For a Theft-Proof motorcycle

Here in the Philippines, motorcycle theft is very rumpant specially in depressed areas where some people tend to "scavenge" instead of working for it. MC theft have always been the same ever since because bikes require very minimal force to steal. Common bike locks require only a wire cutter or a hammer even a strong arm, and I have to telll this that I own a dual sport bike and might I say, this is like the easiest to get. Even Big Bikes and Choppers are not safe anymore, all you need is a big enough van, a couple of dudes and off you go with the bike of your choice, or off to the chop shop for parts. How do we really prevent this from happening, or if it cannot be prevented, how do we give the crooks "hard time" before our bikes get stolen...

The tips below was provided by MSF from my earlier article.

QUICK TIPS: Preventing Motorcycle Theft

Follow these basic tips to help avoid becoming a victim of motorcycle theft:

• Lock your ignition and remove the key. Most bike thefts occur when the ignition is shut off, but not locked.
• Lock the forks or disk brakes with locks that have large, brightly colored tags.
• If traveling with other riders, lock motorcycles together when not in use.
• If riding alone, lock your bike to a secure, stationary object that can’t be easily dismantled, such as a light pole.
• Add an audible alarm to your motorcycle.
• When traveling and spending the night at a hotel, locate an outdoor security camera and park your bike in the camera’s view. If this is not possible, park your bike close to your room.
• Keep an eye on your bike. When parking at a public event, check your motorcycle periodically, especially immediately after leaving your bike, to make sure there are no suspicious individuals lurking about.
• If parking in a garage, block your bike with automobiles, close the garage door and make sure it is locked.
• Don’t store your title in your bike’s storage compartment, tank bag or saddlebag. The safest place for your title is at home.
• Uniquely mark and then photograph your bike. If thieves take your bike, note its unique markings to law enforcement using the photos you have taken.
• Keep your bike registration and insurance identification card on you when you ride.
• Be careful about giving out private information on where you live, work or play.

Here are some useful articles to check on:

Chain locks by Bike In The Fast Lane
Anti Theft by Why Bike
The Exalto from TwoWheel Blog

If you use a trailer to transport your motorcycle, follow these safety tips:
• Park the trailer in a well-lit location near security cameras or in an area easily seen by restaurant, hotel or event staff.
• Lock the trailer doors and hitch.
• Secure doors by backing up to a wall, so there is not enough room for doors to be opened.
• Know your trailer identification and license plate registration numbers.
• When riding home, make sure you’re not being followed.


Guard against theft when selling your bike:

Using fake identities has become common in bike thefts. Don’t turn over the title until you can verify the check or money order is valid and has cleared the bank. Mail the title to the new owner.

• Ask the buyer for his or her name, address, date of birth and driver’s license number. Then ask to see the driver’s license and check that the information given matches the license.
• Be especially cautious of anyone who presents out-of-state identification.
• Make sure the potential buyer wasn’t dropped off by another party and is planning to take a one-way test ride with your bike. Verify that the buyer owns the vehicle he or she arrived with, and that the vehicle is of equal or greater value than your bike.
• Check that the buyer's driver’s license carries a valid motorcycle endorsement.
• It isn’t necessary that you provide a buyer with the title right away. A written document signed by the seller and buyer indicating price and method of payment can serve as proof of purchase. You can forward the title to the buyer once the check has cleared the bank.
• If you decide to sell your motorcycle on consignment, do not provide the signed title to the dealership until you have received your money in full. Make sure the dealership is a reputable business before you trust them as an agent.

It is payday...

It is payday...

It's Payday and I'm 3 thousand pesos short, courtesy of the "Zero Discrepancy" programs of the Accounting Department". Who ever thought about that "said" prgram should think again. I mean it is like praying for peace while holding a gun... that's just nuts!!! Or being the president of PETA with a closet full of fur coats.

