I was on instant messenger with Stilts this weekend, joking about how I wanted a “MOVE OVER” sticker with reverse type for my MazdaSpeed3 wagon. Drivers in my side of Richmond aren’t terrible, but they do have a tendency to float in the left hand lane and let faster traffic stack up behind them. I don’t mind if this happens when traffic is congested. Often the right hand lanes will be wide open, and the driver holding everyone up will be talking on their mobile phone or beating their baby, etc.

They say that there is a site for everything on the Internet, and that maxim is certainly true in this case, thanks to Left Lane Drivers Unite!, a Web site devoted to getting slower traffic out of the left hand lane. Before you jump on me (or LLDU) about speeding and other shit, it’s the law in Virginia that slower traffic has to keep right. It’s not up to the driver to keep left if they are following the speed limit or not. If someone wants to pass you, get the fuck over.

Anyway, the sticker looks good, and does exactly what I want. However, the question quickly came up: would this piss someone off if they saw it in their rear view mirror? I guess it’s better than tailgating, but this could be a shortcut to a road rage incident.

What do you think?

My master bathroom is at the opposite end of the house from the hot water heater. The shower is the last piece of plumbing to get hot water. I had accepted that I would have to stand in front of the shower with my hand under the water until I found the LED shower light at ThinkGeek.

Water pressure turns a little turbine inside the shower head to power ten LEDs. The LEDs shine blue until the water reaches 89°F, then it turns red.

Great googly moogly! Were my days of unexpectedly getting into a cold shower over?
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It was 101°F today (adjusted for Virginia’s awesome-o humidity) when I left the office last week at about 5:45. I had heard about people soaking their t-shirts in cold water before riding, but I was skeptical. How big of a difference could it make?

A pretty noticeable difference, it turns out — at least for my 40-minute ride home. My t-shirt was completely drenched when I left and bone-dry by the time I made it home. I was wearing my perforated Teknic Chicane leather jacket. The front of my t-shirt dried out first, but every once in awhile I’d feel a cool breeze as air entered the back of my jacket through the collar.

The experience made me re-think my strategy of wearing wicking polyester clothing. I wear Wickers Comfortrel bottoms (reviewed here), along with similar long-sleeved tops. I think they would quickly dry out in hot conditions, whereas cotton would retain moisture longer. Outdoor activity logic says to avoid cotton where possible, as staying damp in the outdoors is generally a bad thing. However, this may be one time where having a clammy shirt against your skin is a good thing.

With all the hubbub about the possible leaching of toxic chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) in Lexan plastic bottles, I started looking for alternatives to my trusty Nalgene water bottle. A co-worker had a Sigg-brand aluminum bottle at work, but I didn’t like that there was a screw-on top and that the brass (or brass-like) liner scratched the plastic threads of the top. My co-worker only had the bottle for two weeks and said he was already having problems with the cap seating properly due to a mis-thread.

The good news is that the aluminum bottle market is pretty straight-forward. The bad news is that this is because there isn’t a lot to choose from. There are three major aluminum bottle companies selling in the US right now: Oggi, Laken, and Sigg. Oggi is the least expensive, with some bottles running as low as $10 on the Internet, to Sigg, whose bottles can run you up to $40+. There are also bottles sold by camping goods manufacturer Coleman for as low as $4.99 on their Web site, but I am uncertain if these are private label bottles made by someone else or made directly by Coleman.

Being the cheap bastard that I am, I went to Sierra Trading Post and typed in “aluminum bottle.” I only had one choice: the Laken HIT .75L bottle.

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Snap. My flimsy sponge holder snapped at an arm, rendering it into a $2 suction-cup-and-plastic piece of garbage. Oh well. I was headed to Target anyway.

Target, in an effort to distance themselves from Wal*Mart as a “bargain” store, refuses to carry any sponge holders at less than $7. I know, because I bought the cheapest one I could find. I didn’t want a stainless steel sponge holder, or a combo dish drying rack plus sponge holder plus time machine.

The KitchenAid holder I bought spoke to my consumer emotions. It was more than $2, so it had to be good, right? It was made of thick plastic, so it had to be tough, right? And with giant, over-engineered suction cups it had to stick better than that $2 piece of shit I got at Wal*Mart, right?

That’s right. I got Jedi mind-tricked into buying a seven dollar piece of plastic to hold a sponge in my kitchen sink.
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Not every purchase is super sexy, like a new motorcycle, a handgun, a mobile phone, or sweet audio/video equipment. Sometimes you have to buy a piece of kit that does the job for the least amount of money and the least amount of fuss.

I have a work-provided laptop, which came with a work-provided Targus laptop bag. The laptop bag was problematic for a few reasons:

1. I don’t like looking like I am carrying around a laptop in public.
2. I don’t want people mixing my bag up with the other fifteen standard Targus laptop cases in the scrum room.
3. I don’t like being like everyone else unless there is a good reason to follow along.

