andy reagan only the interesting stuff

Same Ol'

Sunday I did manage to get out to go for a bike ride, and met my parents down at Marcellus Park to play volleyball...I saw some girls I knew from high school playing on the other court too, but me and my parents play against some random people who weren't very good at all, which made it somewhat difficult to get some good practice for Tuesday, which is why we went down there in the first place, but by letting them serve (they had trouble returning any) we were able to get some practice setting and such. I rode my bike home, so I got a good 20 miles total, which now does feel like a shorter ride. Problem with rides longer than that is that well, they take so much longer and I haven't felt like riding for quite so long recently...idk. That was pretty much it for Sunday, I think I might've thrown the frisbee around with my dad some too when I got home.

I was able to make some progress on the toaster, I took apart the toaster oven that I bought and hooked it up to my powermeter. At full power, it consumes 1,330 watts, which I am definitely not going to be able to deliver. After dismantling the toaster over though, it would be super easy to move the heating rods closer to the bread, and even to take two of them out. I also made progress toward an alternator, sending out like 10 emails to craigslist listings of assorted motorcycle, and have so far gotten two reponses about alternators. I was hoping since they were craigslist syracuse that they would be local, but having not paid attention to that while looking for the listings, both of the ones that got back to me are far away enough that they will have to be shipped. They're in Rochester and Niagra Falls, and one guy wanted 30 for his off an 87 Honda CBR1000 and the other didn't give a price yet but he said it was in great shape, only 1600 miles, and only had to sell it cuz the bike was crashed at the frame bent. I think that I'm going to call my uncle Carl too, to see what ideas he has on where to get one...I do think that car alternator would be too big (again 80amps X 12V = 960 watts) so maybe his friend Dave will have one lying around, something from a snowmobile would probably be about right too. When I got to looking at NiChrome wire to use to make my own toaster, since the toaster oven will probably be too power-hungry, I think that I ran into yet another technical problem. The coils in all of these types of heaters have resistances, measured in Ohms, that are designed and ideal for 120V circuits. Doesn't sound on the surface like so much of a problem, but a lenght of wire that has a total resistance of say 50 Ohms will resist a given amount of current, resistance is the opposition to current, and so where a 120V input will have a smaller current that 12V input of equal power, the current of the 12V circuit will be 10 times that of the 120V for an equal amount of wattage (power), so when trying to push current through a 50 ohm wire at 12V, that will seem like 500 Ohms at 120V!! So I will need different wire or to somehow step up my voltage...different wire will probably be the most economic choice in that case.

Tonight is volleyball at the park, and it should be a lot of fun. For sure, I think we've got me, my Dad, Del, and Andy Caster. Andy was going to try to get ahold of Sarah Clere and Jenn Daley, who played with us last summer. Sarah Holden has a lax game later...Zdan has baseball stuff...and Carly has a play recital but they should be able to make it in the coming weeks. Dan I think is good in July, and Carly's practice times will be different week to week I think...but hopefully we can get a pretty consistent group together and it will be a lot of fun. Tuesday is the night that everything else seems to happen on though...both the time trials and the TNTS which are the big rides for the Onondaga Cycling Club are that night all summer...and I'm not sure what else is Tuesdays but I remember there being even more haha...

As for the Onondaga Cycling Club (OCC), I am definitely going to join. There is a ride Wednesday night that I am going to go to, the guy leading it seems pretty cool, his name is Anthony Baleno I think. He sent out a request for somebody else to lead the ride starting at Marcellus on the 27th, which I offered to do, I mean it's in Marcellus Park! Sarah Holden mentioned that we should go camping that weekend, so maybe I can't lead the ride, but either should be fun.

Livin for the Weekends

Friday

Work is work, and 40 hour weeks are the worst. Friday marked the conclusion of my fourth week of work! Really hard to believe that I have been home for over four weeks! But, I haven't been home all that time either, having road tripped one weekend to Toronto and travelled for one of my races to Corning. The highlight of the day may have been my Mom making omelets in the morning haha.

Friday night, we had a dudes night of sorts at Del's house, which was a lot of fun. It was me, Del, Zdan, and Knickerbocker. Sarah was there for a little but she headed out after her friends weren't coming. Without gasoline, it would've been a toss up if we were going to have a fire or not, and man that stuff is fun to play with. Put some on the wood, and lead a little trail out to start it, and phooom the whole thing lights up. Problem is, it would do that and then go right out the first few times...we actually had to get some wood smaller than logs haha.

