Sounds like a band name. Actually, it’s a set of heated pants, jacket liner, and gloves for the bike. And man, do these things work! Rode in 38 degree weather Saturday morning and only needed to put it on low… why did I wait so long before buying these? Have also ordered a Givi E52 top case and mounting plate, but they’re apparently being shipped from Nevada and haven’t arrived yet.

In other news, that firewall seemed to fix itself… and I have no idea how or why. I hate it when that happens, as it could happen again at any time and I still don’t know why. And I created a Facebook account… God knows why, but I have heard from folks since doing it that I haven’t heard from since childhood; so maybe there’s something to it.

Sooo… first week at the new job. I knew I’d have a job ahead of me setting up a training program pretty much from scratch; but no idea how much of one. It seems the former Sheriff of this county- we’ll just call him “G”- was basically coasting until retirement and never pushed for the budget the agency required nor allowed his deputies to do… anything. There hasn’t been a ticket written in the county in two years. The only training the deputies were allowed was the minimum required by the state. He was so anxious to move into the new jail before he retired that none of the jailers received any training on the facility. And, apparently, no one knows where anything is or how it operates.

Well, he retired in 2008, and his successor- my new boss at this new agency; call him “R”- has inherited a mess. A severe lack of equipment, uniforms, vehicles, and training; but at least the deputies seem eager to improve the office. When I started Monday, my training room in the new jail was bare except for a small wooden desk with a penis carved into the top of it. Spent the week getting desks, tables, chairs, office supplies, organizing and preparing; but it’s finally starting to come together- except for two things: The thermostat in my office doesn’t seem to do anything. Cold enough to hang meat in there. I suspect that the thermostat was turned off from a central location to save energy, since the room was vacant for so long. Heating and air guy is coming Monday to look at it.

Second thing is that since no one really knows how the new equipment in the jail works, no one knows how to service the phones, network, or camera system when they fail. Friday the hardware firewall that controls a VPN tunnel between the jail and the courthouse- and, therefore, internet access (not needed for many but essential for my job), the LiveScan fingerprinting system, and criminal record access went tits up and no one knew how it worked. The original contractor, when contacted, was helpful and friendly but wasn’t contracted to service it. The company that manufactured the firewall has a product support service that includes hardware replacement, but the old sheriff had let it expire to save money. On top of that, the model of firewall we have will be discontinued and unsupported after October of this year.

*sigh* So I spent the day, after spending $74 of my own money to re-instate the service contract through October, on the phone with tech support. Must be a problem with the DSL connection, they say; so now talk to Windstream. Everything’s fine on our end, they say; so back to WatchGuard. Finally get WatchGuard to send a new firewall that will be here Monday; so I guess I’ll be setting that up after the weekend and keeping my fingers crossed that it works.

So, if you have any experience with a WatchGuard Firebox X5 Edge, I may have a job for you.

2009 will certainly be a year of change!

If you’ve read earlier posts, you’ll recall that the candidate I supported for Sheriff of the county I live in (and the office I work for) lost the primary election. Wondering every four years who your boss will be is hard enough; but in Georgia, an “at will” state, unless your agency has civil service protections in place, you serve “at the pleasure of the Sheriff”. In other words, if he chooses, he can fire you for no reason at all.

You can probably already see where this is going. New Sheriff; not the guy I supported but I’m willing to work with him. I’ve got a good job, doing what I like, and an excellent pay check. Except, that on New Year’s Eve after swearing in the employees, he pulled me aside and informed me that he was bringing someone else in from the outside to take my position on February 1st and would not have a position for me after that date.

Well, yippy skippy. That’s the strangest way to be told to hit the door. I’m not the only one, either; but it’s a fairly common occurrence around Sheriff’s Offices after every election. There’s a long history, in Georgia at least, of outgoing Sheriffs destroying records and spending every last penny in the budget and incoming Sheriffs firing anyone who might be a political threat or whose position is needed to provide a job for a crony or supporter. Which brings us to the question: who do you want your law enforcement to be beholden to? Theoretically, an elected Sheriff is beholden to the voting citizens of his jurisdiction; but the same thing could be said of any elected official, and tell me with a straight face that they have the interests of the citizens in mind and not pandering to the loudest voice in order to get a vote. On the other hand, an appointed official, such as a police chief, is beholden to the mayor or city commission; who, also, are theoretically beholden to the voters but more often than not will be the real rulers of that agency. Six to one, half a dozen to another; both have some serious drawbacks.

