Shopping stress

Shopping for stuff and coordinating my travel is a stressful activity. Maybe I suck at looking, but it's been hard to find the right around Portland.

I need 1) six months storage for my car, 2) a bicycle, 3) a rear rack for my bike and panniers.

Car

PDX auto storage
Portland, OR

The only affordable car storage I could find in Portland is a car lot (PDX auto storage $45/month). It's cheap, but my car is out in the open with very little security on the premises. In Sacramento, CA there's a place (Tiger Self Storage) that will put my car in a private garage with security cameras for the same price.

Tiger Self Storage
North Highlands, CA

I would feel much better leaving my car in a garage, and I'd much rather return to pickup in Sacramento than Portland. But it's 10 hours drive away, LOL. Plus, I've kinda cornered myself into starting the trip from Portland because I'm awaiting the delivery of my bicycle here.

Bike

The GMC Denali bicycle I wanted to buy that was sitting in stock at every Walmart I've passed through on my way here, is not stocked in Portland. Fuck, LOL. All they have are crappy mountain bikes with chalkboard erasers for brakes. I'm waiting a week to have this similar bike (22.5" 700c GMC Denali $169) delivered to the store here.

22.5" 700c GMC Denali

Although, I guess I could buy a car mount and take the thing down to Cali. Then I'd probably see that very bike sold in every freaking Walmart I pass on the way. Making having it shipped here completely useless, LOL.


Bike rack storage

It's hard to buy stuff online without a home address. A bike bag with panniers (Topeak MTx TrunkBag EXP with Zip-Down Panniers $59.93) available on REI website looks perfect, but won't ship to store or a general delivery address. If I lived here, I could have it to my home by now. Instead I have to find a store that has stock. None in the state of Oregon do, so if I want it, I have to bike until I reach San Diego, California. Fuck.

Topeak TrunkBag EXP with zip-down panniers

A rear rack *is* available (Topeak Explorer MTX Rack $44.95). Though, I only wanted this specific rack for the bag, because the locking mechanism between them is compatible.

Topeak Explorer MTX Rack

Bike lock

I bought a 4-digit combination lock at Goodwill Outlets for less than a dollar. That was like a month ago, and I took for granted that I would brute force the combination by now. I haven't touched that thing since I bought it, LOL. If I plan to use it, I better get time-wasting soon on the 9999 numbers.

Action Camera

Another thing I've been looking at is a camera to record video of my bike trip. I wanted to record every minute of my ride, then create a ten minute condensed video. Time-lapse, or super high speed playback, or something.

The battery life and storage capacity technology of cameras seems like it's not quite there yet. To do what I want, I think I'd have to juggle a lot of device accessories. The battery life of action cameras last like 3 hours tops. So I'd have to use like three battery packs. Probably buy two 64GB SD cards to hold that video. Manually transfer video from each card to my laptop then upload every night. Recharge from 4 power outlets.

I'm looking at about $600 for an ad-hoc solution. $300 GoPro, $30 bike mount, $50 battery apiece, $50 SD card each.

An alternative to video would be a sequence of photographs. There's a time-lapse feature on GoPros that is what I'm looking for. Problem is, the camera stays on so it doesn't save on battery life at all! I'd still have to use extra battery packs. I'd rather just record video then.

The K.I.S.S (keep it simple, stupid) solution to all this would be to just take a freakin' picture from my phone every 15 minutes and make a slideshow of my trip. Total additional cost $0, total extra time spent with managing devices 0 minutes, total extra weight to carry 0.0 oz.

Dash Cam

But instead of enjoying what is free, being a patriotic consumer, I got a Dash Cam (Pilot DualCam Cl-3016wk $80) that records 1.5 hours of video. Comes with bike mount and waterproof casing included. The primary use is to record while driving in a continuous loop, so if someone drives into you, you have evidence in court. Seems like a really great product that I won't have a need for. But after buying the camera, I've been having this morbid hope that someone will crash their car into mine just so I can show people the video. I don't think it's a good idea to drive with that motivation.

I haven't figured out exactly how I want to use it. It doesn't automatically do time-lapse pictures, and its battery doesn't last very long. Maybe record an hour of bicycling every day? Maybe use it to manually take a picture now and then? It's not that much cheaper than a basic GoPro that I assume outperforms it ($100 GoPro + $30 bike mount vs $80 DashCam = $50 difference), so I feel pretty dumb that I spent money on it. Oh, it does have a LCD display on the back which GoPro for greedy reasons charges like $100 extra for, so that does make me feel better.

I did have a genius thought that instead of buying battery packs for GoPro, I could just buy like five of these cameras themselves. Without the sports casing, it's just like a $40 camera (Pilot DashCam). So I dunno, that gives me 8 hours of battery life for a cheaper total still than a $400 GoPro, LOL. Or I could buy three basic GoPros... in fact, what I really think they need to do is create a disposable-camera version of the GoPro.

Video sample

Omg, I just took a look at my recordings. These video files are uncompressed .AVI's. A ten minute recording at lowest 640x480 resolution is 1.0 gb. That's never gonna finish uploading over public WiFi! Fuck. Imma have to compress before uploading. Someone on YouTube will show me the way. Here we go. Five minutes to compress, five to upload. Im probly gon have to suck his dick afterwards tho, and like, subscribe, and share, etc.

Yeah, I'm keeping this thing. It's like a little spy camera. I'll find ways to have fun with it.

"I take pride in probing
all your secret moves.
My tearless retina
takes pictures that can prove"
- Electric Eye

Technology is a pain

5/3/2016

Pacific University

Forest Grove, OR

just chilling on campus today.

Had a scare with my laptop battery, where it wouldn't charge. Problem started after I opened up the casing to check if the RAM, battery, or HD could be increased. Nope. No way to upgrade the hardware whatsoever. Lost one out of 12 screws while I was at it too.

After I screwed the casing back on, I went to the library and noticed my battery wasn't charging. I installed drivers, looked for problems with the operating system, tested different outlets. The issue persisted. It became clear there was a hardware problem. I thought it was hopeless.

I figured in opening up the casing, I had damaged the charging port somehow. So I resigned that my mobile laptop was now a weak desktop.  I opened the case back up to survey what clumsy destruction my earlier curiosity had brought about. I looked at the port and moved around some wires while testing the connection... suddenly, whatever it was I did, it worked. The battery started charging again!

I think the soldered connection between the wires and the charging port got messed up when I opened the case. Maybe one of the wires twisted inside its plastic sheath and lost contact with a grounding wire, so a safety mechanism prevented the circuit from charging.

Same problem recurred the next day on the 4th. Took the casing apart again, this time unplugged the cable to the motherboard. Laptop shut off immediately. (Yes, I operate on my computers when they are conscious. No sedatives used. I know the dangers; I am a careless sadist.) When I plugged the cable back in, the charging port worked. Go figure. So far it's been holding up on the 5th. Keep them fingers crossed.