nuxx.net blog

Due to an interesting series of events (more on this at some point in the future) my sister has had to purchase a new computer and such for herself. As part of her purchase of a Macbook she received an 8GB iPod Touch for free (after rebate). She doesn’t need the iPod, so I’m attempting to sell it for her.

I am currently selling it via eBay auction #290249097988 with a starting bid of US$1. If any of you are interested in purchasing it I can make it available outside of eBay. I expect that we’ll get somewhere around US$240 for it once the auction has closed, but I’d take US$220 cash (or equivalent). This goes for folks overseas or not. Yes, that’s a much better price than you’ll pay for one at a store.

This is a brand new iPod purchased a couple of weeks ago at the local Apple store at the Partridge Creek shopping center. It comes with the original receipt, so there should be no problems with any sort of warranty support on it. It should also be quite easy to get the 2.0 firmware (jailbroken or not) on it, if you so desire.

So, anyone want it? Otherwise I’ll just leave it up to the eBay peoples…

If it wasn’t for my getting Danielle mad at me, today’s ride from Dodge Park to Metro Beach would have been comically bad. Monumentally, comically bad. (Really, it was probably a good experience, but just not filled with good things.) It involved me teaching someone to fix flats, my bike being hit damaging the rear brake, rain/hail/wind, and my falling over the handlebars while showing how quickly one can stop with a front brake.

To start, the start of this morning’s ride was postponed by weather, after which Brian (replika), his friend Mark, and I met up at Dodge Park. After getting my bike off the car I didn’t prop it up properly and it fell over, scratching up the rack and handle bar bit more. While getting ready to go Mark found that he had a flat rear tire on his road bike, which he didn’t know how to fix. I showed him how to fix the flat and we installed his spare tube, during which time Brian locked his keys in his car, and we had to wait for his grandma to show up with the spare set.

We then took off towards Metro Beach and everything was going well, up until right after crossing Prentiss, when Mark’s rear tire went flat again. We stopped and I showed him how patch it, but after he got it back on the rim and hit it with the CO₂ inflator, part of the bead had pushed out beyond the rim, almost blowing the tire off. The tire was then deflated, adjusted, and when reinflating it no air would stay in. It seems that the Presta valve (oh, how I hate these) had torn away from the tube.

Some nice folks on recumbents happened by, asking if things were all right, and they pointed us to a bike shop back at Gratiot (about six miles round trip), so Brian and I headed over there to get Mark new tubes and some new CO₂ carts. A little while and $19.04 later ($6.99 or so per tube!) we were back with Mark and we got his rear tire sorted out.

The ride into Metro Beach and back out was uneventful until a thousand feet or so before Crocker. Brian was riding in front, I was in the middle, and Mark was behind me. We came upon a jogger going the same direction as us who Brian went around, but because of people coming the other direction I braked and held back. Right as I braked I felt something slam into my bike from behind with a metallic scrape and crunch, and then I began slowing down even faster. Looking back I saw Mark taking a spill on the grass along the path behind me. It turns out that Mark was looking down to get out his water bottle, didn’t see the jogger, didn’t see me slowing, and just ran into the back of my bike. He said that he braked and tried to ditch on to the grass, but evidently he only managed to sweve right into the most vulnerable part on the rear of my bike. As we were going 16 MPH or so I guess it’s good that he hit me instead of the jogger, because then things could have been far worse (police, ambulances, etc).

Looking at my bike I found that Mark had hit the rear wheel and rotor, bending the rotor a good 10-12mm to the side and depositing a good bit of tire rubber on my disc and in the caliper. My rear wheel wouldn’t move easily and I couldn’t bend the rotor enough to get it to move. Wholly opening the pad adjustments didn’t help, so I removed the caliper only to find that the rotor was actually bent enough (photo above) that it was now rubbing on the brake mount. I then removed the rear wheel and removed the quite damaged rotor. I was then able to ride back to the car (another 10 - 12 miles), stopping only with the front brake.

Mark’s bike had a six or eight inch slice in his front tire, and the front tire was bent enough that we had to open up his front brake so the wobble didn’t cause too much drag. Thankfully it was still rideable, otherwise we would have had to leave him there and drive back with a rack.

We hurried up and packed tools and parts and such up, because coming right at us from the west were dark storm clouds and we (futilely) wanted to beat them to Dodge Park. Brian stashed our cell phones and water sensitive things in his pack, fitted the rain fly, I stuffed the brake parts and some tools in my bag, and we were off.

