Jay’s Life

This morning Alison delivered a 6lb 15oz baby girl. Mom, baby and Dad are doing well. Now they just have to pick a name.

Apparently Oracle is at the end of the rainbow.

My new bike bag means that today I was able to drive through at Timmys and get my begal. Joys!

So today 12:01 EST, Facebook let you pick a custom URL. I didn’t manage o grab Jason, I did mange to get Jason.McLeod. So you can check out my facebook at facebook.com/Jason.McLeod

It’s amazing just how much better a bike runs with a new battery and fresh spark plugs.  Especially when they are the right spark plugs. Starts up cold just as well as my car. Now it just needs to warm a wee bit.

Just an FYI to anyone buying a used bike, make sure you take a good look at the part numbers on the bike you’re buying.  Some people use the wrong ones, and will only cause you heartache in the future.

Picked up the new battery for my Bike today, and with the weather warmer than it has been since ‘74 I got to go for a ride. Staysea was kind enough to pickup some spark plugs as a surprise, when I mentioned that might be why it wasn’t starting earlier. No need for the plugs yet though, she started up with a deafening backfire that scared the crap out of the cat.

Rain tomorrow, maybe I’ll get to go out again Sunday.

I’ve been using an iPhone for a little over a year and a half now. This is after using a Palm device for more than a decade. I started with a Palm 1000 that I picked up at a Father’s Day sale (sorry Dad I kept it). Over those years I’d collected a LOT of useful information on various topics. My Palm had everything in it including Pocket Quicken for keeping my finances straight as I made my purchases. I’m still waiting for a iPhone version of Qucken, I’m talking to you Landware team.

So aside from not being able to track my finances, and as a result not using cash at all any more, the only other missed thing from my Palm was those memos. But today I learned how to get them on my phone, searchable, and synced with the web.

I used a site called Toodledo . They have the ability to import a CSV file for memos, which is good, because the Palm Desktop can export as a CSV file. Unless you’re a Mac user like me, then it’s a Tab&Return file and there is a lot of text editing that goes on to fix the format of the file. Couple their site with their iPhone application Notebook ($4.99) you can have all your notes back in your pocket. Just search for Toodledo in the App Store and you’ll find it.

A couple of tips if you are one of the unlucky ones like me who has to use the garbage Mac version of Palm Desktop. Go ahead and export the memos you want, but choose just the Title, Note and Category columns.

The open the file in excel, or another spread sheet program, and add an extra column between the fields. We’re doing that so when we re-save the file as a CSV we can strip out all the ” characters.

Do the following replacements:

Remove all the “
Replace all the ,,, with “,” (hence why we added the extra blank columns between the columns.)
Replace all the \n with “\n” (\n is a new line)
Replace all the ^ with a tab
Replace all the | with a new line.
Add a ” to the front of the first line and you should be 99% of the way there.

You can test import until you get only 3 columns imported and all should be good in the world.

No more lime green. The new color will be a combination if grays. I wish I knew how to fix the stucko that the birds trashed when they were flying around in there. I’ll have to research that and see what I can do.

I replaced my old 2006 MacBook with one of the newer model MacBooks on Friday. I have to say the new machined aluminum case is VERY nice, as is the new track pad and glass screen The new firmer palm rest is much nicer to type on, cleans easier than it’s previous counterpart and feels cooler too. This is my 4th Apple laptop, once every 2 years since 2002.

I’ll be selling my old MacBook on eBay since I don’t really have a use for it, and because it’s still a perfectly good laptop.

So, I fixed my bike last night. Pulled off the fuel cock, and learned that there was a tear in the fuel line in addition to the piece that wasn’t supposed to come off.

The first removal went perfectly fine, no fuel spillage or anything. Put the new part on, which has a much larger switch for changing the fuel settings between PRI-ON-RES. Unfortunately I overlooked the two washers that are required for the two bolts that hold on the fuel cock. So, it started to leak a bit.

I repeated my steps of siphoning out all the gas and running the bike on reserve till it died and tried removing the bolts again, which resulted in a considerable spill, hence the firemen reference in the title and their presence at my home. No flames, just needed some help cleaning up the fuel.

Found the washers I needed on the old part, removed the entire gas tank and installed it fresh. New fuel line too. Everything seems to be running quite well now. No leaking no added smell of gas other than what was already there from last night.

Bikes are fun.