The Interwebs Have Arrived!

I broke down and signed up for home interweb access. Yep; I'm slowly catching up to things.....that have been available for years.

The biggest reason for dragging my feet was the cost.  I could afford it, but why would I?  I had my phone so if I absolutely had to look something up, I could.  But if I needed to research anything, I could do it from here at work...er...I mean...after hours.  Yeah; after hours.

Recently, though, my cable provider informed me that they were running a special; $19.99 a month, locked in for two years.  Huh.  Well that doesn't sound bad at all - let's do this!

So I signed up, took the equipment home, and readied myself to be connected.  But the connection wouldn't happen.  I followed all the steps outlined in the documentation (and in the on-line videos which I was able to see thanks to my phone), but no luck.

A quick call to the service dept was answered almost immediatley (nice!) and I was speaking with a wonderful person who checked things out for me.  Turns out there were two problems; the first was that I'd missed a step when I was activating my modem/router (there was no mention of this in the videos or documentation). Second; there were some settings on their end which had to be corrected.  I asked if that was somehing I should have seen or fixed and she said no, I wouldn't have had access to them.  So it was a fault-fault, I guess.

And ta-da!  Success!  I was connected, Wi-Fi and everything!

While she was on the phone, she asked what I would like to change my network name to (they give you a generic, alphanumeric one to begin with).  Hmmm...what to call my network.  Then it came to me...

I said "Let's call it 'tavern'".

"'Tavern?' she asked."

Yep; tavern.  Because that's what my friends think my house is.

So there you have it.  I know have internet access...at my tavern.

Come on by for a beer and a byte.

Get it?

I Built My Dream Bike Last Night

Yep, I had a very productive night last night...apparently.

In my sleep, I assembled what I guess my subconsious mind feels is the ulitmate bike for me.  Then I took that bike on many runs and even up to Labor Day in Maine.  Everyone was loving the bike and I was so psyched that I'd finally accomplished my goal!

So what did this amazing bike look like?

First, start with a Panhead frame (straight-leg, please)...

Then add on an FLH front end and some tires (I'd opt for solid rims, but Google Images isn't cooperating)...

Toss in the shovelhead engine...

Then...well...then I guess cut the rear third off, so the ass end is riding on the frame, immediately behind the seat...

Yep, this was basically it....well, with solid rims, and painted rattle-can black.

How did the rear end roll along?  I dunno, in my dream I was always facing forward.  Maybe it had little caster wheels or something.  Or maybe it had Big Wheels on the back - that would explain some of the slide outs I was doing.

See?  When I said "dream bike" in the post's title, I wasn't kidding, because I was most definitely asleep when my brain came up with this thing...

Good thing I wrote all this down.  I'm going to need to refer back to it when I get the build plan moving.

Wish me luck...

Jersey City!

My freind Chrissy and I headed down to Jersey to hang with Mike for the weekend.   We made good time on the ride down, grabbed Mike and headed off to the adventure that awaited us.

We had reservations through a condominium suite that Mike had found through Expedia.  Long story short; the owners of the condo placed a $200 hold on his credit card (not a charge, just a 'hold') and then never answered the phone when he tried contacting them that night so that we could check in.  Super fishy, and Expedia was ZERO help for us, even though it had gotten to almost 8pm and we still had no place to stay, so keep that in mind if you're ever thinking about using them for vacation or travel plans..

We managed to find a hotel (Hyatt Regency on the Hudson) and it wound up being awesome so in thge long run, it worked out ok.

It was on to the bars!  We didn't venture too far Friday night, but did make some serious rounds on Saturday.  What a fun and very friendly city, I was truly impressed.  Sunday, we took the train over to NYC/Times Square and checked out some sights and many more bars.  Personally, I found NYC to somewhat friendlier than I'd expected but no where near as fun as Jersey City was.

Anyway, the long and short of it was we had a great time and had a ton of laughs.  The ride home yesterday seemed about twice as long as the ride down had been but I'm sure that's because it was the end of the mini-vaca.

Anyway - on to the pics!

This bathroom had a stall door which slid on rollers like an old barn door.  I thought it was pretty cool and was fortunate in that there wasn't anyone using the stall as I stood there rolling the door back and forth.

Sunset on NYC, across the Hudson...

 

This looks like a mistake, but apparently it was designed that way on purpose.  Oh those crazy architects...

 

Night view from the hotel room, once we finally got checked in.

 

The cool thing here is that these lamps all cast white light, to the naked eye.  But after taking several photos with my camera, they all came out looking green.

