I am going to state up front that I’m biased about the point of this article. I’m a commuter. I see my motorcycle as a replacement for a car and my FJR 1300A is my primary transportation.

That being said, I know that a lot of people motorcycle for enjoyment, and a very very dedicated few motorcycle for the skill involved in order to do so well. I definitely appreciate the mastery perspective, which is one of the reasons I decided to write this piece.

Motorcycling as a pursuit, as a culture, can often be divided into halves. Cruisers vs sportbikes. No- or low-gear wearing squids vs ATGATT (all the gear, all the time) power rangers. US-made bikes vs foreign-made bikes. V-twin vs inline 4s.

There are varying degrees all along the spectrum, of course. There are a growing number of riders here who are “half the gear, all the time” for example, and wear a helmet, gloves, a jacket … and shorts. Or whatever. You get the idea.

One area that has really purchased a lot of my “riding meditation” time lately is racers vs commuters.

I belong to a message board, and right now it is pretty dominated by guys who like going fast and riding very precisely. They aren’t hooligans or squids. These guys have taken multiple riding courses, and have read many books / watched many DVDs on race-style riding. They have full protective gear and have been riding for years.

Yes, they are interested in going fast. They are also interested in the techniques of riding, both at high speeds and at very low speeds. They study

• trail braking
• up and down shifting to maximize power and speed
• how to establish a good line during a turn
• body positioning, including getting their ass off of the seat at the right time and dragging a knee
• making tighter and tighter U-turns at low speed without putting their feet down

I respect their desire to get better, and I also appreciate the pursuit of the perfect technique. But I am not this type of rider.

I’m a commuter, and instead I focus on the skills and techniques of riding safely in traffic. For example, I study the art and technique of changing lanes at speed on a highway filled bumper-to-bumper during rush hour. I am completely disinterested in knee dragging on the street, because the world is not a professionally maintained track. There might be something in an upcoming turn that I can’t see, and if I am fully committed to a line and leaned over to the utmost there is no room or time for a correction.

I try to improve my technique at these sorts of things:

• Anticipating the driving behavior of other motorists
• How to avoid cars that pull out in front of me at intersections
• Riding in the rain or other sub-optimal conditions
• Keeping from being rear-ended at a stop light
• Staying physically and mentally relaxed so I can ride longer distances during a single day

and many more — none of which are particularly sexy but all of which help to keep me commuting on a motorcycle as safely as possible.

There is some bleed-over of these skills and desires. Yes, going fast is fun. Yes, racer-motivated motorcyclists want to avoid being run over. Learning to brake hard, or to brake as much as possible in a turning situation, are skills that both types of motorcyclists would learn. My contention is that we’d learn them for different reasons.

Racer-motivated riders will learn to “trail brake,” or to lightly use the brake during a turn, in order to bleed off slight amounts of unwanted speed, settle the suspension, and set the bike up for a faster exit. Commuting-motivated riders will learn to trail brake in case they need to slow down on an off-ramp due to an accident or an obstruction in the road.

Learning to lean the bike over to encourage better turning is vital to both types of riders; however race-riders may push the lean envelope more.

Throttle control to a commuter means being able to navigate through stop-and-go traffic without putting one’s feet down too much. To a racer, throttle control means putting as much power to the ground as possible without lifting the front wheel up. Same techniques, different desires, different applications.

I am not saying racing-motivated riders ride unsafely; what I am thinking is that there’s one sub-set of motorcyclists who are driven to increase their skills. Of that sub-set, there are two sides to that same coin: people who want to learn the techniques of riding as fast as possible, and those who want to learn the techniques of riding as safely as possible on the street.

So the time has come. After wearing a face sweater every day since Thanksgiving of last year, it’s time for it all to come off.

When it came time for me to trim my full beard, my readers voted for the Freebird a little over a month ago. What was supposed to be a goofy weekend experiment turned out to be something I liked.

Instead of shaving it off the following Monday, I wore the Freebird to work for a laugh. Then Monday turned to Tuesday, and Tuesday to Wednesday, April to May, and up until today.

My mother has a big birthday coming up soon, and I didn’t want to be in every photo sporting the Freebird. I didn’t want to look back on her birthday pictures thirty years from now wondering what the fuck I was thinking wearing some inverted pitchfork of facial hair.

