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I love this city and I thought it would be interesting to see what I could see when the roads weren’t clogged with cars… Overall rating: 2 1/2 stars (out of 5). It’s interesting but not very relaxing. Don’t get any ideas about attempting this during the day either. The traffic would be evil. The Route Note: I’d actually recommend going to the end of Storrow Drive and following the curve around as it becomes the start of Memorial Drive but I couldn’t convince Google Maps to do that. All said, it’s about 20 miles, and a little over an hour of driving. What you’ll encounter:

typelation: n. The act of converting speech, or thoughts, into text for a text-based conversation (e-mail, instant messages, etc.). Example: The joke lost something in the typelation.

So, Delicious Library 2.0 was finally released. I was seriously wondering if it was just going to be vaporware for years. The people behind it would pop up their heads every two to four months and say “real soon now”. Back in November / December of 07 they were encouraging people to buy 1.x so that they would get the free upgrade, hopefully in time for xmas but if not very soon thereafter. It’s now June. They had a forum to discuss it where people basically said “yo wtf?” and the devs said “…” and occasionally “real soon now” with no indication as to wtf the hold-up was or why it’d been in private beta for months, and months, and months.

Angle-bracket Operator: n. A person who manipulates HTML professionally. Also see Web-designer.

Most motorcycle gear has little-to-no spine protection. Even suits with decent spine armor rarely have anything that comes close to what Knox offers, and essentially no-one else offers CE rated chest protection for street-riders. Being a safety conscious chick who values her spine and internal organs I ponied up the money for this. The results are mixed.

Looks

If you check out Knox’s home page you’ll see that they’ve updated the styling of this for 2008, but the one pictured here is essentially the same, and what I happen to own, so that’s what I’m showing. The only positive thing I can think to say about the looks of this is that it’s not bad from the back. The front however…

Laurell K Hamilton is the undeniable queen of this genre, but it took her about eight Anita Blake books to approach the quality of writing that Caitlin has given us in her first outing. Eventually Laurell improved her skills but morphed her books into soft-core porn with vampires. Ugh.If you’re like me and enjoy a bad ass heroine in a gritty urban fantasy setting then Night Life is something you should pick up.

I’ve been following Buell since they appeared on the scene. Initially people were having all sorts of maintenance issues, similar to old Harley Davidsons (their parent co.), but they seem to have come a long way in that dept, although I hear tale that the Japanese bikes are still better in that dept.. Something that wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

Poking around the Buell site today I ended up watching the videos Eric Buell made a couple years ago about Buell’s “Radical Principles”, and that’s where I discovered what I think really sets Buell apart from many manufacturers. They’re making bikes for real world road riding not track racing. Given, what’s good for one is frequently good for the other. But, I think this approach has a much better chance of resulting in a bike that’s suited to the riding you’re really going to do on it, as opposed to the riding you wish you’d do on it.

General Patton said that “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” If he was a coder he might have said “An automated test violently executed now is better than a perfect test next week.”

New motorcyclists tend to spend most, or all, of their pennies on their new bike without considering, or perhaps realizing, just how much it’s going to cost to protect themselves on the bike. Of course, having just bought the bike, there’s no way they’re not going to ride it…. While I covered the items you’ll want to keep you safe in “So you want to ride a motorcycle… and not die” I didn’t cover what it would cost. Afterwards I figured it would be useful to put together a list of your basic safety items, and what you can expect to pay for them, so that new riders can plan accordingly. I’m mostly just going to be using low end prices, the cheapest you can get away with and still be safe. You can easily pay many times more for most of these items from different manufacturers.

The Fieldsheer Highland II is a surprisingly affordable and thoroughly armored one-piece motorcycle suit. At $230 from Motorcycle Closeouts it’s quite possibly the most inexpensive way to get a full compliment of CE rated armor including hip and back. Its nearest competitor is the $450 Olympia Phantom (scroll for more).

Sizing It is critical, with a one piece, that you really read the

sizing chart. Don’t just go with whatever size you “normally” are. The problem is, of course, that there’s no adjusting the distance between the crotch and the shoulders of a one-piece. If you’re too tall in a two piece the coat simply overlaps the pants less. In a one piece your have heavy duty fabric being yanked into your groin. I’m 5'9 1/2", 140lbs, and according to the size chart I was a medium, so that’s what I ordered, and it fits perfectly.