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Stuck Link!

Published August 22, 2009

Today I took a ride from my house up to Stony Creek, around the trails, into Downtown Rochester, then over to Bloomer. Bloomer is a bit convoluted, and the only trails that I could find are the rather intimidating ridge trails, which are a bit riskier than I prefer to ride. (See this photo, which shows where I stopped riding as I prefer to not duck around chest-height trees on off camber bench cut trails with steep drop-offs.)

Right as I began heading towards my house, something wasn’t going right in the drivetrain. Every couple pedal strokes or so I was getting a bit of ghost shifting, particularly when in physically smaller gears. A quick look showed that it was likely a stiff link on the chain, so I headed back towards home. En route to home things became worse and worse, to the point where I could only ride in the big ring and somewhere above the middle of the rear cassette. Regular ka-chunk sounds were heard as the derailleur jumped around a bit.

By the time I got home there were 34.37 miles on the odometer, in just about 2:49. I was rather wanting to ride more, but the chain was saying otherwise. This is a pretty new chain, and prior to this ride (at about the 120 mile mark) the factory lube still seemed to be doing its job. Everything was moving very smoothly, there was no noise from the chain, and everything was shifting well. Right now I’ve got the chain soaking in degreaser, and then post-cleaning I’ll give it a bunch of (physical) attention to try and loosen up the link. At least a new chain isn’t particularly expensive if that doesn’t work.

(The bandage is from cutting a good slice mostly off of my finger tip yesterday while slicing limes with a bent, dull knife. Doing this made me very mad at myself.)

UPDATE: Problem found! It’s a damaged inner plate.

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Python Is Interesting

Published August 20, 2009

Yes, I’m very late to the party, but as I’ve been hearing quite a bit about how useful Python (Wikipedia) is, I’ve spent some spare time over the last week giving it a look. As was suggested by some friends I started with Python 2.6.2, which is the latest version of the previous branch of the language. (There is also a 3.0 branch, but it’s my understanding that it’s not yet widely used and is sufficiently different from the previous version that it’s best to start at 2.6.2.)

After going through most of the very nice official Python tutorial I began playing with Windows-specific things, most notably Tim Golden’s WMI Module, which seems to work quite well. I still have to get more comfortable with the language, but thus far I’ve had no problems reimplementing many of the basic scripts that I’ve written at work to automate random little tasks.

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Trashwall Is Dead

Published August 18, 2009

Yesterday while at work Danielle informed me that she was unable to reach the internet from my house. SSHing into Trashwall showed that while it could talk to the public network, for some reason it couldn’t talk internally. I figured that a quick reboot might be worth trying, but after that it never came back. Watching the console yesterday showed it dumping core while booting, and that the system’s time had been reset to the epoch. Hopefully this is just a case of the PRAM battery having failed. It’s a SAFT LS 14250 C, which is thankfully easy to find. Out of the system the battery reads 3.6V, which is normal for it, but it’s possible it’s right on the edge.

I think that after replacing the battery and getting Open Firmware properly set back up I’ll look at replacing it’s el-cheapo 2GB Compact Flash drive with an actual hard disk. The extra space will allow me to run Cacti, which I think would be pretty nifty to use for logging per-device bandwidth use, wireless network stats, and things like that.

Currently my house is running just-fine on an AirPort Extreme which works well, but is a bit limited feature-wise. It’s really nifty that it supports IPv6 and all, but that’s not something that I currently use. If I’m not able to get Trashwall (that is, the Mac with the many-port NICs and such) going again, I’ll have to figure out something else for network connectivity at home. I really like the idea of a ultra-quiet OpenBSD box handling everything, but I’ll have to find (and silence) a PC in order to do the same thing. That might take a lot of effort.

UPDATE: Trashwall was fixed by fitting a new hard disk, replacing the PRAM battery, restoring the OpenFirmware settings, and installing OpenBSD 4.6. Everything is working great again.

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Bob’s Tour-de-Addison

Published August 15, 2009

Wanting to show some people around Addison Oaks, Bob set up a group ride, the Tour-de-Addision, for there today.
This morphed a bit, with some of us riding up from Rochester Mills.

This was a really great ride, totaling somewhere around 40-42 miles. We rode up to Addison Oaks via the Paint Creek Trail and some dirt roads, two laps around the park’s single track loop, through Bald Mountain, then out to the PCT again. On the way back the three people I was with (Nick, Jon, and Erik) were really pushing each other, holding a solid 22MPH for the roughly 8.5 miles from Lake Orion to Rochester. I was able to hang on behind them for a while, but once they got up near 25MPH I was lost.

After making it back to Rochester we all had food and beer at the Mills, then Erik, Kristi, and I walked over to Bean & Leaf for coffee. Unfortuntely my stupid-in-retrospect choice of espresso pushed me over the edge, and I ended up with a good bit of heat exhaustion. By the time I got home the feeling of a migraine was coming, I was really sleepy, and nausea was coming on. With this being signs of heat exhaustion and/or dehydration the AC was turned on, and I went to lay in the basement while sipping cool water. After mixed napping and drinking of cold beverages for three hours I’m feeling better, but I still haven’t had to urinate. Hopefully soon.

