I did a lot of riding this weekend. Rode to Fernley on Saturday to the bank and filled up. I’m getting 54MPH right now. That’s pretty good. Better than I thought.
Then Sunday we rode through Virginia City and into Carson for an 80 mile round trip. The curves were cool. I think I’m going to like this biking thing. Can’t wait to start riding to work.
I’m going to try and get my clutch sorted out tonight/tomorrow night. Then I’m going to ride into Reno on Wednesday for work.
Made it to my first 100 miles on my chopper yesterday. Everything is running great.
I’m going to wire in the blinkers this weekend and ride into town. I think I have everything I need to wire up the blinkers now. I need to take the rear fender off and weld in some steel brake line that I bought then run the wires in it to protect them from the wheel. It should work out good.
My chopper is so close to being done. I just can’t wait to start riding it. Well, I have been riding it actually.
I still have a few small things like blinkers and tail pipe mount to finish, but its pretty much done. I have the paint for it and when it’s nice out I’m going to clean it up and paint it. I want to relocate the filler and petcock on the tank before I paint though.
I’m going to finish it up this weekend. Here it is as it looks right now.
I decided that I needed to take another look at Sublime Text 2. There has been several version updates since the last one I used. A few new configuration settings help make this editor great. Not to mention the new look is really cool.
I still can’t get used to having to double click on files to open them. You can single click to “preview” them, but when you toggle to another tab the preview goes away. This is very annoying.
But editing is really great. I love some of the things that they include like the token matching. If I’ve typed something var name above, then I just start typing it and hit tab to complete it. This is super nice. (I set mine to tab completion in my config)
I’m actually thinking about buying a license for it.
I have had problems shifting into neutral since just after getting the bike. I chocked it up to needed adjustment. One day I started playing with the adjustment and I just could not dial it in.
Hugh’s Handbuilt announced a new hydraulic clutch that fixes the problem with finding neutral. So I jumped on it. Got it last week and installed it over the weekend. I still could not get the clutch adjusted to find neutral. Randy said there could be something wrong with the clutch pack or clutch basket.
We cracked open the right side case to check it out. Yep, the clutch pack was screwed. Two out of the six were the wrong size and binding in the basket. Well, there’s the problem. I was able to put my single piece clutch rod on at the same time. Now I’m waiting for my new clutch pack and screws to hold the basket in. The screws were all stripped out and bent.
I hope to be on the road this weekend now…
For the past few years I’ve been getting calls from Card Member Services every other day. It’s a scam that steels your credit card and identity. There is no way to stop it. The Feds can’t do anything, the banks can’t do anything, and the phone company won’t do anything to stop it.
Lately I’ve been wasting their time by talking to them and giving them fake info. I talk about the weather and Florida (where they are based). I don’t know what else to do. I’m already on the do-no-call list. I’ve also reported them to the FTC many times.
Aaron from Card Member Services was pretty cool guy. I was on the treadmill when he called. I sounded like a total idiot. Finally I told him to call me back, but he never did.
The latest guy caught on pretty quick after dropping the line and putting them on hold a lot. Finally Ethan hung up on me after I told him my credit card — that had 123456789 in it.
Update:
I changed my ATT phone number and relinked my Google Voice number to it. I got them to do it for free too. What’s nice about my Google Voice number is that it’s free and I can block numbers for free too.
I solved the carb problem on my bike (by carb problem I mean spark plugs) and the next thing to solve was the way advanced timing. I finally broke out the timing light was started checking things out and found my timing was running at idle where it should have been full advance at full throttle. I dinked around with trying to time it and it just wasn’t going to happen.
So I purchased the Pamco electronic ignition system from MikesXS. Got the high power coil, advancing rod, ATU, and all the parts to swap my bike over. Install was simple. I think it only took me an hour but it should have only taken 15 minutes. It’s pretty simple.
After getting it all installed I could not get the bike started. So back to the computer for more research. From what I could gather, I had a ground problem. Then today I finally found a tasty tid bid. The coil mounting surface is a ground for the coil and how I mounted it to the bike it was not grounded. I took the coil off and filed the paint off where I mounted it then put it all back on.
Now my bike makes vroom vroom noises again! I quickly checked the timing and it’s right on the mark.
I should be riding this weekend! I just need to clean up the wiring a bit and then I’m off to the streets.
When I first moved to Silver Springs, NV there was no high speed internet access. At first I was on Dialup and that wasn’t going to hack it. Later I switched to dual ISDN for way too much money per month. Fed up with the sorry state of access I started my own ISP. Got myself a T1 to my house and use wireless networking to my customers. This actually worked out pretty good. 1.5mb both ways and life was happy for a while. I sold the ISP about 7 years ago.
Things went downhill pretty fast with it. After fighting it for years I finally signed up with the other internet provider that moved in shortly after I build my ISP. It’s been pretty solid. I still had my account with the first ISP so I build myself a pfSense router and hooked up both ISPs to it. Now I have a multi-wan configuration.
