Philosophical Problems

I was going to write a cheesy little LJ-poster as my first Android app, byt
it looks like post-by-email has me covered there.

At least I'm safely back in Atlanta thanks to the generousity of PsiU,
especially Amy and Flip (cf. Eliza). Thanks, guys!

Following my typical modus operandi, I deliberated carefully and charted the pros and cons of all my scooter options for weeks, then woke up this morning and just went and bought one to stop obsessing about it. Because it’s “the season,” the few good deals which have showed up on Craigslist have lasted all of 5 seconds before someone snaps them up. At one point I’d pretty much decided to ignore all caution and buy the 150cc Vespa, but the universe saw fit to remind me that I can’t really afford such extravagance at the moment – I’ll save that for my second scooter.

For my first scooter I’ve ended up going with a new Lance Charming 50cc:



The ultimate deciding factor for me was cost. Scooter enthusiasts seem to love railing against cheap scooters made by fly-by-night Chinese companies, and there do seem to be a lot of terrible-looking super-cheap Chinese scooters out there. Lance is kind of a fly-by-early-morning company – a US-based brand for a Chinese manufacturer trying to establish a better reputation, actual dealers/shops, etc. Here in Atlanta they’ve been picked up by ATL Scooters, which probably influenced me somewhat because they were the first scooter shop I visited and were super nice and helpful. All of which makes the Charming – as far as I can tell – hands down the cheapest scooter available with dealer support in Atlanta. We’ll see how that decision turns out a few hundred miles down the road, but I’m happy with the cash saved for now.

Plus it’s soooo cute. I thought about getting it in pink, but decided I didn’t need to broadcast my assurance of my own masculinity quite that loudly.

Thank you for the lazyweb advice, fur and glueandglitter – it was much appreciated even if not followed to the letter.

I seem to have come down with the Martian death virus. I went from “fine” to “sniffley” to “oh god my throats hurts oh god ow ow kill me please” over the course of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead last night. I went to sleep feeling too miserable to go buy cold medicine, woke up and have been feeling too miserable to go back to sleep for about an hour, and was just about to go actually buy cold medicine when I realized I have a full bottle of NyQuil. Strikes and gutters.

I’m contemplating buying a motor scooter. It would greatly increase my mobility in Atlanta without requiring the whole “car” thing again. (Somewhat-rational reason: a car I’d just end up selling once I leave, a scooter I might hold onto wherever I move next.) I’ve just started looking, and already feel overwhelmed by options.

The Big Decision seems to be getting a 50cc vs. larger engine. In GA and many other states anything less than a 50cc engine is comparatively unregulated – no need to get a motorcycle license, register the scooter, or even get insurance (!!! I think – haven’t confirmed the last yet). The downsides are (a) the maximum speed is generally only 30-40 mph (frequently regulated down to 30); and (b) a 50cc engine can’t really carry a passenger very well.

But then even if I just decided to go with the 50cc engine there’s a huge variation in prices, from less than $1k to over $4k. Are the cheap ones worthless? Are the expensive ones worth it? I have no idea.

Er, okay, so the Lazy Web part – anyone I know ever own a scooter and/or have any advice? Thanks in advance...

This guide may come in handy for those of you who keep kosher.

27.0027

The flood of weddings for people I know has already started, but the next year or so covers the local streets in marital water. Several friends, my brother, Elise's brothers, and several of Elise's cousins are all on the wedding calendar.

This past weekend Elise and I headed to Hunstville, AL for her cousin Nathan's wedding. I decided this was a good opportunity to start actually using our digital camera and my flickr account. The digital camera we have was a gift from some years ago, and the automatic adjustment setting isn't that smart. So between my being a total photographing amateur and needing to fiddle with the exposure settings every shot...

And it just felt weird photographing people. I imagine most people have experience doing family photography from childhood, but my family was never big on the picture taking. We have photo albums spottily covering the early parts of my sibs and my childhood, but nothing after that. Although I've respected photography as art, I didn't realize how hard it is to take even just... "documentary"? photographs -- those sufficient to give a visual sense of the time, place, event under the camera. Practice makes perfect?

I've been doing the intermittent tech-blogging thing over on platypope.org. I'd like to start doing a bit of life-blogging again, but I don't think the people who subscribed to platypope because they liked my Emacs screencast want to know what I had for breakfast (a bowl of corn chex, btw). So now I can be a two-blog blogger! With not quite enough material for one blog! It'll be great.

Speaking of two-<x> things, Elise's car is in the shop, making us presently not a two-car family. But what a better time to pull out the old bicycle? I hadn't ridden or otherwise touched it since moving to Atlanta, due to a combination of having no idea where to go, getting used to auto-driving, and fearing death as incarnated by Atlanta's drivers. The bike was pretty grubby, but some metaphorical elbow grease and literal degreaser fixed that. Well, mostly -- I wouldn't quite call it "clean," but at least it doesn't make any scary sounds when I pedal. As for when I brake... I'll need a few more tools to fix that.

Now I can go to the Flying Biscuit and the grocery store! And probably other places! Under my own power! Ah, fuel efficiency. And I finally understand the whole fixed-gear phenomena. Mike plus some cycling experimentation convinced me that the nearby hills are doable with a reasonable single gearing, and the cleaning job would have been way, way easier (and more complete) without all those fancy "brakes" and "derailleurs."

Elise expressed some interesting in trying out the cycling thing, so I might be researching and pricing up a pair of fixed-gears in the quasi-near future.

Those of you using LJ as your primary feed aggregator may add platypope to your friends list in order still to read my intermittent rambles.

Please move along. Nothing more to see here.