Fungii.com

Removing a cassette freehub - the hard way

My bike's drivetrain was pretty trashed as of late with the chain skipping all the time, and completely flying off at other times resulting in painful injuries which I will not go into here. ;)

So I went out and bought the replacement parts (chain, chainring and freehub) and set to work this morning. It's usually a pretty simple procedure. Use a chainbreaker to break the old chain, throw it away and use the universal link to install the new chain when all is done. The chainring replacement involves removing the crank-arm on the drive side, removing the bolts holding the chainring in place, throw away old chainring and bolt on the new one. Easy!

Then came time to remove the freehub. Ugh! I've never had problems with this before. I removed the rear wheel, used a chain whip to hold the cassette in place and put the appropriate cassette removal tool in place. Using a ratchet with the correct sized socket over the chain tool, I cranked on it. And nothing budged. Tried a pry-bar. Nothing. Used a quick-release skewer to hold the tool in place, still no movement. Tried soaking it in WD-40, leaving it to soak in and banging it with a hammer to break the "bond". All attempts end in dismal failure. Covered in sweat and grease, I gave up.

I must mention that this bike is only ten months old - got it last year when somebody ripped off my old bike. So it's not an old bike covered in rust. We had a mild winter, this bike hasn't been through very much weather wise. I think somebody at Rocky Mountain got carried away and tightened this hub down to a ridiculous degree. I would like to kill him.

I decide to go to the bike shop to see if they could work some of their voodoo on this thing. Get to the bike shop, and find that they are closed on Sundays. When did this happen? They are always open on Sundays! Tried another bike shop. Not only are they closed, they are completely defunct, out of business. Argh! I give up. Try again tomorrow.

But of course, I didn't give up, cause I'm one of those assholes that just can't leave well enough alone. Searching through the internet, I don't find much help. I seem to have tried everything that people were suggesting as solutions. Until somebody wrote about using a torch! Of course! When all else fails try using a torch! I fired up my torch, heated the hub up and tried removing it. At first I thought I had busted my hub removal tool, because the damn thing started spinning. Then I realized it was spinning cause I had finally broke the goddamn thing free!

Awesome, now I just have to screw on my new cassette (not too tight!) and throw my new chain on and I'll be set. God, I hate working on my bike sometimes.

Stolen Bike - Details

2002 Black Azonic Evolution mountain bike frame - stickers removed except for "Evolution" on the top tube at the front
Avid mechanical disc brakes - large rotors [203 mm]
License plate number 1574 - front and back
Avid brake levers
Deore XT rear derailler
No front derailler
Front shifter - Deore XT
Rear shifter - Deore LX
Large middle chainring - 42 tooth
Deore crankset - Black, paint worn away to reveal silver underneath
Race Face handlebar - Black, flat straight, cut short
Lock-jaw type handlebar grips
Handlebar stem - Specialized, short, silver
New continental tire on back - Contact Security 26 X 1.75
Old continental tire on front - Country Ride 26 X 1.75
Sun Rhyno Lite rims, front and back, black
2004 Marzocchi Marathon XL forks - no air in them so they were sunk down as far as they could go
Heavily worn bike seat, the cover was worn away
SPD pedals with black plastic platforms so you could ride without spds if you needed to, Shimano I think
Front tire had a Schraeder tube, but rear tire had a Presta tube with a brass adapter attached and a yellow cap

Stolen Bike

Somebody ripped off my bike today. I'm so depressed right now. It was a slow day today and I finished my bank deposits early, so I went into my final time call a bit early at Canterra Tower. After sitting around for about 15 minutes, I did my time call and came out to drop off my last couple of deliveries and go home. That's when I noticed my bike was gone. At first I thought maybe I just parked it somewhere else but then I noticed my lock sitting on the ground cut in half.

I bought this frame back in 2002 and slowly built it up into the bike I wanted it to be. It's not just the money, this was my bike. I had spent so much time getting it just right. Now I'm screwed. I can't work tomorrow. I have to fork out a bunch of money that I don't have to buy a bike that I don't fucking want. I want my bike dammit! Plus I have to go to the police station to report this as they closed at 7:00 o'clock today and I didn't make it. I can't find my receipt anywhere so who knows what they'll say about that. I can find my receipts for 2001, 2003, 2004 but not 2002 which is when I bought my frame. I'll probably be up all night looking for this goddamn receipt.

The worst part of this is that the bike didn't even look that good. All the stickers were removed except for "Evolution" on the down tube, so he couldn't sell it as a certain brand. The paint was chipped, it just didn't look good. So he's probably going to turn around and sell it for peanuts. A bike that I put so much time and effort [and money!] to make exactly how I wanted it to be. In short, it meant so much more to me than it could ever mean to him. Or her. Not to mention it was what I used to earn my living.

I'm crushed.

Bike rebuild '07 Part II

Spent another $ 170 on my bike [and shit] today. New shoes, bike lock, cleats for me shoes, seat and grips. Hopefully that will be all for awhile, I'm broke!

Fixed the "customize" thing on my sidebar so it works with Firefox. Although it's still screwy, it only changes one thing at a time. As in, if you change the font color and then try to change the font size, the color will revert to the default orange. And if I don't use the default class as a base, the change in class changes more than what I want it to. As in, if I have a simple class that changes just the font color to red, the font size changes as well for some reason. :(

Bike rebuild '07

I had to buy a new drivetrain for my bike this week. Not that I wanted to, I have so many bills to pay right now. I was trying not to spend any money unnecessarily, but my chain was either skipping really bad or completely falling off. I had to buy a new chainring, chain and cassette. My new middle chainring is now a 42 tooth ring, which is funny because my "big" chainring is has only 44 teeth. Not much difference between the two. My new cassette is 12-23, which is cool because I do pretty much all my riding on the road, not much need for the bigger cogs. Now I just need some new biking shoes, seat, handlebar grips, brake levers...

Ugh, I need a couple thousand dollars to fix all the things I need to fix! The total came to $ 305. I also picked up a new 203 mm rotor for my front brake as it was pretty worn down. And an extra 36 tooth chainring, they were on sale and I wasn't sure if the 42 tooth ring would have enough clearance. It did, just barely.

Bike Messengers on Crack

Crazy video! Fun to watch, a lot of tight squeezes in there.

Winter Weather Whining

Ugh, it's -15º again today and snowing. I'm getting sick of this weather. Riding downtown in it is brutal, there's too much snow in the curb lane so I have to ride out in the ruts made from the cars. Which is kind of dangerous and I'm sure the cars behind me don't like it very much. But what can I do? I don't have much choice. Deliveries are also taking a lot longer too, but I can't do much about that either. I've been getting a ton of deliveries to the beltline [long trips] as well, about one an hour. Just brutal.

Kill me now

I had such a shitty day today. It was really busy all day. Then, right before I started doing my bank deposits, somebody gave me a rush. I thought I could get my deposits done before doing this rush, but all the banks were really busy and it took forever. So the people who sent out the rush got all pissed off that it was so late, so I had to rush down there after my deposits to get rid of the damn thing.

That's when things went from bad to worse as I encountered some psycopath that nearly killed me the other day [long story, it's like something out of "Duel"] and we had some major confrontation in this loading dock. I wouldn't be surprised if I get banned from that building now because of it.

Then when I came home, some chick needed help getting into her car because she locked her keys inside. I tried to use a coat-hanger to get it opened, but I'm useless as a car thief, apparently. I loaned her my finest hammer, because she still needed it to pry the door open while using the coat-hanger after I had given up. She promised to return it when she was done, but here I am, hours later and she never returned my fucking hammer.

It's been a rough day. :(

Damn Snow

Last week it was freezing cold, then this week it snowed and next week it's supposed to snow for much of the week. So much for our mild winter. Hopefully it'll chinook again soon. I wore my regular cycling shoes Wednesday and Thursday but my feet got soaking wet and cold, so on Friday I wore my big-ass Sorels. I couldn't get around as fast with those damn things, but they did keep my feet dry and toasty.

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Can I see your papers, please.

The cops busted me for riding on the sidewalk today. Damage: $25. Not much money, but it was still depressing. I think the last time I got nailed was February, so I had a good run without paying the poor tax.

Dyin' ain't much of a living, boy

I was coming out of a bank today, when I noticed somebody hanging around my bike. They walked away as I was coming out, so I inspected my bike to see if anything was missing and it seemed fine, so I assumed it was just somebody curious about my funky disc brakes. Later, I noticed marks on my cable lock where somebody had used cable or bolt cutters to try and cut it off! Fuck, was I pissed off! I raced back down to the mall to see if I could find the motherfucker, but he was nowhere to be found. Argh, that put me in a foul mood for the rest of the day, but I guess it could have been worse, he could have been successful and I would be bikeless.

Life in Hell

It rained almost all day today so it wasn't much fun at work. Cold and wet. As if that wasn't bad enough, my tire went flat at the end of the day. My new, expensive Continental tire that supposed to be virtually flat proof. And it was, for about two months. Then two days ago I got a flat. Now another one. Argh!

