Joe's Personal Blog

The Tyson's Corner Nespresso store reopened with a more euro-style feel.  The sample area is now in the front corner as a self-serve table. There is a sitting area with 4 tables on the left-hand side. The store was full of people sampling. Nespresso has moved away from plastic cups. All the boutiques in our area now use Nespresso-branded glass cups. There is a coffee experimentation/info/something bar that runs down the right side of the store.  It has bulk beans, grinders, and a roaster. I was told that they cannot sell or sample anything they roast.  I'm not sure what they are thinking here. The right sidebar also had a coffee 3d printer that will create patterns in foam. The coffee and accessory sales area is the back 1/4 of the store with 4 standalone sales kiosks in the back.  

The Etihad Airways Lounge is a limited-access venue on the Event level, 2-3 flights of stairs from the main concourse level.  Lounge access comes with some seats or can be purchased at certain times as part of packages.  I got one-time access as part of a ticket charity auction. You can gain access to the event via the stairwell opposite aisle 108 on the concourse level.  It feels like 3 flights of stairs going down. There is also an elevator at the top of the stairs on the concourse level. There was an elevator operator in the elevator the day we went.  It feels like the venue was jammed into some empty place under the event floor but it still works. They scan your lounge pass at the entrance and then give you a wristband that you use for later access.  This was a fast process.  The scanning entry area is small and I could see people getting caught on the stairs if they came in closer to game time.   The lounge opened about 1 hour before the game...

MIK mounts are a great removable bag or basket mounts.  You can easily swap bags, baskets, or other bike attachments.  There are racks with integrated MIK attachment points.  My Electra Townie has a plain rack so I added a MIK adapter . Sagging Soft-Sides on the Rear Rack I have an Electra Basil soft-sided cooler that is twice the width of my MIK bracket and probably 30% wider than my rear rack.  I load the bag up with drinks, heavy chain bike locks, and other ridiculous items.  These locks tend to slide to the sides of the bag which causes the bag to sag down on the sides.  The MIK bracket acts as a  high center on and off the bike because of the thickness of the bag-mounted bracket. MIK Dimensions The MIK base on my soft bag had mounting holes 10MM apart in width and 19MM in length. Adding a cutting board Base to the Cooler I decided that I wanted to add a base plate between the cooler/bag and the MIK bracket.  I have a drill but didn't want t...

This blog describes how two Townie 8i / Low-Step E Bikes with Bosch mid drives load and fit on a Thule EasyFold XT.  You can see that the bikes comfortably fit on the platform. The pedal angle of the inside bike is not at the optimal angle in this picture. Why a Platform Rack? The low step bikes don't have a crossbar to hang them from. The bikes weigh more than the average bike even with the batteries removed.  The EasyFold is rated for the e-bike weight. Loading Hints Remove the batteries. The locking bar for the outside bike has to go between the bars of the bike loaded closest to the car.  See the picture. Set the pedal angle of the bike closest to the car with the pedal towards the car in the up  position. The pedal angle of the outside bike can be set so that it does not bang the battery mounting bracket if you do this Inside bike with the car facing pedal in the up position Outside bike pedal angle is flexible in this situation

The Kawasaki Versys is a great motorcycle except for one weakness.  The Versys seems to burn out stators at an inordinate rate.  This results in not electrical generation capability and a dead battery.    They symptoms are that a battery is dead after riding but still takes a charge from a wall charger. The motorcycle ends up running off the battery draining the battery during every ride. A burnt out Stator often results in a weakened or dead voltage regulator.  The combined cost for OEM Kawasaki Stator and Voltage Regulator is about $500. You can see my 2014 Versys Stator that died in 2019 @ 14,500 miles on the odometer:

The Sony Playstation Classic is a small single board computer that runs 20 pre-installed Playstation 1 games via an open source platform emulator.  It can be hacked to run additional PS1 games through a simple USB Flashdrive hack which modifies nothing on the PSC.  You can run run games from other legacy game platforms by augmenting the same USB Flash Drive with additional files.  The blue and green components in the following diagram represent software and files that run from the removable media. The PSC has 3 USB ports.  Game controllers are plugged into the two Type-A on the front. One controller port can be tied up with the USB flash drive.  Power is plugged into the mini-USB connector on the back.   This plug can be convinced to act as a Flash Drive bootable USB port by installing USB OTG drivers in the kernel. Users plug a USB OTG cable in between the power cord and the PSC and plug the Game laden flash drive into the type-A socket on the ...