I feel like I'm getting into the spirit of the ham radio stuff. I've made my first cable, a custom Yaesu 7100M to sound-blaster audio cable. I even went ahead and added a grounded foil shield. Here is a in-production pic before I finished wrapping the tape around the shield:

Another blow to the wallet. For some unknown reason, the back hatch on my cage was broken out on Wednesday. Security says it was a rock or one of those parking dots that must have flown up and hit the window. Seriously? How freaking fast do you have to be doing to have a rock generate that sort of energy? Personally I think it was one of the maintenance guys backing into it with a ladder or something. I'm parked across from the maintenance parking... Anyway, the glass place came and fixed it in a day right there in the garage. Had to use insurance because that one piece of glass was $819!

Reading Kenny's blog we find out just how crazy his antenna setup is. No wonder he thinks I'll only need 100W and a 'simple' antenna to reach him from here. He's got this crazy ass motorized tower; now I see why he had to buy somewhere without pesky associations. Also, Vareck's Iraq temps beat out Austin, but at least Iraq is a dry heat. :)

So, the rest of the weekend was pretty good. In addition to the bike fix Saturday I also got some other projects knocked out including making a real mount for hammie cam... OK, 'real' may be an overstatement. It's an old aluminum mop handle I've had in the garage forever trying to find a use for with a coat of BBQ black. Zip-tied to the leg of the cage and presto, we have a mount:

The other minor project was getting the radio setup moved down into the garage and ready for the echolink hardware which should be here today (!). The battery is above nothing so if it decides to leak it will just get on the floor and not the workbench, cabinets or the hood of whatever car is in there at the time. The antenna is just stuck to that piece of sheet metal sitting under the sub-woofer. Kenny approved of the setup so it's not ghetto, it's just creative.

After projects we went up to the city with Scott and Lina and went to Restaurant Ideale and then went to see Beach Blanket Babylon which has changed a lot since we saw it years ago. The restaurant was not too bad for being a low-mid priced place and whatever wine Scott picked was pretty good as well. I had pumpkin ravioli which was better than the veal ravioli that Lina had.

As we were going to the city it gave us an excuse to dress up a bit. Ellen was so surprised that I thought I should post the pictures here since apparently we're 'cleaned up' vs. what we usually look like. Only after we got there did someone point out my collar was screwed up, the inner shirt is supposed to have it's collar over the top of the jacket collar. So many details.

Last night's dinner was just some BBQ burgers which were a mix of leftover ground lamb and beef combined with some random spices and whatnot. I'm not sure all of what the woman put in there but it really worked out well.

Whatever gods there are must hate me, the stinky Indian kids and grandma were in the row behind me so one of the little nuggets kicked my seat for at least half the flight until I dropped the seat back and knocked all her crap all over at which point grandma swapped places and the poor sap stuck in the middle seat had to deal with kicking child.

Other than the flights they Austin trip this month was fine, got the interviews done and are in the process of working an offer for the guy we want. He's the best pick we could make in the 4 months we've been looking. Hiring quality people in Austin is hard apparently, let's hope we don't lose the guy we have there now (who by all accounts is very good and would be exceptionally hard to replace).

A couple of Austin pics, first the forecast said 102F and humid as hell, and they were right. Then we've got the Austin data center shell (not very interesting) and two, yes, two meals at Chick-fil-A (only one per day, I'm not some sort of weirdo).

OK, on to more interesting stuff. First up, before I left my 'foscam' showed up. Unlike those linksys cams I tried last year this one actually works and doesn't crash. Setup was easy even without the windows based software (usual DHCP, get the IP out of the router and hit it with a browser) and what's extra bonus cool is there is a foscam app for the iPhone so I can pan/tilt the camera while viewing it via the phone. Damn handy. To make the woman appreciate it I set it up temporarily (I think!) pointing at the hamster cage. She loves 'hammie cam' and watches it from work now even though they don't really do much during the day. At night the IR night vision actually works and you can see them running around doing their hamster stuff. A typical daytime shot of hammie cam where you can see nothing but wheels and toilet paper everywhere.

While I was out all my parts came in (although I did have to go to the post office on Friday because they wouldn't re-deliver the package from Japan) and today I got to work on getting the bike fixed. It took me about 4 hours to get it wired the way I wanted and put back together and now it's working and I fixed up another couple of crappy connections the previous owner put in there. It really needs a major re-work, I might order some of those custom bike-specific 'fuse centers' and just put in a secondary panel and move everything to that instead of a hodgepodge of blade and glass fuses scattered about. In these pics you can see the difference between the old and new bits, the harness after I lengthened the wires so it would fit correctly in the bike with the fuse by the battery vs. having it under the tank where it shows up with the stock wire lengths, and the final thing installed and the bike back together. All the splices I made are soldered, then covered in heat shrink tubing, then electrical tape and finally wrapped in wire loom. Those ring connectors are the worst part because my crimp tool won't be here until Tuesday (mostly for those Anderson 1-pole connectors them HAM guys love so much) so I had to just squish them with pliers and then solder them.

