Then and Now..."
One of the coolest guys on my motorcycling forum posted up some comparisons between his childhood and the way children are raised today. Funny/scary shit.

Tomorrow after work I'm going to bicycle down to Sea-Tac Airport to catch a plane. The Seattle Department of Transportation is nice enough to have a marked bike route from downtown to the airport, but their written and mapped directions are somewhat poor. In an effort to help both me and future cyclists get to Sea-Tac more easily, I've created a Google Map of the route. Here's hoping I can make it up the 2 mile long hill on Des Moines Memorial Drive.


View Larger Map

Watch this video from 1:15 until he's done.
Real Time with Bill Maher, September 28, 2007 part 6 of 6

Brilliant. Thank you Bill Maher.

Now that I have two bikes, I think I'm going to make an effort to call them by name.

I've just posted a few pictures of work that I've been doing on them each.

First, I got a Loobman automatic chain lubrication system for Sliver. After installing it and seeing how nice the lube delivery is, I went ahead and ordered one for Ninjai too.

Speaking of Ninjai, that's my little Ninja's name now. Why? Because the little ninja rules. Trust me. I also got Ninjai back to full hp today after receiving the cowling bracket I needed yesterday.

Next week I'm getting a new chain and sprockets for Sliver and the parts I need to replace the shift pivot bolt, which has been cross threaded for about 4k miles. I realized after ordering those parts that I'm going to hafta remount the Loobman bottle to do it. Oh well, I have extra zip ties :-D.

After reading this article about how to praise children, it strikes me that the principle tested with regard to children is very similar to the principles of REBT which I've posted about before.

The basic concept is this: When thinking or speaking about the quality of a specific action, use specific words. No amount of specific language sums into general language, no matter what we're taught by grades and diplomas.

Another thing to be avoided in praising or criticizing is the use of superlatives (I think that's the term for both types of things I'm speaking of).

Compare the thought "I am not doing well at this task" with the thought "I never do well at this kind of task" with "I am not good at this kind of task". The word "never" clearly denotes an inability to change, clearly not productive. The general statement "am not good" assigns a value to the subject and people know that things do not change their values. The specific statement about the current task is simple to change, it has made no statement about the subject's abilities, only about their immediate actions and the subject is left with the obvious option to change those by the lack of an infinite time scale modifier.

What is non-obvious (at least to me) is why the same kind of helplessness that can be learned from general criticisms can be learned from general praise. It seems somewhat counterintuitive.

Perhaps it's simply a matter of the mind's ability to act based on the language presented. The specific types of statements convey much more actionable information in both cases. "I have made this good widget" puts one in a position to study the process and result that is good and attempt to duplicate it. "I am good at making widgets" does not convey anything specific to study or duplicate, you could study the last widget you made but is that the right one? You might ask, "what's good about my widgets?" The even more specific statement "this widget has good balance" provides even more actionable information.

The negative side of the same scenario is fairly obvious. "I am bad at making widgets" is not actionable. "Which widgets are bad?" and "Which aspects of my widgets are bad?" are two of the possible questions that one might ask in order to gain the information needed to fix the badness. In the absence of that information improvement is impossible.

It is definitely worth mentally changing your language. When you start to think "I can't X" simply replace "can't" with "don't". The two statements have the same immediate meaning, but when you use "don't", your mind is left with the option to change. When you start to think "I'm bad at X" think "I am doing X poorly". Again, same immediate meaning, but one is obviously changeable. You can also change "I never X" to "I haven't X" and a myriad of other enabling self-talk changes.

Posted up pictures of my entertainment over the past two weekends.

Last weekend my mom was in town and we hiked the Mount Dickerman Trail. The views were amazing.

Mom also helped me with shopping for some house stuff, which involved using Flexcar for the first time. Yay for car sharing!

This weekend I spent most of my time working on the Ninja in my garage. I'm so glad I have a garage and my Nnija.

On the one hand this is a timely post because I just finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. On the other hand, it's a late post because I bought my Kawasaki Ninja 250R last weekend.

This post is not about the new bike specifically, but I want to give a little bit of background about why I possess it. I realized at some point last month while riding my 599 around Seattle that there were still a lot of situations where I felt like I couldn't handle the throttle with confidence. My bike was too fast for me to handle confidently in tight city streets, even after more than 13500 miles. Once I had officially acquired a garage I decided that there'd be no harm in trying to pick up an inexpensive used Ninja 250 to hone my skills on. Less than 2 weeks later there she is!

I was reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and also reading up on the type of maintenance that the little Ninja would need to keep her running happily. This combination of reading material started to fill me with gumption for motorcycle maintenance in general. Previously I'd always been a little bit intimidated of doing maintenance on my 599. Probably in much the same way as I was intimidated by her throttle.

