Planning for Nationals 2007

The Cascade Vaulters entries are in and my plans for Nationals are coming together.

Nationals this year are in Denver on August 9-12 at the National Western complex.

I have only one vaulter going to nationals this year. She will be part of composite trot team with the Warm Beach Vaulters and will be using their horses.

It looks like I will again be hauling horses to Denver with Tammy Denault, now with the Mtn. Wind Vaulters. I should be in the Denver area from about August 5th until August 13. For the return trip, Tammy will be flying back east from Denver to be with her family, and I will be driving her truck trailer and horse back to Kettle Falls, WA.


We'll also be traveling with and hauling a horse, Joey[?], for the Harbor View vaulters who are an off shoot of Tammy's former club, the Emerald City Vaulters.

Jeep Noir ready to go!

It took all day Wednesday and big chunks of Thursday and Friday, but I got almost everything switched / moved from the Geek Jeep over to the Jeep Noir.

• The passenger side rear door window has been switched with the one from the Geek Jeep.
  
• The stock speakers and some of the stock wiring for them got switched from the Geek Jeep as the after market speakers in the Jeep Noir didn't really fit. They interfered with the window cranks.
• I had to repair the stock wiring harness for the radio as the previous owner had wired his directly. For the Geek Jeep I had an adapter harness that plugged into the stock harness.
  
• All my "jeep stuff" has been moved from the Geek Jeep into the same places in the Jeep Noir, so I still know where to find everything and can pull almost any needed item out of my jeep on short notice.
  
• The tune-up is scheduled for next Friday (7/13).
• Windshield will probably get done sometime in the next few weeks, but it isn't an urgent fix.
• Still need to get the hitch package ordered, as moving the old one isn't easy. (It would require fishing nuts out from deep inside box beams of the Geek Jeep frame and threading them into the Jeep Noir frame without the aid of the special springs that initially came with the kit.)
  
• The breaks will likely need get done some time between Ben's wedding (in September) and Thanksgiving.
  

I've been driving the Jeep Noir around this weekend and I think it is now ready for the hard core daily use that the
Geek Jeep provided so well.

I still need to clean-up the Geek Jeep and get it posted on Craig's list or otherwise find it a good home.

Tom's JeepNoir

I signed paperwork this evening and received the key to my "Jeep Noir". It's has a black exterior with a small red sport stripe. The interior is the same gray as the Geek Jeep!

Tom's JeepNoir
Originally uploaded by TSayles

The "Jeep Noir" passed pre-purchase inspections this afternoon in good shape. [Much better then the Geek Jeep did in 1999.] The only serious hits were:

• Needs a tune-up
  (routine maintenance item)
  
• Breaks will need to be done later this year
  (routine maintenance item)
• The windshield is cracked
  ($244, including mobile instillation service while I'm at work, just had this done on the Geek Jeep about a month ago. )
  
• The passenger side rear door window is broken out
  (this can easily be replaced with the one from the Geek Jeep)
  
• And when the cooling system was pressure tested the heater valve exploded!
  (A common failure point on early '90 jeeps. I've gone through about six of them, and have a spare on hand most of the time.)

The inspection and the replacement of the heater valve cost under $80.

There are a number of cosmetic / comfort items that I will transfer from the Geek Jeep, including:

• Radio w/ custom cut cluster bezel
• Gray floor mats (new from Costco only a few weeks ago)
  
• Driver's seat, and possibly front passenger seat if they don't match,
  (Twenty / forty minute job. The Driver's seat in the Geek Jeep is in better shape.)
  
• Driver and front passenger door panels, including stock stereo speakers,
  (Jeep Noir has after-market speakers that don't really fit.)
  
• Passenger side sun visor
  (JeepNoir's is broken.)
• Driver and front passenger window handles
  (Jeep Noir has back and I think the gray looks better.)

An unexpected bonus is a Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio receiver module that should plug into the Kenwood Sirius Satellite ready radio that's currently in the Geek Jeep. So at some point I'll have to get and install the proper cable.

I think I found a replacemnet Jeep

I went and looked at a 1993 Cherokee Sport this afternoon. It has the main items I'm looking for and is in fairly good condition (for it's age) and has less miles on it then mine did when I bought it eight years ago. It does have a few items (seat, right rear passenger window, thermostat, shifter knob) that will need to get fixed sooner rather then later. But it is not only a year newer then the Geek Jeep, it is also one model up the product line (Sport vs. STD). Which means that it already has things like the nicer instrument cluster, the rear defroster and rear wiper without having the extras the will tend to break over the long haul, (power windows, power door locks, etc.). The only thing it doesn't have that I had wanted was a hitch. So I will just end up adding one like I did to the Geek Jeep in 1999.

