ChronoTech Corporation

So, I was supposed to spend time back in August, writing blog posts about my epic motorcycle trip. Obviously that never happened. Everything since August has been, as the blog title implies, exceedingly strange.

I’m writing this in a studio apartment with a shared bathroom, on the fifth floor of a building that was built in 1902. If I was in Albuquerque, I would be wondering how my life managed to swing towards failure so quickly after finishing college–though I would also be wondering how I managed to find a century old five story apartment building in Albuquerque, since such things quite simply do not exist in that city.

Of course, this apartment is NOT in Albuquerque. It’s in Seattle, about a mile from the waterfront, just a couple blocks east of downtown. And while the job I’m doing is not one that I imagined doing when I set out on my faithful motorcycle, it is one that, more and more, I’m finding to be satisfying. Not particularly lucrative, but definitely satisfying.

Finding myself as a freelance writer in the middle of a city of three million wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but it’ll do for now.

In the last month alone, I’ve probably put down a good 20,000 words, easily. Which is about half of the output I really need to be hitting, but it’s a start. It’s enough to pay the rent, and my internet bill. Not much left over after that. The more I write, the more money I make. I do wish I could spend all of my time writing in a blog and make a living doing that, but let’s face it, this blog is probably never going to be getting 5 million page views a day.

I would have to wonder about the sanity of the human race if it was.

Last week, I borrowed a car and drove down to Bend, Oregon, to watch my nephew compete in the Cyclo-cross nationals. He didn’t place, but he did pretty good, came in about in the middle, which isn’t bad at all considering that his starting position was near the back. On the way back from Bend I drove through the Santiam pass down into Salem. About halfway down, as I was driving past the vantage point with a view of Mount Washington (ironically located in Central Oregon,) I realized I had been on that road before, about 22 years ago.

Putting aside the fact that I’m now old enough to clearly remember things that happened more than two decades ago, I was reminded of all of the road trips that my family went on when I was a kid. I remember how happy I always was when we were travelling, and how actually reaching a destination was actually a bit of a disappointment. It was the trip that was exciting. The place we were going was always irrelevant to me.

I’m enjoying my time in Seattle, but I think that my time here may be limited. No more than a year at the most I suspect. I think after that, the old travel bug will starting biting my feet again.

The nice thing about freelance writing is that all I need to write is an internet connection, and little else. I can go anywhere, and see anything I want, and I’m at a stage in my life where there is absolutely no reason for me not do so. I think it’s time to head down to the local post office, and fill out an application for a passport. I’ve seen a lot of the good old US of A, and very little of the rest of the world, and Toronto barely counts as the rest of the world (apologies to our Canadian friends to the north…)

London, Paris, Berlin. These places tug at my soul, and not because I wish to live in them. Because I wish to see them, and move on.

I wonder what will be left for me once I’ve seen all I can of this world. Perhaps we will have figured out Faster than Light travel by then, and there will be whole other worlds to explore.

One can hope, right?

purgatory

1. in Catholic theology, the stage of the afterlife where souls suffer for their sins before they can enter heaven
2. any situation causing suffering

While the first definition doesn’t apply here, I’m certainly in a situation that causes suffering.

I’m currently taking an intersession class at UNM. This particular one is History 161 (US History to 1877.) I’m not taking it because I want to, but because I still need one last 100-level history class for my major (not to mention that I need to maintain 12 credit hours for last semester.)

The big problem is that the instructor might possibly be the most boring person on Earth. It might not be so bad if I didn’t already know all of this. In fact, I’ve known all of this for literally decades. 

I know why England liked having colonies. They like having money. They like trading. It’s not that complicated, though by the looks on the faces on some of the mouth breathing morons I’m sharing this classroom with, it appears to be surprising information.

I would guess that I’m probably the only person in here with any real interest in History, other than the professor and his very bored teaching assistant. It’s ironic that all three of us are in this classroom for less than academically valid reasons. The instructor outright admitted that he’s in here because he likes money… much like the British.

At any rate, it could be worse. He could be one of those instructors that insists on everyone paying rapt attention to him throughout the entire class.

I’m seriously thinking about not buying the book and seeing how much of this I already know.

Time for a break. I thought it would never come.

Well, this has been a wonderful fracking day. Me and my roommate headed out so I could drop him off at the airport, and we got to about Yale and Lead, when the back end of the truck started to feel all wonky. I pulled into the parking lot of Tri-H Gas, and got out.

