It’s Monday. Spring break is over. Traffic is back to normal: slow to mostly crappy.
I never did get caught up on my sleep this weekend. I snoozed most of Sunday. This morning, I still woke up late after punching the alarm clock for 45 minutes of snooze. Read more…
Why am I always lacking in the sleep department?
Umm… Because I don’t sleep. Read more…
Hulu has posted the complete Cosmos series online. (Link)
Another trip to the KTM dealership for parts and paperwork. I scored a throttle cam assembly. I threw on the 400/500 cam which is for loose, muddy conditions. That kind of sounds like riding in the rain. I can’t believe how much better my throttle control is. Smooth and easy without any reduction in throttle range. It just works. I tried to fit handguards to the bike, but the first set don’t fit. I also picked up the correct tool for adjusting rear shock preload. Steering damper kit ordered. Ready to Race Street kit paperwork completed and ordered.
Yesterday, I rode to work. It was 39 degrees and none of my electrical systems were working. Last night, I fixed that problem. This morning, it was 46 degrees. With all of my electrical systems working, I was warm and toasty inside my heated vest and my fingers were comfortably warm on the heated grips. In fact the new throttle cam with it’s 6061 Al construction balances out the heat output between the left and right grip. Very nice.
So today, I’m loving this new machine. I’ve fixed the quirks and I have parts coming to extend capabilites both for handling and comfort.
Back to the next episode of Cosmos err… work.
Yeah. Back to work.
The upgraded Pazzo levers showed up for the woman’s bike last week. It took me all of 10 minutes to throw them back on her Ducati. She seems to like the longer levers better. We really won’t know until she goes out for a ride and with rain in the daily forecast she’s not very interested in that idea just yet.
All of this reminds me of how nice it can be to deal with people and not corporations. I work for a corporation. I drive a car built by a corporation. Most of my food comes from a corporation. Read more…
So, it’s home. The days of lusting after a Hypermotard are over. I got an incredible deal on this new (yes new) 2007 KTM SuperDuke. The dealership took a loss. I tried to price match a two other places and one flat out told me it was $2400 under his cost. It was a demo bike, as in the service rep road it for 6 months, putting 1200 miles on it. Throw in a few weekends by other staff and test rides that came well after the break-in period and there it is. The Akropovic pipes were throw in. Like I said a screamingly good deal. Thanks to Chris and all the staff at KTM Northwest in Gresham. I’ve got some bits on order and I am sure the machine will change more than a little by the end of the summer. I’m thrilled to have it. Actually, I’m overwhelmed at the moment.
It is done. I can stop lusting after it and start riding it. I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to write once I get a couple thousand miles under me. Frame sliders, heated grips, carbon?, tank bag, gel saddle?, more carbon, more sliders…
I guess I’m riding to work in the morning. 
It’s raining… again.
The temps are starting to climb. Spring is on the way. It was 50 degrees on my way home from the Yamaha dealership a few minutes ago. It rained really hard on me when I was driving home from work. Just now I got home with only a few sprinkles.
That is one of the quirks to Oregon that I have not gotten used to. It can be raining AND sunny. It can be pouring in one place and perfectly dry just a few miles away. We’ve got the Gorge, the Coastal and Cascade Ranges, the Willamette and Columbia rivers, plus a rather large ocean less than 100 miles away. So there are a lot of different inputs on the local micro climates. Back in misery, I mean Missouri, the weather was regional. It was hot (or cold) for hundreds of miles. Rain would cover a 4 state area. Snow from Canada down to Tulsa. Tornado bearing storms would cut through hundreds of miles of open plain without minimal damage. Different place.
It will be a while before the mountain snow melts and then the real fun begins. This summer I am going to spend some time in those mountains buring fuel.
Still, it is strange only having one bike. I sold my DL last summer which dropped me down to one moto. I’m still thinking about the SuperDuke. Thinking, thinking, thinking…
It is raining again. Slow and steady. Tiny drops from above collecting in shimmering pools of life.
I crave
…summer’s warm caress.
I crave
…naked horsepower and violence.
…restraint and flow.
I crave
…leaning into a corner on Mt St Helen’s southern approach.
…infrared heat soaking into my leathers.
…muscle memory and grinding ceramics on tarmac.
I crave
…hyper-focus and disconnection.
…asphalt ribbons and sky.
…fuel vapor and pine needles.
…to be lost and found.
I crave
…my lover’s smile when I return.
I crave.
So how did I fall under the Ducati spell? As I said the other day, I finally rode the Hypermotard from Ducati. Uninspiring. Boring. Uncomfortable. Disconcerting. I got off the bike thinking there were a host of things I’d need to change if I was to buy one. In short, it just didn’t suit me.
Last night, the woman woke up at 2 coughing. She joked that she had swallowed a hair ball. The cats are usually in our face most of the night so that isn’t a wholly unreasonable idea. So she woke up coughing. I woke up. She went back to sleep. I stayed awake… until about 6:30 this morning. I was surfing around trying to figure out what I want in a bike. Ideally, I’m looking for an alternative to the FJR for commuting. I need the power to do the 75 mph assaults in the morning and crisp handling to survive the stop-n-go for my ride home. I’d also like something that I can play with on the weekends. I’m not looking for super-slab performance or off-road capabilities. I want something that works for me.
KTM SuperDuke? Read more…
I found this blog entry today… VS2010 will use WPF and gets an update.
http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonz/archive/2009/02/20/a-new-look-for-visual-studio-2010.aspx
Portland Code Camp is scheduled for May 30-31, 2009. It will be held at Lewis and Clark College. (Event Link)
Sixx: AM
Courtesy Call
The Heroin Diaries
*Dialtone, knocking, Mexican TV*
Female voice: Housekeeping…
*Knocking*
Female: Hello, housekeeping?
*Tries, door, knocking*
Female: Hello?
Well you found me, but I don’t know
Why you wanna save me…
Well, God is great and God is good
But God didn’t help me when he could
And life dances so lonely by.
Read more…
I’ve had a problem with ClickOnce deployments lately.
Unable to create the Web site ‘
‘. The components for communicating with FrontPage Server Extensions are not installed.
I think I found the solution with the following URLs. I’ve installed the WebDesignerCore. Now I need to see if I can publish…
I went to an MSDN event yesterday. The topics were Azure, Debugging and Mobile Programming. Azure was interesting. I learned a lot about Azure and I learned that I shouldn’t think too much about it just yet. It won’t do what I need it to do at this time, plus it is a CTP and not ready for prime-time. That’s why they call it a community technology preview. Duh. One huge topic is storage. They don’t have rows. I can’t save a single record. This rather small issue makes it almost impossible to transition data between a local SQL server with a row-based relational model to the entitiy-based Azure data model. That could be a problem. But, as I said, it’s a CTP and lots of smart people are working on it. <shrug≶
The dugging section was the best for me. I learned a few little tidbits that should make my life a little easier. The speaker, Bruno Terkaly, had already posted his debugging tricks to his MSDN blog so I could pay attention and not scribble down notes. I skipped out a few minutes early so I missed all of the mobility discussion. (The word is I missed getting a free book as well.) Read more…
