my house. I don't know much about it, and I don't have many of the tools one would need to do any kind of substantive work. The same goes for... I dunno... dentistry.

I told my mother that despite what she might think, I could teach her how to replace brake pads and rotors on her car. I don't think she could care any less, and she would be firmly in the pay-someone-else-to-do-it camp. I thought I might run through some of the basics of swapping pads and rotors, at least as it relates to Subaru's superb Legacy 2.5 GT.








Right. So what we'll be fiddling with is inside there, inside the wheel

Certainly, we'll need a suitable floor jack to get the job started. This is a really nice one from sears.







The Legacy GT, for whatever reason, is particularly low to the ground. A low-profile jack like the one pictured above is required. Next, we have to find a suitable jacking point -- a place where we can jack the car up without fear of damaging the car, or risking the car falling off the jack.



There are six jacking points on the Legacy GT according to the service manual. Note the use of a jack stand in addition to the jack. This one is situated at the control arm mounting bracket. After positioning the jack stand in an equally suitable location, I lowered the car onto the jack stand for stability. Because of the jack stand's footprint and relative lack of wheels, there's less chance of the car moving than if I just used the jack itself to support the weight.









Since I wanted to lift both wheels off the ground so I could later change the tire positioning front-to-back, I did the same for the rear:

Some say it's a bad idea to lift the car this way, as it puts too much torsional stress on the unitized body. That may very well be the case.






Here, we see that the front wheel has been removed. Many people feel it necessary to use air tools when performing a job like this. It makes it faster, and sometimes easier. But with proper hand tools, it isn't at all a necessity. I didn't use an air/impact wrench on this job until it came time to put the lug nuts back on and secure the wheel. But even then, I only used it as a quick means of running the lug nuts onto the studs somewhat loosely. I set the tension of each lug nut by hand at 90 lbs-ft of torque with a torque wrench.



As an aside, if you look at the picture to the right, you'll see lots of corrosion on the hub center of this wheel. That's where the rotor and the wheel come in contact with eachother. This happens because the two metals are dissimilar. The rotor is steel, and the wheel is an aluminium alloy. Yes. Aluminium. It's the British spelling and I like it.

I like to lightly coat the wheel-side of the hub with a non-ferrous anti-seize compound. Less is more here. If you use too much, it could sling off and coat the brake rotors. The purpose of anti-seize is to reduce friction. The underlying principle of brakes is friction. You dig?

If you've never heard of PB B'Laster
that's a shame. It truly is the best thing ever when it comes breaking apart things fused together by rust. This car is an '05, so it's not as bad as it could be. But still there's no shortage of rusted fasteners.

Like the anti-seize, this is designed to reduce friction greatly. Use extreme caution when working around brake pads and rotors. I'm replacing both pads and rotors here, so I don't care if they get saturated.

Here, we're looking at the cross section of the old brake pads in the pad carrier, against the rotor. One could argue that I had a bit of time left before *really* needing pads. But I wouldn't have wanted to wait any longer.

The brake pads quite essentially come right out of the carrier. Sometimes they need some persuasion with a long, flat implement and a sledgehammer.

To get the rotors off, we need to remove the caliper and brake pad carrier. This is where the PB B'Laster comes in handy.

The round, rubber accordion-looking thing there is the Constant Velocity (CV) joint boot. When these tear and go unchecked, the joint goes bad and it's generally time to buy a new axle. Quite annoying, really.

This is the caliper -- *THE* essential component of the braking system. When you step on the brake pedal, the lever attached to the pedal pushes on a rod which is connected to a piston that, in turn, pushes brake fluid through the brake lines. The terminus of this fluid is the caliper. In this case, there are two pistons that get pushed out of the caliper body and apply pressure against the brake rotors. The corroded mess you see on the left is what's left of the disintegrated brake pad anti-rattle backing material. The new pads have no such removable backing pad.

For measure, here is an old pad compared to a new pad -- a Hawk HPS performance brake pad. I'm not sure sure I'd still say that I had so much time left.













So now, onto the matter of the new rotors. Quite a difference. Disc Brake Australia (DBA) 4000 Slotted Rotors that I sourced from Import Image Racing.

Good folks, great prices, super-fast shipping.

