Amerika - Force of Occupation

Caveat: This post is not going to be very entertaining unless you're an über bike-geek. Even then, it's prolly not going to be terribly engaging. Sorry adoring fans. Feel free to send poison-pens to my editor... Oh shit, that's me!

When I bought the Surly -- In deference to my friend Dan I will no longer be referring to this bike as Baby from here on out. Long story... -- it had tires that were well suited for commuting around town, but not really designed for longterm touring. So when it came time to look for touring tires I did my usual studying and restudying. I'm one of those people that can't just waltz in to a new major expenditure. It takes me three or four visits to any particular store for some hands-on fondling, or in the face of no tactile samples of what I'm contemplating I end up waiting and doing more research.

I'd actually been researching new tires for the Surly since I bought the bike -- coming up on two years in June. There are many players in the bike tire market. Several of the names are quite familiar, and some folks are even a little surprised to find that familiar companies noted for their automotive tires are also producing bike tires. Michelin and Continental are instantly recognizable to most people. However, they both make first-rate bicycle tires as well. In fact, Continental makes some of the highest touted tires in cycling. They are the only tires I've ever ridden on the Kona. That said, when it come to touring tires there is really one name that far and away leads the rest. Schwalbe has been designing and manufacturing tires specifically for bicycles since 1973. Virtually every long distance tourist or expedition cyclist uses Schwalbe.

Although it may seem that two years is an excessive amount of time to spend looking for tires, much of it was spent planning the purchase and waiting for prices to come down. I found and then changed my mind about which tires I wanted during the process of all that waiting. I'd done my research, found what looked like the pair of Schwalbes I wanted and then set off to every bike shop I could find to actually handle a pair of Marathon Extremes. I'm a very tactile person in these cases. The closest I ever got to finding the Extreme stocked anywhere was a sample piece at a shop in Eugene, OR. During the process of saving up for those tires Schwalbe announced a new touring/expedition tire called the Marathon Mondial that was designed to be the replacement for their Marathon XR tire that has been discontinued. I'd personally never heard of the XR prior to someone mentioning it on a bicycle touring mailing list that I belong to. The original Marathons, and at least a few of its iterations can be found in almost any bike shop and virtually no one that rides bikes as more than an occasional past time has never heard of them.

In any event, there was about nine months between the announcement of the Marathon Mondials that I eventually decided upon and their actual release. That was plenty of time to agonize over the cost of the Extremes and the Mondials and whether I actually wanted the Extremes after all. The price of the Extremes came down by about US$20 per tire in the intervening months between the Mondial's announcement and release. However, I also came across various complaints about the Extreme's durability. Deciding on the Mondials was settled by that.

Upon replacing the tires that were currently on the Surly I was stunned to discover that the rear tire had worn down to the threads. I'm amazed that the tire still held air as bad as the wear was, and that I wasn't getting flats every time I left the house. Proof positive that Continental make great bike tires, which these were. Even so, grocery-getting and the several trips I've taken on those original tires wore them down in only 4,000 km (2,500 mi). I'm really hard on tires for some reason. I'm not a real pedal masher, meaning I use the gears of my bike as much as possible to facilitate pedaling instead of pushing down harder and stressing bike frame, parts, tires, and most importantly, my knees.

Perhaps I'm misguided, but instead of purchasing these tires online, I ordered them at my one of my LBS's (local Bike Shop), Deschutes River Cyclery. I'd found the tires online for US$56 each from a reputable vendor, but because I've known the folks that own and run Deschutes for several years, and because spending money locally keeps my money local, I purchased from Deschutes. Granted, some of what I paid went to a dstributor far, far away, but the most went to Deschutes, and by extension back to my community. The tires cost me almost three and a half times as much doing it this way, but keeping local businesses in business is terribly important from the perspective of economic sovereignty. Communities as a whole survive corporate destruction of local economies -- think WalMart moving in to a community -- better when they have strong local businesses. I shop at locally owned businesses whenever possible. The immediate perk of shopping local in this instance? They threw in the new tubes I needed to fit the Mondials for free. That may not seems like much after spending almost US$190 on two tires, but ten bucks is ten bucks. But, I digress...

The Mondials are 26x2.00" (50-559). Huge tires compared to the Continentals which were 26x1.5” (39-559). They almost seem like mountain bike tires when looking down at them from the handlebars. There was a large gap between the tires and fenders on the Surly before. The Mondials fit the fenders such that for the first time I hear when rocks or other bits get lodged in the tire tread and pulled through the fenders. There was a substantial gap between them and the Continentals so I never heard anything from them. That's another thing about the Mondials: They sound like mountain bike tires. Handling is much more sluggish than before as well. I didn't expect these tires to be exactly as easy in terms of pedaling effort, but they require significantly more effort. This speaks more to my tendency to want to ride a bike made for carrying a load like a bike made for going fast than a design flaw of the tires. Plus, the gearing between the Surly and the Kona just aren't comparable. I usually explain the difference between the two as the difference between a Peterbilt and a (VW) GTI.

*NSFW*

https://github.com/rakshasa/libtorrent

---

$ unzip rakshasa-libtorrent-0.13.0-94-g4c9de3c.zip
(----Much output----)

$ cd rakshasa-libtorrent-4c9de3c

Read more...

