Mr Wing's WPcom Blog

Motorcyclist

Mr Wing's blog — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:04:51 +0000

Where have I heard the following before?
The ability to purchase a $25,000 motorcycle and gear, does not make you an instant motorcyclist.
Here it is November 7, 2011, and I am the only motorcycle on the morning commute.
Where did all the other riders I have seen during the course of this year go?
You don’t suppose that the current temperature is around 45 degrees and partly cloudy has anything to do with it?

I had an incident happen about mid summer this year that I keep thinking about.
I was coming home on my regular commute on the back roads of Livermore.
I saw a full dresser several miles ahead. As I got closer, I could see it was a Kawasaki Concorse.
He had the full riding gear. He had the proper jacket, boots, pants, and helmet. It looked like all new gear. I saw that his bike was new as well.
Then what hit me, he was riding right down the middle of the lane, right on the grease spots.
On the turns, he would move to the outside of the curve, then once back on the straights, back to the center of the lane.

I pulled up behind him, and rode to one side, offset, for about a mile.
At one curve, as he pulled to the outside, I pulled abreast of him on the inside of the curve.
As we got to the straight lane, he started to move to the center again. So I backed off to a staggered position again.
This is when he noticed me, and it scared the shit out of him. You can tell by the way his bike went into a wobble.
He backed off the throttle and move to a position behind me.
He blasted his horn and I could hear him shouting.
I signaled that we pull over, park and have a conversation.
When we did so, he blasted me with a series of insults.
When I replied, he gave me a ‘wait a minuet’ gesture and reached down to turn off a switch, then removed an earpiece form his ear.

He was listening to the radio all this time! I wonder if he had both ears on the headphones?

I asked him if he had seen me, as I had been following him for over a mile.
I figured we could ride two abreast for a while on our commute.
He replied with more high pitched insults.
I tried to tell him about not riding in the center of the lane, as this is the slickest part of the lane.
I also tried to tell him, as a motorcyclist, he needs to be aware of his surroundings.
All I got was more insults.
I couldn’t talk to this guy, and he sure didn’t want to listen.
So, with him there yelling at me, I took off.
About 30 seconds later, he zipped past me at a high rate of speed. Again down the center of the lane.

Thinking about what happened, he must be a new rider, new bike, and full gear.
Some dealer talked him into getting a radio and all the amenities that go with the bikes they are sell these days.
He was in his own little world, riding the road, listening to his favorite sounds, completely oblivious to the world around him. Till he realized some bike was right next to him. And the reality check scared the hell out of him.

I have been watching for him again on my commute, and have yet to see him. It has been over six months now.

I figure his concept of the adventure of motorcycle riding hadn’t turned out to be what he had envisioned.

I wonder if he is smart enough to try to further educate himself, of if he is trying to sell off all that new gear he bought.
If he is smart, I should see him again sometime.

The Beast

Mr Wing's blog — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 23:17:47 +0000

Man, if I didn’t like riding motorcycle so much, this commute would get tired fast.
Each morning I dread the 56 mile commute.
About 20 miles in, I feel great. Zipping and zooming around the turns, making that bike purr.
Nothing like doing a 90 degree turn and accelerating out of it at max throttle.
There a couple of S turns just before I get to work that are rather pleasant to take at the speed limit of 35mph, but a blast at 85.

The Suzuki is back.

Mr Wing's blog — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 04:58:14 +0000

Commuting to work about 3 weeks ago, the bike got really loud real quick. I found that the header pipe on the rear cylinder had cracked all the way around at the flange that mounts into the cylinder. Now I was running with a straight pipe on the rear cylinder.

Was able to ride it home, about 15 miles. There it sat while I searched for a replacement pipe. Nothing on CraigsList, nothing on the Marauder Yahoo Group I belong to. Found something on eBay. A salvage yard in Ohio had a full exhaust set for my year bike.

Asking $25. Cool, what a deal. Made a bid. It sat for 3 days, and I got a notification I was loosing the bid. Someone else wanted my pipes. I raised my max bid, and so did he. To end this story, I maxed out at $106, plus $48 for shipping.

I guess it was OK, the dealer wanted $365 just for the one piece I wanted. Not counting labor, I guess I saved some money.

Took 3 days to deliver, and got it on tonight. I will be riding tomorrow.

Now I have 2 sets of exhaust pipes for this bike I cannot use. Both are on CraigsList.

The Cobras are here -> Ref: http://www.2ndstring1st.com/HTML/For%20Sale/FS-HTML/CobraDragPipes.html

Bottom line – I’m up again.

Yahoo, I have been plagiarized.

Mr Wing's blog — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 23:12:54 +0000

The original = http://www.lcobw.com/index.htm I am the web author.
2nd photo down, select the link under, and view the images in the student speaker contest selection bar.

