Another track day this time I’m going to participate.
But not riding on the track, I will be watching a corner as a ‘corner watcher.’ What the hell is a corner watcher you ask?
“A cw (corner worker) is a person that is stationed near a section of a track, and is responsible for monitoring the going ons in that section. This means keeping an eye on the section, making sure the section is safe to be riding on, notify track marshal of any events on that section (crash, ride off, any thing that could affect safety). They are the eyes and ears for the track marshal on that section of the course (track marshal is responsible for everything that is going on the track).”
~ ciaka on TWTex.com on 09-26-2008, 12:36 PM
Why the hell would I want to do this? Well I can watch from the pit lane with a crappy view or I can watch from a tower on the track, get reimbursed with a free track day (~$150 cost), and gain a sliver of respect from the racers.
If anyone else wants to go it will be on October 5, 2008 in Cresson, TX from 6am through 5pm, riders hit the track at 9am.
The house is for sale now, the clock is ticking.
He is asking $144,900 for the house. Which is $39,500 over what it was appraised for from Tarrant Appraisal District. I heard him make a comment about how he wishes it doesn’t sell which makes since because who wants to be directly responsible for 5 children? Perhaps I won’t have to move out.
Another route and Chiquita news.
This is the most optimized route so far. It has some of the best curves (assuming they have completed work on FM 917).
Also it seems I’ve blown $220.19 on various parts for the SV to return it to good condition. Replaced the air filter, changed a couple of parts for the clutch lever, bought a new front tire as I’m at the indicator, bought sliders for the second time (first time they were out of stock and voided the transaction without a heads up). After all that I still need to get the tire mounted/balanced and also I think the front pads need replacing.
09.9.08Well this is a bugger.
Well I think I just got an eviction notice; more or less.
The owner of the house recently had a lot of family issues come up (mother’s bad health, half sister abandonned 5 children onto him & sister & mother, and his younger brother just got out of prison). Only I could attract people like this. At any rate he feels its better for him to move closer to old-home to help his sister take on this burden of 5 children which means buying another house because as he put it “rent is wasting money.”
He technically didn’t say “Hey I’m selling the house.” but “selling the house” was on a list of possible options (as well as various forms of renting) he went over with me; also seemed like the most likely as he didn’t seem to want to have any additional worries; I can’t blame him.
So it seems I am on the hunt for another dwelling; this place was awesome while it lasted but it is what it is.
Side projects.
Lately I’ve been working on a PHP/MySQL project for logging vehicle maintenance, gas, and aftermarket parts so I haven’t been doing much else like riding and such.
A quote I like:
“You must learn from the mistakes of others, You will never have time to make them all yourself.” ~ doxiedog
09.1.08New motorcycle route.
Going to run it in a few moments.
All I can say is this route is 3/4 crap. FM5 is freakin’ amazing; one of the best motorcycle roads within 40 miles of downtown FW.
How to convert Microsoft Excel sheet to a MySQL database for free.
After searching for an hour I didn’t find anything too promising without fronting some money; which probably means there is an easier free way than my method I just didn’t find it. So here it is.
First you’ll need to convert your Excel sheet to a CSV text file. Stands for comma-separate values. From there you will need to modify the sheet to import to MySQL via phpmyadmin easier. As an example you’ll have a text like this:
Tommy Gun,12mm,$500,600 rounds,60 per clip
Glock,9mm,$200,400 rounds,8 per clip
Revolver,15mm,$900,100 rounds,6 per
Shot Gun,12ga,$100,50 rounds, 2 per
Open your new CSV file with notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac) and replace (comma):
,
with (single quote comma single quote):
‘,’
And replace (new line):
with (single quote new line single quote). Tip you can’t enter an return in the Find and Replace fields but you can copy and paste it there:
‘
‘
For some reason phpmyadmin won’t recognize an exported CSV without these modifications. You should have something that looks similar to this:
‘Tommy Gun’,’12mm’,'\$500′,’600 rounds’,’60 per clip’
‘Glock’,’9mm’,'\$200′,’400 rounds’,’8 per clip’
‘Revolver’,’15mm’,'\$900′,’100 rounds,’6 per’
‘Shot Gun’,’12ga’,'\$100′,’50 rounds,’2 per’
Now go into phpmyadmin and create a new table with 5 fields and create using the appropriate type. Now you are ready to Import the CSV file into the MySQL database. Fields terminated by are terminated by commas and fields enclosed by single quotes. It should successfully import into your database assuming you aren’t using any crazy characters which means only periods, dashes, and letters. Semi-colons, colons, dollar signs, number signs, etc will throw it off. If you want to use those characters place a forward slash just before the character so $ would need to be \$ in the CSV before importing. Again a find a replace is the easiest way to do this.
P.S. If you are importing dates make sure you format them before saving the Excel sheet as a CSV file. Select the dates, go to formatting, go to special, enter “YYYY-MM-DD” as the format as that is what MySQL uses.
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