ramblin wrench goes legit

 Many thanks to friend Steve S, who set me up with a domain and webspace for my Ramblin' Wrench venture. I'm now proud co-possessor of RamblinWrench.com, bringing bicycle maintenance to you.

He hooked me up with a couple of videos on how to make the site look good (and work, too!). I spent most of today getting it set up, making mistakes, starting over, processing pictures, and getting the most infuriating web form to work. 

Go check it out. And contact me if you need anything done!

tracking spending

 Yeah, the title of this post is "tracking spending". The truth is, I only "kind of" do it.

You can find articles all over the web saying that you will probably spend less if you use cash instead of credit or debit cards. Yeah, I don't do that; I use debit or credit for almost everything except snacks on rides.

I don't have budgets for specific items, or even categories. But there are two things I do that, I think, help.

First, I have a list of my monthly bills. The Excellent Wife (TEW) and have a complicated financial system of her money/my money/our money, and I know exactly what is supposed to come out of my money every month (including the contribution I make to the "our money" fund). So when it's time to pay the monthly bills, I open up that list and grind 'em out.

The other thing is that I track all my finances (spending, savings, credit cards) in Gnucash.

Some time ago, I was asked by a friend which financial software I used, and when I said Gnucash, the next question was whether it did anything automatically. It might, but I don't know; I enter every transaction by hand. Salary, interest, checks, charges, debits, transfers... ALL of 'em. I THINK this might have a similar effect to paying in cash; I pay a little bit of attention to every transaction, and I see what it's doing to my overall budget.

If I used a program that did everything automatically, I think I'd fall into the too-comfortable semi-ignorance that might be what leads people to overspend on credit cards. Instead, I have a comfortable savings (separate from my retirement savings*), and I think the repetitive data entry has something to do with it.

(I started using Gnucash because it ran on my Linux computer, and its free. But it also runs on Windows... so I keep my data file in my web storage, and update from whatever computer I have open at the time. I always have a computer open; I've not made the transition to everything-on-the-smartphone yet.)

*And I keep the retirement accounts on a spreadsheet that I update every day that the markets are open. I know that wouldn't work for most people; the daily ups-and-downs would be irritating and/or alarming. But it's impressive to me to see how, while the amounts did not increase much for the first decade I tracked, it's gone up dramatically in the most recent years. Even including the years of the Trump Slump (see 2018-19), seeing the spreadsheet is a motivator to keep dumping money into the retirement accounts.

free hand? balderdash!

 After the trolls at Reddit have completely taken over the value of Gamestop stock...

... don't ever talk to me again about the magic of the free hand of the Market.

Edit Feb 1, 2021: On reflection, I realize I was wrong. The Reddit trolls ARE the free hand of the market. The market includes those who have money, but no traditional knowledge of the market. I'm especially gleeful every time I read of another fatcat who bemoans these folks because they're upsetting the market. Nope. It's just that it's a different market now. Deal with it.

weekend rides aug 22-23

Edit 8/23/20 2:25pm: I just remembered some coolness from Eric H on today's ride; see below.Also, I called Eric "Ed" throughout, and just went through to correct.

Tom H invited a few of us on a flat ride this weekend; it looked like this. Jack H, Laura OLPH, and I met at Tom's house. From there, we ride to Cranbury Village Park.

We went to see who was going on Peter F's and Winter Larry's rides, and to pick up Ricky G.

Although it was humid, the heat wasn't bad. We zipped around Tom's fairly flat route.

The stop came late in the ride; we stopped at a Wawa near route 33. Most of those pictures didn't come out, but this one, of a sign that caught my attention, did:

What other purpose are you gonna use those premises for?

On the way back, we caught up with Larry's ride again.

We decided not to go back to Cranbury; Ricky went off on his own and we headed back to Tom's.

