I finally have high speed internet in Santa Fe.
Well I finally broke down and called Comcast for internet service after becoming frustrated with my local coffee shop’s intermittent and slow connection. The central office for Comcast is 1.4 miles away from my house (as a bicycle rides) so I figured there would be a good connection at my house. I searched their site and finally found a deal that I could live with even though I would be paying for TV and not using it.
I signed up online and for whatever reason Comcast won’t finalize your order until you have spoken to a representative via their chat application. Some how I managed to talk my way into faster internet service, for a lower cost, without the need for a second service, and mostly importantly no introductory rate. What I received is 16Mbps downloads 2Mbps uploads for $29.99 per month plus taxes.
They claimed the installer would come out to my house about 5 days to setup the cable and modem. Well I got a little impatient and decided to hook it up myself. Turns out the condo was already wired for cable and after pulling up a web browser Comcast Technician’s Service site came up. Well it’s not rocket science and I clicked through the screens, that took care of allocating my modem and line testing. I then called Comcast up and stated I didn’t need an installer to come out and paid for the first month’s service now without the installer fee ($25).
I have had the service for 9 days now and am impressed. It’s just as fast as my Charter connection I had in Fort Worth and the upload is a bit faster. In those 9 days I’ve downloaded 131GB and uploaded 44GB. I hear Comcast has a 250GB cap, I hope that isn’t true because at this rate I’ll hit that limit by the 15th.
Now for a screen shot:
Different kind of riders, a reflection on collection of experiences from that era.
Riding Styles
New
Its easy to spot this type. They are timid and obviously aren’t fully comfortable with their bike. Generally the way the handle their bike in parking lots can tell you a lot about the rider. Hopefully you’ll never realize you are riding with a new rider in a corner.
Social
These riders generally meet up at a local venue to chat about past experiences and general social conversations. These type of riders spend a lot of time not moving. And generally use a motorcycle to attract females for the purpose of fornicating.
Stunters
These riders are generally wide cannons and love the rush of adrenaline. Part of the reason they stunt is there competitiveness and partially due to the rush they get from the stunts. Generally have no/low concern for others, this rider type seems to attract some very immature riders.
Enduro
These riders are pure riders, they enjoy riding from destination to destination but not thinking of it like that. They ride to enjoy the experience of riding and the stops along the way. Think of them as tourist in a all-in-one package on the motorcycle.
Track-only
These are some crazy riders in themselves. Blasting knees isn’t a big deal, reducing lap time is where their focus is.
Anything-paved-is-a-track
Very similar to track only riders except they don’t have a concern for themselves or others and take the same track level of riding to the streets. No reserves just balls-out-riding all the time.
Adventures of the last few days. (A drafted post from a few weeks ago)
A couple of weeks ago my motorcycle was taken from in front of my condo and I haven’t seen it since. To be honest I’m a little glad, I should get more money from the insurance company than I would of felt comfortable asking for it in a private sale. I tore that bike up, mostly the engine.
Well with the bike gone I sure as heck didn’t want to keep the truck. It was old, diesel, and turns as well a a yacht does. I put it on Craigslist and priced it below KBB hoping it would sell quickly. It being a turbo diesel work truck I figured it would. Well it took about 3 weeks which is a little long than previous vehicles I have sold on CL. I eventually sold it to a woman who lived 20 minutes from the Colorado border. She didn’t have a car and didn’t have a way to get to Santa Fe. If it sold the truck I would drive that far (3 hour drive). Well she wanted me to drive up there on a Thursday as she had commitments that weekend. So after work I start driving out to her place, I eventually arrive at 9pm in a storm. A storm which she is unwilling to drive me back in.
Also due to this storm, water is running down the hill her house is at the base of, straight into her house under the front door. So after spending 2 hours scooping water out of her house I tried to fall asleep in one of her guest bedrooms. Very unsuccessfully. My alarm went off at 4am and well I was mostly conscious already. We discuss the final arrangements for signing the title over, she then drove me back. Well she was a little timid driving at speed through the mountain passes and made me late to work. Oh well I figured as I sold the truck.
During all of this and several months previous actually I had been looking at buying a Miata. Ever since 2004 I’ve wanted one when a friend asked me to change the oil her 1990 Miata which she lent me for a weekend. After changing the oil and driving it a bit I didn’t want to give it back and even offered to buy it from her.
Unfortunately there weren’t any good deals in Albuquerque or Santa Fe for a Miata. However there were a couple in Colorado Springs that I wanted to check out as they looked promising. But there was a bit of a problem, Colorado Springs is a 5 hours drive from where I live and even further walk considering I didn’t have a car. But I had a plan. So Saturday afternoon I walked to the train station (9 miles), then took the train to Albuquerque (54 miles), then walked again (300 feet) to the bus station, took the bus to Colorado Springs (380 miles). One of the sellers was willing to meet me at the bus station so I could check out the car.