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Broken Crank Puller Cap on Race Face Deus XC Crankset

Published August 13, 2009

Tonight I went to pull the crankset off my bike so I could change the chainring bolts and this happened. That bottom flat piece of metal is supposed to be a taller cap, known as the crank puller cap (see crankset instructions here). It sits on the outside of the crank bolt, and as one undoes the crankset bolt it pushes against the cap, which pulls the drive-side crank off. Instead of doing that it just came apart, breaking off at the first ring of threads. This is not supposed to happen. Not much force was needed to break the part and the splines of the crank were well greased when I reassembled everything a few weeks ago, so I figure the cap simply failed.

While I can get another cap, there is a relatively thin cylindrical threaded piece of aluminum stuck in the crankset. I’m not completely sure how to get it out. I also can’t wholly disassemble the crankset until this piece of metal has been pulled and a new cap acquired. A very large easy out may work, but I might end up having to make something which digs into the remains of the cap and can unscrew it. It’s not very tight, but its not moving.

UPDATE: After a bunch of effort I was able to get the cap out and use a crank puller to remove the crank.

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Corned Beef and Swiss on Rye from The Bread Basket Deli

Published August 11, 2009

After taking a wrong turn somewhere while heading back from the Tree Farm, I found that the fastest route home would involve a trip up 8 Mile. Just before reaching Telegraph I was surprised to pass a Bread Basket Deli, and it was open! I’ve wanted some Sy Ginsberg Corned Beef, one of Detroit’s finest products, for a while now so I very quickly doubled back and ordered a corned beef and swiss on rye and some cream soda.

What I received is exactly what you see above, a giant and wonderful tasting corned beef sandwich with both old and new pickles. I’m currently eating it, but with a glass of Arcadia’s Angler’s Ale instead of the Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda. I’m a bit disappointed because the Dr. Brown’s now contains high-fructose corn syrup. I was not aware of this earlier, otherwise I wouldn’t have purchased it. Oh well; the sandwich is outstanding. This is the kind of food that makes me want to utter profanities while eating because it’s just simply that good.

If you’re interested, here is a photo of the outside of the deli, along with my bike on the car.

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Failing Furnace Blower Motor (A.O. Smith 319P892)

Published August 9, 2009

With last night’s storms and the extra-high humidity today, I turned the air conditioning on before going to bed last night. While working in the basement this morning I heard an intermittant squealing sound coming from the the furnace blower while the air conditioning was running. This wasn’t a good sign, but I figured I could just keep an eye on it and see if it gets worse. Then, sometime around 1pm, the AC was no longer working.

Reaching inside of the furnace and turning the fan by hand (with everything powered down, of course) found it to be rather stiff, and almost stuck, meaning that the bearings in the motor had likely failed. After removing the blower unit and playing with things, I found that the motor was now turning a bit better. With a replacement likely needed in the future I pulled the motor itself, then took the picture above to document the model number.

Looking further, I noticed that the motor has a ‘TOP’ marking, and right below this are two oil inlets. (One of these inlets can be seen above on the bottom part of the motor, sticking out in line with the shaft cover.) Hoping to loosen up and lubricate things a bit, I dripped a bit of Tri-Flow down into the holes, spinning the shaft some more. With the shaft moving better I reassembled the blower unit, put everything in the furnace back together, changed the air filter, and tried it out. It works, with no more (for now) squealing. Yay! Hopefully it’ll keep working. I’d rather not have to buy a replacement.

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World’s Greatest Pizza Sandwich

Published August 8, 2009

This right here, the lunch that Danielle and I a few minutes ago, is the world’s greatest pizza sandwich. First, make the aforementioned tomato sauce with a can of Trader Joe’s Fire Roasted Crushed Tomato and Chilis, garlic, olive oil, oregano, salt, and pepper. Then acquire some good sandwich pepperoni, muenster, and good quality cibatta and do the following:

· Cut a piece of cibatta of appropriate size, slice it in half like a sandwich.
· Apply thin sliced deli pepperoni to each half.
· Put sandwiches, open faced, under the broiler (on low) until the pepperoni is sizzling.
· Pull the sandwich halves and put sauce and cheese under the pepperoni on the bottom half.
· Apply sauce on the top bread , beneath the pepperoni.
· Put the sandwich halves together, with lots of mushrooms and a bit of sauce between the pepperoni.
· Place the assembled sandwiches back in the broiler, and broil until bread is slightly toasted.
· Pull from the broiler, let sit for a few minutes, then eat.

This tastes very good with Mexican Coca-Cola, and ice cream likely makes a good dessert afterward. Note that washing one’s hands after eating the sandwich will be required.

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