Upon reassembly of the whole works, the caliper pistons have to be driven back into the caliper. That's where a suitably-sized C-Clamp comes in handy. This car has two pistons per caliper in the front, so two C-Clamps are preferable, though you can make it work with just one.





And, when you install the new rotor, pad carrier and new brake pads, it looks something like this:

I've applied anti-seize to the back of both brake pads as well as the brake pad springs where the pads contact them. Just like the hub, less is more here. Additionally, these rotors are directional; there's a left and a right. This ensures maximum performance of the slots which help to keep brake pad deposits off the rotors.

The caliper in the carrier and the wheel ready to be bolted on.






The rear brakes are nearly identical to the front, except that they're smaller (most of a car's braking bias is towards the front), and in this case, the emergency brake is located inside the center of the disc brake.





It looks largely the same; smaller pads, smaller diameter rotor. Still, quite large for a car of this size.








And really, the mechanics of freshening pads and rotors on the rear is about the same. Access to the rear, lower caliper carrier bolts is idiotically difficult.

You can't really make it out here, and I suck at Microsoft Paint (because it sucks by a factor of forty), so I can't really draw a circle around the idiocy. But suffice to say, access to the lower caliper carrier bolt is only achieved by inserting a long enough socket extension through the lower control arm opening. Because of the size of the opening, you can only fit a 3/8" drive socket in there which means leverage isn't on your side.

In this case, the rear rotors were most likely responsible for the significant pulsation felt at the brake pedal -- so much so that it made driving the car a chore. Note the deep groove on the back side of the rotor, and the pronounced heat cracks.
Also note the drum portion of the rotor. Inside there, the e-brake lives.

It seems to me that some "modern" offerings from ford, GM and Chrysler have primary rear brakes that aren't as robust as the auxiliary, parking brake found on this Subaru.

It's right about here that you'll find it necessary to extract some brake fluid from the brake master cylinder reservoir. Since we've pushed the brake caliper pistons back in, the fluid that was inside the calipers has to go somewhere. It goes backwards through the brake system. If any fluid has been added (which, it never should be -- if your fluid is low, you either have a leak, or it's time for brakes), there will be more fluid in reserve than the system can handle. It'll make a mess of things.







Old hat, new hat. Err... brake pad.











New pads in the carrier and the rotor back in place. But not really in that order. Again, note the anti-seize compound on the brake pad springs, as well as the back of the pad.

Everything working smoothly, in its right place. We like that.







And Bob's your uncle.

Still, some of the best looking brake rotors I've seen. Toilet looking calipers in this case, but the rotors sure look nice.

So how's it work, Norman?

Funny you should ask...

Well, having completed this blog entry some two months after I actually did the job, I've had ample opportunity to bed the brakes in and try them in most situations I might encounter. I haven't pulled a trailer with them yet, but if I were to extrapolate, I'd say that they'd be superb for that as well.

They're positively stunning. They offer staggering, arrest-hook performance with no noise, very little dust and progressive feel that I've never experienced before. You have to be mindful of water, however. If you're driving in heavy rain, and the brakes are soaking wet, it takes a half second or so for them to dry off and bite. The first time it happened, it was a bit disconcerting, you might say. But once you know what to expect, it's nothing.

The brake rotors generate some noise during heavy braking due to the slots. I don't mind it. It's purposeful sounding, kind of like the rattling you hear under braking on a motorcycle equipped with rotors that ride on full-floating buttons -- like those found on an SPS Ducati Superbike, or the fabulous 900 SS Final Edition

The only downside is that even with BF Goodrich's very good G-Force Sport ultra-high performance summer radial, the ferocious power of the brakes far outstrips available traction.

The Legacy GT had stunning brakes before. Now, it's an even more complete performance package.

It's finally spring, I think...

Let's see... It's only been nearly a full month since my last entry. Terrible, really.

When I last left you, I was in Des Moines, IA. Today, I'm writing from Marysville, OH, where I've been for the past week. And it's been that way -- pretty much nonstop travel.

But anyway, I think spring is finally here. It's not to say that there won't still be cold weather, or even some snow. But I think the really bad stuff is behind us. Or at least I hope it is, as I had my summer tires swapped back on the car.