This caught me by complete surprise. I actually exclaimed, "holy shit!" All the stars from my childhood are dying. Fuck, I'm getting old, and the clock is ticking louder than ever now.

Reproduced in its entirety from Rolling Stone:

Monkees Singer Davy Jones Dead At 66
Jones sang 'Daydream Believer' and 'I Wanna Be Free'
by: Andy Greene
February 29, 2012 1:01 PM ET

Davy Jones on the set of the television show 'The Monkees.' Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Davy Jones of the Monkees has died of an apparent heart attack at age 66. The singer, who had been on a solo tour this month, complained of chest pains last evening and was admitted to a hospital this morning in Stuart, Florida. Jones was born in Manchester, England and started acting as a child. In 1964 he had the misfortune of appearing in the cast of Oliver! on the same episode of The Ed Sullivan Show where the Beatles made their debut. The next year he was cast in The Monkees, a comedy show/band inspired by the success of the Beatles. They were an instant hit in the ratings and the record shops, scoring massive singles with "Last Train to Clarksville," "I'm a Believer," "Stepping Stone" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday." Jones – who played tambourine in the band – was the lead vocalist on the classics "Daydream Believer" and "I Wanna Be Free." At the peak of their popularity in 1967 the group sold more albums than the Beatles. Photos: Davy Jones Through the Years The Monkees' music was written by some of the best songwriters of the day, including Carole King and Neil Diamond. As the group grew more popular, they insisted on writing their own music and playing their own instruments. Although their later work has attracted a huge cult audience over the years, their mainstream success quickly dwindled and the group split in 1971. Jones went onto a solo career, and he memorably performed his song "Girl" on an episode of The Brady Bunch. Jones returned to acting in the late 1970s when his solo career failed to take off, but he found it difficult to escape the shadow of the Monkees. By the mid-1980s Monkees mania was reborn when MTV and other stations began regularly airing old episodes of the TV show. The band (minus Mike Nesmith) reunited for a highly successful reunion tour in 1986. They toured off and on through 2001, when infighting led to another split. Last summer they patched things up for a 45th anniversary tour, though it was called short because of what guitarist Peter Tork called a "glitch." Nesmith posted a tribute to Jones on his Facebook page. "I will miss him, but I won’t abandon him to mortality," he wrote. "I will think of him as existing within the animating life that insures existence. I will think of him and his family with that gentle regard in spite of all the contrary appearances on the mortal plane. David’s spirit and soul live well in my heart, among all the lovely people, who remember with me the good times, and the healing times, that were created for so many, including us. I have fond memories. I wish him safe travels."

St Patrick's Battalion
by David Rovics (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

(Please let me know if the title of this post does not appear correctly. On my laptop, all I get are rectangles.)

I think I've been getting poisoned by chemicals at work. I've had weird pains, stiffnesses, and weaknesses that just sprung up. A couple of weeks ago I woke up one morning to find the index and middle finger on each hand were stiff in a way I've never experienced. Even the knuckles were swollen. Now, on top of it all, and thanks to my compromised immune system, I have snot. Anyway, once I started feeling really sick and getting freaked out by the chemical exposure I drew on my complete lack of in-depth knowledge of Ayurvedic medicine and headed to the co-op. There I purchased the following:

• Burdock root
• Nettle leaves
• Raspberry leaves (they were out of the Dandelion leaves that I wanted. Bastards!)
• Milk thistle seeds
• Turmeric root
• Ginger root

I used two tablespoons measured of everything except the turmeric and ginger. Of that, I just grated a bunch until I felt I had reasonable piles. Probably three or four tablespoons measured. I didn't really want to measure the turmeric. That stuff gets on everything. My fingers and nails are still stained a groovy saffron/yellow mustard yellow.

I then boiled a little over half a liter of water and added the above ingredients. The mixture then simmers for at least ten minutes. This yields a dark yellow-brown liquid of what is essentially tea. Each time I drink water I mix a quarter of the tea with about three-quarters of water.

At first, this stuff made me pee a lot! It's not a great surprise. Most of the ingredients are powerful diuretics. I don't know if any of this stuff is doing any immediate good, but cumulatively there is some compelling data, specifically for turmeric that makes it worth the surprisingly minimal cost of the ingredients.

Just what this world needs. Yet another spam vector. I knew getting rid of the internal private messaging system in favor of just one more internet email system was a bad idea. I guess, in the final analysis, I don't care why the Opera-folk decided this was a good idea. However, I do know that I have enough internet email addresses.

Remember when they thought stripping html and bbcode formatting out of various parts of my.opera -- and particularly the "About Me" field on the About page -- was a good idea? Part of their primary rationales was security and spam attacks. That didn't last long before many of their measures appeared to be repealed.

I rarely, if ever, got this sort of internet spam over the old messaging system.

----- Original message -----
From: "ddstella desmond" <ddstelladesmond@gmail.com>
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:24:21 +0000
Subject: FOR YOU

Hello,
My name is Miss Stella, I got your contact via www.myopera However I'm
writing to know If your address is in order.Reply me as soon as you receive
this mail so that I can send you my photo.Hope soon for your reply.
Yours,stella
(Stelladesmond21@hotmail.com)

Totally, "Stella." I'll get right on that.

(Here's the spam message above with full headers.)