They’re a scarf, a hat, a personal cooling device, a neck protector in hot sun. They’re a washcloth, a towel, a cleaning rag. You can wear one by itself, or under another hat.

I used to think they were not cool. Something only a hick farmer would wear. (No farmers aren’t hicks, or not cool, either. That’s just the stereotype.) So I never had any.

But this year our robotics team used them as a fashion accessory to help make our team stand out and issued us each two, one red one and one blue one, to be used to show which alliance our team was currently on. If that doesn’t mean a thing to you, that’s okay, just know that I ended up with two of them after the competitions were over.

I started carrying one with me on my bike this summer. I perspire a lot and it’s been a hot, muggy summer so far. Having it handy to wipe the sweat out of my eyes has been indispensable. Recently, on a ride, my bandana got so soaked with sweat that I decided to rinse it out in the restroom at a park we stopped in. Not only did it feel great to wipe my face with the cool cloth, when I was done and had rinsed it again, I put it around my neck. Instant air-conditioning! The more I rode, the more it cooled me!

I’ve tried sweat bands before, but they are only so effective. Once they get soaked, rinsing them leaves them yukky and they loose their elasticity. Don’t rinse them out and after a while they are disgusting. Bandanas are much better than a terry sweat band. And you don’t need to buy wrist bands either. Just wrap a bandana twice around your arm and tie. Voi-la!

They’ve been so handy, I think I’ll pick up some more. I just hope someone doesn’t think I’m in a gang or something. What color should I get so that no one thinks I’m a Crip or a Blood?

Q.: When a pickup truck cuts in front of you and stops dead in the road to make a right turn into a driveway, and you are traveling downhill at about 30mph on a bike, what is your proper response?

A.: Pass the pickup truck on the right and hope he sees you and doesn’t drive over you as he turns.
B.: Pass him on the left, and hope there isn’t any traffic in that lane that will make you a meat pancake.
C.: Crash into the rear end of the truck to let him know you don’t appreciate his cutting you off.
D.: Squeeze your brakes for all you’re worth, while yelling at the top of you lungs: “NO! You @$$#Ø13 Don’t stop here!”

Fortunately, when this happened to me, I chose D. and the driver actually heard me and rolled forward enough that I stopped before becoming choice C.

As I rode by him, he said “Why didn’t you just go around me?” I said “Why didn’t you just wait behind me?”

I shouldn’t expect the driver to appreciate the nuances of riding a recumbent trike, or even a bicycle for that matter, but I don’t believe this was an accident. I believe he deliberately cut me off. The pickup made a right turn while staying fully to the left in his lane leaving no way around him except on either the right, or into the left lane, both dangerous and ill-advised choices. He came to a full stop to turn into a driveway, not slow and turn, but sit there with his turn signal on waiting to see what happened. Then the fact that he was aware of me enough to hear me and to pull forward when it looked like I couldn’t stop in time really makes it look deliberate, rather than just typical clueless driving.

The only other explanation I can think of would be that he really thought that the right thing to do in this circumstance would be to leave room on the right for me and wait for me to go by before making the right turn. But how do I know he even saw me? Bikes get run over all the time by right-turning cars and we are taught to avoid that situation, as I did.

Just in case you are reading this and are wondering what the right thing to have done was, the answer is, as it always is, treat the bike as if it was any other vehicle. This is what the law specifies. The driver should have stayed behind me in the lane, even if it means slowing down, just as if I was a slow-moving car.

I wasn’t going to sweat it, but soon after the incident, my steering failed on the trike. I had apparently pushed or pulled so hard on the handlebars that I broke two bolts clean off. Only one was left holding the bars and that was so loose that I could no longer guide the bike.

I got off onto the sidewalk and took things apart to see what happened. I do carry tools with me on the bike. But I had no spare bolts! Not even something I could have fudged into one more hole to make a wobbly steering possible.

So I put it all back together, except for the two bolt heads that I threw into my bag with the tools, and went off in search of a place to wait and maybe buy a drink. A short walk back the way I came ran out of sidewalks quickly and I wasn’t going to drag the trike along the side of the road in traffic. So I turned around and headed the other way. It was downhill at least. I didn’t have to go far to come to a gas station with a C-store and a Subway in it.

Another thing I usually carry is a cell-phone. Now you know why. Even if I found a hardware store open, and could buy a bolt or two, I didn’t have a way to get the broken pieces out while on the road. It was a piece of cake at home with the right tools and a power drill! But my only option left was to admit defeat and call home hoping someone could come give me a ride. Fortunately, my wife answered my plea for help and she and my daughter came to my rescue.

