an infodump grab bag!

sunday, november 26th, 2023.

Having five days off to spend time with family for Thanksgiving has been friggin' amazing. Lots of great food to put on that winter weight for hibernation (*cough*), playing D&D together, going for walks, and generally avoiding the consumerism of the post-Thanksgiving season by staying the heck away from the crowded big-box stores.

The pumpkin pie I baked a few days ago turned out delicious. Not bad for my first time baking a pie! I learned that I need to make a little extra dough for the crust so that I can decorate the pie lip, plus I need to blind-bake the crust to make sure it gets cooked all the way through next time. I made two pies, one that I brought to the Wednesday gathering and another that I gave to my next-door neighbor, who gave us a few take-out boxes stuffed to the brim from the feast they prepared for Thanksgiving. Sharing food with my neighbors makes my heart sing!

My sleep schedule remains skewed early, so I'm usually tucking into bed around 9:00 or 9:30pm while everyone else stays up, but here I am typing up a blog post at 6:30am. Bit of a bummer that we don't line up— the kids are definitely on holiday time!

keyboard things.

I spilled some coffee on my Model M buckling-spring keyboard back in September. I thought I had gotten it cleaned out, but a few weeks ago I started getting phantom keypresses. After opening up the keyboard, poking around with my multimeter, and bending a few springs by accident, I realized that I was in over my head. There was dried coffee behind the backplate where the springs contact the underlying membrane to register keypresses.

I emailed Unicomp about their repair service and they agreed that the coffee on the membrane was likely causing the phantom keypresses, giving me an RMA number and a shipping address so that I could have them repair the keyboard. It cost me probably $70 or so in shipping and repair costs, which was a bit of a gut punch but I'd rather repair a fixable keyboard than send it off to the dump.

Well, the keyboard came back in the mail on Friday and they did a great job rehabbing this thing. All the springs are in working order and the entire keyboard is pristine— I had to look really closely at where my palms rest to see the bits of plastic that had worn smooth through use. The plastic shell and keys are so clean that I thought they might have just shipped me a new keyboard!

If you didn't pick up what I'm laying down, it's this: Unicomp is an amazing company for offering a repair service for their keyboards and making it worth every penny. I made sure to let them know when they sent me a customer feedback form to fill out.

bicycle things.

Well, if you're still reading this blog, I have to assume you haven't yet tired of my bicycling and bicycle-advocacy journey. Self-deprecating aside, I'm still 100% hooked!

On a lark, I decided to bike around town Wednesday morning. Mostly to see how accessible the nearby shopping plazas and grocery stores were. But I wound up riding to city hall and dropping by the transportation planner's office for a friendly, informal conversation. It went well! I offered to loan her my copy of the Strong Towns book, and we bade each other a fantastic holiday break. She recommended dropping by the community & economic development director's office soon and having a conversation about the direction of downtown development and our future community advocacy organization. So I sent an introductory email to that director asking to meet up at some convenient time. Looking forward to that!

I dropped by my local bike shop Friday morning and picked up an ABUS SECURIT Spyne cable lock. I used to have a proper U-lock, but I have no idea where that thing or its key wandered off to. Anyway, I figured the armored steel cable design of the ABUS Spyne would be a decent lock for a quick trip inside a local grocery store. Maybe not good enough for downtown Portland or some other place where thieves are on the prowl with angle grinders and wire cutters.

I had a pretty rad conversation with one of their mechanics, who is terribly interested in keeping up with the news about my adventures into bike advocacy. When we get this thing off the ground and start printing out business cards with a link to our website, I'd bet the bike shop will be happy to have a whole rack of 'em!

Now that I have a lock for my bike, I'm able to lock my bike to street signs in front of the grocery store! So yesterday I picked up a gallon of milk, some coffee creamer, some garbanzo beans, and a loaf of raisin bread and brought it all home in one of my panniers. I think I'll keep doing that sort of thing for the odd weekday trip for odds and ends! The important bit is that it's very doable and yet another opportunity to leave the minivan at home.

At any rate, the family is stirring and waking up, so that's enough blabbing for now!

Until next time, be well. :)