Chaos Records

A lot of girls have walked into this office: blondes, brunettes, HR bitches.  I've grown accustomed to sizing them up with a mere glance above that days Calvin and Hobbes strip.  That's why when this woman walked in, it wasn't her large bust that I noticed, but her red badge.  Programmer.  There are many, many red badges in this company, and they are rarely seen on women of her...style.  Needless to say, she had my full attention just by walking in there.

My first instinct was that this was a social engineering attempt.  Fuck if it hadn't been tried before, and with uglier girls.  She started going on about a communication problem with her service while I checked out her badge.  To my shock, it checked out.  She was in the system.  I leaned back in my chair to soak in her tale.  She noticed me noticing her, and didn't look surprised.  It was all about rogue servers and missed SLAs.  I grabbed my coat.

We took three sky bridges on our way to the server closet.  I watched the city's two monorails, Narya and Nenya, pass below us.  It was raining outside.  It's always raining in this damn city.  The elevator dropped us forty floors to the sublevels.  As soon as we stepped off, the power went out.  Red running lights along the edge of the floor lit up.  I've been in this business for decades, so I'm not the skittish type, but nonetheless I squeezed my left elbow against my side just a hair, feeling the reassuring precense of my glock under my coat.

My compannion produced a flashlight and we made our way to the server closet.  Inside the server closet, now, that's where things got interesting.  We found her rogue computer.  It was on.  I checked it out with the console.  At first glance everything looked fine.  That's never good, when something broken looks like its working.  I decided I wasn't dealing with this shit on a friday night.

"Pull it and spin up a new host," I said.

She refused.  Company TCO, and she's been getting a lot of these failures recently, and the Requisition Department says they haven't received any of the old ones, and yadda yadda yadda.  I sighed and went to work.

I worked my magic on that box, hands dancing over the keyboard.  Most people who watch me gasp in admiration, but this cat looked like she'd seen this tier of skill before.   I finally find out:  it was a DNS record.  Looked funny.  Some moron had written an NAPTR record with a REGEX using pound signs for backslashes.  Kids these days.  Couldn't compile their way out of a room with four open doorways.  But I digress.

That DNS record.  Something rubbed me the wrong way.   She was in a hurry to get out of there, but I insisted on checking it out further.  I have an instinct with these things.  I took at look at the code on the box.

"Where's the source control markers for this package?" I asked.

"I don't know.  Its not ours.  The markers are usually hidden-"

"I know, I know.  I'm looking at the hidden files.  They just aren't there."

"But who would code without source control?" she asked.  I looked at her, and then back at the computer.  I dumped every DNS record on that machine.  A full third of them were in the CHAOS class.

"Traitors..." my voice trailed off under my breath.  Then all hell broke loose.

Without warning I yanked that computer right out of the rack, knocking the console onto the floor, its screen shattering.  I pulled my glock and pushed her behind me.  They were outside.  They were coming through the door.  A man of my pedigree rarely retreats, but it was at least twelve to one and I had a civie to escort.  The Codex Engineerica clearly called for escape in this situation.  We pulled up the floor boards of the patch floor and crawled under the server rooms.  They followed us.  I could hear them growling.  I fired off two rounds into the darkness behind us.  Couldn't tell if they hit anything.

I led the way, dragging her into a run, taking the stairways.  It was lights out all the way down, until we reached doors so old they had mechanical locks.  I busted one open with my foot.  Before us was an ancient eight-car, yellow monorail.  I was lying when I said the city only had two monorails.  There had been a third, a long, long time ago.  Its official name was Vilya.  I called it Blaine the mono.  That monorail would probably kill us, but it was our only chance at escape:  they were 30 strong, and right on our heels.  I shot the safety arms off just before I shoved us inside the head car.  The door closed just in time for bullets to ricochet off of it.

I wasted no time getting Blaine started, and we shot out of the station.  As soon as we were safe, she hugged me.  She told me she's never been so scared in her life, and yadda yadda yadda.  The standard damsel in distress.

We parted for a second, though still in a bit of an embrace, and looked in each others eyes.  She had that shut-up-and-kiss-me look written all over her face.  I may read those cues, but I play the game my way.

"I like your bangs," I said.

"Do you."  Her voice was sultry.

