ajft

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After a little more than a decade, the time has come to finally part with Mr Damage — for the last four years, maybe even five, I've done little more each year than just pay the registration and then get it running for a couple of days in the last weeks each January.

The bike owes me nothing, the costs in time and money of cleaning it up and advertising to sell it probably wouldn't be worth anything like what the recompense would be. Instead I offered it up on the mailing list of http://www.teamRC17.net — swap for a case of beer! One of the semi-local members jumped at the chance and all that remained was to find a mutally agreeable time to come and pick it up.

In all these years I've never had to put the bike on a trailer so it was a little amusing to finally learn how (backwards) one and a half fit and healthy gents can hoik a CBX into a trailer — my left shoulder still refuses to have anything to do with lifting heavy weights:

Of course Melbourne's weather chose to make life a trifle more interesting by raining lightly on us the entire time, but we refused to either drop the bike or slip over. Paul tied it all down to his satisfaction and after more thanks on both sides, headed off for the long drive back home. I'm really glad the bike is going to someone who'll use it, rather than have it sitting and gradually falling apart in our driveway — Farewell Mr Damage.

Finally, the all-important beer:

Continued from part #1.

After a little searching online I decided to have another look at the internals of my rear shifter — albeit a 1996 Shimano XT unit, so I've had a decent thirteen year's use out of it! Undid the three chassis screws, disconnected it from the cable, and brought it inside where I can safely drop tiny pieces on the kitchen table and not lose them in the shed or the garden.

First major annoyance, the tiny little phillips head dust-cover screw that yesterday I removed then replaced, neither time with any problems, has mysteriously jammed and is almost stripped. Needed to be almost butchered out since the cross-slot has nearly gone.

Surprisingly clean considering the thirteen years of use so far — a wipe with a clean cloth and a toothpick to remove some of the dirt, then the discovery that the main ratchet is broken. I doubt if these are sold as servicable parts by Shimano, and if they are, how many other small parts are worn out or nearly so? Cleaned up and regreased lightly it all seemed to be miraculously operational again — I doubt it'll last another thirteen years, but I may get a few more out of it!

Second, or third, major annoyance came during the reassembly — the 7mm nut that holds the thumb levers on managed to twist around inside my socket-spanner and refuse to go on the bolt, jamming up so badly that I couldn't extract it without hooking a piece of wire into it. Then I found that it had stripped the thread of the bolt, so both the bolt and the nut seem unusable, a new nut may exist somewhere in my toolboxes, but a special custom-made Shimano bolt — no way. Looks as though new shifters are on the shopping list.

Nine-speed Shimano Deore XT brake/shifter levers seem to be $299 a pair — now can I use the nine-speed levers with the eight-speed cassette? Some people seem to say yes, some to say no...

Either way, a working repair seems better left to my LBS — providing I can find an LBS I'm happy with. I bit the bullet and rode up to Carnegie and dropped it off at Fitzroy Cycles, apparently the nine-speed shifters cannot be used with the eight-speed cassette so they'll have to order in an eight-speed shifter, but it should all be fixed and running and frighteningly clean and adjusted by Thursday.

... part #3.

Over the last few months my rear derailleur — 1996 eight-speed Shimano XT — has been harder and harder to change; I can change up to a bigger ring, but down is a problem, and I need to change two or three cogs and then back up. Jo has also pointed out that her changer is sticking and she was just about stuck in one gear almost all the way to and from work — not much of a problem around either of our commutes, which is why we haven't done anything about it.

This morning I took a look at Jo's rear shifter; the cables look corroded and stick, so I suspect there's no point in trying to adjust anything until they're replaced.

Starting to have a quick look at Norky bike, I found that the shifter had jammed completely and I couldn't move the thumb-lever at all! A little fiddling and it released, shifted up and down a few times, then jammed again. Undoing the tiny dust-cover screw and then the three chassis screws meant I could remove the shifter body — not sure if the cable was still in the guide where it's meant to go. A little bit of fiddling up and down and I convinced myself there's nothing I could do, better off to check it in for a service — but where, we're not entirely happy with the last few services from the last place we've been, I get the feeling that things were done "on the cheap" or with odds and ends parts because they classify me as a cheapskate and a friend. Local bike shop has butchered things twice when I tried to get a quick repair, then stuffed me about when I tried to get a wheel trued so I'm not inclined to go there for service, although they're fine for bits and pieces. Next nearest is Fitzroy Cycles, up in Carnegie on Dandenong road.

I put it all back together and started contemplating my options; repair or replace, adjustments or new shifters, proper service, its all just money...

...part #2

Ho-hum, a letter from the bank...

We understand just how tight the finances can get some months. You never know when you might need some additional funds to tide you over.

Um, yeah, I guess so... that'd be why there's never more than about $1000 on my $5000 credit card, but you're the financial experts so carry on...

We'd like to invite you to apply for a credit limit increase on your Starts Low Stays Low credit card, from $5,000 to up to $7,500. A little something extra you can use for any unexpected bills or to pay for those everyday expenses like groceries and petrol.

WHAT THE HELL YOU ON ABOUT Mr BANK? $7,500 for groceries and petrol? I'm sure you'd like me to apply, and you'd just love it if I went bankrupt maxing it out and paying your extortionate interest rates and charges, vultures.

Wouldn't possibly be trying to get people into financial difficulty just coming up to Christmas now would you?

Dear bank, get stuffed.

I took advantage of Microsoft's It's Not Cheating offer last Friday and bought myself a $50 Windows 7 upgrade online, paid an extra $14¹ to get a DVD rather than battle Telstra BigPond and download it all myself. The DVD arrived yesterday, here we go. So it begins...

