Category: Weblog

A post by Sean Bonner has been bouncing around my head for a bit. In his post, he talks about looking around and thinking that everyone else has things figured out. That they had “cracked the code” or “have a pro account or something” on life in general.
I used to feel the same way. I’d wonder how I would ever get up to speed to what was going on around me in the world.
The truth dawned on me over time.
First, the group of guys I went to college with grew up and slowly started taking positions of power in the business and the military. We’d kept in touch since living in the fraternity house together. The same guys I watched do stupid, foolish, and occasionally felonious stunts, were now responsible for important things. Seeing a guy that put his motorcycle back together so poorly it literally caught fire was now flying a $25+ million fighter plan was a bit strange.
And then it dawned on me that maybe there weren’t a lot of people out there that did everything right in life and had life ‘scoped’ completely.
Once I moved up the corporate ladder, I started working with the people that decide what and how you see things on television and in the movie theater. Surely, these people must be no nonsense, super sharp, focused individuals. I mean, how else do you steer a Fortune 50 company correctly? It didn’t take me long to realize that the vast majority of people making the ‘big’ decisions in business weren’t all that different than you and me. Some liked facts, some liked numbers, some liked their gut, but none of them I saw ever take everything into account like you might read in an MBA textbook. A lot of the decisions I saw get made were because they were the ones that helped them avoid blame.
But because of their title, most viewed their decisions as ‘brilliant’. That is until they were ejected from the Company, upon which a new ‘brilliant’ individual would take their place.
My point is that you have it within you to be as good as anyone you admire. Even if you can’t see it, others can see your potential to do great things. The trick is looking at your strengths rather than looking at your weaknesses. I’m not saying you should ignore your weakness, just that you shouldn’t get caught up obsessing on how someone is better at something as you.
I guarantee you that you have a skill or ability that someone you admire is jealous of and wishes they could have.
I’ve only met a few people that were truly inspiring, innovative, and ‘game-changing’ in business and life for that matter. They all have the same basic characteristics.
Passion – They were driven by an ineffable passion to push forward. Not money, status, or reward, but by the prospect that they could move the needle in their field, even if only a little.
Openness – They wanted to hear what others thought. Not to refute or argue with them, but to listen to alternatives. They never lost sight of their goals, but were truly open to different paths to reach it.
Optimism – They are not cynical people. They see failure and problems as inevitable parts of the road forward. Rather than focusing on who is to blame for the tree that feel across the trail, they are busy climbing over it and leave a rope behind to help others get over it as well.
If there is anything we could all do to head toward having a ‘pro account’ in life, it is to follow our passions, listen to others with an open mind, and stay positive in the face of adversity.

Here are some concrete things you can do to to have a better 2013. No hand-wavy, touchy-feely resolutions. Just a few simple things to do that will make your life a little better.
Don’t sleep in the same room as your phone.

There’s no reason to be checking your phone first thing when you wake or last thing before you sleep. Let your mind rest a bit. Charge it in the other room when you sleep.

Send a gift to someone that doesn’t expect one for no reason other than they could use some love.

Why wait for holidays? People can use a little boost any time of the year. Receiving something out of the blue is a wonderful feeling. Knowing someone is thinking about you during a tough time is sometimes just what’s needed to get through. With internet shopping for pretty much anything you can conceive, there’s no excuse.

Go outside and exercise at least two times a week.

Exercising your body is the best possible thing you can do for yourself. Being outdoors and away from screens and into the sunlight is also great for your body and mind. If you don’t like to ride or run, even just walking during your lunch hour is great. Get outside, move your body, feel the sun on your skin and a breeze on your face.

Read book that is non-fiction, not self-help, and about a topic you don’t know well.

Getting outside of your normal zone of information is the only way to expand your perspective. Learning new things will help you make connections that you might normally miss. Our world is amazing, take some time to see it.

Listen/Read/Watch these things:

Bullseye – Podcast w/ Jesse Thorn interviewing people involved with popular culture from today and the past, shining a light on great things. Jesse’s interviewing is top notch, bringing people out from behind their standard PR answers and offering a glimpse of the person, not the persona.

Saga – Comic by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. The best written and most innovative comic book out there today. Romeo & Juliet meets True Romance meets Alice in Wonderland. Not for kids, it’s an comic for thinking adults.

What Technology Wants – Book by Kevin Kelly – A look at how technology affects and drives human society. Are we technology’s master, or are we doing it’s bidding? Well written and comprehensive.

The Diaz Brothers – Song by the Mountain Goats – My favorite song of the year. Simple, but with strange allusions to films and literature. A catchy tune that earwormed me for months.

