I’ve gone through several plastic feet on the KickBack, mounted to my Big Dummy. I’ve grown tired of purchasing replacement kits to source the plastic feet, as the kits are relatively expensive and I don’t need all the extra parts they provide. I’ve across a couple great ideas from others:

http://andy-projects.blogspot.com/2013/08/xtracycle-kickback-kickstand-fixes.html

and

https://jnyyz.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/extra-feet-for-the-xtracycle/

So, I followed their advice, in particular the advice in the second link – going with vinyl caps instead of rubber ones. Based on this information, I purchased a couple types of caps/feet at Menards:

https://www.menards.com/main/home-decor/furniture/casters-furniture-hardware/grips-pads-tips/shepherd-7-8-black-hi-vinyl-leg-tips/p-2718333.htm

and

http://www.menards.com/main/furnitureutilityhardware/78inch-vinyl-hi-tips-black/p-1469292.htm?plckReviews=true

I placed the caps, from the first link, on the KickBack – they fit like a champ and so far seem to be working just fine.

Multiple sets of replacement feet for 1/10 the OEM cost is a bargain. Thanks, Andy and Prof. from Toronto. Now I need to figure out a cheap and better way to replace the KickBack’s spring.

**********************************************

5/6/2017 UPDATE:

Was doing some post-winter maintenance on my Big Dummy and noticed the 7/8-inch chair tips were both punctured and I believe I had just put fresh ones on a year ago. All’s good. I removed the punctured ones with a utility knife and tossed a couple new ones on. Menards still carries them, so it looks like I can pick up another 4-pack of the 7/8-inch size.

This information has been useful in the past, so I am re-posting it just in case the source ever goes away:

With summer bike riding around the corner, I decided to charge up my Tunebug Shake. The trusty device fired up and seemed to be charging, but I found that when I unplugged the USB charging cable and played music, it soon turned off on its own.

Figuring it might be the battery, I visited Tunebug’s website and was surprised that they do not offer a battery replacement and worse, this is what their support site advises:

Does Tunebug offer a battery replacement or upgrade?
Tunebug does not offer a battery replacement or upgrade service. The device will need to be recycled in the event the battery completely wears out over time.

Since the Shake seemed like it could be destined for a recycling facility, I decided to take it apart to see what sort of battery was inside and how easy it might be to swap it. Turns out, it is very easy to work with – only 4 screws need to be removed with a Torx T-6 bit.

Once inside, I found a battery measuring about 25 mm x 25 mm that was easily removed by pulling the battery’s plug from the board. The battery had a slight bulge to it and wasn’t registering much of a charge on my multimeter, so I looked for replacements on the web. I found AtomIndustries.com selling a ASD1190 – 3.7v Lithium Ion Polymer Lipo Battery 500mAh on eBay. The replacement battery was about $10 shipped and I would only have to swap plugs from the old battery to the new one with a little bit of solder, so I decided to try it. The replacement battery arrived a couple days later, I cut the plugs and soldered the swap, and the Shake fired right up and ran on its own again! It was obviously much tighter getting the new battery back inside the Shake, but it worked and should provide several more years of enjoyment. Thank you atomindustries.com!

Dropped the Dummy’s chain on the ride home this evening – I should’ve been proactive with the faint creak I was hearing 🙂 I had my chain tool handy and probably could’ve pressed out the faulty link on the spot, but I was close to the west bank at the University of Minnesota and one of Goldy’s warm buses was waiting just a few feet from my.

I’ve asked parked/off-duty Metro Transit bus drivers before if I could test putting the Dummy on their rack and they usually give me a strange look and oblige. It wasn’t the most secure set up, but I knew it worked. I expected Goldy’s racks to be similar and I was right. Here’s a view from inside the bus.

Its not hard to get a longtail cargo bike on the rack of a bus, but I believe the front wheel overhangs where a front wheel would usually rest on the rack. The adjustable support arm that would usually grab onto the front wheel instead grabs on to the top bar of the Dummy. If this doesn’t make sense, I’ll get a pic outside the bus if it should ever happen again.

I requested and received my unlock from AT&T yesterday, but they sent instructions requiring that I restore my phone with iTunes. This is nonsense, as I have no intention of losing my 7.1.2 jailbreak. I grabbed a T-Mobile SIM from a co-worker and tried the instructions below:

1. Turn iPhone off
2. Insert non original carrier SIM card (T-Mobile SIM in my case).
3. Connect your iPhone via USB cord to your PC or Mac and allow the computer to power on the phone.
4. Open iTunes on your PC or Mac iTunes may pause for a moment and/or show a pop up box with a failed activation message, click “ok”.
5. Briefly disconnect USB cord, then reconnect USB cord.
6. iTunes should now display a message saying “Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked”.
7. If prompted for a Carrier Update, please accept.

