Fri, 31 Mar 2006
Garmin Edge headaches // at 23:59
It hung again today. Once is annoying, twice a coincidence, three times... four times — a product released before it is ready!
2006-03-24 13:00-16:00 on charger until it reported "fully charged"
2006-03-24 17:30-17:45 cycled home with it.
2006-03-25 10:00 plugged into the PC, downloaded data and restarted PC. Edge goes off and will no longer power on. Windows now reports "Replace device."
2006-03-25 18:3 Edge finally turns on, but the battery is now flat and it turns itself off in under a second.
2006-03-27 09:00-12:00 on charger until it reports "fully charged". Edge was completely flat and took 3 hours after fifteen minutes use last Friday!
2006-03-27 00:30 use at lunch time (00:30 total)
2006-03-27 00:15 use riding home (00:45 total)
2006-03-28 00:15 use riding to work (01:00 total)
2006-03-28 10:00 succesful upload
2006-03-28 00:15 use riding home (01:15 total)
2006-03-29 00:15 use riding to work (01:30 total)
2006-03-29 10:00 succesful upload
2006-03-29 00:15 use riding home (01:15 total)
2006-03-30 00:15 use riding to work (01:30 total)
2006-03-30 10:00 succesful upload. I believe the PC was then restarted with the Edge connected to the USB cable.
2006-03-30 18:00 Edge no longer powers on, no "charging" message or other display when plugged into the charger. Pressing "mode" and "reset" brings it back to life.
2006-03-31 00:15 use riding to work (01:45 total)
2006-03-31 10:00 succesful upload, power now down to 3 bars.
2006-03-31 14:00 sent off support email to Garmin in the US.
2006-03-31 18:00 Edge won't power on. Reset via "mode" and "reset" buttons, only one bar of power left and device cannot lock onto satellites.
2006-04-01 approx. two hours on the charger to recover from a supposed 1hr 45 minutes use (from a quoted 12hour battery life).
Snigger snigger snigger…. // at 00:00
Being a married man as of almost three years ago there are some questions that come up occasionally:
1st Cotton 2nd Paper 3rd Leather ...
Ooo-errr, its coming up on our leather wedding aniversary.
Tue, 28 Mar 2006
New toy redux // at 00:00
Mon, 27 Mar 2006
New toy // at 00:00
Purchased Thursday, arrived Friday, broken Saturday! Saturday morning
I plugged the Edge into the laptop and turned it on, it fired up the
Garmin software, declared that there was no data to download (so I
guess I didn't record anything on the ride home yesterday) and then
powered it off.
After that I found I couldn't switch it on at all, and plugging it in to the laptop results in a Windows message telling me that the device is faulty and needs to be either unplugged and plugged back in, or replaced.
Later in the evening I could switch it on, but it promptly turned itself off again. Dead flat battery? I fully charged it Friday afternoon and it was only on for twenty minutes or so! Annoyingly, I'd left the charger at work so I couldn't investigate further.
Today I plugged the Edge into the charger at 9am and left it on until it said fully charged, noon, three hours later! No idea how it can have completely flattened the battery on Saturday, although I have my suspicions that a software bug killed it when it was disconnected from the USB cable.
Photos
Thread: last next
Sun, 26 Mar 2006
Sat, 25 Mar 2006
Fri, 24 Mar 2006
Tue, 21 Mar 2006
Beach road on fast-forward! // at 00:00
The Commonwealth Games cycling time trials are on today; first the
women's in the morning, then the men's in the early afternoon. I half
thought about taking off from work at lunchtime, racing down North
road to Brighton to see what I could see. Turns out that firstly I
wouldn't have been able to see anything since one event had finished
and the other not yet started, and I'd probably only have about five
minutes down there before having to turn around and head back to
Monash!
There's a TV upstairs in the staff room, but more importantly I found that one of my esteemed cow-orkers has setup a thoroughly experimental stream from a TV card that's accessible from my desk. I got it successfully set up with mplayer with minutes to spare from the end. Just in time to see Kathy Watts race home to take second place, between two other Australians.
Wee! A winning time of 37’ 40.87s, an average speed of 46.195km/hr over 29km! Fairly standard back of the envelope guesswork, and I think I could manage just on double that time.
The men's race is meant to start at 1 o'clock, I guess it has, channel 9 advertised it as one of the highlights of their coverage but by half past still haven't mentioned it. Their coverage is execrable, the one saving grace is in the cycling where Phil Liggett covers the event rather than just the Australians in the event!
Photos
Mon, 20 Mar 2006
Sun, 19 Mar 2006
C'wealth games road mayhem // at 00:00
It was lots of fun with no traffic on the roads. Jo and I took the tandem out for a ride in the afternoon and rode up Beach road from Elwood to Port Melbourne. We didn't see any of the marathon, just millions and millions of bollards, railings and miles of flapping plastic tape. Such a huge road when there's no other traffic on it though!
Funniest part of it all was at one set of traffic lights. Not one but two police motorcyclists sitting at the side of the road 3m back from the lights, a pedestrian pushed the button and made the lights go red, we stopped, another three cyclists come up from behind, pulled out, overtook us and the motorbikes, then two of them rode up the footpath to avoid stopping and around behind the lights while the third rode through the red light, half-way through the intersection, up the footpath and then continued around the other light before all three dropped back onto the road to continue!
We sat at the lights laughing while wondering whether they get booked for running a red light or riding on the footpath or both. Police guys were shaking their heads and said they couldn't believe it, but it was not the worst they'd seen during the day.