In any case, I’m not waiting until February 1st; my resignation is effective January 23 and I start at a new agency the following Monday. I didn’t have a whole lot of time for job seeking; while my resume is impressive, in this economy, agencies are either in a hiring freeze or only have entry-level positions available. I’m taking a pretty heft pay cut, but it beats standing in the unemployment line.

It’s been a really crappy couple of months. First the election- covered in the last post- then the usual drama around the station house, and then I find my mom has stopped taking her medication and had a paranoid episode in which she called 911 and got five cops respond to the house. She’s spent the last week in a behavioral health center and has returned home this weekend. What causes the most stress is that dad is convinced he can handle this on his won’t tell the kids what’s going on, so quite a bit of it came as a surprise to me. Not surprisingly, when I went to my doctor to renew my migraine medication, my blood pressure was pretty high. Doesn’t help that I have the eating habits of Michael Moore.

Found this, which appeals to my inner geek- don’t have much tolerance for graffiti “artists”, but this is a non-destructive graffiti that’s pretty damn cool.
Laser graffiti!

Farkles- the little bits and pieces you add on to a bike. Or so the term seems to be around the sport-touring community, I’ve found. Started with the electrical support for other bits and pieces- TomTom Rider 2 GPS, iPod. Ran wires from the battery to a Bluesea fusebox under the tail:

Only iPod power/audio adapter I could find ended in a cigarette lighter plug, so I needed a corresponding socket. It was also pretty short, ending at the edge of the tank. But, socket and plug fit (barely) under the tank skirt:

With the cover on the Bluesea fusebox… fits under the seat with a hair’s width to spare:

Mounts for the GPS and iPod should be here Monday; then it’s frame sliders, Datel voltmeter, and (pricey) Starcomm unit to tie all the audio together and feed it to the helmet.

I’ve got plenty of room in the garage for it now, as my roommate just sold his Suzuki SV1000. Well, he never rode it, anyway.

We’ll just ignore the date of my last post.

In the early ’90s, when the bikes I rode were all used ’80s Universal Japanese Motorcycles, Yamaha was producing a “sport touring” bike called the FJ1200. Sport tourers are comfortable, long distance touring bikes that still retain the power and handling of their sportier cousins. While plenty of people racked up amazing mileage on long trips on relatively small displacement UJMs in the 80s, long trips were definitely a chore. The Honda Silverwing and later Goldwing reached bigger, plusher sizes in the ’90s and became the long-distance touring motorcycle standard; but, while I’ve seen folks ride the hell out of those things, they’re far from sporty. Sport bikes and supersport bikes took off in the 90s and got faster and faster- and more and more uncomfortable for long trips. Towards the end of the 90s, Harley Davidson re-invented itself and the cruiser era took off.

But, for me, the slick plastic enclosed crotch rockets left my back sore; and the underwhelming cruisers left me unimpressed. There were sport touring bikes, sure- the ST, Concours, Pacific Coast *shudder*; but they were still more touring than sport and out of my price range. The Bandit was the closest I could come to the old reliable UJM of the 80s… but I kept my eye on the FJ (now FJR) as my “ultimate” bike.

Sooo… last Monday I traded in the Bandit on a 2008 FJR1300. I had to wait until Thursday for it to be delivered; and, of course, it decided to rain for the next three days. I’ve still managed to put 100 miles on it in that time. But what I’ve found so far is that it’s just as sporty as the Bandit was while being far more comfortable and suited to long rides. The adjustable windscreen keeps me a lot warmer (and drier) than the Bandit’s, I’ve got saddlebags now, the seat is far more comfortable…

I think I’ll keep it.

