So, there’s a thread over in the Lounge forum at Ars Technica about the 100 Pushup Challenge. The program prepares you to do one hundred pushups in a row — starting with 0 at week one, and ending up with 100 on week six. I just finished my second tour of duty with Tony Horton’s Beach Body Power Half Hour and was looking for something to do.

I’m in — one hundred pushups or bust.
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I love getting more than I paid for. I like searching out high-priced items that are on discount, or finding off-brand or re-branded items of quality. My Quantaray bounce flash has been a great example; I paid $90 for it and it does everything I need. The Canon alternative is no doubt better, but it is also $380.

A remote shutter release is a fancy name for a remote control that makes your camera take a picture. I have been using a hacked up cell phone headset cord to decent effect. However, the cord is only three feet long and it made for some interesting camera angles (it’s one of the reasons a lot of my body shots are at an upward angle). I wanted a wireless remote for my camera, but didn’t want to spend $30 or more on a Canon one. So I was pretty excited when I plunked down $10 for the ZE-WRC5 remote shutter release by Zeikos for my Canon Digital Rebel.
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I am going to finish my second round of the Beachbody.com Power Half Hour home fitness series today. I completed the first thirty day session in April, and enjoyed it so much I did it again. The Power Half Hour program is made up of five different sessions: abs, thighs, ass, arms, and then a stretch day. I added a day of kettlebells after stretch day for the first four weeks for a little something extra. Here are my thoughts about the Beach Body workout program after the second time around.
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Just a quick mention about a really cool blog for a really cool endeavor: fellow FZ6 owner Lucky Devil is riding across the United States. She sold everything she possibly could, gave up her apartment, loaded up her FZ6, and headed east.

It’s the kind of thing I’ve wanted to do for a long time (except go the opposite direction) but have never had the guts to do.

Lucky Devil posts nearly-daily updates on her blog, with lots of cool pictures. She has stopped at national parks, museums, and assorted points of interest. You can also follow her progress via her SPOT personal GPS tracking emergency device. Even though Lucky Devil has grown up in an urban environment most of her life, she is trying to save money by camping as often as possible along the way. Sometimes she meets up with fellow riders for an escort; for the most part she’s on her own.

She is also collecting donations for Riders for Health II, which attempts to bring medical supplies and care to those living in remote or hard-to-reach areas. You can donate to Lucky Devil’s fund raising effort through First Giving. I kicked in a few bucks; consider taking the money you’d spend on Starbucks for a week and donate.

Any one of these aspects would make for a great ride worthy of support:

• a coast-to-coast ride undertaken by someone with no plan and no cushy sponsorship
• a rider mostly going it alone in unfamiliar territory and under unfamiliar conditions
• an exploratory tour of the United States when more people are becoming more and more physically insulated due to television and the Internet
• fundraiser for people who really need help

When you add them all up, Lucky Devil’s Nowhere In Particular & Everywhere In General Tour is the making of an epic trip. Check out her blog, and consider “>donating to Riders for Health II on her behalf.

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Almost four years ago I reviewed the Dyson DC07 Animal vacuum cleaner. Since then I’ve moved on to a DC14 Full Kit model. What I have never done in those four years is properly remove the trim to clean the “beater” brush bar that sweeps dust and other stuff into the vacuum.

Before I went back and read the directions (cough) I would just take a razor blade and cut away any hair or rug yarn that was wrapped around the beater bar. After reading the directions, I discovered that you can remove the plastic trim at the bottom of the vacuum. I wasn’t entirely sure how hard this was going to be, or what to expect, so I got out the camcorder and went to work.
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Verizon is boosting its FiOS fiber optic Internet service upload and download speeds today, according to this Ars Technica article. My plan, which is already 5Mbps up, 20Mbps down, will supposedly go to 15/25 … which is pretty damn awesome.

I immediately went to Speedtest.net to see if my line was upgraded, and so far it’s at the same speed it was yesterday:

I’ll check it again when I get home from work.

I’ve been a FiOS data customer for over three years, and have been very pleased. I recently got the FiOS TV and VOIP service, and while I pretty impressed with the TV picture quality the router they make me use sucks and my latency has been sporadic. I wish I could go back to using my hacked Linksys router.

I love my new 2009 Yamaha FJR1300A. It is very nimble for its size, has lots of power, and is fun to ride. One of the things I don’t like about are the factory side cases. They are probably just a little bigger than my old Givi E21 panniers (21L capacity), but definitely smaller than the E360 cases (40L capacity) I have on Cylon. I am not sure what the displacement is on the factory side bags, but I would guess they are somewhere around 25L.

Anyway, Givi doesn’t make a Monokey side rack for the Generation 2 FJR1300A (that’s model year 2006 and newer), so using my E360s on Apollo is out of the question. Buying the latest and greatest Givi side rack and side cases would set me back almost $900 before shipping, and I am not ready to make that plunge.

So I bought the biggest fucking top case I could find — the Givi E55 Maxia hard plastic top case.
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Okay, I admit it. I’m a sucker for the Keyboard Cat Internet meme. The concept is simple: take a video on the Web that involves some sort of disaster, and mix in a cat playing a goofy tune on a keyboard.

I have many Keyboard Cat favorites: the two people trying to wheelchair backwards down an escalator, a breakdancer vs a baby, and the fat lady dancing on a flimsy table.

However, my latest favorite involves four teenagers, some stupid behavior, and the need for a full-face helmet:

No matter how bad your Monday is today, just remember you could be this kid.

My new 2009 Yamaha FJR1300A motorcycle has an electric windshield with an adjustable height. It is too hot to really deploy the screen in any other position but “low,” as I need as much airflow as I can get. However, the screen makes a very nice barrier against rain when adjusted to its full height.

Such was the case this evening, when I was riding around with Xamot on the way to meet his wife. We had just swooped onto a highway onramp, hoping to minimize our exposure to the elements. Rain had just started to fall.

I shifted up into fourth gear and signaled my intent to merge. It felt like being in the trench of the Death Star. I thumbed the windshield control, and up the screen came, slowly but surely.

Before I realized what I was doing, I screamed out to no one, “switch your own deflectors on, double front.”

I’ve grown accustomed to having a lot of storage on my motorcycle. I try to ride as much as I can, and that includes trips to Target or the grocery store. Before I signed the paperwork for my FJR1300A I put in an order for the Givi SR357 top rack from Twisted Throttle. As usual, Twisted Throttle’s customer service was top notch. I made the (somewhat silly) request to include more than their one traditional reflective logo sticker. They sent me three ;) Good on you, Twisted Throttle!

So, my previous Givi rack installation experience was with my 2005 Yamaha FZ6. In short, it was a total pain in the ass. You learned a few new words if you lived within two miles of me. I had to use a rubber mallet to make the rack fit correctly and I think I seriously damaged my relationship at the time due to my behavior. With that in the back of my head, I was prepared to spend hours putting the SR357 on my Yamaha FJR.

I was very surprised that the installation, from unpacking to clean-up, took less than thirty seven minutes.

Here’s how to do it.
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