End of 95.5 WBRU (?)

I was away this week for work. Tonight I was driving home down 495 in Massachusetts. As I got close to RI I switched off the ipod and turned on the radio... as I hit the #1 preset in my car I heard MC Hammer..something you would *never* hear on WBRU. WTF!?!? I messed with the knob... still MC Hammer. ARG. Then... some annoying announcer came on the air and said "You're listening to Buddy FM!", and then played... *gulp*... Duran Duran. I mashed off the radio in shock.

This is incomprehensible...inconceivable... that WBRU has gone off the air?!?!?!

BRU was(?) the last privately owned "Alt" Rock station in Providence. Mostly student run, owned by Brown University it was the station I grew up listening to, going to their summer concert series blah blah blah. It was one of the things I loved about living in RI.. being able to listen to BRU whenever... They had been around for 36 years and always were playing bands you've never heard before.

I did some searching and found this article... Maybe it's for real?

Please tell me this is a very sick April Fool's Joke?!?

(btw, wbru.com is down too)

Spring Day

The company I work for has this thing called Spring Day. The first day that it gets above 60 degrees by 10 am, we get a half day vacation. So today is SPRING DAY!!! YEAH!!! WOO-HOO!!! You suckers are stuck in work for the rest of the day. (I shouldn't talk too much because you all probably get more vacation time than I do and probably leave earlier than me everyday....I'm the real sucker.)

random stuff

Well the past week or so has been wicked busy trying to get back up to speed after taking time off the weekend before last. I haven't had a chance to post. I have a couple random things to talk about... in no order or reason what so ever:

On April 8th the local mtbiking organization
is having their trail work day in Arcadia. The pandapas gang will be there in force fixing one of the bridges, then after I'm sure we'll be riding then consuming some fine beverages and IPC. Stop over and say hello.

I've been reading up on more practical bikes lately. I've thought
xtracycles were pretty cool for a while, and now this product makes it about a million times more useful for getting groceries, beer, and building materials home from the store. I took the time to read all of his blog. If you like the though of a small business guy with a good idea starting a company, check it out.

While I was looking for a funny picture with bikes and bikinis to post in response to BBW, I found this site. I have no idea if their music is any good, but their calendar looks fanstastic. :)

Did anyone else fall off their couch laughing over family guy doing the
milkshake song on sunday??? I kept rewinding to watch it over and over. Mrs 40 was laughing so hard I had to stop.

Cya.

40oz's Future

This is a picture of Mr. and Mrs. 40 oz in about 40 years. All that is missing is the rack for the I-bucket and the remote in 40oz's hand.

snoe.down

Hey! This weekend the Pandapas folks went to Snoe.Down up in Lake Placid, NY.

Greased Up Deaf Guy (GUDG), his brother Heffe, Crayons Taste Like Purple (CTLP) and FortyOz(40) met up at Greased Up's house. He and Mrs. Greased Up fed us all with Indian Pickle Chicken aka IPC, grilled homefries and homebrewed IPA. OMG.. It was so tasty.

Then we iron'd on the transfers to make our I.T.M.F.A t-shirts.



We all drank more homebrew and then shaved GUDG's head into a Mr T. mohawk. This is it about halfway through:



Friday morning we loaded up the truck with the snowboard gear and 4 cases of those yummy homebrew IPA 22s. CTLP has been perfecting his Lynndie pose, and likes to show it off every chance he gets:



We stopped at a diner in attleboro for a huge breakfast. Here is Heffe's 17lb Dutch Oven'd omelet(hehehehe). CTLP couldn't resist another Lynndie.



Then we roadtripped up to Lake Placid at a pretty relaxed pace... at least in the Heffe mobile. I'm not sure you'll agree but I took a picture of this bridge 'cause I thought it looked pretty cool.



We got to the hotel a little early, room wasn't ready but whatever, it was happy hour, St Patrick's Day... so we did what anyone would do... Start Drinking Guiness!

The day flew by after that, many more homebrews and whatnot. Later we headed to the venue where we were all searched more thoroughly than the last time I flew anywhere. Wow. Unpleasant.

Wow.. a very industrious f'r got Friday night's sets up already on Live Archive.

We were lucky to get some freakin' amazing seats, about 1/2way back in the venue, two or three rows up from the floor. Close enough to jump down and wander through the crowd but far enough up to see the stage nicely. This pict is a bit blurry, I took it with my phone.. doesn't like the dark so much. You get the idea though.



After the show we all crashed.

Saturday morning we slept in a bit later, ate a *huge* breakfast at the Black Bear, then went snowboarding at Whiteface.



The snow wasn't so great.. in fact the mtn was mostly ice. I had a couple good runs but dodging ice got old for me pretty quickly. I took a few runs before hitting the lodge to see the bands playing on the two stages. I caught the end of Dread Clampitt's set. Pretty cool.

I took one more run with the other guys, then we all headed back to the car to get warmed up for moe's set on outdoor stage. Hmmmm the IPA rocked. We gave some to the Canadians that were parked next to us eh. They compared it favorably to the IPA from Trinity... now that's a pretty good complement to GUDG and his brother who brewed it.

Holy crap... we all were impressed that moe played a set outside at the mountain Saturday afternoon... It was about 15-20F and wicked windy. We were all freezing, the guys were up there with no gloves playing like madmen. We had a pretty cool spot up on a snowbank on the left of the stage. Check out the set yourself Here.





After the mountain we swarmed the hot tub back at the hotel then recharged the batteries for a couple hours before dinner. We hit up a steakhouse on the way to the show. A bit more expensive than what we expected but whatever... it was damn yummy.

Saturday night the show was great. IMO not quite as good seats, closer to the stage but a bit higher up.



