Marc's Public Blog

Today was beach day, the other UCPA folks went to a couple of places Alain, Seb and I went to last year, so instead we rented scooters and rode around the island to check out 5 different beaches.
In a nutshell, some of them were really beautiful, and I also bit the bullet and did research and a few friends who asked a favour.
Males have a lot of trouble not looking at breasts. What is worse, males cannot look at breasts and think at the same time. In fact, scientists now believe that the primary biological function of breasts is to make males stupid. This was proved in a famous 1978 laboratory experiment wherein a team of leading male psychological researchers at Yale deliberately looked at photographs of breasts every day for two years, at the end of which they concluded that they had failed to take any notes. "We forgot," they said. "We'll have to do it over."
- Dave Barry

It only seemed fair that I did what was in my power to help with this important research while we were checking out the beaches, and bars playing, you guessed it: techno :)


By special request, I'll also do my best to get more men for you, interested ladies. In the meantime, you can always look at last year


In other news, it was actually my first time on a powered two wheel vehicle (50cc scooter). While those things sound underpowered, they strangely still do 80kph+, which happened to be the highest speed limit on the island's roads anyway, so getting 125cc wouldn't have gotten us that much (it also required my French driver's license as the US one wasn't good enough for anything but 50cc, and the said license is sitting on my dresser in Sunnyvale). What's funny is that I actually had to change sunglasses, because going past 60kph created an insane amount of wind that was getting around my shades and triggering tears.


It was an interesting experience, even though I've always hated the obnoxious sound that scooters do (and I still don't feel any different now), but the fun part was driving in the mountain roads around the island: brake, setup for the turn and the apex, lean in the turn, hit the apex, gas out, and off to the next turn. I very quickly confirmed that I would probably enjoy this about as much as racing cars, which is exactly what I was afraid of.
Long story short, while I wasn't leaning a whole lot (less than I would on a mountain bike, which isn't a whole lot to start with), the thing slid from under me in a turn. I don't think I hit any significant dirt or gravel, it's just that a scooter comes with really crappy tires not meant to be ridden on the side at all, not even a little bit, and that the tires we got were probably even crappier than the average.
I'm not quite sure how, but I ended up on my front and face, opened my right knee fairly well (took a more than 4 hours to coagulate despite the hot air and wind from riding), and it also took a good piece of skin off my chin right under my goatee (so luckily it isn't visible as it's healing). Apart from that, my elbows didn't suffer that much and I only got minor scratches apart from that. I also made a couple of comments about the "this is a joke" helmets we got, and sure enough, a real helmet would have protected my chin in this fall...
The main problem is that I landed on my fanny pack, which broke the LCD on my digital camera that was in there. This is the part that sucks the most because while the camera still takes pictures, I now have to operate it blind and won't be able to take any good manual pictures (like long exposure night ones, or dance club pictures with light and exposure correction), not counting the fact that I'll have to buy another camera again (the previous one had a rafting "incident")
At the end of the day, I guess I can't complain, since my riding "leathers" were a pair of swimming trunks and a T-shirt. All in all, I didn't get that hurt, but I'm really bummed about my camera, especially since I'll have 10 more days without being able to take pictures as easily or well :( I guess compared to a broken leg or something, it's "only" money... At least I can share war stories with the road and mountain bikers who have had close encounters with pavement (I've always managed to avoid that on my mountain bike so far)

But while scooters have always been obnoxious and dangerous pieces of crap (even though they do come in very handy in a place like Ibiza), and I do realize that real motorbikes handle better, I still think that powered bikes are dangerous as a whole, especially for someone like me. Therefore, I'll stick to a low to the ground car with four tires on the road. They can slide without the car tipping over :)

But going back to the day, some of those beaches were really gorgeous. While it was an expensive day considering, it still felt worth it