"Love 'em.  They hide the bloodlust in your eyes, chaos bitch."

The word bitch was still on my tongue when she snarled and tried to stab me with the knife in her right hand.  Would have been a kill strike if I hadn't just handcuffed her wrist to the drivers chair behind her.  She looked down at the knife in her hand, just two centimeters off the fabric of my coat.

"Sorry babe," I said.  "Its not my night."

Blaine sped on in the darkness.

All for Nothing

I like All or Nothing by Theory of a Deadman, but they're lyrics are...well, mine aren't much better anyway.  Replacement lyrics [some original lyrics in square brackets].

when i last saw you standing there
that night, it was little too hard to bear
such sorrow when the bus pulled out
i know it made you think that I never cared

sent those letters to your dorm in vain
cause we never saw each other again
we kissed that night after he left
it was, the first thing we should never have done

what happened when I left?      [you've got all that i need]

you played it like all or nothing, where the
ante's always life or death

whyyyy'd you go all in?    [with you i know that it]

burning out until you're
selling out your throne in the sky    [so lets go give it a try]

my an-ngel           [we've got our...]

falling through the shadows    [backs again the ocean]

for a bittersweet sunrise

you played it like all or nothing, where the
ante's always life or death

you played it like all or nothing, where the
ante's always life or death

when i brought flowers to your grave, i thought
there was a chance i'd find an empty stone
i stood there standing in the rain, waiting
for forgiveness that could never come

what happened when I left?

you played it like all or nothing, where the
ante's always life or death

why'd you go all in?

burning out until you're
selling out your throne in the sky

my angel

falling through the shadows
for a bittersweet sunrise


you played it like all or nothing, where the
ante's always life or death

I want a website like this

http://www.ladyada.net/

It would have taken about 5 seconds to make that an actual hyperlink, which is about how long I spent writing this note.

Personal...Development

I had an interview for another job Friday afternoon.  Probably won't work out;  noncompete and all that, but the mere fact that I was actively managing my life's trajectory was exhiliration.

Speaking of which....

Some hot girl at work sent a long advertisement for...oh what did they call it..."live coaching" and "image consulting" to an email list at work whose only purpose is to facilitate the wasting of time.  I didn't read it, but I saw that the first few sentences were pretty offensive, being that they included an insinuation that the passive aggressive nerds who bitch at each other through this mailing list might not be well dressed socialites.  I predicted there would be hostile responses from other people who read only the first few sentences, and jumped in early to take a shot at the other nerds.  I'm not going to tell you what I said, so I guess you'll just have to trust me that my email was witty and amazing.

Ok that actually wasn't important to the story, I just love bitching about the losers on the mailing list.  I know, I know, I shouldn't be on it, but ever since I lost faith in the veracity of anything on sites like slashdot and digg (see my post about how gay but not erotic books with naked girls on the covers were accidentally categorized as XXX) I only have two options for wasting time after the webcomics run out:  wikipedia, and this mailing list.  Wikipedia binges can easily take out an afternoon, so if I just want to waste five or ten minutes I'm stuck reading an argument over traffic laws or someone's monologue about that time he went to the break room and the coffee machine was empty because some terrible fiend had taken the last cup and not refilled it, or the thing with this guy who wanted a large internet company situated in the hippie-est of cities to provide him a gun locker so he could carry while he rides his bicycle to work.  This is in a city that allegedly outlaws knives.  If I could make up stuff this good I'd be as rich as Stephen King.

Anyway.  Yeah.  Ok.  So after I sent off my rude message I came back later and saw the replies, and they all assumed that I had read the entire message (which is like three pages long) and was a customer.  Its interesting what people give away when they make stupid assumptions.  It piqued my curiousity, and I got through an entire paragraph.  It was indeed a pretty offensive advert, but the person who sent it was attractive so I fired off a reply saying I might be interested.