Here is the current speeds for each network I have access to:
|
HDISS Internet |
$120/mo |
Download Speed: 2844 kbps |
|
AT&T 3G |
$45/mo |
Download Speed: 2540 kbps |
|
HSN Internet |
$40/mo |
Download Speed: 1201 kbps |
The HSN network is the most unreliable right now. Sometimes it’s ok speed at 1.5Mbps down, but usually it’s under a Mb. AT&T recently moved 3G into our area and it has really good speed. I’m thinking about hooking that up to my router as a backup to my two networks.
The only thing that still irks me is that I still can’t watch a YouTube video without pauses. But things are looking up business wise and soon I’ll be moved into the city where I can get 30Mbps down for less than I pay now. It will be nice.
Well, all this time I thought my carbs were messed up. It was bad spark plugs. I swapped them out for new ones yesterday and the bike fired right up. It runs great…almost. There is an issue with the timing being advanced too far. Thought the cam chain was off a tooth, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Figured out how to check for that today. I’ll check the cam chain tension and put the light on it again this weekend.
I was sitting here working away on my multi-gateway network and all of a sudden I could not access anything. “This isn’t right” I said to myself. It should just drop off the bad gateway.
Well, I was pinging the other side of my ISP’s network connection. The Tel-Co side. I thought that if anything would go down it would be the connection between my ISP and theirs. Nope. Pings were just fine.
Now I’m pinging the DNS servers. Now when my ISP goes down, it just drops that gateway and uses my other ISP.
I haven’t had to use my third option. Connecting to any random open WiFi. 
Another new plugin using my Rental Post Type code for Vehicles. I have it up and running for 123lex.us. You can get the code on my GitHub account Here.
I’m working on KBB and DealerTrend data file imports right now. This should be done in the next few weeks. I only work on this code on the weekends.
One of the reasons I’m doing a DT import is to speed up the inventory listings for my DT customers. Right now it downloads the inventory from their servers on every request. That really slows things down. It used to cache, but it doesn’t seem to be doing that anymore. I’m getting a lot of complaints about the slowness.
To fix the slow problem I will download the inventory from DT and import it into WP. Then it’s served straight from WP. The import can be run nightly also.
I’m also replacing the widgets that come with the WP DealerTrend plugin. The thumbs display is really, really slow and has no way to target pages anymore. So I’m fixing that up along with making it better.
My auto dealer customers are going to be pretty happy soon.
I spent most of the day today trying to figure out how to sort and search WordPress post meta data. I did a lot of Google searches trying to figure this out. I found just enough to piece it together. Here it is.
if ( !is_admin() ) add_filter( 'posts_clauses', 'ors_rental_query' );
function ors_rental_query($clauses) {
if ( !strstr($clauses['where'], 'rental') ) return $clauses;
global $wpdb, $ors_rental_cookies;
$clauses['fields'] .= ", CAST((select {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_value from {$wpdb->postmeta} where {$wpdb->postmeta}.post_id = {$wpdb->posts}.ID and {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_key = 'price') as decimal) as price";
$clauses['fields'] .= ", CAST((select {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_value from {$wpdb->postmeta} where {$wpdb->postmeta}.post_id = {$wpdb->posts}.ID and {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_key = 'home_size') as decimal) as home_size";
$clauses['fields'] .= ", CAST((select {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_value from {$wpdb->postmeta} where {$wpdb->postmeta}.post_id = {$wpdb->posts}.ID and {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_key = 'bedrooms') as decimal) as bedrooms";
$clauses['fields'] .= ", CAST((select {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_value from {$wpdb->postmeta} where {$wpdb->postmeta}.post_id = {$wpdb->posts}.ID and {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_key = 'bathrooms') as decimal) as bathrooms";
$clauses['having'] = array();
$clauses['orderby'] = '';
if ( isset($ors_rental_cookies['text_search']) and $ors_rental_cookies['text_search'] != '' ) {
$clauses['where'] .= " and ({$wpdb->posts}.post_title like '%{$ors_rental_cookies['text_search']}%'";
$clauses['where'] .= " or {$wpdb->posts}.post_content like '%{$ors_rental_cookies['text_search']}%')";
}
$search_params = array('bedrooms', 'bathrooms');
foreach ($search_params as $param) {
if ( isset($ors_rental_cookies[$param]) and $ors_rental_cookies[$param] != '' ) {
$clauses['having'][] = "$param = '$ors_rental_cookies[$param]'";
}
}
if ( !empty($clauses['having']) ) {
$clauses['where'] .= ' HAVING ' . implode(' and ', $clauses['having']);
}
$order_params = array('price' => 'price_near', 'home_size' => 'size_near');
foreach ($order_params as $field => $param) {
if ( isset($ors_rental_cookies[$param]) and $ors_rental_cookies[$param] != '' ) {
$clauses['orderby'] .= ", ABS({$ors_rental_cookies[$param]} - $field)";
}
}
if ( $clauses['orderby'] == '' ) $clauses['orderby'] = 'price ASC';
else $clauses['orderby'] = substr($clauses['orderby'], 2);
return $clauses;
}
New in WordPress 3.1 is the posts_clauses filter. There is no documentation page on it, so I had to Google for the usage. But it works awesome for what I needed.
