Sunday, 2/3, GSX ODO 4706
Wendy's and back for lunch.
Notable: Chilly at speed, but great to get out with the sun and temps in the high 50s. A wrong turn onto Belmont Ridge (at the Loudoun County Parkway detour) turned a quick trip to Wendy's into a 30 mile excursion to 50 and up 28. 0 to 60 in 3 - 4 seconds still feels great.
Monday, 1/7, GSX ODO 4676
To work and back.
Notable: A beautiful day to get out -- sunny with a high of 74, according to Weather.com. Great to get out! As I recall, the weather over the next couple of days wasn't bad either, but circumstances and a certain paranoia about 1/10 kept me off the bike.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Motorcycle Diaries 2008.02.03
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Background Music
The new music is borrowed from a site built by a friend of a friend. Lifehouse's Everything from their 2000 release: No Name Face.
What do you think?
What do you think?
Motorcycle Diaries 2007.12.29
Saturday, 12/29, GSX ODO 4661
Around.
Notable: The front tire does have a slow leak... down to 31 psi since the last ride. Looks like this was last ride of the year since the weather just gets colder from here for the next few days. Good to be out. Temps at 50 with wind chill at 50+ mph was pretty chilly, but not too much for a quick 11 mile run.
Around.
Notable: The front tire does have a slow leak... down to 31 psi since the last ride. Looks like this was last ride of the year since the weather just gets colder from here for the next few days. Good to be out. Temps at 50 with wind chill at 50+ mph was pretty chilly, but not too much for a quick 11 mile run.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
BMW Performance Delivery
So, after seriously considering the 2007 BMW 550i and opting for the motorcycles instead, I finally broke down and bought the 2008 this summer. Our trip to Europe presented an opportunity that was just too good to pass up, so I gave it a shot.
Everything worked out spectacularly. European Delivery saved me a bunch, and enabled us to tour Germany and Austria in style for a few days. Details on that trip are still pending.
After dropping the car off with the shipping agency in Munich in early September, it finally made its way to the New Jersey shores in October, and was trucked to Spartanburg, SC. A circuitous route... but bare with me, and you'll understand the method to my madness.
Thursday, 10/25, I grabbed a rental car and headed for Greenville, SC (immediately adjacent to the BMW plant in Spartanburg, SC, braving 500 miles of rainy weather, traffic, and dark highways, praying that it would clear by the morning.
Cutting to the chase... The next morning, with a group of five couples, I headed to the BMW Performance Delivery center just a couple miles down the road from the hotel.
Upon arrival, what should we all behold but my car, proudly displayed in the lobby of the delivery center with placards reading "PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH -- THIS IS A CUSTOMER'S NEW VEHICLE." With the second "comfort access key" in my pocket, it was all I could do to resist gently touching the door handle to deactivate the alarm and make the lights flash. "That's my car, baby!! ;-)" (But, I resisted the temptation to show off.)
After brief introductions, and a quick performance driver training session we headed to the track, and to copies of our cars ready for abuse.
Unfortunately, 550i Sport editions were in short supply, so I was stuck with an M5... a 500 BHP, 0-60 in 4.5 seconds monster! Yeah baby!
With heads-up display, paddle shifting, and various performance tuning controls set, I was ready!
First up, pushing the cars as hard as we could on a small portion of the race track. From someone else's "hot lap" experience, here's a rough idea of what it looked like from the inside; with Donnie Isley:
Then, it was time for ABS brake testing, and practice turning while braking:
And then, over to the skid pad. First, without DSC:
Then, with DSC:
I took delivery of my car; personally shown every bell and whistle by Donnie. After wrapping up, he drove it out of the lobby, and handed over the keys, BMW coffee and other goodies.
I had just enough time to zip over to the Zentrum museum, drive on the sidewalk (whee!) and park behind the row of 650is driven over by the rest of the group.
I sorta missed the opportunity to drive one of the 650is over... but with my 550i parked behind the group, how could I complain. Really!?
After a quick tour of the museum, and lunch complements of the delivery center, we headed back on the track.
While some of us waited for lunch to settle, Donnie ran hot-laps with each couple. Here's Donnie's final hot-lap for our group, from the outside:
I then headed over to the X5 course with Jim Davis.
The course really demonstrated that the X5 is a true four-wheel drive off-road vehicle. Nice!
After wrapping up the drive in the X5, and saying farewells to Donnie, Jim, and the gang, I was back in my shiny new 550i for the 500 mile return trip home.
