Roger Hsu's Blog

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jul 31, 2005. For our San Juan hut-to-hut trip, the question still remained whether we should bring a trailer or just use panniers. Since Brian has both, we decided it would be a good idea to try each of them out to better decide. Brian and Judy did a short backpacking trip starting on Tuesday and I drove up on Friday and met up with them in Downieville. Since Brian and Judy’s backpacking trip was shortened because of a relentless attack by mosquitoes, they had already scoped out a nice campsite by Yuba Pass. It was nice indeed – relatively secluded with not many people. Unfortunately, the lack of people didn’t mean a lack of mosquitoes. We all decided to sleep in our cars that night. Since it wasn’t very cold, Judy and I decided to crack the windows a bit, hoping it would be enough to provide adequate ventilation but not enough for the mosquitoes to get in. Well, that didn’t work very well as a good number of mosquitoes got in and were able ...

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jul 24, 2005. Pics of Latte at Leon's going away (med school) picnic.

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jul 23, 2005. Pics from our long training ride to the ocean along Gazos Creek.

Originally posted by Judy to RohJuh.com on Jul 20, 2005. I left for Yosemite at 5 AM and made it there in 3.5 hours! Pretty quick drive as long as you don’t get stuck behind slow cars. First thing I did upon arriving was check into Camp 4 (walk-in only). All other campgrounds that take reservations were completely full, so I was hoping that Camp 4 would have room. I would have been fine sleeping in my car, but I guess you’re not allowed to sleep in your car at Yosemite. It turns out that Camp 4 fills up by the end of the day, but if you check-in early enough, its no problem getting in. So I got a spot, and proceeded to set up my tent. All the sites are shared, so its pretty easy to meet people there. This guy insisted on helping me set up my tent, even though I insisted that I was perfectly capable. After setting up my tent, I started hiking the Upper Yosemite Falls trail around 10 AM. This trail is labeled “Very Strenuous”, and estimates 6 hrs total hiking time. Its only ab...

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jul 17, 2005. One of the things that we need to decide for our San Juan hut-to-hut trip is whether to use a trailer to bring our gear or to use panniers (basically bags that hang off the sides of the bike). Since Brian has both, we decided the best thing to do would be to simply try each method out. Out test ride was for the July 30th weekend in which we would ride the Tahoe Rim Trail (TRT). However, none of us had ever ridden it before so we didn’t really know if it would be a good trail to try out the trailer and panniers. If anything, after reading the trail descriptions from several sources online, it seemed like it would not be a good trail for our purposes. Since Judy and I live much closer to Tahoe, we decided to do some recon of the TRT. We left in the morning, got to Tahoe City in the early afternoon, had lunch at a sandwich shop in town, perused a bike shop to see if they had any good maps (they didn’t, but they had a bathroom which I...

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jul 13, 2005. SBC has been advertising a DSL special in which you get their basic DSL service for only $14.95/mo with a one year commitment. I was paying double that, $29.95/mo so I decided to call them up and see what they could do for me. I knew that the $14.95 promo was for new customers only, but I’m kind of cheap so I was prepared to threaten to cancel my service and then sign up again to get the deal. It turns out that I didn’t have to go that far. The customer service rep informed me that I could get the current promotion as long as I signed up for another year’s commitment. No problem! She also informed me that the $14.95 deal is only if you get another SBC package with it (caller ID, long distance, etc.). I didn’t want any of those so the best I could get would be $19.95/mo. That’s still a fantastic deal – less than AOL dial-up! I also asked about getting the Pro package. Unfortunately, I still don’t qualify because I’m too far from the...

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jul 10, 2005. We returned to Big Basin State Park today to ride the Gazos Creek trail. After getting lost the last time, we knew the trail much better this time around. We decided to go the same way by riding Middle Ridge Road again rather than just doing an out-and-back along Gazos Creek Road. The steep climbs were still there of course, but we could tell that we were in much better shape since we could ride up most of them. At Sandy Point, we decided to take the 8.8 mile out-and-back offshoot along Chalk Mountain Road. There was more climbing along this road that was made more difficult because it was all exposed to the sun (the majority of the rest of the trail goes through shady forest) and it was pretty hot! When we got to the end, we didn’t even do the short hike to the viewpoint because it was so hot. Also, I had forgotten to bring the camera so we figured that we’d do the hike the next time when I’ll remember to bring the camera. This trai...

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jul 3, 2005. We returned to Bolinas Ridge today, this time in much better riding shape. Whereas last time we only rode 9 miles or so, this time we did the full out-and-back which ended up being around 22.6 miles. The scenery wasn’t as green as it was just a few weeks ago, but we got to ride through the redwood forest portion which we didn’t last time. It was a fun ride and an especially good training ride because it allowed us to get a good amount of miles in on trail as opposed to on road. Perhaps the highlight of the trip was when we came across a large herd of cows crossing the trail in front of us. This time, I remembered the camera and captured some pics .

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jul 2, 2005. Prior to just a few months ago, the iMac line came standard with a paltry 256MB of RAM. With OS X having the voracious appetite for RAM that it does, this was laughable as 256MB simply isn’t enough to run OS X effectively. 512MB is really the minimum needed for OS X. Although my iMac came with 512MB, it still felt a little slower than I would like at times. I felt that a memory upgrade might help. I probably only needed to get an additional 512MB (for a total of 1GB). However, the iMac only has two RAM slots, one of which is already taken with the RAM stick that comes with the unit. If I add 512MB now and later decide that I want or need more, then I’d have to throw away one of the 512MB sticks to replace it. So it’s better to err on the conservative side, especially since RAM is so cheap these days. I ended up getting a 1GB stick of PC3200 DDR RAM from NewEgg.com for an unbelievable $81.50! That brings my total RAM to a whopping 1...

Originally posted to RohJuh.com on Jul 1, 2005. We currently have three bikes and although there is space for them in the garage, we don’t have a good way to store them and so they end up taking up a lot of space. Since our garage is pretty small to start with, this make it difficult to park a car in the garage. I looked around for bike storage products, and found some various racks that looked like they might do the trick, but they were kind of expensive and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. I ended up buying a set of wall mount hooks which were on sale for around $13 or so. After installing one, however, I decided that I didn’t like it. It was a pain in the ass to hang the bike up, especially with the fat downhill tires on my trail bike. So I returned them and decided to try out some traditional bike hooks – cheap and simple. These cost less than $3 a pair, are pretty easy to install, and actually work really well. Now, my two bikes are hanging from the ceiling and out ...