Fixing Frank. MOAR HACKS.

My boss gave me an early start to the weekend, so I rode to the library to return a book on Tarantulas I had borrowed, and I sat in the shade and enjoyed the lunch I thought I was going to be eating at work.


What was I doing with a book about taratulas?  Oh, right. Meet dd. You knew I had a thing for spiders, right?


Anyhow, when I got home, I figured it was really time to dig into Frank's rack and get to the bottom of why it fell apart. I'd only barely put the rack back together when it happened. I was meeting some of my fellow nerds at a (very) nearby coffee shop. I knew that one of the assemblies holding the seat stay braces had come apart, and on the other side, the bolt holding the seat stay brace to the seat stay came out. I knew I was missing some hardware, forever lost in the middle of the road somewhere, perhaps many miles ago.

Here, you can see what the seat stay brace attachment is supposed to look like. Two pieces of u-channel aluminum sandwiching two roundish pieces of tube type material around the seat stay brace. It's missing from the other side because those pieces fell off when the rack fell.


I apparently missed one of the half-tube-like pieces when I scurried around the road looking for bits of hardware.


I looked around for anything that could be used to replace the missing piece, and finally settled on an outer plate from a piece of old chain.


It wouldn't quite fit, so I had to bend the plate a little. Pliers were getting me nowhere, so I tried the chain cutter. Success.


The finished bracket:




After finding a few more allen-head screws in my bucket of bike stuff and putting everything back together tightly, it seems to work great. Time will tell, I suppose.


The SuperFlash was just a little scuffed up. The mounting bracket is fine and the light itself still works and snaps securely into the bracket. Good news all the way around.

Speaking of Creepy Crawlies

This youngster was eating breakfast a few mornings ago, and didn't seem to mind being photographed up close.



Wolfette was on the prowl for food, and practically posed for my camera when I brought it out:



And while I was setting up the bike shelter, this raccoon just climbed up on my railing, looking at me as if to say "What? I'm hungry, and those birds made a huge bird seed mess on your patio. I plan on cleaning it up if you'll get out of my way!" - I only had my phone on me at the time.

In Today's News

Stocking caps are making headlines.


I had to be in to work really early today, and temperatures dropped into the mid-30s overnight. That means it's time to start breaking out the real winter commuting gear. I was still dressed pretty lightly, but this is the first time this season I've needed a stocking cap.

The early commute also gave me the perfect opportunity to do a totally dark ride with the Light & Motion Vis 360 (shown left) that I'm testing out for BikeCommuters.com. At an advertized 115 Lumens, I was figuring that this light would end up being most useful as a "to be seen" light, but it actually casts a really good beam that's totally suitable for night-time riding at speeds of 15 MPH or so. The fact that it's helmet-mounted makes it good for Pothole Patrol. The side markers are brilliant and eye-catching, and the rear light is suitably luminous as well. I expect a full review to be done in the next week or so.

To test it, I took it out with a few other headlights I own, and took pictures of beam patterns. Its competition:

• A Bell Orion I found on the roadside back in early 2009, loaded with a pair of fresh CR2032 batteries. This embodies the ubiquitous cheapo front headlight from discount stores. It's usually helmet mounted. I made a handlebar mount for it when I found it (missing the helmet mount)
  
• Blackburn Flea
  
• NiteRider Evolution Halogen (15W Bulb)

I'll save the beam comparisons for the full review, but here are some teaser images.







And the beam shot from the Vis 360. This was the darkest spot I could find at my apartment complex this morning, far from the best place to do this sort of thing, but gives you a good idea of the beam pattern. I can say it's not nearly as bright as my halogen, but it knocks the socks off of my Blackburn Flea. It had better, for the price!


And off topic, we're finally getting settled in at our new apartment. We had a lot of help moving, but the tedious process of organizing and unpacking has seemingly only just begun. Oh, and the Brown Recluse spider infestation that we were dealing with at our old place won't likely be a problem for much longer, even if some of them did move with us. I found this friendly guy on our first day at the new apartment. It's a Wolf Spider (Hogna carolinensis, specifically) sitting atop a 50-cent piece (Diameter: roughly 1.2")


I really like large spiders such as Silk Spiders, Orb Weavers, Wolf Spiders, Tarantulas and Nursery Web Spiders. They are typically very gentle, but eat most smaller spiders and any other bugs nearby. I'm pretty sure the days are numbered for any Recluses that happened to stow away in our belongings.