I use the $clauses['fields'] to subquery in the meta data. Then I’m able to do sort orders on it. I can order by price or whatever from the aliased subqueries. In my case I use special “near” method to find the prices that are near the search param.
To find an exact match like in my bathrooms and bedrooms, I use a HAVING clause to get access to my aliases. I just tack it to the end of the $clauses['where'] and it works like a charm.
I make sure to use CAST to cast my strings to integers for sorting by price and size. No buggy string number sorts here.
The above code does a lot and it might be more than you need but it should point you in the right direction. For more check out the source code Rental Post Type Line 293
Things are going pretty good with ORS. Jane is onboard building sites, the 01click project is moving pretty good, and I have two more projects on the back burner waiting for time. I also have two internal projects that I would really like to get going this year.
Jane is doing awesome at launching sites. TheJane, We Race Against Hunger, and a few others. She is also converting all my old sites from HTML to WordPress. I’ll soon be able to turn off that old Slicehost server.
I might have to hire someone to do my back burner Rails projects. I have two that could be pretty good. I don’t have the money to hire anyone though, so that will be hard. Can’t find anyone to work for free. If they weren’t automotive related I could probably get my friend Dave to help me, but he is looking for something outside of that realm as a side project.
Anyway, gotta get back to work. I’ll be in SF tomorrow at the Heroku Waza.
Been trying to get the carbs tuned on my chopper. It’s not easy. I have a bunch of jets and I’m trying to figure it out. Lots of manuals out there so it shouldn’t be too hard. I think one more time and I’ll have it running again. Then it will be fine tuning. Hope to get it solved this weekend.
Had a great time with family this year. No snow, so driving was easy. Got everything I wanted.
TextMate 2 Alpha was released to the public recently for evaluation. It’s been a long time coming. It is alpha, so a lot of things will probably change. But, I just hate it for some reason. Maybe when it finally hits beta it will be better. There are things that I feel should have been much further ahead by now with all the time that has past. Some things feel like they have gone backwards in usability.
And I don’t like the new icon.
But, maybe things will change next year.
Got new parts for my bike on monday and haven’t had time until today to get into the garage. New jets for the carb are in and the bike is now running awesome!
I just need to finish up the wiring and fender struts so I can ride it!
For a few months now I’ve been checking out old school choppers, bobbers and such. Thinking about biking. Last month I was given a Honda CL350 all in parts. It got me thinking more about biking. Last weekend I got my motorcycle license and now I’m looking for a bike.
The Honda would have been a pretty cool little bike, but it has no title. Can’t register it and when I went to DMV they just gave me the run-a-round. Looks like it will be a PITA to get a title for it, so I’m going to dump that idea.
So there are these cool sites. http://xs650chopper.com and http://chopcult.com
I’ve been checking out all the photos and stuff and I’ve decided that I want a Yamaha XS650. Fixed up they are really sweet bikes. So I’ve been scouring Craig’s List for one. I really didn’t want to spend over $1000, but I’ve found a few that are mostly built already and just need to be finished up. Most of them are in AZ and TX.
Found one in Vacaville area that looks like a really sweet deal. Getting more info right now on it.
Just spent way too much money on my front Dana 44 axle. New cromo shafts and 300M u-joints. New Ford big bearing outers, and drive flanges.
I better not break any axles after this all gets setup. I sure hope I’m wheeling next weekend too. Takes forever to get this stuff done.
I’ve also put the rig up for sale. !!OH NOES!!
Yep. Just getting tired of sinking money into it I guess. We are talking about moving also. So if we move back to the Bay Area it will be a PITA to go wheeling.
My plans are to buy a Santa Cruz Blur TR Carbon mountain bike and get back into that. I used to have a lot of fun riding. I’m also way, way out of shape from sitting around for the past 10 years. The last 3 being the worst. No exercise at all.
So the rig is up for sale for $14,000. That’s about half of what I have into it. No hits yet, and probably won’t get any for a long time. I’ll just keep wheeling it until it gets sold.
We’ve been talking about putting together a real hack-a-thon in Reno for some time now. Something with sponsors and prizes. Bring your ideas and compete to win the 24 hour hack off.
We now have an event coming soon to create something from Reno local city data. Talks are underway for the event. You can get more news by signing up at: http://hack4reno.com/
This is going to be really good for Reno. We need more Reno developer recognition and getting the Reno developer community together for this event will certainly do it. Lets put Reno on the map and show the world that good developers are not only in San Francisco.