The tire is completely shot. Parts of the tread are missing. The worst part is that I know from the last time this happened to me, I ended up paying almost 200 bucks to replace the tire. At least this time, my truck isn’t sitting on the side of the freeway, with traffic wizzing by at half the speed of light (eighty miles an hour.)

It gets better of course.

My friend Josh shows up to take me to go get a tire. I get to discount tire, and they – of course – don’t have the tire I need. I already called Big O, and they were asking almost two hundred bucks for the tire. Not going to happen. So we left, and after stopping off at Sportsman’s Warehouse so Josh could buy their entire stock of .308 FMJ ammo, Josh dropped me off at the truck, while I called a tow company.

To top it all off, I was very late for work. At least my boss is a pretty understanding guy.

P.S. My motorcycle now charges, but it sat so long that I need to replace the air filters and clean out the carbs, maybe rebuild them. IT NEVER ENDS!

For most of the summer, I haven’t been able to ride my motorcycle because of electrical problems. The bike starts up fine, when it’s being jumped, or the battery is at full charge, but I can only charge the battery by hooking it up to an external charger.

The reason for this is because, for whatever reason, the charging system isn’t working.  I decided to replace the rectifier, and seeing that mikesxs.net had a solid-state rectifier/regulator, I replaced the regulator at the same time. I also installed a new wiring harness. I took the bike out in the driveway, hooked it up by jumper cable to my truck battery, and started it up. I removed the jumper cables and…

No joy. It died as soon as the connection was broken. I looked over the wiring guide to the rectifier regulator, and noticed that I was supposed to ground out a wire that doesn’t connect to the new unit. It’s the ground wire for the alternator rotor. So I grounded it and…

I ran out of time to work on the damn thing. It got dark, and I had to head to work anyway.

So, that’s the story so far. I’m really hoping that hooking up that ground wire worked. And if it doesn’t, I really hope that replacing the brushes on the alternator is sufficent to get it working again, because if it isn’t, I’m looking at spending US$149.99 on a new rotor, and US$199.99 on a new stator for the alternator. That won’t be any fun at all.

At least I have an idea of what’s wrong. That’s something, right?

So I just bought an iPod touch to replace the classic I just sold. So far I’m pretty happy with it. The apps are fairly rediculous. Typing is a little hard with the chincy little keys but overall it’s not too shabby. It’s good enough to write this with.

The Wordpress app is particularly awesome. The lack of a delete key or the ability to copy & paste is a little annoying. That’s pretty easily overlooked just due to the fact that it is so easy to type up a blog and post from where ever you happen to have wireless.

That’s the one thing that would be better about having an iPhone instead. Because then you aren’t even tied to a wireless hotspot, which I have to admit would be pretty cool.

Of course, given how often I actually post to this blog, it probably doesn’t matter. Hopefully the coming fall semester should give more material to blog about.

UPDATED:

So now I’m writing this on my brand new iPhone. The 3G Internet more than makes up for the fact that I had to pay a $200.00 deposit to AT&T.

T-Mobile is of course being a pain in the ass as regards my old phone. They insist that I have a contract even though I never signed any such thing. To counter this I changed the credit card number to a Paypal generated one with a one time use, and then immediately canceled it. Assholes.

At any rate, I can’t even begin to describe how cool it is to walk down the street while listening to a Pandora station. It is quite literally, the bees knees.

I’m putting the touch for sale on eBay to recoup the costs. I’m also throwing in my old iPod dock, as the case I bought wouldn’t allow the phone to fit into it, even if I had the proper dock adapter, which I don’t.

I’m getting pretty fast at typing on this thing now. It’s pretty impressive what this thing will autocorrect from. You can hit completely the wrong keys and still get the right word. Kudos to Apple for that.

The monsoon season in Albuquerque is here. That means, that while the rest of the country is busy boiling in it’s own skin, I’m currently drinking coffee outside of Satellite in nearly perfect comfort. It’s maybe 75 degrees out right now.

Unfortunately this brings with it the totally unpredictable rain that is one of the signature elements of life in ‘Burque. I’m perfectly comfortable right now, but it might be pouring rain in 20 minutes. Twenty minutes after that, it’ll have probably stopped.

Back in the day, these rainstorms use to mean that the entire valley would flood on a fairly regular basis. All of the main streets on the slope from the foothills to the Rio Grande would become minor rivers a couple of times a week. This was a bit annoying

These days, we have a fairly extensive network of concrete drainage ditches, locally referred to as arroyos. If you were to visit ‘Burque in the late spring, when it rarely rains, you would wonder why the hell we have them. If you were to visit during a rainstorm in the monsoon season, your confusion would be quickly abated as a wall of water slammed down an arroyo, typically with a greater water volume than the river usually has.