And thus, we bid adieu to another year. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

I guess I can’t complain. ’07 wasn’t that bad for me. There were highly annoying boss issues, co-workers getting arrested issues, still being single at age 37 issues… but I’ve paid off my car and am in better financial shape than I’ve been for many a year. Still relatively healthy, if not in the best physical shape; better if I can quit the 11 year tobacco habit this year. All in all, not too bad. We got the best reception we’ve ever had for the annual banquet video this year… although I think that’s more a function of our audience having low expectations than anything else.

When I went home for Christmas, Dad gave each of the kids a copy of his will. Nothing sinister; my brother-in-law’s brother died recently and didn’t leave a will behind, and it’s caused quite a bit of trouble for their family. I think Dad’s trying to avoid that. One thing that did surprise me, though, was his request in the will to have his ashes scattered on the top of Blood Mountain. Not that this is such an unusual request, but… Blood Mountain has always been one of my favorite places; someplace that I’ve been drawn to since the first time I climbed it. What I didn’t know is that it meant that much to my Dad, as well.

Time to let 2008 wet his nappies.

Did I say two months down there? I meant three months, apparently. Don’t worry, I’ve been busy, not lazy.

Well, OK, mostly lazy. But there has been a lot going on. For one, I underestimated the amount of equity I had in the house… by quite a bit. I swallowed hard and got an equity line of credit. Foolish, in this day of defaulted sub-prime loans and collapsing mortgage industry? Not really. I avoided the traps that led to a lot of foreclosures. With the equity line, I’ve paid off all of my debt, including the car, except for the house itself; and owe less than the house is worth. My monthly payments are far less than they were before the debt consolidation, so there’s more paycheck left for savings. Why didn’t I think of this earlier?

Of course, I still have watch my spending habits, and avoid using credit for anything other than emergencies. Hard to do with a toy fetish like mine. Speaking of toys… with all the demands from work for video footage-banquet video, recruitment video- I’ve replaced the old Sony DV camcorder with a Sony V1U high-def camera. Far more camera than my current skill level merits, but I’m working on it. As a side effect, I can’t watch a movie these days without studying the framing, camera movements, color correction choices, etc. Don’t know if it’ll rub off on my production values, but it can’t hurt- at least until I get too cliche’d.

Wow, two months since an update. Ahem.

The garden has been cleaned, tilled, re-bordered, and planted. I even got the borders around the house done halfway. Ian and his girlfriend have split, meaning the bills and mortgage have gone up, now that they’re split two ways rather than three. (However, the latest appraisal says we’re sitting on about $40k in equity!) I finally have a replacement assistant at work, and he seems like he’ll work out fine. We finished teaching one week of Senior Deputy classes with another week coming up and have somewhat of a lull, although I need to get Radar Instructor materials put together; and the Fall Citizen’s Academy and Banquet video are still hanging over my head. Just have to split some stuff off to the other guy and get busy.

I was in Forsyth at Digital Photography class when the I35W bridge collapsed in Minnesota. I predicted while watching it that there would be a slew of “Are our bridges safe?!?” stories and indignant outrage all over the media in the days that followed, and I was right. Not that this was an astonishing prediction. And I knew I would get annoyed by it.

Why annoyed? Because the fact that a huge percentage of bridges in the US are in bad shape is not news. We’ve known that for at least twenty years. I can remember news stories and articles from the 80’s discussing the need for bridge repairs and upgrades across the country and the enormous costs involved. The fact that one collapsed is not incredible, it’s inevitable. There have been major bridge collapses in this decade, in fact. But the trend lately is towards 24 hour coverage (repeating ad nauseum the same tiny snippets of information) and breathless “experts” rendering their opinions, which the general public gobbles up as pre-digested fact so they can avoid having to decide what they think about it. There’ll be some tsk-ing, some self-serving aggrandizing and grandstanding by politicians, and the issue will slowly fade away; or quickly, if some other news-worthy tragedy appears on the horizon. And everyone will forget what we’ve known for a long, long time- the nation’s bridges are in poor shape.