I'd recommend spending more time in Greenville. But, even if you have to make the whole tour in less than 36 hours, I still recommend it! The experience of a lifetime!
Everything worked out spectacularly. European Delivery saved me a bunch, and enabled us to tour Germany and Austria in style for a few days. Details on that trip are still pending.
After dropping the car off with the shipping agency in Munich in early September, it finally made its way to the New Jersey shores in October, and was trucked to Spartanburg, SC. A circuitous route... but bare with me, and you'll understand the method to my madness.
Thursday, 10/25, I grabbed a rental car and headed for Greenville, SC (immediately adjacent to the BMW plant in Spartanburg, SC, braving 500 miles of rainy weather, traffic, and dark highways, praying that it would clear by the morning.
Cutting to the chase... The next morning, with a group of five couples, I headed to the BMW Performance Delivery center just a couple miles down the road from the hotel.
Upon arrival, what should we all behold but my car, proudly displayed in the lobby of the delivery center with placards reading "PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH -- THIS IS A CUSTOMER'S NEW VEHICLE." With the second "comfort access key" in my pocket, it was all I could do to resist gently touching the door handle to deactivate the alarm and make the lights flash. "That's my car, baby!! ;-)" (But, I resisted the temptation to show off.)After brief introductions, and a quick performance driver training session we headed to the track, and to copies of our cars ready for abuse.
Unfortunately, 550i Sport editions were in short supply, so I was stuck with an M5... a 500 BHP, 0-60 in 4.5 seconds monster! Yeah baby!
With heads-up display, paddle shifting, and various performance tuning controls set, I was ready!
First up, pushing the cars as hard as we could on a small portion of the race track. From someone else's "hot lap" experience, here's a rough idea of what it looked like from the inside; with Donnie Isley:
Then, it was time for ABS brake testing, and practice turning while braking:
And then, over to the skid pad. First, without DSC:
Then, with DSC:
I took delivery of my car; personally shown every bell and whistle by Donnie. After wrapping up, he drove it out of the lobby, and handed over the keys, BMW coffee and other goodies.
I had just enough time to zip over to the Zentrum museum, drive on the sidewalk (whee!) and park behind the row of 650is driven over by the rest of the group.
I sorta missed the opportunity to drive one of the 650is over... but with my 550i parked behind the group, how could I complain. Really!?
After a quick tour of the museum, and lunch complements of the delivery center, we headed back on the track.
While some of us waited for lunch to settle, Donnie ran hot-laps with each couple. Here's Donnie's final hot-lap for our group, from the outside:
I then headed over to the X5 course with Jim Davis.
The course really demonstrated that the X5 is a true four-wheel drive off-road vehicle. Nice!
After wrapping up the drive in the X5, and saying farewells to Donnie, Jim, and the gang, I was back in my shiny new 550i for the 500 mile return trip home.
I'd recommend spending more time in Greenville. But, even if you have to make the whole tour in less than 36 hours, I still recommend it! The experience of a lifetime!
Motorcycle Diaries 2007.11.21
Wednesday, 11/21, GSX ODO 4650
To Brambleton Plaza and back.
Notable: New 12V portable air compressor from Sears, and air in the tire: 36 PSI and holding. Weather today is 72 and sunny! Heavy Thanksgiving traffic, so I kept it short. And, kept the speed down ...just in case.
Sunday, 11/18, GSX ODO 4637
Err... nowhere.
Notable: Front tire 0.0 PSI. I noticed that turning in was particularly hard on the 11/10 return home, but figured that it was just my imagination. A flat!? ...or maybe my 11/10 trip to get air had the opposite effect! Bizarre.
Saturday, 11/10, GSX ODO 4637
To gas station for air, and back.
Notable: A chilly ride, but it was good to get out for a bit.
To Brambleton Plaza and back.
Notable: New 12V portable air compressor from Sears, and air in the tire: 36 PSI and holding. Weather today is 72 and sunny! Heavy Thanksgiving traffic, so I kept it short. And, kept the speed down ...just in case.
Sunday, 11/18, GSX ODO 4637
Err... nowhere.
Notable: Front tire 0.0 PSI. I noticed that turning in was particularly hard on the 11/10 return home, but figured that it was just my imagination. A flat!? ...or maybe my 11/10 trip to get air had the opposite effect! Bizarre.
Saturday, 11/10, GSX ODO 4637
To gas station for air, and back.
