How-to: GSX650F & Vortex 41mm Clip-ons

Author Note: I wrote this article when I still owned my GSX650F. I’ve since traded-up for a 2007 GSXR600 (and I couldn’t be happier). I might have some images to post with this tutorial, but I’ll post them when/if I can find them. Hopefully the write-up is enough to help… Good luck, modders.

Prior to my experiences with the Suzuki GSX650F, I was the semi-proud owner of a Hyosung GT250R. I loved the body styling, aggressive riding position, cheap price ($3300 OTD) and gas mileage, but I realized something more powerful was necessary for longer trips (and riding 2-up with the Mrs.).  This brought me to my evolving 2008 GSX650F, which has the power, speed, and styling qualities that I was looking for, but still lacked the aggressive riding position I had with the Hyosung.

Vortex Racing had the answer to my commuter bar problem: 41mm clip-ons. They’re available in three different colors: silver (aluminum), black, and gold. Additionally, Vortex manufactures after-market bar ends (weighted or unweighted) for their clip-ons — which are certainly necessary after losing the dampers. The install took less than 45 minutes, but I’ll admit I made the mistake of loosening one of the fork bolts too much while lowering the front-end (required for installation on the GSX650F). This inevitably resulted in a lopsided front after the left fork pushed right through the triple-tree clamp. An extra 10 minutes of jacking the bike up and re-adjustment was required. Here’s a concise set of steps used to complete the project:

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Add ‘Submitted Tickets’ Listing Page for Joomla! RSTickets

If you haven’t heard, RSTickets! is an advanced Joomla! Help Desk ticketing system that allows you (or a team of yous) to manage and keep track of your clients’ issues. It’s actually one of the few effective, useful Help Desk systems available for the Joomla! 1.5+ framework that I would personally recommend. Unfortunately, it’s still under development and lacks certain features that one may desire, such as a read-only listing page that displays tickets already submitted to you or your department.

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New fun with old toys: Adtran Atlas 550 + Free 411

As a result of my frugality, I got my hands on an Adtran Atlas 550 to be used for partitioning a single PRI into two PRIs at my workplace. In addition to the partitioning, this system provides the added bonus of dynamic number substitution. What’s this mean for me? Substituting costly 411 directory service for free Goog-411 service (which I prefer over traditional 411). I’m also able to create a number rejection list to block those NSFW 900* calls [or variation thereof], but the number substitution templates seem much more interesting…

How to do it:

• Telnet to yohost.yodomain and log-in
• Dial Plan > Network Term > Interface # (1 in my case) > Enter
• Select Substitution Template
• Enter the Original DNIS number (the phone number originally dialed)
• Enter the Substitution DNIS number (the phone number you’d like to dial)
• Go back to the main menu and log-out

Remember, this change is transparent (and instant — no need to write/commit the config to startup), so the next time callers decide to hit up the 411 directory service, their call should be automagically routed to 1-800-goog411 (1-800-4664411). Since we’re a fairly small office I don’t think this number substituion presents a problem with Googles Terms of Service, but if you’re considering this change on a massive scale  I’d consider reading over Google’s TOS agreement (particularly section 5.3).

Altermime, Postfix/Zimbra, and Headaches

EDIT: I have since removed altermime after installing a MailScanner spam relay for our Zimbra server to use. Because, by default, MailScanner appends a default signature to all outbound email, it was very simple to modify the signature rules to accomodate our mandatory disclaimers for different domains.

I had the pleasure of applying mandatory disclaimers to all [outbound] emails at my workplace today… ~Joy~ … I had the assumption it’d be rather easy, but Altermime and Postfix were a bit finicky to work with. After editing the master.cf I ended up customizing my own ‘disclaimer’ shell script.

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How-to: GSX650F Chop-shop Job (Cutting down the fender)

Per another owner’s request, here are some up-close shots of the chop-job for the 2008 GSX650F … Notice the black bolts (attached to the protruding box shapes beneath the fender) in the second image. These are holding the bracket to the bike ‘trunk.’ There’s a lock washer and nut on the inside of the trunk securing the bracket to the bike.