---

For today, I had a ride listed for the Princeton Freewheelers, to do a route I'd done a month or so ago; I had few takers and was gonna cancel... and then Laura, Dave H, Eric H (a club newbie), and Sophie T signed up. Sophie didn't appear, and Laura and Dave said they'd meet us along the way, but Eric was there at the start. We rolled over to Blackwells Mills/Six Mile to get Laura, and then up to Amsterdam Ave... where one of the long-missing porta-potties has been replaced.

Eric took the stop in good spirits.

This wasn't Eric's longest ride, but it WAS his first club ride, so I tried to ensure that he felt welcome and will come back (we can get back to our usual petty catfighting at some future date).

Eric and I got to talking about bike maintenance. He'd had a problem with his cables that was fixed at Kim's Bike Shop, and I bent his ear about parts, tools, shops, and the like. I stopped before his eyes glazed over completely.

Now, the GPS turned itself off TWICE on this ride, so I did what I could to keep it going, and eventually had to stop the navigation (I knew the route anyway).

The route is linked here.

Edit to insert cool quote: There were a couple of points during the ride when we felt droplets that COULD NOT have been rain. We discussed what might be happening, and Eric said, "Mountain sweat". From now on, such droplets will forever be "mountain sweat" to me.

We picked up Dave in Hillsborough, and continued along, until we got to the stop at Thomas Sweet.

At that point, Laura and Dave rolled off; Eric and I headed towards home. He lives close; he may be the only person in the club who lives closer to that Claremont School start than I do. And he SAID he'd be back out on club rides; I hope to see him again.

And when I plugged in the bike GPS to upload the route... it gave up the ghost. It won't turn on. I can't even do a factory reset.

Oh, well. Research and shopping is in my future.

better

The worst of the fog that was the meat of my last post is passing, at least for now.

The two main reasons I can give for this are these: the support of The Excellent Wife (TEW), and an email chain, started by Laura OLPH, involving a number of my bike-y friends. Thanks to you all.I can't say how much you mean to me.

I've been spending too much time following the news, reading horror stories about how the COVID-19 virus has afflicted those who are suffering the worst. In my imagination, I'm sure to be a victim, because I catch every respiratory ailment that comes close. I've got a history of strep throat and bronchitis, and missed most of kindergarten battling pneumonia. My parents were afraid I might die at the time. One of the reasons I support science, even when I don't really understand it, is that I'm sure it saved my life then, by means of antibiotics (which had been in general use for only about 20 years at the time).

Too much reading is not helping, so I'm planning to reduce my news dependence. I've downloaded a couple of books, and I'll plan to paraffin my chain today. (Thank might make another blog post. Watch this space.)

Another thing that's not helping is Facebook. I saw postings on Facebook about a "minister" who had been a COVID-denier who had subsequently died from the disease. My initial reaction was to gloat. I don't want to be that person, and I think Facebook promotes that. The Facebook algorithms promote the echo-chamber culture effect, giving me more and more of what I already know and agree with, and less of anything else. It separates me even further from viewpoints with which I might disagree. So it's easier to see people who hold those viewpoints as aliens. I don't think that's useful; I don't think it's going to get us what we want. We are separated enough. I think that's helping to feed my isolation, and I need less isolation right now.

TEW suggested knitting again, and I might see what yarn we've got, to make another of those neck gaiters like the too-colorful one I ride with. I might not; knitting doesn't engage me as much as other activities with tools do.

I also have to point out that the use of ZOOM has been an unexpected blessing. Both my WW group and my work team are using ZOOM for meetings. The WW group has been a great support, and the work one too, although less so. I think part of the reason the work online meeting is less of a support is that almost none of my coworkers turn on their cameras - I suspect they don't want to show off the torn t-shirts and pajama tops they are wearing when working from home. (My director and I turn our cameras on. I may even wear a tie next time, just because why the hell not?)

My hands are a wreck from so much handwashing. They feel sunburned all the time, and the skin and the knuckles (especially) is red and rough. I never use grooming products, but I've tried Vaseline on 'em, which didn't seem effective. This morning, I tried some to TEW's hand cream. I'm not sure htat's better.