Notable: A chilly ride, but it was good to get out for a bit.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Math Is Cool, Part 2
April last year, I blogged about math coolness I encountered while poking around the TopCoder member profiles...
Yes, I'm a math geek... who knew!?
In doubt that math is cool?! What would Halo 3 be without math... think on that one! So, maybe it's not math itself, but what can be done with math that's cool.... but then, aren't we just quibbling over semantics?
In fact, I was a fairly marginal math student all the way through school and much of the way through college; always a year behind the curve it seemed. But the August 1985 cover of BYTE magazine changed all that. [No luck finding an actual image of the cover online, but I did find this great link!] My discovery of Fractal mathematics convinced me that not only is math cool, but that I was in a unique point in history to be able to combine my love for computers with the power of math.
Anyway, I've been reading a series of books from SciAm Book Club (see note above) covering the history, math, and personalities surrounding Pi, e, i, Phi, and zero. Did you know that Pi, e, and i are all directly related to each other?! (While reading about Pi, I discovered why the Riemann Zeta function series contains primes... more coolness.)
So, I'm reading about Phi, now.
Did you know that Phi can be found in the five-pointed star? Measure the distance between two adjacent points, and divide that into the length of one of the long strokes... 1.618... Phi. [From my hand-drawn star, I get ratios between 1.42 and 1.59... maybe you can get a closer result.]
More later...
Yes, I'm a math geek... who knew!?
In doubt that math is cool?! What would Halo 3 be without math... think on that one! So, maybe it's not math itself, but what can be done with math that's cool.... but then, aren't we just quibbling over semantics?
In fact, I was a fairly marginal math student all the way through school and much of the way through college; always a year behind the curve it seemed. But the August 1985 cover of BYTE magazine changed all that. [No luck finding an actual image of the cover online, but I did find this great link!] My discovery of Fractal mathematics convinced me that not only is math cool, but that I was in a unique point in history to be able to combine my love for computers with the power of math.
Anyway, I've been reading a series of books from SciAm Book Club (see note above) covering the history, math, and personalities surrounding Pi, e, i, Phi, and zero. Did you know that Pi, e, and i are all directly related to each other?! (While reading about Pi, I discovered why the Riemann Zeta function series contains primes... more coolness.)
So, I'm reading about Phi, now.
Did you know that Phi can be found in the five-pointed star? Measure the distance between two adjacent points, and divide that into the length of one of the long strokes... 1.618... Phi. [From my hand-drawn star, I get ratios between 1.42 and 1.59... maybe you can get a closer result.]
More later...
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Motorcycle Diaries 2007.10.21
Sunday, 10/21, GSX ODO 4632
To pickup hacksaw.
Notable: Hacksaw on a bike… not the smartest combination. But, it was a good ride. Beautiful sunny, pure blue skies with temps in the high 70s!
Saturday, 10/20, GSX ODO 4592
To Loudoun Motorsports for state inspection.
Notable: A sunny cool (low 60s) morning after a rainy night led to a hair-raising trip in, with cold wet/slick roads out of the neighborhood. Once on the dry, much better. Just impossible to get the feel for wet traction…
Beautiful weather on Thursday, but I drove in to work. Friday, I had hoped to take the bike in for its state inspection, but the weather said "no."
To pickup hacksaw.
Notable: Hacksaw on a bike… not the smartest combination. But, it was a good ride. Beautiful sunny, pure blue skies with temps in the high 70s!
Saturday, 10/20, GSX ODO 4592
To Loudoun Motorsports for state inspection.
Notable: A sunny cool (low 60s) morning after a rainy night led to a hair-raising trip in, with cold wet/slick roads out of the neighborhood. Once on the dry, much better. Just impossible to get the feel for wet traction…
Beautiful weather on Thursday, but I drove in to work. Friday, I had hoped to take the bike in for its state inspection, but the weather said "no."
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Linux
Attending the New Paradigm Enterprise 2.0 All Member briefing last month, I was once again reminded of LAMP: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP5. Although I have an extensive "client" programming background, in the web realm, I'm a bit of a newb.
So, a few weeks ago, I got copies of Professional LAMP and Setting Up LAMP, and ordered a "cheap" Dell server.
The server arrived last Thursday. :-)
The entire locating the correct Fedora Linux build, download, verify ISO, burn DVD, install, test-run process took only a few hours... in spite of a few hiccups along the way. (My PC has a DVD/CD-RW... not a DVD-W/CD-RW. :-P)
Before starting the Fedora install, I also took a brief detour with the setup DVD included by Dell, which included a Linux variant. Unfortunately, after getting through the setup process, the install failed for lack of a "Disc 2." (The whole install seemed to be on a single DVD, and the other disc included in the package was docs only... so, no luck.) But, it's just as well that it didn't work out, because the Fedora release rocks.