So, I bought myself a second Timbuk2 messenger bag big enough to hold my laptop and a bunch of other junk. The NEW problem was that the messenger bag wasn’t as padded as the Targus bag and I didn’t want my work machine to get banged up.

I needed to buy a laptop sleeve that provided a sensible amount of abrasion resistance for the least amount of money. I didn’t want a zipper, snaps, a handle, pockets, or anything other than a sleeve to slip my notebook into.
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When it comes to concealed carry, one size fits none. I’ve talked a lot on Gibberish about how no one holster, firearm, or carry position will meet all of your needs all of the time. Comfort, concealment, and accessibility form a personal protection triangle that is almost impossible to balance.

When I can wear more loosely-fitting shorts and an untucked t-shirt I prefer to “appendix carry.” This means I wear my primary handgun in the front of my pants and to the left. The butt of my Glock 27 is just about near my belly button. Appendix carry is accessible, even while sitting down. Certain gunfighting/training schools consider appendix carry to be more accessible than a small-of-back or rear-of-hip carry position. Appendix carry is also very concealable, and if I offset my belt buckle to the right you can’t tell I am carrying at all.

Comfort is where appendix carry can fall short. The Glock 27 is a pretty short handgun, and it still digs into my skin when I sit. I can shift the pistol around a little bit to be more comfortable, but it isn’t nearly as comfortable as carrying outside of the waistband or in the SmartCarry “assault diaper.” I can tolerate appendix carry for about six hours before I’ve had enough. Getting up and walking around helps, but nothing will change the fact I’m wearing a big metal brick next to my manhood.
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I hate talking on the phone and try to avoid it if at all possible. I especially dislike getting phone calls from numbers I don’t recognize, because I don’t know if I should pick up or not. About two and a half years ago I wrote about “whitelisting” phone calls as a way to avoid unsolicited marketing calls. I didn’t know this technology had made it into the mainstream until I bought the HTC Touch Windows Mobile phone. I purchased Spb Phone Suite call management software from Spb Software House as an add-on to Windows Mobile, and along came whitelisting. The “ah-ha” moment for me came when I realized that I could use phone profiles and whitelisting to only allow certain callers to ring my phone.

Here’s how it works.
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Motorcyclists are an odd community. I describe most of us as “social loners,” who want to be in a degree of isolation but still remain connected to other individuals. We may ride alone (or with a passenger), but for the most part we are active in the motorcycling community. Some attend “Bike Nights” or benefit rallies. Some belong to local or regional groups. Some just bust out the motorcycle wave. I, and thousands of other motorcyclists, connect through the Internet, typically on forums like Adventure Rider or Sportbikes.net. Neither my BMW K 1200 LTE nor my Yamaha FZ6 are “common” bikes. Without sites like these I wouldn’t know a fraction about my bikes (or motorcycling).

I am fairly new to ADVrider.com, but even then I appreciate what it is like to be part of a larger Web community. I’ve been on Sportbikes.net for awhile, long enough to see riders come and go — either by moving on to other rides or passing away under various circumstances. Unfortunately this post is about another such passing, that of Dennis Sherod. He was 56 years old and a husband, a father, and a valued contributing member of the motorcycling Web community.

The accident appears to have been caused by a woman running a red light at an intersection. Dennis was not speeding, was wearing safety equipment, and was an experienced rider.

I am not sure why this has effected me so deeply. Motorcyclists crash all the time, some times because they are fucking off and crash in a turn, or dump a bike while trying to wheelie on the road. Some times I even poke fun at them, or think that they deserve it. But when a family man is on his way to work, obeying the laws of the road, experienced in the saddle and reasonably protected … it reinforces that motorcycling has a luck component as well as a skill and gear component. Sometimes all you can do isn’t enough to keep you safe, and that fucking sucks.

ADVrider.com has a thread about Dennis’s passing. There is a sunset memorial service scheduled today, but since I can’t be there I will be remembering Dennis on my motorcycle commute today.

Motor on, Dennis, motor on.

I have pretended for awhile that working for a big corporate entity hadn’t changed my lifestyle much. Sure, I went to be three to five hours earlier than normal. Yes, I gotten up earlier consistently than I have for the last fourteen years. But it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized I have become “older” and officially indoctrinated into a 9 - 5 culture.

If you’re a long-time Gibberish reader, you already know how much I love coffee. I have all sorts of coffee contraptions about the house, and either have a mug of coffee or a glass of water in my hand. So when I met some folks out at Starbucks last night I barely believed myself when I uttered the phrase, “half-caf, please.”

:record skipping:

Yeah, that’s right. half-caf. I needed to go to bed “early” in order to wake up for work and be on time. I could hardly believe it myself. What’s fucking next, decaf?