Monthly Archive for July, 2007

‘Roncam

Fabio, we need ‘Roncam. Coming down Ward, stopped before Beretania because light red, everyone is stopped. Moron in Titan talking on his cell phone rolls into the back of the Suzuki. I pull into the convenience store at the corner & park on side by gas pumps. I see him turn in. He drives past me, parks in the stalls by the shop, gets out, and then starts walking to the store! At this moment he is officially a ‘Ron. I call out to him & ask if his truck is alright. Of course at this point I didn’t really give a flying monkeys behind about his truck. But I guess maybe its my over polite Japanese culture influence method of saying hey ‘Ron, WTF are you doing?! I had already looked at my (actually Dad’s) bumper and damage was trivial. Luckily his bumper did not hit the spare tire. So really that wasn’t the issue, the issue was that he said he didn’t know he hit me. Sheesh.

Anyway, Fabio, you need to finish development of your tailgater cam and we need to make it into the ‘Roncam and adapt it to spool video continuously to a memory card with the big red ‘Ron button to save the video. Or if its made so simply pulling the card out you can view the video file left on the card. You know, if you made it small without needing a laptop, relatively inexpensive unit, bet you could sell it. Consumer version and commercial version, commercial version perhaps some kind of authentication algorithm so it could be submitted as legal evidence. I even give you permission to use the ‘Roncam name.

Most Advantageous

Thursday evening dinner was Cafe Maharani. Been wanting to check it out for a long time. Site of the former Javarama by the Down To Earth in McCully. We used to be fixtures at Javarama. Cafe Maharani is an Indian restaurant crammed into that small space. I was worried about parking, but I found a stall in back, and Derek lucked out and scooped prime parking right in front. Checking things out from outside it was already pretty packed inside, wonderful aroma of spices waft out, and they are equiped with a tandoori oven, we were sold. We were told we would have about a 15 minute wait, so we took a stroll to Star to find some beer as Maharani is BYOB. Timing perfect, table is ready for us when we get back.

We decide to do the 2 person dinner combo which consists of samosa appetizer, choice of two entrees, rice & naan. img_0788.JPGThe veggie samosa is a deep fried pastry stuffed with a curry spiced veggie filling, served with a spicy tamarind chutney, and a cool yogurt sauces. Both nice, but the tamarind sauce is wonderful. We do the eggplant tikka masala and chicken vindaloo our entrees. Oh, and this seems wrong, they have beef as entree choices. Continue reading ‘Most Advantageous’

Bzzzz…

I’m sleepy.  I’m disoriented.

I had an iced Thai mocha from Lion’s cafe.

Now I’m sleepy, disoriented, and jittery.

All packed up and ready to go.  I hope I didn’t forget anything… it’s not like I’m going to somewhere in the wilderness though –  there are stores in Whistler village – it’s just the normal traveler’s anxiety and not wanting to pay, “how much for a pack of four AA batteries?”  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post any trip info here while I’m there, otherwise, see y’all on 06 August or thereabouts.

Bzz…

The brain is not fully functional today.  I was up until after midnight packing the bike and starting to pack my gear for the Whistler MTB trip tomorrow.  I have to remember to buy a spare XTR chain tonight – got a spare rear derailleur and brake pads on Tuesday.  The bike fit into the Da Kine case fine, but I had to drop the fork (which is easy) and pull the crankset (which is even easier) – maybe didn’t have to remove the cranks, but it makes it easier to pack the bike.  In retrospect, I could probably have left the pedals on the crankarms had I known at the time that I was going to remove them.

Must finish packing after McBike tonight, so I’ll be even more delerious tomorrow!

Whee…

Signed, sealed, & delivered

Turned the two pieces in to Justine at the Academy today.  Go by the art sale on 11 August 2007 if you’re interested.  Images are up on the gallery if you know where to look.

Yay!  It’s done!

Hope someone buys them.

Taco Time

Monday evening ride was Scat, CKucky and me head up to St. Louis. Summer sun now so we have some time to play. Decide to play on some jumps.

 J Scat gets too much air and is barely in the shot! Continue reading ‘Taco Time’

Showcase 2007

Finished the artwork for the Honolulu Academy of Arts Showcase 2007 this morning around 04:00.  This weekend was mostly doing all the digital photo-based backgrounds and effects.  I’m reasonably satisfied with the outcomes on the two pieces – we’ll see how good they look on Fujicolor paper from Long’s this afternoon.  I’ll go ahead and upload the images for printing now.  I was going to put them up on the gallery, but I neglected to reduce them to web resolution at home, and Windows Photo Mangler here won’t open the files because they’re “too big”. 

Smoke-fest

Sorry, no oregano herbage here, so all you gov agencies can go back to monitoring the rest of the Net. This Saturday was a daylong cold smoking session. img_0735.JPGThis time an old fridge was procured for smoke duty instead of our previous glorified cardboard box. A hole was cut in freezer section for smoke intake. It was determined after running for a bit that there was not enough air/smoke flow from the freezer to chill section so another hole was cut in the bottom & a computer muffin fan inserted to encourage flow. Yes, the fridge was now trying to chill the world and I’m sure Wayland’s electricity bill will show the damage, but it’s the price to pay for the pursuit of smoke salmon and bacon.

Continue reading ‘Smoke-fest’

O Jeans

I really like casual Friday. It’s one of those days when you can forgo the aloha shirt/slacks/dress shoes uniform and dress more how you want to. I was looking forward to this most recent casual Friday as I was going to wear my newest pair of sample jeans. I bought them at the most recent sample sale, and in all honesty, I didn’t need them, but for $25, I figured, why the heck not?

The sample size stuff all has a 34″/”L” waist. Depending on what it is, it’s either snug, loose or just right. Having learned my sample jean shopping error some time back, I decided to actually try them on before I bought them (genius, I know it!). Grabbed a nice, soft pair replete with zipper (button fly sucks, as far as I’m concerned) and tried them on. They fit good, albeit with some silly patch on the outside of a knee and some silly stiching. Yeah, don’t think so. Back at the jean’s rack, I found another pair, with a button fly but they’ve got that worn/sanded/rough look that’s all the rage these days. Hey, for $25, how can I go wrong?  

Friday morning I get up and deal with feeding “the kid” his morning iron suppliment and bottle. Have to be out in Kapolei for an 0800 training session, so it’s kind of early for me. Pull the jeans on and..uh…stuck on my thighs. With a bit of wiggling, they get up around my thighs and I can button them up with no problem. Hum…guess they didn’t make these jeans for retired mountain bikers with big thighs. I look down at my pants and I can see my VPL. Bad, very bad.  My underwear collection doesn’t deal well with this type of fashion emergency, so what’s a guy to do?

Go commando of course! So I spent the day being very careful to not to show ass crack as I bent over/squatted or really just moved at all. Dang jeans stop about three inches below my belly button, so I felt like a trashy school girl (except for the urge to wear lipstick, eyeliner and other assorted female accouterments). While being trained on a new computer system, I amused myself by counting how much change I had in a pocket. Despite having a short waist, the pockets were long and halfway down my thigh. Not wearing those jeans to casual Friday ever again.

 Moral to the story? If you’re going to be sitting next to a flaming coworker for eight hours, make dang sure your shirt covers your crack!

Tire test

Did a test run on the Michelin Mountain A/T‘s yesterday after I got home.  I can notice a difference between them and the XCR A/T‘s.  They feel more cushy and have better off-camber and cornering traction.  There’s a little more knob flex – even though the knobs have a larger footprint, they are also taller.  The knob flex is noticable on hardpacked surfaces or pavement, but not on softer, looser surfaces.  I ran them across asphalt, concrete, short lawn, tall grass, packed gravel, loose dirt and packed dirt. Continue reading ‘Tire test’