I went for the full install, which includes not only web server and development tools, but also desktop apps: Firefox Browser, email, Open Office, GIMP (Open Source PhotoShop-like), Totem DVD player, games, and a lot more. It took a lot of restraint not to sell my MSFT shares right then and there! ;-)
This morning, I see a Wired article about the latest Ubuntu Linux Release. And, just as I was dropping a DVD into the drive, read about the problems with Totem DVD codec support. Installing the codec seemed to eliminate the error, but didn't yield any further success. But, the ultimate irony is that none of it mattered anyway... I bought this machine to be a web server / dev box -- not for movies or games... so, no sound card. :-P
So, as the install progresses from L to A to M to P. My study has begun with P. So far, looks very similar to Java. More later....
So, a few weeks ago, I got copies of Professional LAMP and Setting Up LAMP, and ordered a "cheap" Dell server.
The server arrived last Thursday. :-)
The entire locating the correct Fedora Linux build, download, verify ISO, burn DVD, install, test-run process took only a few hours... in spite of a few hiccups along the way. (My PC has a DVD/CD-RW... not a DVD-W/CD-RW. :-P)
Before starting the Fedora install, I also took a brief detour with the setup DVD included by Dell, which included a Linux variant. Unfortunately, after getting through the setup process, the install failed for lack of a "Disc 2." (The whole install seemed to be on a single DVD, and the other disc included in the package was docs only... so, no luck.) But, it's just as well that it didn't work out, because the Fedora release rocks.
I went for the full install, which includes not only web server and development tools, but also desktop apps: Firefox Browser, email, Open Office, GIMP (Open Source PhotoShop-like), Totem DVD player, games, and a lot more. It took a lot of restraint not to sell my MSFT shares right then and there! ;-)
This morning, I see a Wired article about the latest Ubuntu Linux Release. And, just as I was dropping a DVD into the drive, read about the problems with Totem DVD codec support. Installing the codec seemed to eliminate the error, but didn't yield any further success. But, the ultimate irony is that none of it mattered anyway... I bought this machine to be a web server / dev box -- not for movies or games... so, no sound card. :-P
So, as the install progresses from L to A to M to P. My study has begun with P. So far, looks very similar to Java. More later....
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Motorcycle Diaries 2007.10.17
Wednesday, 10/17, GSX ODO 4568
To Loudoun Motorsports and Market Station for lunch.
Notable: Still with AOL, but our team was hit really hard. Not happy. But, today, it’s an absolutely spectacular day with sunny skies, temps in the high 70s, and a light enough workload for a long lunch.
Ordered Scott Anti-Fog Lens Cleaner, Stomp Grip Tank Pad Kit, and Vortex Frame Sliders from motosport.com. Free shipping, too! Not ready for the track, yet. But, the Tank Pad will help me hold on better when stopping and turning. Hopefully will never use the Frame Sliders....
Monday, 10/15, GSX ODO 4539
To work and back.
Notable: T minus one day, and counting to AOL's October 2007 layoffs. Not happy.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Motorcycle Diaries 2007.10.13
Saturday, 10/13, GSX ODO 4524
To Target and back.
Notable: Still seems silly to ride a GSX-R into Target… but not as silly when riding out with eight shot glasses!
Friday, 10/12, GSX ODO 4506
Out for a hair cut, and back.
Notable: Sunny but chilly morning, so I drove in to work. But, after wrapping up work, returned home and rode the bike... the helmet’s not so good for the new haircut, but who cares?
Thursday, 10/11, GSX ODO 4480
Out to pick up spare contacts, and back.
Notable: Chilly and overcast, but good to get out for a quick ride. Saving gas!
To Target and back.
Notable: Still seems silly to ride a GSX-R into Target… but not as silly when riding out with eight shot glasses!
Friday, 10/12, GSX ODO 4506
Out for a hair cut, and back.
Notable: Sunny but chilly morning, so I drove in to work. But, after wrapping up work, returned home and rode the bike... the helmet’s not so good for the new haircut, but who cares?
Thursday, 10/11, GSX ODO 4480
Out to pick up spare contacts, and back.
Notable: Chilly and overcast, but good to get out for a quick ride. Saving gas!
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