Rantings of a Lunatic

I didn’t run Ulduar tonight, and I haven’t logged in in a week now. And I am ok with that. Instead, I continued to pour over the wiring diagrams on my motorcycle, and figured out what one of the previous owners did to the electrical system. I was worried that the missing wires and cut and spliced wires were going to be a difficult situation to replace. Luckily though, it appears that the turn signal relay had gone bad, or something, and that was removed, and the rear brake light switch was shorted in there. If my assumptions are correct, it will only require a new relay, (already ordered off ebay for $8) and reconnecting the red wire that was cut and spliced away. If thats right, then the turn signals will start working again, which is something I am looking forward to. After that work, then I will have a few more tasks, like the cooling system flush. I am kind of worried about that, the amount of rust and sludge that were in there were pretty sickening to me, but hopefully it will all be ok after I run a flush through it. That will also be when I first fire it up after the valve-job that I did on it. All said, what I expect is about another 2.5 hours worth of work once I get the new relay in. Then its off to ride more. Unfortunately I am not sure if I will be able to take care of it yet this week, or if it will have to wait until next week.
I missed the ROT rally last weekend, I saw the riders coming in, and riding out, but I was in Houston over the weekend, so I wasn’t able to go take part in the festivities. Its interesting though, I don’t know any people from the Austin area who went to take part in it.
In Houston, I was hanging out with my family. My mom and I went and took a welding class, then we all went and celebrated Amanda’s birthday. It was good to see my family again.
Also my garden has been going well. We picked some veggies the other day. The Japanese Long cucumbers are averaging 8″ long right now, and the crooked necked squash is doing pretty well. Unfortunately the snow peas are all gone, they only lasted a few minutes after being picked. Kelly missed the pole beans altogether. They are averaging 14-18″ right now, so they look more like the stalks of the plants actually. I will probably pick those tomorrow, and we can have them for dinner. In all, the garden has been an interesting experiment, but I will make more changes before next year. I am reading about permaculture right now, and am interested in ripping up most of the back yard in an effort to turn it into an urban food producing jungle. We will see how that works out. I know that I will need a tiller for one thing, because I am not going to try to turn the soil over by hand again. That was a ton of crazy work that took a long time.
Photos will be coming shortly.

Last night I unplugged. Instead of running ulduar with my guild, I decided not to even log into WoW. I had intended to spend a while on a video conference call with some friends discussing technology, but through a weird sequence of events, we ended up canceling the call. Instead I checked on my seedlings, which are unfortunately looking like they might not make it. Some of the plants that I had started had reached the top of the container that they were in, so I could no longer leave them inside. Accordingly I had moved them out to the back porch, where I figured I would let them grow until this weekend when I would have the time to put them into the ground. That was on Tuesday evening that I had moved them outside. On Monday morning I checked on them and noticed that they were all wilted and laying down, in no way reminiscent of the thriving plants that I had seen inside the night before. And last night and this morning was more of the same. I am continuing to water them, and hoping they will come back, but I can’t be sure that they will at this point.
After a brief stint with the plants, I went out to start looking at my motorcycle again. I haven’t riden it in a while, as I have been working on fixing problems here and there with it. Most recently I have been trying to figure out why it would always die when I got it past 5K rpm. The redline on it is 10K rpm, and as it revved up to 5k it would just start to sputter and die. So last night I decided to take apart the throttle controls. It was interesting, because it taught me how one more system on the bike worked, and gave me an opportunity to look at just how archaic the system is, though it does work. It turns out that the bike is based off of a turning handle at one end, and a wheel at the other end. The wheel is connected to the butterfly valves in the carburetors, and the handle and wheel are connected by a pair of cables. One cable is responsible for acceleration, and the other for deceleration. The issue with my bike was that the acceleration cable had become loose, and about halfway through the pull the deceleration cable would build up more tension and spin the wheel and butterfly valves back the other way even though the accelerator cable was still pulling in the direction that the handle was being turned. A few quick adjustments to the cables, and now it will run all the way from its idle at ~1.2K rpm all the way to a fairly steady 6k rpm, which is where I feel comfortable cruising at, and a further twist will send the bike all the way up to the upper 9k range. I find it very difficult to redline the bike while it is sitting on its center-stand. And its probably just because I am used to my car which redlines at ~6k rpm, but cruising at 8k just feels very hurried to me. I think when I am ready to start looking at a bigger bike, (because I know I will) I will probably look to see what the engine ranges are like. Its probably partly because the engine’s predecessors were racing engines, its half of the 1000cc out of a Ninja, but when it really cranks up, its easy to tell that it wants to run. Its a little out of character for the looks of the bike which are mostly old-school cruiser, but I knew it would be that way when I bought it. There was a magazine that touted the fact that the 454 LTD was faster to 60mph and faster in the 1/4 mile than a 454 Corvette from 1973.

Anyway, tonight I think I will change the oil on the bike, check the garden, and generally just be myself.

So, I have started a garden in the back yard. And by starting a garden, I mean I have dug up a plot, reconstituted soil, and fertilized it, and I have started seeds. I haven’t actually planted any seeds/seedlings into the bed in the back yard, but I am working in that direction. I have been working on some seeds though, and they are making good progress. I keep being delighted when I go look at them and they are larger and healthier looking. I hope they continue to grow and don’t die right away on me. Though I have been advised by enough sources that my initial attempts at gardening will be wrought with failure, and perseverance is what is necessary to make it a sustainable effort.

Seed Bed 1

Seed Bed 1

Seed Bed 2

Later I will prepare a map to point out what is what, but here is a list of what is growing in those seed cups:

Bed 1:
Broccoli
Snow Peas
Onions (Tokyo)
Endive
Eggplant
Cucumbers (Japanese Long)
Cucumbers (Thai Special)
Bush Beans
Amaranth
Long Beans
Tomato (Amana Orange)
Beets (Bulls Blood)
Brussel Sprouts
Tomato (Aunt Ruby’s German Green)
Tomato (Arkansas Traveler)

Bed 2:
Spinach
Summer Squash (Crookneck?)
Tomato (Cherokee Purple)
Watermelon (Black Diamond Yellow Bellied?)
Banana Melon
Garden Pea (Tall Telephone)
Serrano Pepper (Hot)
Swiss Chard
Golden Marconi Sweet Pepper
Okra (Burgundy)
Lettuce (Asian Red)
Radish (Japanese Minowase)
Boule D’or Melon

Some varieties maybe named wrong, or spelled wrong, etc. I am going off of some hand-scribbled notes, and didn’t spell everything out.