minnesota_slim's blog

Our friend and neighbor Shawn Small, owner and sole fabricator at Ruckus Components, just got done with his first batch of bash guard prototypes. Here's a video of him dropping some bash guard knowledge on me. Email him and pre-order one today!

The guy who does maintenance on our building, Gene, just threw me under a truck. Another tenant here, Gary, has all of these barrels stacked up in the parking lot (see pic below) and he sells them on Craigslist. So this Russian guy is outside by the barrel pile pestering Gene about buying barrels and Gene points at me and says "ask that guy, he knows more than I do." Then this Russian dude starts getting after me- it went a little something like this (imagine Russian accent):

Russian: I want barrels, I see barrels on Craigslist.

Me: You have to talk to Gary.

Russian: Where is Gary?

Me: I don't know, I don't have anything to do with him.

Russian: Gary is gone so now you are boss. Sell me barrels.

Me: I don't want to have anything to do with the barrels. They're not mine.

Russian: I give you cash, I take barrels. You give to Gary. Better: you keep cash, no problem.

Me: Sorry, can't do it. You'll have to get Gary's number from the Craigslist ad.

Russian: Is it number for Portland Design on building?

Me: No, you have to get the number from the Craigslist ad.

Russian: I have no time, I need barrels now.

Me: Sorry, I don't have anything to do with them.

Russian: I give you money and take barrels. No problem...

You get the idea. He just wouldn't give up and I eventually had to walk away while he called after me. Next time I'm just gonna sell the barrels and put the cash in the beer fund.

Staying hydrated today, or at least bandying back and forth between hydration and
dehydration.

Also, check out the design detail on the Red Bull Cola tab. It's a nice touch.

Here's a screen shot of my computer right now... not exactly getting a lot of work done.

Our friend Beth at City Bikes sent us this pic of her new short track racer, "Stompy." Nice grips!

Got blasted by my own RADBOT last night. Man, those things are bright!

Thought I'd take a moment to introduce one of our neighbors here at PDW shredquarters. MapleXO is a brand of jewlery made from old skateboard decks and wheels by Lindsay Jo Holmes. She handcrafts everything in the space next door to us and it all looks real good. Here are some pics I snapped of her operation a couple days ago:

Looks like our contact form was not functioning for the past 9 days or so. If you tried to contact us through the form between January 30th and today, your email did not make it through to us (despite an auto-response being sent to you stating we had received it).

We've spent the last couple days trying to figure out the problem and it turns out it was that rascal Google all along. Hopefully they fix the bug soon.

Just saw this news. No Jamaican bobsled team? C'mon, mon!

If you haven't heard, seems a drunken cyclocross fan had an unwelcome impact on the Belgian National Championships last weekend. Here's the recap from Joe Parkin's blog:

"... a drunken supporter of 2009 Belgian cyclocross champion Sven Nys reached out and grabbed the arm of reigning World Champion, Niels Albert, causing him to crash, and breaking a rib in the process. Not only did Albert lose any chance of winning the race as a result of the crash, but with a broken rib, he now has a difficult time with hard accelerations and any sort of climbing... Albert, who currently leads the Superprestige and the World Cup, has been officially screwed by someone he was there to entertain. What’s worse, depending upon how the rib heals, Albert may have problems with it for the rest of his career."

Something like this makes me wish cyclocross was a bit more like the Canadian national pastime. Over the years during hockey games there have been fans who interfered with players/coaches and those fans have ended up serving as cautionary tales to future fans: have a good time, but don't touch the players...