Work have not been the same since september came in, and I kinnda miss my old place, but you won't grow if you don't get out of your comfort zone. my dad and I went to the grocery store earlier to get some diapers and supplies, the prices aint right, its scary. What will happen after 5 years, when it is my turn to have my own family. Well anyway, thats too far from now, I just want to make some short temr goals done and inch on my long term goals.

Work is great so far, I've been getting good feedbacks from my superiors local and state-side, plus customer feedbacks are looking good, i sure hope I'll get a Perimeter shirt later, you know, a token to brag about for some interested parties :)

Tomorrow will be a little challenging, we have a game to play on the office basketball tournament and then I get to go to the office after the game, stickin' schedule but it can be rewarding too. It has been a year since I last played basketball and told myself that I will play again after a year when I had an accident. That's October 17 well, it is almost a year, plus i gained at least 10 pounds after the accident, so I have to shred them through basketball again. I brought some food for lunch but then it wont be all mine.

Talking about that lunch, I was googling my a$$ off and found a way to to reduce "lunch theft" in the office or at school. This was posted by Bibas from BibassBlog, Anti Theft Lunch Bag wahehehe, nothing but cool...

Alcohol And Motorcycles

QUICK TIPS: The Importance of Riding Unimpaired by Alcohol or Other Drugs

Theory: Alcohol And Motorcycles Are Incompatible
• At a Blood - Alchohol Concentration of 0.01 to 0.04%, judgment begins to lessen, the drinker is less critical of their own actions, reaction time is slowed, and indications of mental relaxation may appear.
• At a Blood - Alchohol Concentration of 0.05 to 0.07%, judgment is not sound, thinking and reasoning powers are not clear, and the ability to perform complex skills is lessened.
• At a Blood - Alchohol Concentration of 0.08% or above, judgment and reasoning powers are severely hampered, and the individual cannot complete common simple tasks without error.

Proof: Statistics From Recent Studies (by NHTSA, Florida, Kentucky, and Australia)
• Having any alcohol in one’s body increases the chance of crashing by five times.
• Having a Blood - Alchohol Concentration greater than 0.05% increases the risk of crashing about forty-fold.
• 46 percent of all motorcyclists killed in crashes were using alcohol.
• One fourth of all fatal alcohol-related motorcycle crashes involve motorcyclists running off the road, overturning, or falling from the motorcycle rather than striking another object.

Explanation: Alcohol Affects Your Ability To “SEE”

SEEsm is the acronym for MSF’s strategy to help motorcycle riders maintain a safety margin as well as remain ready and able to respond properly to traffic situations. SEE stands for:
• Search for hazards that might lead to trouble.
• Evaluate how the hazards might interact to create risk; prioritize multiple hazards to deal with one at a time.
• Execute an action to maintain a margin of safety.

Alcohol affects these three human elements of safe motorcycle operation by impairing your vision (Search), judgment/decision-making ability (Evaluate), and coordination/reaction time (Execute).

Recommendation: Plan Ahead
• Riders should never mix alcohol with riding. Even low, legal limits of Blood - Alchohol Concentration increase your risk while riding a motorcycle.
• Riders who are away from home and decide to drink should either (1) wait until their BAC has returned to zero before riding, even if it means staying overnight, or (2) leave the motorcycle in a secure location and find alternate transportation home.

Work-Load

What is work-load?... well lets check out what Wiki has to say.


"The term workload can refer to a number of different yet related entities.

An amount of labor

While a precise definition of a workload is elusive, a commonly accepted definition is the hypothetical relationship between a group or individual human operator and task demands.

The assessment of operator workload has a vital impact on the design of new human-machine systems. By evaluating operator workload during the design of a new system, or iteration of an existing system, problems such as workload bottlenecks and overload can be identified. As the human operator is a central part of a human-machine system, the correction of these problems is necessary for the operation of safe and efficient systems.

An operating budget may include estimates of the expected workload for a specific activity.