While at the tire shop, I was informed that three of my four wheels are bent. How exactly this is, I'll never know. Welcome to northeast Ohio, I guess. I really think this wheel would great on my car:


But $263 per wheel is a bit too steep for something which will probably get destroyed. And anyway, when you put wheels like that on a car, you should have decent-looking brakes. Mine are rusty, and look like they're components with nearly 72,000 miles on them. Funny, that.

Committed

My boss and I are in Des Moines, IA on a reasonably big job. It's big in that if this project goes well, we'll be booked with work for the next couple of years -- on top of our already hectic schedule.

During some downtime earlier this evening we were trying to get a handle on the real-world performance of the new Cisco 1250-series access point. I'm not often swayed by the latest widget or the claims bandied about by the spinsters. But I'll say this: it truly is an amazing piece of technology. It far exceeds anything else I've worked with -- and not just in throughput. It actually takes advantage of a particular kind of interference that we have always dreaded, multipathing, and enables the access point to perform better as a result of it. It's hard to believe without seeing it firsthand.

To try to get a handle on realistic throughput, we decided to move a large file between the testing laptop and a laptop set up as an FTP server. That file happened to be a .avi of the move: The Commitments. After we were done with the test, I thought I'd watch just a little bit of the movie.

I had forgotten what a fantastic movie it is. It's surely one of the best music movies of all time, with a strong commentary on the state of things in industrial, working-class Dublin. The movie came out in 1991, but I doubt that much has changed there.

If you haven't, see it.

What a difference a day makes

I started a project on the 33rd floor of The BP Building in downtown Cleveland on Wednesday. It's really quite a spectacular view from up there.

Here is a view looking to the west towards The Warehouse District and out to what's referred to as The Gold Coast of Lake Erie. In the bottom right corner of the photo is The Old Stone Church. It's a nice place. I've shot two weddings there. The minister, however, must think he's running a concentration camp. You can't do anything she deems inappropriate -- like sneeze. You'll be banned for life. Yes, really.

Anyway, in this picture is the west side of Cleveland it looks to be marginally less of a toilet than the rest of Cleveland. It looks that way, anyway.

Yeah, it's Cleveland, so don't get too excited. But for us surface-level, worker-drone types, it's a rare treat to see the world from this perspective.

I was fairly snap-happy, so I took lots of pictures -- many of which I knew would be lame. Here is a lame picture of Public Square:


Nothing special -- again, just a chance to see it from a different vantage point. Pay special attention to the top right corner of the photo, the area where there is a car initiating a right turn.

Today, that same maneuver wouldn't have been possible:


A closer look?

Yes.

It seems that a water main dating back to the 1880's (!!) broke.

The nerve. And marvel at the 20 or so people in yellow vests staring at the hole in the ground.

Your tax dollars at work, they are.

As my mother pointed out, in a *real* city -- a city with real traffic, this sort of thing would have been paralyzing. When I drove down there, I encountered not a single problem.

It's different out west

I guess at the heart of it, I have something of a confidence problem.

I think one of the reasons I couldn't stay in that job, is that people looked down on me -- sub-consciously or otherwise. In this part of the country, there's little you can do to cut through the stigmas and preconceived notions people see.

I was the service manager of a mostly-upscale motorcycle dealership. I got into through previous dealings with the shop. I became a good customer, befriended almost everyone there and before I knew it, I had a new place to work when my six year mode of employ came to an end.

It always felt like a summer job to me; one that I couldn't really take seriously, despite the fact that I was actually making semi-serious money. In the end, it felt like a dead end. That, and you had to work every Saturday, with no chance of taking vacation during the summer. Company rules.

I think people were surprised after they spoke with me for a few minutes. It's not to prop myself up or say that I'm the smartest person to ever work in the motorcycle industry -- far from it. But I think people got more than they bargained for after some chat. And, of course, it cut both ways.

I tried like hell to move to Portland, Oregon to work at the greatest motorcycle dealership I've seen. The reasons I think that are numerous. I've been through the doors of hundreds of dealerships, and this one is head and shoulders above any of the others. Maybe it's just a byproduct, or pure chance. But my two trips out there to try to nail down the details had me believe that Portland is the greatest North American city I've ever visited. But there's something else.

