Press "Enter" to skip to content

nuxx.net Posts

Fun Day

Published July 5, 2008

Today has been a fun day. First the bike ride, then hanging out with #mi2600 folks and going to see the Clawson fireworks. Now Danielle will be here soon and I can get snuggley hugs. Yay!

The only thing I didn’t do well today was eat. After the bike ride food I ended up eating a large fry from Wendy’s, then a bunch of random junk at the party. Tomorrow I definitely have to eat something more in line with what I normally consume. Curry and rice should be on the menu, if possible. For now, though: bed. I’m profanely tired.

Leave a Comment

Work is 15.4 Miles Away via Bike

Published July 4, 2008

On the Fourth of July I rode to work, then up to Lake Orion, then back home. Total of about 56.5 miles. Since Google Earth would only save this as a blank black image I had to take a screenshot instead.

I’ve been curious how far it is to work via the safe route (no riding on high speed roads), so today I tried it and found out: 15.4 miles.

After getting to work I used the bathroom, refilled one water bottle, ate a food bar, then rode up Squirrel to Tienken, down to the Paint Creek Trail, up to Lake Orion, then back home. Google Earth (even the latest version as of today) wouldn’t save the displayed route out as an image, so what you see above is a screenshot.

If you’d like to see this route for yourself, here is 04-Jul-2008.kmz and here it is in Google Maps. There is an odd mis-track there, which I don’t quite understand, but it seems that my GPS occasionally figures itself to be somewhere it isn’t.

Total food consumed before and during the ride was:

· 1 each GU Energy Gel in Chocolate Outrage and Lemon Sublime flavors. The Chocolate Outrage and Vanilla Bean (both with 100mg caffeine) are my preferred flavors of these.
· Approx. 1 cup of mixed golden raisins and raw almonds.
· Vegan Organic Food Bar (These are very, very good. Sort of like a nut and fruit smoothie paste in a bar.)
· Four hard boiled egg whites, some overly salty hot smoked salmon, vanilla yogurt with granola, an english muffin with olive oil and black pepper, and a pint of coffee (this was the before-ride breakfast).

The stats for today’s ride are, per the bike computer:

Total Distance: 56.55 Miles
Moving Average Speed: 13.3 MPH
Maximum Speed: 25.9 MPH
Moving Time: 4:13’54

This is the longest ride I’ve been on, particularly if one figures during my last 50 mile ride I stopped at home, ate a pile of leftover Thai food, packed some stuff up for shipping at the post office, then set out again. The only time I stopped for a period of time today was at work (~10 minutes) and to sit in downtown Lake Orion in a park and eat nuts and raisins (~15 minutes).

Now to shower, eat something, and figure out where I’m going to end up this evening. Party invitations are three deep, and all sound very good. I’ll consult with Danielle (who is at her house at one of the parties) first.

Leave a Comment

33 Miles == Working Brakes

Published July 3, 2008

After riding 33 miles this afternoon the new brakes seem to be working great. The intermitant creaking sound still has to be worked out, but I’ll try to do that tomorrow when double-checking torques before riding.

I ended up riding down to Dodge Park, through there, up to Riverbends, then I wound my way around some neighborhoods there and back to my house. Part of this included two runs through the 5km hiking trail. All in all, a nice ride.

Tomorrow I’m going to try and do a long ride. Hopefully that’ll go well.

Leave a Comment

My Bike Works Again

Published July 1, 2008

The Wheel Master 365-MACVXT5 wheels as shipped, built with Mavic XC 717 Disc rims and Shimano Deore XT HB-M756 six-hole disc hubs.

I’m very happy, my bike works again. Today I received a package containing the new wheels and front brake and got everything installed and working. The delivery was supposed to come yesterday, but at 8:30pm UPS changed the status to indicate that it would be delayed and delivered today.

