I’ve been an XM Radio subscriber twice. When I started driving to work last year during the fall I called in and got the “open secret” $77 annual membership deal. Service is usually $13 a month, so I was glad paying more than 50% off. However, as the weather got better I rode my motorcycle so much I didn’t listen to XM for months at a time. Even then, I wasn’t a big fan of their music selection and wound up listening to just two channels, something I wrote about almost four years ago when I tried XM for the first time.

Anyway, my year subscription expired about three months ago. I called in and spent forty-five minutes on the phone with an account representative and canceled my membership (which was set to auto-renew at $13/month).

What followed was a ninety-plus day barrage of sales calls trying to get me to become an XM customer again.
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Every year, I am impressed at the thoughtfulness of the gifts I receive from my Sekrit Santa. The amount of consideration from my Sekrit Santa this year is matched only by my embarrassment at not posting sooner. We’ve been preparing the house for holiday visitors, and between the painting and the unexpected kitchen sink explosion I have been very bad at not saying thank you.

Here’s how my Ars Sekrit Santa did a fantastic job this year.
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On Monday I noticed that some of my things were damp underneath the kitchen sink. Turns out that there was a small leak coming from the cold water hose. No problem, right? I read the specifications right off of the hose, went to Home Depot, and purchased a replacement.

I turned the knob on the cold water shut off valve and started to unscrew the old hose. Water started spraying out. Hrm … didn’t I just turn the valve off? I turned it the other way, to make sure. Then this happened:

The knob snapped off right in my hand. Water sprayed ten feet back and all over the floor. I clamped my hand over the spray; it was the best I could do while Sedagive? scampered for a bucket. The bucket filled almost instantly.

Here’s the fun part: I had no idea where the house’s shut off valve was, and the last time I had to do this the valve was under a manhole-style cover in my yard in Williamsburg. We had about four inches of ice and snow in the yard, and I didn’t even know where to start looking. I decided to try underneath the house in a hope that the shut off valve was in an accessible — and dry — location.

Sure enough, there were three valves under the house. I channeled my inner R2D2 and shut them all down. It took us quite a while to clean up the water. We went to Lowe’s to get a replacement plastic valve, and the gentleman explained that the valve was a Quest fitting that was no longer made. Apparently Shell made a bunch of this shit out of polybutylene and it had a reputation for failing. Shell settled a class action lawsuit for a billion dollars (which I missed by seven months).

I bought a metal “shark’s tooth” style replacement fitting. It didn’t make me super confident — you just push the fitting onto the pipe and it clamps down on its own. How reliable would it be? What made me even less confident is that while the cold water started working again, there seemed to be a leak from the hot side now. My dishwasher feeds from that line, and I didn’t want to deal with trying to replace that fitting.

The plumber is here now, and he had to scrounge for some antiquated Quest parts. Keep your fingers crossed.

We love board games at the Den o’ Gibberish. I prefer to play games that are partly competitive, partly co-operative. If a game isn’t truly co-operative, I like games that allow for “isolated group” play, wherein every person in the game can still do something, no matter how far ahead or behind they are. Games like Settlers of Catan, Dominion, and Carcassonne get a lot of play. Recently we’ve been playing a lot of Power Grid by Rio Grande Games. Power Grid is a nice blend of city building, auctioning, resource management, and tactics. It can be played by a wide range of ages and a wide range of player skill, all at the same time.
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“When I ride, I keep my head on a swivel,” my Motorcycle Safety Foundation course instructor told me over four years ago. He went on to describe how his eyes were always darting around, and he was constantly looking behind him and to the sides. It sounded super vigilant, and super safe. I wanted to be super vigilant, and super safe, so that’s what I did.

A few years (and a few thousand miles) rode by, and I realized that I didn’t really feel any safer with my head spinning around, eyes fleeting everywhere. Quite frequently I would look to my right, then my left, and notice that traffic had locked up their brakes in front of me. I found that the more anxious I was with my riding, the more fatigued I became. I started to relax my body more while riding, and that included how I looked at the world around me. My eyes and head stopped moving so much, and while my eyes were mostly straight ahead, I never fixated on any one thing for too long.

I seemed to ride better, anticipate things more accurately, and react to situations more quickly. I chalked it up to experience and riding with more confidence.

Little did I know that my day job would explain how I could see everything by looking at nothing.
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Back before concealed carry pistols were made in polymer frames, high-tech alloys, or high-capacity magazines, my father carried a Smith & Wesson Model 37 five-shot .38 revolver. Purchased in 1974, the stainless steel, very short barreled pistol was the easiest handgun to conceal that had the chance of stopping someone. Dad worked at a bank when I was younger, and his .38 went with him every day.

