Need I think of a more descriptive title?
Its been a while since I actually wrote a post with some logical flow of events…
I finally took my bike to be repaired—for real this time. Last year, on a campout, my chain broke right before we left camp for a several hour bike ride. It took us about an hour to find a bike store; It must have been the only one for miles… The nice bike store guy offered to change the chain for us. ( for a small fee… ). While he was doing so, he noticed that the bike didn’t switch gears very well. ( Never had really. ) He just happened to have another bike of the same model in the shop at the time. Turns out my bike didn’t have the factory crank on it. ( Although, it is the crank that was on it when I bought it new ). To get the gears switching correctly, and prevent subsequent damages to the chain(s), I would need to have the crank replaced, or the spindle shortened. ( Gears were too far away from bottom bracket ). Shorty after that campout, we took the bike to the store we bought it from. I told the dude that the gears were not switching properly and suggested that he replace the crank or shorten the spindle. He decided to replace the front derailleur… It still didn’t switch correctly… We gave up with that place. This time, we took it to EPICycle’s North Attleboro location. The dude there also noted that the crank was not the one that comes with the bike. He sounded like he really knew what he was talking about it. Unlike the “other place”, this dude intends to take it for a ride and make sure it is working well before returning it.
Soo… While we were out in the old country ( North Attleboro… I used to live there ), we stopped at Emerald Square Mall ( lived right down from the street from that. I remember when it was being built, but that is a different story ). They discriminate against chains there… Some security dude made me tuck my chains in. I don’t get it… ( I suppose it is good that my knives were concealed. ) While at the mall, we stopped at EMS to buy some pants for Philmont. Generally, I dislike EMS, but the prices aren’t so bad when you have a boy scout membership card to flash. ( 15% discount ). I didn’t have a valid card, but he took my eagle card :). I ended up paying roughly $41 for a pair of pants. They are very nice. The pockets are over a foot deep :). I’ll probably end up buying several more pairs.
Ever been to a fast food restaurant with free refills? I’m sure we all have… It seems to be popular to buy the smaller size and pay less. You still get infinite soda ( theoretically… ). The small size definitely has more disadvantages than it does advantages. With a small, you have to get up more frequently. ( not that I really mind that… ). More importantly, with a small, you walk out with less…
Remember the boots? Yeah… I finaly got around to ordering a new pair of boots to replace the $200 pair I hatcheted… They were made in italy. Nice, sexy italian leather boots… mmm… When buying a new pair, I decided to buy the new model. They’re made in china. I can’t believe I replace Italian boots with chinese boots. I have a serious lack of morals. The boots came in yesterday. The same size as the hatcheded pair, but they didn’t fit… It occured to me that I hadn’t worn my boots with synthetic wool socks and sock liners in a while. I put them on, and they didn’t fit. Now, I have to send them back for a 10.5…
I went to visit WPI on Saturday. The campus is beautiful. They have cable TV, 10BaseT Ethernet ( or 100BaseT for a small fee ) in every room in addition to campus-wide WIFI. According to a brochure, there are more computers on campus than there are students. Definitely my kind of place.
I practiced driving a manual in my driveway more. My dad says it is a really good place to practice ( the hill…), but I rather dislike it. Every time I drive up the driveway, I have to back down. Backing down is no small feat when in a truck… S < -- My driveway looks kind of like that. I swear. One of these days, I am going to end up rolling into the middle of the road...
Alas. Yesterday… Nothing interesting. We started clearing out a more permanent parking space for the truck… It involved moving a lot of leaves. I blew them, then sucked them up into a bag with the lawnmower. The flies weren’t very happy about that. They attacked me. The bit. They swarmed. They drove me out…
I upgraded spam karma to 2.0 pre-alpha. Its pretty sexy…
SO much for the logical flow of events… I finally settled on a media player. I am using xine-ui. I have always had problems with xine-ui… Random crashes, etc, but I find they are greatly reduced with a different skin. The lircd support works well. My biggest complaint is that the mute function doesn’t seem to work… I might end up writing a shell script to toggle mute using amixer…