Yearly Archives: 2012
Motorcycle Road Trip 2012 #2: the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island
I was lucky to be able to enjoy a second “significant” motorcycle road trip this year. My brother Colin and his son, Troy, came out to the coast from Alberta on their motorbikes. Colin had previously ridden up the Sunshine coast and wanted to share that with us, and it sounded fantastic to me. I asked Colin to be our road captain, since he knew the route and I don’t really care to lead unless I’m riding solo. We set out on August 14th on a trip that ultimately looked more or less like the map below:
Continue reading Motorcycle Road Trip 2012 #2: the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island
Motorcycle Road Trip 2012 #1: Washington, Idaho, Montana, Alberta, and back again
My first “real” (i.e.: more than one day) motorcycle road trip of 2012 began on July 30. Myself, my nephew Shane, and our good friends Jeff and Tim set out on a journey to buy Shane a T-Shirt. Yes, that was the only actual specific, tangible objective of the trip. Everything else that happened was purely incidental…
My travelling buddies at the Grand Coulee Dam
Continue reading Motorcycle Road Trip 2012 #1: Washington, Idaho, Montana, Alberta, and back again
HARLEY DAVIDSONS LEAK!!! Kinda…
I will state this now very clearly: Harley Davidson motorcycles built since the late 1980’s (i.e.: those with the Evolution motors) do *not* habitually leak. These engines are generally as tight and well-designed as any, albeit with a different aesthetic than the finely balanced Hondas and BMWs of the world.
That said: my beloved Road Glide began to leak about a week ago. The leak was a very small amount of quite clean lubricant, dripping from some generalized location on the bottom of the engine. I say “generalized” as it wasn’t a single spot: generally, wherever the engine was lowest e.g. towards the kickstand side. In other words, there was no obvious source of the leak. And when I say “small amount”, I mean about one drop every three or four hours. Placing a clean paper towel under the engine for 24 hours would result in a spot no larger than you might get from resting your Egg McMuffin on the same paper towel for a few minutes.
Regardless of the size of the leak, *any* leak is frustrating, even if it isn’t critical. My bike is scheduled for its 32,000 km service next week, and the measurable fluid levels were all “in the zone”, so the leak wasn’t critical. But I wanted to be able to clearly point the service guy in the right direction to solve the problem. So I began digging. I washed the bottom of the engine, towelled it off , and got out a flashlight. From here on, I started to get a bit of an education regarding the engine of the bike I love. And I also have a tip regarding avoiding the leak I experienced, so read on…
Star Wars: The Old Republic
| Title | Star Wars: the Old Republic |
| Developer | Bioware |
| Type | Massively Multi-player RPG |
| Platform(s) | PC |
| Kelly Score ™ | 95 / 100 |
Massively multi-player role playing games have, with very few exceptions, a standard motif. You create a character, complete a few “orientation” or introductory quests, and are then left to your own devices. Thousands of boring and repetitive quests combine with your character having complete lack of any perceivable impact or even place within the background story to encourage a kind of hamster like behaviour. You run in your little questing “wheel”, seeking levels or gear to help you continue to run in that wheel. Your long term goal: running in the wheel long enough and fast enough to eventually jump to the big, shiny end game hamster wheel of raid content. Raiding is where you get to spend all of your time staring at a wall, or the back end of some other person’s character, for hours on end as you beat some giant monster to get more shiny gear so you can do the next bigger raid. Most people don’t even read the story associated with each quest, and in many MMOGs that is a blessing: the stories are vanishingly thin and comically trivial. They have to be, since your character has no impact on the world whatsoever.
Star Wars: the Old Republic (SWtOR) breaks out of that motif. It plays more like a single player RPG, where your character is the hero of his or her own story. Other players and “group” dungeons (flash points, operations, and Heroics in SWtOR parlance) certainly exist, but the personal story your character is playing through is paramount. It is a refreshing and welcome change, even though the basic mechanics of the game are otherwise pretty traditional.
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
| Title | The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim |
| Developer | Bethesda |
| Type | RPG |
| Platform(s) | XBox 360, PC (reviewed on XBox) |
| Kelly Score ™ | 98 / 100 |
I have played a few games in the Elder Scrolls series, and each successive one seems to be a little bit better- at least in my opinion. I played Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and now Skyrim. And, with a few caveats, Skyrim is basically the best computer RPG I’ve played to date.
First month of 2012
Christmas is a distant speck in my rear-view mirror, and we are already most of a month into 2012. I wouldn’t really say I have any “resolutions” for the New Year, but I do have some goals. It is odd how the completely arbitrary change over of a calendar causes me to re-examine my life, but I will take advantage of it. It is time to give some thought to what I want to focus on in the next year.