Jeff's blog

Chipotle Burrito

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:15:09 -0400

Think about this next time you go to Chipotle and order a burrito:

13" Flour Tortilla

Rice
Black Beans

Barbacoa (5oz)

Tomato Salsa
Corn Salsa

Cheese
Sour Cream
Lettuce
Chips

Chipotle Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 Burrito


Amount Per Serving

Calories 1835	Calories from Fat 642

% DV*

Total Fat 72g

Saturated Fat 24g

Cholesterol 144mg

Sodium 3908mg

Total Carbohydrate 219g

Dietary Fiber 18.5g

Sugars 10g

Protein 76g


Vitamin A 147%

Vitamin C 70%

Calcium 59%

Iron 40%

Try it yourself with this calculator

Jeff Stevenson
jxs2151
.

As a Matter of Fact...

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 22:05:49 -0400

If you are one of those drivers that plants yourself in the left lane, riding along at 60 mph and not feeling the least bit compelled to move over and let a faster vehicle pass, then yes I am one of those bikers that "weaves in and out of traffic" as I go around you.

Jeff Stevenson
jxs2151
.

Meetup.com Group Ride to Thurmont and Vicinity

Tue, 1 May 2007 12:28:42 -0400

Went riding with the The Rockville MD/VA/DC Motorcycle Riders Meetup Group Saturday.

We rode the backroads east of 270 north to Thurmont, MD, stopping to eat at the Cozy Inn & Restaurant before proceeding west across Cacoctin Mountain on Rt. 77. From there we ended up at High Rock, near Camp David.

Check out this panoramic view from High Rock, looking out on Great Valley:

http://www.potomacwatershed.net/resource/antimono/hirkasse.html

Here's a shot of me at High Rock, standing as close to the edge as I am going to get when the dropoff is several hundred feet.

All the pictures from the ride can be found here.

.
Jeff Stevenson
.

Seeing The Broader Picture

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:20:11 -0400

Former UN Sectretary-General Kofi Annan recalled that when he was in school in Ghana, the headmaster Francis Bartels had once “put a broad sheet of white paper on the wall, with a little black dot in the right-hand corner, and asked, ‘Boys, what do you see?’” The boys shouted in unison, “A black dot.”

Bartels then admonished them, “So not a single one of you saw the broad white sheet of paper. You only saw the black dot. This is the awful thing about human nature. People never see the goodness of things and the broader picture. Don’t go through life with that attitude.”

.
Jeff Stevenson
.

March 25th Meetup.com Motorcycle Ride

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:41:46 -0500

Spent today riding with a great group of guys (and a girl) from The Rockville MD / VA / DC Motorcycle Riders Meetup Group. One group started in Olney, VA and we all met on Dock Street in Annapolis.

From there our group of ten rode to Tilghman Island, MD where we ate lunch at The Bridge Restaurant. Then it was back to DC in the Ocean City traffic.

All the pictures from the ride can be found here.

The quality may seem a little off since they were taken with the cell phone camera. Don't even ask how I got the moving, on-the-road pics.....it's probably not legal.

.

Do you care enough to show up?

Fri, 2 Mar 2007 12:17:46 -0500

On March 17th, the Anti-America crowd is planning a march in DC. International Answer, a group with known links to International Marxism-Lenism (www.discoverthenetwork.org) is organizing a march to the Pentagon to call for an immediate surrender in Iraq, the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, etc. Their planned march will take them past several memorials to our military. The last time this bunch showed up in DC they defaced the Capitol Building and desecrated the Lone Sailor statue that stands watch at the U.S. Navy Memorial.

This time it will be different. Several military veterans organizations are committed to protecting the sanctity of our memorials and are organizing to counter the Anti-American crowds impact on DC. A Gathering of Eagles is the main group and information can be found on their website.

Do you care enough to spend your Saturday standing with the veterans who defend our country?

.

A Father's Love

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:30:14 -0500

First view this:

CAN - Father & son bond of Dick and Rick Hoyt

Then go read the story:

Team Hoyt History

Then view a longer video:

Team Hoyt

Then, sit down and think.

.

Dear Future Me

Mon, 6 Nov 2006 17:23:01 -0500

If you could bury a time capsule what would you put in it? What would you say? Would you even want to say something to yourself in the future that could possibly affect the way you think about things then?

If you could email yourself up to thirty years in the future would you? You would need an email address you are sure would still be working thirty years from now. You would need a service that could send the email.

If you are intested in the fascinating prospect of sending yourself an email that would be delivered tomorrow, next month, next year, or fifteen or thirty years in the future check out http://futureme.org/index.php

And thirty years from now you can thank me for pointing this out to you.

.

DC Photo Trip #2

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 09:09:01 -0400

Beth had a photography class assignment and the topic was "architecture" so what better place to go than into DC?

I took this picture of her taking a shot of the beautiful neoclassical columns that front the National Archives building.

.

Summit Point Track Day

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 18:31:34 -0500

Luis Bruder and I went to Summit Point Motorsports Park today to watch a motorcycle track day. This event, sponsored by the Northeast Sportbike Association (NESBA), allows riders to "enhance their riding skills in a safe, track environment without the pressure of a race event." Not sure if this is something I want to do next year but it looked darn interesting. Anyone got a cheap 600 they wanna sell me for a track bike?

Tons of pics are here.

Feel free to download and do with as you wish. Yeah, I know some of the images are slightly out of focus and not centered, but you try to catch a motorcycle in a curve doing 90 mph while you are panning the camera at full zoom. It's hard to do and the autofocus doesn't keep up. I mostly did a manual focus on a certain point of the track and panned to that spot, tracking the bike and tried to snap at the proper focus point.

I did not do any digital adjustments to the images. If they appear dark, run 'em through Photoshop and adjust.

If you want to make prints it is best to download the largest image size. Click the image you want in Flickr, select "All Sizes", then select "Original (3072 x 2048)", right-click the image and save it.

If you like the pictures take some time to drop me a note.

.

1986 GSXR-750

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:27:36 -0500

I found this old picture yesterday.

A 1986 GSXR-750 that I used to own.....years and years ago. Anyone remember it?

The picture was taken behind the (now gone) Sundance Cycles building across from Salisbury University.

.

Michelin Pilot Road

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 15:00:48 -0400

Took the Honda 919 out today for a long ride on the new Michelin Pilot Road tires to see how it rode. The new skins are definitely stable and confidence inspiring. The ride is smoother than the original Michelin Hi-Sports, turn-in is predictable if slower and the things just grip the road. There was only one time that I felt them slip but the slide and re-grip was even and predictable, causing only one missed heartbeat. These tires are likely more capable than I am, which is a pretty safe place to be.

Snake!

Thu, 8 Jun 2006 14:25:55 -0400

I...Hate...Snakes. I...really...hate...snakes.

So, Beth and I were hiking this afternoon on the southernmost section of the Seneca Creek Trail, near the Potomac River and the C&O Canal Trail when we came upon this:

Wishbone walked right over it as Beth and I froze. The snake froze too but we were unconvinced. I called for Wishbone and he ran right over top of the snake. The snake made no attempt to bite the dog but Beth and I remained unconvinced of its intentions. We warily snuck past as we were determined to reach the end of the trail, 200 yards ahead. We remembered that I had a camera on my phone so on the way back I got close as I could and snapped the picture above.

Upon our return home I searched for snakes and found this:

It was a Northern Copperhead- Agkistrodon contortrix mokasen for the biologically curious. Venomous, but freezes when it senses danger, which would explain why it didn't move the whole time.

I...Hate...Snakes.

Installing Fedora Core 5 on a DL380 G1 Compaq Server

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 07:50:29 -0400

I am building a new web server to eventually house the Stevenson Family website and other websites that I run. Since the old server runs a rather outdated version of RedHat Linux I decided to install the latest version of Fedora Linux on the new hardware.

The struggles began when I ran the first FC5 install CD and the error "No hard drives have been found you probably need to manually choose drivers for the installation to succeed" came up. I was sure that I had drives in the array properly configured using SmartStart. I searched for untold hours for an answer, sure that someone else had run into the same problem and had the solution. I was able to find two other people who ran into the same problem, one trying to install to a DL380G1 and the other trying to install Fedora 5 on a DL360G1. They both were installing on Compaq servers with the Integrated Smart Array Controller. Neither had posted a solution. I decided to move on and install Fedora 4 and try to upgrade to 5.

The FC4 install went well using the network install method. This is cool in that one doesn't have to download and burn all five CD's, just the first. You then specify an FTP or HTTP location to download from during the install. You simply specify the packages you wish to install and the install gets them from the FTP site during the installation.

Fedora 4 installed just fine and I used yum to update all the packages using 'yum update'. I then ran rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-5-5.noarch.rpm to get the latest kernel rpm and ran 'yum upgrade' to upgrade everything, including the kernel. Upon reboot I found that I was still having array issues as it would not boot past the array.

I went back, deleted the array and decided to just install FC4 and be done with it. I searched one last time for clues and found this:

"Having difficulty installing Fedora Core 5 on a 1st generation DL360 with the integrated
cmqarray controller? Perform the installation using the noprobe option. The hardware probing
process failts fails to load the correct raid controller module. When asked, you will need
to specify the cpqarray module from the list of available drivers."
--http://www.galwayland.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=14.

This seemed to be the answer as it let me move past the array problem in the FC5 installation. I specified linux noprobe acpi=noirq askmethod at the prompt of the FC5 install. The acpi=noirq argument got me past a CD-ROM error "hda lost interrupt" that had befuddled me for a while. I had to select the Intel NIC when asked and had to choose the Smart/2 Array (cpqarray) when asked but it seems to have done the trick.

Old Guy

Wed, 10 May 2006 10:36:09 -0400

I'll be forty next week. To celebrate I took a thirty mile bike ride on the Rock Creek Trail. The ride had an interesting twist that I thought I would share with you:

I was about eight miles into the ride and had up until then ridden smoothly and not real aggressively when I noticed a pink shirted girl up ahead. My competitive instinct kicked in and I began to chase the twenty-something young lady, hoping to prove to myself (and possibly to her) that I still had it. The entire male gender was counting on me.

I chased her for about five miles, slowly reeling her in until she became aware of my presence. She would occasionally glance behind and began pushing harder on the pedals, trying desperately to lose me but I was having none of that. After a mile or so of following her and feeling rather proud of myself we came to an intersection whereupon she turned her bike around to head the other way. I smugly looked at her as she matter-of-factly stated: "Not bad for an old guy" and took off the other way.

The rest of my ride was uneventful and I didn't chase anyone else.