mikeyboy.com

i hope everyone enjoys a fun and safe independence day holiday today.

as anyone who knows me will probably already be aware - i love the World Rally Championship. and the american SCCA Pro Rally series. i enjoy cars going at outlandish speeds on dirt roads. i just never thought that a combination of outdated map data, plus (in my opinion) irresponsible highway signage, would lead to me (and carrie) having a Rally experience in my focus … today.

the problem

first of all, carrie and i were navigating from traveling west on rt 101 to Suncook (Pembroke), NH. our Dash Express GPS usually routes us up Daniel Webster Highway, which has terrible traffic and red lights. so we asked the GPS for an alternate route. it found one. yay!

what’s in a name?

i am a stickler for consistent nomenclature. i pretty much make it my occupation. the GPS routed us down “Chester Turnpike.” now, in the parlance of road naming conventions, a “road,” “street,” or “avenue” is a thoroughfare which has an outlet. a “lane,” “place,” “terrace,” “park,” or “circle” have no outlets. and a “highway” “freeway” or “turnpike” are primary thoroughfares.

chester turnpike

this is a google map of the part of chester turnpike it routed us down. notice google shows the road ending at “N Candia Rd.” the GPS however believe that road continues for several more miles. in fact, there is a gate blocking whatever it is. the more accurate story also says, that right before it heads down into that valley that Clay Pond drains out through, at the top of a hill, the pavement … ends.

story in pictures

view approaching crest of hill

where the pavement ends - just over the hill

where we landed - hit the gravel pretty hard, the anti-lock came on and stayed on for at least 5 seconds

where they put the sign - a small sign designating that they didn’t maintain the road

road not maintained by town

no dumping - i guess dumping trash is more important than informing motorists that pavement ends over a blind hill

i plan to write to the town and ask them to please post a sign at some point farther in advance of reaching the end of pavement, that informs you of the upcoming end of pavement. maybe a nice diamond-shaped yellow sign that says “Pavement Ends.”

tomorrow i’ll inspect the suspension of the car, but i think i came through it okay. i built the car for this, really. i just didn’t expect to do it … today.

while the view is quite different from what i had in seattle, i do get full control over setting up my workspace however i like it.

my desk was cheap (and carrie has an identical one) - $99/each at a used office furniture store. they have cranks that adjust the height of the work surface. my chair was another $99 at a different used office furniture store, and it’s 6-way adjustable.

here’s an overview:

and my desk (it’s never this neat, unless i’m taking a picture of it):

my plywood laptop/LCD stand that i built, it hides most of my cord mess inside:

and i covered the laptop side with stick-on rubber feet to allow air to circulate:

this is where i do all my SQUAREDESIGN web design and development. i keep overhead low, and pass the savings onto my back account.

not earth-shattering developments, but i’ve made a few updates to my site theme that may or may not be interesting, depending on whether you are a geek or not. in no particular order, the changes include:

• the site name is larger, and the byline is moved to the right of it
• the main page width scales with your browser window width, but will have a minimum and maximum width if your window gets too small or too large (except Internet Explorer 6 users - you get a fixed width page. please upgrade)
• there is a very subtle, dotted separator line delineating the flickr images on the left, from the content column in the center, from the utility column on the right
• not only do the columns scale with browser width, but the whitespace between them scales, and keeps the separator line centered between the columns
• the header and columns now are more rigidly aligned in a grid
• the utility column on the right scales up to be wider than it used to be, yet scales down smaller than it used to
• the content column, and parts of the utility column, are now text-justified so they fill squarely to the right margin
• i’ve added some simple logic to the flickr image display so it retrieves fewer images on article pages than it does on the homepage (the content of some articles is a lot shorter, and the images were pushing out the page height past the content length)

this revisit was inspired by attending An Event Apart Boston recently (writing a summary of AEA on my SQUAREDESIGN site). if you have any opinions, let me know.

for anyone who hasn’t heard: the Celtics have defeated the Lakers in the 2008 NBA Finals. they clinched it in game 6, in front of the home crowd at the Garden. and the flow of goodwill (of course, i don’t live in LA, but) in general, seems wildly different from hearkening back to the Patriots’ Super Bowl flop.

people are excited not only for the Celtics players, the coaches, and the staff; but they’re happy for the city and the fans. even documented boston haters have offered their accolades. what’s different?

i believe people, by their nature, are averse to hubris. they generally want to see the good guy triumph, the bad guy get his come uppance. what defines whether others think you are good or bad? identifying with you, your intentions, and your goals. judging whether you deserve to attain that goal or not. and herein lies the big difference.

the 2007-08 New England Patriots were quite possibly the most arrogant collective of individuals in professional sport in recent history. i didn’t quite understand this at the time; i kept wondering “why do they hate us?” and i only really began to understand, when i started watching the Celtics-Lakers series.

i won’t say that it’s an out and out david vs. goliath story. the Celtics team is more than capable and full of talented and accomplished people. but the media, most professional sports fans, commentators, and the courtside celebrities (athleteratti?) had pretty much assumed the Lakers would win. how could they not? Kobe Bryant is the best player in basketball, how is it possible that they could lose?

the satisfaction in victory, for a new fan of the Celtics, was phenomenal. i’m surprised how much i wanted the Celtics to win almost equally to how much i wanted the Lakers to lose. after seeing the chest-thumping of the Lakers players, the smirking Jack Nicholsons. everyone (except Matt Damon) thinking there was no way these “Boston” guys could take the trophy from it’s destined recipients.

then they did, beating the Lakers 131-92 and proving beyond any doubt that they deserved it. piling on points? maybe. outplaying the Lakers in every dimension of the game? more likely.

previously i wrote about my suspension in the back of the focus making a clunk. i forgot, however, to update with the ultimate resolution to this clunking conundrum.

after eliminating various other sources of noise (the improperly-secured jack being a big culprit) i noticed the noise persisted, and it seemed to occur consistently every time the rear suspension moved up or down.

this led me back to thinking it was something with the suspension, so i started to investigate deeper. first up: removing the shock absorber on the passenger side rear (where i could hear the most noise coming from). as i began to remove it, i noticed immediately that there might be issues: it was really tough getting the bottom-end bolt out of the trailing arm.

at first i suspected that the shock mounting bushing was frozen onto the bolt, thereby applying a moment on the shock every time the suspension compressed, causing the shock body to slam against the shock piston cover. turns out i was half right.

the bolt and bushing were not frozen; but rather, the washer on the bolt, which was designed to help [the bushing] rotate freely on the bolt, was corrupted with rust to the point that it could not rotate. i cleaned up the bolt, washer, and bushing and applied anti-seize to all surfaces.

upon reinstalling the shock and torquing to specification, a test drive proved that the shock body was no longer making the clunking sound. i brought it home, re-checked the torque on all fasteners and cleaned up my tools.

the takeaway: salty winters change everything. it’s probably a good idea every spring to give everything a once-over and make sure if it’s designed to move: it still moves.