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A good autox weekend

It felt good to be autocrossing the Integra again last weekend, especially now that I have some competition with Clint running DSP. I was able to stay ahead after each run, but it was only by four tenths in the end. Given the tire advantage I had, it kind of takes away from the victory. On paper I should have won by a lot, but I'm just not as good a driver. Despite running in the morning, I still paxed a 956. Looking back at past stats, that's pretty consistant with my scores in the spring (952, 950, 953 in Jan, Feb, Mar respectively).

In the morning I was pushing everywhere, and just generally running poor lines. My last run I tightened up some of the lines, blew about 3 turns and a slalom, and didn't lose much time. In TO's I cleaned up those turns, kept the better lines, and the extra grip from running later dropped my times almost two seconds. That was good for a score of 980, easily the best score I've had at a Phoenix area event. In January I had a competition run that would have been a 974 were it not for a cone, but...well, there was a cone. So I'm happy with my performance for the weekend.

In afternoon fun runs I ran the Saab a few times, and those stock tires are just terrible. The best I could manage was only good for about an 895 on the DS pax factor. I was surprised at how easy the car would rotate with the pressures we were running, however (suggested by Jay B). Well, easier than I would have expected, at least. It really needs some better tires, particularly in a better size. Something tells me that 205/55-16 isn't the hot size for STX, no matter what car you're driving.

High-altitude cone-dodging

Sunday was the first autocross in the Saab, with the RGRSCCA running in Santa Fe this month (a bit less than an hour's drive from Albuquerque). Thanks to some tire pressure advice from Jay Balducci, former "plain-'ol-WRX-on-street-tires" driver, the car felt pretty good. Well...not at first. You see, it was a bit of a slow course. Slow enough that you put it in second, then you wonder why you ever did such a thing.

First run I shift into second at the first turn, and boooooog. I don't shift the rest of the run, and it's like the car has a 2000rpm redline that it just will not exceed under any circumstances. Finish with a 63.3, Teresa has a 64.4.

Second run I decide that I better at least downshift for the clump - yep, it's not just Arizona, apparently New Mexico has them too. Ok, so it was one cone, but it was reeeealy tight, and not a bit of fun. I think Teresa took the clump cone better than me all day. I take off some time though, 61.4 for me, another 64.4 for Teresa, but +1.

Third run, the lag is pretty frustrating, and there are just so many slow turns on this course, plus the tires aren't offering much. First gear it is! I don't shift into second until the very end of the course, which is essentially a straight. I finally break into the 60s with a 59.8, but Teresa takes off loads of time with a 60.3. Hmm...only a half second back.

Fourth run, more of the same. First gear, trying to be smooth with the throttle, blah blah blah. Go a bit faster, 59.4. Teresa improves more though, to a 59.5. Only a tenth behind me. Was I worried? Does Ron Burgundy play jazz flute? You bet.

Fifth and final run. I know I need to take off a LOT of time, lest I bear the brunt of much scorn come Monday morning. I don't know what was happening this time, I think I just pushed a little more everywhere, turned a bit earlier, and the car just kind of floated around the cones and through the gates. It was actually kind of nice. ;-) I crossed the finish line, not knowing where I would stand, hoping I would widen the gap just enough. As I rolled up to the timing lights, I saw the glow of the five-eight-oh, which I knew was plenty. Teresa's next run was a couple tenths faster. She congratulated me on the good run, then I think she hit me. Something like that. :-D

How does that stack up to everyone else? It was a totally stock car on big tall RE92s, how do you think? S-L-O-W. Results sorted by pax are here. I was 19th with a 916. Paul Brown takes top pax in a small car on a course with a bunch of slow turns? Unpossible! :-P

That said, there were some things left to be desired about how things were run. I think this was a bigger event than they usually put on, and it was a new location, so there are always problems associated with that. 40-second (est.) overlap + 5 runs + 2 run groups = long day. The course doubled-back on itself a couple times, so it took a while before you could send the next car. 36 cars in a run group meant that it was a long time before you could run again, too. Of course, it was much worse if you were a course worker, as I was standing out there in the sun for about 3.5 hours for the afternoon work assignment. I'm a bit red now, as we didn't have a chance to pick up some sunscreen before the event. Bad idea.