Then came today.  Today I am in the office on a saturday both to make up for not working friday afternoon and to sneak in a large, personal refrigerator (which probably is a violation of the fire code or something) and plug it into the daisy-chained power strips under my desk (which are absolutely a violation of the firecode).  The fridge is now plugged in, which left only one thing to do:  work.  Unfortunately, I was just told to switch from this interesting thing I was doing, to this boring ass bullshit that is super important.  Ergo, I just read through this entire life coach ad.  It was pretty bad, like I felt like I was watching The Office.  I think I might take them up on it, depending on how much these girls charge.  I don't know how much good it will do to have yet another girl standing in my apartment telling me I should really clean my bathroom more often and getting all weirded out that I wear the same pair of jeans every day, but I suppose this would make a good story.

Also, and I don't know how this happened, but I checked out the website these girls made, and they list like, books that are supposed to magically help your life or something, and despite having never stepped in the "self help" or "personal...something" section of a bookstore, I just reallized I've read the first four chapters of like half of these books.  Think and Grow Rich--read half of that.  Four hour work week, got near the end of that one.  How to win friends and influence people--that one I only read the sleeve, but I think I should get credit for it after making it so far in Think and Grow Rich (the authors knew each other).  So, I'm not sure what to think of that.  I don't know how my life here stopped phenominally sucking, but it wasn't because I read a book.

I can admit that I need a little work in the style department.  You should have seen me trying to get ready for my interview friday;  I had no idea how they dressed at this other company, so I aimed for the median the decided to go with slacks and a button down shirt.  I didn't actually know what slacks were until about a year ago, but fortunately I did own a pair because Kev made me buy some for the rehersal dinner of his wedding a few months ago.  So, all I had to do was find them, and figure out how my iron worked.  I mean, my shoes didn't match, but it wasn't that noticeable.

So anyway, assuming I don't have to pay a lot, I guess I'm going to hire these girls to tell me to dress better.  Maybe it will be like hanging out with Colleen and Chris, idk.  I'll let you all know how it goes.  Whatever happens, it should make a good story.

Another Day, Another Show

So the hot girl that liked legos.  Here's the story.

Some night, like...two nights ago.  Tuesday.  'Bb9 texted me, saying her, Hot Lego Girl, and this cool russian dude were drinking at this bar again.  She usually doesn't mention who's with her, which in turns makes my night a game of russian roulette (because mr. five-'o-clock-shadow-but-acting-like-a-girl might be with her).  She did this time.  Interesting.  I show up and hot lego girl seems super excited to see me.  One thing led to another and I bought everyone a round of grey goose shots.  Doesn't matter what kind of vodka is in the shot;  I always think of Kat and Natasha.  Anyway.

Once we were all sufficiently drunk we have the brilliant idea to go get food.  I ordered two pancakes and some bacon from the plastered waitress, then went home, had fitful hangover dreams about owning a pet velociraptor, female, that I knew was going to attack me one day, and then woke up with a terrible stomach ache and went to work.

--warning:  right about here is where I stopped proofreading--

Last night was 420.  I don't smoke weed, but I was invited to hang out with bb9 and hot lego girl anyway.  I might have made fun of hot lego girl too much.  Maybe that was it, idk.

Me, bb9 and hot lego girl were supposed to go out salsa dancing tonight.  My normal girls were out for whatever reason.  I was on call tonight, but traded nights with someone on my team just so I could make it out.  Then I felt like I might be coming down with something, so I chugged a bunch of vitamins, some yogurt, and some drugs and went out.  Then I discovered that 'bb9 wasn't coming out.  By the transitive property, neither was Hot Lego Girl, because I didn't have her number and because she didn't respond to the first, and possibly only, facebook message I sent her.  So anyway, I danced with this one girl I knew, and she thought I had improved a lot and thought I must have been taking lessons.  Ironic that I seem to have improved so much since I stopped taking lessons.  The second girl I danced with was some random girl who seemed a bit new to salsa, and like every other beginner, was completely dazzled by my moves.  Then the people running the place cleared the dance floor to make us watch some "performances" which are basically boring, rehersed salsa dances.  Then they played a merengue, and I left, figuring I had better uses for my time.  Apparently that's sitting at my computer in my underwear writing stories for people on other coasts.

Ok.  I just stalked her (yeah we're back to hot lego girl again) on facebook, in order to overanalyze things like a girl.  It appears that we are still friends.  I can't tell if she has logged into facebook since i messaged her, because my facebook is in pirate mode and I really don't know what "9 turns of the hourglass" means, but it probably doesn't matter.  It is what it is, and I've already made my move.  I just hate the waiting, and the disappointment when you can kind of sense things are about to not go your way.