On my first night out there, I went to dinner with the general manager of the dealership -- and everyone else. That's how they roll. They're really like a big family. And, a few customers heard that we were all going out, so they tagged along.

At first, I would've told you that at least two of the customers were highly-placed corporate executives with expensive post-graduate degrees in economics or some other complex discipline. One of them worked behind the counter at GameStop, the other a salesman at a car dealership.

The year before that, a friend of mine flew me out to San Francisco to see the inaugural USGP at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California. It was a truly splendid time, made even more so by some of the people I met out there. The sashimi at the transvestite show bar was also some of the best I've ever had.

But it was the same thing. The people you would take for high-level executives of whatever industry were real, working folks. But different. More like myself, perhaps. It didn't matter what they did for a living. They're just incredibly nice, interesting people who don't have confidence issues, and don't feel the need to tell you everything they think they know so they can convince themselves that they have social worth.

It's nice to meet people who are interested in *you*. Not where you work, or what you drive or whom you know. Nothing else really matters. No pretense, no showmanship, no onanism. Real. People.

You don't get that here in the "Heart of It All."

Smoking v1.2

Perhaps I'm a hypocrite.


As I type this, I'm enjoying a hand-made cigar. It is, well, enjoyable.

I still think it's different from cigarettes. I can see all of what I'm smoking.

There's no fiberglass, no amonium nitrate, nothing for an opportunistic tobacco company to hook me for life. If I did get hooked, I could probably walk down to The Sponge Docks and complain to the man who sold it to me.

I think what really pours sand down my shorts about smokers is the utter disregard for common courtesy -- something which my mother has always said I lack. But think of it for a moment. Almost every smoker I know feels that a smoke break is owed to him. He also has no problem throwing his burning refuse on the ground and dismissing it as biodegradable -- something which will naturally break down into base organic material. It isn't. Even if it were, I could easily make the argument that human feces is certainly biodegradable, but it would never occur to me that I could defecate on his front lawn or driveway or any old parking lot.

Worst of all, the smoker has no regard for my earthly to breathe clean air. In fact, he's put-off, arsed that I may ask him to not smoke near me or that he and his fellow smoking friends not congregate in front of every doorway I must walk through upon entering a public building.

So by now, I'm nearly done with this cigar, sitting on a dock at nearly one in the morning, away from just about any living soul.

I've even collected the ashes that fell. But I know that somehow, I'm still a hypocrite

Why?

You could tell that she wasn't a smoker.

From the way she held the cigarette, to her difficulty in holding the smoke in her mouth, let alone her lungs -- she was new to this.

She got out of the back of a late '90's Ford Expedition, where someone was still back there with a rear-facing baby seat. So I guess I should be somewhat grateful that she elected to get out and 'smoke', rather than subject the one with the least choice of anyone in the vehicle.

It was hard to size up this group. A white Expedition with a Confederate Flag where the front license plate would go on a vehicle in a state that requires it. Apparently, Florida and Georgia
do not. Five of them filed out of the large SUV. Four of them went to the restroom, the fifth stood outside to 'smoke.' Two of the young men were wearing muscle shirts. The three young women were all wearing belly shirts, had navel piercings, and appeared to be hanging all over the two young men I could see. I couldn't tell the gender of the person who stayed with the baby.

When two police cars screamed by with lights and sirens blazing, the two young men gestured and shouted in the direction of the police cars. One of them, a redhead, grabbed his crotch and pointed with two fingers in a decidedly 'urban' fashion, if you will, at the cars. I couldn't hear him, but all I could make out from reading his lips was, "Come get some of this, bitch!" Maybe he was just happy that they weren't after him for a change.

While all this was going on, the two other young women (not the one choking and turning green from what looked to be maybe her fifth or sixth Marlboro Red) were sharing a single, lit cigarette. One of the men snatched it from her. He took a drag. The other young man took it from the redheaded young man and took a drag -- but the redhead never took his fingers off it. It was a strange visual dynamic that seemed to transcend any necessary description of the matter.

The first girl lit another cigarette and tried desperately to get all the moves down, the posture, the fidgeting with the cigarette for the sake of looking busy and looking like she'd done it before.