I gave the current owner, James, enough of a deposit that he won't sell it to someone else over the weekend. The plan is that he will bring it out to my mechanic in Fall City on Monday Afternoon.

WANTED: early '90s Cherokee, Explorer or 6cyl midsize pickup

My '92 Cherokee with 359k miles had the #2 cylinder die and I need to find a replacement.

Things I'm looking for include:

* 6 cylinder engine (~4.0 liter)
* manual transmission
* working AC
* hitch / towing package (2" receiver preferred)
* about 200k or less miles (maybe a little more if all else is good)
* no major work urgently need
* no minor work needed to get too and from work

Willing to pay about $1400, depending on condition and features. (Maybe a little more for the perfect replacement.)

Ad selling my '92 Cherokee coming soon!

Geek Jeep Terminally Ill

I'm saddened to report that my venerable white '92 Jeep Cherokee, once upon a time known as "The Geek Jeep", is on it's last few miles. Late last week it began running a little rough. It did better over the weekend after having the fluids (including oil) topped off on Friday. But by Monday morning it was missing consistently on at least one cylinder. My initial thought was that this was likely due to the fact that it was over due for a tune up (new plugs, cap, rotor, etc.). I got it home Monday evening on the remaining five cylinder, and preformed the tune-up. However the number 2 spark plug was covered in oil and it was still missing when I got everything back together. So based on recommendations from a few friends I took it in to the Model Garage in Fall City, where they did a compression test, etc. and diagnosed the problem as the piston, piston rings or both, with an estimated repair cost starting at about $1500. For that price I could just about replace it.

It now has about 359k miles, 183k of which I've put on it in the eight years I have owned it. It started out it's life in California with an unknown owner. My friend Alan Duda acquired it in New Mexico around '97 when he moved with it to the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. I bought it from him for $1400 in June 1999, had a new transmission put in, and drove it from DC through Chicago, Seattle, Oakland, San Jose, Las Vagas, Los Angles, Dallas, Venice (FL), Atlanta and back to DC before the end of that year. In early 2000 it made trip down to Venice FL pulling a large U-Haul trailer to and from Atlanta. In late 2000 when I moved from Maryland, the Jeep pulled my little cargo trailer to L.A., then in early 2001 north to the Seattle area. Since then it's been down to California several times. In 2003 I drove it to the Vaulting National Championships in Denver, where it developed a crack in the radiator, which I replaced before heading home. This year it got new rear breaks, new tires, a new windshield and just last week, new floor mats.



So I'm in the market for a new (used) vehicle. Either another early '90s Cherokee or a six cylinder small or mid-size pick-up. If you know someone who might have such a vehicle (in the Seattle area) and might be willing to part with it for under $2k, please do let me know. For more specifics see this post on my blog.

Virginia Tech massacre

Yesterday was a very sad day for Hokies everywhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre

Among those killed was Dr. Loganathan, whom I believe was one of my hydraulics professors.

I'm not sure but he might also have been one of the young Tech profs that worked with my grandfather on quantifying the transient effects of closing check valves (i.e. water hammer) using some of the early PC based data loggers and pressure transducers.

2006 Taxes

1040ez.
Start to finish, 30 minutes including 10 minutes deciding that trying to free e-file wasn't worth the effort.
Refund due: $14.45.

Liberated Music

Alyssa --

    A few weeks ago you said that you're are interested in listening to new music that might be suitable for vaulting.

    Below are a bunch of links to sources of legal music downloads.  A number of them are to organizations I am familiar with including:

• Creative Commons;
  
• the Association of Music Podcasting;
  
• Defective by Design
• FreeCulture.org
• Garageband.com
• MagnaTune
• myspace.com
  
• CDBaby; and
  
• the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
  

Most of the others are not.  In both cases be sure to use caution and common sense.

    Most of the artists on these sites should be independent of the RIAA record labels and look at the Internet as a way to publicize their works, promote their live performances and/or are simply making music because it is fun and they want to share it with the world. 

    The best opportunities of the future are in The Long Tail.