The Great Hobini – Truly wonderful music mashups with a hip-hop touch.

Moonrise Kingdom – Movie by Wes Anderson – Finely crafted movie about an adventure in the world of 12 year old children. Touching, funny, and with enough commentary on adults to add a few layers of meaning.

Six weeks ago I crashed my bike. I’ve crashed before, but this by far was my worse. Since the crash I’ve learned a few things.
I was in a cyclocross race. Cyclocross is kind of like a steeplecross race for people on bikes. You ride over grass, dirt, sand, bumps and all kind of obstacles, occasionally jumping off the bike and carrying across barriers or up a hill. I’d wanted to do this for a while and had even built a bike up from the frame to ride.
Riding in my second race of the day, I was trying to make up some time on people ahead of me going over the flyover. A flyover is a big wooden ramp. This is what the flyover looked like. Here’s a video of much better riders coming down and making the turn.

I guess I came down too fast or made another mistake. When I hit the first bump after the flyover I lost control and crashed into the turn. They told me my tire popped on the bump and that was the cause, but I’ll never know for sure exactly what happened.
Over the handlebars I went, landing on my head and right shoulder. I tumbled a bit and landed on my back. I had heard a crunch and I knew I had hurt myself. I wiggled my hands and moved my feet, but couldn’t get up. A race official hopped over onto the course and crouched to shield me from other riders still going past. I just wanted to get up but he insisted I not move. He asked several questions to see if I was able to think straight. The ambulance crew came over, but they didn’t do much but put my arm in a sling in help me up. Everyone asked me if I wanted a ride to a hospital or other help.
Lucky for me, my buddy Ken was at the race too. He gave me a ride home. On the ride home I had to call Michele and tell her I had crashed and would need to go to the hospital. I hurt all over and had sharp pain in my shoulder, wrist and back. I realized this was not a trivial injury and my stomach sank.
Michele took me to the hospital where they cut off my cycling jersey to look at me and took a ton of x-rays.

After waiting the longest 15 minutes, the doctor came in and said, “You really banged yourself up today.” I had broken my right collarbone, left wrist, and cracked some bones in my lower back called the transverse processes. I’d have to see specialist to determine if surgery was needed. They strapped my right arm to my body and casted my entire left arm. I now couldn’t do pretty much anything for myself.
I’d had shoulder surgery before, but had always had my other arm free to do things why the injured arm was healing. Now I had neither.
I got a wrist cast on my left arm that allowed a little more movement and I stopped strapping my arm to my chest after 4-5 days. Over the next six weeks, I didn’t do much but stay home and heal. Doped up on the serious painkillers the first week, I stopped taking them the second and started to have more time to think. Currently, I’m through the worst of it and pretty functionally, but still limited on lifting things and hurt all the time.
What I learned:
I’m lucky – I landed on my head. My helmet cracked. I could have been injured in so many worse and permanent ways. Many are not so lucky and end up dealing with the consequences for the rest of their lives. I am truly, deeply grateful that I got off as easy as I did.
I’m not 25 anymore – When I was younger, accidents and injuries happened and usually were gone before a weekend was over. At 45, nothing heals fast. Even though I’m in good shape, eat healthy, and have great medical treatment, my recovery is measured in weeks and months and not days. Realizing exactly how long I’d be ‘down’ was a tough thing to come to grips with, considering the doctors still hadn’t ruled out a surgery on my collarbone. For all the wonderful things that age brings like wisdom, patience, and the long view, losing the ability to bounce back quickly really is a hard one to accept.
Cycling is mental exercise as much as physical – I love riding my bike. It’s my preferred solution to resolving every issue. Hit the road and everything fades back into the calm parts of my mind and I think about the color of the sky, the smell of summer as hot wind blows over a brown hillside, the hearing the sound my heartbeat roaring my ears, the feel of rain hitting my face, the taste of cold water on a hot day. Not being able to ride removed this way for me to deal with the everyday issues of the world. Cycling is as important to my mental health as to my physical health. I hadn’t imagine how much I’d miss this aspect and long to get away and feel the air on my face to help me process my feelings.
But the most important thing I’ve learned and need to continue to learn is this:
Humility – When I worked at Disney, I walked past a dedication plaque in front of the Frank G. Wells building regularly. On it was written “Humility is the final achievement.”