Cigarettes are an acquired taste, I guess. I don't know, I never smoked. It never appealed to me. I've tried cigarettes, certainly. But I could never understand the appeal. I actually do like the taste of a quality, handmade cigar. But I think that's different, it's a dynamic. If I smoke one cigar a year, it's a heavy year. If I had access to the kind of Cuban cigar I smoked in Mexico last year, I might smoke them all the time. It was strangely... Wonderful.

No one ever picks up her first cigarette and enjoys it -- at least the physical attributes. The taste, the burning sensation in her nose, throat and sinuses; the smell.

So, why? Why bother?

I fear that it's for the least compelling reason of all.

Everyone else is doing it.

Off to Fla

We're off to Florida tomorrow. I'll be happy to get out from under this oppressive cold malaise.

So I don't have much, other than this:

It's silly to try to imagine what it's like inside someone else's head. But I can actually give you an idea of what it's like inside mine, courtesy of Mr. David Firth. The first time I saw this, I was so frightened, I couldn't move. Not because it was scary, but because DF was able to so vividly, and with such clarity, express in a coherent fashion the kinds of random things I see in my head every day. Have a look:



So, there it is. He actually has many other cartoons which are much better than this one, but that one, for whatever reason, resonates with me.

Enjoy your week. I'll post if I can. There's got to be some wide-open wireless somewhere down there.

It's, well...

Yeah... It's been cold here. I'm going on holiday this Saturday to (hopefully) sunny and warm Florida.

And the timing couldn't be better. I hate the cold in general. Those who know me, know that I don't use the word 'hate' casually.

I really am tired of the cold.

Predictions

... are extremely difficult to make -- especially about the future. You need a copy of tomorrow's newspaper to do that. Or something.

It's highly likely that I'm not the first one to think of this, but I predict that the Democratic Presidential ticket will feature Clinton and Obama. Or Obama and Clinton.

It would be foolish for either of them to not select the other as his or her running mate.

If you have those two on one ticket, I predict a landslide victory for the Democrats.

The corporate world

I sat in on three meetings today, which is a lot for a Friday. By the time the second one rolled around it occurred to me that I was bored. And really, I shouldn't have been. Our CEO was telling the engineering staff that we are doing a good job, and if we continue to do a good job, good things will be in store for us. Or something.

A snapshot from the meeting:

That's our CEO, far right. The guy second from left isn't sleeping.
His brain has just collapsed from the weight of words filling the air.

I don't have anything from the third meeting. An audio recording would've been better anyway, as one of the participants can't ever talk about what her team *can* do. It's always why things won't work.

Sound v1.0

I think sound is one of the most under-appreciated senses. I think most would point to to sight or even taste (thusly, smell) as more important.

Sound drives my life.

It's the dynamism of it. If you bite into a piece of steak (and to be sure, steak is by far, my favorite food), you have an idea of what you're going to get. Some are better than others, some multi-course meals can cost upwards of a thousand dollars. Or so I'm told. But for the most part, it's steak.

It would be hard for me to argue that sight is any less important, so I won't.

I mentioned in, I think, the first post, that I'm a gearhead. I believe I am that gearhead today because of how things sound. Sound is the basis for most of my memories -- some of them very early memories.

The sound of the starter motor of my dad's 1958 Chevrolet Corvette
The sound of the small-block 283's Carter four-barrel carburetor at full chat while riding in the Corvette
The sound of the gear-whine four-speed manual transmisson my dad's 1980 Datsun 310
The sound of my mom's 1982 Cadillac Seville Diesel -- Yeah, one of those
The sound of my first proper motorcycle, a 1971 Honda CL70K

That's the early stuff. More recently, In addition to all the crapola in the ether, sinking to depths you never thought possible, YouTube lets us see things that maybe we've only read about over the years.

The following items require that you have a sound card. Decent stereo speakers that you can play loudly are preferable. The video in some cases is poor, but the sound, well... Speaks for itself.

My penchant for mechanical sounds really runs the gamut:

A highly-modified Detroit Diesel 12v71TT in a Kenworth. That's a supercharged (sort of), twin-turbo V12 two-stroke diesel producing 2000 hp. Because it's a two-stroke, it actually sounds like it's turning twice the RPM it actually is.

