Ruby Friday

Daniel and I have been deep in the details this week. We’ve bounced through apache, java, javascript, tomcat, linux, tapestry, eclipe, netbeans, ruby, and rails.

The latter pair are proving to be very interesting, I wonder if ruby is the basic of the early 21st century (see http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra)? It is delight to be freed from the necessities of sturctured programming (strong type casting, clear proceedural operation) but I’m a long way from being convinced that any code will survive to production. How bad are the memory leaks?

 

It happened…

Marilee dropped the new bike!  Thankfully she wasn’t seriously injured.  We had just stopped at the yacht club to see if Art and Nancy were still in town, they’d alaready headed home.  On the way back home Marilee locked the front brakes up on a left turn from a stop light (we guess the acceleration surprised her).  SHe must have let them go a little late and high-sided onto the street and slid into the curbing with the bike on top of her leg.  Her ankle is sprained and she’s brusied from her shoulder down to the chest.  Thankfully is was a low speed accident so no major injuries. 

She’s anxoius to heal,  get the bike back in shape (some new body panels) and find out what happened.  Me? I’m concerned that we need to make sure a bad habit doesn’t get formed.  I’m pushing for some one on one drill time with a experienced MSF instructor.  I think it’s a bit early in her development as a motorcyclist for the Experienced Rider Course but maybe not…

 

Baby’s leaking Oil… I thought that was a bygone era!

I had a good scare Sunday night. I took the fairings off the St4s to install an airhorn (the horn on the bike is anemic at best) and found oil all over the lower sections and coating the oil cooler. I figured the cooler has sprung a leak. closer inspection revealed the rocker cover (just above the oil cooler) wasn’t tightened very well (probably at the 12K serivce). That seems to explain the hot oil smell from the Fort Bragg run with the Sightseers last month.

 

Motorcyclist Protective Hen

Those of you on the St2 list know by now Gary Egan (Hobatz), riding god, king of the iron butt and general kindly curmudgeon of all things motorcycling has suffered a nasty crash as a result of a mundane error plus equipment failure… He left his sidestand down on the multistrada and turned left. The interlock on the sidestand was clearly not working at the time.
Marilee’s new (to her) Multistrada (Spiny Norman, see http://www.ducati.info/archives/2003/08/the_marmite_machine.html#more and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063929/quotes) has been lowered 1.5″ and so the sidestand protudes enough to make it a very scary proposition to leave it down. I’ve got protective hen syndrome every morning making sure the sidestand has been retracted.
It’s been a bad year for motorcyclists – I just want us to stay out of the trend.