So out came the shears, and all bowed down before Beardaggedon.
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Our trip started at 8:45 Friday morning when we headed out for our friends’s house in Tybee Island, Georgia. As usual, Sedagive? was an excellent motorcycle passenger and the 500 mile ride passed by without incident.

Here are some photos and thoughts from the first few days of our trip.
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Today marks the eleventh year of my sister’s passing. As the days tick on, I continue to think about her and the things that she did for me. The things that she taught me, both in her words and actions.

However, as I now have lived a little more than a day longer than my sister, I have started to think about the things I don’t remember.

And it makes me sad, and concerned, and even a little guilty.

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I’ve had an ADT alarm on the house for over five years. The main reason I got it was for the fire and smoke monitoring. I wanted to make sure someone would come if the house lit up while I was away. I don’t really care about the things inside the house, I just want someone to rescue my three dogs.

Over that five year period, I’ve had a few false police alarms. Those were mostly caused by pet or house sitters, and ADT called every time to see what was the matter. It was never a big deal.

However, I inadvertently triggered the fire alarm over Easter weekend, in possibly the lamest way imaginable.

Here’s why user interfaces and usability are important in all facets of our lives, and not just software and Web sites.
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After about three and a half years of heavy usage, my Melitta Fast Brew coffee maker finally bit the dust. I noticed a few days ago that the coffee wasn’t as hot as usual. That was a bad sign, especially since I put the finished coffee directly into a glass-lined Thermos air pot to stave off overheating by the burner and heat loss.

I threw a fresh pot (water only) and put my thermometer inside the carafe as soon as the Melitta was done brewing. The proper brewing temperature for drip coffee is around 195°F. Accounting for some heat loss by brewing into a room-temperature carafe, I’d expect the final temperature to be around 180°F or so.

The Melitta brewed at 160°F. Definitely a bad sign. The stainless steel heating element in the Fast Brew is surely dying.

We’re limping along with the Melitta for now. I figured it was time to order a new machine to replace the old bird before she died, so a Bunn is on the way. I’ll run the Bunn for a bit before doing a write-up and give the Melitta a proper burial.

Rest in peace, my sweet.

In the spirit of the “How many five year olds can you take in a fight” quiz I wrote about almost two years ago, The Accountant™ passed along the “how many 90 year olds can you take in a fight” quiz.

Some new rules apply here versus the original:

• Everyone is ambulatory (no wheelchairs)
• Everyone is wearing groin protection — this is a big update from the first quiz
• The “arena” is bigger, about the size of a basketball court

My results:

I could take down 35 90 year olds in a fight.

This is all in good fun. If you are thinking about submitting my results before the court, this in no way implies that I would actually take on 35 90 year people at once, or that I would want to.

I run up to six computers in my house. I turn them off or suspend them in order to save money and reduce my impact on the environment. I recently discovered a problem when doing this, though. I want to watch a television show or movie when I power on my HTPC. When I shut them off or suspend them most of their “lives,” all of the system health stuff runs at the same time I am trying to watch a program.

For example, I run Grisoft’s AVG antivirus software and Windows Defender. Both run on schedules and both can take a fair amount of CPU, RAM, and hard disk I/O resources. If you leave the machine off long enough, it’s possible to have both programs running at the same time.

This makes the rest of the system run slowly. This is particularly annoying when watching a 720p HD show via Boxee, which takes a pretty healthy dose of resources up on its own.
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Okay, here’s a fun game I played with my friends and family this holiday.

You’re in the middle of a major world crisis. Zombie apocalypse. World War Three. Super deadly strain of Hamthrax breaks out. Hockey gets canceled. Whatever the reason, you’ve got to leave wherever you are, and get to some place “safe.” The “safe place” isn’t important; what’s important is that you only have time to take one of each of these things with you when you bug out.

You have to have the item in your possession, either in your domicile or in storage less than 15 minutes away by vehicle.

You can only take one item from each category. Not two. Just one.
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I spend some time at the end of every year and think about the best and worst things I’ve reviewed. I wrote 63 reviews this year, from sock garters to headphone amplifiers. What were the best and worst things I bought all year?
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