It’s been slow on the blog this month… in fact, for that last couple of months, my posts/week ratio has been getting awefully weaker, as if it wasn’t weak enough to begin with. So whats the reason for this? I had tons (read: megatons) of stuff do over the last weeks, and all those personal projects coupled with school, my McJob and spending a bit of time with the friends and family didn’t leave me lots of time to write up some stuff. The articles are written, thanks to all those wasted Economy class periods, but I just haven’t found the time to write them up.

Both of the above are part of the problem… ever since my first bike got stolen in late August, I’ve been hustling my ass off to get a working bike (to the left, commuter), and then as soon as I could I spilled another couple of greenies to get a working BMX (to the right). For the past month, the general rule has pretty much been “work as much as you can and buy the parts as fast as you can”, but for now both bikes still have to undergo serious modification and fixing to be in tip top form. Ever since my first bike got stolen, it seems that my passion for self-propelled two wheeled vehicles has grown exponentially… I’m now finding myself to put more money into my chain-propelled rides than some of my buddies are spending on their gasoline guzzlers, to a point where I almost totally stopped wanting to build, rebuild, and re-rebuild my computers as a hobby in order to save up for my whips. Those two are the first two of a long series: a third bike, a scratch-build track bike this time, aka fixie, is scheduled to be started by summer of ‘09.

After building my first computer WAYYY back and trying to mod it to my tastes, I grew a taste for nice looking cases and chopping the latter up. When I saw the Rocketfish case for the first time in an Overclock.net case mod work log, I fell in love, and when I saw a member of OCN who had bought 3 (at 50$ it’s a steal) sell those for 60$ a pop, I jumped right on it and purchased despite the pretty steep shipping costs for such a big box to across the border.  Today, despite the fact that it took some time to get something done between disassembling the whole thing to getting some actual modding done, I like how the case is turning out. Sanding, chopping, painting and reassembling this huge full tower ain’t a one hour thing… So that’s kept me busy too. I don’t know where I’m headed to with this thing, but either reselling it to cover at least cost price (which is now at about 250$, man hours not included) to buy a laptop or getting sponsors to actually put some hardware in there would be nice. Either way, I’m having tons of fun playing with brain-numbing acrylic laquer and power tools. :D Check out the work log!

When I’m not at school doing all of the above and/or working and studying, which is already a pretty big workload at 30 hours of school per week in addition to 20-25 hours of work, I’m constantly getting emailed by the fine folks at Condistes.org, a french language which I put up voluntarily for a community of campers who use specific Westfalia-style vehicles. There’s always a link missing (french lanuage PHPbb + english theme = fail), a problem with one’s password, spam to get taken care of, or whatever else. Sure, I’m missing out on making a couple of bucks off of a couple of community members, but it’s a nice thing to put in a portfolio.

Yup. I’m that kind of person now. I bought the game to play with a couple of real life friends on those cold winter days, or to have something to do with my time when I can’t ride my bike, go to school, work, or work on my other projects for whatever reason.  Waste of time? Probably. But a guy’s gotta relax somehow.

It’s a busy life, as they say. I’ll try to update more, but I can’t guarantee. If you like my stuff to the point where you absolutely have to read everything I write (yeah right), be aware that I have a hardware-oriented blog down at overclock.net. Grab a feed!