The ride starts at 9am eastern. If y0u want to follow along, visit my account on MapMyTracks. If it’s working properly, you’ll see a new entry at the top. Click on it and with any luck, it should show our route so far, some stats, and our current location. The map will then actually continue drawing as we ride.

I’ve done a few tests, and this does seem to work. However, I’m not sure what cell coverage will be like along the route, or if my battery will last all day. It’s a fun experiment, regardless.

So, I ask you … what would YOU prefer? Would you be interested in posts on other topics? They could range from photography to GIS to movies, music, beer, school projects … basically anything. I can obviously post things on this blog very easily. I could also provide a cycling RSS feed, if you wanted to just read about cycling. It would also be easy for me to setup a secondary blog would allow this blog to remain cycling-focused, and still give me an outlet to write about other topics.

What do you think?

I’m still sick, but less so. I moved my blog over to my “new” host. Let me know if you notice any issues. I already have some other projects hosted on this server, and it’s been very reliable, so this should be a vast improvement. For the curious, it’s a managed Linux VPS. The hosting company keeps things up-to-date, does backups, and does some basic maintenance. I still have a VPS with root access. I find it to be the sweet spot of not having to worry about it constantly, but still having complete control over the system.

Update: It looks like my spam filter isn’t working, and your comments are going to moderation. I’ll approve them as soon as I get a chance. I’ve temporarily disabled comments on old posts to cut down on the amount of blog spam coming in.

The Job

I started a new job today, as a Web Developer at the Eppley Institute for Parks and Public Lands. According to their Web site:

The Eppley Institute is dedicated to meeting the needs of park, recreation, and public land organizations. As a unit of Indiana University’s Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Studies, Eppley combines academic expertise with real-world experience to design practical solutions that work.

I will be working on various projects including building e-courses and working on their Web site, and any other projects that come up.

Those who have been following my blog for a while, or who know me personally, know that I got laid off back in December. At that time, I started my own Web Development consulting company. I decided running my own business wasn’t for me, so I started looking for other options … and ended up at Eppley.

On my first day, I managed to completely hose the copy of Windows XP on my computer (the classic hal.dll not found error). Probably fixable, but my boss suggested another option … so now the machine is running a shiny new copy of Windows 7.  My first impression? Well, I’m not too impressed. However, I’m told that I can install Linux on my workstation if I want — which I just might do. I think it’s going to be very cool to be in an environment that’s not completely Microsoft-centric.

The Commute

I ran my consulting business out of our apartment, so I missed being able to commute by bicycle. Oddly enough, my new commute is nearly identical to the one I had at my last job. Completely identical, in fact, except for the last turn. The distance is about the same — a little under three miles each way. Not an epic commute by any means, but I ride year-round, in all conditions, so things can still get pretty interesting. And, I’m a little more committed to riding every day than I was before, because we are a single-car family and my wife will be using the car to drive to her new job. Previously, she was in school and rode the bus to work, which meant I always had the car as a backup option. I didn’t use it much, but it sort of functioned as a safety net.

View Luzerne County, PA for DirtData.org in a larger map

I’ve also started a map of the Bloomington, Indiana area, which I’ll post later. It’s fun making these maps, and I hope that they’ll come in handy in the future, both for myself and for others.

If you ride gravel roads in your area, I urge you to create maps to share with everyone.  Here are some useful links to help you get started.

• Map Key
• A pictorial tutorial
• DirtData.org Blog
• DirtData.org Wiki

So, I’ve sent out some applications locally, but there aren’t a lot of openings in my field. I’ve also considered going the consulting route; I could probably pick up a client or two who used to use my company’s development services, and do projects for them on a contract basis. If I could find another client or two, I could be in decent shape.

I’ve also considered reinventing myself. I could be a clown makeup artist, a jukebox repairman, or maybe even a garbage man. Any suggestions out there?

Seriously, if anyone out there knows someone who needs a Web developer, either in the Wilkes-Barre, PA area, or in a telecommuting scenario, let me know!

This week has not been a good one for riding for me. The weather has mostly been pretty good, but I have been busy with a geeky project that’s cut into my recreational ride time. It’s been fun, though, and hopefully there’ll be more projects in this vein.

Anyway, I’m building a mostly-new system, since my old one kicked the bucket. For those interested, I got an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+, ASUS motherboard, 2 gigs of RAM (for now), 500-gig hard drive, case, etc. Unfortunately all I’ve gotten to do with it so far, after putting everything together, is install Windows. That seemed to go without a hitch until I realized that my system drive is somehow the I: drive. I am assuming that this is because I also installed my old hard drives, which may have retained their old drive letters somehow.

Does anyone know if there’s an inherent problem having Windows XP on a drive other than C:? I haven’t noticed any problems yet, but I’m really not sure if this is a good situation.

Once I get Windows up and running, I’ll be installing Kubuntu, probably the x64 version. Windows has been my primary operating system for a while now, mostly because of work, but I’d really like to get back to making Linux my primary OS. I think that, even for working from home, it should be mostly doable, with a VPN client and some sort of VNC software running at both home and work.

Take the old power supply, unhook it completely from your computer
(including the 4-pin plug if it has one) and then plug it into the wall.  Hook up a jumper (bent paper clip) between the green wire (there should be only one on the main plug) and any of the black wires.  The power supply fan should fire up.  If it does not, the PS is toast.

The fan did spin up, much to my surprise. Noah also suggested testing the voltage in the wires, but I couldn’t find my multimeter (terrible, I know, I’m turning in my geek card today). Still, it’s a good technique so I’m posting it here.

If it does fire up, use a multi-tester (I know you have one,  you of all people I know must have one) and check the voltage from any of the black wires to all the colored ones.

From ground to any of the yellow wires, you should get about +12VDC.
Ground to red: +5VDC.
White: -5VDC.
Orange: +3.3VDC.

IIRC, ground to purple should be +5VDC even when the green-to-black jumper is unplugged.

I double-checked the voltages on Wikipedia and they’re correct.

I had an extra power supply on hand, but it failed the paperclip test, so I knew it was dead. I bought a new power supply, hoping that would fix it. It didn’t. I disconnected everything from the outside of my computer, took out all the expansion cards, and disconnected all unnecessary cables inside. I tried reseating my RAM, and tried each DIMM independently. Still no go. I figure my motherboard and/or CPU must be shot. Great!

So, I started using my older computer, which I’ve dubbed “Maddog.” Maddog is an older computer I built that runs FreeBSD. It used to be a server appliance prototype, in a small form factor, but over the years most or all of the components have been replaced. But it’ll always be Maddog to me. I digress …

Maddog worked pretty well last night, as always. Maddog has always been rock solid — not fast, but uber-reliable. However, this morning I went to check my e-mail, and I saw that Maddog had rebooted overnight. I logged in and started X.org. After about 20-30 seconds, Maddog spontaneously rebooted. Later, I tried logging in again and the same thing happened.

So now, both of my computers are unusable. I need to act fast, as I have a lot of work I need to do and data I need to get to. Fortunately there’s nothing I need for my job on there, so in that sense I’m OK, but … this aggression will not stand!

I’m starting to suspect a power surge or two may be responsible for these problems, especially since we have had some storms in the past couple of days, but I have both systems plugged into different outlets/surge protectors. And Sarah’s computer is in the same room and appears to be fine, so I’m not sure I’m sold on that explanation. Unfortunately I won’t be able to do any troubleshooting until Sunday at the soonest, as we’ll be in Fort Wayne most of the weekend.