Man Bag
After a few weeks of looking on the web for the perfect Man-bag, I believe I found it, a block from home at a unheard of price.
It hit me one day shopping that I was wearing a jacket in order to hold the necessaries that a man in 2008 needs to get by.
- Blackberry with Bluetooth
- Wallet
- Cash
- Pocket knife
- Something to hold a few business cards
- Pocket Change (for parking meters )
- A few receipts
All these things I had been putting in my jacket pockets. Every day I had to go around the house looking to make sure that I had all these things to take with me whenever I went out.
Putting them in a briefcase worked but only for going to work. What about going out to dinner, what about golf ?
So I started to look, Ghurka has a nice one, but at 795.00 It should have come with a BJ at least. Checking the specs, No BJ, so I kept looking.
My other favorite leather company Hartmann had nothing but I did find this little binocular case .. problem was the strap wasn't long enough.
This one from the same company was great looking, but a little small
This is the one I ended up with. It fits my wallet, a small moleskine, my blackberry,bluetooth, money clip cash, a pen and a backup laptop drive. usb thumdrive..
I would have much rather had something in leather, or at least tan.. but for now. until I happen to find it.. this will do more than fine.
p.s. total coast.. 10 bucks plus tax.
Virgin America Air - A review
Sitting at LAX - terminal 6, waiting for permission to board my flight to NYC, I thought I would jot done a few of my thoughts about Virgin America
The first thing you notice on a VA flight is the passengers. Something about their look, or attitude is different from the typical American Airlines or United Airline passengers.
They appear to be relaxed.
Is it they have been on a flight before and know the joy they in store for ? or is just the nature of the type of passenger who finds them self flying on an airline promoted on the Cobert Report ?
Looking around, I see a older gentleman in jeans, with his Grey hair, pulled back in a tail. A non -hip glasses wearing techie girl with a blue military blazer and hair slightly too long, bad complexion, red scarf black jeans and yellow IPOD. Geek girl, prop tats up and down her legs and other areas which I am not privileged to see
Just about everyone has headphones on. One guy has a old style phone headset clipped to his cargo pants. A girl with long thick braids, the type pippy long stockings would have worn , quite sure her name is Helga and she is from Norway, plaid sneakers on a scruffy faced guy with jeans on, about 3 sizes too big. Backpacks, and not leather briefcases are the word of the day for these peeps. The girls all seems to be about the grunge, wanna be IT crowd look.
This feels like my home in the middle of the arts district of LA.
The flight would have been better if everything worked. But that being said one notable difference between VA and any other airline is the touchscreen interactive video console. The OS for the console is Linux (for those hackers out there, I found they keystrokes to force a reboot ) But the features on the console are made for the pleasure of the passengers. Most importantly, is the food delivery. No more waiting for the flight attendants to push a hot cart down the middle isle pushing out TV dinners and yesterdays turkey sandwiches when they feel like it. Now if I wanted stone ground crackers, figs, cheese and grapes, thats what I order using the touch screen. They bring it when I want, and yes.. its cashless ! Swipe your credit card and its delivered to your seat.
Other niceties, like change your reservation for 25 bucks, have an extra bag.. its 10 dollars surcharge, and my favorite every seat has POWER for your laptop.. yes.. Every Seat with regular 110 Volts !
Now you dont need the power because you have your choice of first run films for single charge of 8.00 (swipe your card) or live TV thanks to Dish Network, or what about last nights episode of LoST .. (avail for 3.00)
Each seat has a really nice collection of Mp3's and they give you headphones for free to listen to them.
For me.. I can't see going back to United.
Bob Lee
Get involved with Politics !
2008 is looking to be a very exceiting and groundbreaking year for politics.
In the Oval office next year, we are going to decide between a Woman, a black man, a Mormon or keep the status quo, with a old white geezer who feels the continuing fight in Iraq is for our our country.
Look up your congressman and senators and send them letters or emails. Let them know what is on your mind.
believe me, Not enough people do this simple thing. They rely on polls to tell them what people in their states and communities consider important. But if they hear from you directly It means a lot more than the polls.
My congressman has a website which invites you tell communicate with them telling them what issues you want them to tackle in Washington.
Is Healthcare on your mind ? what about no child left behind, maybe you have an opinion about theIraq issues or you feel there should be major overhall of our tax system.
Let them know !!
Writing them and communicating to them is much more powerful than even voting. Once they are in office their job is to lead.. and do what the people want and need. How do that know what issues unless we tell them.
So even if you don't vote, let you voice be heard
I close this rant with a picture.
Research done on Electric Bikes and our last good night to Atom
As I finished my research on electric bikes I thought what I found out was interesting enough to share with my friends.
Here goes.
The definition of an electric bike is at this point somewhat fluid. In the EU an electric bike needs to have the rider peddle before the electric motor kicks in. This is a legal rule, not one based on technology but based on what makes a bicycle. in the EU, is bike doesn't require the rider to peddle its not a Bike ! its something else.
Thus there is this term Pedalac .. which means its an EU version of an electric bike.. But they also sell full power Bikes in the EU, but in some countries that would mean you have register it like it was a motorcylcle.
Lee Iacocca was one of the first big names to embrace the idea of a electric bike. His company called EV Global is a tragic story which is worth reading for anyone wanting to start up a business. How you can get too much backing, too much promotion without a product or really a ood idea on the market.