I did not remove the tail before cutting. I used only a razor knife (with new, clean blades) following a hand-drawn [penciled] line. I did have to change the blade out about half-way through, and I did slice the crap out of a finger, but it was still worth the end-result.

My plate is not actually at an angle, but if you purchased the same tail light w/ the integrated signals and plate light, you don’t need it at an angle. It’s clearly visible at night without bending or angled mounting. Also, you may need some additional hardware (2 X bolts, 2 X nuts, 2 X lock-washers) to re-mount the OEM plate bracket to what’s left of the tail after the chop. Depending on how small your hands are, you might have to remove the tail piece (not the rear fender, just the painted tail) to attach lock-washers and nuts on the inside of the ‘trunk’.
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Shuttle PC MyKover Template

After deploying a few Shuttle KPC K45 systems for UTM (Unified Threat Management) appliances using Untangle 5.42 and 6.00 I got tired of fussing with Shuttle’s MyKover JPEG template(s) and opted to create my own to-scale Word Document template. Feel free to change the included background image and text, I just left that on there for reference. And yes, the screw hole markings are correctly (or nearly correctly) placed.

I enjoyed the coffee cover included with the barebone system, but opted for something customized that would allow remote clients to phone in service-calls with all the important information (Local/WAN IP, MAC, FQDN, etc.) required for troubleshooting. Hope this helps someone out who might be looking for a better template than the one provided by Shuttle’s site.

DOWNLOAD MyKover Word Document Template (.DOC – Created w/ Microsoft Office 2003)

Zimbra flows on the iPhone

Zimbra (FOSS) provides one hellaciously clean, organized web client on Apple’s iPhone Safari Browser, nearly resembling a native application.

Bashing MySQL Dumps

A quick set of batch scripts I wrote up (two of the three scripts, anyway) for dumping all of my (specified) MySQL databases into an archive for backup. The log mailing (emailsql.pl)requires Perl and the MIME:Lite module to correctly function. I’ve also utilized a wrapper script so the log outputs to a separate file [to be mailed]. There’s also a ‘dummy’ log file I use in my crontab file, though this isn’t really necessary:

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Perl my way to happiness

If only everything was as easy & straight-forward as account provisioning in Zimbra:

!/usr/bin/perl

# ZCS IMPORT SCRIPT
#       Provided by : ZCS Wiki
#       Modified by : J.R.
#       Last Change : 2008.04.09
#
# Lookup the valid COS (Class of Service) ID in the interface or like this
my $cosid = `su - zimbra -c 'zmprov gc apd |grep zimbraId:'`;
$cosid =~ s/zimbraId:\s*|\s*$//g;

while (<>) {
chomp;

# CHANGE ME: To the actual fields you use in your CSV file
my ($email, $password, $first, $last) = split(/\,/, $_, 4);

my ($uid, $domain) = split(/@/, $email, 2);

print qq{ca $uid\@$domain $password\n};
print qq{ma $uid\@$domain zimbraCOSid "$cosid"\n};
print qq{ma $uid\@$domain givenName "$first"\n};
print qq{ma $uid\@$domain sn "$last"\n};
print qq{ma $uid\@$domain cn "$uid"\n};
print qq{ma $uid\@$domain displayName "$first $last"\n};

#Set the user's reply or canonical address
print qq{ma $uid\@$domain zimbraMailCanonicalAddress $uid\@cityof*****.org\n};

#Add e-mail account alias for multiple domains
#Verify domain is correctly working for provisioning aliases

print qq{aaa $uid\@$domain $uid\@cityof*****.com\n};

#Add all users to a general distribution list and terminate
#Add multiple distro-lists if desired
print qq{adlm dept.all\@cityof*****.org $uid\@cityof*****.org\n};
print qq{\n};

}