Quantified effort

Workload can also refer to the total energy output of a system, particularly of a person or animal performing a strenuous task over time. One particular application of this is weight lifting/weights training, where both anecotal evidence and scientific research has shown that it is the total "workload" that is important to muscle growth, as opposed to just the load, just the volume, or "time under tension". In these and related uses of the word, "workload" can be broken up into "work+load", referring to the work done with a given load. In terms of weights training, the "load" refers to the heaviness of the weight being lifted (20 kg is a greater load than 10 kg), and "work" refers to the volume, or total number of reps and sets done with that weight (20 reps is more work than 10 reps, but 2 sets of 10 reps is the same work as 1 set of 20 reps, its just that the human body cannot do 20reps of a heavy weight without a rest, so its best to think of 2x10 as being 20 reps, with a rest in the middle).

This theory was also used to determine horse power (hp), which was defined as the amount of work a horse could do with a given load over time. The wheel that the horse turned in Watt's original experiment put a certain load on the horse's muscles, and the horse could do a certain amount of work with this load in a minute. Provided the horse was a perfect machine, it would be capable of a constant maximum workload, so increasing the load by a given percentage would result in the possible work done decreasing by the same percentage, so that it would still equal "1 hp". However, horses are not perfect machines and over short time periods are capable of as much as 14 hp, and over long periods of exertion output an average of less than 1 hp.

The theory can also be applied to automobiles or other machines, which are slightly more "perfect" than animals, making a car heavier for instance, increases the load that the engine must pull, likewise making it more aerodynamic decreases drag, which acts as a load on the car as well. Torque can be thought of as the ability to move load, and the revs are how much work it can do with that load in a given amount of time. Therefore torque and revs together create kilowatts, or total power output, which can be related to the "workload" of the engine/car, or how much work it can do with a given amount of load. As engines are more mechanically perfect than animals' muscles, and do not fatigue in the same way, they will confirm much more closely to the formula that if you apply more load, they will do less work, and visa versa."

we all know that sometimes workload is considered as "$hit-load"but hey, if you want to get through everyday expences, you have to have more on your $hit-load / $hit-list. I mean c'mon, not all of us are born rich at a no-need-to-work kind of life. For almost a year, I did not get to do much but once I got a spot on doing something, shoot!!! this is not rain anymore, this is avalanche. I get to earn enough and get to do more that what i should be earning, but thats life, just like one of my mentors said, "you ain't gonna learn to walk if you can't learn how to crawl" (with that sympathetic facial expression...)

The great part on working the hell out of yourself is working with someone you are comfortable with, back-office like QA1 QA2 / training / manong guards; managers like operations manager / shift supervisors , and team mates and some twist... well they all make this war-zone-like pace some what of a home for me.

I was supposed to put up something bad for my work place, but after putting what I had on top, i forgot about it, honestly... It makes me wanna it a rice meal... well we'll see what it will be.

Kimbo Slice, Knocked Out...

Kevin "Kimbo Slice" Ferguson made his way as a YouTube sensation, beating other street fighters to the guts or coma hehe (for more informationa about Kimbo, just check out this blog right here, "Brutons' " Its the lighter side...). Kimbo was one of the most anticipated participant in MMA because many have said that is ruthless and uncontrolled style of brawling may not work with MMA specially against a composed opponent. He was unbeaten in four fights from his debut to MMA until Oct 4, 2008. The tauting, trash-talking skull breaker turned into a laughingstock as an MMA fighter in just a matter of seconds knocked him out. He was bound to fight an MMA legend, Ken Shamrock, but had to withdraw due to injuries at a warm up sparring.

"Seth Petruzelli, a fill-in for Ken Shamrock, pummels Slice for a first-round knockout in their EliteXC bout." - AOL headline.

- That says it all, 14 seconds in the first round, a punch, a follow up and a stopage. For Seth Petruzelli, this is like a cinderella story, from Ultimate Fighter to EliteXC star, like what he said, "I'm not used to this much attention" - from MMAJunkie.

The next thing you may want to look out for is if Kimbo decides to train more and have a rematch and the have more determination to trail to fight rather than to brawl, he's training with Bas Rutten, that's Bas Rutten, it is impossible for Kimbo not to learn.