Over the years I checked out several Miata and this one was, without the extras, in good condition considering the price. The extras were a bit of a bonus (the hardtop and extra set of wheels). The only problem with the car is the engine, specifically it was one of the early Miatas with the short nose crank. I’ve still in the process of buying parts and gaining knowledge to fix it but should be a fairly straightforward process. I should have the car running by winter as I don’t really have a need for a car until then.
Here is a photo of her:
My first crash on the mountain bike.
Well as with all my mishaps I was quite fortunate. A drunk once told me “Just don’t react to the accident once you know you past the point of commit.” Okay there is a lot of paraphrasing but come on, it was a drunk guy; I received the gist of the message. This incident was no different.
I had this crazy idea to ride up to the ski basin after I got off work. According to Google Maps it should of took me 3 hours and 44 minutes. I’m not exactly sure on the heuristics used to figure that number but I figure I could beat it. And I pushed myself hard to do so. I made it up in 3 hours and 14 minutes, success right? Well I still had to make it back and it was ~7:30, I figured it wouldn’t take me as long to get back because it was mostly downhill. I was flying down the mountain, I passed a few cars actually which in itself is a rush. At one point I hit 39 MPH (according to the computer on the bike).
Did I mention I ran out of water once I reached the top. There is a refill station about half way down but on principle it is hard to stop when you are going fast and have to get home as quick as possible. So I passed up the refilling station and kept pushing myself to get home. Well I exerted myself too much and I was going through a very large intersection with a rail road diagonally cutting through it. I was too tired to do a wheelie over the track and the front tire got caught and my moment kept going straight. I hit the ground doing 25MPH. I landed on my shoulder first, then my body rolled a little, and the front sprocket dug into my shin area. My first thought after I knew I was crashing was “Shit my phone” as it was on a outside mesh pocket to get better GPS signal. It was fine. While I was laying on the ground I assessed I would get hit pretty soon so I jumped up and got my stuff out of the street. No visible damage to the bike. A couple of kids witnessed the crash and thought it was the coolest thing ever watching me crash and then jump up so quickly. I was spent and gave the kids some cash for some substances from the gas station. After some recouping with the water and sweets recently bought I went on home and fully assessed the damage to myself.
Worse of the damage (dumb luck right):
A conversion to the Android OS via the Nexus One from the perspective of a long time Apple / iPhone fan boy.
Let’s start off by giving some perspective on the writer’s tech background. I started out using Yahoo as my primary search engine when I came to the computing world but found the front page to be full of bloat. Around the same time of this realization I found Google. Then, a search engine was a search engine, I typed stuff in and roughly the same thing came out. Much like a smartphone is a smartphone, or so I thought. Apple’s iPhone was released and for a time it didn’t phase me. It was a phone and I had a phone, one that worked, “Why would I need another phone” I thought. Well enough time lapsed for the second generation iPhone to come out.
At the time I had been selling a lot of items of eBay and needed to keep up with current and potential customers while at my real-day-non-desk-job. A smartphone was an easy solution and at the time the iPhone had no competition. So that’s what I got from Craigslist, a used second generation iPhone that I had verified could be jailbroken and unlocked for use on T-Mobile’s network.
Initially I thought the phone was great. It had many more features than my trusty Nokia. A plethora of applications for anything you could think of. Plus it fulfilled my need to check my emails and interact on eBay’s site. After enough time and many updates to the OS on the iPhone I realized it was slow and laggy. Something which annoyed me terribly, plus I was limited to 2G service being that T-Mobile uses different 3G bands than any iPhone uses. At this point I started searching for a new phone.
Ironically at the time I was looking for a new phone I heard that Google had released a phone. The Nexus One certainly has some impressive specs for a phone. A 1Ghz processor, MicroSD card use, 512MB RAM, HSPDA Network, LED-lit screen, 5MP camera just to rattle off a few. Most things I buy used from Craigslist or eBay but the Nexus One was to recently released and actually was going for a higher a price on eBay than it was selling from Google for. So I bought my phone from Google without contract, a steep price for a phone surely but cheaper than if I would of gone the same route for a 3Gs iPhone.
I received the N1 from Google the next day via FedEx Overnight shipping. That was certainly plus in my book. I turned it on and well it was a learning curve. It took about 2 days to get used to but Androids is such a great and well designed OS. The integration between applications on Android is impressive. Not to mention the phone is so much faster than my previous iPhone. I’ve since used other older phones running Android and it’s impressive how Android manages resources even on older phones.
Android 2.2 is incredible fast, much faster than iOS4 or any other phone OS out there. I can’t see a reason to switching phone OSes anytime soon.
Clockworkmod “MD5 Mismatch” Fix
I received this error while trying to flash to a nandroid image that I used to recover earlier the same day. Thinking that perhaps one of the files became corrupt while transferring the files off the SD card and back on. All files checksummed with the correct MD5. Then I realized my problem, I was trying to flash with a non-rooted stock ROM.
The solution is to flash your phone with a rooting zip.
04.11.10Drafting
And not the kind done in cars to reduce drag. I have 8 drafted post that I am still editing or still typing on. Updates soon.