Also, and this is tangentially related, 'bb9 does have castle crashers, but she only has 2 game pads for her xbox.  I need to find a way to acquire one for her without just buying one and giving it to her, which would probably seem rude.


In other news...I'm doing an exciting project at work that I can't tell you about.  Also, I have an interview for possibly another job.  Also, I am trying to write a music book for the guitar.  Also, the lego parts I needed to finish my lego mosaiic are now on backorder, which means this half finished thing is going to sit on the table for months now.

Also, I've figured out how to get thick skin:  you just have to face a lot of people bitching at you.  I will probably encounter this, as i've started to be a bit more nasty to annoying people at work.  We'll see how that turns out.

Also:  I've been reading through the original RFCs for DNS at work.  If you don't know what that is, please skip this paragraph.  I discovered that in addition to the IN or "internet" class of DNS records, there are other classes, including the "chaos" class.  Since RFCs are incredibly boring, I immediately started daydreaming about Space Marines, and their hated enemies the Chaos Marines, and about some detective noir parody where a hot girls asks a private eye to look into these "chaos DNS records" and he finds out about some kind of Horus DNS Heresy that almost took down the internet.

Also, I have 4 words for you:  Monty Python Star Trek.  Take a moment and think about it.  Yeah.  I'm no John Cleese, but I think there is an awesome idea there.  Can you imagine?  "You two--make sure no one else beams down."  "Ok, we'll make sure everyone else beams down."  "No!  make sure no one beams down."  "Ok we'll make sure to beam down."  "No!! I beam down.  No one else.  Got it?"  "Yes."  "Ok.  Wait where are you going?"  "We're going with you!"   "No!!!!  I'm beaming down, your staying here...."

Also...I think I'm about to finally let go of Laura.  She has some kind of college graduation party in may.  I was literally going to fly back to philly for it, and was going to rationalize that by using it as an opportunity to also purchase a sportbike that I would ride across the country.  However, there will be snow in the passes, and I have this policy where I don't risk my life in snow unless someone is watching.  Also, sometime soon I'm going to have to go on a commercial flight while wearing a heart monitor, which is going to be a huge pain in the ass with the TSA and with my luck I'll probably freak some moron out on the plane and get put on the No Fly list, which is a problem for pilots, and I really don't want to deal with that while on a six hour flight home to buy a motorcycle.  So I guess, this is me, finally letting go of Laura.  Or something.  A voice in my head is screaming that I should take every opportunity, jump on every chance I get.  It could be right, and maybe blah blah blah something about true love.  Whatever.  Let her jump on a fucking plane.  And then I say something really poetic here, maybe using the word unicorn, or making a reference to that scene in the new james bond where he drops vespers necklace at the end of the movie.

Also...actually thats probably it.  Oh, no, there's this other girl that I'm...dealing with.  She...is interesting.  She says she normally prefers really "masculine" guys who stalk her (I am NOT making this up.  I know it sounds like I am, but I'm just...just move here and meet some of these people) and when I email her she takes days to respond.  She seems really into me though.  Said she wanted me to cover her in post it notes and then disappeared for a few weeks.  Maybe she got her wish about being stalked.  Oh, and she doesn't understand the point of marriage.  I get a little worried when people don't understand something that I think warrants no explanation.  For example:  I don't discuss my love life with my guy friends, and also I love bacon, and also I would like to one day find myself in a ski chateau with a wife watching our beautiful daughter spill pasta all over the table.  I feel like I don't owe an explanation for any of that to anyone.  Yet, when it comes to this girl...I do have vague plans involving vanilla candles and like maybe a box of fake rose petals.  And whatever else would make a good story.