Anyway, I still went out a bit after disinfecting my wounds, but found it a bit hard to dance with a knee that I couldn't really bend due to the bandage, so I ended up going to bed around 02:00. The highlight of the evening however is when I bound some compeed (special bandage that is supposed to be water proof and help healing), and that it wouldn't stick to my skin due to the temperature and sweat that I couldn't wipe off. So, what was the solution? Well, while the geek's #1 non tool is duct tape, the second one is super glue, so I did happen to carry superglue with me (I always do), and superglued the bandaids to my skin (it took 3 to cover the area. That worked perfectly, it even turned out to be entirely water proof since it survived the two dives I did the next day :)
(No, you may not ask how I'm ever going to get that off: one problem at a time, shall we :) )

Pictures from Wednesday
(I'm sparing you the bloody knee and opened chin, you don't really need to see that :) I'm sure you'll enjoy the nice beaches better)

Where are the pictures you ask?
They're being taken, but with all day activities, socializing, night life, and PADI studying, and other, I've been a bit busy :)
Then, there is the small problem that it's hard to edit and gamma correct (i.e. fix the color balance) of pictures when you are on the beach, and you can barely see the laptop screen (besides, there are other things I should be looking at ;-) )

I'll see what I can do as I get a little time if that happens, I barely make it to the internet cafe as is (as it should be :) ), besides uploading pictures when I post my blog through my cell phone is not going to happen :) and my pictures are usually so big that it will take quite a while to upload them from the internet cafe since their uplink is usually a slow 128KB.

What's interesting too, is that I think I've been taking fewer pictures this year, I guess partly because there isn't much of a point to take the same pictures than last year (about 360) which are all here , and also because I'm trying to cut down a bit on pictures in general too (I've gotten the hints, thanks :) )
Well, you're in luck, I managed to upload 3 days worth of pictures, and you can find them here

Anyway, I got done reading the 120 pages of PADI training around 02:00 this morning, and while I was really tired, I only got into a half sleep with weird dreams and eventually got up 30mn later to take an ambiant which took nicely care of that problem (although between Sonata and that, it'd be the 3rd day in a row, not great... I guess it does confirm that my sleep cycles are very picky)

The next morning, I was at least woken up by my watch, confirming that I got slightly more 6H of uninterrupted sleep, and Alain and I went to the harbor for our pickup to the dive site where we studied and practised this morning. The bad news is that when I jumped into the boat (reasonable jump down), I mis-landed a bit and because I was wearing my slipper-like sandals, I managed to somewhat injure the left side of my hip (probably nothing, but still somewhat painful right now). That, plus the blisters, and the soreness from wakeboarding made me feel like an old beaten up man today (at least one person will know what I'm talking about :).

We got picked up in the local harbour to go to the dive center, and I burst out laughing when I saw that (don't tell me I'm the one with a dirty mind, they're the ones who named their island that way :) )


Anyway, we went to the dive center, and Upi, our Dutch teacher told us "ok, let's go study in my office", by which he meant "the bar/restaurant next door" (where his hot british wife happens to work :). I'm not bitter to have spent all that time reading (even though it feels right now that once again, not a lot stuck in my brain), but would I have not done it now, I wouldn't have later either. Either way, Alain showed up without having read much at all, and we went through the review questions and he did fine anyway.
After that, we actually went in the swimming pool for the first time (being by the sea, we had simply done all the exercises there). The funny part was that it was a hotel swimming pool with guests bathing and sun bathing, which was a bit sunreal when we showed up in full diving gear and dove in their pool and worked mostly under them :)

After lunch, we went for another sea dive and more training, as well as a slightly better dive. Since I'm a moron, I forgot my under water camera for the second time, but I did put it in my bag for next time though.


After getting back, and a stop at the internet cafe which took a little while due to blog catching up, and all the mails I had received, we had a tapas party, where each room had prepared finger food that we all shared.
Then, for some reason, we followed part of the group in some sunside bar that was somewhat empty, but I feel like sleeping tonight, so that's just as well.
The good news is that I got all my pictures edited and sorted, so I'll try to upload them next time I reach an internet cafe. I will even try to add a few pictures to the existing blog entries.
Ok, 02:00, time for bed, the next nights will be much later and wilder than tonight, so I might as well get a little sleep now.

