David Fisher : What is Noise Blog

There are few words to describe this. I don’t doubt that they choose the dumbest people that they interviewed and I’d love to see the uncut footage- but damn, they found some morons easily.

In late August Sarah sent me a Craigslist posting that detailed a 1979 Honda CM400T motorcycle for only $400 in working condition. I had recently given up a 1981 Honda 750CBK that my father and I had worked on a bit over the years in an attempt to get it restored- yet had never completed and I had never rode.

I hopped on the opportunity immediately and drove over that evening to pick up the bike. We got it into the back of my Chevy 1500 pickup truck and took it home.

It should be noted that I had little to no riding experience. I can drive anything with four wheels, from a BMW to a 24″ U-Haul with little issue, and I’ve rode jetskis, scooters, dirtbikes and snow-mobiles. Yet I had never been the operator of an actual on-road motorcycle.

Outside Sprout Labs five of us lifted it off the truck since we didn’t have a suitable ramp. The first time starting it was a bit of a trick and I can’t quite remember what I was doing wrong. Probably forgot to put it in the ’start’ position or something. I know that I did flood it badly, to the degree that at one point it spat a large amount of (what I believe was) gasoline onto the pavement. Yet, I did manage to walk/wheel it home.

The bike was in pretty good shape. The seat needed a new cover, and there were small bits of rust in various places, but nothing that appeared to go through the frame. After that first night, it started fairly easily always and gave me few issues.

Getting a permit was rather easy but the entire process was rather tedious. Massachusetts recently put in massive budget cuts to their RMV (what the rest of the union calls a DMV) and many branches had been closed. For whatever reason I was stupid enough to go to the Watertown branch which is filled with some of the most incompetent people in the world. Not a single person there deserves their job in my opinion- but that is another story. Over the course of several hours I managed to weave through the bureaucracy of paperwork, changing requirements, taking a number, workers taking lunch in the middle of helping you, rudeness and waiting.

Sarah let me borrow her 3/4 helmet from her 50-cc Scooter for initial driving. YouTube videos came in handy for remembering a few tricks, like proper shifting and braking.

My first day out I left the house and set down Massachusetts Ave toward Arlington. Before I even hit Arlington a man in his 50’s pulled up beside me on a sport bike and offered me the advice that I should get gloves as soon as humanly possible and that there was a shop up the road.

I stopped in there and made purchase of the gloves. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I’d be back there a good bit.

I set back on my path and kept riding. I was nervous. The bike was hard to get into neutral and even harder occasionally to get out. I kept stalling like I was a 16 year old learning to drive a stick again and cars behind me were nervewracking and impatient while I tried to get it started.

I turned around shortly after and went home. My thumbs and hands hurt from the clutch and I was not used to the wind in my face at 45mph. Overall, not a bad first ride.

My second day out, well that’s a story for another day. But it involves Route 2, my bike smoking and the realization that I needed a full faced helmet. Also I should delve into my thoughts on riding overall and the freedom that a motorcycle provides. And pictures. We need pictures.

Is there something incredibly awesome that you’ve been wanting to do but you are lacking the funds?

Maybe its art, music, technology, or something community-oriented.

I recently joined the Awesome Foundation as a Micro-Trustee. We’re giving away $1000USD each month to people who want to do something awesome. It’s not an ‘investment’. We don’t want the money back. There is no catch.

Go apply. Do something awesome.

Better yet, do you want to encourage Awesome? Contact us information on starting your own Awesome Foundation spinoff.

I’ve been thinking about my reach online lately. In general, its constantly growing, but I wanted to blog about it for other people, but also to look back on in a few years.

A few quick facts about my current reach:

• This blog sees around 5000 pageviews/month, with around 3,400 visits. It has approximately 70 people viewing it daily via their RSS readers (Feedburner).
• I have just short of 1,900 followers on Twitter. I’ve made around 7,200 updates and 1,200 DMs. There’s much bigger people on Twitter, but I don’t follow back too much anymore and I’m not really trying to grow much.
• I have about 120 people on Flickr that call me a “contact” or friend. On Flickr I’ve had around 100,000 views of my photos at the current rate of around 200/day on average
• My YouTube channel gets around 80 views/day on average. I’ve had around 40,000-50,000 views on my videos (I deleted some that I didn’t like, so a few numbers are screwy)
• I’ve had my Slashdot account for around 8 years now. It’s sad that I lurked for so long or I could have easily had a 4 or 5 digit UID. I can’t find where it has the total number of comments, but I think I’ve made over 700.
• On GearSlutz, which is my Forum of Choice when it comes to music things, I think I’ve been registered since 2004 and have made around 4,000 posts. People on there seem to know me pretty well now.
• And on my Tumblr, I have a grand 7 people following me

This isn’t bragging. People have much bigger footprints nonstop, but I’d never taken the time to really put them all in one place. I’m sure this will be fun to look back on in 5 or 10 years and grin at. I occasionally find something that I posted 10 or 15 years ago online and it’s always too funny. Even looking back in my Slashdot journal its cute to see what I said 7 years ago.

Last weekend I took my third round trip on MegaBus between Boston and New York. On the way there was fine enough and the wifi worked for the most part. Yet on the way back was a totally different issue.

MegaBus subcontracts out to Dattco Bus Company for some of its routes, including the Boston/NYC one. These buses however have no wifi, in spite of MegaBus’s advertisement that their buses have wifi. While I’m sure company representatives will say something about there being no guarantee of wifi on any given bus, I feel this is a case of Bait and Switch. They advertise on the basis of cheap tickets and wifi. Rarely do you get a ticket as cheap as they advertise and rarely do you get wifi. Worse, when you ask the drivers on the Dattco buses about the wifi, they are kinda assholes about it.

I’m not saying to “not” take MegaBus, but if you’ve got something online that you must do, then there’s a significant chance that you won’t be doing it on the Megabus. My recommendation is to try for the Bolt Bus, as their wifi is much more stable and actually exists on all of the buses.