StormRaven

It's an AWESOME ride! I love it! I absolutely LOVE it! She rides smooth, shifts smooth, rides like air, always stops straight (even on hard stops), and holds perfect balance for me at sub 5 mph speeds. I even took a chance and stuck WildKat on the back for a short hop around the extended block (surrounding 3 major highways). Aside from having to adjust for her extra weight at the stops, I couldn't feel her back there at all. The only hitch to a perfect first ride was when I pulled into the garage. The shoulder bolt let go on the kickstand and over she went. I guess she just got tired from the long ride and decided to take a horizontal nap. After getting her back on her feet, I put her up on the center stand and let her sleep for the rest of the night so she can be well rested for the first ride to work in the morning. And for her incredible smoothness, ease of speed, and impressive slow speed handling, I dub her SabreWing!

Wanted to take this rare opportunity of having a few minutes of free time to say thank you, DragonSlayer. I look forward to the hopefully many years of enjoyment that my new to me first 1st gen will offer. I do apologize that I was unable to meet you in person when Tricia met with you to discuss the bike, but I do look forward to meeting with you when we take the bike off your hands.

Hi all and ty. I unexpectedly learned @ 38 yrs old that I was preggers with the 4th kidlet in June @21 weeks. The csection yesterday went well, and I've had minimal discomfort and pain. I've been walking some today and doing really well @ walking. We more or less kept this one quiet because my last pregnancy had complications. I should be home sometime sunday if all goes well.

... and comparatively speaking feels fine after the C-section. The worst she feels is hungry. She's not even using the morphine pump that much. Nurses won't let her eat anything more than chicken broth and crackers yet...I'm hoping that I can sneak in a nice steak dinner for her tomorrow. And now, pics... A couple of which confirms that he is, in fact, a boy. http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v281/GAWildKat/JT%20pics/

The Caption: "Uh oh... wan outta piddies" The back story from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?": [Eddie is hanging on to a flagpole] Tweety: Oh, wook! Piddies. Eddie Valiant: Hi, Tweety. Tweety: This wittle piddy went to market. [lifts one of Eddie's fingers from the pole] Tweety: This wittle piddy stayed home. [lifts another one] Eddie Valiant: No. Tweety: This wittle piddy had roast beef... [lifts another one] Tweety: And this wittle piddy had... [Eddie falls] Tweety: Uh-oh, wan outta piddies. Or an earlier example from when "A tale of Two Kitties" (1942) [Catstello is hanging from a wire by one foot; Tweety is jumping on his toes] Catstello: Hey, cut it out! Cut it out, pigeon! Don't do that! Tweety: [pulls off one toe] This widdle piddy went to market... Catstello: Babbit! Tweety: [pulls off second toe] This widdle piddy tayed home... Catstello: Babbit! Tweety: [pulls off last toe] This widdle piddy had woast beef... Catstello: Babbit! [falls] Tweety: Well, whatdya know, I wan out of piddies.

Now Freebird, you can't give up the ghost just yet. Your son is in a major crisis and it is only through care and intervention that he can be shown back to the path of Open Computing. The best thing you can do right now is have him build a Gentoo Linux system from the ground up and let him see for himself the kind of stability that can be had from a system he built himself without the hassle of being locked into the media channels that only the company who manufactured the computer will allow. Also consider that your son may not have made the Apple choice of his own volition. Many schools and colleges now preach the Apple Blasphemy and brainwash the masses into the dichotomy that all computing must be spoon fed by your Corporate Overlords. Nay dear friends, we must all rise up, and build an open network that our ideas and creativity may truly flow without the boxed philosophy that so many companies feel that the masses must adhere to!

Thanks for all the Birthday Wishes, friends. It was a good one with the best meal I've had in years. WildKitty topped her previous best with this one.

There is one reason, and one reason alone that I disagree with you on this, and in a moment I will tell you why. I will say that the father could have done one better to REALLY make a lasting impression on his daughter beyond using a gun on the laptop. I speak from experience. You see, back when I was growing up, Nintendo was a big name in my life from late Elementary School and all the way through High School. In '88, when I was in 4th grade, I got the NES with The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. From there the library just grew and I wound up with the SNES and the Gameboy. Well, I can't say I was the best student, and when the grades slacked a bit too much my parents would routinely take all the game systems and accompanying literature and lock them away. This didn't really bother me as much as they thought it did since I knew that I was going to be getting it back and when they weren't able to watch me while I was home alone I was able to bypass all their locking systems, get to my games, pull them out, play them for a couple of hours and get my "fix." Well, one day in '93 my dad just got fed up to his boiling point over my grades and told me to "Grab that F***ing Piece of S*** Plastic Crap and throw it down the GD stairs Right now, and if you don't, I'm going to smash it and you are NEVER going to get another one!" Knowing my dad as I did, I did as I was demanded of me. He then took me down into the basement, grabbed the gameboy, put it on the work bench, handed me a sledgehammer and told me: "You are going to smash that thing to pieces and throw them in the trash by your own hands. If you don't, I will take every GD Game System, Cartridge, and Disk you own and burn it in a barrel out back while you watch and you will have none of it again while you live under my roof. If you do, you'll just be out of this one device permanently until you get a job and pay for a replacement yourself. In the mean time, I will be taking your other devices and putting them in a storage locker at work for 3 weeks. But this one...You've lost this one forever now." I did as I was told, and I have to say, that is the ONLY punishment that my parents ever did that left a lasting impression on me. Getting the belt hurt, but I don't ever remember the exact infraction that caused it. Getting my things taken away never did anything to hurt me, because I still had my own mind to entertain me, as well as comfort in the knowledge that I was getting it back at some point. No, being forced to destroy something that I prized above all else at that time, that was what left an impression that I've never forgotten to this day, and I don't think I ever will. In my opinion, this is more along the lines of what the father in this case should have done. Instead of letting his rage take over and blowing the laptop to Tech Heaven on his own, he should have given his daughter a sledge hammer and had her do it. There's something about the shock of destruction that leaves the impression. Just giving the laptop away to a less fortunate doesn't create the same snap against the entitlement mentality that so many kids these days really need. Giving away the laptop still gives a sense of reward to the child that their actions did someone else some good. There's too much of a way for the mind to put a positive spin on what is supposed to be a negative consequence and thus won't necessarily learn the proper lesson from the situation. With the "senseless" destruction it triggers the brain's reflex to try and figure out what the heck just happened here and thus, creates a long lasting impression.

The only visible discrepancy I can see between your screen shots and the tutorial screens from Hover: You didn't enable the SSL Encryption in screen 3 for both incoming and outgoing. Ports are correct, servers are correct, including the IMAP setting. Enable encryption and you should be good to go, provided you're entering the correct password.

...I'm all wet. I need some recommendations on rain gear. I've got a pair of Frogg Toggs, but they're too bulky and not heat resistant. They're great as far as keeping the rain and road mist off my shins, but the right leg has too much extra material that winds up resting on the exhaust. It's already got a hole in it behind the right knee, and it left a tarnish on my pipe (which I can fix.) I'm basically looking for rain gear that's not baggy. Even if it's something of a heat resistant rubber pant suit that's loose enough to be easy going over the top of my jeans and thermals. Btw, as GAWildKat just took the liberty of reminding me, I'm not on a Venture yet. I'm on a Suzuki Volusia 800, and the exhaust runs down the right side of the bike, just below my knee.

No matter how many times you format the disk, the data's still going to be there. All the formatting does is it deletes block pointers from the current formatting and re-writes them. Essentially, the pointers to the files are lost, but the data is always going to be there until it gets written over with new data. It's one reason I like the dd command in Linux. It's built into the Operating System itself and it can be used to make a perfect clone of a drive as well as set all blocks of data to 0, effectively erasing the drive completely. Using the command three times as follows: dd if=/dev/false of=/dev/{h,s}da will write "0" to each and every bit on the first hard drive, whether you have the old IDE hard disk (/dev/hda) or the new SATA hard disk (/dev/sda). likewise: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb will make a perfect clone of the data on the first SATA hard disk and place it in exactly the same location on the Second SATA hard disk. As long as the disk being written to is as big or bigger than the first disk, there won't be any issues. Using this I was able to take the 40GB drive that held my Windows 7 Operating System and Clone it onto a 500GB drive. After the clone, everything worked just like it did on the smaller drive; I just had to use the Disk Manager in Win7 to expand the partition to take up the rest of the drive. Just be warned that if you're going to use dd on a 500GB Drive It's going to be working for several hours. It took my Computer (2.1 GHz Dual Core with 2 GB RAM) about 7 hours to complete the data shred on the 500 GB Drive before I cloned the 40GB onto it. The TB drive I had to run the cleaner overnight. Now that all the tech talk is outta my system I'll leave y'all to your regularly scheduled thread.

Since Monty Beat me to the 4gigs of RAM, I would like the GPS Unit. I could definitely find a use for it. Thank you Greatly.

My best recommendation is if you can't get Windows7 to partition and format the drive, try using a server operating system (Linux) on a LiveCD. One of the easier ones to work with for people familiar with Windows is Linux Mint. Using the built in gparted program for doing a custom partition format is a bit advanced, but it's one of the better free tools that one can use. Also, with a LiveCD, you don't have to install the operating system to the hard disk. It can just run from the RAM-Disk. It won't run as well as if you instaled it to the HardDisk, but for just doing a partition/formatting, it should do the job. Disclaimer: I've not used the new version of Linux Mint's LiveCD so I don't know if the exact steps are the same as I remember. Edit after seeing Brian's post: He's got a point. If the motherboard isn't able to read large drives, you'll want to try his workaround. Fail in that, I hate to say it, but you might need an updated MoBo

It doesn't sound so much like a video card problem, on the surface. If you're just having trouble with Streaming video having hicups when it's playing, or not downloading fast enough, it sounds more like you're having a network bottleneck somewhere. 90% of the time the bottleneck is somewhere between your router and the ISP, it's not usually a connection between your system unit and the router. If you're on a heavily used cable trunk, you could have slowdown trying to watch movies while all the neighbors on the same trunk are trying to do the same thing(depending on Cable Company topology, you could have somewhere along the lines of upwards of 100-1000 households sharing the same trunk). Also, if you're trying to stream HD content, you're going to want to let the buffer fill up before trying to watch it, unless your ISP is providing you with a connection to your home that's greater than 10Mbps, even then it's a good idea to wait a minute or two before hitting play on a download, especially in Prime Time when everyone on the trunk is online. If your system is not having any trouble playing a local movie file, or a DVD, or even playing a 3D game that's only moderately intensive on graphics by modern standards (Oblivion or Dragon Age would be examples of games in this category) then the problem is most likely NOT your video card. Also, telltale signs that a video card is failing are screen flickers, random crashes to desktop or blue screen of death, or the screen just going blank in the middle of doing something (this doesn't include the monitor powersave feature being kicked on for excessive time without punching keys on the keyboard or fiddling with the mouse.) P.S. - If you're having to take out a loan to get a gaming rig that can play all the newest games on Ultra settings, you're doing it wrong. A very good gaming rig can be built for less than $1,000. The super expensive rigs with the $4,000+ just for the video cards are usually for doing High Resolution 3D modeling of the sort you'd find in developing a Pixar or Dreamworks production.

Yeah... I get IT quite often.... almost daily. I especially get IT when I mouth off to Kat one too many times. I wish the roommate would get IT more often to take the burden of getting IT so many times offa my shoulders some.

Who said anything about normal? From what I've seen here, nobody qualifies.. thus the weirdos are the "normal" people.

Doesn't being Psychologically nude lead to others being psychologically scarred?

Strange...? Not really the word I'd use. Totally emmer effin weird. I just wish to say right now that I know not a single one at that table. Especially not the incredibly handsome dude sitting in between the two redheads on the left-hand corner.

Wattage Smattage, when it comes to charging a device it's all about the volts. Too little and you're potentially weakening the battery (really bad on Ni-CADs, not so bad on the Lithium IONS found in cell phones). Too much and you're creating an explosive device. Mini-USB is regulated to a max of 5volts output. No matter how you slice it, the phone is not powered through that port, it only recharges its battery through that port, or charges the battery and allows for data pass through if it's connected to the computer. You really don't have to worry about wattage (voltage x amperage) unless you're actually powering an electronic device. Then you want to make sure that your power supply is putting out the exact voltage and at least as much amps or more than what the device is rated for. And for the record, I don't stay in Holiday Inns, but I am a RadioShack Sales Associate. We get "trained" on this stuff pretty regular. (More like brainwashed if ya ask me, especially in regards to wireless.)

I managed to get this photo of Tom sitting up in his hospital room. As you can plainly see, he's attained considerable improvement in his mobility and ability to sit upright. I do fear, however, that the mental damage caused by the local healthcare system may take a bit longer to heal...

