YetAnotherPersonalHomepage

I’ve upgraded to MovableType 3.

The differences from a reader’s perspective, aside from any visual changes, are related to moderation of comments: * Comments will not appear until I approve them. * Visitors can continue posting comments. * Visitors with identities registered through the free TypeKey http://www.typekey.com/ service may be granted blanket approval.

This is unfortunate but necessary because even with a CAPTCHA mechanism, really determined net slime manually inject blog spam.

Yesterday was gorgeous. Sunny, clear, dry and temperatures in the low fifties. I did not get in a ride. We drove two hours each way to attend the baptism of our friend’s new born daughter. Attention to a friendship is more important even than riding.

Today I had time and, of course, the rain was pouring with temperatures in the low forties and accompanied by forty mile per hour gusts of wind. I did not take a ride today.

I have accepted that the season is over and have my supplies ready. I made a start but did not get much done in my landlord’s garage. There’s no power out there. Running my extension cord across the concrete patio from the house in the puddled rain sounded like a bad idea. That and I don’t have a working shop light. A trip to Lowes is due. Despite that, I started winterizing the fuel tanks and carbs in the half dark of the garage. I pulled back the covers and put gas stabilizer in the fuel tanks. I ran both bikes until they were good and warm and the stinky smoke of the Stabil was coming from the exhaust pipes, closed the petcocks and when they stalled, shut them down and pulled the covers over them.

One dry evening this week I’ll push them out, warm them up and take each for a last short ride around the neighborhood. I’ll top off the gas and change the oil and plugs. I’ll pull the battery from both and keep them indoors and trickle charge them occasionally. I already replaced the air filter on the Honda and the filters on the BMW are from late in the season and nearly new. For good measure I’ll replace the oil in the gear box and final drive on the BMW too.

Luck of the calendar and I have on-call for Thanksgiving. It’s not a holiday in Europe or the Far East. I’ve been logged in and working since 9am. Whee.

I just hope it stays quiet.

Recently finished two entirely unrelated books: * Salt by Mark Kurlansky. The book is equal parts of political and social history and seasoned with period recipes and text on other bits of culinaria. A good read. * Fear of Physics by Lawrence M. Krauss. Despite the fact that I paid little to no attention to physics in High School and college, I do have an interest in the subject matter so when I saw this at a used book shop I snapped it up. It is an entertaining and approachable layman’s introduction to topics such as general relativity, the expansion of the universe, subatomic particles and symmetry.

I just got back from a few days off, arrived at JFK, and now I turn around and fly out for work, leaving from LGA. This is not how I like to plan these things but I have meetings tomorrow and the idea of a 6am flight didn’t sound so good. I’ll catch up on the 1000+ backlog of work email over the next couple of days.