So, the last time I was at the bike shop I asked Roger about the 2007 Pista Concept, specifically, how soon can I get one. He rings them up and they say that they should be shipping framesets in late January, early February. This sounds good; just in time for my income tax refund.
Then we had our annual ‘employee appreciation’ brunch for work and I got my bonus, which will actually cover the cost of the frame! Time to hit eBay and look for some components!
I already have the brake, brake levers, wheels, seatpost, saddle, and another Madonna del Ghisallo medallion (this has become like a rabbit’s foot to me, both of my other bikes have one). So, I go cruising eBay for a crankset and pedals. Without even breaking a sweat, I score myself reasonably good deals on a Miche crankset and bottom bracket (see pics here and here) and a set of Speedplay X-2 pedals (see pic here).
Now all I need is a stem and some handlebars. Oh… and the frame, of course.
I can hardly wait for new bike day!
So, today was Thanksgiving. I was, first and foremost, thankful for such a gorgeous day; 55 degrees, basically no wind… fabulous! I went out for a nice ~1 hour ride, there were so few cars that it was almost creepy at times. As I passed the location of yesterday’s dog incident there were no dogs, but there was a deer carcass, right where the one dog had appeared from, which goes a long way toward explaining his behavior.
As I turned onto my street, on my way home, I passed a man pushing an old pickup to the side of the road. I started to stop and help push, but realized that I wouldn’t be too much help slipping around on bike cleats. As I rolled into my yard, I asked if he needed any help.
“I could use a jump, if you have a car,” he replied.
No problem, I replied, just let me run inside. I ran in, put on some regular shoes and a jacket, and grabbed my car keys. Pulling my car around to his, I asked if he was sure that was all that was wrong. He assured me that it was, that his ignition switch (or something; still pumped from my ride, I wasn’t listening too closely) had gone bad, that he’d filed something down (again; not paying close attention) and had been using a screwdriver to turn the switch. He had left it on, thus draining the battery. I mention that he’s picked a bad day for car trouble as there’s no one around (apparently almost the entire population of Xenia spends Thanksgiving elsewhere). Laughing, he agrees.
I open my hood, he hooks up the cables, then asks if I’ll get in his truck and push in the clutch, he can handle the gas and the starter from there. No problemo. He gets it running pretty quickly and all is well.
As I’m closing my hood, he’s thanking me very graciously and has fished a wad of bills out of his pocket, wanting to give me some money “for my trouble”.
“Seriously, dude; all I did was pull my car around, don’t even worry about it,” I told him.
He thanks me again, saying that I’m a “lifesaver” and that “what comes around goes around” (an awkward turn of phrase, but I knew what he meant). He goes on his way, I park my car and go back inside.
It wasn’t until quite a bit later that it occurred to me that there might be a chance the truck was stolen (I really don’t think it was). I felt a small surge of… what? Not exactly pride, but something, realizing that; faced with a strange black man and a pickup that he has to start with a screwdriver, my first instinct was to help, not to automatically assume he’d stolen it. He seemed very genuine and the color of his skin had in no way colored my perception of him.
Now, if we, as a people, can just evolve to the point where we don’t give these things a second thought, then we’ll all have something to be truly thankful for.
It was a perfect day for a ride (for late November). Somehow, it seemed tremendously appropriate when I saw numerous farmers out working the fields, harvesting their corn, wheat, and what-not.
This also gave me pause. We always give thanks for our food, but how often do we give thanks for (or to) our farmers? Not often enough. This is something I’ll have to add to my list of things I’m thankful for.
This moment of introspection was short-lived though. Rounding a slightly uphill, 90 degree right-hand bend into the sun, I saw a large dead dog lying in the center of the road. When I reflexively sighed, “aaawww”, he turned to look at me. Not dead at all, it’s a friendly dog who lives just up the road, sunning himself. He’s a sweet old guy, has never so much as barked at me and today was no exception. Suddenly just ahead there was a rustling and an explosion of dark fur and ferocious barking as his less well-mannered sidekick charged out from the shadows, sun at his back, straight for my front wheel. I braced myself for impact and swerved, but obviously his “attack” was just a bluff. Once my heartbeat returned to normal, I had to chuckle; he had set a perfect trap. He had me going up-hill, sun in my eyes, and distracted by his docile friend napping in the road. Under different circumstances, I would have been someone’s dinner.
I guess I should be thankful he didn’t want to eat me!
Here’s the really crazy part of the whole sordid mess: At the same instant that I discovered that the importation process into WordPress was not going to work, and I began to curse Google/Blogger for raining on my parade; I smelled smoke.
Acrid, burning plastic-type smoke. As I sniffed the air, searching for the source, I saw smoke wafting out of the top of my file server, which promptly shut down. Pulling the cover off and peering inside, I wasn’t immediately able to find the source of the smoke, but there were traces of the thread-like soot that is characteristic of burning plastic scattered here and there inside the case. I disconnected the power, grabbed a flashlight, and searched for the culprit. Several minutes later, I found it. At the edge of the motherboard, hidden from view between a PCI card the edge of the case, two plastic jumpers had melted down and, evidently, caught fire.
Here’s the really, really crazy part: After I pulled the charred remnants of the jumpers off, I warily powered the computer back up… and it booted right up and ran (and continues to run) as though nothing had happened! Crazy! (And not exactly confidence-inspiring.)
Naturally, even though there’s absolutely no evidence of any involvement, I blame Blogger/Google.
Bastards!
So, I discovered that with the newest (2.05) version of WordPress, importing my Blogger posts and comments was actually going to be a breeze (famous last words).
Gleefully, I installed WordPress on my web-server and set-up the database. So far, so good. Then I attempted to run the importer. Nothing doing.
Login failed. Please re-enter your username and password.
But the username and password are correct. Apparently the problem lies with the beta now using a Google login, rather than the Blogger login. A little more digging around online and I found that I’m basically hosed. Had I not “upgraded” to Blogger/Google’s God-forsaken beta, it would have been smooth sailing. But, since I fell for the old “upgrade” ruse, there’s no reasonable way of accomplishing this task. I can either labor for days, cutting and pasting, or I can wait for WordPress to update the importer. I think I’ll wait.
Damn!
So the Blogger beta finally became available to those of us posting via FTP and I decided to “upgrade”. Unfortunately, I realized too late that all of Blogger’s new “functionality” is strictly geared toward those posting to blogspot accounts and is actually more of a liability for those of us with blogs hosted elsewhere. I won’t go into the reasons why; suffice it to say they are manifold.
The worse news? There’s no way to go back.
So, now I’m looking at converting the entire blog to WordPress. I’m positive that this will be a Good Thing™ in the long run, but I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out how to import my posts while keeping all the URL’s the same; thus ensuring that all the links (internal and external) will still work.
So, anyway, if I don’t update for awhile, or things get all screwy-looking; that’s probably why. I’m hoping to make the switch sometime during the upcoming week, or at least make serious progress in that direction.
Wish me luck!
So, I was perusing my server logs (like I do) and discovered that someone from the Department of Homeland Security had found their way to my blog, via Google (and this isn’t the first time).
I don’t want to run afoul of “them” and find myself in some secret gulag somewhere being subjected to various forms of “not torture”, so I won’t divulge what search phrase landed them here.
Suffice it to say that given my predilection toward paranoid delusions/flights of fancy this information has made me feel decidedly less secure. Of course, I could just assume that someone in Homeland Security was goofing off at work and found their way here, but where’s the fun in that?
And it goes like this.
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