Byron Servies

The oil companies and their employees want to eliminate the moratorium start drilling again, and that is understandable.  Others want to study ways to improve safety; also understandable.  Here is a solution that makes sense to me:

Why not wait until the oil companies can prove that they could do the things in their spill contingency plans?  Add in a required relief well like the Scandinavian companies require (which would provide even more work for the gulf employees) and voila: sensibly safe, lots of employment and no more dead professors in the plan of record.

Your inconsiderate, sanctimonious zombies have been a harassing me virtually every time I leave the house to visit local businesses in Santa Cruz for months now.

I don't give a crap about your mission, or message, anymore.  You'll never get anything but loathing and hatred from me now.  I will actively discourage everyone I know from having anything to do with you.

Leave me the fuck alone.

Update on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 1:13PM by Byron Servies

And they're still there, and getting more aggressive.  All the downtown regulars are ready to put them in a sack and beat them with sticks ala Dara O'Briain.

Update on Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 8:29AM by Byron Servies

August 30th, and the little bastards haven't driven their parent-supplied BMW 325i's back to college yet.

At lunch today I was watching the South African team play Uruguay in the World Cup, and I may have had an epiphany moment similar to one I had watching the Vuelta a España in 2002 or 2003.

I had started road cycling the year before, and in those days the Outdoor Network (now Versus) would show live coverage of all 3 Grand Tours.  And play ads for Lincoln Navigators.  It was bliss for a cycling fan.  Anyway, on one stage Phil Liggett commented that U.S. Postal Service was moving to the front, and Paul Sherwin may have said something about cross winds in that part of Spain.  The riders were on a huge road, perhaps a freeway, and when they took a left turn, Postal went all postal on the peloton.

The footage from the motor bikes showed Roberto Heras tucked in, protected by a couple of lieutenants while the rest of the Postal squad turned themselves inside out riding through cross-winds that had the entire peloton dramatically angled across the multi-lane road.  It was amazing: a giant snake of riders battling the winds and trying to stay with the Posties.

They failed.

The peloton shattered like so much safety glass.  There were a couple of groups organized by dropped favorites, but mostly it was just carnage.  In the end I don't believe any of the major contenders lost time, but it really opened my eyes.

It showed me, in a way that was obvious event to a beginner, how cycling is a team sport and what having a great team can do.  Now, watching football ne soccer, I have never understood offense.

There never seems to be any organization. The players just appeared to run around, or not, and then some superstar would take a shot (not unlike the NBA, which is why I don't watch anymore).  But in the first half today, Uruguay's players aggressively kept a roughly circular formation; they even swapped places as opportunity required another player to move.  It showed me much better what was going on.

Perhaps it was the white uniforms, or South Africa's poor defense, but Uruguay sure helped me.  Will it stick?  I don't know, but I have about a month left to find out. 

The New York Times has an article about a new motorized system that supposedly is being used by some professional cyclists to cheat, you know, in addition to doping.  The stupidity of this thought is clearly defined by the following paragraph in the article:

The Gruber Assist boosts riders’ efforts rather than transforming their bicycles into motorbikes. Schweitzer said the system supplements a rider’s input by an additional 100 to 110 watts. Given that a pro cyclist might typically produce about 400 watts during the final 30 minutes of a race, the device offers a significant gain despite a weight gain of about four pounds for the stock system.

FOUR POUNDS? That is 1.8 kilograms for us cyclists.

If I have learned anything about professional cyclists over the past decade of sometimes serious amateur riding, it is that they are all weight freaks. My bike, a steel Mondonico FOCO frame with 3-cross wheels, weighs roughly 10 kilos (22 lbs) ready to ride and is considered far too heavy for anything but training.

Four pounds?

The UCI minimum bike weight is 6.8 kilograms (15 lbs). Over the course of a 160 or 200 kilometer bike race, paying a 25% penalty over your competitors for 100 watts in the finale makes no sense at all, because you wouldn't make it to the finale in the front group.

1.8 Kilos?

A lot of the bikes are weighed on certain stages as well, to make sure the riders are not using a bike that is too light.  Sometimes, bikes have little weights glued to them to make them heavy enough.  No pro in his right mind is going to pay a 1.8 kilo penalty for 30 minutes of boost 5 hours later.

My Google-foo has failed, and all I want is some Times Microwave coax and accessories.

One of the things I have learned in 20 years as an engineer is that if I use the product everyone else compares themselves to, I will have a much better experience over all.  There will be a price premium initially, but much less will go wrong and things will work as described more often than not.

I have chosen to apply this lesson to my amateur radio hobby, and want to use Times Microwave (TMS) LMR coaxial cable and accessories with Amphenol connectors.  Actual TMS cable, actual TMS accessories, and actual Amphenol connectors.  No "LMR equivalent" or re-branded residuals, thank you.  Just the real thing.

Sure, TMS is used to selling 100's of kilometers of cable to huge companies.  As a lone amateur radio hobbyest I will use, at most, a few hundred meters.  Even so, I don't understand why this is so hard.  Even the 50' of cable listed on Amazon has a comment saying it showed up with a different name printed on the sheath.  Several other online comments say the same thing.

I live in freakin' Silicon Valley! Why don't any of the parts suppliers carry TMS coax any more?