On this day, I hate my job

Another crappy day. It got real busy at the end of the day, now I have a shitload of crap that I'm supposed to get done "first thing in the morning". Ick. And my lip still has this lump in it, I guess it'll take awhile for that to go away. I feel like I should be chewing tobacco or something. My chest is still hurting. I might have cracked a rib or something rather than a pulled muscle. Whatever it is, it hurts. Plus I have to do laundry, fix my bike, wash dishes, yadda yadda. Major suckage.

I saw a cool movie on the weekend tho, Kontroll. Entirely set in the Budapest, Hungary subway system, it focuses on the subway kontrollers, the people who check to see if you paid for a ticket. Rather bleak, but also funny and strange.

Recovering...

It's been almost a week since my crash last Tuesday. I ended up taking two days off because my lips swelled up so I could hardly talk and I had a really bad headache. The worst part was going back on Thursday and discovering I had a bad pectoral muscle pull on my right side, made work sheer hell. Friday wasn't much better, I started at 7:30am and went full blast, no breaks until around 5:30pm. That kind of day is hard at the best of times, doing it banged up was torture. And I had to explain what happened like a 1,000 times. My weekend was spent mostly in bed, taking aspirin and applying various ointments to my pustulating wounds. Today wasn't so bad, most of the woundage and swelling is gone. Except for this split in my lip, which is still preventing me from doing something as simple as eating a sandwich. I also noticed my right hand was hurt in the fall, it's a bit sore lately.

The worst part is I picked up a cold or flu from somebody along the way. Been sneezing, getting a runny nose and coughing. Maybe from my dentist? Oh yeah, I also went to my dentist. He fixed my tooth by using filling material to rebuild the part that got chipped off. Hopefully it will hold. And he lightened my wallet by $250, the bastard.

[warning: graphic pictures in extended entry]

I look like I'm in a bit of shock here. My lips swelled up a hella lot more after this. You can see my nose got some road rash as well. I had a nose bleed when I bailed and later it scabbed up. I actually had a big scab running up from my chin to my nose on the right side afterwards, quite fucking disgusting.

Here you can see my chipped tooth. Yuck! The dentist fixed it pretty good, although I think it sticks out a bit more than my real one did. Maybe I should grind it down with my Dremel tool? You can see my chin was pretty raw, lucky I didn't break my jaw or I'd really be a hurting unit!

These pictures were taken not too long after the incident. I actually don't look too injured. The next day was the worst. No, I didn't take any more pictures, I basically died after this.

I got the day off!

After feeling a little under the weather yesterday, I awoke this morning feeling much better. So I made my way downtown, ready for a good day at work. The first hour was dead, but just before my 9:00 o'clock time call, I got a call for a couple deliveries. I picked them up and dropped off the first one. As I was making my way to the second location, disaster struck! I was coming out of a parking lot where the exit comes out across a sidewalk and then onto eighth avenue, which is a two way street. Being a two way street, you have to check both ways for traffic before getting onto the road. That's what I was doing as I hopped off the curb. There was a big puddle on the road right where I was hopping off the sidewalk and I guess I miscalculated how deep it was, cause I was leaning too far forward when I did and my bike simply pivoted over the front wheel. Sending me face first into the pavement with no chance for me to react as I was checking for traffic and by the time I realized what was happening, it was way too late. It felt like forever as my face slammed into the road. I got up and all this blood was gushing from my face. Some lady helped me keep a towel up to my face, some guy called an ambulance, another guy locked up my bike for me and I waved down a courier to deliver my package as at that time I didn't think I would be doing it myself. They were all quite nice and helpful! :)

The paramedics basically helped me clean all the blood off and sent me on my way. My lip was [is] split open, and I went to a clinic to get it sewn up, but they took forever and I couldn't wait anymore. It's funny, they had a sign saying that they don't help people on a "first come, first serve" basis, that the most urgent situations get dealt with first. Well, I was the only one covered in blood with obvious injuries, yet they helped a whack of people before me, none with any visible problems. Bastards.

None of this would have been a big deal for me, really. Hell, I probably have just wiped away the blood and gone back to work had that been the extent of my injuries. Unfortunately, as my face was mashed into the asphalt, it felt like my two front teeth had been knocked out. It wasn't quite that bad, but one of my front teeth had a big chunk knocked out of it. I went to the dentist, they got me in for an x-ray pretty quick. Tomorrow I go in to get some filling material put in, and hopefully that will be good enough. He said there's a chance the nerve in my tooth could die. In which case, I'll need a root canal. And maybe more? I don't know, and that's the thing I hate about this. I have no dental and dentists always seem to want to do more and more work. [$$$] Hell, today they tried to get me to do a cleaning when I get this filling thing done tomorrow. And I need a bunch of other work done as well, I'm sure they'll mention that when they get a look inside my mouth. I am poor, comprende?

So that's how I got the day off today. I don't feel too bad. My face feels a little raw, like it's been dragged across the pavement for a bit. I'm just pissed about my tooth.

Life's hard-learned lessons

* note to self: when your bike's tire explodes in the middle of the night, that means your tire is trashed and you need to go get a new one. Under no circumstances should you swap in a new tube and pump it up, cause it will just blow up again, making you pissed off and deaf.

Rain no more

Today was a good day. After raining all night, it was over by the time I went to work. It rained lightly a couple times in the morning but by the afternoon the sun was peeking through. Everybody seemed happy today with the rain finally gone. Hopefully we'll never see rain like that again. Ever.

Blind Melon - No Rain

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
I like watchin' the puddles gather rain
And all I can do is just pour some tea for two
and speak my point of view
But it's not sane, It's not sane
I just want some one to say to me
I'll always be there when you wake
Ya know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today
So stay with me and I'll have it made
And I don't understand why I sleep all day
And I start to complain that there's no rain
And all I can do is read a book to stay awake
And it rips my life away, but it's a great escape
escape......escape......escape......
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
ya don't like my point of view
ya think I'm insane
Its not sane......it's not sane 

Rain rain go away. And die.

It was just pouring rain first thing this morning [again], but I had leftovers that needed to get done so I headed out early. Just as I got downtown, I felt my back tire go all wobbly. Checked it out, flat tire, a big chunk of glass stuck was stuck in there. I had a spare tube so it didn't take long to swap out the old one for the new one and get back on the road. But, about twenty minutes later I hopped on my bike and felt the same wobbly feeling and I was like "no way!!!", but it was true, another flat, this time a big screw was jammed right in there. I immediately headed over to MEC but they're not open till 10:00am so I was screwed till then.

My first impulse was to head over to MacDonald's and dry off and kill time till ten, but instead I decided to head over to the courthouse and get some stuff filed. I didn't want to walk in the rain all the way so I took the plus-15's where I managed to dry off a bit, from dripping wet to merely extremely damp. [Ahh, to be merely extremely damp, I shall remember that fondly] I never got much of a break. As soon as I had done my QB stuff and a late time call, it was time to journey back to MEC, although I did get a muffin on the way. Woohoo! Which was good, as I never got any lunch.

After getting my bike back on the road, it was mega busy for the rest of the day. And it rained, and rained and rained. I was soaking wet and cold. It was difficult to keep my deliveries dry. Even if you pulled out a dry envelope, all this water would drip off your arms and get everything wet. Major suckage. Anyway, I made it through the day, and I'm fully loaded for leftovers needing to be done tomorrow morning. And the forecast calls for more rain in the morning. Sounds like a fucking repeat of today. Although they promise that it will taper off as the day wears on tomorrow, so I have that to look forward to!

Average rainfall for June in Calgary is 77mm. We've had around 180mm [I think] in the past week. Average yearly rainfall is 301mm, 435mm if you include snow. A lot of rain any way you look at it, and we still have 23 days left in the month!

From the Globe and Mail:

Alberta Environment has issued flood warnings for the towns of Pincher Creek, Okotoks, Turner Valley, Black Diamond, High River and Clairsholm.

Most areas in southwestern Alberta have been experiencing anywhere from 60 to 100 millimetres of rain per day for the past week.

The subsequent flooding falls ominously on the 10th anniversary of the last major floods in the province, when roughly 250 mm of rain fell over two days between June 5 and 7, 1995.

The hardest hit areas in Alberta are Clairsholm, roughly 100 kilometres south of Calgary, and the Pincher Creek area, which both experienced more than 100 mm in the past 24 hours.

The average monthly rainfall for June in the Calgary area is nearly 80 mm in the entire month, Mr. Shannon said. Most areas in the southwest portion of the province have been experiencing those levels over the last 24 hours, he added.

The CBC has a photogallery.

New shades

My old Oakley sunglasses were bent out of shape lately, totally unwearable after 8 years of abuse. So I had resorted to wearing these cheap, scratched-up, pieces-of-crap sunglasses. Then on Friday one of the nosepieces fell off so I had these freaking prongs that were supposed to hold the nosepiece, digging into my nose. After that experience, I broke down and bought some new Oakleys, Oakley Straight Jackets Black Gold Iridium. I like them, a bit expensive but they should do the job. Here's a picture of me wearing them. They make the world look all weird, kinda Sepia-like. It's like I'm on drugs whenever I wear them, ha ha.

Bike rebuild '05

I picked up most of the parts to rebuild my bike.

