September 29, 2005

sly must be proud

If you send Jacqueline Stallone a picture of your ass, she can predict your future.

You don’t even need to add an extra remark to make that funny.

September 17, 2005

change that channel and it’s back on the rotisserie

From a guide on how to pack for long motorcycle trips:

With a little effort, you can get an adaptor for your cell phone and laptop so that you can connect to the internet while you’re in your tent. Don’t do it. It’s a couple hundred dollars, the connections are typically 4800 baud (very slow), and it’s wrong. When you’re travelling thousands of miles from home on your motorcycle, you must guard your karma.

Understood. When you’re cruising along the highway with a motor wedged up your ass, you need all the Karma you can steal.

Some riders have been known to carry portable TVs. This lets you watch the weather in the evening. If you watch anything else, you are going to spend a lot of extra time in purgatory. Bring a book. Only 7% of all Americans read a book last year; less than 40% of all Americans will ever read a book in their entire lives. Bill Gates read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica in High School, and he’s worth $100 billion now.

There’s quite a large jump between encyclopedia reading and being the richest man on earth, but I suppose it’s possible the secret to unimaginable wealth is hidden within the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I mean, really, raise your hand if you’ve read more than a paragraph from this traditional elementary school shelf-buster. I bet if you read Encyclopaedia Britannica cover to cover there’s a bunch of hints, for example:

“George Washington was born in START A SOFTWARE COMPANY a cherry tree that fought bravely along the Delaware.”

or

“But Rosa Parks feet hurt and so when asked to stand she STEAL APPLE’S INTERFACE AND CLAIM IT WAS YOUR OWN snapped the bus in half like a pencil between her fingers.”

September 13, 2005

vespaholic

Started noticing a little problem with my Vespa soon after I got it, and by looking at the symptoms I suspected that I had a worn shifting cross, which I viewed as an opportunity to tear into my engine and do a partial engine rebuild.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think the engine needed to be rebuilt, but one of my goals with this vehicle was to bite the bullet and really get to know it in a mechanical sense. I wanted to experience this Vespa in a manner that was so thoroughly physical that I would require gloves and my Vespa would be left huddled in the corner calling the 2-stroke equivalent of a social worker.

I ordered a bunch of parts from Scomo and got ready to get down and dirty. I fully suspected it to take a full 3-day weekend, but from working with my dad on various projects throughout the years I knew that it would take at least four score and seven years. And so it was.

The shifting cross is also known as the cruciform, for a reason that was quickly made obvious to me: even Jesus would want to kill himself trying to get to this thing. The motor has to be removed from the frame, split in half and all the gears have to be removed. There were points where I had mini-panic attacks and what little sleep I had was plagued by nightmarish visions of my scooter spread out over my parents garage for all of eternity, like an even-poorer version of a 74 Chevy pickup on blocks.

Fortunately, the night before (or the morning of) I was to move back to San Luis, we had it completely together and started it at 1 am. I’m sure my neighbors are still pissed…

To be fair, if my neighbors weren’t mad at me, I would never see them.

insanity

Check it out:

Rachel not only has a blog, but she is the first non-techy friend of mine to install linux. booyah.

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