I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike

10.27.2009

After talking about it with Gina and deciding to follow through, I finally have a bicycle.

For most people, a bicycle wouldn't be that big of a deal as far as purchasing. Pick a price point, go find one, begin riding. For me, due to my metric tonnage, I had to have a special bike. Bikes don't have weight limits, it all comes down to the parts, most importantly the wheels. The wheels bear the weight, so that's where you have to start. Ever scouring the interweb I found a good forum that has a big & tall section that got me started on what to ask and how to ask. I eventually went to my local bike shop in Madison and put them to work customizing a bike that would hold me. Here's a quick summary of what I had done:

• The pedals and rotor (or whatever the big thing the pedals are connected to) all got upgraded to metal parts.
• Custom made 40-spoke wheel - I had asked about wheels for tandem bikes since they're supposed to hold upwards of 400 lbs, but these wheels would cost about he same and be stronger.
• Thorn resistant/thicker inner tube.

After I picked the bike up and rode around Gina's block a couple of times, I needed my own nerdy upgrades!

• Bag to go under the seat to hold keys and whatnot.
• Seat that doesn't poke me in the testiculars.
• GPS because it's a speedometer I can plug into the computer.
• Headlight because it's about to get dark just as I'm getting off work.

I've also got gloves with gel in the palms and a helmet that fits my huge melon, so I'm being safe! Once I figured out how the GPS works, I found I like keeping up with my trips:

10 miles in 2 trips! And I didn't die going up a big friggin' hill on the way to the cemetery. I know, irony. Gina had a flat coming back from that one, though.

More updates as I progress!

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Screenshots for Jer

10.14.2009

Jerry gets a kick out of my mail Warcraft guy running around kicking butt of the lower level NPCs. I admit, I do enjoy it. Nothing makes me feel better after a rough day than just being a bully and kicking the snot out of some computer AI. I've taken Jer through Stockades a couple of times as I'm about 40 levels above the mobs in the instance and can solo it fairly well. The last trip through I tried pulling a couple of rooms into the hallway for the killing feast to allow Jer to meet a pile of sparkly corpses to loot. I started to wonder if i could pull a hallway, or even the entire dungeon.

After a trip to the auction house to upgrade some armor (now over 11000 Jer!), I decided to run to Stocks and give pulling a hallway a try.

By the time the bodies from 1 hallway, 4 adjoining rooms, and some of the rooms at the end of the hall had all hit the floor, I had about 25% of my health remaining and wound up looting 37 bodies.

I didn't get a lick of experience, and the loot will likely not pay for much more than my armor repairs, but it sure was fun.

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How much is a stamp?

10.13.2009

I mail off bill payments about twice per month. I don't know why, but I can never remember off the top of my head how much postage to put on the envelope.

I know, I should be all high tech and modern and pay my bills online, but there's something I just prefer about writing out a check and mailing the little bastards off. I think it's one of those things that makes me feel like I'm paying bills. Buying things online is fun! Point, click, done. No more thinking about it. Writing out that check is my way of saying "this isn't a fun thing I'm buying, so don't get carried away."

Over the past few years when it came time to buy stamps, I would get a roll of 100 first-class stamps. Soon after I started doing this the postal service decided to change the price of first class stamps every third Tuesday. As such, I still have around 3 variations of first-class stamps. Instead of saving them up, I purchased a variety of 1¢ & 2¢ stamps so that I could use those historical stamps.

Here are my steps to bill paying:

• Open bills
• Write check
• Stuff check and receipt in envelope
• Close envelope
• Apply custom printed return address sticker featuring me in a wrestling mask
• Google price of first class postage
• Apply postage
• Drop off bills at post office since mailing them from home didn't get there twice, stupid boonies mail people.

I can usually find the first class postage price on the first page of the Google results, and I always say "Oh yeah, I knew it was 44¢.", but I check every time since I would feel stupid for being late paying a bill because I skimped on a penny. Today Google presented me with a shortcut for finding the price of that stamp: http://www.priceofastamp.com/.

The utter simplicity of it amazes me. I look forward to visiting the site two times each month.

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Me 'n' Fleh

10.01.2009

A few weeks back I twisted Jerry's arm and made him start to play World of the Warcraft. I believe he's enjoying it, as the subject is our main topic when avoiding work. I could go on and on about how it's more than a hack-n-slash game or a repetitive button-masher, but that's a post for another time. As it is, it's become something Jer and I enjoy that totally takes us away from whatever crap's going on during the day.

And for the record, Jer's the girly one on the left side of the picture.

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One of those updates for no real reason

09.24.2009

I've about rode the crest of acing my Accounting test to where the realization that I'm going to have to continue to study has set in.

I've been trying to make some headway on the revamped Spiritus employee website. is it really revamped if it hasn't existed before? The graphics and layout are to match the new look for the website. Ironically, the new look has been ready since May, it's just waiting on some proper content. And maybe some cool header graphics.

Along with the above 2 things, Westar/QinetiQ has been keeping me busy on the part-time front. Lord Ford has officially come on board to help me out. It looks like the project may be wrapping up in March, and depending on how myself and his Lordship tackle what's left my (or our) part may be finished in January. Although I'll miss the extra income, having some free time to do all kinds of things I've been putting off would be nice. Well, to do those things and not feel guilty about the work I should be doing instead :)

Thanks to an Amazon Blu-Ray sale, I've stocked up on some old movies that I either never got on DVD (Under Siege, Con Air) or never saw in the first place (Reign of Fire, Freddy Vs Jason, Postman). I'll probably get kidded for getting Postman, but I actually like Kevin Costner. Waterworld comes out next month on the sweet Blu-Ray, and I've never seen it, due mainly to all the bad reviews it received. But that was 12 years ago, tastes change! Plus, I liked Super Mario Bros, so how hard can I be to please?

This past Saturday I went to the bike shop in Madison and told them to start putting together the monstrosity of a bike that won't crumble beneath me. The parts were supposed to start arriving today, so I'm going to try and check in on them next week and see how it all is going. I need to order some big boy bike shorts to protect the unmentionables, too.

Enough of this blogging. Time to get back to some free time web development that I was talking about at the start of this.

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