Ryan is getting a bike

Yeah, you heard it here first. Once I told Ryan I had my old bike back, he started looking to get one himself. See parents! Now you might be responsible for 2 middle aged men crashing on bmx bikes like they were teenagers!

So I mentioned to D that I wanted to get a new bike – it didn’t go over well. I have no self control when it comes to freestyle bikes. Check this thousand dollar model – click here

Today I worked on a few new (old) tricks. I worked on the arm glide and the hang 5 and tried to drop down into a hitchhiker (crash!). The balance is coming back quickly. The difference is that my muscles are sore from not being used in 18 years and the balance is still coming back (not back entirely). Still, I’m happy with the progress so far. Once Ryan gets his bike, I’ll have a riding buddy again – won’t that be funny seeing 2 33 yr. old fat guys riding around on bmx bikes!

Graduation Day

M graduated from preschool today. I was so proud. He wore a cap and gown (red). They had a ceremony where they handed out diplomas and moved the tassel from one side of the hat to the other. It was the Little School’s first graduating class so it was a little chaotic. Several parents brought their other kids to school (we brought Z) but a few of the babies were crying very loud. We video taped it and got a few digital pictures too (I’ll post them soon). M was very proud and happy. He waved to me (holding the camcorder) and it was super cute. The kids had cake and pink lemonade and then we came home. I’m glad I was able to attend. One diploma down. Oh, did I mention that when they asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up he said a doctor. That’s my boy.

Slow web business lately

Our web businesses have been very slow lately. Our traffic has dropped off since we fell back in the search engines a year ago. Now the ad space has also heated up so ads cost more and there are more competitors clicking our ads (click fraud) so our budgets are wasted on fake clicks. All small business advertisers know this is happening but we are powerless to do anything about it. Google and Yahoo own us. Our businesses depend on these search engines to bring potential customers to our sites. No traffic = no sales. We are currently on page 3 or 4 in Google and 4 or 5 in yahoo. Nobody every looks through the results all the way to page 4. Most people don’t look past page 1. Here’s to hoping that we can move up in the search engine rankings and get more people to see our site. Cheers.

Cavs Win Game 4 with Pistons

Last night the Cavs won game 4 with the pistons at home. They evened up the series at 2-2. Now they haed back to Detroit to try to beat Detroit at home – a difficult task. I’m so happy that LeBron finally made some cluch shots at the end of the game, including free throws. Now, I think the only thing standing between a Spurs/Pistons finals is the Cavs. Go Cavs!

Re-Learned a Hang 5

Today I re-learned a hang 5 again after 18 years. It looks like this picture. You are balanced on the front peg, rolling forward. I also worked on a whiplash and fell (not bad at all). Yesterday I fell twice right on my back and butt (not so good for the back). Curse you parents for saving my bike all these years! I’m helpless. I can’t have it and not ride it. What have you done to me?!

BMX Freestyle Flatland Observations

I found this cool freestyle flatland site. It has a bunch of neat videos and links to current bmx bike makers. This company sells bikes made for flatland freestyle like we used to do.

I noticed that bikes today have some technical differences from when we were riding. The chaindisks are much much smaller. The cranks are much shorter as well. Frame design today makes for a much smaller bike (easier for all sorts of tricks). The handle bars are much more narrow and riders tend to saw off some of the width as well to keep the bars out of your way. Some of the part and bike makers are still around: GT, Haro, DiaCompe, Odyssey, Shimano, Profile (cranks), Hoffman (new when we stopped riding) but there are a bunch of new ones.

The sport seems to have split into street, flatland, vert, dirt. More observations to come.

New Cincom Smalltalk Tutorial

Here is a new Cincom Smalltalk Tutorial. I just added it and a link to James Robertson’s Smalltalk Daily to my Smalltalk tutorials page.

BMX Freestyle Flatland

So, It is 1989 and I’m in the garage cleaning up my bike – a Dyno Pro Comp with GT racing wheels, Shimano cranks, Dia Compe Brakes, Jive Handles grips. I decide I need to make a run to the bike store to buy some new tires and tubes so I zip out to make a quick buy. On my way back I hear Slick Rick on the radio so I turn it up and have a nice drive home. I put the new tires and tubes on the bike, finish cleaning it and go out for a ride. When I come home it is 2007. The kids are taking a nap and I’m 33 years old.

Since I’ve been teaching M to ride his bike lately, I had mentioned that Grandma still had my old bike. When we went to visit them this weekend I came home with it. I got all the rust off the frame and wheels (WD40 & steel wool) and put new tires on it (wow bike parts are still very expensive).

After nap time I helped M learn how to ride his big bike and get himself started (he’s a pro now). Then I did tricks for the kids on my old bike. Today, I’m sore all over. Not like 1989

Found this video on you tube and thought it was cool – it could have been me 1989:

Close To Home

I like this show. The season just ended (I think) with a sequence of connected shows. Maureen was killed. Annabeth has a new love interest. Conlon stopped running for Attorney General. I think this sequence of shows was the best I’ve seen from this show. I was very entertained. I’m looking forward to more.

Smalltalk Portability

There have been a number of posts lately regarding Smalltalk portability – the ability to move Smalltalk code from one dialect to another or to write code that is dialect independent. From Sport to SWIG to various fileOut formats, Smalltalk has suffered in this way forever and it is just too bad. There was a time when the vendors were to blame for sure but in the last few years I think it is simply physics that makes finding a standard for things like files and sockets hard. The vendors already have a library of code that works. They can’t change it because they have a lot of libraries built on top of it. So, Smalltalkers in the community write code to compensate for these differences in the various Smalltalk dialects. I know years ago, I wrote some code to make my library work in Dolphin, Squeak and VisualAge. Maybe that is the way to go – if the vendors owned their version of Sport then it would make it easier for people to use it and believe that it will work between dialects (just a thought). I hope in the next few years these types of problems can be resolved now that we have such good product managers for each of the Smalltalk dialects.