 

Looking across at NYC...

 

Another pic of the wacky building, this time; in the daylight...

 

This is the Katyn Memorial, in memory of the thousands of Polish who, while fighting the Germans in WWII, were attacked from behind by Russia. 

 

This plaque was added to the base of the memorial, after 9/11.

 

This was the Iron Monkey bar, and it has a metal statue of a monkey, apparently getting his buzz on.
How do I know it's a "him"?  If you click on the pic and zoom in, you'll see it's anatomically correct...

 

Ginormous clock on the shores of the Hudson.  This thing faces NYC, and I guess is for anyone on that side of the river that doesn't have a watch...or a cell phone to tell the time...

 

A 9-11 memorial on the bank of the Hudson, utilizing steel beams from one of the towers.

 

This is also part of the memorial.  This entire thing is made out of steel.  Even the parts that look like paper (letters), duct tape (holding the paper), flowers, etc.  It's all formed and shaped steel.  Very impressive...

 

I liked this building - it was in a section of Jersey City where the roads are blocked off (semi-permanently) and shops and bars have outdoor seating, tables, etc.
This building was very narrow, coming to almost a point, and had a small patio on the second floor.  I picture this being the place to party on warm summer nights!

 

 

Outside a massive church was a miniature sculpture of the church itself, in amazing detail.  On the top of the church, someone had placed a keychain style skeleton.  I think this was more of a "ward against evil" than anything malignant.

 

Along the streets were a ton of metal brackets for folks to chain their bicycles to.  This one instance, though, it appears the city had said "F you" to the lock (it's just a lock and a frame - everything else is gone.

Some of the local street art in the area where the road was closed off and the shops had tables and such outside.

Yep; that wacky building again...

Whoops - it's upside down, but this was the beer list at my favorite place; HopsScotch (two "s's" in that name).  It was about 70% stouts and porters.  My kind of place!

Back outside in the open air marketplace area...

Never heard of this before but apparently there's a chain of them.  All the old 80's and 90's arcade games, and drinks!

The bathrooms are apparently welcome spots for graffiti tagging.  it was on the ceiling, the floor, the mirror, the door...almost any surface.  (It seems the toilet itself is hallowed ground, as it was untouched.)

Back outside.  The area was much busier than it appears to be in this pic.

Back at HopsScotch; jenga tower.  We had it so high, we were doubling up chairs to stand on, and it almost hit the ceiling.  (We had bartenders and patrons cheering us on to see how high we could go - and man, when it went over, it was loud!!!)

A daytime shot between some buildings, looking across at the Freedom Tower.
It almost looks CGI, but this is a real pic.

Lomg set of marble stairs heading back to street level at one of the bars.

A condom for Lynner!

How could we refuse to patronize a place with this name?

Flight sample inside the Bier Garten!

1 liter of your dark, please (placed against the sample, for size comparison).

Sitting outside one bar, and planning our next foray across the street...

I guess this is in case the three stooges all go to the bathroom at the same time...

Monday morning came all too soon.  A couple of last shots across the Hudson

Int eh distant background; the Brooklyn Bridge...

 

And there you have it; Jersey City.

Next up...well...I'm not sure what's up next, but with the weather looking like it's getting better and warmer, I might actually be able to get a motorcycle post up here soon...

Ciao for now...

Going to the Dogs

Installing the new dogs into the agitator was beyond easy.  The disturbing part, though, was seeing all the film that's developed over the years from all the loads of laundry being done.  But I'm getting ahead of myself so let's back up and proceed through the pics.

First up; here's the agitator with the top section pulled off (it just snaps on, and lifts off easily).  Inside, you can see the top of the cam assembly.

Here's a closeup.  Man, look at that nasty gunk buildup!  (You can see just the tips of the dogs; they're the brown things sticking out from the cam and (trying to) grab the teeth on the outer wall.)

A 7/16 socket with an extension, and the bolt comes out easily.

Lifting the whole agitator out, simply stand on the base and gently pull to lift up the middle section.  There's a round ratainer/gasket which sits between the sections, and drops out when you separate them, and the cam assembly just lifts right out of the top part.

Lift off the black plastic retainer on the cam (I thought it was snap-locked in place but it wasn't.  Just had to pry it up and then lift off.)..

Here's the new dogs compared to the old ones.  There doesn't look like a lot of difference but trust me; this was the problem.