The Cizeta V16T:




A Honda NR750 RC40:



A Honda CBR250RR:



A 2000hp Cummins V16 Diesel with four turbochargers at tickover:



There are more; lots more, but that gives a taste.

I can't say why these things drive me the way they do. In most ways, I wish they didn't.

What color is my car?

In case you didn't get the memo, it's winter time. And make sure you enunciate it.

Win-Ter-Time

My 3.5 year-old son corrected me the other day when I lazily called it: "winnertime." Apparently he's shaping up to be like his dad -- and his grandmother.

So with it being the season of cold, here's a challenge:

What color is my car?

Need a little help?

Still not sure?

Yeah, it's actually blue.
And, that's actually salt on the ground, not snow.

But whenever you see salt contrails on the side of a car, it's hopeless. And around these parts, salt is cheap, plentiful and local. So why not just drop a shit-ton of it everywhere?

Ah, well...

Next up... Sound v.1.0

A handful of green rocks

Dreams can really screw with your head.

I had a dream the other day that I was working for the government on a rather secretive project involving time/space travel, and the planet Jupiter.

Yeah.

It seems that my wife and I were living on IO. But in any case, there was a glass dome covering the entire satellite. It was night time pretty much all the time, save for the very bright orb glowing in the "daytime" sky. It was something akin to the late summer Harvest Moon -- except it was the sun.

The temperature seemed to be a constant 65 degrees F, and it was just like living on earth, except for the conspicuous lack of people, the eternal darkness and expanse of space before me, and the quiet. My mind was able to resolve a kind of quiet that I'd never before experienced. It was amazing. The one thing that my mind keeps drawing a picture of, is the convenience store/gas station type affair that I was walking out of -- with nothing. I didn't buy anything; for some reason I was there. It was as normal a convenience store as you'd find anywhere. There was a gruff "handsome" lady working the checkout, all manner of beef jerky, cigarettes, beer, and candy.

Oh, and the green rocks.

At some point, I picked up a handful of green rocks -- about the size of #57 stone, which bears a striking resemblance to this:

Except they were green. Think: Kawasaki Corporate Green

And it was as if they were powder-coated. They had a thick, clean, plasticky quality about them and they were everywhere.

It was hard to not ask, "What the hell?" as soon as I woke up.

DON'T TOUCH IT!!! (or, more things in buildings)

I saw this today in the records room of a hospital.

It made me think of one of the greatest interludes ever from Ren and Stimpy

Elephants - Now, larger than the moon!

It's really not for me to make fun of people, especially when it's fake.
Apparently, these folks, thought it would be funny to humiliate this lady by pretending that she missed the first $100 question on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?'




The reality is, she actually won $32,000 by answering a question correctly about the trachea -- that underrated portion of our anatomies.

It's kind of a shame. It'd be a lot funnier if it were true.

But as I've said before, Almost nothing is ever what it seems. So is there a point to this? Not really.

The Journey Continues

I was crushed when the new show on NBC, Journeyman, was canceled. It really touched me in a profound way, and I can't say why, really. It's not the most intellectual show I've ever watched. But it had an honesty to it that I think is lacking in most television today. It had the appearance, at least, of everyone working on the show wanting to be there, wanting to to a good job.

Apropos of nothing, I went looking for some Kevin McKidd (the lead role in Journeyman) material on YouTube this morning. I had forgotten that he was in Trainspotting -- more to the point, I didn't really notice him all that much in that movie, some 12 years ago. Not the most uplifting movie ever.

Anyway, I came across this absolute gem of a short film, about ten minutes long, 'Does God Play Football?'. I absolutely love it.

I couldn't be any less religious than I am at this moment, but the messages in this film are wonderful, if somewhat conflicted for the conventional, religious set. It's beautifully done. Have a look:



Sadly, this kind of filmcraft seldom gets the exposure it deserves. But this is one of the reasons,I love YouTube. If you have the time, you can find some real gems among the refuse. This truly is a gem.

Ducati 999R From The Ground Up

This is a particularly cool sub-two minute time-lapse video of the WSBK Xerox Ducati Corse team building Troy Bayliss's 999R from scratch.