When the box arrived the label on it indicated that it was a Wheel Master 365-MAVXT5 set, consisting of Mavic XC717 Disc rims, 32 hole, in black, with matching Shimano M756 hubs and black DT spokes. I’ve been unable to locate any info on Wheel Master online, but it appears that they assemble wheels in the US for sale through other shops. I’m quite happy with these wheels, as they were almost perfectly true when received, reasonably well packed, and cheap. There was no rim tape, prompting a quick run out to REI to pick up some 17mm Velox rim tape. It also seems that the rims are painted (or powder coated) black, so there is the risk of scratching them and exposing metal beneath. Hopefully this won’t happen.

I had a bit of difficulty making the rim tape stick, but hopefully it’ll get better as it sits under pressure from the tube. Mounting the disc brake rotor was trivial, and it was particularly easy to fit the tires on to the rim. The size of the rim seems just perfect, and my normally-difficult Continental TravelContact tires seated automatically, without the need for glass cleaner as a lubricant.

The Avid BB7 brake received was listed as a 07 version, but it was manufactured in 2008 and doesn’t match my rear brake dated late 2006. They don’t match, but they do both work. Part of me is considering returning the one from REI and getting a new rear BB7 to match, but it’s probably not worth it

Everything else with reassembling the bike went great, and I took it for a ~8.5 mile test ride in the dark (with lights, of course) after everything was done. There is a slight creaking-ish sound coming from the bike, but I can’t tie it to any particular effort or movement, so I think that it may either be a brake cable housing rubbing against a cable tie or possibly the seat post. I’ll try and sort it out tomorrow.

The brakes themselves are working better than they were when I first left on the ride, but they still aren’t properly broken in. I’m not able to lock up the rear brake yet, and squeezing hard on the front brake while pushing the front end along by hand still allows the wheel to turn, albeit with quite a bit of effort. I imagine that with another 10-20 miles and some more good hard stops the brakes will start wearing nicely and they’ll stop like my BB5s did.

Overall I’m quite happy with things. The wheels are lighter and the bike seems to move better than it did before, and having nice, true, non-flat-side wheels makes everything seem like it rolls by better. Hopefully soon I’ll get to go on a nice, much longer ride; maybe this weekend.

Leave a Comment

Bus Routes To Work

Published June 30, 2008

I just decided to look up the bus routes to work, via this area’s wonderful SMART bus system.

It turns out that there actually is one bus route which I could take to work, number 559. The closest stop to my house is Lakeside Mall and the nearest to work is Hamlin and Squirrel, meaning that I have to cover 3.4 miles from my house to the stop, then around another .75 miles after the destination stop (without sidewalks) to the building I work in.

The times are also pretty pitiful, with the westbound buses (yes, there are only two) leaving at 5:51am and 6:48am, arriving at 6:14am and 7:11am, respectively. The eastbound (home, again only two) busses are at 3:33pm and 4:38pm, arriving 4:38pm 5:00pm.

This isn’t really usable. If you’d like to see the route for yourself, look up route 559 here.

I think I’d have to get up particularly early bike the first segment, hope the bike rack on the bus works acceptably on the highway, bike the last bit, then find a place for my bike. I may as well just bike the whole thing.

Leave a Comment

Indian Springs Metropark Underwater Viewing Room

Published June 29, 2008

Sitting around the edge of the underwater viewing room at Indian Springs Metropark.

Here is a photo of the underwater viewing room in the Environmental Discovery Center at Indian Springs Metropark. It is an acrylic cylinder with a domed roof, and an arched walkway leading from the basement of the building. Here is a photo of the pond behind the center, with the underwater viewing room visible as a light spot in the pond.

Wanting somewhere to wander, Danielle and I headed over to the park this afternoon. Everything was going well until we tried to head down some of the nature center trails which were much more insect infested than we would have prefered. I had numerous deer flies on me at any given time, and one of them bit my head. Of course there were also mosquitoes. Lots and lots and lots of mosquitoes.

(This photo was taken with a Peleng 8mm fisheye lens and is posted without cropping or other processing. I personally find it interesting how well a lens like that works for photographing the inside of a curved room. I feel that defishing and/or cropping would have made it less interesting.)