A few of the cool cars I thought I'd mention. There was a Conquest (see below) in all it's 80's-retro glory, 2 red FD's, including one in SM2 that looked absolutely perfect, and an SM2 NSX that looked almost as gorgeous. Oh, and there was a new C6 that put a wheel up on a curb while trying to pull into a parking space. Nice.

Onward with pics!
This is ALL of the stuff we brought to the event, including two jackets in case it rained. Weird!

Grid lineup.

The curb-hopping C6.

The fender-ful Conquest.

Ah, an actual picture of the car!

And in motion.

Teresa attacking the clump cone, while Ben wishes he had a better zoom (you'll have to click to see anything):

Hey, who took all my camber!

More on course.

Me pretending I got something out of my Evolution school.

And finally, a shot for the sponsors. You listening OMP? I need a new helmet bag! :-D

Unexpected packages

Those are always nice. Yesterday I got a fleece blanket from Saab that they've been sending out to new buyers. Because that's exactly what I need when it's 110° out.

Also finally received my copy of 25 To Life for the first public beta of the game. I think it'll just be multiplayer only, but it should be fun. Too bad I don't have a USB headset.

So I tried Galleon last night, as I mentioned yesterday. It's definitely a cool program, but still needs a fair amount of work. I had to reboot my tivo for Galleon to recognize it, and when you add apps to the list, they don't always show up on the tivo. The music player is cool...it can organize your mp3s based on ID3 tags, then it uses those to go online and get album info and cover art - sometimes even lyrics, if they're available for that particular song, which I thought was a nice feature. I just read about this software yesterday, but I heard that the developer releases new versions pretty quickly. I look forward to the next update. :-)

I know I normally don't post links to outside news, but I particularly like this one: AMD sues Intel. :-D
Edit: Here's a direct link (pdf) to AMD's complaint, worth the read IMO.

Green chiles, tivo, Integra repairs

Traded cars with Teresa this weekend in Albuquerque - the Saab made it there fine, no problems at all. Had about 1200 miles on it when I got there. The way back in the Integra wasn't quite as comfortable, but it wasn't bad, either. I think it was almost an hour shorter going the Payson->Heber->Holbrook->ABQ route vs. Flagstaff->ABQ.

In the state known its chiles, they were available on pretty much everything. I think I had green chiles in some form with every meal, except for the stop at Dunkin' Donuts. Good stuff.

Now that my car is back though, I need to do some repairs (some sooner rather than later). The most immediate concern is the clutch slave cylinder, which will probably fail the next time I look at it wrong. The radiator hoses need to be replaced after that blowout a couple weeks ago, and replacing one with a poorly-fitting hose from Autozone. And of course, I really need to replace the gasket between my header and the cat, as the noise from the exhaust leak has transformed from annoying to embarrassing. :-( But those parts should all be purchased today, with their installation dependent on who's available to help me when (well, the slave cylinder at least).

I mentioned tivo in the subject, as I'm interested in trying Galleon when I get home. It seems to offer some of the things I always liked about an HTPC, like RSS feeds, weather, and email on the tv. Hopefully it'll work ok. :-)

Related to tivo, I finally got the whole dvd burning thing working, I think. I was able to convert my .tivo files to mpegs, cut out the commercials, and burn two episodes of Victory by Design to a dvd. Nice. :-D

Update-o-rama

Laziness has once again gotten the better of me, obviously. My updating skills are lacking.

Break-in of the new car is going well. Over 600 miles as of now, probably closer to 700 by the end of the day thanks to an expedition out to a new kart track on the west side this afternoon.