Saturday

I heard about the village of Marcellus having a big yard sale from my Mom reading the paper on Thursday I think, and where better to find an old toaster? I had been telling Megan G. that we were gonna hang out, so I took her down the big yard sales to help me find a toaster...and even though she was pretty convinced that I wouldn't find one, I found the perfect toaster over from, of all people, Andy Caster's mom, and it was only $5, perfect, but I did carry their basketball pole from the backyard out to the driveway haha. Small world...only problem now though is that the toaster is rated at 1440 watts! There's absolutely no way that I can make that much power for an extended period of time...especially with the inefficiency of a car alternator. What I need to do is figure out how it works, and hook it up to my P3 power meter and see how much power it actually consumes. But now all I need is the alternator, and important selection, and some wiring and such. I think I might go to an outlet from the alternator so I can both use my power meter and not destroy the toaster power cord. If this toaster toasts a piece of bread in 2-3 minutes normally, I think for me to toast it in 15 would be pretty good. The idea of the bike-powered toaster is to take that 30 minute morning warm up bike and make something useful from it, so really anything under 30 would be a success.

After the yard sales, we came back to my house and watched "The Big Lebowski.' I'd heard good things about it, it got an 8.2/10 on imdb, and it was good, but perhaps less than I was expecting. Maybe I need to watch it again haha. Me and my Dad decided that we have to watch O Brother Where Art Thou again, after he misquoted it the other day, which is unacceptable. After watching the movie, I just chilled around the house basically until going to Jack's for yet another bonfire. A lot different though, there were a ton of people and most of them were camping Jack's back yard for the night haha. Pretty nice that I live walking distance...and so that was fun, Zdanowski couldn't stay, again, cuz he had to get up for baseball, again, but like everybody was there so it was cool. Pretty glad I wasn't going to be sleeping like 12 people to that 6 man tent!

Today

Well, I just work up about an hour ago and sat down to eat some cereal, but am instead sharing my thought to the world. Del wants to play tennis, which is pretty random, but I think I'm gonna go for a ride if I ever get around to it. It sucks that I don't know anybody else my age around here who rides...the only person I can think of is Tommy Forte but I don't really know him. Frickin Shields had to blow out his knee so that he doesn't want to bike anymore and save what strength his knee does have for water skiing, which I guess I can't blame him for but I need somebody to ride with! Other than that I got no plans, maybe I'll beef up my blog some more later haha. Or I could look into making a comment bar....but it's not like anybody reads this. I was going to use google analytics and their tracking cookies so that I could see how many people come to my site and what pages they visit and for how long, but I think I would just be disappointed lol cuz I wouldn't have any data to work with cuz nobody visits! Maybe they do, who knows, so don't block my cookies!

Another Day In Marcellus

On only the second day of having my blog working, I missed a day...I would've like to have had one every day for at least a week. Maybe I don't have that much to say after all. Tuesday, I didn't end up doing either OCC ride, stopped on my way home to drop off a computer at Westcott, and got home at 4 which was nice. Then I got talked into playing basketball again somehow, so I took the extra long way there on my bike, getting in a 15 mile ride before playing 2 hours of basketball. I got my Dad to come down which was good, and my team finally won one against Jeff, Del and their crew. The weather was much nicer (no rain!) so I was glad I put on sunscreen haha, and the best news is that I got a good clean dunk. Now Del definitely can't say the ONLY think that I can dunk is a water bottle. I still deny dunking any writing utensils lol.

Last night, I didn't really do much of anything at all, except for getting in a bike ride. I went out towards Skaneatles on Old Seneca, turned back up Stump by Welch-Allyn, and wound around so that I came back up Munro. That area on (not sure what road it is) but up from the Gorge connecting to Munro is really nice, tons of nice houses. I didn't get away without seeing anyone I know either, saw Sam Wickett at the bottom of Lawless, and even helped her pull out (checked if there were cars coming haha). Then I just lounged around like a bum and watched the Family Guy movie and part of Beavis and Butthead which, for some reason, Kyle had his heart set on watching...but he left to fork the lawn of the high school and I think I that I was getting too much dumber from watching that "movie" so I went to bed too.

I guess that the only other things going on are that we're definitely putting in a volleyball team next Tuesday at the park, hopefully with some volleyball players on it (Carly!) and that I have discovered the awesome confusion of filing taxes. Actually, laugh if you will, I just had to fill out my W-4 for work, buuut establishing residency in Virginia is making things more complicated, I actually wrote my NY address down the first time! And so apparently I have to file taxes with both states too. Who knows. On a sour note, there was mold on the bread for my sandwhiches today for lunch which I almost ate haha and on a positive ending note, my new Oakley lenses should be shipping out today from Mr. Ben Warren.

On another positive note, I (with the "help" of my Mom) got the links on the site to open externally. But bad news for all of you still using IE6 or earlier, I don't feel like fixing my logo for your out-of-date browser so I'm not gonna do it. Upgrade or die!