The collected works of CDG

Yep, what the title says. Just curious if anyone in here is a fellow motorcycle rider. I ride both on and off the road. Given my sort of redneck style, I prefer the dirt to the road, but like a little of both. I drive an '01 Kawasaki KE100 for dual sport adventures (she'll do about 50 over the road, so I can just about get to my local OHV trails). For the road, I have a new '04 Suzuki DL650 Vstrom, probably gotta be one of the top 3 nicest bikes I've ridden. Scary fast like any roadbike today, but not as fast as some out there. Overall just very comfortable for the road, and has enough power to keep you entertained, and smoke most other cars on the road (*most*).

So just curious if/what anyone else her might ride...

I imagine a lot more people in Europe might ride given fuel costs there, although California ought to have a lot of riders given the weather. Myself I ride probably 5 out of 7 days a week in the Arizona sunshine. I could ride more but often times it's not practical to run places on my bike.

RZ- two stroke eh? At least I think they were liquid cooled V4 2 stroke with oil injection. Correct me if I'm wrong though- they haven't made RZs since around the time I was born, and they're pretty hard to come by today. Always known for being high strung and violent in power delivery, even by 2 stroke standards. Pretty rare in the US too.

Anyways. I have a thing about 2 strokes. I want to upgrade myself to a KE250 from my little 100. The 250 would be better suited for western riding through washes and the like, where power is necesary. However 250s are rare, either because they didn't make many, or more likely because they've burned up, or people who have them don't want to let go.

2 strokes are becomming rarer unfortunately due to pollution standards and noise regulations. Still, I love 'em.

Nice Kshuff- good job on the accesories. I nearly bought a sporty, but settled on the Suzuki instead. The fuel injection on it is nice for high altitude, and the semi-agressive rear tire is more stable in hard-pack and dirt roads (not enough suspension and too much weight to go wild off the road though).

Anyway I'm not one of those people who goes around flapping their trap about "real" motorcyclists. I respect all forms of riding, and in fact try to enjoy them all. I am a "real" motorcyclist, yessir I am. I'm a real live human being who rides a motorcycle.

But that's getting off on a tangent.

Oh and I can imagine putting an O2 on a motorcycle. Hell I've driven some pretty big parcels up to the Post Office on my KE100 strapped to the tank. The problem can be climbing the hill to the PO in the left lane on the main road into town where the speed limit is 45 (mph), and I'm doing 35 in the left lane. It's really all the faster it will do with a ~210 lb rider like me onboard while climbing a hill. Other then that though I get an overwhelmingly positive response with the little 100. It sounds like a chainsaw almost, but mostly you get the old timers to look at it and chuckle, no doubt remembering having a bike like that when they were younger.

I love my KE100 though. It's filthy right now from romping off the road with some friends in their trucks. It's also very handy from the standpoint that it doesn't cost much for me to go out down the trails- only about 1-2 gallons of gas on average, and about a quart of oil every 5-800 miles.

About the R6- I can only say this much. My dad turned me loose on his FZ1 (detuned R1 with a more relaxed riding posture), and I can say that in gears 1, 2 and 3 it is nearly impossible to keep that front end down, and that once you see the needle sweep past 140 in 5th, you start thinking maybe you ought to just let off. The FZ had about 120 horsepower. That little R6 puts out about 99 in the US. All I can say is have fun and be safe. But not TOO safe...

I hear ya about dropping a heavy bike. I've had my Dad's Harley on my knee before... very embarassing parking lot accident that cost $600.

However, I agree that to tour you ought to stick with a larger bike. That said, if you want something a little lighter and nimbler, might I suggest a Kawasaki KLR 650? I've been riding since I was about 6, but when it came time to learn how to ride on the road, the first bike I rode was my dad's KLR. This is a NICE motorcycle. Capable of probably 140+ mph, compfortable at cruise, weight comes in at around 450, and when the motorcycle press says it's one of the best handling bikes ever produced, they aren't kidding. Yeah, I was skeptical having ridden a number of dual-sport bikes myself, but you can really crank this thing through the turns. It is capable enough off the road, but frankly a bit too large and heavy to let it all hang out. Price tag runs around $4600 US before accessories. Kawaski offers lots of bags, a lowering kit (I'm 5'9" and have no problem getting both feet down), and a taller windscreen. The tall windscreen is particularly worthwhile.

My picks when it came time to buy a road bike of my own was between my current Vstrom, a Harley Sportster 1200, and a KLR650. The primary and possibly only major downer of the KLR is the carburation- when you make the climb to the Grand Canyon, you're going to be wanting fuel injection. It won't be the end of the world, but the difference is significant. However, when you see a trail you want to take, chances are good the KLR will be more then up to the task. I don't know if that's your thing or not, but to me, that's the most awesome thing about a dual sport.

Alright, I've rambled for quite long enough.

Yes, the aforementioned Phobos card. You can get them for around $25 + shipping. On the software level, I don't know enough about networking in IRIX to say if you can actually make it into a router or not. I know from LInux reading that it is probably possible if you run Debian.

I don't want to go trumpeting my horn with unsolicited advice, since your business is your business, but I would not pick an Indy for use as a router. They run much to hot for comfort for something I would want to leave running all of the time, and there are no easy ways to mod them with fans. Furthermore a router would probably be as cheap as a Phobos ethernet card, and a router would probably do everything the Indy could do faster anyway.

What can you do with an Indy today? Honestly not much. Get the Indy Video Option + Cosmo Compress boardset and you could have a half-outdated video catpure rig, as opposed to just the completely outclassed Vino built in video. Actually, IVO can supposedly do quite well, although you're still looking at hours of work encoding those high-quality video files with a processor that is 12 years out of date... You can show your friends the Indy Cam if you have it, confuse the hell out of your pets with it. Alternatively you can still do some light video capture on Vino. Vino capture ability on an Indy can very greatly based on how much RAM you have, and to a lesser extent what CPU. I find with my R4600SC with 128 megs RAM I can capture a consistent 15 fps at 320x240 high-quality mode.

Do not get me wrong, I love my Indy. It's my first and so far only SGI experience. I enjoy tinkering with it much the same way one would enjoy R/C nitro cars, or model trains. It's a hobby, and nothing more. I got my Indy cheap (nearly free). Of course I've soaked about $50 in mods on it so far, with HDD and CPU upgrades, but hey, I'm having fun.

Anyway that is my opinion. I'm no expert on the matter. I don't want to discourage you, but there just aren't many great uses for the Indy these days. In fact, the more reading you do about the Indy, the more you realize that they weren't used by much of anybody. SGI had a lock on 3d design workstations back in the 90s. The Indy was designed to steal the 2d market from Apple. To a minor extent the Indy did succeed, but it was never an extremely popular graphical workstation. The Indy was in for 2 or 3 years, and then was replaced by the (far superior) O2.

If you're a musician, Indys can be used for sound, often times to surprisingly good results. You don't want to do your playback through the onboard speaker though obviously...

So, just my opinion. Hopefully I'm not giving you an idiot lesson- If I did at any point, I apologize.

OK so the O2 didn't initially displace the Indy right away, but an R5k Indy can't face down a loaded up R10k O2... An Indy can also still be capable for sound editing, photo editing (a bit slow, but sufficient for most purposes), and if it has the Cosmo board, high quality capture (althoupgh exporting those video files is going to be pretty slow). I had quite overlooked application and web development. Some people also use Vino for internet video- 1/4 NTSC size to get pretty high qualities.

I don't want to get into a pointless argument, but I would doubt that any Indy has ever caught fire. Not unless you wadded cotten around the GPU on the graphics board. I could see a spectacular l ight show if/when the PSU fails maybe, possible catching a stack of papers on fire, but tha tseems a little far-fetched to me. They don't run THAT hot... I've left mine running for 20 straight hours working on video encoding (obvioiusly there was some idle time in there, but mostly I was just feeding it clips and letting it crunch it all down). I felt the drives reach the outer comfort zone, but I never thought there would be any fire hazzard.

Incidentally, I did actually hear the PSU fan run on the Sony PSU. It isn't very loud, but it definately exists!

I suppose though I was harsh in my initial statement though

For use as a graphical workstation though, I would be pretty sure there are better choices. For use as a router, I'd get something that's actively cooled. I don't think it will start on fire, but at the same time, I don't think it will be particularly reliable either... Just my $0.02 though.

I've seen guys who keep cats in their 18 wheelers doing long haul trucking. Some cats are more adaptive than others though... You might be able to arrange to turn him/her loose in the truck. Maybe you could even take it to the truck for a few hours during the evening. Then start driving the truck around the block in the evening. Eventually, you might condition the cat to get the idea that the truck is cool. Just a thought- might not work. It really depends on the cat in this case.