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A February For Riding

Published February 18, 2012

This February’s bizarre weather has made for some really nice riding. After a hectic (but good) day working I was able to get out a little early and go for a ride. Trails are still too squishy to ride, but almost all of the pavement was dry, the sun was out, and the air was warm enough that I could wear knickers, toe covers, a base layer, and a light wind jacket.

During this ride I explored a few neighborhoods that I’d yet to pass through, finding a new (to me) connector to the MOT near 24 Mile and a route through an undeveloped neighborhood, up a small rock retaining wall, and into another neighborhood that I frequently pass through. While I didn’t venture into it (because of the aforementioned soft ground and my relatively skinny tires) I also came across a sane entrance to this path-filled yet apparently abandoned area which might be a nice place to take a break and eat. More and more of this area is starting to come together mentally, and I’m getting even more ideas for long path/residential/dirt road rides.

The full route / GPS data for the ride can be seen here if you’re interested.

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LP Gas Tank Weights

Published February 18, 2012

My LP gas tank, when essentially† empty, weighs 17.82 pounds. When freshly filled by Metropolitan Tool Rental in Shelby Township it weighs 36.32 pounds. The TW (tare weight) stamp on the chime indicates that the empty tank should weigh 17 pounds.

I’m not sure if I’ll go to Metropolitan for another tank fill, as they seem to charge a fixed price for tank filling regardless of amount needed. I was getting one tank filled and another (which was about half empty) topped off, and I was initially told that there was a flat rate for filling any tanks. Asking them if it’d really be full price to have one tank partially filled they cut that price in half. Next time I’ll try and find a shop that simply charges by the quantity of fuel sold plus a base service charge or something.

† Essentially empty is defined as when the tank is empty enough that, while operating a turkey fryer burner for brewing beer, it would not produce a normal flame and thick frost was developing on the very bottom of the tank. Upon swirling the tank to warm the liquid the flame would return to normal size, but within a few minutes it would settle back town to a trickle. I’m presuming that the gas level was low enough that any evaporation (read: liquid turning to burnable vapor) was sufficiently chilling the remaining liquid so that it wouldn’t readily evaporate.

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Burroughs Mainframe Cards

Published February 17, 2012

Years ago I got the chance to help empty out a friend’s neighbor’s basement after they passed away. This basement was stuffed with old computers and electronics, and I acquired a number of interesting items from there, many of which are now displayed around the house. (Core memory, old test equipment, notebooks, etc.)

The photos from this excursion can be found here, if you’re interested.

One of the items I’d acquired was a milk crate full of old cards from a Burroughs mainframe. Each is a bunch of discrete components built into what’s essentially a logical unit, designed to perform some function. These days a small integrated circuit would be used to perform the same (or multiple) functions.

I’ve given many of these items away, as in my excitement I ended up with many more items than needed. Everything from large boxes of valves to old, uncalibrated oscilloscopes have found homes with friends who had a better use for them than I did. A little while back I was contacted by a guy named William Donzelli who was interested in the history of the Burroughs mainframe and the cards from it. I didn’t know much about it and couldn’t answer many questions, so a couple days back I sent off this box containing the cards to him. Hopefully he’ll find them enlightening.

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Crucial m4 SSD for Data Processing

Published February 14, 2012

I’ve been processing some relatively large sets of data at work lately, and I’m running into disk IO issues after kicking off some of the data processing tasks. As an easy way to alleviate this I picked up a 64GB Crucial m4 SSD and stuffed it into my laptop’s optical drive bay via a $20 Nimitz-branded SATA hard drive adapter acquired from eBay. The drive itself was $99.99 from Micro Center, and since I purchased it myself once I’m done working with it I’ll be able to repurpose it in a personal machine of some sort.

While not a panacea nor excuse for my poor habits of bolting together VBScript and GNU command line utilities, it has helped quite a bit. One typical script (immediately post-reboot, with an empty disk cache) takes ~120.234 seconds to run a task from the hard drive and ~28.400 seconds from the SSD. I’ve seen similar speed improvements across the board, and this really helps when I’m prototyping things and wanting feedback as quickly as possible.

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There’s a Rock in my Hops!

Published February 12, 2012

After some fun bike riding I got to brewing another batch of beer; a slight variant on a blonde ale referred to by Cap N Cork as Vegas Gold. This was to have 2 oz of Sterling Leaf Hops in it (these are from LD Carlson), but while measuring them out into two mugs there was a bang of something hard falling into one of the containers.

Reaching into the hops I found this rock, which per my kitchen scale has a mass of ~10g. I thought that one of this bag of hops seemed a bit small, but I figured it was just a little more compact than usual. Since it constituted a bit more than one third of a bag the finishing and aroma additions were a bit short, but I’m sure the beer will be fine. And now I have a hop-encrusted rock!