• Deore square taper crankset, 175mm - my old one has the pedals seized, can't get them off. I was going to replace it with a splined model, but I broke the cup on the bottom bracket set while trying to remove it [very, very seized!], so I'm just going to use a square taper model on the old BB axle. The axle's taper is ruined, but I've been getting by with a "coke can shim" so hopefully that'll continue to work for me. I tried to get the LX model but they were all out and the only other sets they had were Race Face for about twice the price. Too rich for me!


• New pedals - some Shimano model, they're SPD's with a cage. I'd rather not have the cage but I can't see how to take them off.


• Deore XT front and rear deraillers - my old rear derailler is semi-seized, the pulley wheel is trashed and nobody seems to have the proper replacement for it so I picked up a whole new derailler. Finally, after basically running on a single gear for the past year. My old front derailler never fit on my new frame, the tubing was too big around, so this will be the first time I've had a front derailler on this frame. W00t! More gears!


• New seat - same as the old one, cheapo model that seems to last as long if not longer than any expensive model I've purchased.


• New ODI grips - uses the lock-ring system, which is great, keeps your grips solidly positioned on the handlebars, once you've had these things you'll never go back to regular grips.


• New chain and freewheel block - all new parts for my drivetrain, which was what prompted me to do this upgrade in the first place as my old drivetrain was starting to get some rank skippage.


• New Deore LX shifters - I actually wanted the XT's but they didn't have any without the integrated brake levers [which I hate!]. My old XT's are broken, they don't 'click' anymore. I'm hoping I can fix them somehow, this is the second pair of XT shifters I've had fail on me like this.


• New brake pads, cable housing etc. - usual bike shit.

So I've got all the parts ready, I just have to disassemble the beast and reassemble it with all the new parts, tomorrow's project. Total damage, almost $600.00! Hopefully I won't have to do this again for awhile! At least it's all tax deductible.

Damn tire tubes!

It was pretty slow at work today, but I didn't mind. It was kinda nice to get a bit of a break. But then near the end of the day, I got a flat tire right when I had a bunch of stuff to do. That pissed me off, but I had a spare tube on me so I thought it would be a simple matter of swapping out the old tube for the new one. As I was installing the new tube, I noticed a bit of tube getting pinched as I got the last of the tire on the rim. Sure enough, when I tried to pump up my tire, the air just when straight back out again. Pinch flat. Now I was really mad. Which didn't help when I went to MEC afterwards because I was so angry, I screwed up again and gave myself another pinch flat with the third tube. I finally got a tube installed properly when I took the time to be real careful that the tube wouldn't get pinched. I kinda pumped it up real hard, I hope it doesn't explode. Mmmm, maybe I should let some air out just in case....

Anyway, that was my shitty day. I'm off to slash my wrists now.

I hate this world

Wasn't too busy at work this morning, I actually got to sit down and surf the net using my Blackberry, which promptly crashed when loading a largish page. The Java-based BB's seem a lot less stable than the old C++ based units. Anyway, this afternoon got a little busier, especially near the end of the day when I was doing all my bank deposits. This one client from the east end of town called me for a bank run while I still had about 5 deposits left to do. I wasn't sure if I could make it, but somehow, after doing all the deposits, I had enough time left to run down there, pick it up and get to the bank before it closed. But, as I was riding to the bank, my front end started getting all bouncy. I thought at first it might just be my shocks getting accidently set to "soft", which makes them all mooshy like that. But no, it was a fucking flat tire. Argh, just when I was really busy. I did manage to get to the bank before my tire went completely flat. While I was in the bank, I got a call for a rush as well. And the bank took forever to make up these bank drafts. By the time I got out of the bank, fixed my flat tire and picked up all my calls, the day was pretty well toast. Now I have all these left-overs for tomorrow, plus I'm supposed to pick up doughnuts "first thing" tomorrow, as Friday is a holiday. Eek, I hate that. The worst part was when I was trying to get the piece of glass out of my tire before throwing in the new tube and I couldn't get it out, it was stuck in there good. And it was snowing like crazy, so my tire was all cold and wet, it was pure hell I tell you.

Sunday Bogus Sunday

Finished Far Cry today, finally. Good game, although the save game system was a pain at times and it was quite difficult at certain points. [like the begining of the Dam level, I hated that part!]

I also tried to install my new crank today. Got as far as getting my old crank off. But when I tried to take the bottom bracket off, it wouldn't budge. Seized up tight. So I went to Sears and bought this massive 1¼" wrench, figuring it would give me plenty of leverage to twist the thing open. Well, I secured the BB tool with a skewer to guard against slippage and went at her with the big wrench. It finally turned and I thought "Yeah, it broke free!" Upon closer inspection, though, it hadn't come free at all, but in fact had sheared off half the edge of the cup where the tool grips on! What a bummer. First I just wanted the pedals off, but I couldn't because they were seized to the crank. Now this. I'll pop in to the bike shop tomorrow and see what they think. I know they can push out the wrecked cup from the other side if they can get the good cup off, they did it for me a long time ago. The question is, can they get that other cup off without wrecking it the way I wrecked this one? I'm so bummed, I hope there is a way to get this done, I really like this frame.

175mm, you daft bastard

My pedals have been slowly deteriorating for the last little while, but they have taken a turn for the worse as of late. I actually tried to replace them recently but I could not get them off the cranks. This week, the right pedal has been disintegrating day by day, making loud crunchy sounds when I pedal and it's totally loose, it almost feels like the body is going to slide off the axle. Went to the bike shop, Singletrack, and asked them if they could get the pedals off. After a valiant try, it was a no-go, the pedal just spun around without coming out at all. I guess it's so seized up, it's just stripping the threads when you try to loosen it. That means the only solution is to get a new crankset. [I already have new pedals from when I tried to replace them last time] After checking out a few cranksets, I decided on the Shimano LX. But they wanted $160, which seemed a little steep to me. Looking online, I saw that I could get the set for $120, $40 cheaper! I also found the set for $135 at the Bike Shop. When you factor in shipping charges [$10], the Bike Shop's price is only $5 more than online and I wouldn't have to wait for them to ship. So I decided to get it there.

I went in today after work and asked the guy for the Shimano LX crankset, 175mm. He even repeated it back to me "175mm", before disappearing into the basement for about twenty minutes. He came back with a crankset, no box, no instructions, no fixing bolts, just two pieces zip-tied together. I thought this was a little suspicious, but whatever, they could give them to me in a brown paper bag for all I care as long as they work. Well, I get home and take a closer look at what I bought. The first thing I noticed was that he gave me the wrong size. Right there in plain view, stamped on the metal "170mm". Fuck! Worse, I notice wear on the rings, the paint is all scraped away and you can see rings where pedals used to be installed. The motherfucker sold me not only the wrong sized item, but a used item! Holy shit, was I pissed off! They were still open, so I raced down there to get a replacement or my money back. I tried to be nice because I knew the guy who sold me this is probably gone home and I would be dealing with totally different people. But I'm sure they knew I was pretty goddamned pissed off. After explaining my predicament, he turns around and grabs the correct, boxed part off the shelf not more than two feet behind him. Eek, that first bastard wasted twenty minutes of my time to go get a wrong, used part from the basement, when the correct, new part was sitting right behind him the whole time? WTF?

Anyway, I got the right part [finally!] and I'm going to install it this weekend. I just hope my bottom bracket set isn't seized like my pedals, that would suck. Oh, and my new crankset is splined instead of tapered, which is cool because I've always had problems with those damn tapered axles getting wrecked. If your tighten your cranks too tight on a tapered axle, your cranks wobble back and forth, coming loose all the time no matter how hard you crank them on. Then you need to replace the BB and the crankset, usually. Major pain. I've actually had good success with the "coke-can shim" tho. That's when you take a piece of the metal from a Coke can [or any aluminum can, Coke cans are a nice, pretty red tho] and use it as a shim to stop the wobble. Did it about two years ago and it's been solid ever since.

Busy Day!

Holy shit, it was busy today! I was down there at 7:30 am and I worked solid, no breaks, no lunch until about 5:30 pm. Now my big toe hurts. Funny how it only starts hurting when I'm done work. Got most of my deliveries done. Although there was this one delivery that was driving me crazy. It was going to Revenue Canada, which I assumed would be in the federal building, also known as the Harry Hays. I had to get all my bank stuff done first and for awhile there, things weren't looking good for this RevCan trip. But I booted over there after doing my banking, thinking it was a waste of time, they would be closed, but at least I could say I tried. Well I get there, and they're still open! Woohoo! So I pull out the envelope to enter it on my manifest, and I'm at the wrong building!!! Doh! It's way at the other end of town and when I get there I found out that address had closed an hour earlier. Damn, I was so excited about getting there while they were still open. And RevCan has always been at the Fed, for like the past 18 years anyhoo, but aparently they are doing some renovations so they moved a few offices to this new location until the work is done. The funny thing is, the girl who called me for this delivery made the same mistake and said it was going to the Harry Hays.

You know you need new forks...

...when they start to look like this. Very corroded, the dropouts were so worn it couldn't hold my front wheel straight and they looked like they could bust off at any moment.

