Feb 27
2008

I fell asleep on the lounge again last night which is starting to become a habit for me. I was awoken around 4am by my UPS beeping at me from the other side of the room.

At this time I noticed that the front curtains on the house were flashing like someone was flicking their headlights on and off at the front of my house so I peeked through the curtains and was suprised to see a HUGE shower of sparks coming from the powerpole out the front! It was making a crackle boom bang crackle kind of noise with an impressive shower of white/blue sparks about once per second.

Fearing a fallen power line and the fact it was 4am and raining I didn’t end up going outside but I switched off all my appliances at the wall and then watched it out the window for a few minutes until it stopped and I went to bed. I’m about to leave for work and I guess I’ll have a look up at the powerline and see if I can work out was making the lines short out. My verandah has an overhang that prevented me from seeing directly what was happening, I could just see the power wires leading up to it and a shower of sparks falling.



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Trackback  •  Posted in Environment, Technology  


Feb 26
2008

After remarking to a colleague earlier in the day at how great my VTR1000 was running with 108,000km on the clock my luck turned south for the second time in four months.

At the end of last year the big end bearing let go in my VR6 forcing my hand to sell it and then the VTR had a flat rear tyre on the highway.

And on last friday  the 22nd of Feb 2008 my timing chain snapped a few streets from home smacking my valves into the pistons. Early estimates from the local bike shop was “between $1000 and $4000″ depending on how extensive the damage is.

I feel like the owner of a horse who has broken it’s leg and I have to make the difficult decision of whether to put down my beloved (but old and worn) steed of 8 years and buy another motorcycle or to repair it in the knowledge that something  else could likely go wrong over the following months. The uncomfortable fact is it’s probably time to let go.

To be honest the timing chain was the last thing I expected to break. Suspecting the chain I had it replaced around 30,000km ago and I would have thought it would be good for another 50,000km or so. I was only doing about 1500rpm putting down the local streets to my house, and given it redlines at 9500rpm that’s taking it pretty easy.



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Trackback  •  Posted in Rant, motorcycle  


Feb 26
2008

492km for 42L. I didn’t even think my fuel tank was that big????

8.54L/100km.



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Trackback  •  Posted in Car