... makes it feel like the riding season is right around the corner.

Business as Usual -- or something

I stood in this hallway and waited

for security to open the door leading to the air handler room, where I could gain entry to the roof -- just like I had done at least a dozen times before.

It always seemed to take at least 15 minutes for one of the security guards to get to the fifth floor by way of the 'D' elevator, reserved for staff only. 15 minutes is a long time. It's long enough for me to have counted the ceiling tiles. There are 46.5 ceiling tiles running longitudinally. The hallway is 186 feet long and six feet wide. 15 minutes is long enough for me to question exactly *when* harvest gold was ever appealing. To anyone.

That first door on the left leads to the offices for the Department of Pathology. On this day, there was a particularly pungent odor emanating from somewhere in this hallway. It's the kind of odor you recognize immediately. If you've smelled it once, you'll never forget it. This is the Department of Pathology, so really, the smell of death isn't all that surprising. It certainly caught me out as soon as I stepped off the elevator. But I reeled it back in despite all the things that were going through my head (like when Neo is standing before The Architect and all his thoughts and feelings are displayed on a score of monitors behind him in The Matrix Reloaded, despite his outward composure) and even muttered under my breath,

"Welp, it's pathology; business as usual, I guess..."

Not more than a minute later, a short, dumpy woman exploded through the doorway, out of the reception area in the office of the Department of Pathology, clearly looking for someone, clearly at her wits' end. Almost as if it had been choreographed, the lady she was looking for -- a veritable mountain of a woman, standing more than six feet tall, and weighing at least 200 lbs -- came from around the corner, behind me, nearly slamming into me because she was reading a piece of paper while walking.

The mountain woman (TMW) sputters:

"Jesus Christ! It stinks in here..."

The short, dumpy woman (SDW), not even acknowledging the complaint, queries with a hint of desperation:

"I've got [XXX] funeral home on the phone, they're looking for the body of [XXX XXX]. Do they have the wrong hospital?"

TMW erupts:

"The hell if I know... LOOK...! Not everybody who dies, comes through pathology, 'ya know..."

And then, as if choreographed again, the two went their separate ways; neither resolving the immediate matters at hand. SDW threw up her arms and walked back into the office, TMW kept walking down the 186 foot-long hallway, eyes fixed on the document.

"Business as usual," I muttered, nodding in agreement with myself.

With what I figured would be at least ten minutes to spare, I had nothing riveting to hold my attention, and my mind wandered -- as it often does -- through the vast expanses of nothing and everything taking up real estate inside my head. It's a scary place in which I wouldn't want anyone else to have to live.

If we're going to take my car on vacation, I'll have to replace the brakes, which is going to cost me at least $600 -- and that's with *ME* doing all the work. S'bullshit... How could it cost so goddamned much for rotors and pads -- big, race-car-like-brakes or not? I really like the car. There isn't really anything else I'd want on the road today, so I guess I shouldn't complain. Well, alright, yeah... The Audi S4 Avant is the one thing I'd rather have, but that's damn-near $60-grand by the time I'd put everything I'd want on it, and it's certainly not twice as good as my Legacy GT. Ah, well... At $60-grand, I certainly don't need to worry about it. Track days are awesome. I hope I get to do some this year. No, screw it... I'm *GOING* to do some this year. Last year, I didn't because of the new job and the new house and the fact that I was broke as a mofo. I'm still broke as a mofo, but I'm sure I can scare up a few bucks. I just got a raise after all. And if I get my CCNA certification this spring, I'll get a raise again in June. I wonder how hard the CCNA boot-camp will be. I mean, I look at some of these people who hold a CCNA, CCNP -- hell, the CCIEs I know aren't exactly MENSA material...

I'd say that there was an almost audible click when the gravity of the exchange I just witnessed between the short, dumpy woman and the mountain woman simultaneously kicked me in the stomach and the back of knees, and poured ice-water down my back. I would say that I could feel time and space shifting with that accompanying high-pitched ringing sound I've always heard ever since I was a kid, but I know better. It's just a feeling I've always felt. I can't explain it beyond that. I can see it, and almost duplicate it in my mind, but there's no way I could ever convey that ringing sound and the warping of time and space that happens right before my eyes to anyone else in any meaningful way -- or that feeling of the weird kind of magnetism that feels like it's trying to pull my ears together at the top of my head. I just know that whenever I see it and feel it and hear it, it means something important. I don't know what, but something.

