Clamming at Netarts

So we went down and met my parents at the somewhat-snooty Netarts Bay RV Park. They have wanted us to go clamming with them there for a long time.



Compared to the razor clam, the horse clam (or gaper clam) is HUGE and slower-moving. While a razor might be almost at the surface, and quick work with a clam gun pulls them out, the horse clam takes a large hole with a shovel- ideally two or three people digging.

 

Next, you have to reach your hand into the bottom of the flooded, quickly-collapsing hole. Once you find the clam, you have to dig your hand around and then under it. Once you do that, it's (barely) possible to muscle the clam out.

It's a lot of work! It takes at least 5 minutes to dig a single clam out.



To add insult to injury, Dad's friend Larry and I were digging for a huge clam. We dug down about 30 inches, then I put my hand down another 10 inches into hole from the clam's neck. I still couldn't find him- but when I pulled my hand back out, I felt something else. It turned out to be a piece of wood- doh! That was 15 minutes of hard work for nothing.



As you can see in the last picture (below), Tamara found a clam with a crab in it. That turns out to be really common- they are a pea crab.

hello from Netarts

Tamara and I are out of town for an evening, at Netarts, Oregon. We zipped down on the DL650ABS, we'll go back tomorrow.

Nice little trip!

My 2 seconds of fame

I was on my way to work yesterday afternoon, when a reporter for The Oregonian stopped me to ask some questions about a bomb threat on the PSU campus and the university's emergency alert system. Nothing too interesting, but I got a mention :)

Here's the article.

busy weekend

We had a busy weekend.

On Friday night, we saw Doug Stanhope at a comedy club. The intro band was good, the intro comedian was okay, and Stanhope was pretty bad. His stuff in the past has been pretty good- but he was obviously on something as he started his 2+ hour set, and then his drinking caught up to him as the set went on. Oh well.

We got home around midnight (late for us!), then hung out with Cindy (aka blondie) for a couple hours, watching Office and chatting.

On Sunday, I jumped on the DL650ABS, went to Fry's, then rode down to Eugene. My friend (and pro cameraman) Michael Pierce took video of me practicing braking with ABS both on and off. I left quite a few impressive stripes in that poor parking lot!

That was a lot of riding, and a lot of hours, just to get 20 minutes of video. Hopefully I'll be able to edit it to something useful.

mouth sores, canker sores, treatment

I get fairly bad sores in my mouth. I always figured they were oral herpes and treated them as such- Zovirax, numbing and protecting agents, and the like.

A few years ago, they were really bad. A doctor said they were most likely aphthous ulcers, and I should treat them with triamcinolone, an oral steroid paste. It has certainly helped- and the first 5-gram tube lasted about 3.5 years. I just got a replacement tube of it for about $20, though it does require a prescription.

One of the most interesting things to come out recently is a fairly strong link between these mouth ulcers and sodium lauryl sulfate. That's an ingredient in major brand toothpastes that encourages foaming- but is fairly mean to your mouth. One study showed that those in the test had an average of 14 ulcers in 3 months. They then switched to SLS-free toothpaste and had an average of 5 ulcers in 3 months. That's pretty amazing!

So, SLS-free toothpastes MAY include the following: Tom's of Maine, Sensodyne, Kiss My Face, and Rembrandt. Make sure to read the label to see that it is SLS-free.

Note if you get cold sores, and they are EXTERNAL (not inside your mouth), you can use Abreva.

to my ex-amazon (and current amazon) friends

Found this interesting and neat- a post from Bezos from near the beginning of Amazon (1994):

Well-capitalized start-up seeks extremely talented C/C++/Unix developers to help pioneer commerce on the Internet. You must have experience designing and building large and complex (yet maintainable) systems, and you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible. You should have a BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or the equivalent. Top-notch communication skills are essential. Familiarity with web servers and HTML would be helpful but is not necessary.

Expect talented, motivated, intense, and interesting co-workers. Must be willing to relocate to the Seattle area (we will help cover moving
costs).

Your compensation will include meaningful equity ownership.

sharing salary figures..

There's an article at nytimes right now about how the younger working generation doesn't mind sharing their earnings with each other quite so much. The article claims this is taboo to the over ~35 set, which seems like an appropriate cut point to me.

I agree with this. I've always been confused about how companies tell their employees to keep salary data very private. What's the advantage to the employees to respect this?

In other words, if I were working for Amazon and I talk to other employees about how much they are making, it offers an advantage to myself and the employees. The only person it hurts is the company. So why do employees resist sharing this information?

An analogy would be if you kept the purchase price of your car private. That means if I go to buy the same car, I am on my own to determine what an appropriate price would be. However, if I know that 10 other people bought the car for a certain amount, I get an idea of what the appropriate price for the car is.

Again, the only person it benefits is the dealer. Why would I, as a consumer (or employee) not want to share that information?

