twothirds

John O’Neill is back at the helm at Providence College. To this day, I still have no idea why we called him Swani. Congrats, John.

Seen during my last trip to NYC.  I love the high tech booster.

To the person that nearly right hooked me yesterday on Willow Rd. West before 101–I have a present for you. I tried to deliver this yesterday, but I imagine you were too busy talking on your cell phone, picking your nose, fiddling with the radio or doing something else that impaired your ability to use a turn signal or stop for two-seconds to let me pass:

It is not easy stopping 225 lbs. (body + bike + gear) at 25 mph. Next time we may not be so lucky. The end result could be higher insurance rates or a court date. So please–next time use your turn signal. You won’t even have to slow down. I’ll swing around on the other side and you won’t have to deal with me.

(Metal note: Change brake pads)

I had a bit of a wikipedia issue today. Who know what I was originally looking for, but I ended up on a “why titanium” website. It has some pretty generic information about bike frame material (obviously pro-titanium), but it does not provide any source or ownership information. I had a hunch it was Litespeed or some other Ti bike manufacturer and sure enough…

~ jmichno$ whois whytitanium.com

   Domain Name: WHYTITANIUM.COM
   Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
   Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
   Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
[...]
Registrant:
American Bicycle Group LLC
   PO Box 22666
   Chattanooga, TN 37422
   US

American Bicycle Group owns Merlin, Litespeed and a few other bike companies. (Rumor has it, a lot of other bike companies farm out their Ti welding to ABG.) I am a happy Litespeed owner, but if they are going to spew marketing material they should be upfront about their marketing websites.

I stumbled over to the Trek Bikes website today for some unknown reason. Before I can even look at the bikes I am forced through two separate splash pages to make my country and language selection

I guess the programmers at Trek have never heard of a language header?

This really isn’t that big of a deal, but since my day job is centered around a corporate website, I tend to pick up on these usability issues. (Our UI guy would kill us if we did something like this.)