You can see one dropout [right] was much more worn out than the other one, hence the wheel sitting askew. It's amazing the right dropout held the axle at all, there's very little for the skewer to clamp on to. You can also see in the first picture small holes were being formed in the fork leg from all the corrosion!

For comparison, here's a view of the dropouts from my new forks.

Here's my new forks! I took the stickers off, it makes them less desirable to thieves.

Here's my old forks next to my new ones. You can see the new ones are quite a bit longer than the old ones. Something I didn't realize when I first got them.


And here's what it looks like after I finally got it installed! I had to pick up a new headset today as well, as the old one was pretty thrashed. You can see the longer forks have changed the geometry of my bike quite a bit. It felt funny when I took it for a test ride, it tracks differently on corners. I'll get used to it eventually, I guess.

New Forks!

My old RockShox Judy T2 forks have pretty well had it. The dropouts are so corroded that it can't hold my wheel straight anymore. And it looks like they could bust off at any moment, which would not be good. Because it can't hold my wheel straight, my disc brakes are rubbing like a sonofabitch. Noisy, slowing me down, not good.

So I popped in to check out some forks at the Bike Shop. Not much of a selection, I guess they're waiting for the '05 forks to come in. Of what they had most were over $500, and I don't want to pay more than that just for some forks on my work bike. They had a couple sub-$500 forks, but they just looked and felt like shit, so I was in no hurry to fork over the dough [lol] for them turds.

Luckily, I asked fellow courier, James, where he would go for forks and he recommended Single Track Cycle, a shop just down the street from me. When I got there, I saw a SALE sign in the window, always a good sign. [ha!] I ended up purchasing an '04 Marzocchi Marathon SL ECC5 for $340! Wicked deal, their normal price is close to $900! I actually found them at the bikeroom.com for $700+ [not sure if I have the 85mm, 105mm or 120mm version] but that's still more than half off, so I'm happy. Going to install them this weekend, it's gonna be sweet!

Another beautiful day

I was riding down fifth avenue today and there was a large moving van double parked in my lane. Traffic in the next lane was heavy, so I decided to hop onto the sidewalk, go around the damn truck and then hop back onto the road. As I was heading back onto the road, a cop jumps out in front of me, gesturing at me to stop. Sometimes I think I live in fucking Mayberry or something. Got a $25 fine. And I could have gotten another one yesterday, but I saw them before they saw me so I was off my bike before I came into view. Still, they knew I was riding on the sidewalk and warned me not to do that. I've been toying with the idea of starting a mailing list with the couriers downtown so we could warn each other when there is danger. It could work using Blackberries, though I noticed a lot of couriers are still using those big-ass Motorola radios and simple cell phones.

As if that wasn't enough to bum me out... I was coming up to a green light at the end of the day, but I knew the light was going to change so I booted it. A lady in a SUV, gabbing on her cell phone, ran through the red light at full speed, nearly killing me. She was totally oblivious as to what she had just done too, I could see afterwards that her brake lights didn't even come on. Luckily, my brakes were working well enough, and my reflexes were quick enough, that I managed to avoid getting hit. But it was very, very close and I would have been humbled pretty bad had I not taken evasive action. Yes, I did hurl some obscenities at her.

Some lady pulled up beside me first thing this morning while I was stopped at a red light and warned me that "my reflectors weren't very visible and she could barely see me". I'm covered in fucking mud, a lot of good reflectors are going to do under all that mud. And this was after the sun had already come up, so it was like open your fucking eyes lady, I'm wearing sunglasses and I can see just fine. I didn't say anything in the off-chance that she was just joking. Or completely fucking insane.

BJC-5100 problem solved!

I just received an email from Canon support giving me advice to fix my "out of ink" error. I did as he requested and er, it worked. Something so simple, yet it never occured to me to try that. Whoohoo, I have two working printers now.

Printing like a madman because I can

Just as I was about to go to bed last night, I had an epiphany. Well maybe not, but I did suddenly remember I still had an old HP Deskjet 500C sitting in a closet. Since my Canon BJC-5100 is MIA, maybe I could ressurect the old beast for one last kick at the can. After dusting the large, dusty thing off, I had to tear apart my apartment searching for the power cord. Finally found the strange doohickey. It's a long, thick cord with a massive brick right in the middle. It terminates with a bizarre right-angle plug, that inserts into the bottom of the machine! Who the hell designed this thing? I just unhooked the parallel cord from my dead Canon and it fit into the HP. Installing drivers was a breeze. Then I spent a few hours trying to get some old cartridges working. No luck, so I went to Staples again today, picked up a cheaper knock-off refill cart and voilà! I can print! [ugly, low-rez printing, but hey]

Buying expensive ink carts with no ink in them!

A while back I had to do a bunch of printing [on my Canon BJC-5100] so I purchased a new ink cartridge just in case my old one ran out of ink. Yesterday my old cart ran out, so I swapped it out for the new one. Tried printing some stuff and not a drop of ink graced my lily-white sheets. [Mmmm, that sounded weird.] Anyway, after screwing around with the drivers, furrowing my brow and eyeing the damn thing disapprovingly, I decided that I must have been stuck with a dud cartridge. Dug up the receipt and went off to Staples to get it replaced.

Got home from work with the replacement cartridge, popped it in the machine and got down to some heavy printing. Nothing. The goddamn thing prints absolutely nothing on the pages. And now the driver keeps informing me that the cartridge is empty. Thinking it might just be because the cart is new, I told it to print about twenty pages. Absolutely nothing was printed. It sure irritated me with that awful noise it makes though. I thought it might be my printer, but it does seem to communicate with my PC no probs; my PC recognizes when there is a cart in there, which slot it's in, etc. Plus the printer is dragging the print head across the paper back and forth like it's supposed to, everything seems fine.

I examined the cart, but it's hard to determine whether or not there is any ink in it. One thing I did was take a piece of wet tissue and hold it against the print head. I know your not supposed to do that, but usually a bunch of ink will gush out into the tissue if you do. Capillary action I think. Anyway, no ink at all came out, so I'm pretty sure the damn thing is, in fact, empty.

I need to print out a bunch-a-shit this weekend for work, so it looks like I'll be making a return trip to Staples tomorrow. Going to try a test print with the cartridge, if I can, before I leave the store. I will not likely be able to as it's an old BJC-5100 and I don't think any newer printers use the carts mine does→BC-23. Think I will try to get a BC-20 this time instead. I know this model works with my printer as well, and if they did get a bad batch of BC-23 cartridges, maybe the BC-20's will be from a completely different batch.

Update: went to Staples, forgot my receipt [!] but they replaced my cart anyways. Not only that, but they gave me back $4 in change because the BC-20 is cheaper! WTG Staples, you guys rock!

Came home, popped it in the printer, tried printing, bzzzzt! Still doesn't fucking print! Followed directions from Microsoft to manually remove and reinstall printer drivers. Didn't work. Googled till my eyes bled, found this, nice to know I'm not alone though it didn't help solve my problem. I cleaned the print head contacts, soaked the cart in hot water+Windex, nothing has worked. I sent an e-mail to Canon Canada, I now breathlessly await their response. I've spent about five hours on this thing today. It's starting to look like I might have to buy a new printer. :(

Update: solution!

Posting from my Blackberry?

I upgraded to the 4.0 software a couple days ago so maybe I can post to my blog using my Blackberry now.

Another Day, Another Flat

It was like deja vu all over again today. I went to work and almost immediately got a flat tire. Major suckage. And I never got around to going to MEC to see if they had any of the good Continentals.

I had a problem with my lock today. My U-lock key lost it's nib the other day and it kept popping out of my lock before I was finished locking my bike. Very frustrating. That, plus the fact that you could open the damn thing with a Bic pen made me go get a new one. My options were limited. I could have gotten a Kryptonite "New York" U-lock that weighs a fucking ton and costs $120. Or I could go with an MEC cable lock for $11. I went with the latter and have been relatively happy with my decision until today. The one thing nice about it is that I can leave it unlocked when I carry it in my bag and then just "click" it together when I lock my bike. Until today, when it got cold and I guess the spring inside froze up; it would not "click" together so you could still pull it apart with your hands. I thought I could free it up by whacking it against a post. Not only did that not work, but it busted the top cover right off the lock. They sure build $11 locks cheap these days!

So I decided to use my glue gun to reassemble the thing, but I needed glue sticks, I was all out. Went to Office Depot, no luck. But I successfully found some at Staples. After soaking the thing in silicon spray in an effort to keep th internal parts moving more freely, I hot-glued a piece of an old camera film case in place of the old busted cover. Looks ugly as hell, but seems a tad sturdier than the old cover.

Got a new tire tube in my bag and I'm ready for more fun tomorrow. Oh yeah, I got about 20 pickups and deliveries that need to be done "first thing Friday morning". Groan.

