Skip to main content
Tag

work

100 WFC: Layla by Jeffrey

By General Posts One Comment

100 word fiction contest continues…. #100WFC

Layla
by Jeffrey
with illustration by Wayfarer

My Harley rolled to a stop near the side door of where my girl works. I planted my feet to steady the bike as she jumped off the Fatboy. She kissed me on the cheek and disappeared into the building, it was 8 pm on a Friday.

I hate her job, even though that is where we met. Thinking of her working the pole and picking up dollars makes me ill.

Like a fool, I fell in love. Now I’m on my knees begging her please, won’t she ease my worried mind.

Me and Harley will be back at 2.

* * *

Read all the entries and list of past winners at:
https://www.bikernet.com/pages/100_Word_Fiction_Contest.aspx

Yup, its a weekly contest open to all. Just sign up for the free weekly newsletter by clicking here. Then email us your 100 word limit fiction to wayfarer@bikernet.com

Mystery of the Effective Detective

By General Posts

UNWANTED — unemployed and homeless

Doggone life of the furry government servant

with inputs from Hot Air Cold Love at https://hotaircoldlove.substack.com/

Apparently, dogs are not detectives. This thought crime just got solved.

So, are all the decades of man’s best friend working alongside in forests and mountains, in rain and sunshine, in war-zones and disaster rescue efforts, the hound that will follow “his master’s voice” to hell– all just myth, legend and an old husband’s tale?

As per the research and the statistics, the dog’s days of working as a police dog are over. Maybe now — the customs officer will have to smell your luggage and bark orders if deemed unfit for boarding your flight. Maybe its the humans who are causing the loss of canine jobs (which is my gist of the new report mentioned below)??

Can you imagine all the working animals replaced with humans instead of machines? No more canary in a coal mine. No more snakes eating rats in paddy fields. No more ox ploughing farms, no more donkeys or mules carrying fool’s gold (also called simply as a fool), no more horse carriages nor armed cavalry, no legionnaire crossing deserts on a camel….

So what would you write? A western or a historical fiction or a scifi or a satire or just adopt a rescue dog to play with during writer’s block? Well, he could take you out for a walk and we know that’s always good for creativity (New Yorker story link).

Anyways, chew on this news for now!

Police Say Dogs Help Solve Crimes. Little Evidence Supports That.

In 2020, Salt Lake City abruptly terminated its canine unit for pursuing and apprehending suspects. Not much changed.

https://undark.org/2023/07/24/police-say-dogs-help-solve-crimes-little-evidence-supports-that/

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Send us your 100 word fiction and win Bikernet swag and goodies — check out latest entries by clicking here.

Ride To Work Day 2023

By General Posts

Let’s fill the streets with motorcycles and scooters tomorrow, June 19th! Show the world you rode by flooding social media with your photos and videos!

Here’s a short interview about Ride to Work Day from a popular blog site:
‘5 Questions to Andy Goldfine about Ride to Work Day’ (Click Me)

We hope you’ll be able get out and ride somewhere this Monday, even if only for a short errand. Have fun.

Note about the 2024 day (and following years):
Because the recently established United States federal holiday of Juneteenth is the same day as the current RTW Day, because many business and government entities now close on this day, and because RTW Day is about riding to work (as well as for utility transportation), starting in 2024 RTW Day will annually be on the Second Tuesday in June. This day is chosen because: A) it breaks up the workweek better than a Monday day does (RTW Day is a demonstration day), and B) because a midweek day is more likely to receive media coverage than a Monday or Friday.

Ride to Work Day, a 501 c4 nonprofit organization, can be reached at:
1730 West Superior St, Duluth, Minnesota, 55806 USA
https://www.ridetowork.org
218 722 9806 / info@ridetowork.org

* * * * * * * *

Follow Bikernet Free Weekly Newsletter to get latest Motorcycling news, updates, reviews, tech, tips, & lot of fun. Click here & take a test ride.

Monday Motivation: Stay True, Stay Strong

By General Posts

Here is something to stay positive and remind yourself that life well-lived is a success by itself.– Wayfarer

I want you to hear some truth today.
You are doing a good job.
Yes, maybe it’s not perfect, but here you are still fighting, still believing, still giving.
And that is something to be proud of. To hold your head high. To not dismiss. To remember. To see.
So today, be proud. Have grace for your story. Keep going.

