Okay, really slacking on the blog. Guess I don't get over here as much these days. Oh well, life goes on and the blog is obviously not much of a priority. NBD.
So what have we been up to? Check out Erin's blog. She has been very active in posting since she stopped working at the preschool.
Summer is coming to an end. We have had a taste of Fall weather and honestly I want more. It is nice to have the return of low humidity and temps in the 70-80*F range. We have had a couple of hot and humid days mixed in and the difference is major. Once you get a taste of the cooler weather the hot and muggy is not fun to revisit.
Riding is picking up as the weather waxes to cool. It is becoming enjoyable to get out and ride again. I haven't been too obsessive about riding, which I am sure is appreciated by the rest of the house. The ride log has just passed the 1 year mark and the verdict is in, just over 1,000mi in the saddle for the year. Meh, that's just how it rolls out when the typical ride is <10mi. Oddly I don't think that my ride times are much less than they have been over the last 5-6 years, just a bit more rugged terrain.
I have gone back and forth on wheels and tires over the last 3 years in AL. The terrain really does demand beefier tires, but on the flip side it sucks to push them back up the hill at the end of the ride. If you can handle pinging off the rocks on the downhills and getting a bit beat in the rough then the lighter tires/wheels help keep speed up in the flats while making the uphills a lot less work. In the end I run a wheelset that is heavier than a lot of peoples downhill race wheels with UST tubeless tires. I don't spend much time truing my wheels or fixing flats though, so I guess it all works out.
This weekend I managed to make it out to the rifle range in Madison. It was fun to get out and plink off a couple hundred rounds of .22cal, but also a bit frustrating. The scope on the Remington 552 is way off. It is going to take a bit more time and prep to get it shimmed in. The gun itself is nice, when working correctly. But it was having an issue with jamming/ejecting on missfire rounds, which were plentiful on the 2-3 year oxidized old ammunition I had. It was getting better with use, but I may need to disassemble the gun and clean/lube it for best results. By the end of the day I was pretty proficient at clearing it when it jammed. On the other hand the old bolt action single shot was performing like a champ. Matt and Mike plinked out nearly as many rounds as I did despite the speed handicap of having to chamber one round at a time. Guess messing with the scope settings and gun jams is more of a handicap. Needless to say there were no bullseyes fired with the Remington.
Around the house? Nothing much new. Erin went full-bore on the bathroom face lift. The aesthetic portion is covered in her blog, so I won't rehash it here. Biggest issue turned out to be changing out the faucet. First issue was that Erin neglected to pick up connecting hardware. Not a big deal. After a quick run to HD I fitted it up and turned the shutoff valves on. Crap! Water spraying everywhere from one of the new connectors and a drip out of the valve on the other. Back to HD to exchange the flex connector with the bad seal and to grab some new shutoff valves. Can of worms officially opened. So there I am with water all over the place, cursing and crammed under the sink trying to release 10-20 year corroded swage fittings. I hate this part since the water to the house has to be off until I get valves back on. Instead of cutting off the old swage and nuts I re-used them on the new valves. I ended up tightening the heck out of them and still had some very slow drips. But I was ready to call it a day and grab a beer.
Well about an hour and a half later I walk in to find water spraying out all over. F*%_(_*(&*(^%!! One of the nuts that I over-torqued cracked. This is not good. Basically I have only one option at hand. I can remove the valve and cut back the pipe 1/4-1/2in to get a swage on fresh tubing. Okay, I skipped the step where I cut off the old swage and tried to just swage with a new crush ring and nut. That didn't work due to the mangled nature of the pipe. Obviously I am not the first monkey to wrangle with this pipe. Right about here is where we called in backup. Fortunately Mike was available to come over and solder on a new section of pipe. So by around 9pm we were in good shape. He came back in the morning and extended the other pipe as well. Done deal.
Man, I do hate it when things go awry on home repair.
That's about all I got at the moment. Already a fairly lengthy post at any rate and no pictures or anything really exciting to show for it. Thanks for reading.
What's the weather like in Doug's neighborhood?
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Working hard or hardly working
I started this posting a couple of weeks ago and never posted it up...
I have been thrown under the bus. Seriously, every thing I touch in my new position here at NASA is either behind or on a very tight schedule.
This week I have been fighting with my computer solid for over 40hrs. My current model loads up at over 10gb, so despite my machines best effort the pidly 8gb of RAM just wasn't cutting it. Now I am squatting over in another building on a 16gb machine. Only issue with it, only a quad core.
(yes, that is all 4 cores totally pegged)
Things are going better, but these huge models really to grind PC workstations to a snail pace.
I have been thrown under the bus. Seriously, every thing I touch in my new position here at NASA is either behind or on a very tight schedule.
