Email etiquette rules: the basics of Internet communication

This article about e-mail etiquette was first written about 12 years ago, when the net was still emerging. Though most Internet content is quickly aged out of existence, this post still has lots of excellent information and tips to protect yourself when communicating via e-mail.

Two of my pet peeves about e-mail communicators: those who WRITE IN ALL CAPS AS THOUGH THEY'RE YELLING THROUGH THE WHOLE E-MAIL!

and

Those who send out a group e-mail to a list of recipients without blind-copying it, so that the e-mail is preceded by several hundred (or more) names and e-mail addresses of recipients. Not only is this annoying to me, it makes me feel embarrassed for the uninformed sender, and afraid for my privacy and that of the other recipients.

Here's a link to the article everybody should read at least once: http://www.emailreplies.com/

The Peugeot Project: my vintage ten-speed is coming together

So, I've been working on this bike since earlier this summer. Here's what the frame looked like when my neighbor Eric gave it to me. (Notice those cotter-pins holding the solid steel cranks to the bottom bracket.) It also had a set of really cool aluminum bars that aren't shown:














So I rode the bike for a couple months, put about $100 into a new rear wheel, two new tires, some sweet DHS caged pedals, new brake pads, and some black bar tape. This is the bike before I got the pedals and bar tape on.














And then I got a bit more serious. I looked up a guy who specializes in powder coatings, and took the frame to his shop. $65 later, he had sandblasted it and put on a new coat of bright white paint.













I spent hours online, looking for some replacement cranks for those steel behemoths, and a new bottom bracket as well. It was nearly impossible. You see, these old French frames are 35x1 mm threaded; in a word: obsolete.
I was about to despair, so I went to Adam at Blue Bikes on the Utah State University campus. He'd helped my friend Christy fix her old French twinner frame to this one, and he showed me where to order a new bottom bracket that didn't even need threads. It's self-centering. I ordered it, and came back the next day to talk about the bike. As I told the shop about my travails, this guy spoke up.
"You have an old Peugeot? My first real race bike was a PX-10. I love those old bikes, and you know what? Just two weeks ago, my friend gave me a bag of old French racing bike parts. You want 'em?"

It was a miracle. Just when I needed them, they appeared. So this guy Joe, who it turns out is an architect for the university, called me the next day and gave me these: (Everything is aluminum. Check out the Simplex derailleur. So cool.)