At SJC again awaiting the flight to Austin. Weather is down to 102F and rain, vs. the 105 and rain they had Monday. Wee. I'm wearing a jacket here because it's 59F and overcast. Major temp swing for me today. Oh, and I've hit the perfect trifecta of miserable flying people: breeder family, 2 small kids, 1 infant, grandma and grandpa stumbling along and.... they're all FOB Indians. Yea, noisy, slow and they stink like raw sewage! Yea! Hopefully they're in the back of the plane somewhere.

I've got a ton of inbound parts for the bike, turns out that the rectifier widget is dead, must have been cooked by the short. Rather than going with another stock unit I'm upgrading to an aftermarket unit that has sealed connectors. I'll be running wires outside of the stock harness now, but they'll at least be correctly sized wires. The factory harness has a bunch of small wires run in parallel to carry the heavy load. Seems like a bad idea, if any one of those small wires breaks then you'll overload all the others and fry them as well. The guys at the hammie hut were not impressed with Suzuki's power handling.

My schedule has been getting worse and worse every week it seems. Here is a shot of next week's ical line-up. Dealing with Austin is becoming a major gig, they're expanding so fast and finding qualified help is hard. Hopefully we'll hire next week, or at least get close so we feel like we've made some progress.

The bike is still down, I'm waiting for the parts to come in because I think it will be better to fix it correctly than to get all KLR on it and just hack something together. Getting into the office at 7am (dodging traffic) is slowly killing me though. Not working out at the right time is really screwing with my energy levels too.

One benefit of getting the connector kit from the ham radio place was that although I'm not using it for the bike, it came in handy making power connectors to mate up with the connectors on the radio Kenny sold me. No splicing! Now I have a radio I can try to hack into echolink so I can get on the weekly net without having to actually be near a radio. It's cheating sorta, but last night at the ham nerd meeting they seemed to think it was cool. I haven't had time (with all the other crap going on) to get a proper antenna so I cheated and got a $25 mag mount dual band. The guys at the hammie hut said I could just stick it on a 18" long piece of scrap metal for it to 'work against' since it wouldn't be stuck to the sheet metal on a car. When I got upstairs I realized that we have a lot of flat metal up there in the form of the filing cabinets so I just stuck it in the middle of all the woman's crap on top of one. I told her she could hang a little UofA flag on it and no one would notice. At some point I'm going to move it into the attic and pull the wire down the closet which is on the other side of the desk the radio is on, or I'll get a real antenna and mount it outside next to the TV dish.

Speaking of the ham nerd meeting, last night said they wanted volunteers to learn more about packet stuff, they only have 4 packet operators and need more. Sounds like something I should look into. I know Kenny is big into it, there must be something to it.

So.... yesterday pretty much sucked. I left for work early because it's league night but just before I got to 85, the bike shut off. Not sputtered, not stumbled, just went OFF. Even the clock failed. I rolled to the side of the road and poked around:

Yea, it's not a dead battery, it's shorted and melted out stator connector. Fail.

Next thing to do is call AMA mototow and get them to haul my butt home. Two hours later the truck arrives, but the good news is it's a motorcycle specific rig with this really cool lift designed for bikes. Sweet. He loads up and we drive away. 5 minutes later though, we're in a parking lot:

Hmm.... seems that the tow truck has broken down. The drive belt is mostly shredded so we've lost the alternator, fan, basically everything as there is just the one big accessory belt. iPhone to the rescue to find a Kragen so he can get another belt and get us back underway. Everyone at work loved the pic of the broken down bike in the back of the broken down tow truck. If only we could have got another tow truck to haul us both off, that would have been pretty funny, or at least photo worthy.

The bike came with an aftermarket stator and I have the OEM unit in the box so I could just swap the stator and get back on the road, except that the harness side of this melted plug is a mess too. Suzuki won't sell you just the plug, they want $600 for the entire bike harness. I went to the salvage place, they had nothing. I tried Fry's (ha!) and the electronics junk shop looking for something even close I could hack in there. Nada. The guys at the ham radio shop had some 45A capable 'build your own connector' kits so I got one of those s a backup.