Pictures from Tuesday

(if you wonder why the blogs don't have titles when they first get posted, that's because I think I'll be sending them from my bedroom through my GPRS cell phone, and using BloGTK to do a quick upload/publish, unfortunately, it doesn't support titles, so I'll be fixing that up through the web when I reach an internet cafe some time later)

So, I forgot to mention yesterday how intense the Sun is around here. Coming from California, and having done mountain biking during the summer at noon, you'd think that I'd be ok, but it's so intense that my skin just can't handle direct sun for that long, even with sun screen. At least I haven't gotten burned yet.

I started with wakeboarding, where I didn't do too badly for my 3rd time, but I was pretty bad technique-wise and got tired and sloppy pretty quickly. Then, I studied my PADI notes before going diving since I'm intent on getting my open water PADI level this week (and maybe more next week)


After that, Alain and I did our first dive of the week. It wasn't actually stellar, half because the spot we went to turned out not to be great, and we had some first time diver tourists in tow, and there is nothing wrong with beginners, but those were particularly bad

As nice brainfarts today, I just fried a transformer to charge my Empeg because I completely forgot to plug it into a 220->110V converter I do have (and used yesterday), and earlier, I had an discussion/argument with the American lady who joined us during during our dive about the fact that the verb to dive is conjugated dive/dove/diven, but that it might sound weird to her because Americans don't conjugate some verbs properly than just simplified them to be regular verbs, like dream/dreamed/dreamed, and dive/dived/dived, because "they don't know any better" I uttered. Somehow my brain had decided that they were british like all the other native sounding English speakers around in Ibiza, but turns out they were American, and she took small offense to my comment. Ooops to both :)
(turns out, I'm apparently all wrong on that verb anyway, but that has never stopped me from having a successful argument anyway :) )

Then, we had dinner with the UCPA folks:


I'm now going through the 150 pages of PADI material I'm supposed to read for tomorrow morning's class (not part of the basic deal, it's $400 Euros total, and of course does require some studying). I'm only at page 53, and it's already 01:03. I feel like L.F. was a few months ago. Argh...
Oh well, back to work...

Pictures from Monday

I somehow made it onto the plane (the idea was not to fall asleep in one of the terminal's seats), and because my body had given up on when was an ok time to sleep, I took a Sonata when I got in the plane. I'm not overly sure I remember the take off after that, just like I hear rumours of a decent breakfast in the plane, which was supposed to be surprising for a charter plane, but I do remember waking up a few meters before landing 1h40 later :)

We met the other 13 frenchies in our group and ahead for San Antoni, where our UCPA group stays on the Island. Sunday was the day off for the 4 UCPA sport instructors, and the one of them who most likely got the short straw and came to pick us up visibly went to the Privilege's opening night Sat Night, and hadn't exactly seen a bed in a day or so when he came to pick us up at the airport Sunday Morning :)
The killer quote was when the bus drove in front of the Privilege on the way to San Antoni, and we saw folks on the side of the road (it was around 08:00), and a car funnily parked so much into the side ditch that it was 45 degres angled. His comment was "ah oui, ce sont les restes du Privilege" (the leftovers from last night who hadn't managed to get home yet)

Anyway, after a quick welcome, we proceeded to unpack, and I went to check how the beds were for the next 90mn or so :) before heading for the beach to chat by the Kenya beach bar, with the familiar techno playing on the beach.


5H later, after a 14:00 lunch, a dip in the water, and a nap on the beach later, I headed back for the apartments to do some shopping (8 liters of water), and sign up for an internet cafe that would accept laptops (10 euros for 5H of usage, whenever I want: quite a bargain since I can sync all my mail and do what I need in less than 10mn). Depending on the mood, I've also been sending Emails or blog entries from my bedroom through my gprs phone (no phone lines in our apartments, which is not an Ibiza issue, but just because we're in a cheap place)
I'm on chapter 3 of Mr P.'s learning Spanish audio books, and actually managed to use some of it with the Internet Cafe guy who didn't speak any English or French (a little unusual for Ibiza), cool... (thanks RM).

I got a much needed shower after that (never really hit one, or a bed since I had left home friday morning), and what was funny the "thumb" "thumb" "thumb" I could hear through the opened window. Welcome to Ibiza, where you almost get to hear techno everywhere, even more than Burning Man where you hear music almost everywhere, but not necessarily techno...

After another pre-dinner nap, we had the welcome drinks around 21:00 when we met the other instructors who had waken up by then, and it was kind of funny when they had to give us the UCPA speech that our stay was technically focussed on sports, and that partying was supposed to be secondary (UCPA gets money from the French government to promote sports), as they obviously had faces from people who had partied all night :)
Dinner was from 22:00 to past midnight, and a guy from last year staying with Alain and I, decided to go with me to an early club visit around 01:00 since we had free tickets for the Amnesia that night, and wanted to go there for an hour or so. It was decent but not awesome (sunday nights are usually a bit low), so we headed back a bit past 02:00 and went back to bed for an early night (after all, most of us hadn't slept much at all due to the plane coming in that stupid ass time)


All in all, it was a quiet and decent day considering, and now the week starts, I'm going to go wakeboarding in half an hour, and diving this afternoon.

Pictures from Sunday

Current Music: Faithless - No Root - In the end
Current Mood: annoyed, don't screw with my South Park recording...

The letter I just sent to Tivo:

Hi,

Being an engineer, I am a demanding customer, and I have been reasonably happy with your products and services (which means you've been doing a good job).

However, a bit more than a week ago, comcast changed their channel lineup out of the blue so that pretty much none of my extended channels match anymore. I live in sunnyvale, CA (94085), about 10mn from your headquarters, so I'd be surprised if none of your employees experienced the same thing and already reported it (and I found out way later that you were indeed aware of it)

I called support, which seemed intent on sending me to Sony when it was clearly a software/service issue, and I ended up arguing with the CSR because he wanted to send me to Sony when I told him that selecting change channel lineup was crashing the tivo software (which otherwise never crashes for me).
Never mind the fact that I had to explain to him what a crash and a reboot was (i.e. "describe what happened", "well, I select the menu option, I get the basic drawing, no letters or options, the tivo freezes, and after about 10 seconds, the watchdog kicks in and the kernel reboots", which is what I explained on my third attempt of conveying the fact that the software crashed on that menu option, but he kept asking for more details, saying he didn't understand reboot or crash).
I got more and more aggravated when he was telling me that I had to contact Sony and RMA my unit when it was clearly a software bug (and said Sony also did Tivo software support, is that really true?)

Of course, this wasn't the problem at hand, I was just being nice and playing along with his script. The problem is that after about 10 days, you're still feeding me the wrong channel data, and worst of all, there is no supported way for me to override the bad data (well, if I cared to spend the time, I could probably use Tivoweb, browse the MFS filesystem, find the relevant resource(s) and fix them, but seriously, I shouldn't have to do that)
I've been getting country music instead of the daily show for more than one week, and now I've just missed the Latest Episode of South Park because of your inaptitude to fix a simple channel name to channel number mapping. I am very pissed!

Your CSR explained that you go through some arbitration company to request a channel lineup update and that comcast has to send it back to them and then them to you. Why so much unnecessary red tape? Anyone can just spend 10mn, map the channels and adjust the lineup for almost if not all of them without any help from comcast whatsoever. I personally couldn't care less whether it's an official change or not, or whether comcast plays well with others or not (they don't), I just want the lineup to be up to date.
Do you know that my Replay TV updated its channel lineup quicker than I realized that it had changed (in other words, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't even know that comcast remapped all its channels).
Seriously, where do the service fees go? I have an original Tivo, so I haven't gotten a new feature in more than a year (nor am I really expecting any, even if I'd appreciate them), TV guides can get gotten off several services in a trivial fashion, so the least you could do is to make sure that my channel lineup is up to date, and doesn't stay broken more than 10 days after it changed.
At this point, you're just tempting me to setup MythTV or Freevo.