Ed and Bob at Chestnut Ridge Park

The broken handlebars

And the bolts that once held them together

What’s up with your commercials? You don’t get to punch someone for a Tiguan. And it’s called Punch Bug, not Punch Dub.

What’s with the “dub” business anyway? Dub is a form of music, based on Reggae.

Look, it’s a childish game that we’ve all played, but your marketing department doesn’t get to change the rules to suit your ad campaign. It’s a pop culture thing, and manipulating it to suit your sales ought to be a big flop.

Leave it to Wikipedia to have the whole story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_buggy

And what’s up with the name Tiguan. Tiger and Iguana? Oh yeah, that’s the image I want my car to suggest…

I’ve been using Windows 7 for a while now on several computers and have to admit, I’m pretty happy with it, despite the fact that, even with all the hype, it’s really what Vista should have been, maybe after a service pack.

You must have seen the annoying commercials like the one above, where people seem to think that Microsoft actually listened to them and took their advice on some little nitpicky thing. Well, Microsoft, here’s My Idea (TM).

Windows Vista and 7 have a pretty good Media Center built into most of the higher versions. I have been using it on a PC connected to my Flatscreen TV in my living room. I have a tuner card in it and I can use it to record TV or watch a DVD. It’s pretty nice with Netflix or Hulu too.

The other PCs that have Windows 7 on them have this capability too, but since they don’t have a tuner card, they’re missing out on the live TV part. But an X-Box 360 on the home network can connect to the computer with the tuner in it, watch TV and even control the channel selection! Pretty nice if you have the X-Box. But, can you do that from another computer? No.

I’d really like to be able to sit in front of my computer in my office/studio/radio room and tune in to TV. I watch video off the internet that way all the time. Heck, I have two monitors and a laptop there most of the time, why not put one to use that way sometimes?

But that function seems to be missing. How hard could it be to add that, if they could put it into an X-Box game console? The media center stuff is all there, all it needs is some kind of client to talk to the PC with the tuner. I just don’t get how they could miss that simple application.

My TV in the living room sits slaved to a DirecTV DVR box most of the time. The tuner card in the PC is mostly unused right now. I’m usually the only one who flips over to it to watch something off the internet, or one of the Canadian TV channels that DirecTV doesn’t provide. The local channels are usually better quality there too, but most of the time who cares if Idol is in HD or not…

So, Microsoft, I’m a PC and not long ago, I had an idea: put the same remote viewing functionality that the X-Box has into Windows 7. Thanks, no commercial is necessary.

Here’s why I call shenanigans and call this snakeoil:

First, it makes no sense. Unless they are not telling us something, or in other words are misrepresenting the device, the power just isn’t out there to do what they claim. Charging a battery, means putting power in. POWER. Measured in watts. Feel the charger on most battery-operated devices. It gets warm. It’s doing a lot of work, putting a lot of power into the batteries. It’s just not there in thin air. If it was, we’d all be getting cooked like food in your microwave, which incidentally, works in the same range of frequencies.

They choose wi-fi as their source of power. Why? How do they restrict the power going into it out of thin air to just that coming from wi-fi? You can’t. Cordless phones, microwave ovens, wireless security cameras, dozens of other things all use the same frequencies. Does this use them all? If it does, why not just say so? If it doesn’t, why be so selective? Isn’t my cordless phone’s power good enough? My microwave certainly produces more power… They’re not telling us something here and just using the term wi-fi as a buzz word. Most people don’t really understand how wi-fi works, so it’s kind of magical. They capitalize on that.

And why use microwave spectrum at all? Certainly, there is a huge amount of electromagnetic energy around us all the time. Why not harness the power of all those AM, FM and TV transmitters? What about leakage from our 60Hz power system? All those are potentially much larger sources of energy than wi-fi hotspots.

But the real alarm bell is the use of the RCA name. Most people don’t realize RCA (Broadcating, RCA Victor, etc.) ceased to exist in the late 80′s. The name is held by Thompson SA, a French company and licensed to various people. RCA Records is really part of Sony, for example. This is just some little start-up buying credibility by licensing the RCA name. I’m not buying it any more than I’m buying a RCA TV anymore.

Supporting links:

Engadget

Oh Gizmo!

Boing-boing

Popsci.com

RCA in Wikipedia