Now I feel like my garage contents are perfect. I have the Ninja who has a simple older style 2 cylinder engine with screw adjustable valves and like 20 horsepower. I feel very confident that I can learn how to do all of my own work on this simple little bike. I also feel very confident in riding her. Sitting right next to the Ninja I have my 599, a modern 4 cylinder engine with a DOHC, shim under bucket valve train and roughly 90 horsepower. I am cautiously optimistic about my ability to learn enough from working on the Ninja to learn to do my own work on her as well. Same goes for riding, I think that as I learn to push the smaller, lighter, less powerful bike I'll also be able to gain confidence in riding the 599.

I've got all the tools and supplies that I need to adjust the valves and synchronize the carburetors on the Ninja either already in the garage or in the mail. I've got everything I need for complete brake system flush and fill and pad changes for both bikes. I'm really excited to get started on really learning how to do this kind of work with the right tools in a warm safe garage. In the past I've always found myself doing auto maintenance in parking lots with improvised parts and tools; while I enjoyed this, it often ended up being more trying -- more gumption draining -- than it needed to be.

Beyond the change of scenery, I hope to approach these new maintenance tasks with a new attitude. I always used to focus on completing tasks quickly rather than doing them. The end result was all that mattered. The past year and a third of riding have really helped me to gain the beginnings of an appreciation for the journey. The same applies to maintenance; getting done isn't the point. Doing is the point. Noticing the details of each part is important, not just getting to the part you've set out to work on. Focusing on the finale leads to carelessness on the journey which can lead to stripped fasteners and suchlike.

Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance if you haven't. Maybe it won't resonate with everyone the way it did with me, but it's a beautiful book nonetheless. I will say that at least for now I don't philosophically follow it to the end. I suppose that I am still somewhat of a dualist, but I have much more thinking to do. The practical side of what's said in the book, the focus on Quality resonates very strongly with me. The essential problem that we are all running from is a lack of real Quality. No matter how cheap or how 'correct' things are, they don't feel good.

For many months now I've been occasionally referred to as a luddite by my closest friends. I don't think that that's right, but I can see where they'd get the idea. It's not that I don't love technology as much as anyone, it's that I only love technology that I feel good about; that I perceive as having Quality. A Nintendo DS or a Nintendo Wii have much higher Quality to my eye than a Sony PS3 or a Microsoft XBOX 360 or a Sony PSP. There's beauty in a steel fixed gear bike that I don't see in a many gear rolling piece of engineering. Carburetors have beauty that I don't think fuel injectors ever will.

The only way that comes to mind to describe what I'm speaking about is that certain technologies feel forced, lacking in flow and wasteful. Others seem to flow naturally and to make use of the harmonies available.

That's enough writing for today. I'm going to go and try to apply these thoughts to my job and really make something good today.

Consuming Hypocrisy
Cute little video about consumerist anti-capitalism. I don't know if it is a very strong statement but it's fun.

I was reading this post called Spirituality and Seduction and was struck by how much it resonates with the idea espoused by REBT practitioners of unconditional self acceptance. In either case, the idea is to stop worrying about who you are being and get on with the being of that who. Interestingly enough (although I have not seen the film) I think that these principals are also basically similar to those presented in The Secret. I was wrong.

Some argue that unconditional self acceptance leads to complacency, but that is not the idea. There is no conflict between accepting your self as you are now and setting goals for yourself. The important thing is not to dwell. The basic steps to being happy and content in life are: Accept yourself and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Set strong goals for what you want to achieve. Go about living your life, do not consciously try to set a plan to achieve your goals, do not try to control every step etc. This kind of true self acceptance and self trust is very hard to achieve, especially for engineers who are used to having a well defined sequence of steps before them in order to reach a goal.

The scientist in me says that what is happening is that I set goals for myself and by so doing set in motion a sort of background process which colors my general day-to-day choices in such a way that I achieve that. The great thing is that I don't have to do any _work_ for this to run its course. All I (that is my ego, the part of me that I am conscious of) must do is live in the moment. I get to enjoy all of the joy of day-to-day living and never need to worry about the longer term stuff.

On a personal note, earlier this year I realized that I needed a change -- that I was getting stuck in a rut. I'm thankful to the person who specifically pointed it out to me and to the people who reinforced it. I decided to unstick. 2 months later I had a new job. Another month later I lived in a new city and one more month has passed and I have my first house. There was no plan behind these things, just the decision to unstick. I didn't know quite what a wild ride that decision would turn out to be, but I sure as hell am glad that I made it.

On a more positive note than my earlier post, here's a really nicely worded article on helping children grow into mature reasonable adults and learning and having fun at the same time.