The Popularization =

http://issuu.com/brentwoodpress/docs/brentwoodpress_03.18.11?mode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xml&backgroundColor=FFFFFF&showFlipBtn=true

Big link – huh?
Go to page 6A, the photo in the upper right of the page look familiar?
Someone PhotoShoped it some. Lightened it, but lost some quality, that happens with JPG graphic formats.

This paper is free to view on-line, so I guess there is no $ lost on my part.
My photos on the Lions website are meant to be copied for personal use.
I guess I should put some kind of statement specifying this.

How does the saying go? The best compliment is to be copied.

Lordy, I got a comment!

Mr Wing's blog — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:45:08 +0000

“I shot an arrow into the air, where it fell . . . “

Evidently there are targets out there. Somebody is reading. Cool.

Now it looks like I might have to increase my content.

Varience

Mr Wing's blog — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 17:30:14 +0000

I used to play racquetball. I never liked playing the same person continuously. I preferred to play the challenge games. This allowed you to walk into a new guy each game. If you played to 11, you had maybe 3 – 5 points to figure out this player. His weak points and his strong points. Then you needed to exploit this to get to 11 before he did.

I would like to use this concept in my work. I would like to take up temp jobs, 6 months or less. I figure after 1 to 2 years, I should have picked up various techniques that would raise my skill level to where I can take on any challenge offered.

The problem I’m having, is getting started.

My skill set is front end web development, and to a lesser extent, design. I have a personal site, and have done sites for organization on a pro bono basis. I have yet to do this professionally.

Pet Peeves

Mr Wing's blog — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:33:42 +0000

Do I have them = Yes.

My wife has here own business. Works from a makeshift room in the back end of a tandem garage space. She has a direct entrance to the outside. We built a porch in front of her shop. If you are interested to see what I’m talking about = http://www.qualitystitches.net.

We have customers that come to our house for her business.

Do not park in, or block our driveway. I find it very frustrating trying to work both not to yell at the offender and not offending my wife by yelling at her customers.

Just today, as I am coming home, I see a customer park at the curb, half on the curb and half in front of our driveway. Right in front of my wife’s car. If Anita needed to move her car for any reason, this woman would be in the way. There was plenty of room on the curb to pull forward another 5 feet and clear the driveway altogether.

I wonder about the consideration some people have towards others.

What did I learn today

Mr Wing's blog — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 02:34:42 +0000

CCCOE/ROP

Anyone hear of CSS RESET? New to me. Came across it today researching how to do mock-ups using Adobe Photoshop.

I have heard of star-hacks to deal with the IE 6 and earlier browsers. I did a little research and have come to the conclusion that I should be using Conditional Commenting instead. CC is more widespread accepted and probably last longer as browsers evolve.

What I think I will do is to combine CSS Reset with CC and make a template that will be inserted into all my sites.

I will create a css file called preset.css and include in it the start hack, as well as some of the other css that will make IE-7 and below compatible with Firefox and the other major browsers.

Then link this file using a CC = Listed as one of the first linked css files. This should take care of the greater majority of the cross browser issue.

2nd thing I learned today; I am no way using Photoshop to do web comps. Way too difficult. I am a Adobe Illustrator man, and have been for about the past 10 years.

I will be using Illustrator to plan and lay up the mock-up for my website from now on.

Photoshop is for image manipulation.

See you next time I learn something.

CCCOE/ROP Projects

Mr Wing's blog — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:20:58 +0000

WEB Site design

Final project, which consists of a 5 page (min) web site. Mine has 15 pages.

On one of the pages, I need to show locations of the various clubs in our district.

Once this is done, I need to show the location of each club. I intend to do this by having the user mouse over one of the clube names. Then a highlighted icon, of a little larger size will pop up at its location.

This effort will be two fold; one is to share URLs of the various clubs, and the other is to try to drum up a little business.

To address no. one; in an effort to promote not only our site, but communication between clubs, I thought it would be benifical to both clubs if we could post a link of each of our clubs on each site. I figure I could show an icon indicating which club has a web site, or just an email address.

No. two; I desire to move into this type of work. It would be nice if I could make some money doing it. I figure I could offer to set up the site for free, then charge for the maintenance of it.

We shall see.

Fixed the new ride

Mr Wing's blog — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:42:49 +0000

Had to pull the tank, remove the top carb , air filter, and the intake mount.

Then I was able to reach the hose clamp that was giving me trouble. I then tightened it, as well as some of the others I wasn’t able to reach either. Put the carb back on and its related components. then prior to remounting the tank, I started it up to see if the repairs worked. They did.

Then put the tank back on and took it for a spin.

No more leaks.