Passed the M1 learner's permit test today. Much to my surprise, I also had to take the Class C (the normal license) written test. I passed the Class C with 100%, and I missed 3 (you can miss 4) on the M1 test. I don't feel so bad though, as on the BART home I checked the motorcycle handbook and none of the 3 questions I missed are covered therein. Oh well. I passed. Now MSF on the 9th, 11th, and 12th of July at City College San Francisco. And, assuming I pass, another couple letters on my license!

Picked up my new bicycle on the way home (a Cannondale Quick 4) and rode it from the Mission back to the Sunset. Now my legs are made of fail and I'm eyeing everything organic in my apartment as potential food. Good thing the dog's on a walk or I'd be building a fire pit and roasting spit in the breakfast nook.

SF Pride this weekend. Probably going to the parade, if only to see the KP float and watch our CEO twirl his rainbow umbrella again. Good stuff.

Now, off to eat a small child and have a celebratory mint julep. Have a good eve, all!

I've signed up to take the MSF (well, in CA it's called the MSP) course the second week of July here in San Francisco in the hopes of obtaining an M1 licence. Next Friday, I'm off to the DMV near work to take my permit test. Since I passed the online sample tests without having cracked the motorcycle handbook, I'm not terribly worried. All the same, I'm reading, reading, reading.

Would appreciate advice from y'all in whatever areas you see fit to convey. Specifically, what to expect or how to prep for the training course. I have to get gloves to take the road portion, so brand/feature recommendations would be awesome. Also, the sort of equipment I should acquire once I settle on a bike would also be nice (beyond the helmet/boots/gloves/pants bare essentials; I already have a smexy smexy jacket, thanks to stevefoxx).

::gulp:: Here goes nothing....

[x-posted, in a slightly different form, to furrybikers]

1. You can ONLY answer 'Yes' or 'No'.

2. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone comments you and asks— and, believe me, the temptation to explain some of these will be overwhelming. Nothing is exactly as it seems.
( Been arrested? — No. )

One-ups "Sketchy arm", in my humble opinion.

I'm back, y'all.

Just wanted to say hey. Life's going pretty well; figured I'd pop back in and see what's going on with y'all inside the computer.

It's time to put this journal to bed.

At best, an online journal should be a way to keep in touch with friends near and far, and meet new people that share similar interests. At worst, it becomes a distraction from Life™ and a poor substitute for actual human interaction. And lately, livejournal has for me been a distraction, a reminder of a world and a life in which I no longer feel welcome.

Not that I'm disappearing. The old entries will stay, and I hope to stay in contact with the many friends I've made here (and if you don't have contact info for me and would like it, shoot me an email at ctrueblood via google's ubiquitous mail). I'm simply making my Real Life my priority at this juncture, and trying to distance myself from the drama and hurt of the past few months.

And so, fare thee well, gentle reader. May the road rise to meet you, and may the wind be ever at your back.

Do you ever read something something particularly well-written and pause, wishing that you yourself had written it first?

This happens more often than I'd like to admit. Particularly clever turns of phrase or an especially apt simile are filed away in my brain for later use (like the comment at dinner last week about über-gay-fabulosity, "There's a fine line between lamé and just lame").

Reading an article this morning in the NY Times about the apparent trend of eating goat meat (a practice I couldn't get behind, since, ew...), the author speaks of the goat's "lowly reputation" as a scavenger, and notes that "Their unappetizing visage is simultaneously dopey and satanic, like a Disney character with a terrible secret."

And for the last ten minutes, I've been pretending that I wrote that little nugget of genius. And kicking myself for not having come up with it and trademarked it ages ago.

I didn't feel even an inkling of the 4.something earthquake down in the South Bay. I feel cheated!

I've got the I Can Has Cheezburger? app on my iPhone. Great way to distract myself from the evils of productivity. I was browsing lolcats just now, when the cell signal inexplicably dropped and it lost its connection. The error message the app spat out?

"No can find cheezburger. Did kitteh unplug network?"

Damn kittehs.

My tax refund from California hit my account yesterday. I wasn't expecting it, so if you've been waiting for the state to give you your money, keep an eye out!

Anyone else who uses an iPhone find that the damn thing auto-corrects "for" to "fir" lately? Gah!

I try to minimize my reproduction of LOLCats here, as I know they annoy some people. But this one's just too funny to pass up!

Apparently Facebook is taking lessons from LJ.

My status at 09.16: Chris is watching the live stream of the CA Supreme Court's Prop 8 hearings.

[SF Friend] at 9:34am March 5
Any good points being made by that windbag Starr?

[A very very Republican ex of mine from DC] at 12:28pm March 5
Why should it even be contested? The voters spoke.....Prop 8 passed! Shouldn't it be like President Obama's victory...people voted, they won, get over it? I greatly apologize if I sound like an A*H*, but I'm greatly confused why people can't let it go!

[Same SF Friend] at 12:53 pm March 5
I'm going to propose a law that anyone with the letters H-A-M [part of ex's last name] in it should be denied the right to enter into a legal contract. I'll collect millions of dollars from organizations who have no personal stake in the issue, and then spend all of those millions of dollars telling people that "People with the last name with the letters H-A-M will harm children because in the Bible, Abraham tried to kill his son Isaac." Millions will cast a vote based on bad data and millions of dollars, and a bare majority will agree with me. And then, the result would be that everyone with the letters H-A-M will lose their legal rights because some A*H* decided that they didn't like a certain group of people.

And so, when someone asks why I would fight for the rights of every single person whose last name had the letters H-A-M in it, I would tell them that I do it so that no majority ever is given the right to segregate, humiliate, or disenfranchise law-abiding citizens arbitrarily.

(And yes, I'm aware of the irony of transcribing drama from one online social forum to the next in order to (at least mildly) decry it) [/Sideshow Bob]

Watch. It's being streamed by the Court.

If you believe in higher power, pray. If you don't, send good vibes. This could well be the most important judicial proceeding in the arena of civil rights in this decade.

The ruling will be released no later than 90 days from now. And so we inhale now, to wait with bated breath.

For the past several months, I've been using in-ear buds to listen to my iPod. I bought them on the recommendation of ferrel and stevefoxx after riding back from Las Vegas on the back of Kit's Blackbird listening to nothing but wind noise, both because Apple's basic earphones couldn't seal out the wind and because somewhere between Stateline and Baker, they just fell out and started serenading my sternocleidomastoids.

The earbuds have been great. They worked on the motorcycle, and they work well on BART to seal out the horrid racket that the trains for some reason make while inside the Transbay Tube. Their sound quality is perfectly acceptable, if a bit tinnier than the Apple-supplied earphones.

Segueing a bit, I got a purty blue iPod Shuffle in the mail today to use at the gym, since carrying the iPhone around and adjusting music is a pain, the armbands for it are as much if not more than a Shuffle, and if I drop this gem, I'm out $50, instead of $several hundred. With the Shuffle came a new set of iPod earphones. Being curious, and being eager to drown out the sound of my coworker arguing with her bank, I plugged them into my iPhone and put on some tunes.

Ho-leee crap the sound quality is amazing, compared to the old earphones and the ear buds. I couldn't believe how much richer the sound was. I put on the Finale from Les Miserables and heard a couple of instruments I'd never before detected. Same with Maksim's Croatian Rhapsody: Since I can play it on the piano, nothing caught me by surprise, but I was startled by the way I could hear the instruments individually, and the way the dizzying 64th notes were all crisp and distinct.

Of course, Bose or Sennheiser these are not. But heck, for being free with a $50 mp3 player, I'm quite impressed!

Kosher Coke is coming!

::geekgasm::