I'm keeping up with exercise (I do something every day) and I haven't been eating all the junk in the house (not that we keep much...). Since we're minimizing our store trips in an effort to minimize exposure to infection, I'm always afraid that we're going to run out of stuff, so I may not be eating enough. I've been tired all the time, and cold in the house (at 68F). We've tried online order-and-pickup from the grocery, which was disappointing: not all the items were included, but we didn't know that until I got the bags back in the house (that may be adding to my fear of running out).

Oh, and that beard I started? Because I'm not going to be able to get a haircut, and I want an excuse for looking sloppy and unkempt? It fell victim to the Norelco. TEW said she likes me better clean-shaven. I didn't know!

instead of sleeping...

A not-untypical view of my messy desk.

For reasons we're not gonna go into here, I installed a new router yesterday , and when I went to bed, everything was working fine. When I got up in the middle of the night to check something, the wired-network desktop computer couldn't get to the internet.

Oh, damn. What's wrong with the router?

Reboot the router. Problem persists.

Reboot the wired-in computer. Problem persists.

OK, all the devices connected by wifi are fine. Take another computer, disable the wifi, connect it via cable: works fine. So it's probably not the router.

Go back to the wired-in computer. Internet still doesn't work, so let's see if we can communicate with the router over the web-based interface.

That comes in fine. So the computer can see the router, it just can't see through the router to get to the internet.

That means that the network card in the computer is probably OK. Just because it's an easy fix, I try swapping out some cables. Problem persists. (Yeah, that probably wasn't gonna work anyway...)

Hook up the computer directly to the modem, leaving out the router. Computer still can't get to the internet, but it CAN communicate with the modem over the modem's web interface.

All right, now you're just tryin' to piss me off. You're doin' a pretty good job of it, too.

I've got a utility on the wired computer that makes a snapshot of the system files every week (it's called TimeShift), so you can roll back to a time when stuff was all working. So I go back to my last saved snapshot and install that. (Hrmph. The reset only took about two or three minutes; not as long as I'd feared.)

Reboot the computer: everything's working. Reinstall the updates that had come in during the past week (Drat! Three browsers; it's a LOTTA megabytes that we gotta get); everything's still working. Reboot after the updates; still working.

What a pain. Just a coincidence (probably) that it happened at the same time as the new router... and the detective work saved me sending the router back, getting a replacement, and having the same problem.(Although before I did that, I probably would have replaced the older router, seen that the problem persisted, and continued detective work... but I can't guarantee that, either.)

I feel both smart (for having fixed the problem) and dumb (for having planned to send back the faultless router.

Oh, well. Bike ride in a few hours. That'll help.

practicing for retirement

I worked New Year's Day, and took Friday, January 3 off as compensatory time. Between the usual holiday folderol, my Excellent Mother-In-Law's stroke and her first steps towards attempted recovery, The Excellent Wife (TEW)'s other responsibilities, and whatnot, I had a number of things to which to attend that I had put off until that Friday off.

I spent the day getting a much-needed haircut, doing shopping, doing chores around the house, rehabilitating the heavy steel Krakow Monster bike (there will be a future post about that; I'm drafting notes), installing a SSD drive in the desktop computer (and reinstalling everything, and learning how I can save settings to make future reinstalls easier, and finding some backups I thought I'd lost...), and a few other things.

I had a great time. TEW was delighted to see my mood, and said it was a sign that I needed to take more days off... and then she said it was a sign that I'm likely to be successful in retirement, which, frankly, is the way I see it. I've heard a number of retirees say they have no idea how they found time to work, because they were so busy now.

TEW and I hire a cleaning service once a month, which will be dismissed after I'm retired; even with my (now considerable) back pain and stiffness, there's no reason I can't replace her. I have some ideas for part-time work to keep me busy (I bet I'd be a pretty good Weight Watcher's coach, for example), but I don't think we'll be desperate for the cash (we have a CFP appointment this week to see if our instincts are correct).