First Flat in '05

As soon as I got downtown today, my tire went flat. Yuck, at least it was easy to fix with my new metal tire levers, unlike the old plastic ones that kept bending and snapping off every time I tried to use them. I was hoping I would get a lot less flats with these new tires, especially after I went for a full month without a flat after I first bought them. Apparently not, I got two flats in one day last Thursday and now today I get another one. Shitty, I'm going back to buying the cheap, shitty MEC tubes rather the nice, but expensive Continentals. I'm riding on the Continental CountryRIDEs, 26X1.75. Looks like their Contact Security tires have the best puncture resistance, although this doesn't sound good: "In view of its tough construction, it is not a comfortable touring tyre with low rolling resistance".

My CountryRIDEs: 3 plies/ total 66 tpi [threads per inch].
Explorer: 3 carcass plies; 84 tpi.
TWISTER PRO: 4 carcass plies; 228 tpi.
TWISTER: 3 carcass plies; 84 tpi.
ZETA: 4 plies/ total 110 tpi.
Top Touring 2000: 5 plies/ total 213 tpi.
Contact: 4 plies/ total 240 tpi.
Travel Contact: 4 plies/ total 240 tpi.
Sport Contact: 4 plies/ total 240 tpi.

Mmmm, looks my tires have some of the lowest threads per inch of all their models, no wonder I'm still getting flats. The Sport Contact model sounds good: 'The 26" version helps the bike messenger meet those deadlines... All this added speed for your bike with zero detriment to puncture protection and reliability! Extremely fine and strong carcass plies, SafetySystem puncture protection...'. Sounds like it was made for me! From the Contact model page: "We are so convinced of its SafetySystem puncture protection that we offer a 1 year guarantee against tyre failure." Wow, that sounds good to me, where do I get these things. Even if they don't honour that guarantee for couriers, it sounds like they have a lot of confidence in their puncture resistance. I need these tires!

Looks like MEC carries the TravelContact, which does use their SafetySystem puncture protection. Cool!

Work work work

What a day. I went to work early to get some leftovers done from Friday and as soon as 8:00am rolled around, people started calling me. And they kept calling me for pretty well the whole day; no breaks, no lunch. It was brutal, and to make matters worse I got this damn cold I picked up on Friday. I'm all sniffly and shit. Oh well, it's over and I got some lasagna in the oven. Mmmm, that will be good.

My day isn't complete without a flat tire!

It's been snowing all week, total bummer. And I've been getting swamped with deliveries at the end of the day, every day. I'll be so happy when tomorrow is over and it's the weekend. As if that wasn't bad enough, I got a flat tire yesterday, and then again today. I'm getting pretty good at swapping in a fresh tube though. When I came home today, what did I hear? Sssssss. Fuck, the front tire had another piece of glass in it and it was losing air. I pried the shard out and it seems to be holding air alright, so I might forego replacing the tube if it doesn't go totally flat overnight. Eek, three flats in two days, this might be a long winter. :(

The Grind

I've been too busy to post anything here lately. Thursday I was supposed to do my billing and I stayed up till 1:00am trying to get it done, but it still wasn't done and my eyes were bugging out so I quit. Then I had to get all these doughnuts for people on Friday morning, plus a bunch of leftover deliveries from the day before when I got swamped with stuff at 4:00pm. Last day of the month and people leave everything till the last minute, and blame me if it doesn't get there in time. Fun. And I got not one but two, two traffic tickets on Wednesday, after going for a long time [years?] without getting a single ticket. In fact, I got these two tickets within a two hour span no less. One was for 'riding too far from the curb' and the other for riding on the sidewalk, even though I was just coming off the road so I could park my bike and make a delivery. I think it was 'fill your quota before the end of the month' time and I got burned. I was pretty unhappy.

But I did get some good news that day. Awhile back I was trying to get this account, but they ended up going with somebody else. On Wednesday, they contacted me to do their bank deposits and mail run. I guess their new courier wasn't doing a very good job, so I'm getting a chance to do it. Cool, it's eight deposits at a time, so it is a bit of work. On the other hand, I found out one of my accounts got bought up by a larger company, so I'm losing their business. They were a pretty small account, but still, every little bit helps. And at the end of October, I'm going to lose another account. They're moving to the north-east, out of my service area. The business I'm getting from the new account should more than make up for the lost business from these two smaller acounts, so I should still come out ahead. I hope.

Open Bike Locks with a Bic Pen

Eeek! You can open certain U-locks, specifically the Kryptonite Evolution 2000, with a Bic ballpoint pen! I saw a bit about this on the news the other day, didn't really catch what the story was about, but then today a courier came up to me and was asking if my lock is openable with a Bic pen. Shit, I was kindof scared somebody would rip off my bike all day, I mean they sell those pens to just about everybody! Well, when I got home, I dumped out all my pens on the floor and went about trying to jimmy my cheapo MEC U-lock. Most pens wouldn't even fit, and the ones that would, barely, wouldn't open it. And I tried, I was wiggling it around and jamming it in there, but nothing I could do would turn the tumblers and open the lock. Cool. I know it's still pretty easy to break just about any U-lock, so I know I'm not totally safe, but still, it shouldn't be that easy.

Update: shit, I just did it! If the pen barrel doesn't fit right because it's too small, use a box-cutter to cut a couple slits and try again. My lock is kind of stuck in the half open position. Fuck, I wonder if MEC is still open...

Update 2: MEC was just closing when I called and the girl there said they just had U-locks with the round keys, no flat keys. I think she was full of shit and didn't have a clue what I was talking about, so I will just have to go in there tomorrow when they open. And if you're planning on trying this with your own U-lock, be sure you're ready to throw that lock away because it was hell getting the lock back into working order. It was stuck in the unlock position, I couldn't get the pen to rotate back to the starting position. And the key won't go in because of the nib at the top, I had to grind the nib off with my dremel type tool. Even then, I had to spray oil in there and wack it with a hammer before I could get the damn thing turning properly again.

U-lock with 2 "keys" on E-bay

Oooh! Look at the pretty colours!

Wanna see something gross? This is my wounded shoulder/arm after getting doored. Ick!

Feel the pain

After going so long without any accidents, I got into two of them in the past week. Last week, I was pulling into the Stock Exchange loading dock when another bike courier riding on the sidewalk cut right in front of me. I had no time to react and I ended up T-boning him. Not much damage, but I did get a nasty bruise on the side of my knee. Then today, I was just a couple blocks from home at the end of my day when some kid whipped his door open right in front of me. I didn't even realize there was somebody in the car, no time to react again. I bounced off the door and fell back on top of my bike. My shoulder is a little sore where I hit his door, and my wrist feels a litlle wonky. But worst of all, when I fell back on my bike, I bent the rotor for my rear brake. I tried flattening it out, but it's no good, I need a new rotor. The kid gave me his name and phone number, but I doubt I'll actually be able to get any money out of him. I hope that's it for me and this accident thing, can't say I like it very much. :(

Another day without getting squished

Ah, my feet are sore. It's been busy this week, kind of. It was dead today until noon, when it went totally nuts and stayed busy right till 5:00pm. Hence, the sore feeties. And this stupid taxi driver [is there any other kind? *snark*] nearly hit me. I was screaming down the road in my lane and this taxi driver was in the lane beside me. I think the driver in front of him was slowing down to turn left, so he decided to change lanes, swerving right in front of me just as I was going past him. I slammed on my brakes [glad I got the 203mm rotors!] going into a slide sideways, and screamed "fuck!" Funny how that word gets people's attention. Had I screamed "oh darn!" I'm sure the inattentive bastard would have plowed right into me. As it was, he stopped and I fish-tailed around his front bumper, giving him the "what's your malfuntion, fucktard?" look before resuming my breakneck pace down the highway. Just one of those precious moments I seem to get every single, freaking day.

New Stuff

Another hot day, 30° right now. I bought some new shoes and spd pedals for my bike today. But when I tried to take my old pedals off, they wouldn't budge. I soaked them in WD-40 and wrenched on them as hard as I could, no dice. My new shoes feel nice though. Hopefully my pedals will come loose eventually if I keep spraying them with oil.

Bad day at the funhouse

I just received an e-mail through my Blackberry that was sent at 10:50am, nine fucking hours ago! Argh! Rogers is such a horrible company, I pay them $90 a month for this kind of service? Looks like I missed about ten messages today. I'm so pissed off, it's becoming a habit.

And I come home today to see something like 350 spam comments on my blog. Literally. Fucking ridiculous, had to spend like half an hour to get the blacklist thingy to delete them all.

The water stopped seeping into my apartment today, I guess I should be thankful for that. Now I'm waiting for the fans to work their magic and dry it all out. That won't fix the rotting carpet or the peeling walls, but at least it will smell better. The landlord/owner better be planning on replacing the carpet and shit, cause I don't plan on living in a place with this kind of water damage. :(

My day started with a screw-up too. I pickup at IBM every morning, it's this high security thing where you have to call somebody on a phone and they come out with your pickup. Well this morning I call the guy three fucking times and he doesn't answer. I knock on the window, on the door, and no answer. So I let the client know I couldn't pick it up. Half an hour later, I get sent back. I get back there and this little fucker is giving me attitude, like it was my fault that he's not doing his job. Motherfucker. Sometimes it's hard to not lose it doing this job.

Doing the July Shiver

Speaking of work, it started raining cats and dogs at around noon today, one of the busiest times of the day for me. It was brutal, I was totally soaked. And tomorrow's forecast calls for rain again. I love summer.