This past weekend I was in Palo Alto, CA for my sister's graduation. It was interesting to really see the Stanford campus (I had been once before, but didn't see much of it). Lots of large old buildings and huge trees. :-P They offered a tour of SLAC, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. They claim it's the longest building in the world, at around 2 miles long. It really wasn't much to see, as the outside of the buildings aren't kept in particularly great shape. Overall, perhaps a bit disappointing. I took a couple camera phone pics, but of course, they're still on my phone.

The commencement ceremony was a bit odd at times. It seems that the tradition is for students to go out on the field, not in an orderly manner, but rather in whatever unusual way they can think of, and just do crazy stuff for about half an hour (something like this). Some of my favorite things to see were people dressed like Lego men, some dressed as Domokun's, and a large group playing tetris. Again, pics on the camera phone. Steve Jobs was the invited speaker, and that was kind of odd. Wired offers a pretty decent summary of his speech.

I'd say the most interesting part of the whole weekend was noting the differences between a state-run university, and a university that can throw as much money as they want at pretty much whatever they want. I'm sure they spend way more than ASU just in day-to-day activities and operations, yet probably have a third to half as many students.

Played Halo 2 several nights last week, and playing regularly was definitely helping. I still didn't like the fact that we kept being matched up against people at least 5 levels higher than us in other game types, but whatever. Hopefully the skills learned won't wear off too fast.

Plans have been made to update the azsolo2 site, and I think that will really turn out well. I'll probably start keeping whatever I'm working on at azsolo2.caffeineslug.com or something, but nothing of interest has been created yet. I'll post updates as the new look progresses.

This is where I lament the fact that I don't update more often, as I can't really remember what else I was going to put here. Maybe the fact that Evo's are awesome, I don't know. Probably something along those lines.

Money has changed hands

Much more than any previous transaction, at least. My first post in a week comes bearing news of a new vehicle in our garage...news that anyone who at least semi-regularly reads this probably knows already. ;-) We picked up a 2005 Saab 9-2X Aero, practically right off the truck. Manual transmission, Deep Blue Metallic with the cloth seats, and the non-optional cold weather package. We've put about 250 miles on it so far, with another 750 to go until break-in is complete. It's the first new vehicle for either of us, and the first time we've had car payments. With $7k in rebates, the dealer wasn't offering any kind of special financing, but fortunately we got a pretty decent rate through Costco.

So what happened to the Neon that is being replaced? Well, we're still going to hang on to it. It was giving a check engine light for the O2 sensor the day after we got it running, but the other day that stopped. Took it in for emissions testing today, and it thankfully passed (tags set to expire today). It still needs a new coolant overflow tank, but the part just arrived at the local dealer, so that should be taken care of soon. The a/c works now, so that's good. Once we're confident it's in good working order (or at least, close to it), the car should be back out for autocrossing, hopefully in time for the fall season.

Again with the unusually-large purchases, we bought a tv a couple weeks ago as well. Again, excellent deal through Costco (it's like I go there a lot or something). Panasonic 43" 16:9 LCD rear projection HDTV, 720p native res, lots of inputs. The day after we bought it I went to the Cox store to swap out cable box for the HD box, and now we're enjoying all that HDTV has to offer (and occasionally find it hard to go back to regular programming). Our dvd player does upconverting as well, so it's nice to take advantage of that, and get 480p/720p/1080i in the various video games that support those resolutions.

Now for some other random stuff that I just never posted earlier.

My grandparents in PA moved in January, and sent some of their stuff out to my parents. Of the truckload of stuff that was unloaded, we got two of the coolest things:
First, the largest pepper mill I have personally used. I think it's probably about 3 feet tall.

Second, this what we called a "smør bucket", where smør is Norwegian for butter. I believe it was last regularly used at the house my grandparents used to have in Norway. So now we have a place for butter.

Finally, pics of the free box I received to house all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings movie. Come on, free! This came in the mail months ago, and I took pics, just never did anything with them.