Lights went green, we rode off, police #1 pulled over the couple riding together who'd shot up the footpath while police #2 pulled over mr red light runner. We passed as he was busy arguing "I didn't ride through a red light."
Probably evolution in action, but if you must ride straight through a red light I'd suggest not doing it straight in front of two uniform traffic police!
Photos
Fri, 17 Mar 2006
The (Common?) Wealth Games // at 00:00
Billions and billions of dollars spent on a spectacular display of something on Wednesday night that left millions of people around the world collectively holding their breath and going “Huh?” Ducks and trams and what appeared to be the Crusty Demons of Dirt chromed up, polished and sedated while they popped itty-bitty wheelies around ballerinas. The flying tram spewed forth a horde of tram conductors in a scene reminiscent of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind — maybe that's where they all disappeared to when they were sacked and vanished from the tram network years ago. Footballers and more footballers, oh, you'd almost be forgiven for thinking that the major sponsor also has the rights to the AFL football! Its one saving grace was watching the sickly-sweet TV coverage with the sound turned off, and listening to the hilarious commentary from Leaping Larry L and assorted others on RRR.
Australia's first medal is won in an event that the commentators carefully work around the name of — an event called the 48kg women's snatch. The idiot commentators congratulate a swimmer on winning Australia's all-important first gold medal, quarter of an hour after Anna Meares won one on the velodrome. When not doing that they manage to sound like yokel red-necks massacring any non-Anglo-saxon name and making patronising comments about any country who spends less than Australia does on its national sports teams.
Meanwhile the cycling teams from a number of African countries have arrived without bikes and are borrowing equipment from big-hearted locals!
Photos
Tue, 14 Mar 2006
Yeow!!! // at 00:00
First time in a week or so that I've managed to have a real lunch break and get away from cow-orkers and computers for a while. Today I took off for half an hour to sit under my favourite tree and read some more of my sadly-neglected copy of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. Back at my desk at 1pm, made myself comfortable and was just starting back into the next lot of impossible tasks when YEOOWW!!! — a needle-like pain in my back. Was wondering what the hell it was when YEOOWW!!! it happened again. I shuffled about and stuck my hand up my shirt, thinking I'd got a splinter in there... hmmm, nothing. "What was it that — YEOOWWW!!!!".
There was a three centimetre long bull-ant sitting on my shirt busily biting me every time I leant back and squashed it between me and my chair. It must have come down from my favourite tree.... Damn it hurts!
Photos
Sun, 12 Mar 2006
Sat, 11 Mar 2006
Mon, 06 Mar 2006
The IXUS700 returns! // at 00:00
After two months and three days of being off with Canon Australia's repair facilities I've finally got my faulty camera repaired and sent back — well actually I've got a brand new replacement one. I think another two weeks went by after the last two weeks after the two weeks previously, the parts still hadn't turned up, Canon still hadn't repaired it, and the embarrasment factor got so bad that they just sent me a new one!
So do I now have twelve months warranty on the new one, or do I only get the remaining six months from the first one transferred across to it? Who knows, hopefully it will never suffer the dreaded E18 error that so many of them see to be afflicted by.
Accounts
OK, now here's a scary experiment:
Sun, 05 Mar 2006
Sat, 04 Mar 2006
Fri, 03 Mar 2006
Thu, 02 Mar 2006
Wed, 01 Mar 2006
RTA Big Ride: Day 5, Tumut to Gundagai // at 00:00
Today: ??km
Total: ??km
A thirty kilometre loop out of Tumut to the south-east first thing this morning — designed to give us some extra distance and to get the cyclists off the road while the trucks all drove through to the next campsite. A beautiful stretch of quiet country road, almost flat along the plains of the Tumut river, and another great autumn day.
Lunch was at a tiny place called Brungle — population 60, according to the sign on the road — the primary school was hidden off somewhere in the trees and had gone to all sorts of effort over the last few weeks to get ready for the visit by the ride. All that effort, but they'd neglected to put any signs out so nobody knew they were there at all! Some of the Bike NSW marshalls at the lunch stop asked if some of the riders could ride back for a visit — I did, but then couldn't escape!
Mayhem of excitement at the school; 26 students, two teachers, and absolutely everyone falling over themselves to show off every little detail of their school. The only name I can remember from the group who showed me around was Dakota — a tiny kid who all the bigger kids looked after.
I've promised to send them a print of the photo — mustn't dissapoint them.
Brungle school
1 Brungle street
Brungle, NSW, 2722
The last hill before Gundagai came as a surprise, hot and long and unexpected from the map and route drawings, but followed by a wonderful sweeping descent into South Gundagai and a ride into town past the students of another school — South Gundagai primary, I think.
A warm afternoon with time for a beer or two, a stroll up and down the main street which used to be the old Hume highway, off to view the historic trestle bridges, then a doze in the shade by the pool.
It was also a day for losing things — at least temporarily. This morning I left my bike computer in my tent, so spent the whole day glancing down at the empty spot on the handlebars. This afternoon I managed to misplace my coin pouch, ransacked tent and pockets with no success, and was convinced I'd left it up at the historic Niagra café and was about to walk all the way back up the street to check when it magically reappeared in a spot I'm sure I'd already checked.
Part 2 of the “guaranteed bike ride songs” is now over. The cover band at dinner played Paul Kelly's To her door. I wouldn't have won any money on it this year, normal predictions are that we hear both To her door and Brown Eyed Girl within 24 hours of joining a ride.
Where?