This week I have been fighting with my computer solid for over 40hrs. My current model loads up at over 10gb, so despite my machines best effort the pidly 8gb of RAM just wasn't cutting it. Now I am squatting over in another building on a 16gb machine. Only issue with it, only a quad core.
(yes, that is all 4 cores totally pegged)
Things are going better, but these huge models really to grind PC workstations to a snail pace.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Nuther' One for Friday
First time on a surfboard. Who would have thought it would be in Alabama :-)
The family headed out at the end of July for the annual company lake party. Like most company functions, the more you participate the more fun it is. I was out swimming, surfing, and chaufering eveyone on the waverunner. Erin and Austin managed to snare a couple of tiny Brim, which is pretty good considering they really weren't biting much this year (maybe the higher temps drove most of the fish to deeper water).
Overall it was a great way to spend the afternoon and yet another reminder of how great of a company I work for. If you are ever heading my way, N. Alabama, let me know and I will forward your resume on to the boss for consideration.
The family headed out at the end of July for the annual company lake party. Like most company functions, the more you participate the more fun it is. I was out swimming, surfing, and chaufering eveyone on the waverunner. Erin and Austin managed to snare a couple of tiny Brim, which is pretty good considering they really weren't biting much this year (maybe the higher temps drove most of the fish to deeper water).
Overall it was a great way to spend the afternoon and yet another reminder of how great of a company I work for. If you are ever heading my way, N. Alabama, let me know and I will forward your resume on to the boss for consideration.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Hot up in this joint
In case you are not catching this blog on the day it gets published I have copied the forecast down.
Basically what this boils down to is that by 5pm the temperature should be about 100 degrees and the humidity at 40-50%, which makes it feel about 110*F. Should be a nice day for a ride. Yep. Gonna need to pack some extra water and electrolytes along.
I rode on Sunday at 7am and actually enjoyed the temperature. We did a very manageable 9 miles mostly on the upper end of the park in about 2 hours. It was a nice change from the recent afternoon rides in the 90-100 degree weather.
In other bike related news, Erin has actually been making it out and getting some miles in on her bike. She seems fairly comfortable and content with it as I have built it up. That is a definite plus. Maybe I can get her out in Monte Sano this month.
My bike riding has definitely been pretty weak lately. It has been far easier to hide out at home in the AC or at the pool than to gear up and go out for a MTB ride. Looking at my ride log I went from low mileage to pathetic about the time summer started. The layoff was a good excuse, but I think the weather has a lot to do with it as well. Hopefully we will start to see the temps tapering down by mid-end of the month, then we will go into my favorite time of the year for riding here in the SE.
Nothing else too noteworthy around my neck of the woods. Little bit of mowing, little bike riding, bit of beer drinking, and the rest is family time and lazying around.
Basically what this boils down to is that by 5pm the temperature should be about 100 degrees and the humidity at 40-50%, which makes it feel about 110*F. Should be a nice day for a ride. Yep. Gonna need to pack some extra water and electrolytes along.
I rode on Sunday at 7am and actually enjoyed the temperature. We did a very manageable 9 miles mostly on the upper end of the park in about 2 hours. It was a nice change from the recent afternoon rides in the 90-100 degree weather.
In other bike related news, Erin has actually been making it out and getting some miles in on her bike. She seems fairly comfortable and content with it as I have built it up. That is a definite plus. Maybe I can get her out in Monte Sano this month.
My bike riding has definitely been pretty weak lately. It has been far easier to hide out at home in the AC or at the pool than to gear up and go out for a MTB ride. Looking at my ride log I went from low mileage to pathetic about the time summer started. The layoff was a good excuse, but I think the weather has a lot to do with it as well. Hopefully we will start to see the temps tapering down by mid-end of the month, then we will go into my favorite time of the year for riding here in the SE.
Nothing else too noteworthy around my neck of the woods. Little bit of mowing, little bike riding, bit of beer drinking, and the rest is family time and lazying around.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Dang, stagnant on the blog
Sorry to the few who actually follow this blog.
So, what's new?
Laid off:
I got notified on June 21st that my contract with TBE was on the chopping block. After months of wondering when and if my job would be effected by all the doom and gloom surrounding NASA in the wake of Obama's administration. Answer: Yes, directly. June 30th was my last day on the job.
Looking for new work is never fun, but having to do so under duress just plain sucks. I hit the deck running and sent out updated resume to anything that was even partially applicable to my skill set.
Laid back:
After processing out of MSFC on Wednesday I had an interview Thursday morning that ran long. I got home in the afternoon cracked a couple of beers and received a call from my boss in the afternoon. Apparently he had found another TBE contractor spot in another branch and I was going back to work on Tuesday. So I ended up with a 5-day 4th of July holiday weekend that was much more relaxed.