Man, I always think I lead such a normal life until I come home and write about it.  Did I write about the rally race?  Oh crap, I didn't.  I just told so many people at work about it that I thought I wrote about it.  Well, so there are some pictures on my phone that I was planning to upload here.  That probably isn't going to happen.  My car as mud all over the drivers side.  That was just from the parking lot though.  Here's the synopsis:  my buddy luke snuck into the "VIP" area by accident while I couldn't get near it.  We saw one car flip, then another car jump a ramp and then flip, many cars jump the ramp without flipping.  Also there was a car that cut off another car but accidentally slammed into the side of the track, hard.  Something seemed wrong with his car.  I was curious about why this guy was suddenly driving so slow, and then he turned a corner, and then we all saw that his entire back left wheel was smashed into the car, and like an axle or tie rod or something was just poking out like a broken bone.  The other three wheels were pulling the car just fine though.  All-wheel drive is badass like that.  Speak of which, there were also races for just two-wheel drive cars.  Those racers were lame because 2WD sucks.  Long story short, we're gonna go race at bremerton sometime.  Maybe next month, I don't know.

Oh wait:  Also, I've discovered that I absolutely love Irish music.  Go here and skip to 1:00.

I had a story for taxes too.  I was lame.  I do owe the IRS thousands of dollars though.  Not happy about that.

And here is a website with sheet music that I think is in the public domain:

http://www.guitarfreescores.com/partiture%20en.php

that one was more for me.

Also, some things on my TODO list:  learn how to play some song called "Take Five" on the piano.  Write a detective noir parody about this private detective who is asked to track down.

Also, the sportbike cross-country trip may happen in june or july now.

Also, I'm getting into PGP encryption.  If you don't know what that is, skip to the next paragraph.  My public key is 20745827:13 and I have no idea what the colon is for.  Maybe I'll read up on how PGP actually works the next time I'm about to fall asleep at work.

Also, Firefly Girl is moving to like Florido or something.  I am debating on trying to hook up with her one last time.  Probably not though;  better to just watch a few Castle episodes with her and send her off in peace.

So thats my life.  Oh and my little sister is getting married.  I was going to rant about that.  Seriously, after this, it's just me and my one cousin in our family that aren't hitched yet.  I feel like i'm missing the boat.  Growing old and dying all alone terrifies me, but it would involve lots of Legos.

Legos!

This is more for me than for you.

First, a lego blog.  Then, a tiny firefly model.  I still don't know where to begin to make Serenity...are there like Lego exercises that I can do to work on my sculpture skills?

Suddenly we arrive at something far more interesting:  Frankenstein's Monster in a new kind of Lego mosaic.

Also, excellent lego of the USS Enterprise-whatever.  I hate people like this because they demonstrate a skill I don't yet possess.

Now, back to that new method of Lego mosaic pictures.  Its not that easy, but the increased resolution expands my options of subject material for paintings.

I still don't have many great ideas for lego mosaiics.  In fact, right now I only have two, and the second one is a lot of work because I don't have a source digital image.  Hmm...maybe I can pay someone for the original image?  Interesting idea.  Ok, if you or someone you know can do vector art, and/or are good at drawing castle crashers, please let me know!

Another idea I have that I could use this new mosaic method on, is the white tree of gondor.  I don't know if anyone would be interested in buying that, though.  I think, for lack of a better idea, I am just going to do portraits of hot chicks.  Technically, they will be hot anime chicks, but not because I'm that into anime; they're just easier to do in lego.  Then, maybe gundams.  Idk.  I'd love to work in a Monty Python joke.  Maybe the black knight?  A little "its just a flesh wound" ?

My first project is 99% waiting for the damn legos to arrive in the mail.  The Lego company does not ship express when you order custom parts.  This is unfortunate, because those parts ship from Poland, and Poland is very far away.  I don't remember if I have written about this project yet, so in case I haven't, I'll leave the subject material a mystery until its done.

I also have a design for the portal cake icon.  Not really into it though.

I met a girl that loves legos

She has a boyfriend that doesn't talk much.  At least, not compared to the drunk dude that was just dying to list all of the presidents.  My request for a list of only prime-numbered presidents went unfulfilled.

Rebels are Overrated

I searched for an appropriate "rebel quote" for this story but the samples I found were lame.  Like, wow.  People who consider themselves rebels seem to have a stick up their ass.