The story can be read
here. The EV Global company seems to be out of business here in the US, but I was able to find this
site in England which seems to be selling the bikes developed by Ev Global and selling them to the UK Market.
These bikes, are a little weak by todays standard and they look good, but I would stay away from them until they get up par with newer batteries and more powerful motors.
Since the 80's when the first real ebikes started to hit the market the battery of choice was the old car type battery, (lead acid) aks SLA. (Sealed Lead Acid)
As you know these batteries have their strengths and weaknesses
On the bad side
- They are heavy
- bulky
- Can only be recharged limited times (200 or so)
On the plus side
Bikes used them, and many still do. More recently NiCad's and NiMH have become less expensive and many e-bikes use them as upgrades to the old SLA type batteries
The cutting edge of batteries is the Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer. You can find companies who support them now, but many other companies have found their testing shows these batteries in an ebike environment can cause the batteries to explode or catch fire.
Interesting, that Toshiba has a new battery technology which surpasses Lithium which is out early 2008 You can read about it
here. - Takes you into the business of the Ecar ..
Back to my quest E-bikes
Like I said before in my previous post you can get bikes in either a compete bike or in a kit form. and have yourself, or your local bike shop install the motor for you.
Looking around I found no bike shops local who carried any ebikes... it looks like the demand or awareness is not high enough to demand.
Nice Ebike shops do exist in San Diego, San Francisco, and Portland as well as Salt Lake city and New York city. But LA ?
Oh well
Back to the grind, I new now I wanted something with NiCad or NiMH type battery as the power source, and after reading specs after specs, and reviews I found one thing in common..
Most of the ebikes out there were made in China, and were under engineered for the US. they put in whimpy motors (250 watt) and lame SLA type batteries in them.. and sold them for 500 bucks or so.
All except the Rolls Royce of the Ebike world Heinzmann. (back them in a minute)
The more powerful and thought out options turned out to be the kits which came from two suppliers.
You can read about them. But you have the option to pick the bike you find you want and put the motor of your choice on it.
The are lots of other smaller companies selling similar things to these hubs and batteries, some have a motor attached to the chain, some companies like to power the front wheel, some like to power the rear wheel.
I found that when trying to compare .. it was always like apples and oranges. I could find myself be sold based on specs on just about any of them. (expect some of the ebay's kits you pick up for 300 bucks ) those just had to be junk in my opinion.
The more I read, I wanted to find the best one which was no easy task. Every company explained in the best techno electro jargon how their system was superior in manufacturing design and quality control and pure power over their competition.
Apples and oranges.
Back to the blogs and user groups for actual user experiences.
Over and over again the name of Heinzmann came up. Every time with comments like
Hands down , the best motor. From user after user this company out of Germany who have been in buiness for 50 years selling electric motors and controls really seem to have something.
Who would have thought, a German company selling a quality product, at a premium price. Where quality of workmanship matters more than beating up the price to compete with everyone. (think BMW) LOL
Turns out they carry not only kits for existing bikes they also make
complete bikes. Holy Crap ! Batman.. Here it is, a quality bike from the ground up from a company with a respected following, who have been in business for more than 2 years..
Sure the price of these are about 1/3 more than putting together a bike myself,and putting motor on it.. but hey.. why not.. its a bike. !! Might as well get the best (if you dont know that about me, read my posting about espresso machines )
Trouble is.. Heinzmann doesn't sell their complete bikes here in the US ! Something about how often we in the US sue people with motorized vehicles .. got them a bit shy to enter the market with bikes..
But they do sell their kits. !! yahoo. !!
Once I contacted Heinzmann in German they were happy to give me the US distributor of their kits.
| Light Electric Vehicle Technologies, Inc.
North American Warranty Service Center Philip Leavitt
404 S. Arthur Ave. PO Box 1606
Pocatello, ID 83 204 | Tel: +1 208 478-5388
Fax: +1 208 232-3717
LEVTusa@aol.com |
Speaking with Phillip today, I knew in a moment I was in the right place. Everthing I had learned was finally falling in place.
I have a nice heavy road bike picked out, a local bike shop waiting to put it all together for me, and my new German electric motor and controls on their way. !
For me for this project I wanted something stable, which didn't need to go faster then 25 mph. But I wanted to have road bike I could count on. Ill let you know once is all put together and I have had my first test drive on it.. I hope it was worth the effort.
On a personal note last night we said good by to our baby monkey Atom. He has been part of our family for the past 4 years and his spirit will be missed for years to come. His nightly playing in my hair and cuddling are just the beginning of things I am going to miss.
Take care everyone
Bob Lee
NetFlix LG Partnership
This blog. to me is very interesting and long overdue. Somehow the good friends who started netflix and tivo never seemed to get their business act together so Tivo went with a partnership with Amazon and Netflix is now partnering with LG.
This won't be the last technology in the morphing of TV and Movies and DVD's into something we can imagine.
Next Jan Broadcast signals in the US are all being convered to digital. What this means is that the analog signals the US has been using are being auctioned off by the FCC sold to Google so they can what.. provide free internet wifi for everyone , and start their own cell phone company.
Just finished the movie the
Ten Without a doubt one of the silliest movies I have seen since Kung Pow.
Imagine this, a church roadshow put on by the creators of South Park. I won't tell you much about it, but you might find it better to smoke a dubie before you attempt to watch it. Its an in your face Saturday night Live / performance at a high school talent show romp.
I guess you could say I enjoyed it, knowing it was not really that good
Bob
