@sam@social.coop
@sam@social.coop avatar

sam

@sam@social.coop

Cooperator :TwinPines:, neo-luddite 🔨, Atlantan, solidarity forever 🌹, probably wants to be out swing or blues dancing 🕺, backpacking ⛺🥾, climbing 🧗, or mountain biking 🚵.

#biking #bicycles #climbing #bouldering #coops #backpacking #Atlanta #nobot #nobridge

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ascentale, to random
@ascentale@sfba.social avatar

Next question is from @meganL about national cycling advocacy organizations:

Q3. What advocacy item would you like the League of American Bicyclists (or whatever your national/local cycle advocacy group is) to add to their lobbying agenda?

#BikeNite #BikeNiteQ

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@ai6yr @ascentale @meganL oooh, yes, bicycle parking is a good one! Almost no business around here has a bike rack and I'm always shocked that when they're developing new shopping malls and stuff they don't just take one car parking space and fill it with racks so you could get like 10 bikes in there plus a few cargo bikes spaces on the ends. Having someone advocating for municipalities to include this in the requirements to get development permits would be amazing.

#BikeNite

sam, to GNOME
@sam@social.coop avatar

Every now and then I think I should go back to using because it would be simpler than my own weird mix of Mate and i3 and look a lot nicer, and then I try one of their apps… I just tried out their official Markdown editor and it starts running noticeably slowly (menus don't respond, the rendering preview gets locked up, etc.). This is on a very fast laptop and this is just a text editor. This matches my previous experiences running gnome years ago. Maybe I'll go with something else…

Matt_Noyes, to random
@Matt_Noyes@social.coop avatar

@emi @sam @flancian @dphiffer @ansate @hollie @django @katanova

CWG ops team meeting tomorrow morning at the usual time (7pt, 8mt, 10et, 16cet), but we do need to find a time that works for everyone.

I will post an agenda in Loomio. The basics are:
>check-ins,
>compensation log,
>reports and registration issues (we can talk about onboarding here)
>Ops team elections
>updates from TWG and OC
>other issues
> task list

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@flancian @hollie @Matt_Noyes @emi @dphiffer @ansate @django @katanova I figured out how to add this to your meet.coop list of rooms on the home page if anyone wants it there! Just message me your meet.coop username and I'll add you. If you don't have a meet.coop account I can dig up the registration form as well if you'd like to be able to make your own rooms for personal use!

sam, to random
@sam@social.coop avatar

The bike shops I've applied to have offered the same as I was making at or better. Except one yesterday offered me less and no other benefits and then seemed shocked when I asked about healthcare. The owner seemed to care about his employees, but was also confused about not being able to find anyone. I get that bike shops as a business model just don't work in the U.S., but where do places like this expect to find workers with no rent to pay or other bills at all?

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

Bike shops are really a good place to see through "the free market will set labor prices adequately" lie that right-libertarian types like to spout though. Every single bike shop I've applied to and especially #REI where I used to work is desperate for mechanics, but also unwilling to pay for them. I think that's partially because traditional bike shops are just a bad business model in the U.S. and partially because of the usual problems with the owner/employee divide.

#MayDay #bicycles

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

In the U.S. most people who have money treat like toys, and the people commuting with them generally are doing it because they don't have money for a car so no one is willing to pay much for repairs. At the same time bicycle infrastructure and other amenities that would make a location good for a bike shop bring rent prices way up, selling bicycles is very low overhead, and you have to keep most of your money tied up in huge inventories. It's just not a viable business model.

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@chris__martin yah, that's pretty common; sorry you had that experience. There are problems with liability there that make a lot of shops not work on department store ones, unfortunately (most of them are designed to be ridden about 100 miles and then literally fall apart, and if the shop was the last place that touched it and then it breaks it can be a problem).

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@chris__martin There's also the issue of reputation, a lot of shops get bad reviews ie. "I just wanted my shifting fixed and it's no better" because no matter what those bikes can't be fixed due to the quality of the components, so working on them can cause a lot of damage to a shop.

Not that it makes it any better that they turned you away, really sorry that happened, just to explain why it normally happens.

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@chris__martin if you're looking for a place, I'd recommend seeking out a DIY bike co-op in your city. I volunteer at the one here and we work on those sorts of bikes because our mission is to help low income people who have to buy them for affordability reasons out, so we work on them a lot (whether the person is low-income or not, obviously).

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@sanedragon sort of, I always tell people to buy used if they can. The cheapest new bike that won't just fall apart is about $500 or somewhere in there, but if you have someone with expertise to help examine the bike for you, which is a big "if" I know, you can get a $200 bike that's a few years old, a $100 tune up and have high end components and a nice frame! Probably depends where you are, but a few used shops around here have great old bikes for super cheap!

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@chris__martin hah, nice, I've got to remember that if I ever start my own shop

sam, to random
@sam@social.coop avatar

I didn't realize how much work was depressing me until I quit. Today I:

  • Cleaned the gutters
  • Mowed the lawn
  • Did a 30mi bike ride
  • Built a truing stand
  • Turned the compost
  • Walked the dog twice
  • Picked up trash
  • Called a friend
  • Did several loads of laundry
  • Asked an acquaintance out on a date
  • Taught someone about mastodon moderation
  • and am going swing dancing shortly.