That day was practice for retirement, and I think I'm gonna be at least passable at it. Two years, four months, fifteen days is the planned date, as I write this. Good heavens; I'll be 65 in a few months.

I'm looking forward to retirement, partly because I've been working in my chosen field for 35-or-so years, and I don't hardly know anything. I certainly know much less than I did when I had two years of experience. It's time to get out of the way and let some smart people take over. I don't want to have to worry about it any more.

computer deaths and weekend rides

Not one, but BOTH of my computers have died in the past week. The Ultra Geeky Linux Computer suffered what I thought was a motherboard problem, but is more likely a power supply problem, and in trying to fix it I screwed up the CPU, so I'm taking some time going back to fix that. Then during a recent Windows 10 upgrade, the laptop also died last night. I can't be without a working computer, so I'm typing this on a new Lenovo with some extra bells and whistles. One bell it's missing is a decent keyboard, so the typing goes less than wonderfully; I'll be glad to get the desktop working again (I guess I've got one foot in the geek's camp and the other among the Luddites. With my legs that far apart, I'm feelin' a bit exposed...)

But I did get a couple of rides in this weekend. Yesterday, Tom H planned 60-something miles in the flats of Burlington. Ricky G, Jack H, Sergei, Brian, and I met Tom in Bordentown.

It was listed as a B ride, but we took off hot from the gate (I'm not going to blame anyone; I was keeping up and more as much as anyone). We averaged above 17mph most of the way.

We made a stop at a Wawa about 20 miles in, where a delegation of local worthies were hangin' out outside, smoking and opining about the deterioration of the neighborhood and all things generally; they made jocular references to stealing our bikes, then complained that there were no motors in 'em, then assured us that while they wouldn't steal anything, there were forces in the neighborhood who would (allowing us to draw our own conclusions about to whom they might be referring). It was an unpleasant stop, and we got out with some haste... but not before noticing that one of their cigarettes had apparently ignited a conflagration in the smokers post where they were to drop their butts. We put it out with some of the water we had.

Then to the Brendan Byrne forest, where there was a toilet which the Wawa lacked, and which had nicely paved roads (and some shade). Then onto Sooy Place Road for about 11 miles. If you're going to ride in this area, you've gotta take some of the few roads that are there, and sometimes you go for miles with no turnoff. Well, with no chance of getting lost, some of our number went off the front and disappeared. When we finally caught up to them, miles later, they said they had not been that far in front.

Maybe not. I still had an average over 17 mph.

We passed up another Wawa to stop at Olde World Bakery.

That was only about twelve miles from the start, but I was cooked, and allowed myself to fall back, and I think there was a rider or two who was glad of the company and the excuse to ease off.

My average on my GPS was 16.8, although the ride page says I went faster. On the other hand, my GPS said I had well over 3000' of climb, where the ride page (after correction - sorry, Terry) shows less than 1700'. So there's that.

Today, I led my Sunday gang on an easy 35-or-so around Hillsborough, Blauwenburg, and Montgomery. I rode to the start from home, and had to get this of these women fly-fishing.

Not something I commonly see.

I had eight riders.

While we were waiting, Sr. Francisco, the mechanic at Kim's Bikes with whom I used to ride (when I could keep up), rolled in. He was taking a cyclocross bike on the trail.

We mostly did my usual route around Hillsborough and Skillman, although Bob N gave me a detour that avoids that aeons-long light at Homestead Road and 206 (but you still get to ride over all the annoying hills on Homestead Road! Oh, joy.).

The weather was perfect; there was a cool breeze all day. The group stayed together except for some sprints, and there was social chatter, which ias part of what I look for on the rides I lead.

Just before the stop, Prem got a wicked gash in the side of his tire, and was going to call for a ride home, but Peter R would have none of it, Well, I had a tire boot, and someone else had a tube, and we managed to get Prem's ridiculously-tight tire off, fixed, and changed... well, if not quickly, then at least before the leaves turned.

