Sunday, July 13, 2008
Not every day you see a hit and run as it happened
Since I don't feel like writing essentially the same thing twice. This is the police statement I wrote it for the local RCMP.
At approximately 4:09 PM on Sunday, July 13, 2008 I witnessed a Ford Focus, Blue, license plate KAC 396 pass me in the left lane at a very high speed heading west on Highway 16A just east of the over pass that crosses the train tracks east of Spruce Grove. I was still in the 100 zone when the vehicle passed me. (Notice how I made it crystal clear that I was NOT speeding in the construction zone because that would be wrong.) I would say he was going about 130kph in the left lane. The vehicle entered the construction zone in the left lane which is blocked off at the train crossing without slowing down. He braked hard and slammed into the barricades in the left lane at the bridge. I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures. I approached the vehicle as cars were slowing down in the construction zone. The driver got out of the car and checked the damage on his vehicle. He appeared to be the only occupant of the vehicle. He put a couple of the barricades back up and drove off still ahead of me. I followed him into Spruce Grove to see if he's stop at the RCMP detachment but he went on past it. I stopped at the RCMP detachment and advised dispatch.
At approximately 4:09 PM on Sunday, July 13, 2008 I witnessed a Ford Focus, Blue, license plate KAC 396 pass me in the left lane at a very high speed heading west on Highway 16A just east of the over pass that crosses the train tracks east of Spruce Grove. I was still in the 100 zone when the vehicle passed me. (Notice how I made it crystal clear that I was NOT speeding in the construction zone because that would be wrong.) I would say he was going about 130kph in the left lane. The vehicle entered the construction zone in the left lane which is blocked off at the train crossing without slowing down. He braked hard and slammed into the barricades in the left lane at the bridge. I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures. I approached the vehicle as cars were slowing down in the construction zone. The driver got out of the car and checked the damage on his vehicle. He appeared to be the only occupant of the vehicle. He put a couple of the barricades back up and drove off still ahead of me. I followed him into Spruce Grove to see if he's stop at the RCMP detachment but he went on past it. I stopped at the RCMP detachment and advised dispatch.
Labels: day to day
Nashbar Daytrekker Panniers Product Review
Installation of the Panniers on my bicycle too about 5 minutes. It's a one piece deal and it didn't fit great but I'll blame my smaller than normal rack on that.
I loaded the left pannier with a 4L jug of motor oil just to see if it fit and it fit perfectly. That's about the maximum size of container that will fit in there though.
The 4L jug of motor oil. It's for my chainsaw, if you're wondering. Fits snug inside the panniers.
A pic of the bag wide open. Not a lot of space but it suits its purpose.
I can fit my portable bike pump nicely.
The Panniers look great on my bike. I really appreciate lower profile but practical bicycle gear like this. I don't need to look like I'm about to ride coast to coast when I'm just going to the store. Dont' expect to pick up a lot of groceries but it'll fit milk and a medium size box of cereal nicely or motoroil!
There's two long straps on the top to tie down any larger items as well.
There's two long straps on the top to tie down any larger items as well.
For the $20 plus $5 shipping I paid, these things are a steal.
Nashbar Product Link
It looks like the black ones are sold out. There's yellow ones left in stock if you're into the big safety thing. The black ones do have that reflective silver strap along the side.
I loaded the left pannier with a 4L jug of motor oil just to see if it fit and it fit perfectly. That's about the maximum size of container that will fit in there though.
The 4L jug of motor oil. It's for my chainsaw, if you're wondering. Fits snug inside the panniers.
A pic of the bag wide open. Not a lot of space but it suits its purpose.
I can fit my portable bike pump nicely.
The Panniers look great on my bike. I really appreciate lower profile but practical bicycle gear like this. I don't need to look like I'm about to ride coast to coast when I'm just going to the store. Dont' expect to pick up a lot of groceries but it'll fit milk and a medium size box of cereal nicely or motoroil!
There's two long straps on the top to tie down any larger items as well.
There's two long straps on the top to tie down any larger items as well.
For the $20 plus $5 shipping I paid, these things are a steal.
Nashbar Product Link
It looks like the black ones are sold out. There's yellow ones left in stock if you're into the big safety thing. The black ones do have that reflective silver strap along the side.
Labels: cycling
Friday, July 11, 2008
Jester's Mouse
My cats aren't mousers. I didn't get them with the intention of having them around to catch mice. However, since I moved out of town to the acreage with my wife, each of my cats has caught one mouse each.
Yesterday, Jester, the fluffy silly cat of the three caught his mouse.
He nabbed it in the walk in closet in the bedroom while his little sister looked on in pure hateful envy. The mouse lay limp in Jesters jaws so we led Jester to the door to take the mouse outside. Normally, Jester would be meowing his little lungs out at such excitement. He was looking pretty stressed because he couldn't meow with this mouse in his mouth. I sometimes wish he'd keep a mouse in his mouth more often.
