kyleheon.com: Category Miscellaneous

Got my motorcycle license!

Kyle Heon — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:20:00 +0000

So I’m a little late in posting this but I passed my motorcycle training road and written test and was in line at the DMV the day after (Monday August 25th) to get my temporary paper NH license with the motorcycle endorsement.

Since then I have pretty much ridden my motorcycle to work every day, in fact I have every day since getting it. I just broke 400 miles yesterday and was hoping to go cruising up to my folks in Maine over the weekend but it looks like we’ll be getting a lot of rain courtesy of those annoying hurricanes down south.

Last weekend I gassed it up for a second time which enabled me to run mileage numbers, turns out I’m getting just below 38mpg which is awesome but I’m looking to be in the high 40’s if not the low 50’s once the engine has been broken in (and as I learn how to control the throttle and shift better).

I’ve already started looking at my replacement ride. This bike was always meant to be a learning bike but I’m already wishing I had more power, at least for the takeoff. I’m currently leaning towards the Yamaha V Star 1300 Tourer in black cherry.

Learning to ride a motorcycle

Kyle Heon — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:23:00 +0000

It’s been quite awhile since I last posted and a lot has happened too. This past May I started getting the itch to buy a motorcycle. I convinced the wife (she was apprehensive, worried I’d get hurt). I quickly registered for New Hampshire’s Basic Rider Course ($110) and then waited (not patiently, I eagerly approached the mailbox every day only to be disappointed, until today).

In June (Father’s Day in fact) I purchased my motorcycle. Over the Memorial Day weekend I went looking at bikes, asked a bunch of questions and sat on a couple small bikes (the Kawasaki Vulcan 500 Ltd and the Yamaha V-Star 650 Custom). I then did a lot of research online and both bikes got many thumbs up for starter bikes. I was all but sold on the Kawasaki except that I wasn’t finding many aftermarket parts for but the Yamaha had slightly better aftermarket support, plus a slightly bigger engine.

I ended up going with the Yamaha for the increased engine size, slightly better aftermarket support, the shaft based drivetrain and the fact that it looked so much more bad-ass then the Kawasaki.

I took delivery a few days later. It was so cool and it had a nice little roar to it (nothing like a Harley, but this is my first bike so it sounds good to me).

Having never ridden I wasn’t sure how to even get the thing moving so I worked to get it into first and takeoff without stalling. That didn’t go so well for me until my dad showed up one Sunday morning and helped me work through it. I continued to practice my starts in the parking lot for another week or more and then on July 3rd went to take my permit test (a 20 question written exam). I passed (just barely—phew) and then that weekend my dad showed up again. He rode the bike over to an industrial area near where we live that has numerous (and empty) parking lots to practice in. After a good 1-2 hours of practice in the parking lot I felt comfortable enough to ride it home (about 2 tenths of a mile).

I continued to practice around our neighborhood, not daring to venture out into the main streets of downtown Portsmouth. It’s pretty crazy where I live so I really had to learn the hard way, right into the fire.

Last weekend my dad came down again and we went out on the open road, taking two trips to where I work (about 5 miles away). I stalled a couple times on the way there but overall did pretty good. This past week my truck has been in the shop so I rode Tuesday through Friday to work (the weather cooperated for me).

As I eluded to earlier, I got my training date(s): August 22nd-24th. This unfortunately falls right when my brothers Jack & Jill has been scheduled (they know, so I’m not spilling the beans). Because this is a non-refundable event I’m still going to go and hopefully I can shoot up to my folks to catch the tail-end of the party.

My permit runs out the end of this month so I have only a couple more weeks to ride, and more importantly only two more Thursdays that I could go in and take my riding exam. While I’m feeling really comfortable on the road and with my bike, I’m not sure I’m prepared for the road test…so I need to decide if I’m just going to wait for training to get my license (assuming I pass) and miss a month of riding time (all of August) OR do I make an attempt and go for my license?

I sadly don’t have any photos of my bike (yet) but I will work to get some shortly and post them to my Flickr Photostream but for now, you can see what my ride looks like here (mine is in black).

Snowballing our way out of debt

Kyle Heon — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:24:00 +0000

My wife and I picked up Dave Ramsey’s best-seller The Total Money Makeover about two years ago, read through it incredibly fast and began to work on our debt snowball. The problem was that we continued to add more debt, including a new camera, HD television, replaced my workstation with a Dell XPS 17” laptop, and the biggest addition, a [used] 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan.

It wasn’t until last November that I realized we really were just going through the motions, pretending to be getting out of debt. With the arrival of the New Year, I really got focused.