I read part of a book about seduction once.  It mostly told me things I already knew, which I found ironic, pleasing, and depressing all at the same time.  Like really, if this is what...successful guys do, the fact that it comes naturally and totally doesn't work for me is just...a topic for another post, I'm sure.   What's important is that it talked about one style of...seduction (including the political version)  that involves being the rebel.  Oh baby.  The author actually had a different name for it, but if you spent enough time in a thesaurus, you could get from the word he used to the word "rebel."  Anyway.  If I were to pick a successful personality type, I would definitely choose not the rebel one, because I don't want to get fired (foreshadowing!).  Apparently it comes naturally, though.  A little too naturally.

I switched teams at work a month or two ago.  My previous habit of reaching out of bed for my cellphone at 11am to dial in to the morning meeting from under my warm covers is no longer acceptable.  In fact, there are a whole host of things I do that are unacceptable now.  Not even that, but I had it so easy that I didn't even...well, here's an example.

I rolled into a meeting...basically on time this morning.  Unfortunately, "basically on time" to me is about 15 to 20 minutes past the start time.  I sensed--my acute spider senses went off when I walked in the room and saw that they had not started yet.  I'm accustomed to doing meetings by ... well just scheduling it and having most of the people show up by 15 minutes into the meeting.  Well, I was in for a shocker.  My boss, who was on the phone, was...quite unhappy.  Not only is 15 minutes considered late, but he considers it both unacceptably late and a personal insult to everyone in the meeting.  This is unfortunate because when it comes to meetings, it is often easier to count the number of instances that I'm ever on time.  We started the meeting by spending half an hour talking about a chronic problem with people missing meetings or arriving late to them.  The discussion included a threat to abandon our development process and switch to...basically no process.  There is no doubt in my mind that I directly inspired this conversation.  This was a bit of a shock, though, since I had been under the impression that we had been handling meeting attendance fine all month.  We've been tracking "unexcused absences" from the morning meetings all month, of which there have been a total of 8, across like 6 people.  But my boss doesn't care about just the unexcused ones.  He cares about the legitimate ones, like when you're in another meeting.  There have been too many.  I couldn't understand what his problem was, and so...long story short, I basically volunteered to track everyone's reason for missing this daily meeting for an entire month.

My boss bitched at us two or three more times during that meeting about me being late.  He then also explained that when it comes to our monthly planning sessions he expects us to accomplish in three hours what my old team did in an entire day.  So, that will be a fun challenge.

Then, well, it gets better.  In another meeting, after which my boss said he was going to "drop off," (we called him from the conference phone) the whole meeting lateness issue was brought up.  Some people who haven't been inexcusably late at all joked that those of us that were should pay them for each of our absences, and so on, and then we realized that the conference phone, from which we had called our bosses cell phone, still had the green light indicating the call was active.

At this point, we had two options.  Call out and ask our boss if he heard us making light of this dire attendence situation, or immediately end the call.  I don't know what wolverine would have done, so I reached up and slammed the end call button.  That was episode number two, and I was closest to the conference phone.

The next incident involves a problem we were troubleshooting.  The root cause of the issue lay somewhere between my old team and my team.  I was mid-conversation with a small cluster of people around my bank of monitors when I entered a snarky comment into the computer system we use to track the resolution of these problems.  Seconds later, and I'm really not kidding about the seconds part, my boss called me on my cell phone.  Fortunately his exact words are no longer ringing in my ears, but the gist of it was that he wants to discuss my comments in our "1 on 1" meeting tomorrow.

There was a time when I didn't even know what a "1 on 1" meeting was, when I was just a fresh graduate who saw his boss...basically once a month or two.  Now, well, idk.

People around me have been deriving some amusement from all this, and I've been laughing, but there's been a growing pit in my stomach.  Fear.  Of what, I didn't know, but I stayed late and channeled that fear into finally getting some coding done.  The fact that everyone else had gone home and there were no meetings to waste my time also helped.

On my way home, I stopped at whole foods, and then at McDonalds, which I think is a great combination because the fruit you get at whole foods can mitigate the damage done to your digestive tract by McDonalds, and then I watched a movie about death row starring Morpheus and James Bond.  Afterwards, though, I still felt some kind of fear or stress that wouldn't melt away, and the fact that I had totally gotten a ton of work done didn't even help.

