Bump starting ain't so bad...

Well, it may have been bad for Erin. She was the one pushing me down the drive way. After a couple of tries, we got the bike to start. And it runs like normal, so to me this seems to be a starter issue.

I called Renton Motorcycles and they're booked solid until the 21st. They said that if I can get the bike in before then, they will do diagnosis before the 21st. Looks like I'll try to take it over on Friday. Gotta love technology.

Crap.

My bike won't start. I was going to ride it down to my mom's place. I got it started it, and then realized I needed to pull my helmet out of the top case. Shut it off, got the helmet out, and now it won't start. It won't even crank. Battery's not dead, because I still get gauges, lights, and the fuel pump comes on like it should. But, no cranking.

I'm thinking I'm going to need to do a little bump starting tomorrow to get it going. I hope that works. Argh.

Diesel vs. Gasoline

I drive a 2002 VW Jetta GLS TDI.  It's an automatic.  I bought it back in 2005 when gas prices were a lot different than they are now.  I ran a comparison of prices with my older car, a 1995 VW Jetta GL.  So here's what it looks like today after I paid $4.22 for biodiesel (B5).  Granted, these are highway figures.  My old Jetta got around 25mpg in city and the diesel Jetta gets about 32-33mpg in city; 35mpg if I'm really babying it.  These prices are current as of today.

I think this guy should take a look at my comparison.  He's paying way more than he should.

Gas: $3.42 - 31mpg on highway
BioDiesel: $4.22 - 39mpg on highway
DinoDiesel - $4.09 - 41mpg on highway

400 miles of travel

Gas - 12.9gal used - $44.12
BioDiesel - 10.26gal used - $43.30
DinoDiesel - 9.76gal used - $39.92

$ savings in %:
BD and DD are 1.8% and 9.5% cheaper tank for tank than gas, respectively.

fuel savings in %:
With BD and DD, you use 20.5% and 24.3% less fuel than gasoline, respectively.

Vista and Leopard's Windows Filesharing

Vista is a pain in my ass.  Leopard, decidedly less so, but still a pain.  The two of them together?  Well, please just kill me.

First issue - Vista can't connect to a fileshare I set up on my Leopard-based PowerMac.  Vista complains that I've entered the wrong password.  On the Mac, /var/log/samba/log.smbd says this:

[2007/11/17 22:57:59, 0, pid=475] /SourceCache/samba/samba-187/samba/source/auth/auth_odsam.c:opendirectory_smb_pwd_check_ntlmv2(446)
opendirectory_ntlmv2_auth_user gave -14090 [eDSAuthFailed]

From this site, I found that when entering the username on Vista, you have to do it in the format of IPADDRESSusername.  So, if the server's IP is 192.168.1.1 and the username is bob, then you enter 192.168.1.1bob as the username on Vista.  And then enter your password like you normally would.

Second issue - Vista's Windows Backup and Restore Center gives you the option to backup to a fileshare.  Seems like a no-brainer, eh?  Well, not so much, as evidenced from posts like these.  I eventually found that I had to use the registry edit to change Vista's LmCompatibilityLevel from 3 to 2.  That seemed to do the trick.

But of course, Vista has, yet again, failed in its backup.  The network share is no longer available, or some such BS.

I love Windows.  Gah.

Windows NT's Infernal Filesystem

Here be dragons.

This is the t-shirt I wore to work today. By the end of the day, it was a painful reminder of just how wrong a service pack install can go. So - I've installed SP2 on two XP boxes. One at home, and my test box at work. I waited until today during lunch to upgrade my normal workstation. And, oh how it did break. Sigh.

During the backing up of files, it complained about not being able to read one file. I skipped that file. Then, after the upgrade, RPC wouldn't start. Well now - considering how much on a Windows box depends on RPC, I was pretty well fucked. In task manager, my username did not show up for processes I had started. I couldn't view individual events in event viewer. I couldn't move icons on the desktop. New windows I opened were not showing up on the taskbar. I couldn't resize the taskbar unless Quick Launch was enabled, and even if it was I still sometimes couldn't resize it. I couldn't add a new local user to the local administrators group. I couldn't start RPC (access denied).

I exported my entire system log to a text file so I could see what happened. Bad block on the hard drive. Run chkdsk. Reboot. It finds errors. RPC still won't start!

Had to get one of the IT guys come by and change all of these services to start as the local system account rather than a network account. That got me back up and running, but I still had a bad hard drive to contend with. And these services are *supposed* to run with a network account. This breaks several things in a computer that's joined to a domain.

As it ends up, I got little work done this afternoon. I did, on the other hand, get a new computer. But then I spent 3 extra hours after work getting the apps I use on it. Oh wait, I forgot Ethereal. Dang it. I did not reinstall SP2 on the new machine. I'll sit tight and wait for IT's blessing. So much for being on top of Windows security.

But hey, the old machine was a 800MHz Pentium III w/512MB RAM and the new one's a 2.8GHz P4 w/1GB RAM. I'll live.

Stupid lawnmower.

Mowed the front lawn the other day. Lawnmower ran OK. Not great, but OK. It only stalled once.

Next day, went to mow the back lawn and the damn thing won't run past what gas it's been primed with. Tried a new spark plug - it starts a lot easier now, but still won't continue to run after what's in its primer.

So, I drained the gas tank and checked to see if there were any blockages in the fuel line. Not as far as I can tell. Must be somewhere else. Not sure where, though. Air filter's a mess, but even without the air filter, the mower dies quickly.

This mower's in need of some work which I am ill-equipped to perform. Looks like I'll have to find someone to fix it for me. I'm no small engine genius... I work on cornputers all day long, dagnabit!

In other news, looks like Nicole and I have a fix on a new house in South Seattle. After the rash of arsons in the neighborhood (9 in the past two nights) we're quite anxious to move.

802.11g signal strength informal testing

A buddy of mine in the UK recently purchased a 15" Apple PowerBook G4 (Aluminum). I have this same computer. We're both noticing some pretty abysmal signal strength numbers from these computers, so we're trying to figure out the culprit. Is it the built-in AirPort Extreme cards? Is it the base station? (He has an Apple Airport Extreme BS, I have a Netgear WGR614.) Luckily, I happen to have a PC card 802.11g adapter (in addition to the AirPort Extreme card), based on a Broadcom chip, and made by Buffalo. So, here are the informal numbers from iStumbler, going through each channel available to me.

broadcom pc card:
channel strength
1 59-60
2 73
3 53-55
4 73
5 73
6 74
7 74
8 49-52
9 73
10 53-59
11 50

apple airport extreme card
channel strength
1 54-56
2 68-69
3 68-70
4 52-54
5 71
6 56-58
7 70-71
8 69
9 69
10 70-71
11 58-59


So, it looks like I'll stick with channel 7. Hopefully he'll be able to find a better channel for him. I was originally on channel 11.

It's funny, though. Watching iStumbler, my signal strength on channel 7 is dropping. It's now down to 56. I don't know why...