"Do you hear that sound, Mr. Anderson? That's the sound of inevitability. The sound your death." -- Agent Smith, The Matrix

"Jesus, this is a children's hospital!" I may have said that aloud -- I can't be sure. If I did, I'd plead my case to anyone who held it against me. The person those ladies were talking about was someone's child -- *IS* someone's child.

This is a CHILDREN'S hospital, I muttered to myself over and over again; the words just hanging there like a kind of acrid, cigar-smoke haze you'd find in an old bowling alley men's room after passing that man in the hallway with the cigar in his mouth and the sports section of that day's newspaper tucked under his arm, the toilet tank still filling; recovering after the flush.

Moments later, the gray door of the 'Staff 'D5' ' elevator opened, and the security guard stepped off with a keyring that had to be 5 inches in diameter. Because of what I was dealing with I can't say, but I'll bet he was earlier than I would've expected. I don't think I stood there for ten minutes pondering this. He asked me where I needed to go. Twice. The first time he asked me, I didn't hear him. My mind was too busy trying to draw pictures of the child's face whose identity seemed a mystery to more than one person. This was one of the most disturbing things of all, because the only picture my mind could render was that of my own son's face. I was suddenly riven with panic; desperately needing to know RIGHT NOW that he was OK.

I led the security guard up one flight of stairs in the 'P' stairwell to the locked door. He fumbled with the dozens of keys on his massive ring while I struggled under the weight of all this. He finally got the door open. I walked in and let it close behind me, not even thanking him for doing his job.

I did my work on the roof as quickly as possible, but it would later prove to be unsuccessful. I would have to go back up there three more times to get what would ordinarily be a no-nonsense, simple wireless bridge over a short distance, to function as it should. In fact, it wasn't until yesterday, that I got both sides to talk to each other.

I walked down five flights of stairs -- maybe trying to rattle those thoughts out of my head -- and out to my car. I picked my way through the morass of traffic that always confounds me. It seems to come to a stop for absolutely no reason on this one section of freeway. I was somewhat comforted by the fact that as I drove home, the dull, toothache-like pain throughout my whole body faded. It faded to a point where it didn't fade anymore. It just stayed there, where even today, it remains in some small part.

When I got home, I actually did what I could to avoid my son. I was afraid of coming undone if I got too close to him. That eventually passed. Later, after dinner, clean-up, bath and story-time, I resigned myself to just letting the emotions flow so that I could hopefully move past this. My focus changed, and I began to think about the parents. All the parents who have lost a child.

It's positively unfathomable for me.

I lay there with my son, stroking his hair, listening to him fall asleep. I thought of what those parents would give to be able to yell at their son or daughter again, the way I had that night for not listening to me. I thought of what they would give to be annoyed one more time by their son's unrelenting plea coming from down the hall,

"Daaaaaddy...! Come play with me!"

And we all know, it's not that we don't want to play with them, but the kitchen always needs to be cleaned up, the toys won't put themselves away, the configuration that we promised our bosses before tomorrow morning still has to be written, and it's already 8:30 p.m. I can't believe how much time I squandered before he was born, nor how I used to think that I didn't have any time to get anything done.

I thought of how unfair it is for them; how big the hole in their hearts must be that could never ever be repaired. I couldn't even entertain the possibility that I was just lucky. For the most part, I don't believe in luck. If you're walking through a forest and a tree falls on you, I suppose that's unlucky. Hitting the lottery is just chance. I don't think it's luck.

That I have my son to love and raise and discipline and hold at the end of the day is... Maybe it really is luck. But I would like to believe that I make choices and live my life in such a way that helps direct him to make good decisions, love others and learn -- every day of his life. The trouble is, I'm sure those parents who've lost their children felt they were doing the exact same thing. Maybe they were just unlucky.

As I lay there in his bed, nearly unable to breathe from the crush of this inequity, I drifted off to sleep, my body wrapped around his.