After getting home at 8pm, I took the bike apart to see how far I would have to dig to get to the harness side of that melted connector:

Tank, airbox, about a zillion sensors and vacuum hoses, the nose to get the side panels off, the right side crash bar, etc. There are way too many parts on this bike, the KLR was so much easier to work on. Stupid technology.

Someone on the forum says he's got the connectors I need so I'm trying to buy them. I've also ordered a few from a site that was recommended to me from the forum, they won't be factory but they'll likely work. Third choice will be the connector kit from the ham guys. If I didn't fry something else (rectifier, computer, etc) and that stator is still good then I should be back up in a week or so. If I did fry something... oy.

I've changed my work schedule to work 7am-4pm now to try to dodge the worst of the traffic. I can waste 2 hours a day sitting in traffic, that's just stupid. I'm curious to see just how packed the gym is going to be when I start getting there at 5. :(

What are the freakin' odds? I've been saying I should get a new battery for the bike as a precautionary measure. It's still (or was) on the original battery so it's almost 4 years old and has 26k miles on it. That's a lot for a motorcycle battery. Anyway, last Friday some guy posted to the motorcycle forum at work saying he bought and activated a BS-12 size battery before he realized it was the wrong one for his bike. He offered it for $20 and since it fit my bike I told him I would take it. Beats $80 any day. He said he would bring it in on Monday. Today (ie Monday) I roll into the garage at work and notice the ABS fault light is on. WTF? I figure I'll try to reset the bike and see if the light comes back on. I turn the bike off, turn it on, and *click* *click* *click*, the battery is dead. Doh! Must have cracked a cell on the way in and rolling down the ramp at idle was enough of a voltage drop to trip the fault light. The guy I bought the battery from brought it in and it fits perfectly. So, what are the odds that I get a cheap new battery on exactly the day I need it? I have no idea, but it seems like a miracle.

Saturday during the day was mostly nothing but chores, Saturday afternoon we drove up to Napa to try out Morimoto Napa (menu). Pictures are on the main page, and as you can see the woman got her pic taken with Iron Chef Morimoto himself. The food was pretty awesome, although the 'make it at your table' tofu was a bit strange. Ellen loved it though which is why there are all the pics of her and that bowl.

Sunday we went to the mall and spent 5, yes five, hours shopping. I got some jeans, dress shirts and a semi-casual suit coat to wear over the shirts and jeans. It looks pretty good, but we don't actually get to take possession of the clothes until Thursday. No, there isn't a waiting period, there is some sale going on starting Thursday so they let you take the extra 25% off now but they hold the stuff until Thursday. Whatever, it saved me some money and I don't exactly intend to wear this stuff to work, it's only for dinners out.

Today we did the group reorg, so now officially everyone works for me. Ha! It will be 24 people when we finish hiring. That's some sort of record, I should get a raise or something.

Somewhere along the route to SAN the speedometer cable (actually 3 wires, it's all electronic) started to fail. Apparently on the '07 ABS model they used 2 tie wraps and the second wrap is in a bad spot so he wire gets crimped and dies. $130 for the sensor if you just replace it, but I figured I could repair it. To test the theory that it was just the wire I cut off that 2nd tie wrap and the speedometer failed completely. Doh! To fix it tonight I cut out the failed wire (1 of the 3), soldered it all back together and routed it the way they did on the '04-'06, '08, and '09 vstroms. Why that one year different...? no one on the forum knows. Now it's functional and I only drove 1 day (so 36 miles) with no speedometer/odometer, and lost about 50 miles over the 1000 mile trip.

Another amusing thing on the ride was that at one point I thought the end of the brake lever broke off because I couldn't feel it but it turns out my pinkie just went numb so I couldn't feel the lever. Well, I thought it as funny anyway.

Here is the route I took, hwy 1 on the way down, right up I-5 on the way home. I left the beach house at ~9am and got home at 5pm. The woman left the beach house at 2pm and got home at 6:30pm. Lots of overhead on those flights!

The SD zoo pics are up on the main page. I went away from my 'use the iphone camera for everything' theme when we went to the zoo, I knew I would want some zoom capability.

This morning I learned something very important. If you want to run where the hot chicks run, you need to be closer to the water. I've been running in the AMs but along the concrete path along the edge of the beach. All the real hotties are running along the ocean. It's also a lot easier on your knees running on the harder sand by the water than it is running on pavement. Health and happiness benifits, who knew the ocean was useful?

We toured the USS Midway today (pics on the main page). It's amazing how old, old, old school it is yet it was in active use in '91. I guess '91 wasn't exactly yesterday, but still it's still amazing to me that the first 'gulf war' was launched from that war room. 20 years later we're touring it, and the war it started is still going on.