Heading to FL soon

I am heading to FL soon for some training and to visit some friends on the side and am looking FORWARD to the weather!

Merry Christmas!

My best wishes for a joyous Christmas day to my family and friends and maybe the blessings of Christ be upon you for 2011

Snow is on the way!

Have yourself a Merry little Christmas

The Chairman of the Board...voices like that are few and far between.

An Elvis Christmas oldie

For any kids watching this, that device is called a "record player", aka "phonograph" aka "turntable". It's how we used to listen to music...and I still do every once in a while.

Another "new" Elvis song

From the newly released VIVA ELVIS cd, "Can't Help Falling in Love" is presented here as a duet. It's a nice version of the song I think.

Blue Christmas - Elvis

From the 1968 Comeback Special

Diagnosis on the Guzzi Lemans

I fired off a missive to my friend in Australia, Guzzi mechanic Pete Roper, asking him for some advice on the rear drive leakage issue on my 2002 Lemans.

Pete sent back some sage advice. Now all I need to do is follow it :0)

It appears that the bearing part #'s 30 and 31 in the pic below have likely failed. Part 31 is the inner race of the bearing. Part # 10 is the inner bevel box seal that has likely failed allowing the oil to escape.

So there is a fair amount of work needed to be done to repair this but winter is here and riding opportunities are slim anyway. Pretty much it be be a complete dis-assembly of the rear drive assembly. It will be good to get into the rear drive as I have not seen it apart before.

*****CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO ENLARGE*****

Oh Christmas tree how I love thee

Well the arduous task of finding, cutting down transporting and finally setting up and decorating my Christmas tree for 2010 has been completed.

Merry Christmas to all!

Dadgummit...the Goose done sprung a leak

After a fun little ride a couple weekends ago on my 2002 Guzzi Lemans, I spied a small puddle underneath the rear drive assembly.

Turns out it was gear oil. The right side of the rim and tire were fairly soaked in gear oil. I guess a seal in the drive assembly is the culprit.

So now I await the shop stand I ordered and one of my Christmas time projects will be pulling the shaft and rear drive assembly off the bike and seeing what needs fixin'!

Random ramblings

***SPECIAL NOTE!!***
The Comments on this post mark the long-overdue return of the "enraged motorist"

I have taken up reading a little bit more lately. Right now I am reading "Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory".
I really enjoy reading books on my little Droid device.

I recently got a new job at work. The product I have been working on for the last 3 years or so is slowly being phased out and there is just not enough work to go around on it anymore. So I started looking recently and applied for a position on another product which has a burgeoning pipeline and is very young in its life. I got the position and have just recently started getting exposed to this product. I think it is going to be very interesting to learn about the product.

As part of the new position I get to travel back to the Sunshine state, in the south of Florida, the first week of January for intensive training. I am looking forward to escaping the cold of the midwestern USA for a little bit. Hopefully I will have a chance to visit my Guzzi Stelvio while I am there as well.

ROKU Yule Log

My new lil ROKU video box debuted a new seasonal channel today called the Christmas Channel. It has some videos and non-stop Christmas music as well as my favorite addition, a video of a crackling, popping, hissing fireplace. Really neat!

Unbroken

I am not really taken to reading books very often, at least not for pleasure. I do read often, but more likely magazines, manuals, bits of stories here and there on the computer or books for learning, mostly job related.

Recently however I heard of a book that captured my attention. Of all places I heard about it on a sports talk radio show from a fellow known as Christopher "Mad Dog" Russo, a fiery and amusing character with a sports talk show on Sirius/XM satellite radio.

Occasionally he departs from the normal sports talk show fare and delves into books he is reading. This one really piqued my interest.

The book is called "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption". It focuses on the life of an Italian-American named Louis Zamperini and his life before, during and after World War II, in which he was a part of bomber crews in the Pacific theater fighting the Japanese.

I can't say enough about what a fantastic book this is. Exciting, interesting, chilling, joyous, heart rending and tear inducing.

Please get this book and read it. It's a story you will never forget.

The World of ROKU

Recently I made the decision, after looking at my fairly monstrous monthly cable tv bill, to cut the cord from cable tv and find an alternative for occasional tv watching.

Having heard some friends discuss a device called ROKU, I investigated and purchased the device (around $60 for the model I bought). It is a small box, about the size of a large sandwich, which connects to your home internet connect (wirelessly or wired) and streams HD content to your tv.

The ROKU gives you a very nice graphical interface for selecting from myriad "channels" of content on the internet. TV shows, movies, just all sorts of content, very much of which is FREE!

I did decide to subscribe to one such channel called HULU PLUS which has just a massive amount of content including popular current tv shows, movies and much more.

I am having a lot of fun playing with the ROKU and discovering all of the unique programming it offers. Best of all, my cable tv/internet bill of ~$119/month is now ~$45/month. Yeah, I like that :-)