Leave a Comment

New Coffee Cup

Published June 29, 2008

Bodum 16 oz Travel Mug, part number 10659-01B (left) to replace my aging, older Bodum travel mug which has developed leaks between the insulating walls.

Almost every morning I grind some coffee then brew it using an Aerobie Aeropress (photo of mine here). Back in 2000 (or so) I purchased an interesting tea press / travel mug at a Starbucks, made by Bodum in Switzerland, and the cup from this is what I use to carry the coffee with me to work or whatnot. (When drinking the coffee at home I just use a pint glass with an insulating cardboard ring around it.) After all the use the Bodum travel cup has received the seal between the two walls have stared to fail and, as can be seen above coffee, has begun slowly seeping in.

A couple weeks back I finally ordered a replacement cup, and that’s the new Bodum 16 oz Travel Mug seen above. I’m a bit disappointed that it feels to be of cheaper construction than the current one, and I can’t help but correlate it’s Chinese origins with the cheap feeling of the cup, especially when feeling the older (but failing) cup’s construction and reading the now-rare MADE IN SWITZERLAND stamp on the bottom.

Overall the design of the cup seems a bit better, with a nicer gasket system along the top and a more positive screw-close mechanism. Hopefully it’ll work well.

New to this mug is the ability to insert stuff between the walls, as demonstrated by the Bodum-logo’d paper currently inserted there. I think I’m going to duplicate this, but instead of photos I’ll do something interesting with transparency. It will be a bit complicated because the top and bottom are curved slightly, but hopefully I’ll be able to pull some geometry out of the air and properly duplicate it.

As part of this new artwork I think I’ll incorporate a solid band to ensure that when the cup is placed in the Flavia machine at work that its IR sensor can see that my cup is there. (Normally it just sees through clear cups and fails to dispense, so I have to hold my thumb over the sensor.) I think some sort of caffeine-based theme could be interesting as well, including graduating the cup with markings indicating how much caffeine is present in the remaining beverage, based on the presumption that there is 150mg of caffeine in 8 oz of coffee. Or… maybe something else. I’m not sure yet.

Tomorrow morning I’ll give the cup its first go, and hopefully piece together some manner of artwork sometime later this week. I’m really sleepy, so I think that for now I’ll just take out the trash and go to bed.

Leave a Comment

Rear Wheel Grease

Published June 27, 2008

Even though I have new bike wheels on the way, I figure I should try and make the old ones work as good as possible for spare / winter use. Part of this involved disassembling the rear hub, cleaning it, and just generally being sure it’s okay. It was a bit sticky and wasn’t turning very smoothly, so I figured that maybe it had a bearing and/or race problem like the front wheel did.

After opening up the rear bearings I found that there was nearly a tablespoon of grease around the balls and sitting lumpily on the axel, with lots of it in places where it just wouldn’t do much beyond compacting and gumming up the works. Tomorrow (or maybe Sunday) after I get a properly sized cone wrench I’ll put the wheel back together and see how it works. The freewheel itself currently seems fine so I don’t need to touch that, but the wheel bearings themselves were definitely needing some work.

Leave a Comment

Smart UPS 1400

Published June 27, 2008

Old Yuasa batteries from my Smart UPS 1400 and the new Rhino version (part SLA-17-12 from Rage Battery) which will replace them. Also shown are the cables, fuse, and fasteners.

This post is being brought to you by a bit of energy supplied by new batteries which were just installed in the old Smart UPS 1400 in my office.

On Wednesday evening I ordered two new batteries from Rage Battery, part number SLA-17-12, which are direct replacements for the cells in the OEM Smart UPS 1400 battery. They were delivered today, so I used the parts from the old pack (bus, fuse, screws, nuts, harness) to build them into a replacement pack which I then stuffed that back into the UPS housing. After a brief test it’s now all sitting back on the rack, charging, smoothing power, and waiting to protect things at the next power glitch.

Thankfully the replacement TiVo HD was delivered today as well, so I think I’ll go put that into place while Danielle cooks dinner.

Leave a Comment