Here Comes The Stress!!!

Okay, school just ended a few weeks ago. I got all my Fall grades and it was good! Now I have to stay on track with all the deadlines that are coming so fast!

I'm applying to five separate radiological technician programs around the San Francisco Bay Area- Kaiser-Allied in Richmond, Foothill College in Los Altos, Cañada College in Redwood City, Gurnick Academy in Concord, and Mills-Peninsula in Burlingame. They all have different application requirements. Some want letters of recommendation, some want personal essays, some want documented volunteer time, all want excellent grades from required prerequisites.

The first ones are due by the end of January, which means that I need to get on the ball and light a fire under the Merritt College administration to get my transcripts in my hands. I've also got order some transcripts from UC Santa Cruz, but I might as well just take nice drive down there and visit some friends- mixing business with pleasure has never been a problem for me :)

Ripping into that Black Magic

It's been almost two weeks since I've been done with finals. Finally, I'm able to get around to evaluating that SV650 that I bought back in September! Looking back on it, I would've been more careful. Everything seemed okay at the time of purchase- the seller was a nice guy and all, but still, I should've checked things out more thoroughly. C'est la vie. I'm movin' on now.

The bike had been sitting in the side yard, under a cover, for months now. Of course, when I was ready to drag it into the garage, it started raining. I charged the battery and took some pictures to archive its original condition. Handily, the bike already had spools, so it was easy to pop it onto the rear stand. Unfortunately, the new triples have a 13mm hole and my Woodcraft pin is much too large for that, so I'm going to have to spend another $20 to get a pin to fit that fork setup. I hooked up the battery and gave the electrical a quick check. Amazingly enough, everything worked okay, with the exception of the front brake not activating the "Back Off" brake light. All the keys fit and the motor freely cranked over. Yay! It would've sucked if something turned out to be messed up, because the transaction happened so long ago, I would have zero recourse.

I did find minor things wrong with the bike, like the front brakes were rubbing somewhere and a couple of fasteners were missing, but all in all, it was a fantastic deal! There are so many great new parts on the bike- a barely used 525 DID chain, new tires front and rear, the GSX-R forks with working steering stops, frame sliders and rear spools, the Suburban Machinery handlebars and the Givi windshield.

This afternoon, I got pretty far on the bike. I yanked out the carburetors, loosened the rear exhaust manifold clamp and removed the cam chain tensioner. Things were really tight, not having being worked on for quite some time. Plus the bike was extremely dirty!!! There was so much gunk and grime built up everywhere. For instance, I was trying to remove the rear shock mud guard. I knew that it was spec'ed to have a 10mm bolt in place, but it the socket wouldn't fit! I tried an 11, 12, 13, even a 9mm! Finally I took a small screwdriver and worked around the bolt. There was grease, mud and pebbles impeding the seat of the 10mm socket! That's why I couldn't get it in there!

Tomorrow, I just have to set the timing and pull off the head. I'm hoping that it's going to come off without having to remove the entire exhaust system! Wish me luck!

Not a Great Week…

Next week are my finals. I’ve already begun studying since my physiology exam is going to an absolute bear.  I have no idea what to expect from the professor, being that she’s a passive aggressive control freak and won’t tell anyone what scores they got on their labs, so I have no real accurate measure of where my grade is heading into finals. My physics final shouldn’t be quite as hard, but I’m figuring that in both classes, I’m riding the borders of getting A’s, so my exam scores need to be strong. I’ve already established that in my communications class, I’ve got so many points built up that I don’t even have to show up for the final (phew!), so that’ll free up some more time to study for the other classes.

While I’m walking the dog this morning, I get a call from my mom, the seventy-something world traveler. She told me that a few days before, she found a lump in her breast. Today, she got the results of the biopsy- the news was not good. Next week, she’s going to have more appointments, so they can make a plan.

She’s a strong woman. I have high hopes that everything is going to be okay. Mom, don’t let me down!

Woodcraft Update

Yesterday in the mail, my Woodcraft accessories finally arrived. I just couldn’t stand the sight of having non-matching heel guards, so I went ahead and purchased the one for the right side, as well as the rear brake spring, so I can get better action and feel for the brake pedal. I was also able to convince Woodcraft to throw in a couple of delrin buttons for the rear set pegs, since one of them got picked off and the other got damaged in a tip over.

I had to unthread the brake pedal from the master cylinder to get the spring on over the piston screw and rubber boot. After I slipped the spring retainer in place, I put the nuts back on and adjusted the pedal height. Lastly, I dripped some blue Loctite on the master cylinder bolts and screwed the new heel guard in place.

The whole installation process for everything took about half an hour, due to dark garage conditions and my puppy running away with parts. All in all, it went quite smoothly. The set up now looks complete and it’s beautiful!

What a Great Sunday!

Well, I finally finished off my sister-in-law’s PC this morning. Getting McAfee to install was a real bitch, since some weird files were stuck in the registry and took me many tries to get the correct tools downloaded and run, before the system would snap shut and fail. Nonetheless, perseverance prevailed and I can check that project off my list. It only took two months to get around to it :)

The day was looking so nice and sunny out that I just had to jump on my motorcycle and take it for a short jaunt into the hills. The temperature was a gorgeous 70 degrees out with nothing but blue skies. After just a half an hour of riding, I found myself on top of Patterson Pass, in Livermore, looking down on the valley of windmills. It was windless today, which was fine by me. Fifty one miles took just over an hour, then it was time to get ready for the trick or treaters.