I pondered that quote literally for years. In the high stakes game of corporate politics, money, power and secrecy, humility was something that I rarely ran into. Humility seemed like a weakness.
Immediately after the injury I tried to figure out how to do things for myself and continue to keep my routine at home even though it was ridiculous. Michele and girls had to help feed me, wash me, remind me to take medicine, and even make me coffee. At first I felt bad about this, like I was a terrible burden constantly apologizing. Finally, Michele told me, “Stop apologizing. Accept this and let us help you. Your job is to sit still, rest, and get better.”
I’ve always viewed myself as someone who did the helping, not needing the help. I prided myself on being self-sufficient, stoic, and able to handle most things without needing help. But that wasn’t working here, I had to realize that asking and accepting the help of others, being grateful for their kindness, and seeing that I needed others was the only way forward. Once I accepted that it gave me a bit of peace. Accepting other’s making decisions for me, listening and accepting the advice of others based on faith in them not proof, and remaining positive during a tough time all helped me get through the first few weeks.
I hope that I can continue to find humility in my life going forward, not just in dealing with my injury, but in dealing with life on a day to day basis. I don’t think you ever ‘achieve’ humility, but like a bike ride, it’s a path you can take to help your mind and body.

My daughter’s friend, PJ, got an old frame and wanted to make it into a fixie. He needed help refinishing the frame. PJ got into cycling about a year ago and loves it. He joined the local club and has been out racing. He stops by every now and then for wrenching help and to talk cycling. I was excited to help in his project.
First, I completely disassembled the bike. It was an old Schwinn Free Spirit ten speed. It had an Ashtabula crank, which I had never seen before.
I kept all the components, just in case, but most of them were in bad shape.

At the hardware store, I asked what was the best paint remover to use. The paint specialist asked, “Safe and not so good, or dangerous and effective?” Obviously, I chose dangerous. We used Jasco to take off the paint. I can’t emphasize how strong the stuff is. Careful it eats right through nitrile gloves and pretty much anything else it touches. More than once I had to rub baking soda on my hands to stop the acid.
Be careful! You are warned.

The fork paint came off much easier than the frame. The frame took a ton of elbow grease with the wire brush to get loose.

I used wire brushes on the drill to complete the job. Doing it all by hand would have been impossible. It took hours to get every bit of rust and paint off. Wearing eye protection, a respirator, and protective clothing made it a hot, sweaty job, but better safe than sorry.

Kinda neat to see the welds/brazes.

Clean. Having the bike stand was invaluable during the cleaning process.

I made a paint rig from coat hangers and bungie cords. About as simple as it gets.

I used a collapsible shed as a paint booth. Here’s PJ putting on a coat of primer paint. I went with the Rustoleum white to help prevent rust in the future.

Primered.
Over the summer, we both got busy and the primered frame lingered in the garage for several months.

PJ wanted black & orange, the high school colors. So I went for a look with orange on the top, seat, and down tubes. I masked off for orange paint and built another quick hanger.

Painted orange.

I love this look, but PJ wanted black & orange.

I masked off the orange and sprayed on a couple coats of black.
Painting complete.

Decals applied for a retro appropriate look. I got the decals from VeloCals. I recommend them.
Lastly, I rehung the bike and applied three coats of clear coat for more protection.

PJ with his finished frame.
I had the fork headset pressed and put in a bottom bracket adapter to allow the use of standard cranks.
Yes, the bike isn’t finished. That’s up to PJ. His turn to step up and finish the job. I helped with the worst parts, but he can handle the rest and will continue to learn, which is the point of this whole effort.
I asked him for pictures when it’s done and will update here when I get them.

Recently, my friend Xeni completed her cancer treatment. I gave her a medal for that hard work.
She wrote about it on Boing Boing.
Many people asked how they could do the same thing. To be honest, it was super simple.
I went to Crown Awards, a site for all kinds of trophies and medals. I was amazed at the wide range of options.
You simply choose what ever medal you feel appropriate, click away and you enter what ever inscription you want. You can even choose whatever ribbon you want. Very straight forward. The cost was under $20. Takes less than 5 minutes.
When it arrives, the inscription plate is separate and you apply it to the medal. The medal comes with a small case. For Xeni, I wrapped the box and gave it to my friends Sean and Tara, who see her regularly.
If you know someone that deserves a medal, there’s no reason not to give them one. Giving respect and happiness to people is one of the best things you can do.

It’s been eleven years since the attack on September 11th.
Like many things in life it seems both like yesterday and a very long time ago.
I am happy to see the rebuilding in New York and the movement forward in healing these great wounds. The spirit of Americans to overcome adversity is unmatched and proven time and time again. I am always optimistic that we and our children will solve the problems that come our way, making the entire world a better place.
What concerns me is the continued rise of intolerance.
Intolerance, taken to an extreme, is what caused the attacks in the first place.
Seeing intolerance rise in America, is disheartening.
America, we are a better country than this.
We all love our country, our families, and want a bright future for our children.
We are all on the same side, trying to make the most out of life and liberty with as much happiness as possible.
We are all in this great experiment together and need to start treating each other better, assuming best intentions rather than malice.

With Apple’s announcement of the new Mac Book Pro, the interwebs had to find something to fret about and it appears that repair and upgradability is the new hobby horse for pundits to ride.
Kyle Wiens of ifixit wrote a good opinion story on the new Mac Book Pro.
I can’t disagree with what he wrote, it’s completely accurate. But he’s completely wrong that it’s a problem.
ZDNet, MSNBC, and CNET have all jumped on the FUD bandwagon with the story.
Choo, choo, all aboard the Pundit Express to PageHitsVille!
Thanks to a lucky combination of good brain wiring, an electrical engineer father, and an understanding and patient wife, I do a lot of repair and fixing around the home. I’ve repaired everything from our house wiring, dish washers, dryers, ovens, lamps, clocks, to the assorted home electronics of friends and family. I build my desktop computer from scratch. I like fixing things. But it’s a skill set that’s in decline.
The decline is not due to some evil plan by manufacturers, it’s due to the public desire for better products to appear regularly. The desire to buy good, low price, and reliable products that work out of the box is the driver for seeing the lack of ‘fixability’ in the new laptop line. And it’s not a bad thing.
Back in the 70s, there were TV commercials for self repair of your television set. You picked up a set of stickers at the testing unit at the supermarket, went home, opened your TV, pulled out all the tubes using stickers to match sockets and vacuum tubes, took all the tubes to the tester, plugged them in until you found the bad one(s), and bought the replacement. Take everything home, replug all the tubes, and hope the problem went away.

Sounds a little crazy right? Driving around town with vacuum tubes and finding replacement parts at your local supermarket? It sounds quaint and fun, but trust me the whole process sucked. Such a thing is unthinkable these days.
Today’s television experience is undeniably wonderful in comparison. No color drift, no warm up, no fine tuning, no horizontal and vertical lock, no buzzing, or any of the other symptoms commonly found with tube TVs. Today’s TVs are also now nearly impossible for the average person to repair due to modern manufacturing techniques from surface mount soldering to sealed assemblies. Today’s TVs are also better in every, single way than those from 20 years ago.
Most other technologies follow the same trajectories. I’m old enough that my first car had a carburetor and distribution cap, both of which had to be manually calibrated and was a huge pain in the ass. It took experience and skill to set them up properly. Today’s cars have electronic fuel injection and ignition controlled by a computer in the car. It’s exceedingly hard to tweak these things in the average car today. There is a sub-culture of ‘tuner car’ enthusiasts that rip out the standard car computer, replace it, and hack their performance to their heart’s content.

But 99.999% of automobile owners will never consider such a thing. For the vast majority of people, cars have never been more reliable and easier to drive.
In both cases what we have today works better, is cheaper, and is far less of a headache to own than similar items in the past. And this is a VERY GOOD THING.
To meet the demands of today’s consumer, modern manufacturing basically requires the very measures that the punditry is railing against. Fastening optimization, robotic soldering, minimization of variation, exacting tolerances, and made to order componentry are required to delivery great products.
To ask that every piece of modern electronics is designed to allow the tiny fraction of hackers to upgrade is the height of hubris, unreasonable, and a huge imposition on everyone else that has no desire to ever crack the case. All that ‘upgradability’ ends up making the product cost more and be more susceptible to failure. Catering to the fringe is not the way to make good products. Making the best product you can for a low price is the way to make good products, even if it means eliminating upgradability and home repair.
Hackers, hot rodders, and makers will always find a way to do what they want, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of everyone else that simply wants a good, reliable product.
For internet pundits to prattle on about non-upgradability as a serious issue is the height of disinformation. Anyone that NEEDS more than 768 GIGABYTES of storage in a laptop is a huge exception case. Anyone that wants to replace their LCD panel at home is simply a masochist.
So settle down interwebs, relax, and enjoy the amazing time we live in that such products are available.

When I ride my bike solo, I like to listen to podcasts and music in my right ear. I leave my left ear open to hear the other sounds around me. You can try telling me this is a bad idea or illegal, but you’re wrong. It rocks.
I run the earbud cable down inside my jersey, and in the past cut a small hole inside the rear pocket to pass the plug through to plug into my phone, which I keep in a jersey pocket.
I’ve wanted a better way to make the hole and experimented a bit with grommets to see what works. Here’s how I hacked my newest jersey.

You can pick up a grommet kit at a fabric store like JoAnn’s. It’s not that expensive, under $10. Make sure you get the kit that includes the mini anvil and setter.