Ah, weekend.

I had my (great) 90-day review at work and it totally doesn't feel like I've been at my new job for three whole months!

From mid-2006 to the first week of 2010, I was a tiny cog in a mega-corporation and my primary job responsibility was to make the red piece of a pie graph look smaller for some guys in big, cushy offices. I was told four times per year that I was exceeding management's expectations and was rarely ever given much more feedback than that. These days, I love what I do and who I work with. I'm constantly challenged with new aspects of the things I'm passionate about: security, systems administration and helping people understand technology in their own terms. I genuinely feel appreciated, too. My team is efficient and forthcoming with very short feedback cycles. That makes all the difference in the world.

Last week was one of the hottest weeks on record. It makes me really glad I live so close to work these days. The weekend brought sweet relief. Many of my pals put in a lot of bike miles today. It feels really strange to say that 89 degrees with 45% relative humidity feels mild, but it really was a nice break from the heat. After church, my wife and I met some friends at a local fishing lake, where I finally got to test out my new baitcasting reel. It took a few casts to get the hang of it, but now I can see why this style of reel is so popular. It casts far if you want it to, very precisely and operates much smoother than my other closed-face and spin-casting reels. My wife and friends caught a few bluegill. I ended up feeding the fish.


Argiope Aurantia (So-called "Garden Spiders") have always been my favorite spiders. When I was growing up in Nebraska, they were everywhere. They're very tame, don't bite and make zig-zag silk inserts into their webs. They're also some of the biggest spiders you'll find native to this part of the country. This female specimen has a leg-span of nearly four inches!


Random Tunage:
Barlow Girl - Enough (excellent Chris Tomlin cover)
Burn In Noise - ERT

Quantum

No offers yet, but some very exciting leads. Yes, I map places for my bike commute before I even go to an interview.








(question mark? by Leo Reynolds CC by-nc-sa)

You'll know more when I know more. For the time being, enjoy some snapshots.

Charlie, our new praise team drummer (okay, not really, but I love this shot, what a neat kid!)


Errands. Sending a stupid fax is expensive! I forgot I could've used the one at the club house for free. Does someone feel like explaining why I have to use my computer to print something out onto part of a dead tree, run it through this thing that turns it back into a digital document so it can go somewhere else where it's printed onto another part of a dead tree, so that someone can type the stuff back into a computer? This crap should have been on the way out in 1983 and abolished by 1997.


Glow.


Enter.


Foggy downtown


Brown Recluse. Unfortunately, I see more of these than any other spider in my apartment. Yes, I know they're poisonous to an extent, though rarely fatal. This isn't the largest specimen I've captured, but it's close, and it's pretty big for a recluse.


Random Tunage:
Electro Sun Vs Bizzare Contact - I've Got The Power (Remix)
Psychostick - BEER!!!

Does It Ever End?

May was hot (for may) June was a freaking scorcher, with temperatures and heat indices that rivaled solid August numbers. July was kind of May-Like, and August is feeling a lot like fall. What the heck is going on here?

Mad props to Mother Nature for tricking me this morning with an innocent-looking overcast sky that decided to unleash on me half way to work. You got me good. Such a prankster, you are!



On my way home, it looked like it was going to open up on me AGAIN. Fortunately, I beat the second storm of the day home by a good 40 minutes or so.




This whole month has been riddled with rain, overcast skies and vibrant thunderstorms. As I sit here, winding down for the night, we have another round coming in. This will be the 3rd batch of
storms in 24 hours. I'm really ready for my fenders to come in.



The storms might be unseasonal, but this little guy wasn't scared at all. My wife saw it while I was trying to catch lightning on camera. The above photo was the closest I got. I'm honestly surprised the next photo came out as clear as it did, using Program (AE) mode, manual focus and the lowest flash setting on my camera (EXIF Here). No doctoring, not even color adjustment or anything. I just cropped it. I'm amazed at the luck.



Oh yeah. Warning: There's a spider photo in this post. If that bothers you, don't look.

Haha.