In hearing peoples' responses to the post about my new motorcycle, I feel the need to make a clarifying post to show that this new machine is so much more than a little toy. Here's a picture of my 227 pound self sitting atop the 788 pound monster.

Yes, it's big.
You can't tell from the picture, but I have an ear-to-ear grin (like I always do when I'm riding it.)

FYI - I just realized that the aLinks plugin (version 1.0rc1) is broken after upgrading to Wordpress 2.6. The public side of the blog works fine, but all of the admin/posting pages are dog slow. Disabling the plugin lets everything work fine.
I can't even get to the plugin site to see if they have an updated version (due to its slowness, I'm betting they don't yet.)

I just stumbled across this. It's a search box inside one of the search results. I'm not sure who's privileged enough to get these, but it's an interesting usability idea.

For years, I've been telling my wife, "I should get a motorcycle." Every time, her response has been, "I think you should." But I never could quite justify it. Current gas prices have changed my mind, I was able to finally convince myself it was worthwhile.
In May, I took the MSF Basic Rider Course. It was worth every penny and I highly recommend it (unless for some reason I don't like you.)
Monday, I drove this beauty home.

I'm still in the break-in phase, so I haven't really pushed her too hard, but I am sure having fun riding her around. I now take a long detour (8+ miles) on my way into my office. In reality, I'm taking the long way anywhere. I'm itching to get past the first 500 miles of break-in, so I can see how she does on the freeway.
I've also found a great online community of people that ride KLR650s.

We just got back from a 5 day trip to Oregon. We went over to Depoe Bay, up to Portland, down to Salem for a BYU soccer game, back to Portland and then back home. The girls did a great job dealing with all the time in the car.
Trip stats:
2167.5 miles
40 hours, 20 min in-car time
54.1 MPH average speed
23.8 MPG average
24% of oil life used

...you've used a flexy straw as a ciphon to drain your ramen noodles.

For those of you that run AVG Free (free for personal use) there is a major update available. For those of you that don't run any antivirus software on your computer - SHAME ON YOU!
This new version includes anti-spyware, so if you have AVG's anti-spyware (Ewido) installed, you'll have to uninstall it first (go to Control Panel, then Add/Remove Programs.)
Here are a few bonuses of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition:

• available free of charge to home users for the life of the product
• virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product
• doesn't slow your system down (like other anti-virus systems I've seen)
• integrated spyware protection
• LinkScanner feature that gives users safety rankings for their Google, Yahoo, and MSN searches.

So, go and download it!
The install only takes a few minutes so don't put it off, do it now!

Having two young daughters, I'm destined to be surrounded by princess paraphernalia for at least the next few years. One of their favorite noisy toys is a little piano that plays a few songs from Disney's princess movies. The one they like best is "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast. I'm inclined to get songs stuck in my head quite easily but fortunately I'm more familiar with "See my vest" from the Simpsons and that's the song that gets stuck in my head when they're playing with that piano.

This is just a reminder for all of you out there that at midnight on February 17, 2009, all full-power television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting in analog and switch to 100% digital broadcasting.

From the site:
"Congress created the TV Converter Box Coupon Program for households wishing to keep using their analog TV sets after February 17, 2009. The Program allows U.S. households to obtain up to two coupons, each worth $40, that can be applied toward the cost of eligible converter boxes."

We received our coupons a couple of months ago, but I finally got around to using them today. I was able to order a couple of converter boxes from digitalstar.com for a total cost (including shipping) of less than $25 (our tax dollars at work.)

Coupons are limited, so request yours today!
"There are 22.25 million coupons available to all U.S. households. Once those coupons have been used, there are an additional 11.25 million coupons available only to households that solely receive their TV broadcasts over-the-air using an antenna. Households with TVs connected to cable, satellite or other pay TV service are not eligible for this second batch of coupons. Consumers can apply for coupons until March 31, 2009, or until the funds are exhausted."

Amazon just announced two new High-CPU instance types for EC2. Here's a quick comparison of what you can now get compared to the previous offering:
2x Small ($0.20/hr)
RAM - 3.4GB
CPU - 2 Compute Units*
DISK - 320GB
High-CPU Medium ($0.20/hr)
RAM - 1.7GB
CPU - 5 Compute Units*
DISK - 350GB

Extra Large ($0.80/hr)
RAM - 15GB
CPU - 8 Compute Units*
DISK - 1690GB
High-CPU Extra Large ($0.80/hr)
RAM - 7GB
CPU - 20 Compute Units*
DISK - 1690GB

So it really looks like a tradeoff between CPU and RAM. If you run more CPU intensive processes, then these new instance types may save you money.

*One EC2 Compute Unit (ECU) provides the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor.