BAF's Ramblings

Spring is on its way in, as much as mother nature does NOT want to admit it this year. I didn't get much riding in over the winter, because, unfortunately, the weather wasn't anywhere near as nice as it was last year. This means it's time to get the 1125CR ready for the season. The bike is fine, and I've ridden it a couple times this year, but it still needs some preparing.

I'm almost due for an oil change, after last fall's trip down the east coast (it's occurring to me that I didn't write a post about the trip... I'll have to do that!). It's not due for a filter (Buell specs changing the filter every other oil change), so I probably won't bother, since it's so messy to do so. I'll just drain and refill with fresh oil.

I need to give the bike a good washing. I'll wash the whole bike, and polish and wax the body plastics.

I then need to mount new tires. I bought the newly-released Pirelli Angel GT tires, front and back. I'll be mounting these with my trusty spoonbars, and double checking that the TPMS sensors in the wheels are still held in place securely and that the wheel/tire assemblies are balanced.

Finally, I'll flush the brake and clutch fluid. I need to buy a Mityvac or an Actron unit to do this well, so I'll be ordering one of those soon.

Following SantaHack 2011, the site needed a bit of work. Namely, support for hosting the competition across multiple years (and allowing prior years data to be shown), and to clean up the backend code, which was some pretty crappy PHP based on Symfony (which was hugely overkill for a site of this magnitude).

Not much at all has remained the same. The new system is written in Coffeescript (which compiles down to JavaScript and is then run on Node.js). MongoDB is the database of choice now, and all of this is hosted on Heroku. It's also my first major foray into Git, as Heroku uses Git for pushing new code to be hosted. I've got properly separated dev, staging, and production environments now (before, I had separate codebases, but it usually went back to the same database). The pages are all templated using Jade. CSS is written using Stylus, and all JavaScript is written in Coffeescript. I'm also using Twitter Bootstrap for some of pieces of styling, and jQuery for a bunch of the dynamic/AJAX stuff. I'm using numerous Node packages on the serverside; I may elaborate more on that later.

The site itself also much more dynamic. Wishlists are saved via AJAX and votes are stored instantly via AJAX. I have yet to write the entry submission page, but that will be dynamic as well. I'm also planning on adding a blogging feature, which allows participants to blog as they write their entries. Blogs will be private during the event, and made public at the same time their entry is. User supplied content (aside from data that is stored in the database), like entries and blog screenshots, will be stored on S3. And, since I know there are some folks in the community who like to block JavaScript, all of the JS addons are simply upgrades. If JavaScript is disabled, the site still functions fine in a more traditional way.

The code is much cleaner this time around, which is surprising given this is my first time using most of the technology at play here. About the only thing I have prior experience with is HTML, CSS, and to some extent, JavaScript.

I try to have a minimal amount of crap on me at any given time. So... what do I have in my pockets right now?

Keys - car key/fob and a keychain with home/garage/work keys.

Cell phone - communication, calendar, time, etc.

Money clip with $40 cash, driver's license, Discover card, debit/ATM card, backup credit card, and movie theater reward card.

That's it. I used to carry a wallet with endless amounts of crap in it, most of which I never need anyhow. I recently made the decision to get a money clip and take only what I use most often, and am liking the results so far.

Just giving a quick followup to the last update, my stator re-wind ended up failing. Due to the messiness of some of the windings, one of the wires (one that was way too close to the outsideof the stator) came loose from the epoxy, and started rubbing on the rotor. Eventually it wore right through, leaving quite a mess on my rotor in the process.

I've wound a new stator; much more neatly this time, and installed it. I've also cleaned up the rotor. I may go back and add some epoxy to one of the abrasions on it at a later point.

It occurs to me that I've not posted an update on my 1125's stator failure. I ended up re-winding the stator myself, which was a fair bit easier thanks to Hildstrom's write-up on the topic. I used the same magnet wire he did, with one of the Duralco epoxies mentioned. Got it all installed, along with a new CE-605 SB series regulator. I may do a more detailed write-up at some point on this, as I took some pictures along the way to document the progress.

The bike was fine for a while on this new stator. The first regulator I got was defective, so I sent it back for replacement. The new one worked for a little while before it started acting flakey. I switched back to the stock shunt regulator temporarily, and noticed that voltage on the bike drops faster at idle than before. Some checking of the stator confirms that, unfortunately, two of the phases are putting out under-spec voltage. They still put out some power, and the bike is able to charge the battery while moving at speed, but at idle, voltage drops off fairly quickly.

Just a quick note that Discover's customer service is awesome. As I mentioned in the dead stator post, I bought a rotor that sprays oil on the stator. I purchased this from Erik Buell Racing on a core charge basis. Essentially, I paid for the rotor modification up front, plus a $250 core charge. This $250 was to be refunded upon returning the rotor from my bike, after swapping the new one in.

Between the time that I paid the core charge and the time I sent the original rotor back, my Discover card was stolen somehow (issue for another time). Subsequently, the card was cancelled and reissued with a new account number. When the core charge refund was issued, it was credited back to my old card, which was cancelled.

I was informed that Discover accepted the credit and it had all gone through properly, however, the credit never hit my account.

I called Discover customer service to inquire about this. This call took place at around 11pm. I was connected to an American in Utah instantly, and they quickly addressed my issue. No waiting on hold and trying to speak to folks with thick accents and a seemingly weak grasp on the English language, who just read off a script and try and find the right answer to read to you. They informed me that I needed to speak with the fraud investigation department (who was closed), as they own the old account that was credited now, but that it would be no problem to get this taken care of. This is usually the beginning of a horror story, but in this case, everything worked out great.

Unfortunately, the stator in my 1125CR bit the big one the other day. What's weird is that it went from working fine to a state of total failure within about 25 minutes. Typically, an issue will appear in one phase of the three phase stator, and just drop it down to either 1 or 2 functioning phases - meaning you won't have full charging capacity, but you will still have something.

With mine, it died much quicker.

Let's start with some back story on the charging system of these bikes. The stators in the 2009 and 2010 models have an increased output (which means larger thermal load), as well as very little in the way of airflow, oil spray, or oil bath to help keep things cool. In an effort to prevent the stator from burning out, these bikes were recalled to have a harness added between the stator and the regulator. Under certain thermal and engine conditions, one leg of the stator is cut out, bringing the system to 1/3 capacity. Given this knowledge, it isn't alarming to see voltages in the 12 volt range while sitting still for a long amount of time. Everything gets hot, the fans start running full blast, and charging system capacity is cut. This new harness hasn't been successful in completely cutting out stator failure, however. Various efforts have been made to solve this issue, including installing different voltage regulators, modified rotors to promote airflow or spray oil directly on the stator, or even the installation of the lower output 2008 charging system. I've personally installed an oil spraying rotor, and am considering installing a new regulator and removing the stator control harness.

But I digress... Let's go back to the stator failure itself. Everything was fine when I left for work that morning - the charging system was running at around 14.1 volts at idle. When I left work in the afternoon to head home, I got caught at a traffic light, as normally happens. I usually flip to the screen on my instrument cluster that displays system voltage - to make sure I've got power, and to give myself plenty of warning if the harness cuts the stator output. However, I noticed that the system was only running at around 12.7 volts or so, which is unusually low. I figured that the relay in the stator harness may be bad, as voltage returned to the 14 volt range when I was moving. The harness should not have been activated at that point, as the motor was still relatively cool. After that instance of traffic, everything seemed fine, so I flipped off the voltage display and drove home. Somewhere on my ride home, the stator suffered a complete failure; I did not notice the failure though, as I got home well before the battery drained far enough to affect the bike.

Two days later, I pulled the bike back out to take it to work. While starting it, I noticed it cranking a little slower than normal, but the bike started fine. However, my GPS/XM and TPMS both remained off. For the ECM to activate accessories, voltage has to go higher than 12.9 volts after starting the bike, so seeing the accessories not come on was alarming. I saw that system voltage was around 11.9 volts, so I put the bike back in the garage and put the battery tender on to refill the battery.

After work, I did some troubleshooting. I bypassed the stator control harness in case that was the problem, to no avail. I checked the AC output of the stator, and all 3 phases were reading abnormally low. Normal voltages are in the range of 20 VAC at idle, and 45-55 VAC at ~3k RPM. My readings were around 2 VAC at idle, and 3.5 or so VAC at ~3k RPM. None of the stator legs were shorted to ground, and between each leg was showing some resistance (as it should), so the stator only failed the output test.

 I pulled the bike apart and removed the stator. In taking it apart, it was obvious that the rotor was fine, and hadn't lost its magnetism. One of the poles on the stator looked especially charred, but other than that, nothing smelled burnt or anything.

My final test was one I made up myself. I hooked 12VDC across each of the phases of the stator. I limited current to 30 amps during this test, which is below the typical operating power of the stator at anything much above idle. The stator didn't make it close to 30 amps before the charred pole started arcing and smoking. Similar results no matter which phase the power was applied on, and it happened in the same area. This happened instantly upon application of power, so it wasn't damaged caused by my testing. The failure area was where the wires for two of the phases cross between two of the poles, so my best guess is that something got hot enough to burn the insulation off the windings, and cause a short.

Whew, a long overdue update. Since my last post, I've gotten my new bike on the road. I've put roughly 5000 miles on it, done the 12,000 mile service myself (oil/filter, rotate motor to change sparkplugs and inspect valve clearance, etc). I also had the bike with me at the Adirondack Buell Rally (great event, by the way).

My commute is shorter now. Due to some changes at work, we've moved our Albany office to Clifton Park. This cuts around 15 miles off my commute (each way) - and luckily, it's these 15 miles that contain the horrible traffic and congestion during rush hour. This saves me around 30 miles of driving per day, and 30-45 minutes of time. This gives me more time, and a monetary savings of $50-$70/month at current gas prices, depending on what I'm driving.

In early May, I took a trip partially down the east coast on the bike with a friend. This took us through Atlantic City, Baltimore, and the surrounding areas - giving us casino time, time at Six Flags Great Adventure and Six Flags America, and a bunch of relaxing, riding, and seeing sights. It was fun and relaxing.

However, since the trip, I've been slacking off in going to the gym - some of this was being busy, some of it was being lazy. I also started eating like crap a little bit again, but nothing too horrible. I didn't gain any weight back, rather, I maintained where I was at, so I'm not too disappointed. I finally got back to the gym tonight, and did a nice long workout to get back into things.

I plan on getting back into my routine of going to the gym a few nights a week. The 5-nights-a-week thing is a bit stressful, especially during the nicer weather when there are other things I want to do. A few nights a week is a nice balance, though. My goal is to drop some more weight, and then buy a new jacket and pants for the motorcycle - maybe the Spidi H2OUT Marathon set or something. An expensive set, so I want to meet my gym goal before dumping the cash.

Another ongoing goal is paying off my debt. I backpedaled a little on this, however. After I bought the new bike, I also bought a brand new Can-Am Outlander 650 XT, and financed it, giving me another $10,000 in debt. I did qualify for the promotional interest rate on the loan though, which is nice - 3 year, 3.9% interest, so that debt is not a huge deal at all to me. The big items are paying off the last couple thousand on my car, and paying off my loaded up Discover card before the 0% promotional period ends.

A just finished up the payment and paperwork on my new-to-me 1125CR. Yippie! Now all that remains is getting squared up with DMV (paying sales tax and registration fees, and getting my tag) - always a fun trip to look foward to.

Setting aside my opinion that the IRS is nothing but pure overhead and that income tax should be abolished, the IRS sucks.

I filed my tax return on the morning of Feb. 2, and it was accepted by the IRS on the same day at 9:36 AM. According to the refund cycle schedule, this puts me at the very beginning of the Feb. 15 cycle, meaning my refund should have been direct deposited into my bank account today.

It wasn't. Surprise, surprise. Furthermore, the "where's my refund" page shows that they have no record of my refund. Apparently, this is a known issue, and I should receive my refund in "10 to 21 days." Seriously? How hard can it be to process returns and display their status online? Why is the government so afraid of streamlining stuff like this, and so afraid to actually utilize technology? Another great example of this is the absolutely horrid tracking provided for packages mailed via USPS. Until recently, the site wouldn't show you much of anything until after the package had been delivered.

My tax return this year was very basic. So basic, in fact, that I don't see why their computers can't automatically process it and give me my money within a day or two. It really needs to take 3 weeks? They can't even keep to their refund cycle? Ugh.

This is the 2009 Buell 1125CR I just bought (more accurately, I've put a deposit on it, but I'll be paying the balance either this or next week).

It's got around 7700 miles on it, and is mostly stock. I rode a friend's 1125CR last summer and loved it - and now it's my turn to have one.

A quick post to throw down some random thoughts/updates.

First, on the gym front. Since my last update on this topic, back in early December, I've been going more-or-less every weeknight. My weight hasn't gone down too much, however, I am definitely building muscle, and my body seems to be leaning out a little. Last month, I clocked in at 23.1% body fat - not too terrible, but definitely overweight. My goal is to bring this down a fair bit, and rather than looking at the scale, I've decided to gauge my progress via monthly body fat analysis at my gym. Once spring sets in, towards summer, I'll be spending less time at the gym (to make time for summertime interests) - perhaps 2 or so days a week (albeit, with more intensity during the time spent there).