Proof of aggravation

I finally got my "proof of activation" from Rogers today. It only took two weeks when they had promised it would be here in four days. Not to mention I was supposed to get that damn thing in the box with my Blackberry in the first place. I filled in the forms and am sending away for the rebate tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. Somehow, I'm not very optimistic.

The Nightmare Continues...

Christ, this shit with Rogers never ends. I just tried to use my Blackberry browser, not working again. Had to do the reset thing to get it back up again. Hooked up my old 950 to my computer to try and import my old contacts, couldn't do it. I saw a message flash on the BB's screen briefly, like it was trying to communicate, but after about 100 attempts, I gave up. Bogus. Then I tried to fill out the rebate forms for this thing. It requires a "proof of activation" form. I looked everywhere, no proof of activation to be found. I had a letter they sent, but apparently that wasn't it. Had to call Rogers, spent another half an hour with the bastards and they're going to send one out. This is getting ridiculous.

Blackberry 7280

I finally got my Blackberry today, after a week of not having a phone! Had to call Rogers, they told me the package was at a Purolator depot on 17th avenue. So I booted out there right away and the damn place was closed. Wasn't busy, so I waited half an hour for them to open. Got the package [woohoo!], too big to carry around, so I brought it home. Checked it out a bit, but I thought the battery was dead so I left it at home to charge. On my old 950 you just click the thumb-wheel to turn it on, but on this new BB there is an "on" button. Doh! I've been messing around with it for about an hour or two now, seems much nicer than my old, decrepid 950. Nice colour screen, got the WAP browser to display html. It's gonna take awhile to figure out all tricks to this thing. On my old BB you could press 'M' to go to your messages, but that doesn't work on this one.

Rogers: We hate our customers

Still having problems with my phone, like it doesn't work! After getting the replacement sim the other day, I thought I was set. But no, the next day I went to use my phone and I got the dreaded "Unregistered SIM" message again. Phoned Rogers again, after 15 minutes on hold, they informed me that they had no idea why that happened and the new sim was once more "burned". So I asked her if I had to go get another sim?! She checked with Purolator and said "hey, your new Blackberry is on the back of the truck and will be delivered this morning, so why don't you just wait for that?" I stupidly agreed to her stupid idea. Came home on Wednesday, no BB. Thursday, no BB. Checked with local post office to see if they had it there, as that's where Purolator drops stuff off when they can't contact the receiver. Nope, ain't there. Friday, nothing. Now it's Saturday and I don't even know if Purolator delivers on weekends. And I haven't had a phone for almost a week now. Fuck I hate Rogers. :(

Messenger of Death

This morning was very busy at work, I kept getting all these pickups. I was running around for over an hour, picking shit up and unable to drop anything. Finally, I had one pickup left, then I could [hopefully] get everything written up and start delivering them all. Suddenly, I hear a hissing sound and my back wheel gets all woobly. Flat tire! Damn I hate that. So I do my last pickup and start working on swapping in a new tube. I pull the popped tube out and run my fingers along the inside of the tire to try and find what caused the flat. I found out it was a big, sharp shard of glass when it sliced my finger open and I began to spurt blood all over the place. Ahem. Anyway, I got the beast back on the road and all was well.

Although I did have a run-in with some asshole running-man who decided to suddenly dart out into the road where I nearly hit the bleeding idiot. Then he had the nerve to come up to me afterwards and start bleeting about how I nearly hit him. Yeah, that tends to happen when you run out into traffic without even looking first, ya fucking twat. Sometimes the urge to go completely psycho on certain people becomes almost unbearable. But I refrained.

Reconnected

I called Rogers from a pay phone first thing this morning to try and get my phone working again. After a good fifteen minutes on the line, mostly on hold listening to crappy muzak, it turns out the lady who upgraded my account switched it to the new sim I'm going to get get with my new Blackberry. Someday. Meanwhile, my current phone with the old sim does not work. I asked her to switch it back to my old sim, but she was unable to do that. [it was burned, in phone people lingo] She suggested that I buy a new sim for $25 at a local Rogers dealer and they would credit my account.

Luckily, one of my accounts is a Rogers dealer and I was able to get a new sim from them, gratis. [Thanks Tom, you da man!]

Just to show you how messed up Rogers is, I got my phone bill from them this month and it said my account was overdue. Mmmm, I thought I paid my bill last month. Checking my bank account history, I see a payment for Rogers in there. So I take a closer look at the bill, and I notice that they sent the overdue notice before the last bill was even due! What a bunch of jerks.

Disconnected

Today I made arrangements with Rogers to upgrade my Blackberry 950 to a Blackberry 7280 and merge my phone bill with my Blackeberry bill. I just looked at my phone and it has a message displayed "Unregistered SIM"! Fuck. Now my phone doesn't work. I had a feeling something like this would happen, those bastards are so unbelievably incompetent, it drives me crazy. So tomorrow I will have to hit a pay phone and try to get my goddamn phone hooked back up. Arghh!

Here it comes now

Noooooo! I really hate the "Amount 10 to 15 cm" part. It's got to be a typo, it's got to be a typo! Please be a typo! :(

Update: Woke up this morning, and there's no snow, the streets are perfectly dry. What a relief! :)

Working Weekend

I told somebody I'd have this database/web interface thingy done this weekend, so I've been busy trying to get it done. But I don't think I'm going to have it finished in time. Most of it's done, entries are entered in the database, I learned how to set and retrieve cookies, which I used on the page to make re-entering information over and over again unnecessary. And I set it up so form results get displayed in a seperate iframe, so the user can stay on the same page and keep entering info on the form. Argh, what a pain, I'm going to try to get at least the start of the database search function done tonight. Or try, I'm feeling soooo tired. :(

Blizzarding

Ack! It's snowing! And we're supposed to get as much as 10cm of the white crap today. How depressing! :(

Calgary Pix

A couple days ago I had a delivery for Western Oil Sands at 2400-440-2 Avenue SW. There was nobody at the front desk so I took a look out their bigass windows. Nice view. I took a few pictures and here's all of them. It was a nice day but crazy windy, I was cleaning dirt out of my eyes and ears when I got home. [when it's really windy, dirt gets blown around, right into my face!]
The chubby building on the right [in the first pic] is the Shaw Court building. [Shaw is my ISP] You can't see it very clearly in this picture, but it has a combination of glass and granite [concrete?] on its facade, kinda funky. I go there every morning to do a pickup from IBM. They suck, it's never ready.

Good Thursday

I have to do three pickups first thing in the morning tomorrow, plus pickup bagels and doughnuts. And it's supposed to rain. Ugh, I think it's going to be a long day tomorrow. But Friday's a holiday, so woohoo, three day long weekend. I just hope my Blackberry works better than it did today, half my messages didn't come through till hours later. Luckily I had my messages forwarded to my Shaw account, and I had a script setup to access that account via the web browser on my BB. So I did manage to get most of my messages in a reasonable amount of time. Rogers sux!

New Accounts

I started doing stuff for a new account today, and tomorrow I have to talk to some other people about them using me for their courier work too. Woohoo! I just hope they give me enough business to make it worthwhile. Doing billing is getting to be a real pain, so many little accounts.

My bike's having a seizure!

My headset suddenly seized up today. One minute it was fine, the next, I hop on my bike and I can't turn! It was brutal. I turned my handlebars back and forth, trying to break it free, but it was still really screwed up. So now I have to try to take it apart to fix it, which will probably be a major pain cause of all the snow and salt that rusted everything up over the winter. I really didn't want to work on my bike tonight. :(

Update: the good news is that it all came apart pretty easily. The bottom bearings were pretty thrashed, I think pieces of the ring they were in came off and grinded away at everything in there, not good. I cleaned everything off and installed some new bearings, just loose ones this time. I greased everything up real good and put it back together. Now it feels "notchy"! I tried loosening off some bolts just in case I overtightened things, but that didn't help. So I guess I'm stuck with this notchy feeling as I can't think of anything else I can do other than getting a new headset. It might snow tomorrow or Thursday, so no point in putting a new headset through that torment. Besides, it might not be so bad, I hope. I need to get a new set of forks sometime this year so I'll just replace it then.

No thank you, my penis is large enough

This comment spam is getting out of hand, I must get at least 10 or so spams every day. I keep banning their IPs, but there's either a hell of a lot of them or they keep changing their IPs. Probably a bit of both. I was going to install the MT plugin to deal with spam, but it requires a newer version of MT and I'm not sure I want to upgrade right now. It's always a pain, I've hacked some of their templates and my Perl is set up different from the way MT expects. Bleh. I looked at the comment CGI file and it should be pretty easy to hack in some code to do some filtering. Nuke them fuckers right outta there.

