Makework

I'd like to explain how my job works, using to medium of powerpoint.

Powerpoint - the dirty fuel of middle management

In the top left is a representation of my job. Surprisingly, I enjoy it. But I also understand that country music is, as usual, correct in stating that there must be a little rain to offset the sunshine and so that there is always some crap to deal with. It's not the worst crap in the world e.g. greasing up sumo wrestlers jockstraps; just usually some mindless low-level admin involving a 20 line spreadsheet that I'm too embarrassed to ask anyone else to do.


Then, one day, a man in a tie turns up. He has no discernible skills apart from the fact he once shared a bunk on a boat/yacht with one of the directors. He sees the crap bit of my job and unlike old negative me sees not a chore but an opportunity. So, he applies management school  "process improvement" to it, and by some magic that eludes me turns said insignificant crap into a full time job (top right). 

My mouth gapes in astonishment that:

1. Such a trivial, monotonous task can be "improved" to such an extent.
2. Mr. Tie man is even remotely interested in spending his day thus engaged.

Except of course, he's not remotely interested in spending his day doing this crap. Having created a great deal ultimately pointless entropy and fluff from absolutely nothing, he will then lobby the people who matter to employ additional resource to perform the newly important task. A new pleb appears. And because he's ever so clever Tie Man will be made the boss of both me and the new pleb.

Being da Boss is a full time job in itself, so now there's three people doing my main job plus the bit of crap I used to do while eating a sugary bun just after lunch. 

The final irony usually being that the pleb invariably has the work capacity of an incapacitated dead sloth and palms the now much enhanced crap back onto me.


Maybe I should get a tie.

Me Meme.

Everyone on the Internet like memes, and as I am both unoriginal and terrified of being excluded I too shall do a meme. It's also a little tribute to someone I used to live with.

It's not funny because it's true.

Everybody Talk About Shop Music.

When you get to a certain point in life (that being the point where you seem to waste a exponential proportion of your precious remaining hours trimming your eyebrows) it becomes impossible to find any new music you like. Normal people can possibly rely on adverts to find music with which to torture their dinner party guests but I usefully don't watch TV; that road is closed to me. Instead, my musical direction is dictated by retail outlets the likes of Next and H&M via the medium of Shazam. I am still in awe every time it works, it's like some sort of satanic electronic wizardry.

My latest discovery (thanks, Habitat) is a strangely named track from Sebastien Tellier:

Find more SEBASTIEN TELLIER songs at Myspace Music 

Which reminds me very much of Jean Michele Jarre,  whom I was introduced to at university by a nice man called Ted back in the days when I had no taste in anything at all. Not like now. Mr Tellier appears to have released this track several years ago, which is of no pain to me because it's really as cutting edge as I can hope for and I look forward to hearing all this year's new music in 2020. Something about Mrs. Gaga, I'm told.

Kawasaki you tubes

Or, disabling the parking light function on my Kawasaki.

For not the first time in the last few years I rushed out in between torrents of refreshing rain for a quick go on my KLR650  only to find I was going nowhere due to the parking light feature-ette (If you turn the ignition key one click past "lock" it puts on the parking lights, which you can't see in the daytime but can pointlessly and pathetically illuminate the inside of your garage while voraciously draining every last bit of precious life from your battery)

I hate you.

Clearly what is required is tools and science. 


Here's the science:

Wiring. How does that work?

The Red/White (R/W) wire is the interesting one - follow it and it supplies power to the front and rear lights. According to the "Ignition Switch Connections" table, it gets this power either from the White wire (which comes more or less directly from the battery) in the "Park" position or the Red wire (this comes from the left hand switchgear light switch) which is powered only with the ignition on.

So the bad stuff comes from the white wire but I can't touch that because that kind of powers the whole bike. Instead, I need to cut the R//W wire where it comes away from the ignition switch so that it cannot be powered from that any more, then connect it directly to the Red wire so it can get power from there (it's important for the parking lights to work, I use them all the time :\ ).

Now to get the tools out...

Remarkably Rust-free.

First thing with any bike job is to remove some plastic bits. Luckily it's only the two screws on each side of the headlight cowl above - made much easier because I've replaced the ones made of cheese with decent fasteners.

Remarkably neat.

I expected the usual knot of fragile wires behind the cowl but instead found this very tidy row of connectors. The middle connector in this row of five is the one that features in the wiring diagram above. 

Remarkably easy. Photo does not show red/white wire hiding behind heatshrink.

Behind the dust boot are the expected wires. I did want to pull the pins with wires intact from the connector to make this somewhat reversible, but a few prods made it clear that this wasn't going to happen without something been broken and possibly blood loss. So I cut the two wires as shown then made a joint between them on the loom side with solder and heat shrink -- I would have preferred to use my fancy crimp tool but there was no chance of getting it into the available space.

tl:dr - Cut both the Red and Red/White wires, then join them together.

And that all works as planned - Sidelights now come on with the handlebar switch but not with the ignition key.