After the show we had a pretty uneventful night, then another huge breakfast again at the Black Bear, then a long drive home back to Attleboro.

Great trip.

And then there were three...

I had been thinking about answering the age-old question, "how many bikes does a person need?" My idea was to collect bikes until the wife started to ask questions. I know- there are plenty of people out there with bike collections in the double digits- even HIGH double digits, so I was not going for a record or anything, just trying to ascertain the wife's limitations.

The answer: 6.

Well- more like 5, I guess. I had loaned my old Cadex a little while back and decided that I did not really need to get it back (seeing as the frame is now twisted- it was an interesting design, though- no welds, bonded aluminum frame), so depends on whether you want to count that one or not...

After hitting the ceiling on bike ownership I decided to cull the pack- after all I can't ride more than one at a time, and found that really I was riding two of the an inordinate amount of the time.

So, Bald Boy Wonder bought my GT road bike that I had set up for triathalons (though his intention is to turn it back to a road bike, I believe):



Then, last weekend, I sold the GT iDrive Team bike to another friend. I loved this bike, as it climbed well for a full suspension bike. The problem was- I bought this purportedly to get the wife interested in mountain biking. Knowing that there was probably the same chance of her wanting to municycle as mountain bike, I hedged my bets and got a medium sized frame (she would fit a small, I would fit a large) so that I could ride it should her interest wane. Well, her interest waned on the first climb and it was too small for me to truly get comfortable on, so I decided to let it go:



The other bikes are safe for now. Specialized Team Festina for the road; and a GT Xizang hardtail and rigid steel Bianchi Single Speed for offroad. Hmmm... But what if two people come over looking to ride and neither has a bike? Maybe I should look into getting a replacement dual suspension mtn bike...

ITMFA

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Not much new. All the snow has melted here, and yesterday the temp hit 60F. Nice.
I put the singlespeed rear wheel back on my bike, and went for a ride yesterday and today. Warm enough for shorts... Whooo Hoooo!

We did all that stuff around the house you do on the first nice day of the spring... Washed the car and vacuumed out all the sand. Washed windows blah blah blah nothing too exciting.

This week I'll be working like crazy again, I took friday off to go to Snoe.Down with the Greased Up Deaf Guy, his brother, and Crayons Taste Like Purple. Probably my last snowboarding weekend of the winter.

I'm going to make some ITMFA t-shirts if I get the time this week. I read about it in this week's Phoenix, looked up the site, and agree. No time now to list all the idiotic, unlawful, and evil things W has done; A backdoor deal to sell control of 6 major US ports to a foreign government pushed me over the edge. Join the call to ITMFA.

Hmm. dinner's ready... cya.

iPod Crackin

My ipod died last weekend...(read about my trauma here)

Instead of replacing it I decided to fix this one. I've been wondering about the internal workings of the ubiquitous little white machines for a long time so I decided to perform my own surgery. The hardrive crashed and since I had to open the case anyway I decided to upgrade the battery while I was in there.

I ordered a new hardrive here, for 100 bucks, and a battery here for 50. The hard drive was the same size as the original, the battery 2x as big as the standard 4G battery. Supposedly I could have upgraded to a 30gig hd in the same form factor, but I couldn't find any one who had upgraded battery and their hardrive, so I chose longer runtime.

Here is the case opened, the hd is on the right, and the battery the lower left:



After replacing the battery and hard drive you have to plug the ipod into your computer to run the Updater software to format the hd, and load the software.

Here it is afterwards... Whoooo Hooooo!.



Now it will only take about 12 hours to load 17 gigs of music back on the ipod... USB 1.1 sucks. I've gotta get a real computer... one with USB 2.0.

By the way.. after seeing the guts of the ipod I'm amazed it survived my abuse as long as it had (mtbiking, snowboarding, fishing, road trips, many spilled beers etc). Maybe the aftermarket case(s) I use helped it last as long as it did.. but that's a post for another time.....

Penguin Dive Exclusive

You saw it here first.......an exclusive backstage pass to the Northwestern Connecticut Special Olympics Penguin Dive. Seen here, Crayons Taste Like Purple and Crayon's Brother are caught preparing for the icy plunge. For those of you less familiar with our "Penguin Plunging All-Stars", Crayons is seen on the left and Crayon's Brother is on the right. Not to be confused. Asked to comment on their formal attire for the event, the Crayons Posse declared,

"It only comes but once a year - it's for a good cause, and the Special Olympics are near and dear to our family. We wanted to show the people that supported us how much we appreciate their contributions and loving support."

Reporting from Western Whoseyerdicken, Special Reporter Greased Up Deaf Guy with your Backstage Pass. Stay tuned next week for an exclusive update on the mating and migration habits of the eastern yellow-backed llama.

They'll drop again soon enough

Wouldn't it figure.

It has been a really mild winter this year. So mild that it is the first time people who live on islands in the Great Lakes region can remember the lakes being free of ice mid winter...

It is with that in mind that I agreed to join my brother in a penguin plunge to raise money for the Special Olympics. I mean really- how bad could it be?

Oh. That bad. The week before the event, the weather turned from mid-40's to... below zero...

I should have figured that this was not such a good idea when I looked out and saw people in survival suits and a rescue diver IN THE WATER and ready to pull people out.

Okay- so it really was not a big deal at all. I have jumped in icy water plenty of times before, and knowing it was for a good cause (and aided by my good friend, Mr. Brandy) made it even easier. So- without further ado- evidence of me searching out the deep water:

And yes, I was wearing a speedo underneath the regular swim suit- but learned that my parents and sister-in-law were there with cameras and decided against going for the 'red cap and a speedo' maneuver. No one needs pictures of me kicking the Manberry Pudding Pack (or if you prefer: Daytona Dong Sarong). I mean no one- so turn 'em over...