TTFN
    Tom Sayles
    Head Coach, Cascade Vaulters

---

Liberated Music
(Links to non-RIAA legal music download information)
from the Recording Industry vs The People blog


• AmieStreet.com
• Association of Music Podcasting (AMP)
• Beat Port
• BoycottRIAA.com "Non-RIAA" List
• CDBaby.com
• Creative Commons
• Defective by Design's List of DRM-Free Music Sites
• Dischord.com
• DJ Download
• dmusic
• Electronic Frontier Foundation List of "Artists Online"
• emusic.com
• Fading Ways Records
• Fake Science
• Fat Cat
• FreeCulture.org
• Garageband.com
• harveydanger.com
• iRate Radio
• Isabella Stewart Gardner Musuem
• Jamendo.com
• Janis Ian.com
• last.fm
• Lime Light Radio
• Live Music Archive
• live365.com free downloads
• MagnaTune
• Matador Records
• Merge Records
• Mundaze
• myspace.com
• Nettwerk Download Store
• R.evolution I.n P.rogress
• RIAARadar.com
• Slankard, Megan
• Stompy
• uncoolcentral.com
• Vision Metal Records
• warprecords.com
• WPRB.com

Google Snuffs Snuffy

My First Wikipedia Article -- WA SR-204

I wrote my first article for Wikipedia last weekend.

Washington State Route 204 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I had done some reformatting on the SR-203 article (using the SR-202 article as a guide), because I drive both SR-202 and SR-203 fairly often, and I noticed that there was no article for SR-204. From the work on SR-203, I knew where to find all the required info, so I wrote the article on SR-204. When I get some more time I hope to write the articles for SR-206 & 207 as well.

Working with highway data like this info makes me want to get back into traffic engineering, and perhaps I can use the Wikipedia work to move me in that direction.

I know enough about the kind of information that WsDot probably has in their databases to know that much of the information about the Washington State Routes could be written and updated by bots. Furthermore I might be interested in writing some of them.

Idea: Open Road Logger

I think it would be useful to have open and publicly available photo and/or video logs of various roads and highways. These logs could serve as source material for projects like the WikiProject U.S. Roads and even for highway and civic planners.

To be really useful and readily available the logs probably need to be tagged with some kind of open license, like a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. This way information from multiple logs and be combined to produce reports, plans, etc., without worrying about getting the rights to use the data, which is a common problem with mapping and GIS data today.

There are a couple of ways that these photo / video logs might be facilitated. The one option might be to write GPLed a Mono / .Net application to integrate photos and/or video with GPS data in real time (as it is collected) then post the resulting log to sites like Flickr, YouTube, Wikimedia Commons, Internet Archive, etc. Another option might be to develop a flash application that would capture images and GPS data and submit it to some kind of central repository.

Logs of major highways could be collected quite frequently if open minded truckers got involved. Minor highways and local roads would likely require efforts by local supporters and/or local governments and would probably get updated relatively infrequently.

At some point I hope to try some experiments with the same road for which I wrote the original Wikipedia article, WA SR-204. It is short at about 2.4 miles and not very far away from where I live. I'd need to get a new GPS as I still haven't replaced the one that was stolen from my Jeep a couple of years ago.


Anyone know anything about controlling cameras and/or GPS receivers through USB in Mono / .Net? Also anyone have references to XML schema for geotagging images and/or video?

Yet another example...

... of why the time is right for serious reform of the IP laws. 

Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version) - Samantha M. Shapiro - New York Times:

(usual annoying NYT free registration required.)

    It's no wonder that the RIAA companies are reporting declines in sales, they're treating their most important supporters as criminals.  If these DJs tell their fans to boycott the major labels, what would you expect the outcome would be.

End the nonsense, support the creative commons.

Why Web 2.0 Matters

This video shows a little of why web 2.0 matters. I didn't create this, I just found it and share it with you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Cousin in the news

Verity is one of my cousins. 

Out of Africa - The Bolton Common:

First YouTube Video

I posted my first YouTube video last night. It was amazingly simple. I had set up an account several months ago so that I could rate some videos, so after confirming my e-mail address (clicking a link in an e-mail message) I filled out four blanks on a web form and uploaded the raw video file from my camera. The result is this:

Spamming Google Maps

Slashdot | Spamming Google Maps:

With the increase in the availability of aerial and space photography, it seems that painted roof advertising might make a come back.

Snowy Sunset

Snowy Sunset
Originally uploaded by TSayles.

Wednesday's snow storm hit during vaulting practice. So we ended early, but it still took hours for some of us to get home.

After work Thursday I stopped by the barn and took a bunch of photos, which I've posted to my Flickr account.

Company develops virtual meal technology

I ran across this AP story and was wondering if it could be used with the digital picture frames that my mom and grandma got for Christmas.

Happy New Year

All said and done, 2006 was a relatively good year for me.

May your 2007 be the best that it can be.



Yes, I'm recycling photos.