Riding on my rim

Had another flat tire today. Just had a flat tire yesterday. Am I acursed or what? Leaving for work this morning, I remembered I didn't have a spare tube with me and I thought "doesn't matter, just had a flat yesterday, can't happen again so soon". How wrong I was. I think I'm closing in on 30 flats so far this winter. The funny thing is, I recently installed that Mr. Tuffy flat tire protection crap, and it hasn't made one whit of difference. Somebody out there doesn't like me. >:(

Weekend drudgery

I installed a new drive train on my bike today. Great fun. The quick link on the chain wasn't as quick as it should have been. And my hands got caked in oily dirt that I can't get completely off no matter how raw I scrub them. I hate that, people think you're an unsanitary slob, but I really, really tried to get them clean. Really. Perhaps you have to wait for the outer layer of skin that's been stained black to die and sluff off. Feels good having the new chain tho, no more skipping every time I crank on it.

Tall People

The tall people behind the Public Education building on Macleod Trail SE.

Lougheed building fire

There was a fire on the roof of the Lougheed Building downtown this week. The fire started last Sunday night, I think, and they still had the area around it blocked off on Friday. What a pain in the ass.

Hedging their bets

I hate it when, on Monday, Enviro-mental Canada says Thursday's high will be +8. On Tuesday, Thursday's high will be +3. Today, Wednesday, they say Thursday's high will be -11. The future looks worse every day. :(

Family Day

Today's a holiday in Alberta, so no work for me! Woohoo!

The Daily Grind

This week has really sucked for me, so what's new. I got a flat tire yesterday, and then again today! Just fixed it, checked out my disc brake while I had the wheel off, it's all corroded and seized up. I put some oil on it, hopefully loosen it up. I left the brake pads off because even the littlest bit of oil will ruin the disc pads. So I'll only have front brakes to use tomorrow. I'm going to have to get to work early tomorrow as well because everybody loaded me up with deliveries at the end of the day today. Groan. And I'm sure they'll all expect me to get theirs done first, but I can't do them all first, somebody has to be last! My job can be somewhat stressful at times. At least the weather's nice.

It's freezing!

Current temperature: -33°. And they changed the forecast for Thursday; Sunday they said it would be -1° for the high, now they say -18°. Bastards!

Frostbite!

Holy crap, the pinky fingers on each of my hands were totally frozen by the time I got home from work today. I wore my light gloves today, which seemed like the right choice when I rode down in the morning, but coming home it was a different story. I passed a sign that said it was -32°, although the TV said it was only -30°. When I came in, right away my fingers were just throbbing with pain, but my pinkies were the worst. And the fingertips were all tingly, like when your arm falls asleep and the blood just begins to flow back. Then they swelled up a bit, too, which was kind of a freaky thing to see. They seem better now, still tingling, though. Watch, I'll wake up in the morning and they'll be all black and green and grangreny and I'll have to get them chopped off. That would suck.

This is the hat I wear when it's cold. It's wicked, my ears were nice and toasty all day today. Expensive, I only paid $50 for it a few years ago, now it's $77!

Winter Returns

The weather for January in Calgary has been so nice, usually in the +10° range, overnight lows rarely dipping much below zero. How things have changed, the forecast high for tomorrow is -25°, going down to -30° Tuesday night. And snow, tons of ugly, white snow. The streets have been perfectly dry lately, great for riding. Not any more, riding in this snow is going to be hell. The only bright spot is that the high for Thursday is forecast at -1°, so this cold snap might not last that long. Then again, they usually change the forecast day by day.

Baaaaad Day!

My blackberry stopped receiving mail at about 2:00 o'clock this afternoon. The servers at Rogers AT&T must have gone down, again. Missed a shitload of messages. God, I hate that company, most incompetent bastards on the face of this earth. On my way home, my rear tire went flat. That's the fifth flat in the last two weeks. Grrrr! There's so much shit on the roads right now, I think the city actually uses shards of glass on the roads when it snows. Yes, I hate them as well. I have enough hate in me for just about everybody right now.

;)

My New Bike Frame!

My new bike frame came in today, a 2003 Azonic DS1. I ordered it from the bikeroom.com, it was a really good deal. I actually ordered the 2002 model, but I guess they were out, so they sent me the newer model for the same price. Score! The only downside is that I was going to use the frame to build a single speed bike, but this frame doesn't have horizontal dropouts like the previous model, so I'll probably just use my old Evolution frame [it has the horizontal dropouts] for the single speed bike and this new one for the multi speed version. No biggie. It's funny, when the UPS guy came with the box, he's like "There's a bike frame in there? Holy shit, is it light!". I think he said it three times. I should have ran after him, screaming "Hey, that box was empty, you bastard!".

Woe is me

My wrist was still sore and swollen this morning so I wore a tensor band on it during work. It actually felt much better at the end of the day. On the way home, my front tire began to lose air, though. Damn, a flat tire! That meant I had to install a new tube. It's my right wrist that's screwed, too. Well, I just finished fixing it and my wrist feels ok still so hopefully I didn't re-injure it torquing the tire off the rim. The bead on the narrow slick is really damn tight on those wide rims as well. I guess I'll know in a couple hours when my wrist begins to swell up like a turnip. [or not!]

Wiped Out

I hit a piece of ice today at work while riding my bike and wiped out. It seemed like nothing and I finished my day no problem, but when I got home, my wrist felt wonky. Kinda swollen. So now I have it all wrapped up and hopefully it'll be fine in the morning. It better be. :(

Cold

Yikes, it's -17° outside! I guess I got used to the summer-like weather and now I don't want to go outside. :(

Bad day at work!

My bike was driving me crazy today! One of the brakes pads in my disc brakes [on the front] kept sliding out. I would jam it back in there, but it wouldn't seat properly. The instructions say there should be an audible click when it is properly seated, but mine won't do that. It's too grunged up from all the winter salt, mud and crap I guess. And the brake cable for the back is semi-seized, it won't release the brake completely and I get an extended drag whenever I use them. And my chain is skipping a bit and the shifter cable is completely seized -> no gears. Major suckage, I guess I'll be working on my bike tonight. This is why I wanted to build a simple single-gear bike for winter. But I couldn't afford it. Dammit!

Cargo Bond II

I got the paperwork for my cargo bond yesterday, a day late. As if that wasn't bad enough, they sent me an invoice even though I've already given them a cheque. I know they haven't cashed my cheque either because I got a balance on my account yesterday and the money is still in there. I'll have to go in there today to find out what the hell is going on.

The certificate didn't have the proper wording that the city requires as well. I gave them the letter the city sent me so they would know what was required, yet they still screwed it up! I'm going to submit it as is and hope the city accepts it, but if not, I'll have to go back to the insurance company and get them to do it up right.

I so hate this crap, why are people so freaking incompetent?

Update: The insurance people said they usually don't deposit the cheque until the policy's effective date, which was yesterday. I hope he's right. I pointed out how the policy doesn't have the specific wording needed by the city. "Oh." I couldn't really give him a hard time as it was a different guy from when I first went in there and explained things. He said if the city has a problem, they would be able to add the proper wording. I dropped the papers off at city hall, hopefully they'll rubber stamp the damned thing and I won't have to deal with this shit anymore.

At least till next year.

Cold & Snowy

We got about 10cm of snow last night. It was wet snow so my day at work was pretty miserable, not too cold but very wet and muddy. We're supposed to get another 5 to 10 cm tonight and the high for tomorrow is -15°C. I hate this time of year.

Cargo Bond

I finally got an insurance company to insure me for work. I am so happy, that's a load off my mind. The best thing is, they're insuring me for almost $300 less than the last company I was using. Woohoo! I guess the last company I was using had some kind of minimum they were charging their customers. And then they dumped me. Well fuck 'em, I'll take my business elsewhere and save money. Cool.

Pee Man

Yea, it's Friday! I haven't been posting much this week because it's been cold lately and I've been too drained to do much of anything.

So last Friday I'm riding by one of those bus shelters and I hear a "Whaaaa!" coming from inside. I look inside as I go by and there's this guy with his wang hanging out and he's pissing a long, steaming yellow stream into the air. The dork didn't even turn away from the road and all these people were rubbernecking, checking out the spectacle. It was kind of funny. I rode by later and the cops were there with their lights on so I guess they busted the guy. Dude, I'm never drinking with you again, you freak!

Snow Days

Misery

It rained all day today, I was soaking wet and cold, it sucked. And it was really busy, I was running around like a maniac. A maniac I tell you! Then there was this lady who couldn't decide if she wanted to sign for this envelope, she oohed and aahed about it for a good ten minutes. I felt like smacking her, I so didn't have time for people like that. Now I'm nice and warm and dry and I'm happy. For now. It's supposed to snow tomorrow. Gag!

City of Calgary Suckage

Yea, it's the weekend! I just got a letter from the city whining about my insurance expiring. Bastards! I tried to get some quotes during the week, but nobody was offering this type of insurance. I got some suggestions for places to check out though. I was going to bother John at Kamikaze Courier to see what insurance company he is using, but he uses the same insurance company as me and his insurance hasn't come up for renewal yet. I can't wait till this is taken care of, it's such a pain in the ass.

Cargo Bond

I am so mad today. I've been waiting for the renewal notice from my insurance company in regards to my cargo bond needed for work. It's a requirement the City of Calgary insists on if you want to work as a bike courier. Well, today I got a letter from the insurance company saying they are declining my account because they are no longer servicing accounts under $5000.00. Argh! I've always paid my premiums on time and I've never made a claim, and I'm not likely to, the only reason I have the damn thing is to keep those paper pushers at city hall happy. But no, I'm too fucking small.

