Geek who loves 2 bike

I could not resist commenting on this report in the York Daily Record about Harley workers in New York voting to strike while meeting at the Toyota Arena. How ironic.

As usual, I am pleased with my Mac and how easily it allows me to do numerous tasks. Yesterday, for no particular reason, I decided that I wanted to customize my ring tone on my Motorola V600 phone. The key factor is that I wanted to do this without paying anything. I can not understand why anyone would willing pay up to $3.00 for a new ringtone. With a few simple steps I was able to accomplish this. Following are the steps I took:

1. I established a bluetooth connection between my phone and Powerbook. This is easily accomplished with the Bluetooth preference in the System Preference application.

2. I then went about creating a short MP3 ringtone using iTunes. I did this by first selecting a suitable song. I then made a copy of the file. Double-clicking it added the second copy to iTunes. Using iTunes and the info window ("Get Info") of the song, I set the song to only play the first ten seconds of the song. Note, you can sample any section of the song using a start time and stop time. Finally, I converted the song (Convert to MP3) to make the song file only the length of the sample.

3. The next step was loading the song file to the phone. I used the bluetooth connection between the phone and the Powerbook to copy the ringtone song file to the audio directory on my phone.

4. The final step is to use the phone setup function to set the new song to my ringtone.

This works great and was very easy to do. Significantly, I needed no software other that the stock software on the computer. And most importantly it did not cost a cent.

I am so flaming mad, I can hardly begin. Bottom line: I believe anybody would be an idiot to purchase an Arai helmet.

Here's the story. I purchased an Arai RX-7 Corsair helmet some time ago. This is almost at $600 helmet. Although the helmet fits well and functions acceptably, after some normal use I question the quality. First, the interior padding is flimsy. The foam in one cheek pad broke. Note I am careful with my helmets as I believe they are a vitally important piece of safety gear. Contacting Arai via an e-mail on their site (as they consciously provide no phone number), proved unsatisfactory. They offered no replacement, no solution to the fact that their dealer network in the area does not stock the cheek pads, and basically said I could fix it myself. Eventually, I just used some duct tape. This seems ridiculous on a $600 helmet.

Later, in mid-November of 2006, the chin strap ripped clear across on my helmet. Once again, this helmet has not misused, mistreated, or involved in any accident. I found this very disconcerting as the chinstrap is integral to the safety of the helmet. On November 17, 2006 I sent Arai an e-mail via their website reporting this failure. Arai did not respond to this e-mail until today, January 13, 2007. This is almost 2 months later. I believe this is enough to discourage anybody from purchasing an Arai helmet.

But, there is more to my story. After not recieving a reply from Arai one week after my November 17 e-mail, I visited a local motorcycle dealer who sells Arai. During my visit the dealer called Arai while I waited. Nobody at Arai answered (this is on the dealer contact number) and I heard him leave a message. One week later when checking in with the dealer, I was told that Arai had not returned the dealers call. I had purchased an Suomy helmet rather than risk wearing the defective Arai helmet. The dealer and I agreed that the dealer would return my helmet for warranty. In December, a month later, I was informed by the dealer that Arai had just given him a return authorization to send the helmet in. Once again, I can not agree to any justification for Arai failing to respond quickly to defects in their helmets.

A broken chinstrap is a serious failure. Arai's delay in response is inexcusable. While I know that many have used Arai helmets with no failure I urge you to consider whether you would want to do business with a company with the poorest level of customer support I have ever experienced.

I have been using the Griffin RadioShark for two years. For those who do not know, the Radio Shark is a hardware device that you hook to your computer (Mac in my case) via USB. This allows you to listen and record radio directly on you computer. The RadioShark includes an associated software application. Basically, the RadioShark (and software) allows you to do three things: listen to over-the-air radio on your computer, record (time-shift) any radio program you are currently playing, schedule recordings.

The RadioShark has worked well for me since I began using it. Particularly useful, is having weekly scheduled recordings of programs I like.

Today I tried recording a program I was currently listening to. The software indicated an error. None of the workarounds I tried seemed to work. Note: my weekly scheduled recording have been working flawlessly. I went to Griffins site and found a newer version of the software (v.2.0.1). After downloading the software my problem (recording the time-shifted buffer) works without error.

Unfortunately and significantly the new version of the RadioShark software has a much different user interface. This is unfortunate in that that the new user interface is very ugly and not as user friendly as the old interface. There is no option to go to the old user interface. From a business management perspective, I can not believe that Griffin did any user testing.

In the end, I am pleased to have my Griffin RadioShark function again. My grading: function - A-, form - D

Just watched Top Gun (1986) again. This is one of my favorite movies. The movie plays well even 21 years later. If you haven't watched it in awhile, do yourself a favor and rent it.