Sitemeter

I set up Sitemeter here a few days ago, (coincidentally just before their glitch) and have been peeking at the Google Searches that bring people here. Of all the varied things I've blogged about, the post that attracts the most Google searches is my adult trike comparison.

XMMS

I finally gave up on Audacious, and installed XMMS from source. There is a good guide at Sartek.net that worked fine, once I cut and paste the commands he gives properly. Don't copy the #, and where he has a /, it should be replaced by the next line before you hit enter.

Audacious is a case of doing more stuff I don't care about, but not doing the stuff I find useful well. The final straw was Audacious inability to delete a file from disk by itself. If you are sorting through a bunch of new downloads that you may or may not want to keep, you have to figure out the file name, then switch to the file manager and find the file. Winamp and XMMS let you select and delete from the playlist.

My Beater Bike

In the spirit of Xavier, a post on my beater bike. I've got different tastes than Xavier, so my bikes are a good bit different. This is a Bianchi Boardwalk that was intended for my wife. Bianchi is a huge Italian bicycle company. This is one of their "low end" (relatively) Asian-built hybrids, originally with flat handlebars. Apparently these didn't sell well, they wound up at Value City for about 1/3 their original price. (Many of their dealers were upset by this--you will rarely find the same merchandise in both a bike shop and a mass-market store)

The biggest problem with this bike is the frame geometry. The seat tube and standover is fine for my 5'2" wife, but the top tube is within 1/4 inch of my carbon-fiber racing bike, professionally fitted to my 6'1 frame. This makes it absurdly long for my wife, but easily adaptable for my size.

I've no idea why seat tube is the standard measurement for a bike. As long as it isn't too tall, it can be easily compensated for by adjusting the seat height. There is little you can do to adapt a wrong-sized top tube--a longer or shorter stem helps, but changes the feel of the steering.


Since the top tube is sized perfectly for me, I took the bike over as my beater when I found a Schwinn World Sport in her size. I prefer road bars, which meant the original shifters wouldn't work. Suntour had gone bankrupt and was no longer available new, and switching to Shimano would require a new dérailleur and freewheel. Additionally, downtube shifters aren't easily adaptable to this frame. I was able to find a compatible NOS downtube lever, and I had a bar-end adapter from a different project.




The front shifter is a 70's era Suntour non-index Power Ratchet barcon, one of the best shifters of the pre-index era. The handlebars and brakes were in my junk pile, and I left the original cables on everything but the rear shifter, so I've got one white cable, 2 silver cables and one black. The stem looks like it is set very high for a road bike, but that is another artifact of the odd frame geometry.






Back when it was my wife's bike, it was stolen and recovered with a damaged crank. I didn't have anything compatible, so I got a cheap steel replacement. Works fine, a little heavier than ideal. If I lose 50 pounds, I might worry about weight on the bike, until then...

One water bottle cage is standard, one is a Walmart special with an adjustable rubber strap. This will hold non-bike bottles much better than the normal cage, but it isn't as convenient to get the bottle in and out of.

The wheels are Campagnolos I bought from Nashbar in the early 90's. so I could have two different sets of gears on a bike I sometimes pulled a trailer with. I think the tires are the original ones from the bike, and they are nearly perfect for my purposes-fairly smooth tread, but 38mm wide, rather than the 23mm I run on my racing bike. Being wide, I don''t have to put air in as often, being smooth they don't slow me down much, and there is just enough tread to deal with the occasional grass and mud.

The rubber ball on the kickstand is there to help keep the bike upright if I park in grass. The pedals are meant for a serious BMX bike. They are larger than standard to better support my big feet, and they have screw-in replaceable spikes to hold shoes (or especially sandals) firmly to the pedals, even when wet. The idea came from Rivendell Bike Works, the pedals came from Tipp Cyclery. These pedals are a tremendous improvement over the standard plastic pedals the bike had originally.


If I remember right, the rack came on our tandem, but I had to change it when I switched to a different type of brakes. Works fine on this bike. The panniers were at a garage sale in near new condition for $3. Very handy, and worth leaving on the bike unless I'm racing.

I've left the original seat. It isn't a great seat, but although I ride this bike often, I rarely ride it far enough that the seat becomes an issue.

Robert Owens for Ohio AG

My brother is working on the Owens campaign, and invited me to the Freedom Alliance picnic at Liberty Park in Powell, outside Columbus last weekend.

I wasn't aware of the Freedom Alliance before I was invited. It appears to be made of Libertarians, Constitution party members, and Ron Paul supporters. There were several different agendas going, and some rather unusual issues--There was a conservative Republican Vegetarian who was against genetically modified foods, and was hoping to convince delegates to the Republican primary to change their McCain votes to Paul...

Owens was the final speaker. I don't agree with him on all the issues he talked about, (He's anti-NAFTA, and for a hard currency) but I can't think of any place we disagree that is relevant to the AG's office. Owens is very much pro-gun, probably more than I am. He spent a significant amount of his speech talking about pro-gun issues. He made a good point that an independent AG will have an easier time fairly investigating government corruption, bringing up Coingate and the Dann scandals.

The worst I could say about him is that he was too reassuring to people who asked about their pet issues in areas where the AG has no real authority (Genetically modified foods lady wanted to know what he'd do about it)--It gave a 'I'll tell you what you want to hear" impression.

He will be at the Ohioans for Concealed Carry picnic, also in Liberty Park next Sunday, along with the other 2 candidates for Ohio AG. It will be interesting to see if the other two can resonate with that audience--I'm pretty sure Owens will do well. Wife and I will be there. My brother said he'd try to bring Mom, which should be interesting...she is afraid my gun will go off while I carry it. Last year we had Ohio Governor Strickland, and for some reason that triggered a lot of people to open carry.

Idiot drivers, part 367

Yesterday when I was driving into work, I was in the leftmost lane of 3 on the interstate. I was passing a semi that was in the middle lane, ahead of him a big rental box truck, similar to the one that ran me off the road last year. This time the box truck began to pull into the right lane, even though that lane was occupied by a Jeep. I braked hard, not wanting to be involved if they made contact and started pinballing all over the interstate. The box truck saw the Jeep in time and went back to his own lane. A pickup truck that was well behind me when I braked was offended, and started tailgating, honking and flashing his lights.

I'm not fond of aggressive tailgaters, to put it mildly. I will usually slow down until I can get out of their way, rather than speed up--In part because with them that close I don't want to have to stop suddenly (at least officiallly...)

This idiot passed me on the left, 2 wheels in the grass median at 55+ MPH.