After getting my Sony ebook reader, I've been reading a bit more than I usually do. That thing is so convenient to carry around, I'm much more fond of it than I thought I would be. Anyway, I'm going to try and read at least 50 books this year, which is a lot for me as I am usually a very slow reader. Sometimes it takes me months to get through a book, especially if I'm not particularly fond of a book. So here are the books I've read so far, although I am cheating a bit as I got my ebook reader just before Christmas so I actually read some before 2010 started. Oh well, I'm counting them anyway, ha ha.
Currently finished reading 8 books.
But there's more »
I've been playing CSI Deadly Intent The Hidden Cases on my new Nintendo DSi. It's pretty good, not very challenging, but it is fun being part of the CSI team and investigating cases.
One thing that bugged me just now as I was finishing the first case, a piece of dialogue comes up where a suspect says " ...but the crew showed up earlier then I expected..." Argh, don't they have somebody to go through the game and correct obvious mistakes like that? Very annoying.
Some of the puzzles can have slight hiccups, like this one where you have to put together a picture with a bunch of pieces using the touchscreen. You can drag the piece or rotate it, but sometimes when you try to drag it, the piece rotates instead, or vice versa. Another puzzle, where you fix some corrupted data, was pretty tiresome. Still, the gameplay was a bit of a cakewalk, and yet still fun.
The game incorporates a few of the CSI characters, namely Brass, Hodges, Catherine Willows, Ray Langston and Al Robbins. The graphics are serviceable but the replays of the crime could certainly have been handled better. The music is kind of "bleh" and repeats itself over and over. Where is the Who intro tune?!
I just finished watching Straight-Jacket from 1964 with Joan Crawford. A great William Castle melodrama about a psycho axe killer. Fun movie, very over-the-top performance by Ms. Crawford. This is the Columbia Pictures logo from the end, you can see they altered it a bit. That's pure William Castle, he had such a great, twisted sense of humour.
My bike's drivetrain was pretty trashed as of late with the chain skipping all the time, and completely flying off at other times resulting in painful injuries which I will not go into here. ;)
So I went out and bought the replacement parts (chain, chainring and freehub) and set to work this morning. It's usually a pretty simple procedure. Use a chainbreaker to break the old chain, throw it away and use the universal link to install the new chain when all is done. The chainring replacement involves removing the crank-arm on the drive side, removing the bolts holding the chainring in place, throw away old chainring and bolt on the new one. Easy!
Then came time to remove the freehub. Ugh! I've never had problems with this before. I removed the rear wheel, used a chain whip to hold the cassette in place and put the appropriate cassette removal tool in place. Using a ratchet with the correct sized socket over the chain tool, I cranked on it. And nothing budged. Tried a pry-bar. Nothing. Used a quick-release skewer to hold the tool in place, still no movement. Tried soaking it in WD-40, leaving it to soak in and banging it with a hammer to break the "bond". All attempts end in dismal failure. Covered in sweat and grease, I gave up.
I must mention that this bike is only ten months old - got it last year when somebody ripped off my old bike. So it's not an old bike covered in rust. We had a mild winter, this bike hasn't been through very much weather wise. I think somebody at Rocky Mountain got carried away and tightened this hub down to a ridiculous degree. I would like to kill him.
I decide to go to the bike shop to see if they could work some of their voodoo on this thing. Get to the bike shop, and find that they are closed on Sundays. When did this happen? They are always open on Sundays! Tried another bike shop. Not only are they closed, they are completely defunct, out of business. Argh! I give up. Try again tomorrow.
But of course, I didn't give up, cause I'm one of those assholes that just can't leave well enough alone. Searching through the internet, I don't find much help. I seem to have tried everything that people were suggesting as solutions. Until somebody wrote about using a torch! Of course! When all else fails try using a torch! I fired up my torch, heated the hub up and tried removing it. At first I thought I had busted my hub removal tool, because the damn thing started spinning. Then I realized it was spinning cause I had finally broke the goddamn thing free!
Awesome, now I just have to screw on my new cassette (not too tight!) and throw my new chain on and I'll be set. God, I hate working on my bike sometimes.