So now I have to track down some insurance companies that will offer this kind of coverage and compare quotes. And I'll probably pay more because if you're a new customer with an insurance company, they see it as an opportunity to gauge the fuck out of you. This has to happen now, right when things are starting to pick up. I'll have to take some time to run around and deal with this bullshit. I hate insurance companies, the bastards. You give them all this money and what do you get in return? A piece of paper. A measly piece of paper. Oh, the agony.

I am so depressed.

Billing

God, I'm copying my manifests from work using a scanner and printer, and it takes forever! Wish I had one of those big copiers people downtown have, this would take 30 seconds. Of course, they cost around $50,000 but hey, it would be tax deductable! And printing envelopes is brutal, I think I have a 50% success rate. Damn cheap printers.

It's a brain tumor

I have a massive headache, I think my head is going to explode. Woe is me. :(

It's still summer dammit!

Well it snowed today, but not anywhere near the 20cm they were forecasting. Thankfully. There was no accumulation, just wetness on the road. I have no fenders, so I get a wet butt! Stupid me. Wasn't very busy again today, I need more accounts. Anybody need an experienced, slightly used courier?

Snow

The forecast calls for rain today and up to 10cm of snow tomorrow. How depressing, this is how the last week of summer goes? This sucks.

Just ramblin'

Here's a couple pictures from last Friday which was the worst day for smoke downtown. This week's been much better. Haven't been doing much lately. Had to do my billing last night [late!] and tonight I got wired on another Rise of Nations scenario. I haven't been this hooked on a game since last year's Disciples II. Highly recommended. Damn crickets! I have a little cricket farm going to feed my tarantulas and now that they are almost mature I'm getting the male crickets who chirp all the time. And loudly at that. Drives me bananas.

Smoke

CFCN, our local tv station, says our air quality is fair, despite the smoke blanketing our city. Well beg to differ, but as somebody who works outside in the core all day, I would say the air quality is really, really bad. Yesterday was the worst, I had a sore throat and I was coughing and shit. The smoke is coming from forest fires in southern Alberta and BC.

Brake Pads

My front disc brake started squealing like pig on Friday so I went to the Bike Shop to get new pads. They wanted $40.00 for a set. Outrageous! Brake pads for my old v-brakes could be had for as little as $3.50. They wouldn't last quite as long as these disc brake pads, but still, forty bucks! I needed them so I forked out the cash and got them put on. Thought I'd check on the internet to see if I could get them cheaper, and sure enough, they were priced at $20 on the Airbomb site. Half-price. Grumble. Guess I should stock up on them so I don't get ripped off next time. I also found this interesting product. Lol! I also noticed that Airbomb isn't carrying the 2002 Azonic Evolution frame anymore. Bummer. I wanted to pick another one up to use as a winter bike. The American site has the new Evolution but for $441 American, while the old model was going for $299 CAD on the Canadian site. About half the price. And the old frame had beefier rear chainstays and horizontal dropouts. Guess I'll grab a DS-1 instead, although the chainstays aren't as beefy.

Killer Crows

Went to the park behind the old MacDougall School today, as there wasn't much happening work-wise in these dog days of summer. Sat on a bench, began to surf the web using my blackberry. [a sure way to get Stephen King eyes before long] A male pigeon was courting a female pigeon, puffing himself up, cooing and doing the funky chicken. Soon a bunch of pigeons and sparrows were congragating on the grass by my bench, like I was going to feed them or something. Ha! I just went back to giving myself cateracts.

And that's when something really strange happened. There was suddenly a loud commotion by my bench. I look over and there's this giant crow pinning a sparrow under its talons. The little bird is screaming [? well, bird screaming-like ¿] and trying to fight back, but the crow just crunched it with its talons and pecked at it a few times till it stopped fighting. Then it flew off into a tree, to enjoy its meal I presume. A guy and girl nearby saw the whole thing and they were totally freaked out. I've seen crows eat dead squirrels that were run over by cars, but I've never seen one go out and kill something like that. Very freaky.

Postal Strike

Looks like there could be a postal strike next week. Cool! Courier business always picks up during a strike, especially if it's a reasonably long one. And summer is usually a really slow time of year, so this could save the day. Go for it, buddies, take the summer off!

Damn Bike!

My tire had a bad gash in it for the last little while and I could see the tube was slowly working its way out through it from the tire pressure. Yesterday I went to MEC to check out what tires they had, but they didn't have the type I wanted so I didn't buy any. Today I go to ride my bike to 7-11, and the tire is flat! Aeiii! I guess the tube blew out through the gash overnight. Today it rained pretty well all day so I guess I will head out tomorrow and get a new tire, and tube. My road bike's brakes aren't working, so I will have to fix them first before I head out, and then I will have to do all the installation and shit when I get back. Egads, what a pain.

Damn Bike

Well, I figured out why my bike was behaving so messed up. One of the bolts that holds the hanger for my derailler fell out, leaving my derailler hanging there loosely from one bolt. Argh! I got it all bolted up nice and tight, but now I get an awful squeak whenever I shift gears. It never ends. ♠

Grind

I haven't been blogging anything here for awhile! It's been rather boring lately, just going to work everyday, grinding away. Yesterday it rained, and then today my bike's gearing was all screwed up. It was going in one gear, then dropping into the next and back up again, like ten times! It was driving me crazy! I hate that. Guess I should clean the chain and shit, get it back in ride-able shape again. I hate working on my bike. I hate working. I hate this world! Ugh!

Colour Blackberry

The new colour Blackberries look cool. Too bad their only available in Europe right now. Might dump my old BB950 for one of these if they aren't too big. Or expensive.

According to this thread, they will be going for 299 Euros [or 850 American dollars!]. That's 473.05 Canadian dollars [or 1,133.22 CAD!]. Well, assuming the Euro price is correct, that's not too bad. Hopefully they'll have some kind of rebate deal to go along with that price. Funny how the Europeans get this baby first even though it's made by a Canadian company. No fair!

Free Beef!

They had a free beef on a bun thing on the mall yesterday. You got a Coke as well, but it was a caffeine-free Coke. What's the point in that, eh? That should go over like their last great idea, New Coke. I managed to sneak into a short line, took about ten minutes to score my free food. [I don't feel terribly angry yet. Maybe it takes awhile to take effect. Moo!] They also had a mascot entertaining the line-ups, just like in Rollercoaster Tycoon!

This Week Sucks

What a horrible week I'm having! It's been so slow, I get next to no calls most of the day. But then everybody calls me, all at once, late in the afternoon and I end up running around like a maniac trying to get everything delivered before everything closes. Very frustrating. I need a holiday man.

Mounted my Disc Brake

I finally got my rear disc brake installed! It feels good, just need to tweak it a bit. Then I have to shorten my chain, it came off like three times today and it skips a bit in the smallest cog. And my derailler is making this horrendous squealing sound. And I need a new seat. And...

Bike Work

Today I decided to do some much needed work on my bike. I cleaned it, which took much longer than I had hoped but it does look much better now. Then I installed my new flat bar and funky Odi grips. I changed back over to a flat bar because I never did get used to the riser bar. Plus I couldn't shorten the riser bar that much and it was way too wide for riding in traffic. Now my flat bar is really short and I'll have to get used to it all over again. I also installed these new Odi grips that have lock rings at both ends to keep your grips from rotating and facilitating easier changeovers when they wear out. I went for a ride and it felt good. Except the new grips started spinning around. [I forgot to tighten the locknuts down. Doh!]



To install the rear disc brake, I had to switch my front brake to the left brake lever. This presented a problem rounting the cable. I could run the cable on the outside of the forks, but that looked really ugly. Running it inside the forks was fine except it rubbed against the tire. So I used this zip tie to keep it out of the way. Those zip ties bust off pretty easily tho, so I later replaced it with shoestring. Good shoestring is really durable shit.

Afterwards, I thought I would finally install my rear disc brake. This did not go very well. After mounting the rotor to the wheel, I went to install the main assembly. It would not go on. I had noticed it said 'front' on the mounting bracket but I thought that just meant to orient it pointing to the front. [there was an arrow under where it said front] But no, after reading the documentation, front definately meant front brake. Dammit, the bike people sent me the wrong brake.

So I fired off an email to them and I hope they can send a proper mounting bracket to me before the week is out. Kinda sucks having that big rotor sitting there and not being able to use it.

Weekend

I'm still alive, haven't been posting lately because it's been snowing every freaking day this week. At the end of the day I would come home and just want to crash right out. Plus it was really busy at work this week, not sure why but everybody was sending out tons of crap. Now it's the weekend and it's nice and sunny out. Go figure.

Easter Monday

Quite a few of my accounts said they would be open today so I'm open for business. It's almost 9:30 and I haven't received a single call yet. Bogus. I guess there's a lot of places closed today as it's kind of a semi-holiday. I'm just glad I didn't go running down there at 8:00 o'clock this morning and then sit around all day waiting for a call. Yawn. Maybe I should just go back to sleep.