Every extra bit of money we could muster up, either from selling stuff (mostly on Half.COM) or through bonuses, tax return, and gifts went to the smallest debt we had. Since the beginning of 2007, we’ve managed to cut out nearly ALL unnecessary expenses and so far have paid off nearly $9500 in debt. This includes completely paying off the laptop, my last school loan, and one of three credit cards. Right now, early projections show us being debt free by middle of 2008 but I’m pretty sure that given our current rate of progress, we’ll be able to speed that up. I’m hopeful that we’ll be debt free by March/April of 2008.

The next step after becoming debt free is to fully fund our emergency fund. Once that is done we are going to start saving for a house. After all that (probably in a couple years), I’ll be socking away a large percentage of money into retirement and starting to fund my kids college funds.

Diabetes Fundraiser Results

Kyle Heon — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:15:00 +0000

Well this morning I dropped an envelope in the mailbox with checks totaling $300! I’m very pleased with the results of this years fundraising drive. I received a very large number of donations from ex-PixelMEDIA, Inc. employees. Thanks everyone.

I want to also give a big shout-out to my very talented friends (also past co-workers) over at Lightfin Studios for their generous donation. Thanks guys!

Community Campaign for Diabetes

Kyle Heon — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:44:00 +0000

It’s that time again. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) Community Campaign for Diabetes. Last year I participated in this and raised about $150-200 (can’t remember exact figure). That number was doubled by LifeScan (I think). This year Splenda is lined up to double all proceeds, up to $50,000.

The ADA does amazing things each and every year. I have been diabetic since I was 11 (turning 30 in about 2 months). I live a considerably better life today largely due to research made possible by the ADA. About two years ago I was finally in a position to begin using an insulin pump (from Animas). It was the best move I ever made. My A1c went from an insanely high 8.9 down to around 6.2 in about 3 months. Ever since I have been able to keep up that sort of consistency, thankfully.

If anyone is interested in donating, I have setup my PayPal account to accept credit card and debit card payments. You can get started by heading over here and send money to kyleheon @ gmail dot com. I promise you that any and all donations received will be sent to the ADA.

Updated Typo to the latest version

Kyle Heon — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:29:00 +0000

It’s been quite awhile since I last updated this site from the Typo trunk so tonight I decided to do just that. Thankfully working through the upgrade was pretty pain free.

I haven’t done all that much testing to make sure nothing major is busted but should you notice something not quite right, please kick me off an email or add a comment to this post.

Harmony 880 Remote

Kyle Heon — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:19:01 +0000

So I’ve wanted a decent universal remote for quite awhile now and have been watching the Harmony line a bit. The 880 was in my price range and the other day I found it for $159.99, which is nearly $90 cheaper then I could find it anywhere else. Given that this is a three check month I ordered it with free shipping and had the remote within a couple days—not bad for free shipping if you ask me.

So how do I like it? Well, I’m torn. It is definetly pretty cool looking, with it’s Tivo like look and feel but with a rechargable lithium batter, a blue glow backlight that turns on automatically when you pick up the remote and tilt it ever so slightly.

Programming it however hasn’t been quite as easy as I’d like. The Harmony website that you use to program the remote is pretty unfriendly, and I’m a savvy computer user (programmer by trade for anyone new to the site). I’ve managed to work through most of my problems though but it’s been a timely process. Part of my pain has been with my new Samsung televion. The pain centers around automatically changing the televisions selected input and how Samsung does this. You have to hit “menu” on the controller, then select the “input” section and cycle up/down to the one you want. Alternatively you can cycle through them by clicking the “source” button. This is pretty tricky to program into the Harmony remote.

Researching things online lead me down the path of using the discrete IR codes for the required inputs. Another part of the problem is that many of the input codes in the Harmony database are wrong so fixing these was the first task. For instance, someone pointed out that Component 1 was actually Component 2 in the database. I tested this and it was in fact which made fixing the problem I had with my “Play a DVD” activity quick and easy.

Last night I hooked up the Xbox, PS2, and VCR but have not yet setup the remote. I’ll get around to that later this week[end]. We bought a new upconvert dvd player (Sony 5-disc model) and adding this was pretty easy, just removed my old one and added this new model and then configured it for the “Play a DVD” activity.

The Harmony 880 remote employes the concept of an Activity, something such as “Watch TV”, “Play a DVD”, etc where you can string together what is in essence a macro. For instance, my “Watch TV” activity ensures the following:

Samsung TV is on
COMCAST PVR is on
Sony Receiver is on
Samsung TV input is set to HDMI1
COMCAST PVR input is set to Tuner
Sony Receiver input is set to TV/SAT

The remote also has the ability to keep track of when a device is on so that it doesn’t get shut off by choosing a new activity. To shut down for the night you can click the “Off” button and it powers things down one at a time.

