(reposted from Craigslist)

I bought my 2006 Hyosung GT 250 new in March of last year (2009) from Zone Moto; it was a Salon de la Moto demo, never ridden.

Full specs and review for the bike here.

There are lots of forums and aftermarket parts suppliers dedicated to this bike.

I've added:

• Leather Tank cover with bag clips ($200)
• Front Iridium Windshield ($120)
• Center Stand ($100)
• Hyosung Lowering kit ($100 with labour)

With only 3300kms, This is an awesome 250cc, light, quick bike, uses very little gas and amazing around the city and on the highway, especially ideal as a first motorcycle for new riders (like I was), women or shorter people since it's lowered (I'm 5'8" and the bike fits me like a glove). I ride with friends who have 500s and 650s and can keep up with them. It's less expensive, faster and better handling than a Ninja 250, extremely reliable (not a single problem with almost daily driving all summer) and has that awesome naked look.

It comes with the remainder of a 2 year warranty valid until March 2011 (so the entire riding season!) at Zone Moto. The bike was broken in properly and gently, the initial service is done (all synthetic oil), and it will be due for its 4000km service soon, which will be done by Zone Moto at my expense before the bike is sold (or, if you prefer to do it yourself, I will subtract the cost of the maintenance - about $100 or so - from the asking price).

It is like new, maintained meticulously, with only a few nearly invisible scratches (seen in pics below) on read fender and exhaust can - the bike was not dropped but I clipped the side of my garage door the first day I got it. The bike was stored on its centerstand all winter in a heated garage with a trickle charger, and the tires were rotated regularly.

I will include the original manual, receipts, a bike cover and all original parts / bolts / etc that came with the bike, including the kit to raise it back to stock height.

I like kids. No, scratch that - I love kids. Hell, not many people know this, but I actually used to be a kid. Infinitely curious with an imagination that knows no bounds, children have a way of seeing the world which is uniquely their own. They are nothing less than little people, with their own sets of rules, societies and laws, and one of the main reasons so many people find it difficult or awkward to interact with kids is that these people try to force children to step into in our "real" (ahem), man-made world, instead of working our way towards being accepted into the grand societies that children have built.

I must have been around 6 or 7 years old when I got my first computer; the family's Coleco Adam. Unlike most kids who had the marvelous opportunity to be exposed to computing at such an early age, I did not go on to become a hardcore, Godlike programmer nerd. This may have been due, in no small part, to my computer's tendency to "generate a surge of electromagnetic energy on startup, which can erase the contents of any removable media left in or near the drive." However, it did serve as a critically important introduction to the logic of programming, user interfaces, gaming, and science fiction. Several hundred "goto line"s and "run 80"s later, the path to personal technocracy had been laid.

Naturally, upon realization that my exposure to these themes was critical in shaping me into the strapping fellow you see read before you, I became a strong evangelist for the sort of exploration encouraged by these early computers. In his post “Tinkerer's Sunset”, Mark Pilgrim details his version of this shared experience many young kids went through at that age:

"As it happens, this computer came with the BASIC programming language pre-installed. You didn’t even need to boot a disk operating system. You could turn on the computer and press Ctrl-Reset and you’d get a prompt. And at this prompt, you could type in an entire program, and then type RUN, and it would motherfucking run.

I was 10. That was 27 years ago, but I still remember what it felt like when I realized that you — that I — could get this computer to do anything by typing the right words in the right order and telling it to RUN and it would motherfucking run.

That computer was an Apple ][e."

If you have a shaved head and want to keep it, don't let it grow out more than a few days or so. Shaving your head after it's grown out more than a few millimeters is almost as irritating as when you shave it for the first time.

That is all.

There is no love lost between Apple and myself. The limitations imposed on the way Apple products work - especially their software - is one of the greatest blights on digital creativity today.

However, I can see how they are skilled at marketing and design intended to appeal to people who like neat, pretty, packaged things and are willing (and able) to plop down a 300% markup on a computer in order to get bouncing glossy icons and a glowing logo on their computers.

One thing, however, that Apple has somehow never, ever been able to create correctly, is a mouse. Even the most die-hard Apple fans I know draw the line at buying / using an Apple mouse, instead going for one of the more usable offerings from Microsoft or Logitech. For some reason, the fascist, rigid design principles that apply to their laptop, keyboard and software engineering divisions do not seem to carry over to their "Mouse Group" or whatever it's called. I am happy to report that their illustrious history of creating what are likely the most craptastic pointing devices ever to sport a USB plug (or Bluetooth chip) remains intact.