Jester carried the mouse outside. Joey our dog bounced around making sure Jester didn't take off into the woods or something. Jester put the limp mouse down for a moment to grasp the situation.
Much to everyone's surprise, the mouse rose from the dead and darted under the house while Jester was looking away. The only way I can describe the look on Jester's face when he realized his prize mouse had vanished is a look of pure "Srsly... WTF!".
It was priceless.
Yesterday, Jester, the fluffy silly cat of the three caught his mouse.
He nabbed it in the walk in closet in the bedroom while his little sister looked on in pure hateful envy. The mouse lay limp in Jesters jaws so we led Jester to the door to take the mouse outside. Normally, Jester would be meowing his little lungs out at such excitement. He was looking pretty stressed because he couldn't meow with this mouse in his mouth. I sometimes wish he'd keep a mouse in his mouth more often.
Jester carried the mouse outside. Joey our dog bounced around making sure Jester didn't take off into the woods or something. Jester put the limp mouse down for a moment to grasp the situation.
Much to everyone's surprise, the mouse rose from the dead and darted under the house while Jester was looking away. The only way I can describe the look on Jester's face when he realized his prize mouse had vanished is a look of pure "Srsly... WTF!".
It was priceless.
Labels: day to day
Myley Cyrus and Judgement Day
Something's been bothering me for a week or so now. It's like a bad dream that reoccurs only when I'm driving to work so I forget about it when I get to work again. I'm one of those people who never remembers his dreams.
Anyway...
Miley Cyrus, daughter of country pop icon actor Billy Ray Cyrus and teenage pop queen TV actor too. She is in a sense the result of him and in the same way that Skynet resulted in Judgment Day, there will be consequences.
Since nobody really reads the internet, I'll be straight forward here.
You have been warned.
Anyway...
Miley Cyrus, daughter of country pop icon actor Billy Ray Cyrus and teenage pop queen TV actor too. She is in a sense the result of him and in the same way that Skynet resulted in Judgment Day, there will be consequences.
Since nobody really reads the internet, I'll be straight forward here.
Myley Cyrus is destined to record a heart felt ballad of "Achy Breaky Heart" as a tribute to her father.
You have been warned.
Labels: pop culture
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Short Review of the Patriot 16gb Xporter Thumb Drive
I bought this thumb drive to go with my new Asus EEE PC. It does the trick. 16GB is a phenomenal size for a thumb drive. There's also a 32gb model too. I paid something like $50 for my 16GB model after lame mail in rebate.
For what it is and what it does it works great. No annoying software preinstalled like on the Verbatim for example.
There's a rubbery coating on my Patriot thumb drive which is sort of neat but it makes it really big and sort of annoying too. I'll probably remove the coating eventually as it will probably loosen over time anyway. The cap is made of the same material and it's terrible. I'm not even sure where the cap is right now. They really need to attach the cap to the body somehow on these things.
If the OCZ Rally 2 16GB wasn't sold out I would have bought that instead.
For what it is and what it does it works great. No annoying software preinstalled like on the Verbatim for example.
There's a rubbery coating on my Patriot thumb drive which is sort of neat but it makes it really big and sort of annoying too. I'll probably remove the coating eventually as it will probably loosen over time anyway. The cap is made of the same material and it's terrible. I'm not even sure where the cap is right now. They really need to attach the cap to the body somehow on these things.
If the OCZ Rally 2 16GB wasn't sold out I would have bought that instead.
Labels: tech stuff
Asus EEE PC 4G Surfer Review
The Trouble with Traditional Laptops:
Modern consumer laptops are just too damn big to actually be realistically portable. Secondly, they're just too expensive to take anywhere without feeling like you're babysitting it all the time.
Why did I buy an EEE PC instead of a traditional laptop?
Size matters. Only having to carry around 2 lbs of laptop is a huge selling point. Not to mention that it's only 125cm wide 90cm long and 15cm thick. It's just tiny. The trade off is that the screen is even smaller and the keyboard takes some getting used to as well. The 900 model has a slightly larger screen but the jump in price wasn't worth it. The other nice thing about size is that I can use it in public without everyone gawking at me and my screen. Even at work people will give me that "OMFG U got A Laptopzor! Dya got any games!?". Nobody will even notice the EEE PC. I can even comfortably turn it on it's side and read it like a book.
The price. The performance of the EEE PC benchmarks about about half of what a normal consumer grade $1000 laptop can do. The 4G surfer model retails at around $350. The other advantage is that if disintegrates or simply walks away I'm not out a grand or more.
There's no hard drive. Hard drives are mechanical spinning discs that don't appreciate being shaken or knocked around. Logic dictates it might be a bad idea to carry such a hard drive around in a laptop. The EEE PC uses static memory like that of an SD card in a digital camera. There isn't a lot of memory but it won't crash on you if you slip on the ice while carrying it. Secondly, going back to the disintegration slash walk away factor, if the EEE PC does do this, you won't be out half a terabyte of your most precious data. I picked up a 16GB usb drive for portable storage I use my desktop at home for primary storage.