I still have some timing issues from time to time but overall it’s been working pretty well.

Now in high def!

Kyle Heon — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 01:28:00 +0000

I’ve been checking in at Best Buy every night just in case my tv had arrived. Hit paydirt this evening as the truck had just left and my tv was in.

We have been working all night long setting it up but hot damn, it simply rocks. I’ve been watching a Red Sox game on NESN HD since about 7:15PM, it is simply beautiful, and the 40inch was a good choice, it’s not too overpowering in the room, just right. I could probably go up to a 46inch comfortably if I wanted but this will do for awhile now.

With the new entertainment center we built over the weekend, the living room has transformed into a much nicer room. Now I need to look into buying a newer dvd player, possibly one of those nifty upconvert models to take full advantage of my the new tv.

HDTV, here we come!

Kyle Heon — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 00:08:00 +0000

Over the past couple of weeks my wife and I have been discussing upgrading to a newer, bigger television with HDTV. It was the only lacking piece of our home theater (a couple years back we upgraded to a Sony ES receiver with 100 watts by 7 speakers). We struggled to find just what we wanted in both the size and price range we wanted to hit.

With the Labor Day sales this past weekend though we managed to find something that suits our wants and desires and didn’t break the bank (too much).

So, what did we get? Well we decided on the Samsung 40 inch Flat-Panel LCD HDTV which looked amazing in the store. Everything I could find online confirmed that this model wouldn’t dissapoint.

After price haggling and Best Buy Reward Zone discounts (12%), the price came down to around $1800, which I feel is a very awesome deal.

The bad news is that I don’t have it yet. Best Buy was swamped yesterday (sales, and the weather pushed people into stores instead of the beaches). We were there for nearly 4 hours and ended up waiting only to find out that the television we’d bought had been shipped out and they had no more stock. At the time it wasn’t a big deal because we weren’t going to be able to set it up until next weekend as we had a television stand on order.

Then last night we were at Wal-Mart and found exactly what we wanted in terms of a television stand and audio tower(s) which we ended up buying. We spent all evening last night and all day today putting things together. Now that we have a stand and no television I’m a bit annoyed. As consolation Best Buy gave us a $50 gift certificate. The television should be in on Wednesday (two days from today)...here’s hoping.

This all comes just in time for football…I can’t wait to watch the Patriots (and the Red Sox) in high-definition. I’ll probably also switch over this weekend to watch the race (Nascar) cause that should rock too.

It's been a bit too long...

Kyle Heon — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 02:05:00 +0000

It’s been super chaotic here in the Heon household with end of school celebrations, father’s day, and multiple family birthdays (father-in-law, my daughter, and my wife) all falling within the same two-week period. Finally we can come up for some air as we are all done with my daughters sixth birthday party. It’s amazing how loud and crazy things get when you add three girls to the mix. I almost think it’s easier with the boys.

So what else have I been up to? Plenty. We bought a new vehicle about a week ago. We’d outgrown our Ford Focus wagon and decided that the time was right to upgrade to a minivan. Thankfully we had a cousin that sells vehicles at a Dodge dealership in the area so we headed over there and he took care of us. We picked up a fully loaded 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT with 11,700 miles on it. Not new but pretty close. When I say fully loaded I do mean it, all it’s missing is heated leather seats (has cloth seats) and the kitchen sink (smirk). Automatic doors, dvd player, 3.8L V6, stow-n-go seating (really sweet), 6-disc dvd/cd changer, 6 (or 8, not really sure) speaker system. We take an annual trip to the family down south (North Carolina) and this will make it much more comfortable.

Other then that it’s been mostly business as usual. I have been listening avidly on the Radiant CMS mailing list and have been exploring this as a replacement for Typo as it seems to be becoming a bit bloated. Everytime I go to upgrade it I inevitably run into issues, be them migration issues or textile/filter related. Additionally my blog seems to be going down on a weekly basis lately. Not sure if that is TextDrive going up/down or Typo simply consuming too much memory and the process being shutdown. I’m also monitoring Mephisto as a possible replacement. Ideally what I want to do is make it possible to continue to have something that makes it easy to post but also flexible enough to let me create a place to post my photography, something that I’m not really finding easy/possible with the current setup.

Speaking of Rails, I picked up a copy of Rails Recipes (for Father’s Day) and I just ordered a copy of Ruby for Rails which recieved a very good review on one of the blogs I subscribe to. It seems to fit well for me simply because I’m trying to learn both Ruby and Rails at the same time and really struggling to grasp either of them (this is probably due to the fact that I only get to spend a few hours a day, sometimes a week, exploring it).