[caption id=“attachment_19046” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“The shipping box”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_19047” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“The real box”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_19048” align=“alignleft” width=“300” caption=“The Namiki Vanishing Point fountain pen!”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_19050” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“Ships with the twist converter attached.”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_19051” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“A nice shot of the nib.”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_19052” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“Instructions are under the false bottom.”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_19053” align=“alignnone” width=“225” caption=“Sometimes it is a good idea to read first.”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_19054” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“Under the directions: a cartridge of blue (or perhaps blue black) ink, and a metal cap to put on top of the cartridge (so the push button will still work with the cartridge, which is shorter than the twist converter)“][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_19055” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“Close up of the label.

I’ve gotten in the habit of playing music on my big stereo via iTunes running on my Mac. A handy remote control for this is the Apple-created iPhone app called “Remote”. it looks like an ipod on your phone, but it’s controlling an iTunes running on a Mac over the network. It works well enough, but not perfectly. Lag time between waking up the iPhone and being able to control iTunes is in the neigborhood of 5 seconds, which is an eternity when you’re used to instant digital gratification.

I would like to switch away from using quicksilver to using spotlight for all my searching; it will be simpler to use one interface instead of two. QuickSilver does quite a few things that spotlight will not do (and vice versa). but most of the things I want to do are covered by spotlight, with one notable and nearly fatal exception: searching for saved Terminal.app session files. I ssh to other machines often, and I set up a saved terminal session for each machine.

I unfortunately have some songs I bought from the itunes music store using the FairPlay DRM. I know, I know, that was a mistake. well now I’m stuck with about 55 songs I can’t play in linux, and I have to worry about making sure I don’t run out of the 5 auths for my macs (which is a much more serious and likely scenario) some songs can be ‘upgraded’ for 30 cents to a non-drm version (and a higher sampling rate too).

I’ve been trying to display stuff in full screen mode from my mac on my television which accepts VGA input. After plugging in the cable, going through setting up the display in system preferences, I was easily able to make the TV be a second screen sitting next to my macbook’s built in lcd. So then I moved a preview.app window over to the television (drug it over using the mouse).

I’m running Mac OS X version 10.5 (leopard), and I’ve install xcode 3.1. I need gnumeric and gnucash, which I use to track my finances. The current stable rsync version of fink contains gnumeric 1.8.1-3 and gnucash 2.2.5-52, both of which are close enough to the versions I have in Ubuntu Hardy Heron and Intrepid Ibex to be useable. gnumeric and its dependencies compiled and installed fine. the gnucash2 package, however, failed building some dependent library.

I put the liners in, and it made a huge difference. I still need to get new gloves, my hands pretty much started going numb, and I have a bit of air coming in around my neck, but it’s so much better than before. Some statistics: The bike has 3115 miles now. I’ve gotten an average of 53.3 mpg (it’s so low because my typical highway cruising speed is an indicated 80-85 mph).

I’ve been thinking I need to get more practice on curvy roads. Also, I need to do some longer rides, since my typical rides are all between 30 and 40 miles long. Today when I left for work, I decided to head down highway 88 toward Canyon Lake first, to work on both those goals. It seemed colder out today. I had fun riding up through the curves, got to a nice pull-out.

The two BMW motorcycle dealers in town had demo days. Both days I got to ride a BMW f800st. The second time I wanted to try out a R1200R, but it was already taken. That’s OK though, because I loved the f800st! I’m going to have to get one as soon as possible. This bike is similar in size and style to my ninja, but is better in every way! much more powerful, more comfortable, more stable on the highway, easier to turn, better brakes (with ABS), plus it has fancy features like heated grips, ambient temperature guage, a trip computer, and even a MPG guage (not to mention a fuel guage!

Last Thursday I was getting on the highway, accelerating gently up the onramp, w hen I heard a loud “Pop!”. Then the car had no power and the tach started slowly sliding lower and lower. The battery light flashed once. Then the check engine light came on and stayed on. By this time I had coasted to the shoulder. Turns out I had lost at least one apex seal in rotor #2.