My Thule car rack suffered from defective mounting bolts and snapped a couple of months after I installed it. So that means I’m not driving to awesome mountain bike trails, so I’ve invested some time in configuring a domain controller at home running active directory and a few other daemons for local development.
So far it’s been a good experience. My setup is pretty standard, but now has proper redundancy and security at multiple points of entry.
The camera was announced yesterday, with a feature set that goes well beyond anything else out there in the semi-pro and pro classes. It’s like a tiny Nikon D300 with more features and lower iso; I can’t wait to get one in my hands and make it part of my kit.
I took my (awesome) htpc and gutted it this afternoon with the intention of putting half the components into my old workstation to create a new, smaller htpc and reuse the old one as a development server.
I’ve completed the hardware swap portion of the task (minus needing 1 sata cable, which I hopefully have in the storage room); so now I’ll get to benchmark an overclocked Operton 170 @ 2.7ghz and some kind of AM2 cpu (probably) at a lower clock speed. I’m nerding out over this.
The benefits overall will be a proper dev server / file server on the lan; and the htpc will still be wireless. At some point I’ll get a sexy matx case for that system to go into and the setup will be ‘complete’.
It seems that I’ve gotten a little soft from my less than average time on my snowboard this past winter. I went for a ride on my Norco Launch yesterday with Jen for a few hours around the city (she rode my Azonic Fiend). It was a lovely day, sunny and very warm with a nice cool breeze. Moving my tank around the streets proved to be a much needed work out. The fat Kenda tires (2.5 nevegals) roll wider than what’s on the Fiend, and make a fun noise on pavement; they also roll with more resistance.
We stayed on paved paths along the river & canal, so I never went beyond a cross country cadence; which is tough enough when you bike weighs close to 47lbs. We definitely weren’t riding the ‘norm’, everyone has some kind of road bike.
Mid way through the ride we stopped for ice cream, and as I stacked one bike against the other (against a cement bench) some one near by said something about my bikes. I’m assuming it was positive, ’cause there was some nice low end hard tails at another bench; but I’m not really too sure. Everyone’s got an opinion about a certain part (or so it seems).
So, today I need to change some drive train parts on the Norco. It’s shifting is horrible and the rear derailleur is worn out (it’s about 5 years old now). I’d love to change it to a Sram x7 setup like the Fiend has, but I have a spare Shimano derailleur (still in the retail box) in a closet. I really dislike the Shimano system in comparison; it’s so sloppy and there’s guess work .. did I only move the cable for 2 shifts and it ghosted to a third?
Remember to change your suspension oil and coils, various bearing cartridges and drive train components as they wear out. Don’t buy cheap parts! If your bike cost less than $500, keep it on pavement!
Random trivia: my Norco Launch is now 6 years old, with a 6 year old Marzocchi Super T Pro (newer x-heavy coils). You don’t always need to buy a new bicycle; just find the right one and it’ll last forever if you take care of it.
It’s a day after my oral surgery and I’m feeling alright. The right side of my jaw is pretty swollen, which is the opposite of what I was expecting; but what the heck would I know? My jaw is closing like it should again. I didn’t realize how much discomfort I was dealing with over the last 6-7 years while those mofos grew in.
I gotta say, I have a pretty strong fear of creating dry sockets by accidentally sneezing or coughing. I probably have nothing to worry about as long as I follow the instructions from the dentist and the various things I’ve read online.
I’m hoping it goes well.
I’ve added smart phone support to my portfolio and upgraded the structure so it’s template based while working from the same JavaScript library. I’ve only tested out my iPhone, but I like!
I’ll have to check out some emulators for Android phones.
This morning I switched the nav to dynamic objects, and put a fade on their container. I also added navigation by arrow keys. Now I need to do a quote generator and I’m done this iteration; not too shabby for a soft launch.
I finished my JavaScript changes this afternoon and noticed IE wasn’t behaving properly. Nearly 2 hours later I simply accepted a JavaScript engine limitation / bug / typical MS and fell back on another method for achieving the desired result. It’s slightly redundant, but it’s functional.
I’m going to work on an iPhone optimized version tomorrow.
This morning I tackled redoing my global.js file so it was technically better than what I had first created. Instead of writing a bunch of strings (excluding the nav which loads once now) I have dynamic object handling. I also removed the onload listener because the rewrite is based on various timers looking for objects and then executing related code in scope.
It’s super simple and basic DRY principles. I’m just enjoying it ’cause I haven’t made anything for myself in about 5 years. That last contract really killed any desire to do web dev outside of ‘work’ hours.