The Tragically Hip

I remember when I first heard the Hip . 1989? Last American Exit I think. I liked it but... then a couple of years later Blow at High Dough. The first couple of times I heard it was in the car on a total Piece of Shit car radio. I was not impressed. And then. New Orleans sank. WoW . Since then I NEVER turn off a hip song on the radio. There have been a few I don't love but none I don't like. Sadly I am woefully short on concert memories. For some reason I just don't get out to shows. Drives me crazy. July 1st 1990 Molson park. The forerunner of edgefest.$1.02 11 or 12 bands. AWESOME day except I was dressed like a TOTAL dork. So much so that I still get shudders thinking about it. Sad. Anyway The Hip were second last before The Box. LOL WTF happened to them? My friends that went with had not discovered the Hip and waited in the car while I watched them. Amazing what a great band live. It was 2002 before I Finally got back to a Hip show. The Hummingbird centre .Odd place for a rock show but it was great. So once again I have tickets. Massey hall May 12 . I am SO excited.

So the albums.
I can honestly say I like them all. Some more than others ,Fully Completely is my favourite but not by much and my favourite song is Three Pistols off Road Apples. I like the rockers more than the slower songs usually. But I like them all. The new album goes off in a new direction. I'm listening to Honey,Please as type. Sweet. Great song. Great Album. I bought the Deluxe package that came with a T-Shirt and "Live from the Vault" Vol 4. LOVING the live stuff. I'm going to buy the other 3 MP3 downloads. Just great I love that it's all raw from the sound board. And not all "Framton Comes alive squeaky clean" it's honest.

A LOT of friends don't get it. Some don't like the music or the cryptic lyrics. Some don't like the fact that they are from Kingston. Only bands from outside Canada are cool kind of thing. I like, no love their Canadianism. Unashamedly Canadian sometimes. I love that. And why not. Canada is the greatest place on earth what's not to love?

Humble and Fred.

Humble and Fred are or were my favourite morning radio personalities. Funny with an edge but not much Howard stern piggishness. I Miss them . My day started just that much better when they were on the Air. Humble is still on EZrock and I like listening to him but it's CRAP music and as it's EZRock the show does not have much edge and although I don't mind the co hosts he has now they are not Fred.

It was Humble and Fred's blogs that got me thinking I'd do one as well so it's there fault I'm doing this.

On May 2nd at the Dominion on Queen Humble and Fred are getting together for a 20th anniversary Podcast .They are having an open house that runs from 1:30 til the last diehard leaves. They will be holding for doing some old bits and saying hi to long time fans like myself . The podcast itself will be on their blogs sometime down the road.
http://www.canadianthinker.com/ and http://www.humblehoward.com/

If you were /are a fan I hope you make it out. Maybe a good response will get them together on the air again.

Exhaust

I bought a Yoshimura RS1 exhaust for the Bandit.
Looks great sounds wicked especially at +4000 RPM .
The sound obsession is more than a little childish.
But a HUGE part of the motorcycle experience.
For me anyway and for most guys I think.Motorcycles should be a little anti_social right?
See your neighbour down the street with the Harley with open pipes.
Mine is not nearly that loud. But it's loud enough.Good times.
One more reason I LOVE the Bandit.
Now what about a jet kit?

Sanity

The bike keeps me sane.
there's no other Way to put it.
The weather is driving me mad right now .
Intellectually I know it's early April and riding weather is unlikely on any given day.
But the few warm days we have had have spoiled me .
I NEED to ride SOON.
And guess where I will be over the long weekend.
200km's away from my bike that's where.
They better have Rum.

The Bandit

So about the bike. It (not SHE it’s inanimate!) is a 2001 Suzuki Bandit GSF 1200S, it has 54000 or so Km’s on the odometer and I absolutely love it. It does not have a name. I don’t get the name thing.

It’s not perfect. There are more comfortable, faster, more fuel efficient and possibly better looking bikes. But not by enough to make a difference to me. I’m just not skilled enough to hit these bikes limits. Someday maybe but not now maybe after I go to a race school. .
This particular bike was bought used in 2008 for $4700. I could have got one cheaper but that’s life and I don’t care. It is a second generation Bandit 1200 and 2001 was the only year they came in Red in Canada. I have no idea why as the red is spectacular. Really, it looks way better than the far more common silver and blue. Of course YMMV on the colour. (Red is the FASTER colour of course)

The basics are this. Inline 4 Cylinder engine 1200cc’s (Ok 1157 sheesh!) DOHC, 16 valves, 485 lbs and it’s RED.

I want to Mod a bunch of things but have not done everything I want to yet. I’ll be on a newer Bandit before I get everything done unless I win a lottery. Of course that brings up the question “If it’s so great why mod?” To which I answer because I can. If I had a Harley (No Chance but that’s a whole other topic) I’d be chroming it up like mad. Because that’s what Harley guys do. Ok that’s my impression but I do have some evidence. If I had a BMW I would be modding it, Honda likewise. And so on. It’s a customizing thing that every rider I know does. Different Seats ,different exhaust (YOSH RS1 installed last night within 20 minutes of it hitting my hot little hands) different windshields etc,etc.

I can’t articulate what it is about being on this bike that gets me. Just getting on and out the driveway puts a smile on my face. A lot of life’s difficulties seem quite trivial when I’m moving. Being leaned over and focusing really makes me happy and glad I’m on the planet. I don’t always feel that way so it’s pretty important to me. Now almost any bike gives me some of that . Bikes are like that, riding is like that. But I’ve ridden quite a few bikes and none are quite what my Bandit is. My brother in law and a friend both have 1200 Bandits and neither one does it for me. The brother in laws is a first generation and I find it vibrates too much. My friend’s is a 2002 and it just didn’t fit, it should have but it didn’t.

And that’s about it I suspect I’ll return to this again. And Again.

I work in IT. It’s a Microsoft shop. This is good and bad.

Good because it’s easy to configure and install Windows. Monkeys can do it.

Bad because when things go badly often Microsoft can’t tell you why.

In the system logs for Servers , errors (and tons of other crap) are logged.

Each error has an error code.

Microsoft kindly provides a link to “Information” regarding the error if you click on it .

Mostly the page that opens when you follow that link says .
"We're sorry
There is no additional information about this issue in the Error and Event Log Messages or Knowledge Base databases at this time."

Or even better provides links to errors in Windows NT. which would be fine if we still used NT but we don't. In fact we only have 3 Windows 2000 boxes left.

What bothers me most about this is Microsoft wrote the code. They came up with a number for the error.

Why DON”T they Know what the Number means???????????????? If they don’t who does?

There are website all over the net that try to decipher these errors. A favourite of mine is called EventID.Net.

If you go there you can look up these error codes and hopefully figure out what they mean.

Usually though each code has multiple meanings.

How is that even possible?

I don’t ever expect to know that answer to this. Microsoft’s latest release Windows Server 2008 still provides the same non answers to the error codes.

Maybe in server 2045 they will figure it out. With any luck I’ll be retired by then.