Bike rescue

It was supposed to rain, so I was driving to work, saw this out in someone’s trash, and it followed me home. $45 in parts from the Broadway Bicycle School, plus new bearings for the headset, and it’s a bike again.

I have no idea what is going on with the paint job.

Confederate trucker lady?

Saw this just the other day driving home in traffic, three cheers for telephoto and anti-shake.

Thanks, Senator Kennedy

Changed jobs twice over the years while the family had a “pre-existing condition”, i.e., pregnancy. COBRA, which incorporated Kennedy’s “fairly small step” to extend health insurance coverage, saved our butt, both times.

Big Dummy

Front fork was aging fast on the old bike, my brother said his Big Dummy was great, I didn’t get laid off this spring, and the stock is up on solid acquisition rumors. So I bought myself a Big Dummy.

No universal health care yet

I mean, it’s been weeks.

Lighting control circuit, fixed, working.

When I finally tested this circuit on a real bike connected to a real hub, it didn’t work right. I got light, but it was flickery when slow, and I seemed to notice a little more drag (this had to be in my head) than the old 350mA system, and more important, the system voltage never made it above 9 volts; no chance of charging standlight batteries using this design as a starting point. The discrepanies from the plan (too much power to lights at lower speeds) pulled too much current from the hub, so it did not run in the more efficient mode.

I figured out the difference between the model and reality, tweaked the model, and then it tracked observations. With that, I could test a fix before soldering it in, and it worked just fine.

Error message FAIL

Once upon a time, Apple wrote this great book on human interface guidelines. It seems nobody reads it any more.

Comment on a bug report

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=272012

Why we need universal health care NOW

What we spend, what we get. Small words, for small brains. We’re not best in the world. Clear?

Not so grand plans

I decided, that the next circuit I build, will do one thing well, and I’ll worry about the rest later.