A few months back (May) while I was out in Ontario, I got onto a Honda dirt bike, and within 60 seconds, promptly fell off. In the process of falling off, I broke my left collarbone.

The timing was awful, as I was all prepared to go kayaking on the Ottawa river with Liquid Skills. I have been wanting to do that course for the last 5 years. I had signed up for it, paid for it, and the week before going I broke my collarbone.

The recovery has been slow. Due to the fact that the bone was not splinted, exercise was pretty much out of the picture. Walking at a semi-normal pace was painful, and sleeping quite difficult.

It is later now, and the bone has healed. Still, my left arm is quite weak I have almost all my mobility back, but in certain ranges of motion my arm suddenly ‘tweaks’. For example, a few weeks back I was moving some furniture, I could feel the stress on my collarbone and the muscles. It was not pleasant, but not painful. Then, the other day, I picked up a cup of coffee with my left arm and felt terrible pain in my shoulder. I guess I just had the angle to make it hurt.

To top it all off I have been neglecting my Physio. So, last week I started it up again. I had hoped to run in some MOMAR races this year, but with my arm the way it is I can’t get trained up in time.

I will be ready for some trail races like the Gunner Shaw though. Well, that is if I don’t head off to South America during that time, but we will see about that.

I responded to a Craigslist posting for the following:

Athlon 3500+ 2.2GHZ CPU
GigaByte K8NSC-939 motherboard
1 GB pc3200 DDR RAM
250 GB western Digital HDD
256 MB Nvidea vid card
Sound Blaster Audigy sound card
ACEPOWER 400 WATT PSU
LINKSYS Wireless pci card/Wireless router
dvd player/cd burner
Windows XP home with C.O.A.
17 inch crt monitor.

$250

Not a bad deal, I was looking at a brand new Dell Core 2 Duo for $300 including shipping, but I chose the above system for the following reasons:

Dell refused to sell the system with either a Ubuntu operating system or no OS. I knew I would not be using Vista, so I had no desire to pay for that, but moreso, I have no desire to contribute to Microsofts sales numbers in this regard for an OS I have no intention of using.

Also, the GigaByte motherboard has more PCI slots, and the system comes with a 400 watt power supply. The Dell has 1 PCI slot, and a 250 Watt power supply. Since I need to install add in cards for the PVR features of MythBuntu, I need more power and more room. In fact, this system is perfect for MythBuntu other than I don’t much care for the case. Still, I can always put the contents into a new case for MythBuntu.

I am currently running through the MythBuntu install, and I am impressed that the installer includes Memtest X86 version 1.70.

Wordpress upgrade seems to have broken my categories on the right, replaced them with numbers. *groan* As if I don’t do enough computer stuff on my own. Update, it appears I am not alone:

Solution 1 Solution 2
Using the Google cache I have pulled my categories up (I could have used my MySQL backup, but the Google cache is faster).

Looks like solution 2 will be easiest for me.

Edit:

Looks like solution one, or rather a hybrid of it worked best. I took my wordpress backup from before the upgrade, and ran the SQL statements to recreate the wp_categories table, and then populate it with the original data. Then I ran the SQL statements to copy over the data from wp_categories to wp_term_taxonomy. Really painful that I had to do it that way, but attempting to manually insert data into the wp_term_taxonomy table was giving me very bizzare SQL errors that should NOT have been cropping up.

And I am going to test something here:

I was surprised to find a wreckers in Victoria BC that specializes in Toyota 4Runners. I had been heading up to Nanaimo and South Island Auto for all my parts. It made sense, as I used to live in Nanaimo. But now I know of “Corvette Holdings” 1063 Dunford Avenue, Victoria, BC V9B 2S4, Telephone : 250-474-6051.

Don’t ask me why it is called Corvette when they have tons of 4Runner parts.

On my birthday I decided to buy myself a Toyota Clinometer off of Ebay for my 4Runner. It was originally in a Toyota Surf - the diesel Japanese version of the 4Runner. I had wanted one for some time for off-road use. After it arrived, I disassembled it to see how it worked as seen here.

I took my dashboard apart:

Then I removed the metal mounting hardware from the Clinometer to measure it for the dash:

After figuring out the fit, I began drilling the dashboard (The hole for the wiring is not drilled in this image):

And finally, reattaching the dashboard to see how it looks:

Not bad, although it appears crooked. This is because the Clinometer is from a Toyota Surf, and thus was not meant to attach to a First Gen 4Runner dash, especially a left hand drive like mine. Toyota Surf’s are right hand drive, thus the Clinometer mounts differently.

I just need to finish off the wiring now so that it lights up when my dash lights come on. I verified that the Altimeter works well, both for altitude and predicting the weather. The tilt to the left and the right is handy, although the forward and back tilt is rather pointless.

This was recorded about a year ago, but I never linked it off of my blog.

It is a video of me surfing on Tarp and Play on the Puntledge river. I am in my Super Ego. This is before I owned my Bliss-Stick boats - which I have not even had the chance to try on the Puntledge due to a broken collarbone.