Old Hotness

A few months ago, I bought this motorcycle from Manny (of Uncontrol fame) because he was moving back to New York and didn't want to just sell it on Craigslist. I finally got around to getting a permit and learning to ride it.

It is a 1972 Honda CB350. Manny modified the handlebars and added an electric starter, but other than that, it is stock. It had one owner before Manny, who mostly kept it in a barn.

Update: Manny says the mufflers are also new. He changed them from 4 into 4 pipes to 4 into 1.

At first I couldn't get it to start (the battery had died), so I was playing with a few things, trying to debug it. It's easy to see how in the 60s and 70s kids could learn about engines just through experimentation. The mechanisms are all really simple and straightforward. You can pull on the clutch or throttle and visually trace how it works.

I intend to use it mostly to get to work and Mama's on sunday.

Orange County lets me down, again

Cool interactive charts found at latimes.com.

Bittersweet Obamaday

Please excuse any bad grammar, I was out last night celebrating with friends.

This is the first time I felt really strongly positive about a politician. I hope that I'm not being overly influenced by a campaign that was tuned specifically to work on my demographic. I hope that there really is something there, and that Obama can manage to follow through on some of the progress his name has become synonymous with.

Unfortunately, it's not all flowers and light. Somehow, at the same time most Americans decided to take a big step forward, it appears a majority of Californians decided that about 5% of the population should be denied the basic human right to marry.

:: sigh ::

Moved to the SF Google office

As of last Monday, I've permanently moved to the Google San Francisco office. A few of us from my team moved up at once to establish the remote northern outpost.

I'd really gotten tired of the 1.5 hour commute each way to Mountain View. Instead, I now go about 15 minutes by subway followed by 10 minutes by skateboard. Other options are a 20 minute bicycle ride or 10 minute motorcycle ride. It's also great to be able to do things after work in the city.

Reminder: This blog is now about personal stuff only. I've moved posts about my work to a new site.

The great work/personal blog split

I finally finished something I've been meaning to do for a long time now: I split apart my work and personal blogs.

From here on out, this blog will be about personal matters: traveling, cat pics, that kind of thing. The programming stuff has been moved to aaronboodman.com.

Thanks!