I place the grommet in my right rear jersey pocket. Since I’m right handed, it’s the easiest pocket to reach into and pull the cord through.

When you are sure the setup is in the place you want, inside the pocket and only through one layer of cloth, you whack it with a hammer to set the grommet. You need to hit hard since you are bending metal. I used a nice, heavy framing hammer.

Pull out the setter and the anvil and you should have the grommet in place. You might have to trim an excess fabric.

I placed the smooth side of the grommet inside the jersey so it doesn’t catch against my base layer or my skin.

Here’s the grommet with the gigantic plug feed through. Your plug will probably be smaller, but I’m using the One Good Earbud which for some reason uses the giant plug.

I’ve been brewing beer on occasion for over 20 years, starting when I was in college and learn such a thing was possible in my Science of Beverages class in my senior year.
Always lurking out beyond the homebrew scene was the idea of making spirits. More complicated than making beer or wine and requiring the use of a still, it seemed out of reach. Being officially illegal didn’t help either. But the idea lingered on in the back of my mind.
Recently, I stumbled upon a device called an Easystill. Basically, it was a water distillation unit that could be used to distill alcohol as well. As Darth Vader would say, “All too easy…”
The idea of distillation is simple. Alcohol boils at a temperature less than water, so if you get temperature above 78 °C but below 100 °C, the alcohol becomes vapor, leaving the water behind. A still captures the vapor, cools it enough to turn it back to liquid, allowing you to capture it.
The EasyStill does all that in a tabletop device that you can store in the closet or garage when you are finished. Obviously, I had to order one.
I read up a lot at homedistiller.org and reddit/r/firewater while I waited for delivery.

I started with making a simple wash. Moonshine people call it a wash, beer brewers call it a wort, but it’s basically the same thing. I used 5 pounds of sugar, 2.5 pounds of cracked rye, and 2.5 pounds of malted barley. Traditional whiskey is made with sugar and corn, but I was hoping to get some rye flavors.

I cooked the wash at 155 °F for about ninety minutes. I probably should have used some sort of calculator to determine the optimal time and temperature to convert the most starch to sugar, but I’m not taking this too seriously. The wash was super sweet when I finished.

I strained out the grain from the wash and let it cool to around 95 °F and pitched 3 packages of champagne yeast into the fermenter. Ideally, I should have used a distiller’s yeast with a higher alcohol tolerance, but the local shop didn’t have any. Champagne yeast was the next best thing for allowing maximum alcohol conversion before the yeast died.

Put the fermenter top on, fill the airlock, and cross my fingers that the fermentation starts. So far this is exactly like the process for brewing beer.

After about four days, the fermented stopped and I cracked the lid. Now was the moment of truth. The alcohol percentage was probably under 10% at this point. I didn’t have a hydrometer, so I couldn’t take an accurate reading.

I put 4 liters of wash into the fermenter and turned the EasyStill on. It had come with a long tube that I filled with activated charcoal. I couldn’t figure out how they intended this to work, so I made do with this Rube Goldberg set-up.

The first things that evaporate are the nasty things like methanol and other distillates that you shouldn’t drink. The recommendation is to discard the first 50 mL that comes out, but I played it safe and tossed out double that, 100 mL, the so-called foreshot.
I then tasted what was dripping out, and sure enough it was alcohol. Success.

I started capturing in a larger container. From turning on the still to first drops took about 45-60 minutes, and then ran around 2 hours under there was more water than alcohol coming out.

I did three runs of the wash and gathered up each into an old apple juice bottle, appropriately marked.
In total, I had around 3.5 liters of booze. I didn’t have an alcoholmeter, so I didn’t have an accurate reading, but it was probably 15-20% alcohol. The taste was smooth, but lacked any flavor characteristic of a whiskey or rye.
The guys are my local poker game seemed to enjoy it.

I wanted a strong liquor, so I ran the first pass through the still one more time. I ended up with 750 mL of final product.
At this point it tasted like a neutral spirit, like grain alcohol, without a lot of flavor, but smooth and not harsh. Enough to warm your insides, but not so strong to taste harsh.

I had acquired an alcoholmeter by this point and found that the moonshine was 75 proof, meaning 37.5% alcohol, just a little bit less than store bought whiskey.
The real test was to see if people liked to drink it. I took it to a friend’s BBQ and everyone sampled it. And they liked it! Some people drank multiple shots.
Obviously, there is a huge amount to learn about making whiskey that I haven’t touched on from more complex recipes to maximizing the “hearts” (best part of the distillation) to aging with wood. Nevertheless, I had a good time and found that you can make your own moonshine without a big investment or large amount of space.
So as long as you are willing to break federal laws against home distillation, give it a try.