Oh yeah, here is the video of the fight from MMARoot.

Why Mondays suck...

Well there are tons of reasons when you collect all the reasons every brain has for the "Why Mondays Suck?", but I do have a few of my own.

Just by the sound of the name, "Monday" ... ewwww yuck, why can't it be like another name, like lazyboyday, or lazyday, or after sunday-day whew.

It's hard to get off from the bed and go to work or school, usually, when it is Monday, you feel feverish and the bed has some hypnotic power or a magnet that does not allow you to get away from it. When this happens, it is either you make a call that you are sick, or just keep everything wingin' until you get something right.

Traffic, yeah traffic, heavy and irritating. For some reasons when it is Monday, specially raining Mondays, some people gets stupid, causing all cost of troubles on the road and making everybody behind them late for work.

Monday Mentality, yeah, this is usually the start of a work week, so you really have to suck it in for another 4 days doing the same sheeeet on a different day.

Negativity, even though you have to be optimist, you cannot.

Work Load, just from how it was called, LOAD, well because not going to the office for 2 days, you will get twice as much load on Monday, plus you get to finish them same amount of time on regular days.

The only thing good in this Monday is that I get to see my wife later and then come Friday, payday, BUT FRIDAY IS TOO CLOSE TO MONDAY... I may get to hate it too.

I tried Googling this thought out and I found another blogger that has the same thought on Monday like I do. Justin's Blog.

Going further in the day... and my coccyx starting to hurt again, then thought about getting an ink right there, to commemorate my tailbone being broken at one point, but then the idea can make my wife nuts but she had a tongue stud that I agreed on :) These links right here helped me today by killing at least 10-15 minutes, great work I may say... "Can we see your tongue stud" and the ever alluring "The HoteWife confessions".

So yeah, I sure hope to get everything running today and looking forward to a good, WET Tuesday...

Switch...

There are may surprising things going on in life, like SURPRISE I'M pregnant kinda thing. But not that. Maybe it's all because things that happen may really have a purpose why it does happen...

Imagine, from blue to yellow and from green to blue...

Chad Reed of Yamaha (he just won last Supercross season with Yamaha) will now ride for Team Suzuki Rockstar: while James Stewart Jr. of Team Monster Kawasaki (he just won last Motocross season with Kasawaki) will now ride for Yamaha. Well Ricky Carmichael is not retired and gone four wheels, but c'mon, what's next... will Bob Hannah Ride for the Yellow Suzuki this time or Yellow Yamaha, whew.

WORD

Work On Rest Day

The title says it all, rest + work = twice the pay for the day :)

I needed the money for one good reason, still trying to earn more to keep up with life and all its challenges, plus I get to spend a whole shift doing things aside from taking in calls. Money can go to be for different reasons like the ff:

Family - I needed this because I am the current bread winner, don't ask, it's a Filipino Custom.

My family - Well this will be for me and my fiance, and its not called fiance if it is not family right.

My niece - I'm a first-time uncle, so she is like my own kid, plus I get to make sure I'm physically clean every time.

Myself - I'm still planning to get a Mt. Bike after getting a road bike for my dad. I came across some resources online and spent at least 1 hour on each site because I still have nothing to do.

Kent's Bike from BlogSpot

and

Bike Blog - They featured a Yeti with the signature loop that may be most useful for me.

...and some minutes on the ones below.

Cycler's Life

Rural Pinoy - A fresh Filipino bike blog from Pinoy MT Bikers.

And a cool article on a Trek Bike Vending Machine...

As off today, one of my former team mate Essa a.k.a Kaikai will be quitting work and may be off to a better, greener... you know. Anyway, good luck where ever you will be. Some dose of creativity from our QA peeps Sherlie and Ruthie, well for some reason their names should rhyme, maybe because they both needed for the same reason, so having a name that sounds a like may be appropriate for the job... and not to forget the blog that has my picture on it, Curlie's; he's not a QA but we just got used to calling him that way, but he now has a straight hair.