Emily left me alone with the puppy to pass out candy to the kids. I grabbed my rubber skull mask and my skeleton gloves. The kids just love that kind of stuff. Between the rings of the doorbell, I was able to get in a chapter of physics reading. On top of that, I got to watch the San Francisco Giants handily beat the Texas Rangers in Game 4 of the World Series, shutting them down 4-0! That was awesome!

Tonight, I started working on reviving an old Dell Precision 340. I think I’m going to tool around with a couple of old Palm Pilots I have sitting around. They’re worth practically nothing on Ebay, so I figure I can just write some fun apps for them and possibly work up to iPhone versions, if the applications are good enough. That’ll get me back into the programming swing of things. But so far, the Dell has been less than cooperative. I had to change the CMOS battery, but then, it’s still returning NTLDR errors. Hmmm. I’ve been trying to reinstall the OS, but it’s not taking the CD. We’ll work on it more later…

Fog Lamps for the Prius- Getting Ready for Winter

Wow! It’s almost been a whole month since I bought those fog lamps for Peaberry, our new Prius. I found them on JuicyHybrid.com. They look exactly like the OEM lamps that come on the Prius V model, but they’re $300 cheaper! I finally had a break in my school homework schedule, where I could get these things installed, before the weather gets bad.

The kit was quite complete and the quality is excellent! Fortunately, I downloaded some .pdf instructions from one of the Prius forums, because the included instructions were absolutely useless. I didn’t have any ramps, so I had to do the installation flat on the ground, and let me tell you, that front end is mighty low! I think it’s only about eight inches high and it was a total bitch trying to get my head under there to see what was going on! Even worse, I couldn’t find my floodlight, so I had to use a headlamp, which didn’t work well, trying to sneak my head under that bumper.

The installation went fairly smoothly, but there were some questionable steps in the instructions and I really had to figure them out. I had issues trying to get through the firewall- on my first attempt, I tried to use an old spoke as my fishing tape, but it was way too short. My wife was able to produce a pretty decent clothes hanger for me, so I went with that. Everything about that car is tight, so I got a descent amount of scrapes. Working under the dashboard was no fun either. With all my little breaks and difficulties, the installation took me almost five hours. It should have taken me one hour :(

All in all, I am very satisfied with the product and the installation. We took it for a test drive tonight and the light intensity and pattern is fantastic. I feel much better knowing that my wife will have better visibility on those dreary, foggy days.

Rainy Day Projects

Well, I finally got a little breather in my semester- my massively important physiology exam went better than expected, so I’m taking the weekend off to do some much needed safety projects.

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been shopping on FleaBay for some LED signals to replace my current setup that I have deemed “unsafe”- I just don’t think that they’re bright enough or visible enough from their mounted positions. The front ones that I picked out have little side marker windows, so drivers from your side have an opportunity to see your signaling as well. The two sets together cost me about $45 total. I stopped by my local Tap Plastics shop to pick up some scrap plastic to prefab some signal adapter plates. I grabbed some lock washers of different sizes to help the new signal stalks stay secure.

Also on the agenda was to fix those darned dashboard lights. A while back, I did an LED dashboard light mod, but I never liked it much- the bulb lighting was never as bright as the OEM ones and eventually, they went on the blink. As much as I hated to do it, I went down to the stealership and just made the purchase, and OUCH! they were costly!

One last thing I needed to do was to bleed my rear brakes and install the rear brake pressure sensor. Apparently, the Woodcraft rear sets are so racing oriented that they don’t provide compatibility with OEM brake switches. I paid an extra $16 for the banjo pressure switch, but didn’t have time to install it, when I installed the rear sets.

Installing the front signals turned out  to be slightly trickier than I had anticipated. One of the signals had a third wire, which caught me off guard. I looked it up and apparently, some bikes have marker lights. Not mine. I just soldered it to the ground wire. When I tested them out, only four out of the fourteen LED’s wanted to fire on each side! It took me a while to figure out that I needed to start the motor to load up the system a little more, then all the LED’s worked and they were bright!

Since my old rear signal setup were integrated into the tail section pieces and now they’re going to be flanking the license plate, I decided to change out the tail plastic. I had purchased a couple of spare parts off of Ebay in anticipation of this, so I was ready to go. They’re a little scratched, but I’m planning on getting the bike painted someday, so it’s no biggie. They took a little while to get washed up and waxed, but they went on with no incident.

I got the brackets set up on the license plate. I had to drill some smaller holes in the brackets, since the stock holes were larger than I needed. One more trip to Home Depot for more washers and I was good to go.

It seemed such a waste to flush the brake system, since it didn’t really need it, but it was a necessary evil in order to get swap the banjo screws out. I was happily surprised to find that I did not have to cut and splice the connector from my old brake switch- the new one happened to have the same connector as my Suzuki setup, so despite what the instructions said, I ignored them. I got it back together, fired up the bike and everything was peachy! Well, almost…

After testing the system a while, I determined that one of the rear signals wasn’t quite functioning right- only the outer LEDs were lighting up, leaving about six bulbs inactive, otherwise, the installation was a success. I contacted the Ebay seller about the problem, sending him a picture, so he’s going to send me out a replacement. When the replacement arrives, I just have to send the bad one back in the included prepaid envelope. Such service!

Update: A few days ago, I called Woodcraft and ordered the rear master cylinder brake spring and heel guard. I know they’re not absolutely necessary items, but they’re definitely nice to have and it’ll help with the feel of the brake pedal.