Fast forward to 1983, and Dad had moved to the country. The Model 37 followed along, and Dad’s never gone back to the city since. Apparently he carried the revolver almost every day for the fourteen years I lived with him. I never knew.

Now that’s some good concealment.

So I was a little surprised when my father told me that his trusty revolver was up for auction. He is currently a deputy, and purchased an upgraded service sidearm. He hadn’t shot the Model 37 in years; selling it would help offset the cost of his new handgun.

I understood his reasons for selling it, but I wasn’t about to let some random dude (or dudette) put their hands on the pistol that Dad relied on to keep me and my family safe for years. I snuck in a bid and won the pistol without saying a word to Dad.

The revolver arrived three days later, and Sedagive? and I headed out to the range.
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I have really enjoyed the Beachbody.com at-home exercise programs. I started with the Power 90 Fat Burner Express fifteen months ago and aside from a few detours with kettlebells never looked back. I have to say, working out at home with Tony Horton and his minions has done more for my body than personal trainers, strength coaches, and mind-numbing laps in the pool ever did.

The biggest reason is consistency. Most of the Beachbody.com workouts are forty-five minutes or less; the majority of those still are thirty minutes or under. It’s hard to skip a day when one could easily spend thirty minutes browsing a Web site, watching television, or playing a video game. If you have time to complain about not working out, you have time to actually work out.

Lately I’ve gone back to the original P90 Basic routine. It’s considered the foundation series for other workouts I own, like the Power Half Hour or the Great Body program. I’m all the way at the starter pair, Phase 1 (cardio and abs) and Phase 2 (strength). This time, however, I’m doing things a little differently.
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Riding in the rain on a motorcycle happens to just about every rider. The difference is that some of us ride in the rain on purpose, while other motorcyclists get caught in a downpour by accident. If you’re the former, here are some tips for keeping your pants dry during foul-weather commuting.

• Gear up. The most important thing, obviously, is wearing waterproof motorcycle gear. You’re going to need:
  • Textile pants with a waterproof liner
  • Waterproof motorcycling boots — regular waterproof boots aren’t a good option because they are usually not tall enough to prevent upspray (more on that in a minute). Furthermore, they may not hold up in a crash as well as boots built specifically for motorcycling. Also make sure your boots have a gaiter on the inside to help keep water out of the openings along the side of the boot. I personally prefer buckles to zippers, but if your boot has a zipper make sure there is a gaiter behind the zipper, too. I wear Sidi On Roads (available at NewEnough).
  • If you are really concerned about staying dry — or you motorcycle during the colder months — you should buy a separate set of waterproof overpants. I own a jacket and pants set of Frogg Toggs Elite Highway (Amazon.com). It makes a huge difference when riding in torrential rain. It is also important for keeping me safe and warm when it’s cold out. You may stay dry when your waterproof textile jacket gets waterlogged, but the wind of riding at highway speeds plus a low ambient air temperature will make you cold in a hurry. It’s uncomfortable at best, and dangerous at worst.
• Tuck your clothes in when going out in public. Fold your pant hem flat against your leg. Put your pant leg inside your boot. If you don’t do this, water upspray from the road my find its way past the various hem contraptions of your motorcycling pants and soak your “real” pants. This is particularly irksome if you are wearing jeans. Demin will rapidly transfer any water absorbed at the hem up your pants. I figured out “the tuck” the hard way after wondering why my knees were wet — it was from my jeans absorbing water on a three-hour ride in the rain.

My Asus Eee 701 netbook computer has always been a mixed bag. Yeah, I loved the ultraportability of it, but the default Linux operating system wasn’t compatible with some of the software I used on a regular basis. I created a custom version of Windows XP via nLite and everything was great — until Windows patch after Windows patch overwhelmed the Eee 701’s tiny 4GB solid state hard drive.

I turned back to Linux for a lighter-weight, easier to maintain operating system. I decided to give Ubuntu a try. They had a special version of their operating system called “Netbook Remix,” which offered a scaled down version of their typical OS as well as common drivers and whatnot necessary for the special hardware often found on ultra-portable netbooks.

I fooled around with Ubuntu for a week, and had a mixed experience. The installation was super easy, but it was all downhill from there — especially as I attempted to craft the Netbook Remix to my needs instead of the standard options available with Ubuntu. It was a weird perversion of the self-sufficient, do-it-yourself Linux user stereotype: the more I wanted to do it “my way,” the more trouble Ubuntu gave me.
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Let’s be honest: motorcycles don’t have much going for them in the event of a crash. Braking distance is longer for a motorcycle than that of a car, stability is compromised at lower speeds, and then there’s that whole “fly off the bike” thing if you collide with an object.

The two big advantages motorcycles have over automobiles are acceleration and size. You’ll need them both when an automobile attempts to change lanes into you. Here’s what I do to avoid lane incursions.
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