Tricia here, on the way home now. I'll be at the hospital in the mornin to see what I can do. Most of the ICU staff knows me, and a few docs too. Sent from my VM670 using Tapatalk

Yep, we're holed up at the Seasons Inn, recovering. After looking at my odo I just realized that I put over 1000 miles on her just for the vogel event... Time for an oil change when i get home (4000 miles since the last change I did when I first got the 'zuki). I do have to give a huge thank you to Dragon(WokkaWokkaWokka)Rider for the most memorable weekend I've had in years! :rofl: I'm sorry to hear about your love letter from the state trouper, Eck. They're bad about speed trapping through Hiawassee this time of year. The locals say it's to keep those they affectionately call "Floridiots" within the bounds of georgia traffic law, but their methods will target anyone they think will either not have the balls or not have the time to fight them in court. What they do in Hiawassee borders on breaking the code in the O.C.G.A. against speed trapping, but they don't go far enough over that line to be able to do anything about it, legally.

Well there I was... Sitting in the pizza joint, sitting across the table from my lovely wife, GAWildKat, waiting on pizza to hit the table so we could start scarfing and some subject came up regarding the bike that Kat recommended that I put it up here. Rather than jotting the thing down as a note in my Smartphone for later, I figured on my infallible memory to carry me through yet again. Well, now I'm here, 2 and a half hours later...and my mind decides to fart on me. For the life of me, I can't remember what in the world it was...oh wait. I KNEW Stream of consciousness would save me. I'm wanting to talk about Visors. Specifically, do they make any aftermarket assembly to install a secondary Visor inside the helmet for providing sun protection? Sunglasses only work when I'm wearing contacts. The Clip-on type for my regular prescription glasses don't provide ample coverage inside the helmet (perfectly fine while driving in a cage, go figure). Lastly, I'm a bit worried by swapping visors on a daily basis to go from sun-shield to clear would cause the visors or the mounts on the helmet to wear out. What brought up this issue: I was coming home from work today traveling westbound at 6:00 pm, the sun was still rather high in the sky, but the angle was giving a lot of glare that the edge of my clip-ons were not cutting out, still making my eyes about near force shut. Not good to ride about blind. So...as far as the visors go, any recommendations?

Yeah, they got cooked. Bad cooked, imo. What really fried my bacon was when the clutch springs gave out the first day after I rode it and I had the bike picked up by a shop that my housemate recommended I got told that the clutch was a little cooked, but would last me another several thousand miles if I babied it. My gut (and wife) told me to find a new clutch ASAP so I ordered the Barnett Kit from Skydoc on his recommendation. I am SO glad I did. I might have gotten a few thousand miles outta what I had, but it never felt 'right'. Now I have response and power whenever I need it, as opposed to putting the power to the engine and the clutch whining(literally) back at me "It's got to go to committee!" letting the engine roar with all its might with no go to the wheel until the clutch felt like it was the right time to start gripping again and only in measured spurts. From now on, if it's not an emergency fix where I'm stranded halfway out in the boondocks 500 miles away from home, I'm my own dang shop!

I wanted to show what the Volusia's clutch plates wound up looking like when I took them out. I have two words: Crispy Smooth. The order of removal goes from first one out on the top left progressing right to the last one out (TM-1b) on the bottom right. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/GAWildKat/Volusia%20Intruder/Burnt%20Clutch/IMG_6107.jpg Also, ignore the shredded gasket material, that came out after the removal of the plates. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/GAWildKat/Volusia%20Intruder/Burnt%20Clutch/IMG_6109.jpg Closeup of 13 and 12. Some friction material, but not much. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/GAWildKat/Volusia%20Intruder/Burnt%20Clutch/IMG_6110.jpg 11 and 10, smooooooth. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/GAWildKat/Volusia%20Intruder/Burnt%20Clutch/IMG_6111.jpg 9 and 8, also very smooth http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/GAWildKat/Volusia%20Intruder/Burnt%20Clutch/IMG_6112.jpg 7 and 6. 7's not so bad Actually had quite a bit of Friction material left. Just cooked. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/GAWildKat/Volusia%20Intruder/Burnt%20Clutch/IMG_6113.jpg 6 (again) and 5. Five coulda been worse too. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/GAWildKat/Volusia%20Intruder/Burnt%20Clutch/IMG_6114.jpg 4 and 3 http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v281/GAWildKat/Volusia%20Intruder/Burnt%20Clutch/IMG_6115.jpg And finally, 2 and TM-1b. So those are my deep fried, oil battered plates. Whatcha think? Now 5th gear actually feels like a 5th gear with acceleration all its own and not just a weaker version of 4th gear...if that makes any sense to y'all.