And then to Thomas Sweet, where the weather was so nice, we mostly hung out outside.

Laura gets a smoothie made with apple juice; it comes in the best colors.

And I noted the collection of socks we were sporting today; it demanded witness:

Maybe I'll do a "wear your best socks" ride one of these days.

Ride page here. Don't you want to see? (As usual, that one includes my rides to and from home. The morning ride is slower because I'm usually juggling a couple off bagels for breakfast on the way in. Out pace on the ride was a bit faster... but not much.)

And so far, this computer is acceptable. But I hope I can get my desktop computer going soon.

bad computer juju

It's been a season of bad computer juju.

It reaches back at least as far as a couple of weeks before Christmas, when The Excellent Wife (TEW)'s Prius wouldn't start, then wouldn't show icons on the dash, then wouldn't shut down. She wound up buying a plug-in Prius, with, if not ALL the bells and whistles, then at least enough to start a good-sized carnival.

Then, Optimum raised our rates for internet and phone by 40% and would not listen to reason; they only offered a lower price after we'd already set up the other service. No thanks; we'll go back when Verizon screws us again (as I'm sure they will; don't get me started on Verizon).

This morning, her eight-plus-year-old laptop stopped responding to any trackpad or mouse inputs (I suspect some dodginess in the USB interface). The replacement is on order.

In between, the motherboard for my desktop gave up the ghost. There had been a weirdness for years; I'd gotten messages that some of the USB ports weren't responding, but I could get around that by using other ports. But then the hard drive controller gave up, too. I kept it limping along long enough to do a final backup, and went shopping for parts.

I built this computer from parts in 2009; I'd done a few upgrades in the meantime, but I know it was old. I built it, though, on the understanding that I'd be able to swap out parts and keep it going. So I did.

Now, there have been some changes since I built my last computer. Time was when you could tell if a motherboard had graphics built in by looking at the ports: if there were video ports, no separate video was necessary (this blog is about the most demanding thing I do on the computer). In the intervening time, however, AMD has built some video processing into their main chips. So I needed to get a board/chip combination that did the video, and I didn't know that until I'd bought some parts. I got the board, the memory, and a wrong chip from Newegg, and then was lucky to find a proper chip for $20 on Ebay (didn't need the heat sink; I had that).

The last of the parts came today. I'd downloaded a fresh copy of Linux Mint to install after the build, and I was ready to go.

Case empty, ready for install.

...and a table full of parts to go in.

The hole where the motherboard panel shows in the back of the case.

...and the panel installed.

Motherboard in. The one it replaced was twice that size, and the case could hold the old full-size one.

That silvery rectangle at center is the chip that makes all the difference. Not much to look at, is it?

The chip, though, gets covered by a heat sink and fan. It looks all industrial-punky, but its whole purpose is to take excess heat from the chip. Under the fan are heat-dispersion fans, and copper tubing. The utility of the copper tubing is beyond me, but it looks cool; it's a shame it's gonna get closed up in that case.

Memory: the two blue strips to the right of the fan. Memory now comes all suited-up-and-bowtied, but I liked it better when it was just modules on circuit board.

I keep three hard drives and a DVD drive in there. The computer likes to boot from drive 1, so I only hooked up that drive and attached the peripherals to see if it would turn on.

Not only did it turn on, but the copy of Linux Mint that was already on the hard drive booted up; I didn't need to do a new install. I've gone and re-attached the other drives, and closed up everything, and found the couple of weirdnesses that always go with a new computer (and I'm sure there will be more). But I wrote this blog post on that computer. It's going fine.

(AND it's got a real keyboard. Having to type everything on that benighted membrane on the laptop has been a painful penance.)

So Reg's car is going great, and this computer is working again. Here's hoping Reg's new laptop is a success (and here's hoping my laptop lives long enough that I can save some money before I have to replace it).