How Dummies Set a Bicycle Computer - The Freelance Files MMCXCI

Setting wheel size in mm

Among the seven habits of highly irritating freelancers, one stands out to the staffers of the Antisocial Network as supremely irritating. That's the habit of what we call "redefinition." In cases of redefinition, the ignorant, lazy, or greedy – or any combination of the three – freelancer redefines the question to make it easier to answer. Through the process of redefinition, today's nominee – Rocco Pendola, whom we've already tagged three times for exaggerating his bicycle expertise – utterly ignored the actual meaning of the task "How to Set the Wheel Size in a Bike Computer" to make it possible to collect his fifteen bucks from eHow.com (the post is now at SportsRec.com).

To get to the only meat in Pendola's post, you must read all the way to the bottom of the post, past 314 words of dross, to find the hidden solution to your problem. It's buried in the second of Rocco's "tips":

"The actual act of inputting values in bike computers varies by computer. The roll-out method is universal."

Uh, yeah. Rocco went to the canonical source of all information bicycle, the late Sheldon Brown, and copied-reworded-pasted his directions for measuring the circumference of an inflated bicycle tire, padding the steps with such worthless dreck as,

"If your computer asks for radius, divide your result by 6.2832 to obtain that value."

Uhhh, yeah, right: cyclocomputers always need tire radius as an input (NOT: Brown's database of hundreds of computer brands and models includes only two minor brands that call for radius). Our staffers found Pendola's overall familiarity with bike computers pretty suspect upon reading this bizarre comment:

"...look to your tire's sidewall to locate its size, match this number--usually something like 700 X 23 or 26 X 2.0--to a code in your bike computer's owner's manual and follow these instructions to enter the code into the computer."

If Rocco had known more about bicycles, he might have mentioned that 700-series tires are typically marked something like "700 x 23C" instead of "700 x 23" – he left off the "C." Now that we think about it, though; logic demands that we ask Rocco, "If the bike computer requires a 'code,' what good is performing the rollout procedure to get a precise measurement? But Rocco hasn't answered... Be that as it may, no one here has ever entered a "code" into a computer; just the circumference in mm.

Truth be told, if Rocco had spent a few minutes' more time at Sheldon's site. he might have noticed that there's a looooooong list of links to bike computer manuals here. If, however, our Dumbass of the Day had just done that, he wouldn't have been able to collect his stipend. What to do, what to do? We know, redefine the question!  Feh.

DD - BICYCLES