— by Ray Russell

* * *

“There is dignity in all labor” – Martin Luther King

International Motorcycling Advocate Deb Butitta Dies in Crash

By General Posts

June 4, 2022: International Motorcycling Advocate Deb Butitta Dies in Arizona Crash

It is with a heavy heart and a great sense of loss that the Motorcycle Riders Foundation (MRF) shares the passing of Deborah Butitta. Deb had been committed to serving and protecting motorcyclists’ rights at the state, federal and international levels during the last four decades. Deb was taken from us due to internal injuries suffered in a motorcycle crash after a truck turned left in front of her on June 3, 2022.

Deb was particularly active with ABATE of Arizona, holding many different offices through the years, and in 2001 was selected as the first designated lobbyist for the Arizona Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs (AZCMC). Deb was a member of many state motorcyclists’ rights organizations, including the MMA of Arizona. She also served on the MRF Board of Directors for many years and was instrumental in the formation of MRF A&E (Awareness and Education), a 501(c)(3) charitable, non-profit organization created to assist the MRF in providing resources to promote motorcycle awareness and ‘share the road’ programs, along with all aspects of motorcycle safety education including rider training. A highly successful businesswoman in her own right, Deb was extremely well connected, not only in the motorcycling community and industry, but legislatively and in some very influential social circles as well. These relationships were of incredible value to the bikers of Arizona and the entire country.

Deb’s accolades and awards are many, including being inducted into the MRF Hall of Fame in 2020 and the Sturgis Hall of Fame and Museum in 2021. Deb is a past winner of the MRF President’s Cup (2003), the MRF Founder’s Award (2017), and the MRF Lifetime Achievement Award (2020). Among her many other duties, Deb served as the MRF’s State Representative for Arizona for 14 years. For several years now, the MRF has given the ‘Deborah Butitta Award’ to it’s highest performing State Representative in her honor.

A true leader, Deb had a profound influence on many of her fellow activists. Few people have dedicated so much of their life or contributed as much to motorcycling as Deb Butitta. Personally and professionally, her passing leaves a tremendous void in our “family”.

About Motorcycle Riders Foundation: The Motorcycle Riders Foundation (MRF) provides leadership at the federal level for states’ motorcyclists’ rights organizations as well as motorcycle clubs and individual riders.

Visit: http://mrf.org

*

Electric Cars Can Kiss My Ass

By General Posts

Eclectic article on Electrifying Changes in Our Lives

by the Wicked Bitch

Here it from the lady who has driven everywhere and tweaked the vehicle to get anywhere. ‘Charge’ up your courage and decide the road for your own fate.

“My dad bragged that I could tell a Ford from a Chevy by the time I learned to walk.. and when i did learn to walk, I left tiny handprints in the dust of an old yellow Volkswagen bug in the corner of the shop.”

CLICK HERE To Read this “Heart to Kickin’ Butt” article on Bikernet.com

Join the Cantina if you aim to Ride Free Forever!!! Sign up by Clicking Here.

Eight Tools to Up Your Home Workshop

By General Posts

Queen of Brat Style working on her Panhead

Essentials to flip into high gears inside your Garage

by Kyle Smith from Hagerty.com

We all started somewhere, and for most of us garage-dwellers, it was a set of sockets and screwdrivers.

From there we progressively acquired tools to complete tasks and projects until we reached a point where there wasn’t a project to be scared of.

A big part of that is the mental toolbox, but the physical tools in your hands or on your bench can be critical in deciding if you are able to take on a project.

We took a look around the garage and rounded up these eight tools that we recommend for a budding DIY enthusiast.

CLICK HERE To Read this Tech Tip to up your DIY game

Subscribe to our Free Weekly Newsletter to stay updated on Motorcycle news, tech, market, products, reviews, events & fun

CLICK HERE and subscribe to the Newsletter – try it once, unsubscribe at anytime

The Flying Wrens: Sisterhood of Motorcycling Heroes

By General Posts

All-Female British dispatch riders of WW-II

Originally, the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) was formed in 1917, during WW-I.

