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Well, it’s Halloween again. AKA my 34th birthday. This year finds me at home for the first time in years for my birthday. My usual habit over the last few years has been to go out of town on Halloween. This habit developed after close to 30 years of celebrating my birthday at someones silly costume party. I’d had enough. I decided if I left town, I could celebrate my birthday without going to a costume party. It works, too. I’ve had Halloween trips to some cool places, including New Orleans, Jackson Hole, and good old Colorado. I haven’t had to wear a costume in eons. It’s just not really what you want to do on your birthday after, say, age 10. This year, Halloween is mid-week, Jaime is super busy at work this time of year and can’t travel, and I’m starting my new job tomorrow (more on that later). I don’t know of any big party or anything, so we aren’t even blowing off a friends’ party, which is good. So we’ll just hand out candy, make dinner and chill. Sounds good to me. No costume necessary - that’s all that really counts.

Well, in an attempt to keep my mitts on a valid Colorado Drivers License, I have purchased a third vehicle: a 1985 Honda Shadow VT700C. It’s in rather good shape and runs perfectly with 27,000 miles on it. New seats, new tires, the works. Everything is present and intact and everything works. I figure this bike will keep me from having such frequent conversations with the local and state constabulary (my new best friends). I’m dangerously close to having some genuine trouble with the ol’ DMV, so, I’m just going to cruise along at the speed limit from now on (well, almost all the time ). That’s actually fun to do on the old ‘85. Believe it or not the thing makes decent torque and can scoot right along. It’s certainly not overpowered, though, which is the point. Cheap, reliable 55mpg bike for less than $2K. No tickets - this is the stay out of trouble machine. Hopefully this strategy will work. I need to go 18 months with no tickets to get a fresh start in CO, which, really is rather lenient I think. If I got these tickets in Virginia, where I used to live, I’d still be hanging in chains from the dungeon wall.

Here she is, looking pretty nice for 21 years old

Stablemates

I ride a ton of miles (almost 13,000 this year so far), and don’t expect that to change soon. I can’t continue to do them all on the FZ1, because its just too hard not to get the attention of the Law Enforcement Officers. The police love that stinkin’ FZ1 - they never miss a chance to stop it and take a look at it. I’ll use the 85 for transportation and keep the FZ1 for fun for a while until the heat subsides. If I can get a few bucks together next year, maybe I’ll get a bigger cruiser and trade up from the 85 700. We’ll just see how it goes. Still, the Shadow has some fahrvergnugen of its own. It’s a fun little wanna-be cruiser. Welcome to the family!

The Jets come back with a win. Not a convincing win, but I’ll take it.

At least we didn’t do what the Cardinals did. Ouch.

Wow. It’s a good thing Jets fans are used to absorbing the suckage. That was horrible. I actually turned it off in the fourth quarter, which I never do.

Let’s face it. Jacksonville owns us. Pennington can’t play against them, we always lose to them and get people injured. They’re starting to be one of the non-division teams I don’t like to face, like the Raiders were a few years back. Somehow they’re always on the schedule, and somehow they always beat us. The Jets were mentally and physically exhausted after the Colts game drama, Jacksonville was returning home after two tough road losses. A tough scenario to be sure. Throw in the fact that this team ripped Pennington’s arm from the socket last time they met, and you have the formula for disaster. Pennington played scared, and he played the worst I’ve ever seen him play. The soft running attack didn’t exactly help, nor did some terrible calls by the officials that kept going against New York. The defense couldn’t stop anyhting Jacksonville tried. The perfect storm.

The positives: Were there any? I guess you could say this game’s over and Chad is still healthy, hopefully won’t have to face those mental demons again. Leon Washington finally got the starter’s load of carries and chalked up a 100 yard game. Maybe we can settle in with him and get a running attack going soon.

The negatives: Crushing defeat. Can the team’s psyche recover? Will Mangini lose the team? What’s really bad is that now every team has a perfect blueprint on how to kick the Jets’ ass. Great. It’s only week 5.

We should be favored in the next three contests, at home against Miami and Detroit, at Cleveland. If we win those, we’ll be 5-3, two division wins. Still in the hunt. But we had better put this nightmare game behind us and play some freakin’ ball or it’s all over very soon. 2-6 would be a tough situation for the new coach.

I have to give out props to Apple. They actually hooked me up when they didn’t really have to. In our modern business climate, this is virtually unheard of these days. I’d forgotten this could actually occur.

My main computer is a 20″ 1.8 GHz G5 iMac. It’s the first generation 20″ iMac, it’s kind of an old model, but still current. The new ones look the same but are much faster with the intel chips. The iMac has, however, been a stalwart companion, and I’ve grown somewhat dependent on it for my day-to-day computing stuff. So, it finally broke. The power would just shut off. Click. Off. This happened a few times to my dismay, then finally, it would not power up any more. Kaput.

I heard that there was a new Apple Store in the Flatirons Mall in Broomfield, so down I went, to the the incredibly poorly named “genius bar”, asked for help, and was told to schedule an appointment. My hopes of an immediate fix dashed, I was pleased that I could at least make the appointment right there on one of the demo machines in the store. I got one of the last spots for that day, and returned at 2:45. Fair enough I guess. I waited at the “genuis bar” (can’t you call it something else?) for 15 minutes and then I was served. The fellow hears my complaint, tries to power it up, fails, then he starts looking stuff up in his powerbook. The good news follows: The power supply is bad, but they extended my warranty for that specific part for another year. Better yet, he’s replacing the Main Logic Board (think motherboard) for free as well, since its also extended, and heck, they might as well while they’re in there.

Wow. I was pretty suprised. Also, I dropped the unit off on Saturday, I’m writing this Monday night, and Apple just called to say the iMac is ready to pick up! Stoked.

So, I have a bill from Apple for $957 dollars worth of repairs, and I won’t pay a dime, even though my warranty has been over since February 20th 2006!! That just rocks.

Go Apple, you just earned some damned brand loyalty on that one.