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69er!

Published October 21, 2010

Ever since fitting my Specialized with a rigid fork I’ve thought that a 29er wheel could fit nicely in the fork and was unlikely to affect the handling much. After test fitting another wheel last night I posted to the MMBA forums looking for a 29er front wheel and picked one up today†. While finishing the swap of drivetrain components from the Titus to the Specialized I put the wheel on, and it all seems to work nicely. For the $45 and time spent shuffling components I think this bike is ending up as something rather interesting. It may even work out to be a good winter bike.

I also fitted the bike with plain lock-on grips for this weekend’s cyclocross race as the only other grips I have include bar ends, which aren’t permitted equipment. The bottle cage was removed to make carrying the bike easier and I’ll switch the pedals from platforms (which were for testing) to Eggbeaters before then. I’ll probably also take this for a test ride at River Bends tomorrow, if weather permits. A fatter front tire would have been nice as well, but as I’m just playing around with my old bike I didn’t want to spend any more money.

† I purchased a WTB Dual Duty rim / Shimano Hub with straight silver spokes, fitted with a 160mm Avid rotor, and a practically-new Kenda Small Block 8 tire all assembled together for $45 total.

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Shiny Clean Cranksets

Published October 19, 2010

In preparing for Mad Anthony Cyclocross race at Fort Wayne I’ll be swapping shifting components between two of my bikes so that the Titus Racer X 29er gets new SRAM X9 components and the Specialized Rockhopper gets its SRAM X7 stuff. Since this involves a fair amount of disassembly I figured I’d completely wash both bikes, including their drivetrains, and thus tonight I pulled the cranksets apart and washed them. Since the last similar cleaning both had become well-packed with gritty dirt and the chainrings had built up the typical packed in oil and dirt mixture.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get the bikes washed and the reassembly / parts move started, and then Wednesday I can take the Specialized out for a test ride at Stony Creek.

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Massive Fallout 2010

Published October 17, 2010

Thanks to great weather the 2010 edition of Massive Fallout has gone off successfully. Following some trail marking on Thursday and a wedding until late on Friday I managed to wake up on time for the ride. Despite skipping the first part of Stony Creek I still ended up with 52.91 miles and 4:08:17 of moving time and riding most of each of the four main trails; Stony Creek, Bald Mountain, Addison Oaks, and Bloomer.

On the way back (before visiting Bloomer) Jon, Rob, and I even managed to stop by Lipuma’s Coney Island for a rather unhealthy (but satisfying) pile of food to eat.

As hoped, this was a really nice day. Rob had even made up spoke cards to indicate those of us who could provide direction and help, but it seems that most people either didn’t notice the cards or had no problem finding the route themselves. Now to rest up a bit today and get on with the week.

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Massive Fallout Marking, Racing, etc.

Published October 15, 2010

This has been a busy week or so. How, you ask?

Saturday was the 6 and 12 Hour race at Addison Oaks, where our team (Nick, Marty, Erik, and I as the East Side Stepchildren) took second place out of third in the 4 Person Open Sport category, winning nice fleece vests. We rotated through taking turns doing one lap each, until the end when Erik set out to do Marty’s final lap. (Photos of the start: 1 · 2)

Sunday I did a bunch of work out at River Bends and managed to poke myself in the eye with a stick. The white of my eye is a bit bruised on one side, but otherwise fine and getting better.

Work has been busy (yet satisfying) this week, which makes the day go by quickly. Monday I fixed a GPS (yes, another Garmin Edge 305) and got some things done around the house. Last night (Wednesday) was time spent at Sherwood with friends to enjoy half-off hamburger night.

Tonight Bob and I went up to Bald Mountain to mark the trail for Massive Fallout, a huge group ride taking place this Saturday. We went through 2.5 cans of spray paint marking the route in and out of the park, and all potentially confusing corners along the trail. Unfortunately we got caught in the rain and cut out early, leaving one intersection still to be marked. In retrospect it only would have been another 15 minutes in the rain to mark this corner, saving Bob another trip tomorrow, so now I feel bad about making haste back to the parking lot in reaction to the storm clouds dripping on us.

At least the weather should be good for the ride itself on Saturday and the weekend’s plans.

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Relay Failure Means Fridge Failure

Published October 12, 2010

Three days after defrosting my freezer to get the whole refrigerator working Danielle noticed that the fridge was no longer cold. The evening after Danielle rushed most of the food stores over to my parents house I set out to try and diagnose the fridge. After I’d spent a few hours fruitlessly looking it over without any documentation I decided that the best thing to do would be to call a repair person. I normally don’t like doing this, but not having a fridge makes things somewhat difficult, and it likely would have taken a few more days for me to figure out what was wrong.

Doc’s Appliance Service (warning: auto-playing video) came out to do the repair and $210.21† later the relay on the compressor was replaced with a new, compatible (but non drop-in) replacement that required cutting the wiring harness to install. As this was the only part the repair person had readily available it was the only choice to get the repair done at that time. While talking to the repair guy (who was quite friendly) afterward and detailing everything I’d looked into, he showed me that Maytag actually ships block diagrams and technical troubleshooting guides with each fridge, sticking them to the bottom of the fridge in a small plastic bag, folded up to about the same size as a deck of playing cards.