Government inneficiency at its finest:
So the last 2 weeks I have been getting paid to just sit at work. I can't log onto a gov. computer without my badge. So turning in my badge on Wednesday and missing 2 days of work constitutes the need for a whole new background screening. Weird. Beets not getting paid any day though :-)
Home life:
Not much to report. Been hitting the pool up quite a bit lately. It is cheap, fun, and good exercise. Erin and I have used the whole layoff scare as a wake up call. We have figured out a budget that will hopefully have us much better prepared for the next time this sort of thing occurs.
In the garage:
Nothing news worthy to report. More outward than inward tools at the moment. Part of the budgeting and being better prepared meant that some of the lesser-used woodworking tools need to go to put money into savings. So last week I sold off several of my hand planes. More tools will follow. Life goes on.
Working on cars:
Yep, my newest hobby has been embarked upon begrudgingly. I have mentioned in the past that I am really not into working on cars. After spending most of my latter teen years working on them to one extent or another I lived quite happily paying someone else to do all maintenance on our cars. Well, sticking with the budget theme I am having to get out and do more myself. The other motivator is that most of the real issues with our vehicles seem to stump the mechanics. We took Erin's truck in for a full tuneup a couple of years ago figuring that would allow them to get in and really see what was causing power loss and making it run poorly. Not the case. We received a clean bill of health, a bill for about $1000, and a truck that ran no better than before.
Tuesday had me changing the fuel filter on the Tundra and swapping out the brake pads. For $62 in parts and a couple of hours of time I did 2 tasks that would have cost me $300-500 had I taken it in. Not my favorite way to spend time, but it is nice to take care of things myself and save money at the same time.
Today I will be putting in a new air filter, cleaning the MAF, and cleaning the throttle body. Should be fun.
Riding bicycles:
Been hot as hell here in the SE last month and a half. With humidity varying from 50-100% the heat index has had us somewhere in the 90-115F range pretty regularly with actual temps 85-100F. Riding around in a sauna is interesting. 100oz of water doesn't seem to go more than about 2-3 hours even keeping track of consumption. My saddle time has also suffered due to the job hunting and related stress. Thing are starting to settle in, but I am still only getting a couple of rides in each week. That will have to do for now.
I have been riding a set of 777mm wide bars and a 65mm stem. That is nearly 31in for the Americans in the audience. It is amazing the difference in DH stability/control. It rides like the bike did when I had the fork at 150mm, but I am still running it at 140mm. Only down-side I see is that it killed my tech/steep climbing stability. Guess it puts too much weight out over the back wheel. Always trade offs. For the Heckler there is a balance point, on the one side is xc/trail ride all-around stability and on the other is shredding DH stability. You can't get both.
I am diggin on the Hilltop Hoods lately, good music:
So, what's new?
Laid off:
I got notified on June 21st that my contract with TBE was on the chopping block. After months of wondering when and if my job would be effected by all the doom and gloom surrounding NASA in the wake of Obama's administration. Answer: Yes, directly. June 30th was my last day on the job.
Looking for new work is never fun, but having to do so under duress just plain sucks. I hit the deck running and sent out updated resume to anything that was even partially applicable to my skill set.
Laid back:
After processing out of MSFC on Wednesday I had an interview Thursday morning that ran long. I got home in the afternoon cracked a couple of beers and received a call from my boss in the afternoon. Apparently he had found another TBE contractor spot in another branch and I was going back to work on Tuesday. So I ended up with a 5-day 4th of July holiday weekend that was much more relaxed.
Government inneficiency at its finest:
So the last 2 weeks I have been getting paid to just sit at work. I can't log onto a gov. computer without my badge. So turning in my badge on Wednesday and missing 2 days of work constitutes the need for a whole new background screening. Weird. Beets not getting paid any day though :-)
Home life:
Not much to report. Been hitting the pool up quite a bit lately. It is cheap, fun, and good exercise. Erin and I have used the whole layoff scare as a wake up call. We have figured out a budget that will hopefully have us much better prepared for the next time this sort of thing occurs.
In the garage:
Nothing news worthy to report. More outward than inward tools at the moment. Part of the budgeting and being better prepared meant that some of the lesser-used woodworking tools need to go to put money into savings. So last week I sold off several of my hand planes. More tools will follow. Life goes on.
Working on cars:
Yep, my newest hobby has been embarked upon begrudgingly. I have mentioned in the past that I am really not into working on cars. After spending most of my latter teen years working on them to one extent or another I lived quite happily paying someone else to do all maintenance on our cars. Well, sticking with the budget theme I am having to get out and do more myself. The other motivator is that most of the real issues with our vehicles seem to stump the mechanics. We took Erin's truck in for a full tuneup a couple of years ago figuring that would allow them to get in and really see what was causing power loss and making it run poorly. Not the case. We received a clean bill of health, a bill for about $1000, and a truck that ran no better than before.