Of course like 99.9% of the people out there with Windows Vista on their laptops we've got Windows Vista home premium, and the Windows 7 Upgrade that Microsoft will happily sell us is for Windows 7 Professional, which cannot be used to "upgrade" the system, only to perform a clean install over the top of it! If there's an easy path and a hard path you know which one they'll choose for you...

Backed up both our accounts from Vista with Windows Easy Transfer; 7.6G for Jo, 39G for me. Then did a very simplistic xcopy of everything onto the external drive, its not as if I don't trust the Windows tool and its unknown format, giant blob archive, its just experience at work here...

Meanwhile poking around on the Windows 7 upgrade DVD reading the help.

Wow that took a long time, my goodness Vista is slow copying files. The xcopy process took almost 14 hours!

This morning I logged back in and tried to start the setup program. Surprise, surprise, Vista can no longer read the DVD and shows a single README file telling me that I need to use a drive with UDFS capability! Hey guys, I was reading it yesterday and every day prior to today. Standard Windows fix for this one, shutdown, restart, TADA, a readable DVD drive. Pathetic.

Started the setup program and I'm drastically short of disk space; first I need to clear out about 1G to allow setup to download updates and start, then its 6.8G to let the upgrade commence, finally I need to clear out 11G for “recommended” operation.

Ugh, 800x600x16 colours, I sure hope we can find a better resolution than that once we're finished, of course the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor was useless, offering the advice that:

Check Windows Update after installing Windows 7 to make sure you have the latest driver for this device, otherwise it may not work.

Yes, I knew that already. That's not bloody advice, that's just "suck it and see, and if it doesn't work then too bad because you've already upgraded, sucker."

First half of the install takes about half an hour, only a little fun and games as Cam tries to help by tapping maniacally on the keys. The last step of six then takes about half an hour; no appreciable activity, just the words "Configuring."

Reboot; enter my account name and choose a name for the computer. Then try and remember the key for my wireless network. Um, err, its written down somewhere and I've lost the somewhere... Oh well, "Skip" and on to the next step.

Reboot; login. Ugh. 800x600 pixels bog-standard ancient VESA resolution at 4x3 aspect-ratio on a 16x9 aspect-ratio laptop; "Ugly fat-bastard mode". Try to change it and all I've got available is an option of 1024x768 — I guess that's an improvement.

Plug in to the wired network, connect to the Internet and hit Windows Update — 8 security updates and 7 optional, and the optional ones all look to be drivers for my hardware. 59.2M downloading, slowly, ever so slowly.

Waiting, waiting, waiting. Oh, failed. "Windows cannot install updates because Windows Update is installing updates". Ah. Obvious. "Try again later." So I did, and it installed seven updates, then rebooted.

Login and start Windows Update again. Hmm, "Most recent check for updates: Never." I do not think that is correct, I distinctly remember checking for updates five minutes ago! Five important updates and four optional ones this time.

A few more reboots — yes I've got my 1280x800 resolution back — start reinstalling the applications, start rummaging around through C:\Windows.old\ and purging as we reinstall so that there's a usable amount of disk space.

Connect up to the SpeedStream router via the wired interface to find out the WEP key, then reconfigure the wireless network. Easy enough, but I really should find where I wrote it down — inside the cover, in the manual, but where is the manual?

After a fruitless search for the destination end of the Windows 7 transfer tool I re-attach the external USB drive and double-click on one of the two archives, perhaps I should have read the instructions and saved myself some fruitlessness — twenty minutes and eight gigabytes later and I've restored all of Jo's photos. Now to repeat with the 40G of data for my account, after first clearing yet more space on the disk.

Tada! We're up, we're running, we're 95% full on the disk and sometime soon I think I'll have to find out what hideous hoops I have to jump through to replace the 100G disk in the laptop with a 300G or 500G one, whatever the largest laptop non-SATA IDE drive is.

Oh, big surprise and THANK YOU VERY MUCH to Microsoft. The Windows Easy Transfer archive of my files includes everything... everything EXCEPT 17G of my photos! Restored a nice empty Pictures folder just ready for me to curse and swear and copy back all my photos from my other backup because... wait for it... I DON'T TRUST THE MICROSOFT TOOLS BECAUSE THEY DON'T WORK!

Then endless hours of reinstalling applications from my great archive of application installers, followed by watching as they download complete upgrades of themselves because my installers are out of date! The endless treadmill of patches and application upgrades.

---

1. Doesn't look as though they can get that right, according to the receipt email on the 11th:

  $63.95AUD The charge(s) will appear on your credit card as
  "DRI*StudentOfficeAU". Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade - 32
  bit

Checking my credit card account today, the last three transactions are:

12/11/2009	Dri*Studentofficeau Orderfind.Com	$49.95
13/11/2009	Acp Publishing P/L Sydney	$49.95
16/11/2009	Dri*Studentofficeau Orderfind.Com	$14.00

Why on earth does it take them a second transaction and an extra four days to include the DVD? I haven't bought anything from ACP Publishing that I know of, so is that a double charge, or just a coincidental random wrong charge from ACP?

2. Revisited 2009-Nov-27: Pure coincidence, the ACP purchase for the identical amount was a magazine renewal I made weeks ago that has taken until now to appear in my statement. I wish ACP could print the name of the subscription, especially as it seems to take them at least ten days to process an online purchase!

http://store.digitalriver.com/store/msshau/ContentTheme/pbPage.Windows_7_FAQs

FAQ for Windows 7 "Its not cheating" offer