Oldest Living Blogger's update on bikes & computers & stuff
By Ray on September 24, 2005 - 9:05pm
Got the old bike back yesterday afternoon, and it's running
like a charm. They solved the no-start problem, gave it new
spark plugs, and fresh seals & oil in the forks. Now it handles
more predictably in those corners, and gets out of them quick.
I enjoy getting work done at Burnaby Kawasaki, because they
always do a fine job, and treat me like I belong there.
I often feel like I do, because I've never bought a motorcycle
from anyone else since my first ride in 1980. So the folks at
our Kawasaki dealership and I go back a long time. In fact,
Bryan, the owner, and his then-partner, taught me how to ride
that first little 440 in the back alley behind their first
shop near the corner of Broadway & Kingsway one evening just
at closing time. I had one lesson, and I've been out there
playing in the traffic ever since. I've learned a lot since then,
mostly by the well-known trial & error method. Road-rash has
a habit of teaching you things you'd never learn in books.
Things like not trying to take a corner signed at 45 Km/hr
while going into it at 60 MPH. And avoiding little old ladies
in old Datsuns turning left across your path right in front
of you. I've never quite understood how a driver can fail to
see a blinding halogen headlight staring them in the face and
not realize something's coming at them.
Found another neat little program on the web today, on the
MajorGeeks page. It's a graphics program from Japan, with
which you can draw & paint and make all sorts of neat pictures.
But a word of caution: their translations of the explanations
for the additional help and plug-ins files leaves a bit to
be desired. You'll be safer noting the actual file-names for
those, rather than the english descriptions. I downloaded
what I thought was a "help" file, and it turned out to be
a set of filters for a PhotoShop application's plug-in.
The proper help file's name is pixhlp_e.exe, not the one they
listed. But it promises to be a good program, and it is very
popular in Japan. There's also a little demo program for it
which shows you some of the things it can do. The program's
name is "Pixia".
Another word of caution for anyone like me running Windows
98 Second Edition (the whole three of you!)- if you've got
the "Unofficial Windows 98 Second Edition Service Pack" and
have found its so-called companion program, by a different
programmer, claiming to include all the stuff that the other
didn't, don't believe it. When I tried downloading & installing
it, I couldn't even get it to install without it bringing up
error messages about other files on here which I know are OK.
So I terminated the install, and deleted it smartly, before
my good files got messed up. The moral being that you have to
be very careful installing those great-sounding freebies,
because you do so entirely at your own risk. But if you're
careful (and lucky) you can get some good stuff sometimes.
That "unofficial 98SE service pack" is a real winner, and
fixed up several annoying problems on here for me. I'm saving
it in case I need to use it over again sometime. It's almost
as good as having an original Windows CD.