Some of the streets still flood, particularly Lomas Blvd. Every couple of years the local news gets to report on how someone in a Chevy Metro got swept down the street and drowned. The really frightening thing about the monsoon storms is that they can deliver the same amount of water in 20 minutes as a three day thunderstorm might in Seattle. If it ever rained for three days straight in Albuquerque, there might not be a city here anymore.

In the meantime, I’ll take my 75 to 80 degree July days and laugh while people boil in their own skins in Phoenix.

I’ve been playing Bioware’s Mass Effect lately, and honestly, I got to say, I’m a bit confused. Am I playing an RPG, or an FPS? Hell, am I really playing Mass Effect, or am I actually playing KOTOR III?

Honestly, I wish this was KOTOR III. It’s an awesome game, and the addition of lightsabers could only make things better. It is a little weird playing what is most definitely an RPG, and still having to aim. On the other hand, there is a reasonably well developed magic-like system in the game, though it isn’t really quite as broad as one might hope. There could definitely be more spells. Unfortunately, as the default character, I was pushed firmly into the the default ‘Soldier’ class. That’s a little disappointing, and in a way, it turns the combat into just another FPS game, albeit with a couple of magic users (or not, depending on your choice of party members) as back up.

This is a weird trend in these types of games. I don’t mind playing them, but if wasn’t for the story, I wouldn’t be playing Mass Effect at all. While the cinematics and general look of the main story line are quite striking, the sidequests are fairly boring and cookie cutter. All of the buildings in those quests are laid out exactly the same, and they tend to get quite repetitive. I really hope this isn’t a sign of EA’s influence on Bioware, but I fear that is probably the case.

Overall, Mass Effect is an entertaining game, but it quite simply does not live up to the standard set in KOTOR, or in Neverwinter Nights. It doesn’t hold a candle to Jade Empire, which was quite simply a masterpiece of gameplay and story. I could be slightly biased. I’m going to restart the game with a magic user, and see how that works out. Hopefully, it’ll be better.

Of course, comparing it to other Bioware games might not be fair. If you compare it other non-bioware Xbox/PC RPG’s it’s in a class of it’s own. Remember Fable? That game sucked. So much promise, and so little delivery. Mass Effect definitely delivers a finally crafted experience story-wise, and it’s not shabby in the graphics department. It could use some improvement, but what game couldn’t?

you really just aren’t trying hard enough.

The point is, you can’t expect to go through life making everyone you meet happy all of the time. For one thing, even if you try it, you’re going to fail. It’s a basic tenat of the human condition. That applies in general, actually.

So, today, I managed to piss of my boss. There was this computer I was supposed to have ready by this morning, which I couldn’t get working. If I had taken the simple step of emailing him to tell him this, I probably would have come out of it looking a lot better than I did. Now granted, this wasn’t entirely my fault. The stupid thing kept blue-screening. It’s probably the shitty add-in network card. Nonetheless, that doesn’t change the fact that my failure to communicate got me in trouble.

That’s just the way life works. On the other hand, I made myself happy by going to bed at a reasonable time, thus ensuring that I didn’t spend all day as a miserable tired wreck, pissing everyone he meets off by spouting his irritating opinions on everything. That’s just a bad way to go about things.

The second person I pissed off was a girl at Satellite who happend to order almost the exact same drink that I did. I picked up her drink by accident. She gave me a dirty look, I apoligized upon realizing my mistake, and she still left in a huff. At that point, I had no chance of making her happy before she left. She just wasn’t in a mood to be receptive to any apologies. Simple as that. As a situation, it’s even less avoidable than the above mentioned scenario.

The one person I can make happy every single day is myself. Even if I don’t pull it off everyday, the potential is at least there. Most days, I do alright. Sitting in a coffee shop while writing blog posts that I can pretend people will actually read helps quite a bit with that. Especially since I got my coffee for free.

Yeah, I know. It’s been about four months since I last posted anything in here. Last time I wrote, I was bitching about my tiny motorcycle. Well, the tiny motorcycle finally let me down, and broke down in the Wal-mart parking lot at Rio Bravo and Coors Blvd here in ‘Burque. Not the greatest neighborhood. After hanging out at Wally World for about six hours, my sister came and picked me up. About an hour later, my buddy Joby gave me a ride back to the bastion of all that is unholy in retail with a truck. We loaded the bike up, strapped it down real good, and off we went. Joby’s excellent use of slipknots kept the bike from shifting around altogether. After doing this much of a solid for me, Joby goes on the list of people I’m willing to help dispose of a body.