Riding on narrow British roads in all weather conditions can be a dangerous enough occupation. Doing so around the clock during WW-II with the German Blitz going on around you required steel nerves.

The bikes used were mostly small, single-cylinder affairs, built specifically for military use.

Click Here to Read this Feature Article & Historic Photos on Bikernet.com

Join the Cantina for more – Subscribe Today.

https://www.bikernet.com/pages/custom/subscription.aspx

Why shortages of a $1 chip sparked crisis in the global economy

By General Posts

by Bloomberg from https://auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com

The chip crunch was born out of an understandable miscalculation as the coronavirus pandemic hit last year. When Covid-19 began spreading from China to the rest of the world, many companies anticipated people would cut back as times got tough.

To understand why the $450 billion semiconductor industry has lurched into crisis, a helpful place to start is a one-dollar part called a display driver.

Hundreds of different kinds of chips make up the global silicon industry, with the flashiest ones from Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. going for $100 apiece to more than $1,000. Those run powerful computers or the shiny smartphone in your pocket. A display driver is mundane by contrast: Its sole purpose is to convey basic instructions for illuminating the screen on your phone, monitor or navigation system.

The trouble for the chip industry — and increasingly companies beyond tech, like automakers — is that there aren’t enough display drivers to go around. Firms that make them can’t keep up with surging demand so prices are spiking. That’s contributing to short supplies and increasing costs for liquid crystal display panels, essential components for making televisions and laptops, as well as cars, airplanes and high-end refrigerators.

“It’s not like you can just make do. If you have everything else, but you don’t have a display driver, then you can’t build your product,” says Stacy Rasgon, who covers the semiconductor industry for Sanford C. Bernstein.

Now the crunch in a handful of such seemingly insignificant parts — power management chips are also in short supply, for example — is cascading through the global economy. Automakers like Ford Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG have already scaled back production, leading to estimates for more than $60 billion in lost revenue for the industry this year.

The situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. A rare winter storm in Texas knocked out swaths of U.S. production. A fire at a key Japan factory will shut the facility for a month. Samsung Electronics Co. warned of a “serious imbalance” in the industry, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said it can’t keep up with demand despite running factories at more than 100% of capacity.

“I have never seen anything like this in the past 20 years since our company’s founding,” said Jordan Wu, co-founder and chief executive officer of Himax Technologies Co., a leading supplier of display drivers. “Every application is short of chips.”

2021-semiconductors-chips-shortage-inline
The chip crunch was born out of an understandable miscalculation as the coronavirus pandemic hit last year. When Covid-19 began spreading from China to the rest of the world, many companies anticipated people would cut back as times got tough.

“I slashed all my projections. I was using the financial crisis as the model,” says Rasgon. “But demand was just really resilient.”

People stuck at home started buying technology — and then kept buying. They purchased better computers and bigger displays so they could work remotely. They got their kids new laptops for distance learning. They scooped up 4K televisions, game consoles, milk frothers, air fryers and immersion blenders to make life under quarantine more palatable. The pandemic turned into an extended Black Friday onlinepalooza.

Automakers were blindsided. They shut factories during the lockdown while demand crashed because no one could get to showrooms. They told suppliers to stop shipping components, including the chips that are increasingly essential for cars.

Then late last year, demand began to pick up. People wanted to get out and they didn’t want to use public transportation. Automakers reopened factories and went hat in hand to chipmakers like TSMC and Samsung. Their response? Back of the line. They couldn’t make chips fast enough for their still-loyal customers.

A year of poor planning led to carmakers’ massive chip shortage
Himax’s Jordan Wu is in the middle of the tech industry’s tempest. On a recent March morning, the bespectacled 61-year-old agreed to meet at his Taipei office to discuss the shortages and why they are so challenging to resolve. He was eager enough to talk that interview was scheduled for the same morning Bloomberg News requested it, with two of his staff joining in person and another two dialing in by phone. He wore a mask throughout the interview, speaking carefully and articulately.

Wu founded Himax in 2001 with his brother Biing-seng, now the company’s chairman. They started out making driver ICs (for integrated circuits), as they’re known in the industry, for notebook computers and monitors. They went public in 2006 and grew with the computer industry, expanding into smartphones, tablets and touch screens. Their chips are now used in scores of products, from phones and televisions to automobiles.