I sat back and asked myself, what am I afraid of?  I shouldn't care.  I should have thicker skin.  There's no specific threat.  The worst case scenario is basically me getting fired, and that is something I can handle fairly easy.  In fact, wow.  I could just sell my crappy furniture and head on home.  It would be awkward and unpleasant;  picture one of those movie scenes with a person carrying out their box of personal equipment, except its me with three monitors, a monitor stand, and like two boxes of random crap.  But I digress.

Ever desiring thicker skin, I asked myself, why do I even care.  Then it hit me:  guilt.  I'm not blameless in this scenario.  I was the one who was late, and I've missed our morning meeting a couple of times (not as much as our boss though) and, well, snarky comments need no explanation.  So that's it.  I shouldn't feel unsettled just because my boss is totally annoyed at me, but since I am not blameless, I can't help it.  My only hope is that this experience will innoculate me towards this kind of insecurity in the future.

Picture me in a small office tomorrow, for my "1 on 1" meeting, with a spreadsheet of about 8 different categories of absences that I've identified (not even kidding), along with their acceptability rating, explaining how I am going to track this shit for a month.  I'm not...I'm not making this up.

Whatever the case, we're doing happy hour right afterwards.  O captain, my captain.

The Race in the Machine, Supplemental

Well, here is one possibility for handling the snow:

http://www.sportbikes.net/forums/fz6/383074-accessory-riding-motorcycle-snow-pics.html

Not going to work though.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4OQNVTCO9g



how does this guy do it?  Special tires???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cy8QiIyzAA&feature=related

according to a youtube comment, it was something called ice screws.


Hmmmm.....

http://www.kawasakimotorcycle.org/forum/kawasaki-motocross-offroad/16476-how-do-i-stud-dirt-bike-tire-ice.html

http://www.maxigripstore.com/


I don't think I can do this to my bike, and then undo it after I get through idaho.


A clue:  http://www.city-data.com/forum/motorcycles-scooters-atvs-boats-watercrafts-snowmobiles/1076554-riding-sportbike-snow.html


plasticuffs?  wow.  plastic ties.  like for your hands.  guy says he put them on the tires every 3 inches.  another guy said he kept some JB Weld to glue things back on his bike.


note to self:  buy a handcuff key.

snowmobile suit?

The Race in the Machine

It is wiser to find out than suppose.

-Mark Twain

 

 

I may be in Lansdale come early May.  My business there is somewhat private, suffice to say I'm thinking about riding back to Seattle on a sportbike.  At this point it may or may not happen, but I'm fairly serious about it.  The plans are in stage 2.  What's stage 2?  I have no idea because I just made it up, but its way more serious than stage 1.

 

So.

Ninja Mode

It is 2817 statue miles from Lansdale, PA to Seattle, WA.  Google maps thinks it will take me 45 hours.  A superbike could probably make it in 18 hours.  Realistically, if I could maintain an average speed of 120 mph, I could do it in 23.5 hours, if I didn't have to stop for gas, food, and sleep.  Just thinking about doing it this way excites me.  If only I was really Biff Becker.

 

Could I do this?  The biggest thing to tackle would be whether or not I can safely ingest enough caffeine to make it without falling asleep.  After that, I would worry about where I'm going to be during the daytime (traffic will make it difficult and dangerous to maintain 120 mph), and then about cops, then gas, food, physical exhaustion and hypothermia, and engine overheating, in that order.

Road Trip Mode

I have been wanting to visit other cities for a while now.  It is one of the things I haven't gotten to do because of all those weddings I kept complaining about.  It would take a week to do it this way, but I think I'll be willing to sacrifice the necessary vacation time for this.  I've read that you shouldn't ride for more than 6 hours in a shot, and after a couple 4 hour rides, I'm inclined to agree.  Here is some distance data, broken down by cities I might stay the night.  The times are google estimates;  google seems to use somewhere around 63 mph-ish.  Even on a 250 I could do 90 on highways, so times may be overestimates.

Lansdale to Hershey:  2h

Lansdale to Cleveland, OH: 7h

Cleveland to Chicago, IL: 5.5h

Chicago to Minneapolis: 7.5h

Minneapolis to Seattle: 27h

(thinking of possibly doing a blitz where I just ride all day, pull over and sleep on the highway)

Minneapolis to Bismark, ND: 7h

Bismark, ND to Billings: 6.5h

Billings to Spokane, WA: 9h

Spokane to Seattle:  a paltry 5h

Route: 80, 39, 94, 90.