Within another mile (just after the I-94 underpass) we hit the storm and it was quite similar to the storm a few Sundays ago, complete with sideways rain, hail, and wind which nearly blew us off the path. The sweat was even being washed out of my Headsweats, running right down into my eyes and burning. Every pedal stroke made a squish feeling, and my shirt clung tightly to my chest. Hail was making a clattering sound on our helmets and stinging our arms and it felt like standing in the shower. Weirdly, people driving down Metro Parkway (16 Mile) kept honking at us.

To be honest, if one accepts the fact that you are going to get absolutely, completely soaked, riding in the rain (without rain gear) isn’t that bad. Not that I really want to repeat it, but it’s no worse than jumping in a lake clothed; only the wind and hail were bad. After twenty minutes or so of this (and the associated slow riding because of the wind) the storm had finally passed.

Riding along, approaching Utica Road, I was explaining to Mark how it’s not difficult to ride with just front brakes, how they provide most of your stopping power, and how if you brace yourself and stay back on the seat one can typically brake very hard without a problem. I proceeded to demonstrate this, braked a bit too hard, and ended up going over the handlebars and dropping on the pavement. Thankfully I only scraped my elbow and knee a bit, but it was a bit funny. I’m sure the people in the cars sitting at the intersection found it a bit entertaining as well. Thankfully that fall marked the last problem with the bike ride itself.

In the end, today I went 39.14 miles, averaged 14.5 MPH, and had a moving time of 2:41′13, despite taking just under six hours from arriving at the parking lot to getting back to the car.

Right before we were getting back to Dodge Park we heard my phone ringing, but as it wasn’t easy to get to (under the rain cover on Brian’s pack) we waited until we got back to the parking lot to check it. It was Danielle calling, and it turns out that I hadn’t been keeping a close enough eye on the time (to be honest, I hadn’t checked since before the collision) and we were going to be late, so she left to head home to her niece’s birthday party without me. Had I called Danielle and let her know what was going on things would have been fine, even if she had to leave, but I didn’t do that and that made things unwell.

When I finally got home I’d also found that my having left the adjustment nut for the brake hanging from the cable (I couldn’t get it past the ferrule, and in trying to do so stabbed the end of my thumb on a wire strand, making it bleed) was a bad idea, as somewhere between the car and the collision site it had worked its way free and fallen off. So, at this point I think I’m going to end up having to buy at least one new set of brakes. It would have been possible to just replace the rotor, but I’m lacking the adjustment nut and the rotors cost $30 - $40 each.

For a while now I’ve been wanting some Avid BB7 mechanical discs to replace my BB5s. As can be seen here (this also shows the adjustment nuts I lost), the BB5 brakes only have a pad adjustment on one side. Adjusting the other requires preloading the actuating arm and/or moving the caliper side to side.

With the BB7 brakes there are pad adjustments on both sides, so once the rotor is centered in the caliper both sides can be dialed in as needed. Also, the BB7s have considerably larger pads, which should make it easier for me to throw myself over the handle bars in the future. A set of 160mm BB7 calipers and rotors seem to cost about $55 for each end of the bike from the local(-ish) Tree Fort Bikes, so I imagine they’d be similar prices elsewhere.

I guess it’s safe to say that I won’t be biking anywhere for a week or so, though. There’s also a good chance that I now won’t be able to ride in the 46 mile charity thing I was supposed to do next Saturday, but we’ll see…

This weekend I drove a total of 1040.4 miles, taking Danielle and I down to Peoria, IL for the wedding of my cousin Scott Lamkin to his girlfriend Jessica Runck.

I’m currently too lazy (busy?) to caption the photos, although I hope to get to that sometime this week.

I don’t envy the photographer’s job in working on the wedding photos themselves, as the ceremony was held in a hall at the Boy Scout Camp (Wakonda in Chillicothe, IL) which was lit by both high pressure sodium lights and cheap fluorescent lights. I’m not sure how one could properly color correct it, but you can see the weird color straight from the camera above.

The drive was fairly uneventful, although on the way there we passed through a storm alogn I-94 which provided ~80MPH headwinds and rain. I had to tail a semi in order to have a point of reference, then after getting through the storm we found rest areas without power, downed trees and billboards, and an overturned semi. On the way back we took I-80 / I-90 through Indiana and Ohio, mostly paralleling a rather large (and beautiful) thunderstorm the whole way.

We stopped by Danielle’s house to visit some with her family before heading back to my place, and when heading back on to I-75 for the remainder of the drive home a quite beautiful sunset presented itself.

Now I think it’s time to eat lunch. Maybe I’ll post more about this trip after captioning the photos.

First off, thank you everyone for the kind wishes, visitations, conversations, and everything that helped Danielle (and I) these past few weeks.