After work I was struggling to convince myself to get off the couch to make dinner even though I was hungry.

ntnsndr, to random
@ntnsndr@social.coop avatar

One of the nice things about 24-hour time is that when it is 17:01, the workday is over.

This is a Star Trek reference.

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@ntnsndr I don't actually get this, but I feel like I should?

ntnsndr, to random
@ntnsndr@social.coop avatar

When was the last time you had a meaningful in-person conversation with a stranger?

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@ntnsndr I was out for a bike ride earlier today and I got a bit lost. I asked a woman riding by where the trail I was looking for was and she said she was going the same way and would show me. As we rode along she was apologizing for going slow crossing intersections and told me about a crash she was in where a driver turned right and hit her in the cross walk, so I shared some stories too. It was very short, but the comradery and shared understanding of motonormitivity was very nice.

ascentale, to random
@ascentale@sfba.social avatar

Next question from @trouble is about brake pads:

Q2. Has anyone seen brake pads like this before? This is my second time coming across pads that look just like this (the plastic and brake material shapes) on a road bike. Look closely; those shiny silver bits? chunks of rim! I yanked these off and replaced them on my bike with Koolstops, but only after the metal bits wore grooves into my rim, ugh

Has anyone else seen alarming brake/rim/rotor conditions?

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@ascentale @trouble I think I shared this a while back at a previous Bike Nite, but someone came in the shop I used to work at and asked if these rims were safe!

dennyhenke, to random
@dennyhenke@social.coop avatar

What happened to keyword search on social.coop? It stopped working about a week ago.

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@dennyhenke /cc @flancian

sam, to random
@sam@social.coop avatar

First day doing a full grocery shop with all four panniers on the bike! I also found the absolute best way to do the shopping by attaching them to the cart! The lady bagging at the checkout line thanked me for making things so easy when I wheeled the cart over to her and asked me who made bags designed to go on grocery carts because she wanted some!

#bicycles #CarryShitOlympics

A grocery shopping cart with four panniers attached to the wire frame of the cart as if they were the sides of a bicycle rack so that groceries sit in the panniers instead of directly in the cart.

ascentale, to random
@ascentale@sfba.social avatar

And the last question, from @InkySchwartz:

Q9, E-bikes are called e-bikes but what do you call non electric bikes? And why?

#BikeNite #BikeNiteQ

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@ai6yr @ascentale @InkySchwartz this could be a fun debate for a future

ascentale, to random
@ascentale@sfba.social avatar

It's April 19th and welcome to BikeNite! Thanks for joining, and I hope we all enjoy chatting about cycle stuff! Feel free to answer whenever at your convenience. Anyone can join, now or later. Reply to what you like, and boost for visibility.

We'll start out with our introduction:

Q1. Where are you posting from today? What's going on in your cycle-world?
#BikeNite #BikeNiteQ

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@ascentale A1. Posting from , GA where I finally quit my bicycle mechanic job at a giant chain retailer recently. I'm desperately applying for jobs around the city now and looking for something that will give me a bit more autonomy in how I work. Mostly applying for more bicycle mechanic jobs, but I'm also looking into bicycle and transportation advocacy stuff, and have even applied for a few tech jobs (though I'm still somewhat revolted by the idea of going back into tech).

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@shekinahcancook @ascentale that's always been my pipe dream, but that requires money and connections that I'll never have, sadly.

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@shekinahcancook @ascentale I've tried that in the past, but I don't actually know many people anymore and never knew anyone who was interested, sadly.

sam, to fediverse
@sam@social.coop avatar

Is there any / fediverse software for forums?

I am not looking for Reddit alternatives (ie. not Lemmy, although, to be quite honest, I'm not really sure if or why that's different, but they feel fundamentally different from eg. Discourse or phpBB to me, interesting thing to think about later, I suppose).

ai6yr, to cycling
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

I never eat out, but tempted to bicycle to the local pizza place (or another restaurant) sometime this week just to strap a pizza box onto the bicycle and check that off the todo list. 🤔

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

@ai6yr do recommend!

sam, to random
@sam@social.coop avatar

In open source wiki style projects there's a weird disconnect between the "expert" contributors and the casual contributor that I've seen a few times, and I think I might be bumping into again that I can't quite put my finger on. 1/…

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

As an example, a while back I ripped a CD I have in Sound Juicer. The tracks didn't have information on them, so it gives you the option to select one from Musicbrainz and then adds the CDs hash to the database so the next person will get the info auto fetched. I did this, and some editor got *really * mad and told me that I'd selected the 1992 release while the album cover had a different record label on it and was therefore this other one from the list of possible CDs.

2/…

sam, to Atlanta
@sam@social.coop avatar

The Jonquils and Carolina Jesamin are starting to peek out this morning, that makes it officially Spring in , I think! Yellow is everywhere!

sam,
@sam@social.coop avatar

Spring update: flowers are gone, but cherries are growing!

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