I would like to be able to leave either from a party Saturday night, or, unlikely, Sunday morning, or, highly unlikely, Sunday afternoon.  In fact, If I'm still there Sunday afternoon I expect I've have found something far more exciting than a little road trip.  But I digress.

It looks like I have about 7 destinations.  That puts me back in Seattle by Friday night, giving me two extra days for emergencies and adventures.  I want to go out in each city I stop in.  Hopefuly in Chicago and maybe Cleveland I'll be able to find a salsa scene.  In the other cities, hopefully I will have craigslist or some other means of getting into trouble.  I don't know.

If I was Wolverine, this would be the end of my plans.  In fact, if I was Wolverine, I would probably just hop on a stolen motorcycle and go.  However, If I was Wolverine, well, I wouldn't die, etc.  I think he gets away with a lot just because he can walk in front of a bus and not even feel achy ten minutes later.  Just sayin.

Since I'm not wolverine, I need to plan this out a little.  Here are....

 

Potential Problems

Money.  Acquiring a motorcycle.  The MSRP for a new Ninja 600 is like $7,000-$8,000.  The new ninjas kind of suck anyway, because they have a digital panel that looks retarded.  Needless to say, thats a bit steep.  My best idea so far is to show up in philly and troll craigslist for some good used deals.  I did a quick search today and found two postings in the $3,000-ish range, one of which was actually in Lansdale.  My fallback could always be to buy one new.  There's also the problem of getting the money.

Snow.  Mountains.  This will be in May.  As I just discovered yesterday (Saturday) when I took a girl up to Mt Rainier for what I incorectly assumed would be an easy stroll through packed snow that doesn't swallow your entire leg, mountains still have a ton of snow.  If that is true in may, I am going to have serious problems.  Either I will have to somehow equip a motorcycle for snow, or I'll be finding a long way 'round.

Caffeine.  I hate to admit it, but I can get pretty sleepy on long trips;  moreso than the average person sometimes.  I need to find out how many mg of caffeine I can take without inducing tachycardia.  I'm tempted to employ binary search, but that might kill me.

Cops.  There is a reason they don't do the canonball run anymore.  The most reliable method of detecting cops, in my opinion, is constant vigilance, but even that is never foolproof.  I think I can expect to get pulled over, and I'm planning to go fast enough to qualify for an instant arrest.  In the unlikely event that this occurs, I am going to want to do something to my fingerprints to prevent them from getting a good read, and, if I can, a fake tattoo, and, possibly, color-changing contacts, and maybe even a hair color change.  Yes, I think dying my hair blonde in a gas station restroom will add a nice touce to the story.  I will consult with friends as to the best hair color.  I don't know what other information is included in an arrest booking, so I don't know what else to pre-emptively corrupt.  I'm going to need my real drivers license, which is unfortunate.

Sleeping outside.  How realistic is this idea, given May temperatures in that region?  How much equipment?

What to pack.  I'm going to have a back pack and possibly a storage net over the bitch seat.  That's it, for the entire trip.  Can probably get away with two sets of clothing, and wash them at motels.  Maybe a book to read while doing laundry.  What book does a road ninja read?  The Catcher in the Rye?  Gullivers Travels?  The Bible?  Dangerous Liasons?  Pulp fiction from the 50s?  Stephen King?  Some cute midwest girl might walk up while I'm kickin it on a folding chair at the coin-op machine.  The book in my hand is everything.

Breakdowns and directions.  Need to know who to call if the bike breaks down, especially if I buy it used.  Should also learn how to change the oil, if its new.  Need to know where I'm going; maybe get maps of every city.  Can you put maps on a kindle?  Maybe I would get a kindle for that.  Oh, or I could break down and buy a smartphone.  Yeah....

 

Leaning the engine.  Might want to adjust the air-fuel ratio when I am at altitude.  I have no idea how to do that to a motorcycle.

HUD.  It would be nice if my helmet had a heads-up display.  Just sayin.

That's all I have for now.  There is a good chance this won't happen at all, but if you, dear reader, have a motorcycle and are interested in a little road trip, even if only for part of the way, don't hesitate to contact me.