Archive for the 'rant' Category
Page 43 of 54
Original article is here
On this past Saturday’s ride, the chinstrap buckle stopped working. It would “clickâ€, but any pressure would result in the buckle popping open and the strap coming loose. I discovered this at the beginning of the ride to my dismay, but rode anyway despite the danger. I emailed Fox on Monday, but they replied with a stock, “please call our 1-800 number so we can sell you the replacement part†message. When I asked if this was a warranty issue, they replied with a cut-and-paste of their warranty policy, indicating that I should take it back to the dealer. Seems like they’re all “corporate†and don’t handle customer service issues in the same proactive manner as some companies still rooted in their sport do nowadays (Burton and HopeTech USA are good examples of companies with excellent customer service). Continue reading ‘Fox Flux MTB Helmet Update’
This is the Fartmaster. He was in the seat a row in front of Fabio and me on the plane ride back from Vancouver. Throughout the flight, he issued forth the heavy feculent blasts of an impending dump, but waited until near landing before he actually got up and heeded the warning of the turtle head and went to the washroom. Even after deplaning, his inconsiderate actions continued. At the baggage claim carousel, he did a panic-grab for his bag, reaching over a family that was waiting patiently for their lugggage. As he tugged his bag from the upper part of the carousel belt, it swung down like a pendulum of death, hitting the family’s toddler boy in the arm and almost knocking him down. In the verbal exchange that followed, he refused to apologise, and intimated that it was the family’s fault because they were blocking his access to the carousel. Continue reading ‘Die Rektumblähungmeister’
Just got back in last night from YVR aboard AC 047. Had a good first few days on the mountain with deep piles of fresh new snow and lots of unridden, unjibbed terrain features. The clear skies and warmth during the week made snow conditions deteriorate to hideous ice by day 7, but secret Ninja powder stashes, day-long Bigfoot jib sessions, the easy Blackcomb Terrain Garden, and the eventual opening of the Harmony Express chair on our last riding day kept us busy… and in constant pain! …delicious pain!
More later – stay tuned for:
Sushi and more sushi
How many steps?
Snowboard pioneers
Pinocchio’s nose
Die Rektumblähungmeister
Free pants
And more!
“You know we leave this Friday…”
WTF!!!
Fabio came by McBike on Tuesday while I was working on Mitch’s bike and dropped a bomb on me. I knew we were going to meet Kevin and Naomi in Whistler for snowboarding this month, but I thought it was MLK Day week. All those arrangements were made nearly half-a-year ago, so I completely forgot we were going one week ahead. Thankfully I had two nights to pack up my stuff, and my board was still OK after only three riding days in Japan. I packed the park board “just in case”, but the edges are all rock-gnarled and feel like ginsu steak knives! Maybe I’ll drop that one off for a base grind sometime on this trip… All my outerwear and layers were washed and actually were piled up on my suitcase, so packing went rather quickly. I just had to grab some gels, bars, bloks, and drink powders and I was done.
Off to SFO tonight then on to YVR tomorrow morning!
Fabio’s favorites Pabo performed, but unfortunately, paired with some old guys. Perfume got to do a solo, but they were pretty terrible with the synthesized Cher-o-phonic distortion thing going, but they still weren’t as bad as show opener Hamasaki Ayumi. I wonder how long it will take people in Japan to wake up and realize that she really sucks jagged kidney stones? Speaking of suck, NHK resurrected the dead with a performance by washed-up has-beens,Speed. Last year it was TMR who got a chance to reprise his youthful days as a top-selling artist. This year, Speed went on to prove that time and a mediocre wine yield an old, mediocre wine. They were still as bad as they were when they were on the Oricon charts, with flat notes and voices strained on the high-pitched edge of cracking in the same places they have always been. Mikawa Kenichi’s performance was somewhat rudely intruded upon by some gangly tall transvestite. I guess recently, they have felt the need to have something on the shocking side – last year it was that naked fitness dude, and the year before that it was HG. Probably the best performances of the night were the operatic tenor dude and Jero (Jerome Charles White, Jr.). Angela Aki, Aoyama Thelma, and Hirai Ken performed well, although I am not a big fan of their genre of pop. Needless to say ,there was no good rock. There have been rock acts in the past, but nothing harder than L’arc en Ciel. They really needed Krauser II and DMC! Here’s the official site if you’re interested.
The skinned finger healed up in time for the Whistler Thanksgiving trip, so all was good…
That is up until Saturday, when we were out-of-bounds on Blackcomb poaching some unridden fluff. We found a nice log jib, and hung around to session it. I rode it first and cleaned it (with a slightly off-center sortie, but that’s another story). After my run, the snow on top of the log had been scraped away, revealing a prong of death branch sticking out the top. I kicked at it and busted most of it off, but there was still a nubbin of death that bugged me. I got out my Swisstool and sawed it off. While I was shaking the wet sawdust out of the saw blade, the tool slipped out of my hand and disappeared into the snow. Without thinking, I plunged my hand into the snow and found the sawteeth with my fingertip! Blood fountained forth, drenching the tool, dripping all over the log, and splattering the snow like a crime scene! Continue reading ‘BFOD V2.0’
I saw this neat paint chip at the Downtown Post Office loading dock that looks like a galvanized-colored version of the popular image of what a devil is supposed to look like in Western culture.
Saw this sticker on the back window of an old Honda Civic.
No, I will not.
No, this isn’t.
I’m really getting mixed feelings about my iPhone. It’s a nifty device and has proven to be pretty useful in additional to the entertainment options. The 3G network seems to have improved some since my first post, but it still shows problems. So what’s my complaint now? I guess with the complexity and the loadability of software, it’s not as stable as an appliance. I had one instance a couple weeks ago of losing phone service entirely. Thought it was network problem, but doing the reset on phone fixed it. Now today I’ve lost phone service, and it seems wifi. Put a call in to tech support. Ran through the reset I already did, then a reset through the phone setting. Finally am doing a larger scale reset that is still running on my phone and will erase everything. Hopefully that will get the phone back running, we’ll see. So maybe it’s not such a great idea to have one device try to do so many ‘smart’ things if you rely on your phone as a phone. To their credit, there was no wait to get a binder reading tech on the line, but is this a case of product getting a high satisfaction rating because even though the product gives problems, the customer support is good?
Ugh, so that reset seems to have zapped the phone and the only thing you can do with it is call 911. I have to restore it from my iTunes, which is on my machine at home. So I’m without a phone today. Needless to say, I’m quite annoyed. The monkeys are getting angry that they have no cake and the forehead veins are begining to swell.
Ooops, I’ve just been informed that AT&T in Hawaii just went down, so it seems it’s not a fault of the iPhone. I wish tech support was aware of that before we erased my phone. I suppose I should have checked AT&T. Veins have subsided, but the monkeys still want their cake!