I trust that you will get this fixed, but the fact that it still hasn't, and that I have to send you this letter is not acceptable

Current Music: South Park - Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson - O Canada
Current Mood: I know why I'm not a mechanic

So, the dreaded exhaust leak problem came back after about a year, and sure enough, the FM3 turbo kit from Flying Miata was really not supposed to be installed with bolts. I so wished that they had told us though... Of course, now they do tell you on the phone that you should use studs and locking nuts, and they sent me a bag for $10, but that doesn't make up for the almost entire day Jason and Matt spend on my car a year ago to replace two of the bolts on my wastegate with studs, or the entire saturday I just spent at Jason's to do the other two when one of them fell out a year later (to put things back in perspective, the wastegate does hang from the manifold, and it's exposed to high vibrations and extreme heat (800-900 degres C), which does put bolts through a lot of strain).
Anyway, this time, the valiant knights were Jyri, Carlos, and Jason also helped us out, even though he had to stay focus on his engine rebuild.
Jyri and I first took the turbo out, which took close to two hours (lots of nuts in uncool places, but that was nothing compared to what was in front of us). Carlos arrived around the time when we were removing the wastegate (which was now being half held by just one bolt since the other one had fallen out).


Putting the studs in with Jason's double nut trick wasn't too hard, but we spent the several following hours trying to figure out how to put a bolt back on the nut as I did lose the single hardest bolt to replace in the car: the bolt that holds the external wastegate to the 90 degree adapting piece. It's not that we didn't have the right tools, but no wrench would fit there because the bolt was too close to the wastegate, preventing anything but an open wrench from fitting there. The small hitch was that you couldn't use one because the engine was in the way.


So, the next logical move was to remove the manifold so that this could all be bolted together without the engine being in the way, but the kicker is that the manifold can't be removed without removing the wastegate adapting piece, and that's the one that we spent so much time putting in place with studs last year so that it wouldn't move ever again (that was the part that was falling out soon after the turbo install).
After too much time of fudging around without getting the damn nut tightened to any useful extend, Carlos came up with the great easy to shave off some material off the wastegate, did nothing else but remove the TIAL lettering, and that turned out to be enough. It's really ironic that the logo was what prevented us from putting a bolt on, but that's actually what happened.


You missed some funny parts where Jason and Carlos used a PVC pipe on top of an angled wrench to get more leverage, and make sure the nut never ever comes off (considering that it's a day's worth of work to get to it...). We then started the job of putting everything back together (including jacking up the exhaust so that the downpipe would match up with the turbo long enough for us to put the bolts back on).


After that, Carlos had to leave so as to remain married :) and Jyri stayed until most things had been put back together, and I proceeded to wait for Jason who had a previously planned dinner with friends, and we finished putting the remaining pieces back together when he came back around 23:00.
In the process, we fixed a coolant pressure leak, replaced some hoses that were either very tired, or insufficiently heat insulated and would have failed soon, and made sure to give them extra protection so that hopefully they'll last this time.
There wasn't a whole lot to put back together, but it still took another two hours as we applied a few last minute fixes and carefully checked things up as we were putting them back (and had to figure out why nothing was plugged in the blow off valve, and were the missing vacuum hose was). I proceeded to slice one of my fingers open by reaching for my swiss army knife in my pocket (which I hadn't quite closed from its last use), and thanks to all the people mentioned, I got home around 01:30 with a working car again.
I have to give Jyri, Carlos, and Jason a big thank you again, and the guys who designed the FM3 kit, a big fist in the air for having designed the most unmaintainable kit there is out there.

You can find all the pictures here , including a cool small video of the wastegate here here

So, obvious questions some people could ask:
Is it all worth it? Well, when you turn blots a 16th of a turn at a time and leave pieces of your arm in the engine bay, it may not be that obvious, but when back on the road with a huge grin as the boost gauge is hitting 10, the answer is an absolute yes :)
How about buying a faster car, can't you afford that? That's a sensible one: well, today I probably would, but putting aside the blood and tears, I do have for less than $20,000, a car that's faster than an S2000, a porsche boxter, or a Z3/Z4 (not M) and that can also outhandle both of them. That said, there is something to be said for buying a car where all the stuff is already fitted from the factory and they did use studs instead of bolts were needed. My guess is that today, I might consider alternatives, especially knowing the pain when maintenance is required. That said, the friends I made through BAMO, priceless...