Author: Jon

The stupidest bike I’ve ever wrenched

So you bought a RadPower Radmission ebike, huh? Pleasant little bike you got on clearance for barely more than the cost of the battery? Great!

Oh, you have to change the rear tube? Not so great.

First, we start by removing the nuts holding the wheel on. So we grab our trusty bike wrench that fits almost all screw-type skewers and… oh.

A hand holds a standard bike wrench clearly too small to remove the nut from the skewer

This one takes a 19mm wrench. No worries, you have one of those, right? Oh.

A close up of the bike showing a metal bracket that holds the rack that is also holding the wheel skewer in place

This also requires a size 4 allen wrench because the the rear rack is attached to the skewer for some reason. No matter, you have one of those, too. So now we remove the wheel… oh.

A hand holds a utility knife against a cable tie wrapped around the power cable for the rear wheel motor

Did you remember the blade to cut the zip tie that keeps the power cable in place? You didn’t?

This is all BEFORE you try to put it back on and realize it’s nearly impossible to get the wheel aligned the same way as before so your brakes rub and you need a new zip tie to keep the power cable to the rear wheel motor from getting caught in the spokes.

This bike is truly a lesson on what NOT to do when building a bike. But my wife loves it, so…

Credit monitoring companies will simply freeze to death in the winter

I have credit monitoring through Creditwise (credit card benefit from Capital One) and MyIDCare (I think this was from a data breach settlement though I forget which one). Yesterday Creditwise flagged a credit inquiry that I was not aware of from Barclays Bank. I do not have any accounts there, although I know sometimes the bank you do business with is not the one that shows up, so I guess it could have been legitimate?

I called Barclays through the number on their website (NOT the number that showed up on the credit report because who trusts that?). They did not have any record of an inquiry.

I went back to Creditwise and they said to contact the reporting company, so I contacted Transunion. They couldn’t tell me anything more about the inquiry, copy/pasted some instructions about reporting it to the federal government, then disconnected the chat.

As an aside, it is deeply problematic that Transunion won’t let me see anything or dispute anything without giving them and then verifying my phone number. Transunion should be launched into the sun.

Then MyIDCare also flagged the inquiry. My skepticism at the phone number listed for Barclays was validated, as the number at MyIDCare was DIFFERENT from the one at Creditwise. So I called MyIDCare. They basically said the same thing as Creditwise.

So I have two monitoring services that are unable to tell me literally anything more than the name of the bank and the date. I reported it at IdentityTheft.gov so I imagine some Dogebro is checking to see if he can hack my Venmo and ICE is looking at my citizenship status so that’s a good time.

There’s a Simpsons episode that’s applicable here (there always is), where we “fix” problems with increasingly worse problems until finally some problem resolves itself (here, the collapse of the global economy).

I had the idea for a gas generator first

Neither of these articles does a good job explaining, because journalism is dead, but this is the way I thought we should be bridging the gap between gas and electric cars while we build out charging infrastructure.

Ford is ditching its all-electric version of the F150 because, I suspect, the type of person who wants a huge expensive pickup truck ALSO wants it to make vroom-vroom noises to own the libs.

What I think Ford is doing, and what I think has been a great idea all along, is a fully electric drivetrain, as those are efficient and low-maintenance, along with a gas-powered generator to recharge the battery if you’re somewhere it’s not possible or not convenient to plug in. This makes so much sense while we’re still a country with gas stations everywhere but not a lot of car charging stations. A gas-powered generator can be optimized to produce electricity – I bet it’s a TON more efficient that way than having the gas run the engine and ALSO make electricity.

It’s too bad Ford had to struggle through weak Lightning sales in order to get to this point, but here we are. They should have hired me to consult.

Photography problems

I wandered around DC with the F5 today. Ran into two problems. First, it’s been so long that I’ve been shooting digital with essentially unlimited “film”, I’m having to relearn the balance between “scared to shoot anything” and “oh let me take that shot 15 times in case one is good”. I found myself struggling to take anything.

I did get a few I’m happy with on my phone.

PXL_20251207_164427667

I love how they even painted the gas meters.

Anyway, the other problem I’m having is being intimidated by other people around when I’m taking a photo. I’m just constantly worrying about what other people will think or do and I end up walking past a shot I should have taken. It’s something I need to work on.

PXL_20251207_175925189

The smell of a brand new roll of film

It’s been a while, so maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I thought I loved the smell of a roll of film, fresh out of the canister. And in particular, Fuji smelled better than Kodak. This might have been because Fuji had some deal with Ritz when I was working there so their film was cheap. And because it was sort of “our” film, we were very much Fuji fans. It generally had a bit of a cooler look to it than Kodak. And Kodak was the first to start putting awful 800 speed film in disposables without a flash and telling people that was ok for indoor shots (it wasn’t) and then they’d come in with these awful, grainy, underexposed shots and complain to ME that the prints didn’t look good.

Sometimes you could show them the negatives and tell them, “hey, there’s nothing THERE. I can’t print a picture from nothing”. But mostly they were just mad.

Anyway, the roll of Fuji 200 I got this morning didn’t have much of a smell, and I was disappointed. The F5 made a really satisfying noise when it grabbed the leader, though.

Something I’ve wanted this entire century

I am so pumped right now. Years ago, working at Ritz Camera in college, I dreamed of a Nikon F5. It was Nikon’s top of the line pro camera. It cost more than I could imagine ever affording. Ritz didn’t carry Leica or Hasselblad or any of the super high end cameras so this was the best I could get my head around. It was even worse because we had them in the store, just taunting me. It was so close I could touch it. I DID touch it, but I couldn’t take it home.

The other day one popped up on eBay listed as not working. There are a lot on eBay that are not working – I’ve been following for a while. The most common way they are broken is the battery holder no longer makes a connection. I figured I could take a chance – that’s something a bit of vinegar and a stiff brush can fix. And if I’m wrong and the battery holder is good but the camera isn’t, the battery holders are kinda rare and go for a nice amount themselves. Plus I could take the camera apart and that would be kinda fun (even though there’s next to no chance I’d get it back together again).

So it arrived yesterday and I popped in some batteries and THE CAMERA WORKS. It just works. I think the seller just had no idea what he was doing and didn’t bother finding someone who did.

My new toy with some old accessories
A Nikon F5 on a light green table flanked by three lenses

Today I bought a roll of film. I’m not getting TOO excited about it because it still may not work properly – I can’t tell if the shutter is actually functioning properly beyond it SOUNDS right. I don’t even know how long it takes to get film processed these days, but I’m going to find out very soon!

A “Joyful Vision for What Government Can Do”

The most important lesson for Democrats from Mamdani’s victory is this: abandon the decades-old practice of triangulating to win the center. Instead, grow the base with a positive, joyful vision for what government can do when it gives up on being shackled to a Republican base.

Congratulations to Zohran Mamdani on his win in NYC. The lesson here, which the Democratic party will surely refuse to learn, is that we the people do not want stupid centrist compromises. We want you to paint us a picture of the country we could have if we simply ignore the awful little racists and the fabulously wealthy who pretend to lean left in public.