I know this has been out for awhile but I just found it today. If you haven’t seen Matt Harding’s multinational dance video, this is great and is highly recommended.

Here’s a short video on scooter usage in the Rochester, NY area.

Next Wednesday sees the opening of the 66th annual World Science Fiction Convention in Denver. We’re really excited - having never been to anything like this, we’ll have the opportunity to see/listen to and possibly meet some of our favorite writers.

There’s a huge number of authors coming including Lois McMaster Bujold, Larry Niven, David Brin, Connie Willis (who lives about 20 miles from here), Elizabeth Moon, Robert Silverberg and a ton of others. It should be great fun (moreso than that other convention happening here a few weeks later).

The event runs from August 6-10th at the Colorado Convention Center, and one day memberships range from $35 to $85 depending on the day (and wouldn’t you know it but the day we’re going down is an $85 day).

I started working with this CMS yesterday - I converted an XHTML/CSS template over to CMSms format in about half an hour using a handy tutorial from their site, but it took about three times that long to figure out:

• Why my content wasn’t showing up
• How to hide the page numbers in the main menu
• Where to style the main menu

So right now I’m a little bit stuck, but hopefully today I can get further into the project.

In the past few weeks I’ve found some good resources for scooterists:

Brakeflasher.com sells a kit to attach a bank of LED lights to your license plate frame. There’s a mercury switch inside that can be adjusted for various degrees of deceleration, and it’s run by batteries, no wires needed - just stop quickly and it flashes. This is very bright and works well for my scooter.

Team Estrogen sells a lot of fun Scotchlite reflective stickers for bikes that work just as well for scooters, not the usual fare you find at all the decal shops. I’ve got these on my helmet and they are extremely visible.

The HJC Windlight is a no-batteries, wind-driven red LED light that attaches to the top of a helmet. It comes in black and silver and has a fairly low profile so it doesn’t stick way out. Very bright after you hit around 20-25 mph.

I wrote about my new scooter a few days ago, but this morning I discovered that it has other uses besides being fun and transporting me around town.

First thing this morning was a breakfast meeting with one of my business networking groups. One of my friends from the group saw me getting my gear on afterwards and we had a long chat about the whole scooter phenomenon here in town (hundreds of them - I saw about 6 just this morning).

And then I rode over to visit a potential new client on the north side of the city. It took me longer than I though because one of the stop signal sensors never picked me up and I wound up riding around more than I’d planned. I got there five minutes late and apologized and when I told the guys my reason, they were understanding.

After our very productive meeting, they both came out and we had a chat about it too (one of them is a BMW rider). So the scooter serves as a topic of conversation and a good way to potentially connect with clients. This is the first meeting I’ve been to, but I do plan to ride as much as I can so this is a good thing to know.

I’ve had an Olive/Wasabi Small Cafe Bag from Tom Bihn for almost 8 years. I love this bag - it’s the perfect size, it looks cool, and it’s very clean-lined.

One of the buckles broke yesterday. I emailed customer service about 15 minutes ago and have already gotten a response - they offered to fix it for free. But I decided to order a new one, because my old one is getting a bit frayed (and I can try a new color). This is a company and a product I highly recommend.

This is great.