Bike farkling, phase 2

Went to the Llama's house on Tuesday and spent another 6 hours working on the bike. Got the following done:
* Installed EB/Centech fuse block and wiring. This meant removing and modifying the battery tray and relocating some factory wiring.
* Installed the heated grips.
* Installed the shoe for the gascap tankbag mounting system, including modifications to the wiring harness for it.

Next up includes the following:
* heat-troller for heated grips, vest
* drill/connect Powerlet sockets
* connect tankbag electrical
* connect GPS wire
* connect "switched power" for Centech block
* install/connect LED voltmeter

Bike farkling: phase 1 complete

Ken and I got the first phase of bike farkling done Tuesday night. Specifically, we installed:
* centerstand
* crash bars
* Happy Trails racks
* Wilbers shock (seen in the pic at right)

Oddly, the HT racks don't have the metal strap for mounting the ABS tool tube. I'll have to weld one up myself at some point.

We ran into some other problems, too: the shock took several hours to mount because the rear brake ABS system was in the way. We unbolted the ABS tray, fed the shock components in place, then used a zip-tie to reroute one of the hoses. That sounds easy, but it literally took hours.

I still have one or two phases left:
phase 2: luggage
* drill, mount top plate
* gascap tankbag mount (fish wiring down)
* RAM mount for radar

phase 3: electrics
* heated grips
* GPS wire
* 4 powerlet plugs (2 for vests, one for audio, one for radar)
* wired tankbag mount
* Givi brake light

If I wasn't cheap, I'd buy myself a set of white gauge faces because they look so good:

24 Hours of LeMons

So, there's a famous 24-hour endurance race called Le Mans. There's also the other LeMons, which is a bunch of "lemon" cars (max price: $500) racing for 24 hours. It's somewhat of a joke, but any race becomes somewhat serious. Car & Driver participates in it every year- in fact, they entered 3 cars this time around.

Here are some pictures from it:


The race is somewhat famous for weird penalties and rules. C&D states "The Fiero’'s transmission leak produces so much smoke that Austin [was] handed the Al Gore Carbon Neutral Penalty and forced to plant a tree while wearing sandals and a wicker hat. He [was] also pummeled with tofu."

It's definitely worth reading the whole 4-page article.

Introducing my DL650ABS

So I finally got my DL650ABS! Following a tip on advrider, I flew to Colorado Springs and bought it at Apex Sports.

I can't emphasize how fast of a process it was- I found the tip late Thursday on advrider, called the dealership Friday morning, and was on a plane by 1pm to Denver. I got into Colorado Springs around 7:30pm, and was at the dealership when they opened the following morning.

If I hadn't wanted to talk to my advfriend and the sales guy, I easily could have been out of the dealership within 10 minutes- they knew I needed to put some serious miles on the bike.

In any case, I rode about 700 miles each day and was home by Sunday evening. It's nice to have my bike- yay!

On this day in history..

April 17, 2008:
In 1790, Benjamin Franklin died.
In 1837, JP Morgan was born (cool).
In 1897, Nikita S. Khrushchev was born (hmm).
47 years ago, the Bay of Pigs invasion began (oops). (see the NYT headline)
44 years ago, the Mustang was introduced (cool).
38 years ago, Apollo 13 splashed down to safety (cool).
36 years ago, Jennifer Garner was born (cool).

Most importantly, Tamara was born 28 years ago today. Happy birth anniversary, dear.

Paypal customer service: actually good!

I hate calling customer service.

I needed to get my Paypal primary email address changed. The problem is that when I tried to do it online, their site said they would verify by calling my phone number- and it was an old enough phone number that wasn't even listed in my Paypal account anymore.

So I called Paypal, got through their annoying voice prompt system, and spoke to a woman who was obviously in or near India. She quickly figured out my problem, without hassling me, and told me that I'd be transferred to an expert.

The next guy was most likely in the USA. He quickly updated my email address, then looked in to the weird phone number thing. He hadn't seen a phone number listed like mine was, so he put my on hold and did some research to make sure it was okay to delete it.

The whole thing took about 10 minutes. That isn't a long time for such a complicated set of issues, and both folks I spoke to were incredibly nice.

Another one of the bright points of Paypal is that your phone numbers are registered in their system- so they never have to ask you for an account number, just verification of your account. It's such a pain when you have to give some long account number or complicated email address over the phone.

So, two thumbs up for Paypal! I was pleasantly surprised.

43,899 reasons Comcast sucks

So Comcast Portland took MSNBC out of their analog channel lineup many months back. In fact, it wasn't even part of the "free QAM" part of their digital lineup, so that means you must have a converter if you want to watch Keith Olbermann.

Well, a local cable regulatory commission has fined (and received) Comcast almost $44,000. That isn't a lot of money, but it's still a victory.

Comcast still sucks.