(Thankfully this was in the bag that I’d been measuring out and not the one that got dumped right into the kettle. While I don’t think the rock is particularly dirty I’m glad it didn’t get boiled in case something odd might have come off or out of it.)

UPDATE: I’d emailed this post to LD Carlson, and a very friendly person there contacted me and ended up sending me some replacement hops which I used in my next batch of beer. Interestingly, they no longer stocked Sterling Leaf Hops, so the ones that I purchased must have been pretty old. Hopefully it won’t mess with the flavor of the beer. Maybe I should stick to pelletized stuff for now on…

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Fat Bikes at River Bends

Published February 12, 2012

This afternoon, in lieu of a lengthy dirt road ride†, a few folks and I met up at River Bends to ride some snow covered trails. This was quite a bit of fun and I managed to get in just under an hour and a half of moving time. Some of the trails were a bit iffy on the current tires on the Mukluk (particularly the Endomorph on the rear), but it was still a good time. I may want something a bit knobbier next year, but for now I’ll stick with what I have.

The photo above shows James (with the mohawk, who didn’t originally plan to meet up with us but just happened along as we were in the parking lot), Bob, and Nick as they are queued up to cross a stream in River Bends’ Seasonal Loops by walking on a very makeshift bridge. I’d already passed, as did Carlos who was standing a few feet behind me. This ended up being a pretty nice ride, and hopefully I’ll be able to get out for a few more rides this winter. Maybe tomorrow… We’ll see…

† Mostly due to the 30MPH+ wind gusts and negative-digit-Fahrenheit wind chill.

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Found: Danielle’s Pink Mitten

Published February 9, 2012

Back at the end of January Danielle was hiking at Stony Creek, but lost her mitten while on the Roller Coaster. Despite a post to the MMBA Forum’s Lost and Found section it hadn’t been returned.

Then, last night while out riding Stony Creek in the dark something pink and sparkly caught my eye as I passed a tree. It was Danielle’s pink mitten! Someone had picked it up and set it in the crook of a tree along the side of the trail.

Now Danielle has a matching pair of mittens again. Yay!

UPDATE: Turns out that she’d declared the situation lost and thrown out the other mitten this past weekend. Oh well.

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Nice Trainer Setup

Published February 8, 2012

I’m pretty happy with the current trainer setup in the basement. It is located in front of the TV but behind the futon so I can watch a movie while riding and Danielle can use the futon (to watch the movie or play games) without us needing to move anything around. My netbook is on a keyboard stand in front of the bike so I can use TrainerRoad instead of a typical bike computer, and the I-beam spanning the basement is directly overhead and serves as a convenient shelf. The kegerator of homebrew is for after.

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Flat (Car) Tire!

Published February 7, 2012

En route to Cap N Cork after work I was about to cross Hayes (on 21 Mile) when I heard a thunk similar to a rock hitting my wheel well. Perhaps half a mile I found myself pulling over and getting out of the car to confirm that my tire is flat. A quick change later and I was on my way, but the nail-sized puncture hole will require some patching work. Hopefully Discount Tire or another local shop will be able to sort it out tomorrow. It looks to be a best-case-possible patchable hole.

Since I was out along side the road I had to use the trunk-mounted screw jack. This worked pretty well, except the thread on the main screw is rather fine pitched, which meant it took quite a few turns to get the vehicle off the ground. This is probably a good feature overall because it means that less effort is required to lift the vehicle, but tonight it meant a good bit more time spent out in the cold.

It’s also probably a good thing that I had one of my bicycle tire pumps with me. I checked the spare before putting it on, and it was about 20psi low. Whoops.

(Note that the second, bottom hole in the photo is not damage but instead one of the places where a stud could be fitted. My snow tires are clearly not studded.)

UPDATE: Fixed for free by Discount Tire. From what the guy at the shop said it was a screw, and a broken off part of it was left inside the tire. I suspect the THUNK sound I heard was the outer part of the screw breaking off, and that would then explain the non-immediate deflation.

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Notched Pink Foam

Published February 6, 2012

This evening before heading home I stopped off at Home Depot and picked up some pink foam to line the inside of the Kegged Beer Cooler / Kegerator collar for additional insulation. It cut nicely and before long I was sticking it to the inside of the collar with hot melt glue. I was even able to notch it to fit cleanly around the tap fittings.

The wire basket fits nicely on top of the foam, and with the basket moved to the other side there’s now enough room for the fourth keg. Not that I have anything to put in it, nor a gas with which to connect it… But it fits!

All that’s left to do on this project is finish off the drip tray and add a Y fitting to one of the gas lines.

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