Tuesday had me changing the fuel filter on the Tundra and swapping out the brake pads. For $62 in parts and a couple of hours of time I did 2 tasks that would have cost me $300-500 had I taken it in. Not my favorite way to spend time, but it is nice to take care of things myself and save money at the same time.
Today I will be putting in a new air filter, cleaning the MAF, and cleaning the throttle body. Should be fun.
Riding bicycles:
Been hot as hell here in the SE last month and a half. With humidity varying from 50-100% the heat index has had us somewhere in the 90-115F range pretty regularly with actual temps 85-100F. Riding around in a sauna is interesting. 100oz of water doesn't seem to go more than about 2-3 hours even keeping track of consumption. My saddle time has also suffered due to the job hunting and related stress. Thing are starting to settle in, but I am still only getting a couple of rides in each week. That will have to do for now.
I have been riding a set of 777mm wide bars and a 65mm stem. That is nearly 31in for the Americans in the audience. It is amazing the difference in DH stability/control. It rides like the bike did when I had the fork at 150mm, but I am still running it at 140mm. Only down-side I see is that it killed my tech/steep climbing stability. Guess it puts too much weight out over the back wheel. Always trade offs. For the Heckler there is a balance point, on the one side is xc/trail ride all-around stability and on the other is shredding DH stability. You can't get both.
I am diggin on the Hilltop Hoods lately, good music:
Monday, June 14, 2010
Worked over
Yep, feeling a bit worked over this morning. It is my own fault. Erin put the notion in my head that I could ride all I wanted on Sunday. Sounds good. After sleeping in and missing the 9am group ride, lazying around the house, procrastinating, putting the bike back together, and drinking a couple of beers I decided that I needed to punish myself with a massive ride.
The plan, or notion as it was, is to ride the big loop around the base of the mountain. That nets you a little over 20mi of undulating trail. Most of the hills are short, so it is mainly a sustained pace. The only real climb is about 600 vertical feet to get back up to Burrit trailhead at the end of the ride. No problem right?
So here is what I actually rode (green blaze)...
I started off with high hopes on completing the full loop, but by the third connector off of Flatrock I had to pull the plug (red X on map). But in all honesty I had been contemplating other routes since the first connector. The main problem turned out to be the temperature and not having enough water. It was in the low-mid 90's when I headed out with just under 100oz of water. At the red X I had about 20oz left so I decided the prudent thing to do would be to head straight up. I knew I would be running out of water, but the difference in this route and the planned route (blue blaze) is that I could stop at the park office to get enough water to finish the ride. It was only about 3mi to the water where as the car was still about 8mi away. Easy choice other than the 500 vertical feet up to O'Shaughnessy Point in a mile of trail. Most of that is hike. I ran out of water just after getting to the top, so at that point my choice of route was looking pretty good.
So in the end I think I came out around 18mi of ride, 4mi of that was pavement back to the truck. I am gonna have to write this loop off until the temperatures come back down in the fall. It is just too much time to be out on a 100oz of water in 90 degree plus weather. Total ride time was just over 4 hours. In the last 45 minutes my body went into shut down and really wasn't dealing with the food and water well. I think more electrolytes would have helped. Gonna have to figure that out for the summer rides here since you sweat so much.
The plan, or notion as it was, is to ride the big loop around the base of the mountain. That nets you a little over 20mi of undulating trail. Most of the hills are short, so it is mainly a sustained pace. The only real climb is about 600 vertical feet to get back up to Burrit trailhead at the end of the ride. No problem right?
So here is what I actually rode (green blaze)...
I started off with high hopes on completing the full loop, but by the third connector off of Flatrock I had to pull the plug (red X on map). But in all honesty I had been contemplating other routes since the first connector. The main problem turned out to be the temperature and not having enough water. It was in the low-mid 90's when I headed out with just under 100oz of water. At the red X I had about 20oz left so I decided the prudent thing to do would be to head straight up. I knew I would be running out of water, but the difference in this route and the planned route (blue blaze) is that I could stop at the park office to get enough water to finish the ride. It was only about 3mi to the water where as the car was still about 8mi away. Easy choice other than the 500 vertical feet up to O'Shaughnessy Point in a mile of trail. Most of that is hike. I ran out of water just after getting to the top, so at that point my choice of route was looking pretty good.
So in the end I think I came out around 18mi of ride, 4mi of that was pavement back to the truck. I am gonna have to write this loop off until the temperatures come back down in the fall. It is just too much time to be out on a 100oz of water in 90 degree plus weather. Total ride time was just over 4 hours. In the last 45 minutes my body went into shut down and really wasn't dealing with the food and water well. I think more electrolytes would have helped. Gonna have to figure that out for the summer rides here since you sweat so much.
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