I'm happy with my progress so far. I'm going to continue training at the gym and pushing myself harder, and keep making attempts to eat healthier. One major health step I've made is to cut soda out of the majority of my diet - instead of being a go-to beverage, it's now a treat to be had once every couple of days (instead of a couple times a day).

Second is the topic of dreaming. Lucid dreaming (or, more accurately, the goal of getting to the point of lucid dreaming) has been a goal of mine for quite some time. At one point, I was keeping a dream log to track my progress, but that didn't end up faring too well. I may take another shot at maintaining a dream log (which would be a separate blog) - stay tuned for details on that.

So, I finally got un-lazy enough to update my website and résumé. It's been a long time coming, but it's finally off my todo list.

Let me preface this rant by stating that I have no affiliation whatsoever with any of the companies listed. I just felt like writing a blog post on why I'm no longer using TurboTax.

So, let's begin by rewinding to 2010 (dealing with tax year 2009). I was a college student, had just scored an internship, and was actually earning enough money where I had to worry about filing a tax return. I tried out several sites at that point, including TurboTax, to see who would find me the biggest refund. I had a fairly simple tax return, I was just dealing with marginal income and education credits. Turns out that TurboTax, at that time, gave me the biggest refund and a decent cost. No issues, I was a happy customer.

Fast forward to 2011. I had to file my 2010 taxes. One of my credit card companies emailed me a 25% off coupon for TurboTax, so naturally, I returned there. They had saved my information from the previous year, automatically imported it where appropriate, and made the process nice and easy. Paying for the service, on the other hand, was a whole other nightmare.

First of all, I qualified for the free federal filing. Apparently at some point, I upgraded to the 'deluxe' version of TurboTax, which started racking up the charges. Of course, they only give you 'upgrade' options, with no way to downgrade short of contacting them. Oh, and the 25% off coupon I had from my credit card company wasn't applying properly either - swell. So I contacted them and complained. They did some weird set of discount claim codes on my account (which still didn't bring it to the correct total cost). The customer service representative assured me that I would be contacted within 24 hours to get a refund, and just to pay and file. Stupid me - I paid and moved ahead.

Surprise, surprise - I never was contacted and never did receive my refund. I never pursued it, as it was under a $10 difference and I deemed it not worth the hassle, but the bottom line is that I was lied to. Their website is predatory, always trying to rope you into higher cost services, and there is no way of removing additional features/costs (even if you don't need them/aren't using them). The only two options if you wish to go to a lower price tier are calling them and arguing for a while, or signing up for a new account and totally starting over. Not very user friendly, and, quite frankly, an underhanded approach to earning money.

Move ahead to today, when I'm starting to deal with my 2011 taxes. 2011 was my first full year of working full time, so I've got a bit more at stake in dealing with my taxes now. It's still fairly straightforward - a W-2, a 1098-E for student loan interest, and some interest statements for savings accounts. I was originally willing to overlook my issues with overpaying for TurboTax last year, so I started the process. I got to a page where it asked me what product I wanted to use, and by the time I realized I could have started with the free option (and upgrade if necessary), it was too late. There's no way to go back and downgrade whatsoever. I was partially attached because they have all of my tax history, making it easy when values from previous years are needed, but the site seems shady and, here I was, a year later, and they're still trying to milk every cent they can out of me. I decided I was sick of dealing with their crap. I finished going through my tax return just to get some baseline figures (recall that they provided me the biggest refund for 2009).

I did some research, and decided to check out TaxSlayer. Nice and cheap, with only a few different options. I signed up and entered my tax information, and they came up with the same federal refund, and $2 for my New York state return. Nice.

So, unless TaxSlayer does something to make me feel cheated, I'll be a happy customer with them. It's much cheaper than TurboTax, and does the job just as well. TurboTax is a little better organized, and the website is more responsive, but I can deal with a little bit of slowness and a confusing-at-times interface. At least they aren't trying to upsell me at every corner, offering no way to roll back once you accept an option that costs more money (even if your needs are fulfilled by a cheaper option).