I wish that I’d known about this diagram before calling, because that would have allowed me to do all the troubleshooting myself, including finding the failed relay. It also would have saved me the time spent looking at the fridge’s main control board for issues, as the automatic diagnostics would have eliminated the control board and other items that I fiddled with. I would also have then been able to order part 67005560 from Sears for $27.33 and do the replacement myself for 13% of the cost.

In the end I suspect that the relay was failing, keeping the compressor on long after it should have, resulting in the coil freezing up. It’s even possible that the fridge had been running near non-stop for the last few weeks. Turning the fridge off for a while and then putting it back in normal duty cycle then likely caused the relay to fail completely, after which it no would cool. If you’d like to see more photos of the failed relay, part 3ARR65P4E3A6, they can be found here: Failed Fridge Relay (3ARR65P4E3A6).

†$69.95 diagnostics charge, $80 labor, $56.85 in parts, and $3.41 in sales tax.

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HSBC’s Fraud Accounting is Silly

Published October 12, 2010

Despite getting a new HSBC credit card after some fraudulent activity HSBC still has my old account listed and accessible on their website with a $0.01 balance. When I called a few minutes ago to inquire about this I was told to ignore this info as “some people can still see it” and the lingering $0.01 is “for accounting purposes” and “won’t affect my credit report”.

This seems very strange to me. I hope it doesn’t result in HSBC attempting to improperly collect on this Purchase Debit Adjustment. Then again, perhaps them doing so would be a good exercise in small claims court.

UPDATE: A second call to HSBC, this time answered by a more friendly man with an Indian accent (as opposed to a Southern-sounding woman the first time) resulted in him looking into the case, and saying that the account is closed, and despite the reflected amount owed of $0.01 that I should just ignore the account, as from HSBC’s perspective it is completely closed.

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River Bends Park Trail in the News

Published October 7, 2010

When checking the mail today I was somewhat surprised to see this on the front page of the Shelby-Utica News. Last week I was interviewed by Kristyne Demske who wrote the article and this past Saturday while doing trail work a photographer was out with us taking some photos, and this article is the result. While a few quotes seem out of context, I feel that the overall article is good and reflects what we hope to accomplish with the trails. I could probably do with learning to talk to reporters a bit better, too; more concise, better quotable bites, and a bit less wordy.

You can read the complete article online by clicking here, or see scans of the two pages of the article here: Page 1 · Page 2

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River Bends Park Trail Map

Published October 5, 2010

After getting the second phase of trails at River Bends open this weekend I set to work creating a map of the trails in the park. Well, here it is. This map lists all of the two track, official single track, and asphalt along with showing the parking lot and the nearest intersection for reference.

To download a PDF of the map, click the image above or here: River_Bends_03-Oct-2010.pdf

UPDATE: The 17-Nov-2010 update of the map can be found here: River_Bends_17-Nov-2010.pdf

UPDATE 2: The 13-Mar-2011 version of the map can be found here: River_Bends_13-Mar-2011.pdf

UPDATE 3: The latest version of all maps of the trails at River Bends can be found at: http://mmba.org/library/maps/riverbends/latest.pdf

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VBScript Function to Check Active Directory Domain Access

Published October 4, 2010

The following VBScript function can be used to check if a given username and password has access to the specified domain. It will return true or false depending on whether or not access was granted.

function fnCheckAccess(strDomain, strUserID, strUserPWD)
 
    const ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION = &H01
    const ADS_CHASE_REFERRALS_ALWAYS = &H60
 
    dim objDSO
    dim objUser
    dim strPath
 
    strPath = "LDAP://" & strDomain
 
    On Error Resume Next
    set objDSO = GetObject("LDAP:")
    set objUser = objDSO.OpenDSObject(strPath, strUserID, strUserPWD, ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION OR ADS_CHASE_REFERRALS_ALWAYS)
    if Err.Number <> 0 then
        fnCheckAccess = False
    else
        fnCheckAccess = True
    end if
    Err.Clear
    On Error Goto 0
 
    set objDSO = Nothing
    set objUser = Nothing
 
end function

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Phase II of River Bends is Open!

Published October 3, 2010

With a total of 39.5 volunteer hours spent during a rainy trail day of bench cutting, installing a new bridge, (which Pete designed specifically for the space), raking, trimming, and generally finishing off the trail, Phase II of the single track trails at River Bends are now open. While the trails are still a bit slippery from the last couple days of rain, they should be quite nice to ride.

Once I was done taking a break after the trail day I then headed back to River Bends and walked the new part of the trail with My Tracks recording the route. This data, combined with stuff gathered on previous mapping trips, allowed me to make this map showing all the park-recognized paths within the park. While just the first revision, I’m still quite happy with how it’s all coming along. There’s now a ridable, cohesive loop of multiple miles of single track.

Now to get to finishing the other loops that hang off of it. They already exist, but need both some cleanup and trimming before they’ll be properly ridable. Right now getting through some parts of them is akin to riding down a corn row.

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