I also bought it to plug my gps into but I haven't gotten that far with it yet. I only bought it a couple days ago. Apparently it works quite well and fits nicely on the dash of my car. I expect it'll make an excellent mp3 player for the car too. It plays movies well but I still think drivers who watch movies while driving are suicidal.
The one thing I don't trust about reviews by consumers for consumers is that nobody wants to admit that they paid too much money for a piece of crap because that's just admitting to their own stupidity. As a result, you get all these rave reviews for crap. So to counter that, I'll should point out the negatives I found about the EEE PC thus far.
The screen resolution is pretty hard to deal with. It's native resolution is 800x480 but I keep mine at 800x600 and just accept a tiny bit of distortion.
The touch pad is ok but the button attached is really hard to press. It's just one button where you press the right side for the right mouse button and the left side for the left button. I generally just tap the touch pad for a left click but I'm still stuck using this really stiff button for the right. Before long, I just grabbed a USB mouse and used that instead. I personally miss those eraserheads from old think pads but I'm probably in a minority there.
I realize that Linux Ubuntu helped keep the price low and it's great and wonderful to use linux like it's a free range chicken but I'm fairly new to linux myself. I'm not very eager to try and navigate a whole new operating system via this little machine. I confess that I threw Windows XP on it nearly right away. You can buy a slightly more expensive model with windows preinstalled. I recommend that route for novice users. Installing windows via a USB thumb drive is tricky.
So in summary, I love this little machine and most of the negatives can be worked around with some tweaking. Even the small screen can be worked around by just plugging it into a normal PC screen. For the price, what do you have to lose? If you don't like it, give it away as a gift or just return it.
Modern consumer laptops are just too damn big to actually be realistically portable. Secondly, they're just too expensive to take anywhere without feeling like you're babysitting it all the time.
Why did I buy an EEE PC instead of a traditional laptop?
The Good
Size matters. Only having to carry around 2 lbs of laptop is a huge selling point. Not to mention that it's only 125cm wide 90cm long and 15cm thick. It's just tiny. The trade off is that the screen is even smaller and the keyboard takes some getting used to as well. The 900 model has a slightly larger screen but the jump in price wasn't worth it. The other nice thing about size is that I can use it in public without everyone gawking at me and my screen. Even at work people will give me that "OMFG U got A Laptopzor! Dya got any games!?". Nobody will even notice the EEE PC. I can even comfortably turn it on it's side and read it like a book.
The price. The performance of the EEE PC benchmarks about about half of what a normal consumer grade $1000 laptop can do. The 4G surfer model retails at around $350. The other advantage is that if disintegrates or simply walks away I'm not out a grand or more.
There's no hard drive. Hard drives are mechanical spinning discs that don't appreciate being shaken or knocked around. Logic dictates it might be a bad idea to carry such a hard drive around in a laptop. The EEE PC uses static memory like that of an SD card in a digital camera. There isn't a lot of memory but it won't crash on you if you slip on the ice while carrying it. Secondly, going back to the disintegration slash walk away factor, if the EEE PC does do this, you won't be out half a terabyte of your most precious data. I picked up a 16GB usb drive for portable storage I use my desktop at home for primary storage.
I also bought it to plug my gps into but I haven't gotten that far with it yet. I only bought it a couple days ago. Apparently it works quite well and fits nicely on the dash of my car. I expect it'll make an excellent mp3 player for the car too. It plays movies well but I still think drivers who watch movies while driving are suicidal.
The Bad
The one thing I don't trust about reviews by consumers for consumers is that nobody wants to admit that they paid too much money for a piece of crap because that's just admitting to their own stupidity. As a result, you get all these rave reviews for crap. So to counter that, I'll should point out the negatives I found about the EEE PC thus far.
The screen resolution is pretty hard to deal with. It's native resolution is 800x480 but I keep mine at 800x600 and just accept a tiny bit of distortion.
The touch pad is ok but the button attached is really hard to press. It's just one button where you press the right side for the right mouse button and the left side for the left button. I generally just tap the touch pad for a left click but I'm still stuck using this really stiff button for the right. Before long, I just grabbed a USB mouse and used that instead. I personally miss those eraserheads from old think pads but I'm probably in a minority there.
I realize that Linux Ubuntu helped keep the price low and it's great and wonderful to use linux like it's a free range chicken but I'm fairly new to linux myself. I'm not very eager to try and navigate a whole new operating system via this little machine. I confess that I threw Windows XP on it nearly right away. You can buy a slightly more expensive model with windows preinstalled. I recommend that route for novice users. Installing windows via a USB thumb drive is tricky.
The Summary
So in summary, I love this little machine and most of the negatives can be worked around with some tweaking. Even the small screen can be worked around by just plugging it into a normal PC screen. For the price, what do you have to lose? If you don't like it, give it away as a gift or just return it.
Labels: tech stuff
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