I decided to clean things up before putting everything back together.  A sink full of bleach and scalding hot water, a bit of elbow grease, and things were showroom shiny!  (The agitator base isn't in the pic, but it got the same thorough scrubbing as the rest of the components did.)

Reassembly was easy - just had to make sure to line up some slots on the cam body with the matching splines on the bottom section of the agitator, and voila!  The new dogs grab the agitator wall perfectly - I'm back in business!

Guess this means I should start catching up on laundry now...

Winter Doldrums

Not much to report lately, as you've most likely surmised from the lack of anything new showing up here.  It's officially become winter here in the Boston area, due to two decent-sized snow storms hitting within 3 days of each other.  There'd been talk of another one hitting us tomorrow but that has apparently dwindled to just a dusting - which is fine by me.

I don't expect to have the bike out any time soon, due to the road conditions.  There's a lot of ice and slush around, although I am hearing that tomorrow will be above freezing so that should help melt things a little bit - and every bit helps.

Let's see...what else.  I ordered an N-Ferno (brand) balaclava off of Amazon and it arrived yesterday.  It has two layers (one for the lower half of my head, covering the face and neck, then a hood-like covering which pulls down over the front), so the pictures showed it doing a much better job of covering exposed skin than anything else I'd seen out there.  I tried it on last night and while the material is thin, it does feel like it would do a good job of keeping the skin warm.  The only potential problem is that it doesn't fit snugly to my face, which means when I breathe; the moist, warm air flows around inside the thing and escapes via the only opening; the gap for the eyes.  Is this bad?  Not at all if you're not wearing sunglasses (or clears), but since this purchase was for riding, I would have eye protection on, and they fog up quite quickly.

I'll have to do some tinkering and see if I can come up with a solution.  Besides, when I'm moving, the air flow may do a good enough job of keeping them clear on it's own.  It would just be the stops at traffic lights that might pose a problem and that exists now fogging up when not moving) and I just pull the glasses an inch or so off my face to alleviate that.

Moving on...the only other thing I have for ya is a repair on my washing machine.  I know!  Riveting stuff!  But hey, when the bike is parked, I'm kinda starved for stuff to put up here.

Anyway; I noticed a while back that the agitator in my washing machine had started spinning freely.  Doing a little research, I found the culprit to most likely be worn teeth on the agitator dogs.  (The what?)  Yep, 4 little plastic things inside the agitator that spin out to grab and lock into the inner wall of the agitator, to spin it.  (When the teeth wear out, I guess they just gum the inner wall and there's not much holding power in that.)

So the new dogs arrived last night (with the balaclava) and I'll probably install them tonight when I get home.  I'll let you know how I make out because I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat.

Ok, that's it for now...

Winter sucks.

Dressing in Winning Layers

Today was a first for my friends and I at work.  We were allowed to wear jeans and Pats gear to work.  I've been here just over 18 years and we've never been allowed to wear casual attire, not even on Fridays.  So we were all pretty pumped for this, and everyone showed up wearing their gear, proudly.

The only official Pats shirt I own is a Bruschi shirt that I think Bill gave me, like 14 or 15 years ago, so of course that was the shirt of choice.

At the time Bill got it for me I was a bit bigger than I am nowadays, so the shirt is kind of big on me now.  And a I was geearing up for the ride in this morning, a thought occurred to me...

Yup; it's big enough to fit over my jacket.  Which was nice, because it was a chilly 19 degrees when I left this morning and I could always use an extra layer of clothing.

GO PATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Misfire

I’ve been renting and testing a number of handguns in an effort to figure out which one I want to buy for carrying.  I’ve tried S&W, Glock, Sig, Ruger, and Springfield.  Hated the Ruger LC9S, didn’t care for the S&W M&P .40, or Glock 9.  Loved the Sig P226 but pricing made me keep looking.  Then I discovered the Springfield XD-S (not the SC).  Loved the feel, the weight, the pull, ease of mag release, etc.  New, they come with fiber optic sight (front), too!  We have a winner!

I began searching but none of the stores around me seemed to carry it.  What gives?  On-line sites had it, but nothing in Mass did.  Uh-oh…wait a minute…let me check something…

Yup.  It’s not an approved firearm in Mass.  Under certain provisions, a private owner can sell one to another private owner but they cannot be sold (new, I’m assuming) by a dealer.  Apparently the Mass gun laws are so convoluted that Springfield Armory refuses to submit their guns for Mass licensing approval, for fear of someone using it illegally and somehow tying it back to them.  And that means I’m SOL.

So it’s back to the search.

Damn…I thought I was all set.