It appears my iPhone is now unlocked and usable with any active SIM card.

Most of my posts seem to be nerdy and this is more of the same, but if you’re into vapor intrusion and wanting to properly present results in Excel, you might find this helpful.

While presenting VOC concentrations in micrograms per cubic meter in Excel, I noticed the greek-letter mu was being used instead of the proper “micro” SI prefix symbol. Yup, go ahead and snicker, there are subtle differences between the two.

If you’re on a Mac, the following shortcut defaults to the “micro” SI prefix symbol: hold down the Option key and type the “M” key on your keyboard.

*Update* The instructions for Windows don’t appear to work in Office 2016, hence the strikeout below.

If you’re using Windows or are trying to utilize other unicode symbols, the longer way of doing this may be more helpful. To produce an SI prefix symbol for micro and a superscript 3, this is exactly what you’ll need to type on the keyboard if you’d like to enter “35 ug/m3” in an Excel cell (don’t type the “+” symbols or parentheses and what they contain):

3+5+spacebar+alt(hold it down)+0+1+8+1+(release alt key)enter

followed by:

g+/+m+alt(hold it down)+0+1+7+9+(release alt key)enter

Another way to do this on a Mac is to enable Unicode Hex Input through System Preferences->Keyboard->Input Sources. If you anticipate you’ll be doing this frequently, check the box for “Show Input menu in menu bar”. After Unicode Hex Input is enabled, inside any Mac application enter an SI prefix symbol like micro by holding down the Alt key and then type in “00B5” or for a superscript 3, hold down the Alt key and type in the digits “00B3”. When you release the Alt key, your keyboard should return to normal entry.

If you need to access a Metasys web interface, created by Johnson Controls, that is running 6.5 or later, try downloading their Mac app which has a JRE builtin:

http://johnsoncontrols.com/launcher/macdownload

or, if that doesn’t work, try this:

http://www.johnsoncontrols.com/content/dam/WWW/jci/be/launcher/Launcher.dmg

In the last several versions of Mac OS X, I’ve searched for files in Spotlight and on occasion, the preview window gets stuck and blocks off a portion of the screen. To work around this issue, literally, open a Terminal window and execute the following command:

killall QuickLookUIHelper

For various reasons, I need to reboot a Windows 7 machine when I’m connected with a Remote Desktop Protocol session. I could probably establish a terminal session to avoid this, or I could open a command prompt (click Windows button and search for “cmd) and then execute the following command to remotely restart the machine:

shutdown -r

That’s all, your remote machine should reboot within one minute.

Seems com.apple.IconServices was using up a bit much of my cpu as the fans were whistling away. Fired up Console.app and saw several identical and consecutive entries like:

8/21/14 12:50:34.008 AM com.apple.IconServicesAgent[18804]: Failed to write file /var/folders/9q/08gbl69j4p93h7h59f57m8r00000gq/T/com.apple.IconServices/22C30777DAAC89CE8ADF68CE540ED9EE.iscachebmp.tmp to cache.
	1   IconServices                        0x00007fff8caa7b85 ___ZN18IconImageGenerator4mainEv_block_invoke7 + 634
	2   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff80ae028d _dispatch_client_callout + 8
	3   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff80ae1146 _dispatch_barrier_sync_f_invoke + 39
	4   IconServices                        0x00007fff8caa75ba _ZN18IconImageGenerator4mainEv + 734
	5   IconServices                        0x00007fff8caa8ea8 _ZN11WorkManager11processWorkEP4Work + 112
	6   IconServices                        0x00007fff8caa8e1f ___ZN11WorkManager11enqueueWorkEP4WorkU13block_pointerFvS1_E_block_invoke_5 + 26
	7   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff80ae31bb _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 12
	8   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff80ae028d _dispatch_client_callout + 8
	9   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff80ae47e3 _dispatch_async_redirect_invoke + 154
	10  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff80ae028d _dispatch_client_callout + 8
	11  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff80ae2082 _dispatch_root_queue_drain + 326
	12  libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff80ae3177 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 40
	13  libsystem_pthread.dylib             0x00007fff8b529ef8 _pthread_wqthread + 314
	14  libsystem_pthread.dylib             0x00007fff8b52cfb9 start_wqthread + 13

Based on the error log from Console.app, it appears com.apple.IconServices is trying to write something here:

/var/folders/9q/08gbl69j4p93h7h59f57m8r00000gq/T/com.apple.IconServices/

To fix this, I just created a new directory in Terminal.app:

sudo mkdir /var/folders/9q/08gbl69j4p93h7h59f57m8r00000gq/T/com.apple.IconServices/

Gradually the cpu dropped back down and all returned to normal.