Now I’ve got a few things I want to do. I’m going to write them down and then hope I get them done ASAP:

· Obtain CISSP certification. (Hope to do this by the end of July.)
· Design and make available (CC) PCB for a lightning detector. (Unknown estimation, but before thunderstorm season finishes.)
· Finish migration to banstyle.nuxx.net. (Maybe the end of July as well?)
· Cycle 50 miles in one go. (This weekend, if things go as planned.) (Done on 07-Jun-2008.)

I keep thinking about picking up a ruggadized point and shoot camera, but I think I should just ride around with my old one and hope it doesn’t fail, then if it does I’ll replace it. I’m hoping to replace my bike wheels soon as they are rather out of true and somewhat flattened in places, and one of the rims has a gouge out of it.

I’ve been quoted ~$320 for a hand-built set with Mavic XM 317 rims, Shimano XT front and rear hubs, and black DT Swiss spokes. This seems pretty reasonable, I just have to be sure I want to afford it. They’d definitely be usable on whatever bike I end up getting next, though…

Danielle’s mom, Linda Hall, died this morning at just about 9:28am EDT.

If you’re interested, here is her obituary on the Martenson Family Funeral Homes which lists the visitation and service times and such.

Also, if you are interested, this photo album contains some composite / collage images of her mom that Danielle and I together for people to look at while at the funeral home, along with JPEG copies of all the source images. (As I type this they are currently uploading.)

This weekend didn’t really end up as hoped. To summarize, as isolt said to me, Cancer Sucks.

Before we get to that, a bit of background. My absolutely wonderful girlfriend Danielle’s mom (Linda) managed to get through a bout with breast cancer back in 2004, but last summer it came back in her legs. Since then the cancer has been managed with a combination of surgery, chemo, and radiation therapy, but last Wednesday she was admitted to Henry Ford Hospital because the pain in her legs was overwhelming her.

She had been in the hospital since then, with Danielle and various family members staying with her, and on Sunday Danielle and I went for a visit. Danielle’s mom’s oxygen was a bit low (SaO2 of 86), and she was acting really confused, and her mouth didn’t seem to move properly when she was talking. Additionally, she was making a bunch of gurgling sounds when breathing, so it was ordered that she get an MRI and a chest x-ray to figure out why both problems were occurring. Danielle and I headed off to a BBQ at my aunt and uncle’s place and everything was okay for a little while.

Right as we were thinking of leaving, Danielle received a call from her dad saying that “it spread to her brain”, and that she should get to the hospital as soon as possible. We got right in the car and headed down there as quickly as safely possible.

Once at the hospital we found that Danielle’s mom had been moved to the ICU, as the x-ray found that she has pneumonia, and the MRI found a number of tumors in her brain. All of the tumors were under 1cm, except for one 13mm tumor in her brain stem. I imagine that this, coupled with the hypoxia (and all the morphine) is what was causing her confusion.

We ended up staying at the hospital until sometime after 3am, and throughout most of that time there were at least 10 family members there, including Danielle, her dad, her grandma (Linda’s mom), her brother, Linda’s brothers and sisters, and lots of cousins and friends. Throughout the night while people were visiting her blood pressure and O₂ levels were very low, but she was able to talk to everyone and tell them goodbye. As the evening moved on she made everyone leave except Danielle’s dad, who spent the night awake next to her.

Today we returned sometime in the afternoon with a couple bags of food for everyone who was at the hospital, which I would estimate at around 25 people, some of whom flew in from across the country. The food was very useful, taking care of a problem yesterday where we were all eating things out of the vending machine and from the Little Caesars in the lobby, which was open until 3am.

Early on in the day a priest from the parish Danielle’s aunt attends arrived and performed an Annointing of the Sick, or Last Rights while everyone Linda knew was in the ICU room. People had more time to visit Linda, and at one point she told me to be good, and I was able to tell her that I’ll be sure to take care of Danielle.

This afternoon Linda was moved out of the ICU and back to a private room, and tomorrow she’ll be transported home whereafter she’ll be under hospice care until she dies.

Oh, and that picture up there? I’m not trying to be overly cheesy, but I was noticing the building beautiful sunset and clouds while in the way home, so I went outside to take some pictures. If you’d like to see the other photo which I considered using to top this post, look here, at a photo taken out the window of Linda’s hospital room, just before we left so that she could go in for the MRI. And yes, I know this post is a bit scattered. Sorry. Lots has happened recently.

One final thing, before I forget, the staff at Henry Ford seemed to be some of the nicest folks I’ve ever delt with at a hospital. From the security folks, orderlies, and other people who I’d just asked for help to the nurses in the ICU and people working in the cafeteria, everyone seemed just great. That really, really helped.