The funny thing is, after spending 700 bucks getting the CT-2 running, I really have no particular desire to get it running again, except to get into selling condition. There is a good reason for this. About the middle of January, I bought another bike. This one is far, far better than the last one. It’s a 1979 Yamaha XS650 Special. It’s a much bigger bike, and on this one, I can actually go on the freeway. I even have the potential to get speeding tickets now, as the new bike can pretty easily do 95, and if I drop it into 4th gear and open the throttle all the way, I can probably get it up to around 110. This is really freakin’ scary – which is probably why I haven’t broken 100 yet. With my self-proclimation as a total wuss out of the way, I can move on to all the things that make this bike so freakin’ awesome.

The first bit is the fact that the engine is fuckin’ bulletproof. Literally. One could shoot bullets at this thing, and still expect it to start. That’s the second thing. This bike has two starting systems – a kickstart, and an electric start. I use the kickstart when it’s cold, because it always, always starts up by the third kick. When it’s warm, the electric start works just fine. I expect by summer time, I’ll be able to use the electric start all the time. The last bit, is the fact that this bike gets great gas milage. It gets roughly 55 mpg with normal use, and I expect with a little bit gentler of a hand, I could probably get up to 65+.

That leads to the one drawback of the bike. It only has a 2.9 gallon tank, so it has a range of about 165 miles between fillups. I’m planning to get an aftermarket tank that holds 3.9 gallons, which would get my range up to a respectable 220 miles. Which still isn’t enough to get me from  Fallon NV to Ely NV at night, when their are no gas stations between these towns.

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But, hey, what can you do? There aren’t very man places in the United States where one can actually go more than a hundred miles without a gas station – and I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank, because it costs me about 9 dollars to fill up my tank. You try going 165 miles for $9 dollars in your bigass SUV. Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Of course, all this wouldn’t be complete (at least for me) if I hadn’t already managed to drop the stupid thing. The worst (best?) part is that I dropped going around a corner coming off a stop sign, at about 5 miles an hour. That’s what a little bit of water, some sand, and a motorcycle tire can do to you. And, of course, I managed to drop the whole damn 600 lbs. of the bike on my knee, and bruised the fuck out of it. But that won’t stop me from riding it – it’s too damn much fun.

Spring Break is coming up, and I’m planning to ride the beast out to California, to take it up the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway, for the undereducated) and then to Castro Valley CA, to visit my Enforcer buddy Mojo. On the way over, I’m stopping at the House of Blues in Las Vegas to see Flogging Molly. All in all, it should be a damn fine trip.

P.S. Road rash fucking hurts. So do bruised tailbones.

About five months ago, I made a deal with my dad. He agreed to let me have his 1972 Yamaha CT-2, and I would pay to fix it. So about a month later, he dragged it down from Abiquiu to Albuquerque. So far so good. At the time, I had no money to fix it, so it got parked in my sister’s backyard until the end of August.

I finally had the money to actually fix the bike around then, so my dad drove back down, and we took the bike to a local bike shop. About the middle of October, the bike was actually finished, so I rode the bus up to the bike shop and picked the thing up.

Now keep in mind… this is an old bike, and before October, I’d never ridden one. So one thing I was not particularly aware of is this: When the fuel feeds by gravity, it’s very important to close the petcock after you shut off the bike, or else it will flood. Flooding, obviously, is bad. What’s worse, is when you don’t realize that your bike is flooded, and you start fiddling with the carb to try to fix it.

This does not work. What it does do, is allow (in the course of fiddling) dirt to enter into the carb, and to allow that dirt to gum up the throttle, making it stick all the way open.

Motorcycles don’t like this much. Because they can’t start with the throttle all the way open. It just doesn’t work. It pretty much does the opposite of “work.”

So, for about 2 or 3 weeks, I was without motor transport. This is okay, really, because I’ve been without motor transport for more than 2 years. I can cope.

$34 dollars later, my carb is cleaned by the shop. The motorcycle runs better than it ever has before. I haven’t gotten a chance to take it on a good cruise yet, but I’m thinking I’m going to go down to the valley and ride around in search of a decent New Mexican restaurant, assuming such a thing exists in Albuquerque.

The real lesson is this: When you take a spark plug out of the engine, and crank the engine to see if you have spark, it is inadvisable to be holding the spark plug up in the air. Because if you do, you become the ground for that particular circut. Ouch.

I learned this the hard way, but am not any worse for the wear.

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