Sure, TurboTax is kind of like a GPS unit, guiding you through your taxes (as they advertise). But using the service is kind of like going to Best Buy and.... buying a GPS unit. Only, while you're talking with the salesperson, if you even show the slightest interest in ANY upsell/extended warranty/whatever that is offered, you are immediately locked in and cannot say no.

I've been playing a bit with Arduino lately. My current project actually involves creating some hardware to go with it. I dislike the heat, which makes riding my motorcycle uncomfortable at times in the summer, especially on the really hot days. I stumbled upon the concept of a cooling vest - one style of which involves flowing cold water through tubes in a vest to cool down the core of your body. All commercially produced systems using this, however, require that you load a cooler with ice to provide the cold liquid to circulate through the system.

This got me thinking. I don't want to have to screw around with ice, especially if I'm on a long ride or something. How much cooler would it be to be able to cool the water in some other way?

I'll go into more details about this project at a later point, but right now, I've got a peltier unit sandwiched between a CPU heatsink/fan and a CPU water block. This, coupled with a water pump, allows me to remove heat from the water. This cooled water would be stored in an insulated container, and used to circulate through a cooling vest. As the water warms up from body heat, it can be re-cooled by the peltier unit again. To bring this project full circle, I am planning on controlling every aspect of the system using an Arduino. As mentioned before, I'll delve into deeper details on this at a later point, but things such as monitoring temperatures, controlling water pump speed and peltier output, and even estimating cooling capacity and power consumption are the target of this system.

In the pursuit of this target, I've dumped a few hundred dollars buying Arduino parts and a bunch of miscellaneous sensors. I've begun to play with the system as a whole - which really isn't too hard to pick up. My last foray into microcontrollers involved PICs and writing assembly code, so the familiar gcc compiler and community provided libraries for the Arduino family is a nice change of pace.

While playing around with Arduino, though, I've begun to think of several other projects that I may tackle at some point. They all sound fun:

A DIY weather station setup. Given a bunch of sensors, I could record weather data in my backyard, and even submit to Weather Underground. Bonus points for solar powered sensors that communicate wirelessly to a central Arduino brain, which can then use ethernet or wifi to report the info directly online, with no computer required.

An LED cube. They're just plain awesome. Even cooler would be an RGB LED cube, though that presents some interesting issues (due to the fact that I want full PWM control of each voxel in the cube). Multiplexing a digital, single color cube isn't a big deal, but when going to RGB in this fashion, you now have to control three times as much hardware, and deal in analog as well.

Remote car starter. Not the car starter itself, but an extension to it. Using one of the fancy GSM modules for Arduino, it would be cool to be able to start my car remotely over the internet. The only thing holding me back here is that my current vehicle doesn't have a remote starter.

LED brake/tail light and blinkers for my bike. Use Arduino to control them, so I can add some attention getting features (such as strobing the brakes and/or blinkers when I tap the brakes). This was actually a project I was envisioning doing with some sort of microcontroller, before the cooler idea and before I knew much about Arduino.

A bright RGB light for my room. Doesn't necessarily need to have individually addressable pixels, but it would be cool to replace the ceiling mounted light in my room with such a beast. The challenge here is getting the thing bright enough to light the room, and doing it affordably (these challenges rise from the desire for full RGB).

I'm sure I've had other cool ideas that I've forgotten about. These are the cool ones that come to mind right now.

I spent a good chunk of the weekend working on the site for SantaHack 2011. It still needs some work, primarily the implementation of the voting mechanism and the assignment and entry info pages. I'll have plenty of time to do those though, it's not a ton of work. The important part was getting the base site up and ready.

I've been doing a horrible job at blogging, as usual. I've gotten a head start on what would have (yet again) been a New Year's resolution - going to the gym. I started going to a local gym with a friend - which is great, it gives somebody to work out with, somebody to be accountable to, etc. So I figured why not get started on what would likely end up being another New Year's resolution - blogging more.

I'd like to attempt to write a blog post every night. That probably won't happen, but it's something to shoot for. Anything at least semi-regular would be nice. Anything goes here, programming, personal stuff, workouts, etc.

As far as the gym - my main goal is to lose some weight and get into shape. Bulking up a little bit is a secondary goal, but nothing I'm going to actively seek at the moment. I seem to have settled in around 200 pounds lately, and I wouldn't mind dropping at least 50 of it (or less, depending on how much muscle I build, being that muscle weighs more than fat).

Wooters.us desperately needs some attention. This seems to be a recurring, tragic issue. It's just hard to find the time to do it - I have so many other things I want to do as well.