Jake Khuon's Casual Ponderings and Pontifications

Pod Based Airline Travel

All of this controversy over body-scanner machines, TSA gropings, terrorists, etc... is continuing to motivate me to formalise my concept of Pod Based Airline Travel that's been floating around my mind for the past ten or so years.

Testing new webserver

This is just a test. Move along now.

Testing new webserver

This is just a test. Move along now.

Time Travel Spam

From dcmott@arcor.de  Wed Aug  6 23:40:25 2003
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From: "" <dcmott@arcor.de>
To: <khuon@neebu.net>
Subject: Dimensional warp Generator Needed fduywqscqhwry
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 03 05:39:40 GMT
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This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--_3F0__5D2..
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hello,

I'm a time traveler stuck here in 2003. Upon arriving here my dimensional
warp generator stopped working. I trusted a company here by the name of LLC
Lasers to repair my Generation 3 52 4350A watch unit, and they fled on me. I
am going to need a new DWG unit, prefereably the rechargeable AMD wrist
watch model with the GRC79 induction motor, four I80200 warp stabilizers,
512GB of SRAM and the menu driven GUI with front panel XID display.

I will take whatever model you have in stock, as long as its received
certification for being safe on carbon based life forms.

In terms of payment:
I dont have any Galactic Credits left. Payment can be made in platinum gold
or 2003 currency upon safe delivery of unit.

INSTRUCTIONS MUST BE FOLLOWED EXACTLY:
Please transport unit in either a brown paper bag or box to below
coordinates on Thursday August 7th at (exactly 4:00pm) Eastern Standard Time
on th e dot. A few minutes prior will be ok, but it cannot be after. If you
miss this timeframe please email me. I will not be there prior to 4:45pm
EST, so do not transport before then.

Item is to be delivered at (out of service basketball court) located at:
Latitude N 42.47935 & Longitude W 071.17355 and the Elevation is 119 feet.
 
WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TRANSPORT ITEM BY REGULAR MEANS OF
TELEPORTATION. THEY ARE MONITORING AND WILL REDIRECT THE SIGNAL!! I 
DO NOT CARE HOW YOU HAVE TO GET IT HERE, JUST DO IT IN A WAY THAT NO 
SPYING EYES WILL POSSIBLY BE ABLE TO REDIRECT THE TRANSFERENCE. IT 
IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU BE ABLE TO MONITOR THE TRANSFER. HOW 
ARE YOU GOING TO SEND IT SO THAT THEY CANNOT REDIRECT IT??? If in 
doubt do not transport actual unit until your method of transfer can be 
confirmed as a success. You just might need to send a intergalactic courier to 
deliver item safely to me. If so be VERY careful at how they approach me IN MY 
WHITE CAR.


After unit has been delivered please email me at:
info@federalfundingprogram.com with payment instructions. Do not reply
directly back to this email.

Thank You


economyvs vj 
fpb
--_3F0__5D2..--

Nishiki Fandom

Homemade Bicycle Repair Stand

For a long time, I had wanted a repair stand in order to work on my bikes. These stands are meant to support the bike by one of their tubes in an elevated position so you can freely turn the wheels and easily access parts. However, many high quality stands are expensive. They range anywhere between $150 to $250. After reading a thread in BikeForums that was started by a guy who did the same thing, I also decided to build my own using parts from Home Depot. My goal was to keep it all under $50... preferably closer to $30. I knew I wasn't going to end up with something that has all the features of a quality Park Tool stand or anything but I at least hoped to build a solid and functional workstand.

Short Ride

My intent today was to take my roadbike to Marymoor Park where the Grouphealth Velodrome is located and play on the track... maybe ride around the Sammamish River Trail back and forth a couple of times too. However, after getting the bike loaded up onto the Jeep, I went to turn the key only to be greeted by one crank of the engine before the instrument panel went dark. Because I'm rarely driving it and some of the onboard systems continually draw power, I usually keep the trickle charger hooked up to the battery. I guess I forgot the last time I drove it. I didn't have time to wait for the battery to even get enough of a charge to start.

So instead of doing the same tour of my plateau I did yesterday (no thanks) or going down the hill and fighting the traffic coming off the major expressways during rush hour, I instead opted to leave the roadbike on the hitch rack and hop on the MTB. I of course selected my favourite local trail (right outside my doorstep) and did a quick 5-mile loop. I decided to stick to mainly the open areas and hardpack because a thunderstorm rolled through last night and there were portions that were still a little too wet to ride on responsibly. It turned into a fast but short mainly XC ride. Oh... I also did a couple of poseur loops around my block to cool down.

My ride was only around a half-hour but it was it nice little workout.

Average speed differences between MUPs/bikepaths and road

I've been sort of monitoring this phenomenon for a while now and I notice a 2-3 MPH drop when I'm on a path as compared to when I'm on the road. This seems odd because many of the paths around here are fairly flat and the roads have some hills. Disregarding the 15MPH speed limit and even on very sparsely populated days my average speed on a bikepath is somewhere around 18MPH whereas on the road it's somewhere between 20 and 22 or even higher if the roads are flat. And yes, there's the issue of peds and slow cyclists on paths but even on those days where I encounter absolutely no one, my average seems lower. I wonder if it has to do with the surface grade differences. Maybe paths use a softer surface thus there's more rolling resistance.

Testing blogging from my phone

I have decided to download a blogging client for my phone. This is a test to see if it actually works.

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This post was made with a trial version of BlogPlanet, a photo blog client for mobile phones. For more information visit www.blogplanet.net.

Reformatting Lyrics

Following in the tradition of this guy's LiveJournal entry (and the resulting flurry of comments), who reformatted a song into list format, I decided to follow along by creating my own reformatted lyrics of Queen's Bicycle Race.