Wu explained that he can’t make more display drivers by pushing his workforce harder. Himax designs display drivers and then has them manufactured at a foundry like TSMC or United Microelectronics Corp. His chips are made on what’s artfully called “mature node” technology, equipment at least a couple generations behind the cutting-edge processes. These machines etch lines in silicon at a width of 16 nanometers or more, compared with 5 nanometers for high-end chips.?

The chip’s makers have seen their shares soar with strong demand
The bottleneck is that these mature chip-making lines are running flat out. Wu says the pandemic drove such strong demand that manufacturing partners can’t make enough display drivers for all the panels that go into computers, televisions and game consoles — plus all the new products that companies are putting screens into, like refrigerators, smart thermometers and car-entertainment systems.

There’s been a particular squeeze in driver ICs for automotive systems because they’re usually made on 8-inch silicon wafers, rather than more advanced 12-inch wafers. Sumco Corp., one of the leading wafer manufacturers, reported production capacity for 8-inch equipment lines was about 5,000 wafers a month in 2020 — less than it was in 2017.

No one is building more mature-node manufacturing lines because it doesn’t make economic sense. The existing lines are fully depreciated and fine-tuned for almost perfect yields, meaning basic display drivers can be made for less than a dollar and more advanced versions for not much more. Buying new equipment and starting off at lower yields would mean much higher expenses.

“Building new capacity is too expensive,” Wu says. Peers like Novatek Microelectronics Corp., also based in Taiwan, have the same constraints.

That shortfall is showing up in a spike in LCD prices. A 50-inch LCD panel for televisions doubled in price between January 2020 and this March. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Matthew Kanterman projects that LCD prices will keep rising at least until the third quarter. There is a “a dire shortage” of display driver chips, he said.

LCD Prices Are Surging
Aggravating the situation is a lack of glass. Major glass makers reported accidents at their production sites, including a blackout at a Nippon Electric Glass Co.’s factory in December and an explosion at AGC Fine Techno Korea’s factory in January. Production will likely remain constrained at least through summer this year, display consultancy DSCC Co-founder Yoshio Tamura said.

On April 1, I-O Data Device Inc., a major Japanese computer peripherals maker, raised the price of their 26 LCD monitors by 5,000 yen on average, the biggest increase since they began selling the monitors two decades ago. A spokeswoman said the company can’t make any profit without the increases due to rising costs for components.

All of this has been a boon to Himax’s business. Sales are surging and its stock price has tripled since November.

But the CEO isn’t celebrating. His whole business is built around giving customers what they want, so his inability to meet their requests at such a critical time is frustrating. He doesn’t expect the crunch, especially for automotive components, to end any time soon.

“We have not reached a position where we can see the light at the end of tunnel yet,” Wu said.

Ride To Work Day 2020 Artwork

By General Posts

The recent 2019 Ride To Work Day was one of the most successful ever, with more than triple the number of motorcycles and scooters out on the roadways in support of the benefits of everyday riding. Building on that success and excitement, we are pleased to announce that the 29th annual Ride To Work Day will take place on Monday, June 15th, 2019.

With your help and support, Ride To Work Day 2020 will further elevate the awareness about riding a motorcycle or scooter for everyday travel and transportation as a social good, making the world a better place! The Ride To Work website has been updated with new artwork, ads, and posters that can be downloaded, shared, forwarded, and printed to raise even more awareness and encourage even more riders to commute by scooter or cycle on this day. In addition to grass roots efforts to educate others about the benefits of riding, motorcyclists may also seek employer recognition and support for this form of transportation, and increased public and government awareness of the societally positive benefits of utility riding.

Adding motorcycles and scooters helps traffic flow better, according to Ride To Work, a non-profit advocacy organization. Studies have also shown that across the same distances, riders reach their destinations up to 20% faster than those using automobiles. Most motorcycles and scooters also consume less resources per mile than automobiles. “Riding to work on this day is fun and highlights the value of motorcycling. Riding is a form of personal mobility that saves energy, helps the environment, and provides a broad range of personal and public benefits,” stated Andy Goldfine, this year’s event organizer.

Visit the updated Ride To Work website for all of the latest information and artwork, including: