caffeineslug.com

Long time no post

I think this is a record for me, in terms of time without posting. The last one was on June 1st, and here it is July 23rd. Hooray for breaking records I suppose.

In those 50+ days a lot has certainly happened. We've moved into our house, and now we're dealing with all of the problems that nobody noticed before, or just coincidentally popped up shortly after we took the keys. Between those problems and new stuff we've had to buy/install, cash is flowing right out of our bank accounts like beer flowing out of Belgium.

First, the garage floor received an epoxy coating before we went and filled up the garage with stuff. That was the most painless part so far, and I think it turned out ok.

Shortly after that, one of the garage door springs broke (and of course, you have to replace both of them). The one part of the door not covered under the home warranty!

Appliance delivery was next. We needed a fridge, washer, and dryer (and of course, we only overshot our budget by about...100%). Even with a slightly wider-than-standard front door, the fridge couldn't make it in without removing the doors. :-P Yet another reason I prefer double front doors!

Next up, moving day! Fantastic, except three boxes were unaccounted for. We still don't know if they're really missing, or if it was just a number-calling error.

Next, water softener installation. I wouldn't have thought it was almost $300 to have a softener installed when the loop is already there, ouch.

Several days later, the a/c stopped working well. It was running constantly, and still not cooling the house really, so someone came out and recharged it. Home warranty use #1.

While the garage floor looked good, the walls were something else entirely. The previous owner (PO hereafter) decided that when he needed to run a cable somewhere, the best way to do it was by stapling it to the wall or ceiling every few inches. When he removed the cables, he somehow managed to do it while leaving the staples still in the wall or ceiling. Nice. Stuff was hanging on the wall everywhere, and no matter what it was holding, not a single drywall anchor was to be found (nor did he ever manage to find a stud). After yet another trip to Lowes, Dave helped me tape off the floor and fill all the holes, and Teresa helped paint the walls. It looks much better now.

Dishwasher stopped working! Was fine during the inspection of course. Home warranty use #2.

This past week has been extra fun, as we had our first case of water damage. It looks like the drain for the a/c plugged up, and as a result, condensation was going everywhere except out the drain. Like into the walls, and out from underneath the baseboards. A flood company came out and indicated evidence of water in the garage, laundry room, and office. So now we've had a couple big loud fans in the garage and an industrial-sized dehumidifier in the office for several days. We blew out the drain with the shop vac (best purchase we've made so far), and it looks like it is draining correctly now.

Finally, we thought it was time to get the spa up and running. It's a Dimension One spa, and there's just one dealer in Tucson for those (45 minutes away, of course). Fortunately the guy there was very friendly, explained to us how all of the features work, where all the parts are located, how to get it set up right, etc. Due to age and sun exposure, we needed new headrests and a new top...conveniently available for just under $500. :-P We still need a new filter for it, and the LCD screen is barely readable. While filters are relatively cheap, I know the screen won't be. :-\

As far as I can remember, that's everything we've had to deal with. Some problems worse than others, all costing more money than we'd hope. That doesn't count the numerous trip to Lowes/Home Depot for things we just didn't own before, like hoses.

At the very least, I think the house is almost to the point where it is clean enough to accept visitors. :-P

Emergency Post

The only real emergency is that here it is, afternoon of May 31, and I haven't had a post yet this month. :-P

This morning Teresa and I closed on our first house, which is obviously exciting. The process went fairly quickly, about 3 weeks from the time we looked at it until closing.

Here's an album with all of the photos we took while looking at houses - photos from the house we bought are right at the beginning, starting with the first picture and finishing with the picture of dogs in the backyard. The only visible change that will be made from the pictures is that the pink room will be painted white.

The now-previous owners needed to rent it back from us for about a week, so we should have keys a week from Sunday!

Ping pong madness

Who will reign supreme! Well, it wasn't me, unfortunately. But pretty close.

After much trash talk at the last autocross, Travis stepped up and bought a ping pong table. Finally, a forum where those who think they have a game can step up and show what they're made of!

To give myself the best possible odds, I ordered a Butterfly Kyoshi from megaspin.net, in the hopes that a superior paddle could potentially make up for a lack of skills. It showed up at my door just one day before competition, perfect! Opened it up and it still smelled like glue. It was fantastic.

Onward to the competition, and an introduction of the four players:
Travis: table owner, therefore the home court advantage was his.
Clint: talked the least smack, but showed up anyway.
Kevin: claimed his asian heritage would guarantee a victory.
Myself: bringer of the secret weapon paddle.

After some warmup, it became clear that the competition was very close. Official rules were brought up on several occasions, only to be shot down by "no way, that's stupid", and house rules ended up taking over for the most part. Literally house rules, as were we playing inside the house. Don't go looking for the high lob shot from 10 feet behind the table! Blinding light from both sides of the table also resulted in countless excuses from all parties.

Several mini-tournaments were held. Some single-elimination, some double-elimination. Overall, I'd say Travis and Kevin won more often than lost, and seemed to split games between each other. I lost more than won, but still won a decent amount, and the games I lost were usually close. Clint came in fourth, but he talked the least trash, so I suppose that's an acceptable finish.

With this day of ping pong complete, what does the future bring? Rumor has it that Kevin plans to pick up a table of his own, but for outdoor use. Will the extra space available outside be as good as we hoped, or will the North Valley winds make play impossible? General consensus was that I had the liveliest paddle of the group, but who will buy their own Paddle of Mass Destruction? And will it even matter? Will new competitors show up to stake their claims?

Stay tuned for round two.

The first of many

Costco trip count for February: 14

Lots of things to post about, because I obviously haven't in a while.

First up, I suppose, will be the Costco-related stuff.
1. The food court at the Tempe location will be undergoing a remodeling effort that's supposed to last 6-7 weeks, starting this coming Monday. Not all food items will be available. :-(
2. Maxfli Noodle golf balls. Honestly, these are pretty mediocre. What's interesting is the price, and the sheer quantity of golf balls available. Only $10/dozen (about half of retail price), and they must have a couple hundred boxes available. Enough to fill a full pallet, about as high as me!
3. Kirkland Signature polo shirts. I've never seen these with the KS label on them, and I have no idea who actually makes them, but at $15 each, I picked up a couple.
4. PGA Tour-brand golf shirts, these are also only $15, pretty cheap for a shirt made of a dri-fit-type material.
5. I understand they have a new type of cheddar cheese now, something that claims to be aged for 2 years. I'll hopefully be trying that soon. :-P

Waffle follow-up

To update, I'd say the waffle competition was a success. I was kind of surprised when my competitor showed up with an identical waffle iron! Though there was no formal voting, I believe I won both rounds. First round was my chocolate stout/chocolate chip against her bacon, cheese, and green onion waffles. Second round was my hefeweizen/butterscotch against her chocolate chip with caramelized bananas. The bananas were actually fantastic and really made the whole thing good, but both of her waffles were on the softer side, compared to my crispier waffles. Personal preference I suppose, but I think more people had the same preference as me. :-P

Waffle-a-thon

One of my friends has been hyping me up as some kind of waffle king (his logic was "anyone who has two waffle irons must be good at making waffles"). The result of this undeserved hype is that I've now been challenged to a Waffle-Off this Friday!

Well, I can't very well start my career in competitive waffling with just a standard mix and following the directions on the container. Last night was my first practice batch. The usual waffle mix, but replacing water with Rogue Chocolate Stout, and adding a couple handfuls of chocolate chips. The end result was fantastic. It was great even by itself (though butter and syrup didn't hurt it at all). I ate half of the first waffle before the second one was even complete.

Tonight I'm going to try a different beer, Paulaner Hefeweizen, with caramel chips instead of chocolate chips. I expect it to be pretty good, but hard to say if it can top last night's chocolate waffle. Either way, I think I'll make a good showing.

Lights are up

Costco trip count for December: 3

Saturday I had the task of hanging Christmas lights on our house for the first time. I'm not a big fan of ladders, or heights in general, to be honest. And my balance is often somewhere between acceptable and atrocious. But up I went anyway, with three 67-foot strings of multicolor LED lights from Costco. Staple staple climb, staple staple climb. So, LED lights still aren't quite there yet. The lights are a medium size, with a fairly thick plastic bulb. The four colors were blue, green, red, and yellow. Red and green seem ok, but the yellow is kind of weak, and the blue is pretty overpowering. Also, the blue lights look kind of purple from a distance. I think the thickness of the bulb wasn't helping the light output, as they're not as bright as they could be. Still, I'm attracted to the fact that they should last nearly forever, and the power consumption is relatively low.

Costco samples on Sunday afternoon were fantastic. Lots of dessert, cheese, meat, everything. They also started carrying egg nog puffs in the freezer section, which promptly made their way into my cart for a little more personal sampling.

Another interesting thing they had going was personalized Crown Royal bags. Someone from CR was there with a sewing machine putting whatever text you wanted on the bag. I think it could have been cool if I had a reason to spend $36 on a handle of alcohol I'll most likely not drink for a long time.

Four years old

Caffeineslug.com had its 4th birthday this past weekend, so here's to four more years of inconsistent updates and meaningless content.

The last post I made here was August 21st, that's fantastic. Over a month with nothing. I know I've done a fair amount of stuff in that month, but now that it's time to put it on paper, I can't remember what I did. :-P At least now I have one post for September.

Thanks Costco!

My cubemate and one of his friends were in my cube discussing the problems with said friend's tv. Apparently it was about 14 months old, just two months out of warranty, and it broke. For some reason, the repair shop he normally went to said they simply couldn't fix Chinese-made tvs, and he was out of luck. But I found out he bought it at Costco - "take it back," I said. "They'll refund you 100% of your money."

"But it's out of warranty, and broken."

"Doesn't matter, they'll take it."

"If that works, I'm buying you a steak!"

That was yesterday. I come in to work this morning, and there's a cooler with my steak in it. :-D Getting just a year out of a tv is pretty bad, especially a CRT. Even worse when a shop says it can't be fixed. Hooray for the Customer Satisfaction policy!

Related to Costco, I'm glad they realize that Costco-nerds like me exist. I knew you could order checks at a pretty good price through Costco.com, but I found out from their magazine that one of the patterns you can choose is actually a set of pictures of Costco warehouses from around the country! *click* Ordered! :-P

So much emptiness

The site has been blank for weeks now, great. Fortunately, I haven't done much:

- Went to New Jersey for vacation. Spent some time on the beach, ate unhealthy food, played enough miniature golf to get me through the year.

- Got my first-ever second place autox trophy. Thanks Clint! :-P

- Had probably my best ever Addams Family pinball game, at about 412 million points. The machine was almost fully-functional, which was pretty nice. I had at least a couple multiballs, getting the jackpot or double jackpot each time. Two or three extra balls helped out the score quite a bit as well. Towards the end I finally got the "Tour the Mansion" award, which is awarded after you've gone through all of the game modes. You get 50M points, in addition to a few other things. That was great.

- We have a cat now, and have had him for a couple weeks, but still no name. Current possibilities are Samba (after the monkey in Samba de Amigo, greatest Dreamcast game ever), Pi (after the greatest number ever), or Hobbes (after the tiger in the greatest comic strip ever).

- Had my first mountain bike crash just over a week ago, right over the handlebars. Knocked the wind out of me, scraped up my knee pretty good, and my right hand is still in pain. The urgent care doctor initially said it was broken, but I went to a hand doctor that said it wasn't, so that's good I suppose. Still, this isn't good for my golf game.

- 360voice.com lets your Xbox 360 tell everyone what you've been up to. Mine is like most others, in that it seems a lot like a dog - really happy when you play with it, sad and whiny when you ignore it. At least it posts every day, more than I can say about myself to be sure. It also seems to be good motivation to get some achievements, as I've increased my score a good amount lately.

Related to video games, I picked up Uno on Live Arcade last week, and it provided a level of fun commensurate with the price. Single player seems mostly worthless, but partner Uno can be pretty fun provided the other people in your game actually talk. You're paired up with the person sitting across from you, and if either of you goes out, you both get the win. Since Skip/Draw Two/Draw Four cards only punish the person next two you, you can get into good circles of making the other team constantly draw cards. If nothing else, having a teammate requires some amount of talking, and that prevents games where you just sit there with three other strangers and nobody talks (and if you're going to do that, you may as well just play against a non-human).

I also finished up the GRAW single player campaign at normal difficulty, that was pretty fun. After a few levels I realized I had to use the night vision goggles way too much, and that's when I discovered the brightness level in the game was set to zero. :-P Not so good on an LCD RPTV! Cranked that up to 5 out of 6 and I could finally see things. It was nice to get good use out of a $60 game. I might try to stretch it out a bit more and play some levels on hard for a few more achievements.

So speaking of $60 games, the 360 might be what gets me to try gamefly.com. More games are coming out that I want to try, but I don't feel like they're worth $60 to me yet, and prices haven't really come down at all in the eight months or so that the system has been out. Granted some have been less (PGR3, Table Tennis), but it's still feels like a big increase over the $40 and $50 games I was accustomed to with the PS2/Xbox. So for $15/month I could rent games as they become available, and not deal with Blockbuster (I'm doubting here that Blockbuster has changed at all in the last year or so since I dealt with them). That works out to 4 games a year - so what am I better off having? Four games that I can keep, or as many as I can go through in a year, but keeping none?

Honestly, I'd still have to buy some to keep. :-P Forza 2, Halo 3, maybe a couple others that I rent and really enjoy. But I'd really like to try stuff like MotoGP 06, the new LOTR game, Gears of War, etc. I think the stream of games due out is good enough to support using something like Gamefly, provided they have enough copies of the games to keep me playing something.

On to autocrossing, a proposal was made to move the 3-series BMWs and the IS300 out of DSP for 2007. As great as this initially looks to me on paper, it would be both a blessing and a curse. Obviously if this were to pass, I should have a car that's potentially a top competitor. Perhaps not the first year, but at least by 2008 the pax factor should be adjusted, so even if I didn't compete nationally I would still see a local benefit with no changes to the car. Still, if I have a car with potential to be competitive, I should really prep it a lot closer to the limit of the rules. And there's Part 1 of the curse. Just getting "closer" to the limit would mean an LSD, Hondata, exhaust, and dyno tuning. There's $2500 right off the bat if I want to use decent parts, and using cheap stuff doesn't save all that much. To go beyond that requires work that doesn't help the issue of street legality, like ITBs and a big header that eliminates the cat (figure $3k for the pair).

So I could have a car that's potentially competitive. I can take over $5k and get it a lot closer to fully prepared, or I can take that same $5k plus any money I'd get from selling the car, and buy something else. That's where Part 2 of the curse comes in - even for the $11k or so that we're talking about, I can't get a car that's as fast, as fun to drive, and as competitive in its class as my Integra. So I'm stuck with it (starting my 9th year with the car this month).

Of course, if the proposal gets turned down, my car remains uncompetitive, there's no reason to spend money on it, and getting a different car that's more competitive seems like a worthwhile venture. But whatever. I still think it should pass, I guess. :-P

Calibration madness

Finally got my Avia disc in the mail the other day, so I could try to do some kind of audio calibration with the sub. I'll try not to go into the long version, but the short version has two points:
- there's definite "weirdness" going on between my sub + right front, and sub + left rear speakers. SPL from sub + RF is probably 5dB below sub + LF, for example.
- there are weird tone issues between my fronts and center channel. Granted they're not the same speaker series, but they're at least the same brand, I thought thinks would be close, but a white noise (or is it pink? I don't know) that pans left to right is supposed to sound the same as it goes across the front of the room, and it takes a definite dip in my system when it gets to the center.

Yes, that's the short version. The long version involves complaints about not having a real crossover on my receiver, peaks/valleys in frequency response charts, variance in sub level with test tones of different sources, and limited sub placement options in the room. :-P

A Clean Slate

I think my site has been blank for something like a week now. As I've said before, missing a few items I want to post about just instigates this snowball of failure. "I keep meaning to write about such and such, but also these other things, and I don't have time to do it all now. I'll do it tomorrow," I say. Tomorrow comes, and I say the same thing, but the number of items has increased, so now it's going to take even more time. Thus, as time goes on, the less likely I am to have time to write about everything. Snowball of failure > me.

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When I left off, I just realized that pedals came in two different thread sizes, and I lost the coin toss. I remedied that by buying a new set, and they're infinitely better than what came on the bike. Bigger platform, and my feet stay in place much better.

I tried them out for the first time on a ride with Alan (a significantly better rider than myself) on a trail around South Mountain that would turn out to be well above my skill level. Between the fact that it was my first time seeing the trail, my general lack of mountain biking skill, and overall cautiousness, it was both mentally and physically draining. Mentally in that I was trying to process all of these obstacles on the trail that I didn't think I had the skill to overcome, so I was constantly doubting myself the entire time. No confidence. Physically in that there were just a lot of hills. :-P

While I think I could psyche myself up enough to hit that trail again, I'd want to at least see an improvement in skills elsewhere before trying it, I think. I spent a LOT of time walking the bike, and that's never as much fun. I scraped the new pedals up nicely as well. :-)

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We moved a couple weeks ago now, which was all sorts of fun. There's still a room full of junk, with no place for it to go. The garage needs work as well, which I almost look forward to. The bikes need to go up on the ceiling, and better use of shelving should help things out a bit.

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Now that we're in a house, of course, I could finally buy the subwoofer I've been wanting, the SVS PCi 20-39. :-D


I was a bit worried when I plugged things in, and didn't really get any sound from it at first. I eventually just had to turn the levels up on the amp and receiver a bit more than I thought to get anything, and now it's quite loud. I really need to get the whole thing calibrated though. Listening to music over media center, it didn't sound quite like I had hoped. My receiver being as old and partially feature-less as it is, I noticed that I have no idea what it's internal crossover is set to, so when it's on the "subwoofer" preout I'm not sure what frequencies it's getting. Hopefully with a dB meter and some calibration tools I can figure it out, I don't know.

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Finally, the issue of tires. After two autocrosses of hovering around the 900 point mark, I'll finally have a set of 710's on the car that should make me closer to competitive in my class. I really should have ordered them a couple months ago, but I'm cheap, obviously.

Stupidity

Well, last Saturday I was feeling pretty good, maybe 90% recovered from the back injury. I thought "I know, maybe I'll go to the driving range to test out the new driver." Bad idea. By the time I was done, I was feeling worse than I did after the initial injury! Had to basically start recovery over from scratch. Starting to feel a little better today though.

The good news is that the driver seems to be working out well. Trajectory is good (though a bit on the low side if I don't tee it up enough it seems), and at maximum height it seems to hang there for a second longer than my old driver. I figure it's good for at least another 20 yards, but I won't know for sure until I get out to Ken McDonald and play a round. I was hoping to get better accuracy with the big driver (and I think I did), but I'll take the added distance bonus any time!

A new day

A pi day, that is. Celebrate! I might try to search out a bit of pie this afternoon or something.

Also, Teresa gave me this cool camera for our anniversary yesterday, and I'm looking forward to using it. Looks to have all the specs that I'd like, and it's considerably smaller/lighter than my previous model.

2006 F1 season approaches

How appropriate I would have an F1-related dream the other night.

I was cruising along in my first car, the '85 Jetta, wondering why my tank was nearly empty and I had only driven 111 miles. As the road bends around I see a Ferrari F50, and think "wow, don't see those...ever." As my road is about to merge with another, I see another Ferrari on the other road, then another, then all of the sudden the entire street is filled with race cars. Then disaster! There's enough gravel on the road that all the cars come to a stop. So who's driving the three cars in front of me, but Sato, Trulli, and M Schumacher. :-P I tried to take a picture of Schumacher with my phone, but he got really mad at me, and I think he wanted me to pay him for taking his picture. Sato started talking to me, and he was just stupid, and as I was talking to him, I couldn't imagine how he got into racing. Trulli just kept smiling the whole time, that was kind of creepy.

Unfortunately, just as they were offering me the chance to drive their cars, my alarm went off. Worst timing ever.

The good news is that the season starts this weekend in Bahrain!

HD vs DVD comparison

Check them out here. The detail improvement in the full-size comparisons (click on the images, rather than just mouse over) is great. Now where's my blu-ray player?? (oh yeah, it's here)

Axle success

Replaced the other axle on Evan's car today, went much better than last time. He had all the parts and tools ready when we started, the bearing and seal came out in less than 15 minutes, and the whole job from start to cleanup took about 2.5 hours. Much better than a day and a half. ;-)

Category archives

I've been categorizing all of my posts for a while now, but it never occurred to me that there was no way to actual use those categories with my current setup. :-P

On the left now, note that the "Archives" heading has been broken into "by category" and "by month." So for example, any post I've made that is related to the Neon somehow would show up if you clicked "Neon." Fantastic.

Jury duty and such

Got stuck with Jury Duty on Friday, but it wasn't bad at all. It was for county court, there was only one trial, and the defendant didn't show up so we all got to go home after a few hours. :-P

That said, I "finished" up the work on my car Friday afternoon, with "finished" in quotes because I really didn't complete all the work I intended to complete. Three of the hoses were just not accessible with the intake manifold there, and I wasn't going to take it off to replace them. Not at the rate I work anyway, when I don't really know what I'm going to do. Besides, I always secretly hope that the first time the IM comes off, ITBs are going back on in its place, and I don't have those right now. :-D Anyway, at least I'm driving my car again instead of the Neon, and maybe I'll try to address the stalling problem in that car again.

Got some good time in on Guitar Hero this weekend, and scores are starting to improve. On medium difficulty, I have five stars on every regular song except Coyboys From Hell (I have five on most bonus tracks, but I've only played each of them once). On hard difficulty...well it's a little harder. :-P I've unlocked the final set of songs, but they're just too much for me at the moment, so I'm going back and replaying the earlier songs. I have five stars on the first 7 or 8 tracks, plus a couple others. I beat a few songs on expert, but that's still way beyond me in general.

The azsolo2.com update is closer to being done - I believe all of the pages are complete, now I just have to make some minor changes, update it for 2006, and review the whole thing.

Tennis frustration

Not so much frustrated with my game (though it was bad last night), but moreso what was required to play. Started at the court at my apartment complex as usual, around 7:10 or so. Maybe 10 minutes into the game, the lights go out! There's no switch on the lights anywere (removed in the last couple months, probably to keep people from playing too late), so we're out of luck only two games into the match.

Closest good court that I know of is in a park by my parent's house, so we head over there - both courts are in use. Corona is close by so we try that next, and for some reason all eight courts were being used. How does that happen?

The last option was Marcos, all but one of the gates to their courts were locked, but fortunately that one was open, so we finished there. Then on top of that I played horribly. :-P

In other sporting news though, I'm playing golf at Francisco Grande on Saturday morning, and I'm hoping that'll go better. If my driver is working on the range, I think we may have to play from the 7500 yard black tees. :-D

Cheap tools

Harbor Freight just opened a store in the same shopping center as my gym. :-D

HD Tivo on the horizon, and cheap Integra parts

Tivo showed their Series 3 at CES last week, and I'm really looking forward to it. HD support, 300gb internal storage with an external SATA port for expansion, and almost best of all, two cablecard slots. Goodbye evil cable box!

The A/C in the Integra has been out since the end of the summer, with the shop telling me that both the compressor and condenser need to be replaced. This weekend I found a compressor for sale on a local Integra board with 30k on it, picked it up for $50. I'm practically halfway there! :-P

So, a couple months ago, I started thinking about trying mountain biking. I know a number of people that do it, they seem to enjoy it, it sounds like fun. Due to some interesting circumstances, I ended up with a 2004 Haro XLS R3 for a great price a couple weeks ago. Now, up until I got the bike, I've ridden maybe half a dozen times since I got my drivers license, so I'm considerably out of practice. I used to be fairly confident in my abilities back when I was riding to school every day, but now, not so much. I spent a few days riding around on the streets just getting used to being on a bike again before venturing on to dirt.

Yesterday I stuffed the bike in my car (very happy it fit!) and went over to Evan's place, as he has some desert with a trail running through it that people regularly use for biking. Aside from a steep rocky section at the beginning, it was mostly pretty flat stuff. Overall, it did good things for my confidence levels. There are loads of skills that need improving, but I really need to get the confidence up. That said, I'm really not looking forward to my first fall, though I know it's inevitable.

Perhaps I'll get up the nerve to hit a real trail some day. :-P

A lazy week off

You'd think with eleven consecutive days off or so, I'd find more time to post, but no. Probably spent far less time at the computer than ever, and much more time doing...other stuff.

I played golf a couple times over the break, that was one of my goals. First round was with Lee at the Biltmore Adobe course. It was the first round in a few months for both of us, so it should have been pretty even, and that's how it turned out. We both played poorly, but equally bad. I was hitting my driver great on the range, and totally lost it on the course. I hit maybe 3 good shots all day. I ended up winning 90 to 91, but that's not much of a win. ;-) Regardless, I really like the course, and it was in great condition.

A few days ago I played at Ken McDonald, with much better results. The front nine went well, but I think my luck kind of turned on the ninth hole when my drive ended up right against a tree and I had to waste a shot pitching out to the fairway. I think I had a 40 on that side. The back nine felt like a constant stream of bogeys, but wasn't quite that bad. I lost a couple shots when I put my tee shot on the wrong side of the canal on a par 5, then it all fell apart on the 18th. My tee shot hit a tree, leaving me a long shot to the green. The approach plugged in some mud, then I flubbed my next two chips. Ended up with a triple on that hole, to finish with a 44 on that side for an 84 total. Not too bad. Minus one for the tree, two for the canal, and two for the 18th, and that's practically a 79! :-D

Christmas! I got some good stuff. Video games, I got the super-awesome Guitar Hero, as well as We Love Katamari, both of which have occupied much of my time this week. DVDs, I received the Simpsons Season 7 set, which has many great episodes, including my favorite "Lisa the Vegetarian". It should keep me in front of the tv for quite a while, what with the commentary on every episode and all (as I'm watching right now). I also received the Drawn Together Season One set, a great show, and The World's Greatest Rally Cars dvd, which includes the great video of a really fast Peugeot up Pike's Peak.

Other stuff - I received the really cool Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection, and I'm looking forward to reading them all again. I got a nice E30 M3 t-shirt, even has a rollbar in it. :-D All in all, good stuff. I think the only thing I'll try to pick up that I didn't get is the Battlestar Galactica season one set.

I worked on the new azsolo2.com site for a few hours over the break, and most of the pages are up now. Just a few more to go, and it'll pretty much be ready.

Finally, thanks to the beginning of the new year, going to the gym is going to be awful for about a month. Fantastic.

Camaro!Camaro!

I went to one of the few remaining Little Caesars around here after the first day of working on Evan's car. Not having been there in a while, I was surprised to see that their entire menu had been reduced to this:
- Large cheese or pepperoni pizza, $5
- Crazy bread, $1
- Hot wings, $5
And that was it. Do you really need to call it a "large" pizza when you only offer one size?

The plan was to replace the passenger-side axle and axle bearing, and check the driver's side axle as well. The first day working on his car didn't feel very productive, by any means. After stopping by Moe's, a trip to Checker was in order to pick up a slide hammer, and it seems to be the only store that carries Mobil 1 gear oil.

Armed with instructions from the internet, work begins. Wheels off, and I realize that the impact gun that came with my compressor is pretty weak. ;-) Calipers off, rotors...well, the passenger side came off. The driver's side rotor was stuck with the force of a thousand...sticky...things. The holes that go around the studs weren't anywhere near round, and they seemed to be jammed on the studs. Guess we weren't going to check that side after all.

Ok, so get the diff cover off, and now the garage is infused with the horrid stench of gear oil. Time to remove the retaining bolt, and we run into another problem. The directions I have say it's a 5/16ths head, so I grab a 5/16ths socket, but of course, it's just barely too long. The smallest open wrench I thought I had was 9mm, so I have Evan try that one. "I think it fits," followed by "uh oh." 9mm was a bit too large, but now the head is kind of stripped, on top of being oily. Sweet. I can't find my vise-grips anywhere, so we go out to get some from his parents' house. Those take care of the bolt, but there's more wasted time. Oh, and I did have an 8mm wrench in another set, but of course I didn't remember it until the damage was done. Now we need to find a new bolt as well, on a Saturday afternoon.

Axle comes out, and it's all pitted right where it contacts the bearing, so that's a good sign that we're at least fixing something that's broken. :-P Now time for the bearing and seal, and this is where the pain sets in. The slide hammer came with a generic 3-prong puller, and I have to say, it was not the best device in the world. Hammered away at it forever. Managed to get out the seal, and totally dismantled the bearing, but the outer race was still stuck. Looking around online, I see that specific axle bearing pullers look a little different than what we have. It's too late to get a new bolt anyway, so we already know the job is going to run into a second day. Slightly dejected, the sorrows are drowned in a melee of crazy bread and Guinness.

First step Sunday was to find a new diff retainer bolt and some additional tools. The Autozone near me had neither the bearing puller nor the bearing driver, but informed us that the next-closest Autozone had both, so off we went. The Napa we visited Saturday didn't have the bolt we were looking for, but they said to check the store on University. Make the drive up there, only to find out that they're closed on Sunday. Bah! Decide to stop at Amados before making the trek out to the next-closest Napa, a decent drive out of our way (the Arizona burrito was good). They had the bolt, and all is good.

Now with the correct tools and plenty of burrito, it's time to tackle that bearing again. It doesn't fit quite as well as I'd like...there's a disc that seems to fit right over the bearing, but I would think it would work better if it went over the whole housing, so you could put tension on the thing. It was too small for that though, and lacking scrap metal, we put a couple wrenches in there. After tightening it up quite a bit (and bending one of the wrenches in the process, one shot of the slide hammer pulled the bearing out. Woo. The worst was over.

Everything was pretty straightforward going back together, but unfortunately it hasn't totally solved the noise problem. The left one could be bad as well, or it could be a different bearing entirely that's causing some of the noise. Bleh. The good news is that we finished everything, cleaned up, and returned the tools while there was still some daylight remaining. :-P That, and just the fact that the car is back together, and I have my garage back.

Of all the...

Last month I was drawn for jury duty, federal court. Fine, I go down there, fill out the questionnaire, whatever. I'll know next month if I'm selected. What do I get in the mail yesterday? I'm drawn for jury duty again, this time for county court! Even better, the court date is a week after the first trial I was drawn for is scheduled to start.

Last week I went to a new Costco that opened up in Chandler, on opening day even. I understand many people were waiting in line early for 360's, but I wasn't one of them. Still, I can cross that Costco off my list of places to go. :-P It was nice being in one that was new and clean, and the alcohol selection was closer to that of the Scottsdale store than the Tempe store (that's a good thing). Odd though - I didn't see ice cream bars on the food court menu. Not a good sign.

Sunday's autocross was fun, but frustrating. I DNF'd what I believe to have been my best run, but even if it was clean, I still would have been way off Clint's time. I'm going to have to make some significant improvements if I want a chance next season. Hopefully more people can be dragged into the class by then as well...two is good, but three or four would be great (especially after a few years of one).

Finally, I was sick most of this week, which is always fun. Hooray for DayQuil.

Blankman

Not that Blankman (though I do have the soundtrack to that exceptionally fine film), but more like blank-site-man. Why bother with a website if I can't post something in two weeks, honestly. You'd think I hadn't done anything in the last two weeks.

Well, I haven't really.

I take that back, I got to play Guitar Hero, and that was cool. I definitely need that game.

Last week I tried to get the Xbox 360 on Tuesday, but I really didn't put forth much of an effort. I just showed up at Costco, and while they had games, there were no systems to be found. Unfortunate. :-( Now I'm left to wallow in the sorry muck of 480p sadness until I can find one (but I don't mind waiting until I can find a premium system, instead of the core).

On Friday I made it to my annual Black Friday shopping trip with the Millers, however this year I bought less than ever. We showed up at Best Buy at 2am to try to get the $379 laptop (I was trying to pick one up on behalf of my aunt), but there were already 200 people there. Fortunately it wasn't that cold, so we stayed there in line anyway, knowing full well that there were no laptops to be had at that spot in line.

In the end, all I bought for myself was a $5 video game and a $6 movie (Pinball Hall of Fame and Anchorman). Bought a router for my aunt, and a couple Christmas gifts for others that were sorta on sale. All in all I saved less than $20 myself, and sat outside the store for three hours to do it - I'm a genius! :-P

Went to Circuit City after that, where I bought...nothing. In terms of purchasing, this was pretty much the lamest Black Friday for me, but the day has been more about hanging out with friends that I don't get to see that often anymore, and that's good.

Of course, ASU played UA on Friday as well, with the result I was hoping for (though it was entirely too close).

I'm supposed to be playing golf around the end of December, so I decided to hit up the driving range this weekend, and it went surprisingly well. Drivers were going long and relatively straight. I was actually hitting irons into some of the nets placed out there, so that was good. Had a bit of a push/fade with the longer clubs, felt like it was from not turning my wrists over enough, but it wasn't a big deal. Shanked a few wedges, that was a big deal, as that should never happen. :-P

On a related note, I thought about joining the Men's Club at Ken McDonald the other day, as it might provide me with some motivation to actually play golf regularly. Tournaments twice a month all year long, plus I'd have a real handicap again. Not a bad deal at all.

Finally, the new Chandler Costco opens up this Thursday. :-D

Woo compressed air

I finally bought the air compressor that Costco has been selling, since they got another batch of them in the other day. Fit in the Saab perfectly. ;-) Came with the following, from my memory:
- impact gun
- air hammer
- air rotary tool with a handful of attachments
- tire inflation tool (a lame one and a nice one)
- spray gun (HVLP I'd imagine)
- air brush
- 25' air hose
- a few impact sockets (only SAE though)
- um...some other stuff

What's missing from that list? Well, most obvious is the tool I'd probably use most, an air ratchet. I could use an extension cord as well, since my only stupid electrical outlet is in the ceiling in the middle of the garage, and the compressor is not going to sit in the middle of the garage. :-P

Oh no

Costco is carrying pecan pies once again. Must...resist...gigantic...pie...

The sky is falling! or, Costco let me down today

I go to the food court for lunch, and they have new cash registers. Registers which, for whatever reason, will not allow them to take the Costco Cash Card. It's my preferred form of payment, because it was the last lunch place I regularly went that didn't take credit cards, so the cash card meant I didn't need to carry cash any more. Now if I'm out of cash I'll need to go somewhere else. :-\

On the plus side today, I was happy to see 30mpg on my last tank, and gas prices at Costco dropped from $2.67 at the time of my last fillup to $2.52 today.

Update bonanza

This is exactly the problem with a website, the further behind I get, the less motivated I am to make a post, since each passing day means I have more to add. At some point my brain hits a limit though, and anything new I want to add means something else gets left behind. Or to paraphrase Homer, "Remember when we went to that wine tasting and I forgot how to drive?"

I think the last post I made was just before the Tucson autocross, where I planned to drive Dave's car. I had all sorts of problems with that. It was a really fast course, requiring a shift to third on two occasions. Rarely could I get the car from third into second gear cleanly, and on the last couple runs I even had trouble upshifting to third...I just couldn't find it. On top of that, a cone was called on my fastest run (I have no idea where), so I had to stand on a slow run. It really wasn't a good course to exhibit all of the car's abilities, which was unfortunate.

Car issues aside, the course design resulted in some..."event management" issues I guess. Due to the loop and crossover, launch intervals were in the neighborhood of 40 seconds, and even that often put two cars close to each other on course, where one car could easily spin out into another. On top of that we got 4 runs, and that made for a pretty long day.

This is where I totally forget everything that happened last week. I think I probably played some video games. A bit of GT4, some Halo 2. It's good to know that an entire week of my life can be boiled down to "I played video games."

Over this past weekend I noticed an odd noise on deceleration from around my front right wheel. When I finally went to check it out, I first noticed that I was missing a lugnut. Wait...that's not right. The other 3 were "fairly tight," in the same way that I was feeling "fairly stupid." As I'm mourning the loss of the poor lugnut, I notice something shiny on the back side of the wheel. Grease, and lots of it. That's rarely a good thing. Off comes the wheel, and the cv boot is torn all the way around the joint, tossing grease everywhere. Sweet.

My first trip to the dealer for the week, and I'm buying nothing but a lugnut, as I don't have any spares, and I'd rather not (knowingly) drive on three. The boot kit comes from BAP, and I drive up to Clint's place for yet another fine boot installation, which generally went well, except for some additional pain caused by my poly bushings in the LCA, and a broken cotter pin.

Second trip to the dealer for the week, this time to get some spare cotter pins. They don't have the exact one I'm looking for in saleable form, but the guy is nice enough to grab a handful of pins from some bins and just give them to me, saying "one of these should fit." Hooray.

I did in fact carve a pumpkin this year, and I finally tried using a stencil. I did The Cheat from homestarrunner.com, as it looked easy and recognizeable (well, if you know the site).

So that's about it, I think I'm caught up now.

Football camaro mount

Went to the ASU vs USC football game on Saturday, and despite ASU's loss, it was really a good game. Held them off until the very end of the fourth quarter, but that was it. Should be interesting to see where we fall in the rankings after the loss.

After the game, I went with Evan to pick up some lightly-used race tires for his Camaro, some meaty 265/45-16 V710s. We meet the guy to buy the tires, and for whatever reason Evan's car won't start. Fantastic. Somehow AAA takes two hours to arrive, and the car gets towed to the dealer. That's exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday night.

Sunday meant Camaro parts buying, with a trip up to Rippy's to buy some used shocks and look at a stack of ESP parts for sale. He just came away with the shocks, but we got some good advice when it comes to actually installing them.

Finally, I built the in-car camera mount that I bought parts for last week. It turned out...mostly ok, I guess. I didn't have a drill press, and I'd say it's near impossible to cut through box aluminum walls in a straight line, at least the way I was approaching it. So the holes for the post are kind of scraggly, and the whole thing has a bit of a tilt to it. Bah. Should still work at least, but it would have been nice to turn out a better-looking product. I still have enough aluminum left that I could make another one of the same dimensions and just re-use all of my hardware, so I might give it another shot when I can use a drill press.

Happy Birthday!

Caffeineslug.com is now three years old this week. :-D

SPEAK UP, I CAN'T HEAR YOU

That was me immediately after going to the Nine Inch Nails concert on Monday night. Actually, the impaired hearing lasted a much shorter time than some others I've attended, probably because I was sitting on the other end of the arena from the stage. That, or maybe I've already lost some of my hearing. ;-)

I thoroughly enjoyed the show. Didn't play that much new stuff, played all the popular old stuff. I've really only come to appreciate their music in the last few years so perhaps I wouldn't get the enjoyment out of it that a long-time fan might, but it was worth attending nonetheless.

My only regret is that we didn't buy floor tickets. If I had known for sure that I'd be standing the whole time, I would have pushed for the floor tickets. As it turns out, some of the lower sections stood for the whole show, some didn't. I could hear the music just fine either way. :-P

Too much sleep

Don't wake up at 1pm and think you'll get to bed at any kind of reasonable hour. It just doesn't happen. >:-O

I actually slept a lot over the long weekend, and as such, didn't get much done. I should have checked Autozone to see if they rent pressure testers for the Integra, but that didn't happen, so I might stop by after the gym today.

Played poker one night with a different group of friends than usual, that was interesting. We started with 6, and after 3 hours there were still 5 people left. I finally got one good hand, the guy next to me goes all in with about $3k, and I call him...except I can't cover about $75 of his. I win, but he's left with $75. That later comes back to get me, as he wins a few lucky hands, gets some money, and he eventually put me out of the game! Bleh.

I also spent some time this weekend trying to burn some tivo'd shows to dvd, to clear out some hard drive space. Victory by Design and Good Eats episodes were taking up about 70gb on a 160gb drive, and I only had 10gb free, so that was no good. I finished off the VBD, and 5 episodes of Good Eats. At 5 episodes per disc, I only have about...14 more discs to go. Awesome.

The good news is that as I use it more, the less I hate Nero for basic video editing. It's pretty easy to take commercials out, so on a normal tv show, it just takes a few minutes now. VBD has about twice as many commercials breaks as a usual show (though they're about half as long as usual), so it takes twice as long to take out the commercials. Thanks VBD.

A couple phone pics

First, I bought Super Scrabble a couple weeks ago, and the other night I was playing a game of it against Evan. About halfway through the game, I finally had my first turn ever where I used all of my letters in one shot - and with a Q on a triple word score, no less! I received 113 points for it, and thought it was deserving of a picture.

Second, I took a pic from my round yesterday on that really long par 3. It's kind of hard to make stuff out unless you've played there and know what to look for, I think. This is standing on the blue tee box (that I didn't even know existed). The very back of the regular tee box is in line with that bridge on the left, showing how much further back the tees were, and the green is way off in the distance. And it's a par 3!

HD golf and Tivo (unrelated)

I probably watched about 8 hours of the PGA Championship over the weekend, being on CBS in HD (well that, and I like golf). Not all of the cameras were HD, and it wasn't necessarily the best HD, but it still looked pretty nice. ;-)

Also, it looks like you can now send videos to your tivo! People always asked me if this was possible, and now that it is, I'm wondering what videos I'd want to watch. The best application I can imagine would be downloaded tv shows, but I don't do that, so I don't know. :-P

More poker income

Not much, but it's there. ;-) Played again a bit on Friday night with some friends. Started with seven people I think it was, I made it down to the last three, but I was low on cash. I was dealt two pairs in a row, couldn't really do anything with them though. Next hand I was dealt another pair, this time 4's. I don't remember how it happened, but I think I went all in trying to get blinds or something. :-P Mason called, had nothing, and I won with my 4's. The next hand, Mason immediately puts me all in again, and I gladly called, as I was dealt a pair of aces. :-D

Of course, I think I was out about two hands later, but I still won $16 on a $10 buy-in, and I think I'm in the black out of all the games I've played thus far (maybe 5 or 6).

I wish I could forget

...what sodas used to taste like. (see the end of this post for background) But no, I still see soda coming out of the fountain, remembering how good it should taste, then I take a sip, and...nothing. Worthless. Bah.

The weather also hasn't helped my laziness any. The Neon has coolant in it again, but I'm an intake away from driving it around the block and checking for leaks. It's bad enough that the afternoon sun makes it pretty hot in the garage, but the increased humidity lately really kills any motivation to work in there. Five minutes and you're soaked. Sweat drips on everything. I'd consider a portable evap cooler or a/c unit, but then I'd have to close my garage door, and that's my only source of light. ;-) Garages with one outlet and no lights are awesome.

Captain, where be the posts?

Yarrr, at the bottom of the sea, where the rest of ye shall be if ya keep asking!

But really, there's no excuse for not posting in what, almost 2 weeks now? Lame. I don't even remember what happened last week, and it obviously wasn't documented here, so I guess nothing happened. ;-) This week, however, I still remember stuff. :-P

My radiator puked a bit on Sunday, prompting an order from Radiator Barn, which showed up yesterday. The box had about a half dozen holes in it, including one nice big gash, but I called the company today, and they said install it anyway. There's no clear damage, so if it works, then great. I'd rather not wait around for another one, and they'll still send me a new one if it turns out that this was damaged in shipping.

Replaced the power window motor in Evan's car this weekend too, and my only comment is that my garage is HOT. As the afternoon sun creeps further and further into the garage (and you wish you had pulled the car in more), the motivation to finish gets that much greater.

Busted out the Dreamcast a couple days ago. Spent the first couple days with the disc of NES games, playing Castlevania and Super Dodge Ball. Last night, played some Chu Chu Rocket and Jet Grind Radio, both a lot of fun. That system was a bargain at $25. :-D

This might be what gets me a PSP...

Looks like Sony will be releasing firmware for the PSP that enables web browsing (including WPA support), among other things. I'll have to try it out to see what web browsing is like on a screen like that, but hey, if I can get to azsolo2.com from anywhere with an open wireless connection, it might just be worth it. ;-)

A Miata-related dream

Weird, right? Me, having a dream about Miatas? Well, sorta.

For most people that like cars, if they were to have a dream related to Miatas, it would probably involve driving one with the top down on some winding mountain road. Not me, it seems. Instead, I had was standing outside a building where some company made aftermarket Miata parts. There were two doors where you could enter - one for inquiries about parts or sales, and the other door was for people that wanted to complain about the fact that the company used child labor to build all of their parts. Wait, what? That was it.

Like I said, it was weird.

DDR-alicious

Decided to get out the DDR pad again, as I've been pretty bad about doing cardio for the last few months (and it shows), and I had a few free hours tonight. Played for about 90 minutes - no headaches, so that's good. Only tried one song on Heavy, one that I had AA'd in the past, and I didn't do too well. Definitely out of practice, but that's to be expected. Maybe if I keep playing more and talk it up a little, I can talk some of my friends into modifying their pads properly...you know who you are. ;-)

New parts, bad news, good news

Parts have arrived! Clutch showed up on Friday, flywheel on Saturday.
Exedy Organic:



Fidanza flywheel:

Hopefully they'll make their way onto the car shortly, to be broken in before the Fall series.

As mentioned previously, a side effect of my new medication is a change in how sodas taste, and I'm afraid that's definitely happened. Imagine a regular soda with about 85% less carbonation and 65% less sweetness - that's what it tastes like to me. Not so good.

But what's the good news, you ask? Beer tastes exactly the same! :-D

HD > *

Last night I was about to go to bed, was flipping through some of the HD channels, and I noticed that Universal HD was having a Battlestar Galactica marathon. I had seen bits and pieces of the show before, but this was the first time I had seen an episode from beginning to end. Not only was the show itself enjoyable, but between the HD video and 5.1 channel DD audio, it was quite the experience. :-D Unfortunately the marathon ends right as I get home from work today, and it probably wouldn't have been the best idea to stay up all night watching it. I'll definitely have to catch the show when it's on again though.

On the not-so-good side of HD, I found out that TNT has an HD station, and they're showing British Open coverage on it. Unfortunately, Cox doesn't give us TNT-HD. >:-O

Woo drugs! :-P I'm now taking Topamax for my headaches, which should be interesting. It was originally prescribed for people with epileptic seizures, but a 5-10x smaller dose is given out now for headaches. The side effects seem to be an odd combination of the good and the bad:
* Taste alteration - or as my doctor said, "carbonated drinks will probably start to taste kind of weird". I think I'm starting to notice this, but I'm not sure yet.
* Reduced appetite/weight loss - can't really go wrong with that.
* Tingling/loss of feeling in extremeties - uh...wha? Oddly enough, my doctor said that taking a vitamin c supplement fixes this, which I don't quite understand. But then, I'm no doctor. ;-)
* Confusion - this one should be particularly interesting. I guess the most common form of this is a slight inability to find the right word when you want it, while some say that it just makes them stupid. Time will tell!

Once I'm over this cough I'm going to try playing tennis again, see if the headaches come back. Autocrossing this weekend should be interesting as well, but I'm betting it'll be ok, and things are generally looking up. At the same time, it's a little discouraging to think that I may have to take these forever. :-\

MRI results and exhaust fumes

The two are completely unrelated, other than the timeline in which they occurred.

Fortunately the MRI said my brain was ok, which was quite the relief. I'm going to have to take some medication to keep the headaches away, but whatever works. I'm really looking forward to getting back to the things I used to do - going to the gym, tennis, DDR, just sports in general. I still have a couple races on my card for F1 Race Factory to use as well. Alas, I still lack the picture of my brain. I forgot to ask for it when I went in, but I'll have another chance when I go again in a couple weeks.

Got my header back on this past weekend, thanks to a good guy at Full Race that fixed it up for me (their Evo 8 manifold increases my Evo-lust significantly). Now I'm significantly less embarassed to drive my car, as it sounds pretty normal. ;-) I bought a small container of anti-seize for a couple of the bolts that backed out of the head (the ones that broke when the original exhaust manifold was removed), and now I have enough to last me until I'm 240 years old. Awesome.

After my last couple purchases being for maintenance, it felt good to order actual performance parts the other day. Ordered an Exedy Organic clutch kit and Fidanza flywheel, and they should be here either late this week or early next week. After looking at what Subaru parts cost (thanks to the 9-2X purchase), I have a greater appreciation for economies of scale and the cost of Honda parts. I was able to buy those parts for only $434 shipped. :-D

After being introduced to the idea of wearing latex gloves during car repair, I have to say that I like it. Hard to beat that combination of dexterity and cleanliness, provided you can keep them in one piece, and you're not working on anything hot. With that in mind, I picked up a box of nitrile gloves at Harbor Freight last week when they were running a sale on them (about 40% off or so). Supposed to be more puncture- and solvent-resistant than latex...and they're blue. As good as they are though, have you ever tried using them in a 120° garage? Within minutes you can hear the water moving around inside the gloves, as your hands do their best impression of a high school wrestler trying to make weight. :-P The gloves just hold in the heat, and your hands keep sweating. Makes it really interesting when you go to take off said gloves, and you spray this disgusting hand-glove-water everywhere that has been collecting for the last 20 minutes. Oh, and your hands look like you just got out of an hour-long bath. Sweet.

Checking my head

Due to the headaches I've been having for the past few weeks, my doctor recommended I have an MRI done to see if there was anything seriously wrong up there.

It was an interesting experience, to say the least. In fact, it was almost like I was in some sort of hallucinogenic dream state while the scan was being performed. The machine made lots of noise, and the whole process lasted about 20 minutes. The type of noise was what made it weird though. Despite having only seen 2001 once (and I fell asleep before the end), the sounds reminded me very much of that movie. Very mechanical, but electronic at the same time.

So anyway, I'd lay there with my eyes closed, listening to these sounds, and I would sort of start to fall asleep, but not really, like it was a very light sleep. I don't remember what I'd dream about, but it always included the sounds of the machine. Then the sound would pause, or change, and I couldn't always tell if the machine really changed, or if I was imagining it. Very strange indeed.

No instant results, so I'll have to go see my doctor again in a couple days to find out how it went. I'm really hoping to get an electronic copy of the scan of my brain though, and if I do, you can be sure I'll post it here. :-D

A few extras

First off, if you ever get a Scrabble rack worse than this, let me know.

Taco Bell's "Cheesy Fiesta Potatos", found at the Taco Bell in Holbrook. Potatos, nacho cheese, sour cream, and green onions. Everything's better with a little nacho cheese. ;-)

Also, I regret not using the phrase "speed holes" somewhere in my last post.

Events of Grandeur

Well, not so much.

I was invited to another poker night with some friends last week...turns out I only knew one person there, but whatever. Two of the people claimed to play regularly online, but whatever. My beginner's luck continued, and I won. :-D Unfortunately the rules for the night were that the top 3 positions were paid, so I only took home about half as much as I could have. That, and we weren't able to get 8 players, only 6. Had a good time though!

The joy that goes with working on cars didn't go unnoticed this weekend, oh no. Err, wait, perhaps it did. One thing went perfect, and that was replacing a trim piece on the passenger side grab handle in my car. :-P

First up, gasket between header and cat. Old one comes out ok, new one goes in, all is right with the world. Or not. When I eventually started up the car later that day, the exhaust sounded exactly as bad as it did before. So it seems that the gasket probably isn't the issue, but the header and cat are both enjoying the feel of a brand new $15+ gasket, I'm sure. Worse though, is my guess that the header has a crack in it somewhere near that flange, and if that's the case, then it has had a crack in it all this time! It always made a bit of noise, but it wasn't too bad until recently. I'll try to find a place that maybe can fix it, I don't know. I didn't really want to buy a shiny new SMSP header right now, but if I have to...

Next, clutch slave cylinder on the Integra. It wasn't too big a deal to replace this, but for some reason we (Evan had shown up by this point) must have been idiots when it came to bleeding the thing. It just wouldn't work for a while, then all of the sudden it worked. Fantastic. So that feels a little better, but I think the clutch really suffered hauling Teresa's stuff up the mountains to ABQ. :-\

Radiator hoses. Easy, right? Not when oem hoses seem WAY too small to actually fit. Woo. Oh, and I find out that my radiator cap is in about 6 pieces (which wasn't the case just a couple weeks earlier). Off to the dealership to see if they have another one. How about I drive the Neon over there? Sure! Add some coolant since I still hadn't replaced the slowly leaking coolant tank, and off we go. Driving, driving...temperature needle just goes up up up. Shut the car down right in front of the Acura dealer. Pop the hood, and coolant is bubbling out of the hose that goes to the heater core. Great. Keep in mind that the Acura dealer is less than a mile from my apartment. Evan has AAA, so he calls them up and they send out a tow truck to get it back to my place. Fortunately the Acura dealer was right there, and while the parts counter was closed, the refridgerator was not. :-D So it was a good place to hang out while waiting for the tow truck.

Back to the apartment. Push the Neon back in the garage, hop in the Camaro to pick up a cap from Autozone so that I at least have one working car. Replace that, then it's time to figure out what to do with the Neon. Out comes the airbox, as it's just in the way. I notice that the hose clamp for the line to the heater core really isn't all that tight. I knew the hose was too big (by a whopping 1mm), but I thought tightening it down sufficiently would be fine. Apparently it wasn't tight enough...of course, this is all assuming that the actual pipe into the heater core isn't cracked. Which would be wonderful, you know.

While the airbox is out, it's a good time to replace that coolant tank. Need to remove two nuts to take it out. First one? Lost. Second one? Fell to a visible but inaccessible place in the engine bay, and I don't have a magnet on a stick. Great. It looked oddly damaged though, so I may just be buying a couple of those.

So that's it for the weekend. Still have to go get the exhaust issue fixed on the Integra, and address the Neon issues. All sorts of fun. :-P

Woo free stuff

Apparently I won a cd on the radio today without doing anything special - I didn't even know until someone told me! :-D Check the right side of the screen. Not the best prize in the world, but come on...free!

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.

Hybrids and "saving money"

So what's the deal with the hybrid bandwagon. Someone sends me a link to this article, where people are paying over new MSRP for a used Toyota Prius, because they want the good mileage. Why, to save money? I really hope not. I put together this spreadsheet (Excel file) to see how much or how long someone would have to drive a Prius for it to really be cost-effective, over something like a Civic. A Civic HX hatchback gets 36/44mpg, for 2/3rds the price of a Prius. Driving 12,000 miles per year and paying $2.40/gallon, the Prius pays for itself in a mere 35 years. :-P Such a deal!

"But I drive way more than 12,000 miles per year" says the whiny hippie. Fine, change it to 20,000 miles per year, and you still need to drive it for 21 years. "But...gas is going to be $3/gallon this summer, everyone says so!" continues said hippie. Fine, $3/gallon with 20k/year and it takes 17 years. $4/gallong? 13 years. $5/gallon? 10 years, and that's still at 20,000 miles per year.

Now all that said, I'm not against hybrids, believe it or not. If companies can build two cars that are otherwise identical, and one gets 15mpg better mileage, that's great. Just don't charge $5k more for it.

>:-O

Senor Bob, and Neon costs rise

A happy Cinco de Mayo to all. I celebrated by going to Macayo's and filling up Senor Bob a couple times, along with a a baja chimi and a good number of chips. Good stuff. Between being full of chimichanga and margarita, and not getting much sleep this week, I think I fell asleep around 9pm, then woke up at 12:15 so I could go to bed. Hooray for 9+ hours of sleep on a weeknight. :-D

The cost of the Neon repair goes up once again - I took the head to a machine shop, and they determined that I needed a new head. The one we had was significantly warped, and it couldn't be machined any more than it already was. The guy at the shop found a rebuildable head for me, and is moving everything over from the old head (well, the stuff that was on it when I gave it go him). So I think I'm looking at about a $600 bill from the machine shop. :-( The car better last forever when I'm done with it. :-P

Forza is just ok. I really don't see how so many sites are rating it higher than GT4, other than the fact that it does a few things GT4 doesn't, so I suppose it's considered "innovative". I still haven't had time for a lot of the career mode, but one thing I've noticed, as was pointed out by someone else, is that you get so many cars early on that I don't really feel like I've earned them. I'm winning easy races in cheap cars, and often getting pretty decent cars in return.

I started out in a Peugeot 206, and left it completely stock for the first two series I won. For the next one, against some faster cars, I added a few mods that wouldn't change my class - minor suspension upgrade, small weight reduction, and an LSD (may have done something else, don't remember). Any change in power or tires would have changed my class, so I didn't feel like doing those. The car now behaves pretty much like I would expect it to, with those mods. Suspension feels a bit tighter, and I'm not getting nearly as much wheelspin around the course. I haven't messed with tire pressure yet, but I suppose if I have nothing better to do one day I may try that. :-P

Great weekend

So...where to start. Friday night I went to the Guinness event again, same one I went to a couple weeks ago. It was fun, but a bit shorter than the other one I think. People were definitely lining up earlier for it, as Evan and I got there at 6:30 and there were maybe 40 people in line in front of us (last time we were maybe 10th or so in line). Still, plenty of beer, meatballs, and tortilla chips were had.

Saturday was my birthday, the big 2-5, and a good day at that. Any day that starts with a bowl of peanut butter captain crunch can't be all bad. ;-) Watched Goldfinger during breakfast - the best 007 movie to date, IMO. Went to Sub Culture Cafe for lunch (I've mentioned it before), also great. Stop by if you're in the area. They're never busy when I've been there, so I hope they stay around a while.

Teresa gave me a great bday present, the Audio Authority 1154A. It's a four-port component video and digital audio auto-sensing switch. It will accept coax or optical audio, and output the audio over coax, or optical, or both. In my particular case, I have three devices using optical audio inputs, and the 1154A sends it to the receiver through the coax audio output. It also let me buy component cables for my PS2 and Xbox - I couldn't do it before, as our tv only has one set of component inputs, and my receiver doesn't have component switching built in (it didn't even have s-video switching!). I'm only using three of the four available inputs, so when we finally upgrade to an HDTV with an HD cable box, I'll be able to plug that in as well. It's advertized as having enough bandwidth for HD content as well, rather than just 480p. Finally, the auto-switching aspect is nice. Say I want to play some GT4 on my PS2. I just turn the PS2 on, and the 1154A switches to PS2 input. Then maybe I want to start up an endurance race, and watch a movie while my B-spec driver completes the race? I just turn on the dvd player, and it switches to dvd input. I finish the movie, turn off the dvd player, and it switches back to PS2 input, with no intervention from me. Nice. Oh, and I finally was able to get rid of my S-video switch. :-D

More softball Saturday night, and we played a lot better than last week. I hit fairly well, and got some time to play the outfield during the second game, which I've been interested in trying. I've pretty much been an infielder for all of my years playing baseball and softball, but it's nice to try something new. During the second game, an interesting thing happened. We have a 2 home run rule, meaning that (in this case) you can only have 2 home runs more than the other team. We got 2 in the first inning, thanks to a slightly shorter fence than we usually play on. Next inning the other team got one, then we got another in the third. So I'm up in maybe the 4th or 5th inning, with two runners on. As the pitcher is getting ready to throw, I decide I'm going to see if I can hit one out. I'm not a home-run hitter, as I usually try for a well-placed line drive or ground ball rather than swinging for the fence. Well, I made a solid hit, and the ball went out, just as I planned. Doh! I totally forgot that we had made another home run a couple innings prior, so mine counted as an out. Perhaps some other time. Softball was followed by a late dinner at NYPD Pizza, complete with several Fat Tires and a free dessert. :-)

More greatness on Sunday. A Costco lunch is always a good start. After lunch, Evan and I did some brake work on his Camaro. Replaced the front rotors under warranty, replaced the rear pads, and bled the brakes. The rear brake caliper tool from Autozone is fantastic. It turned out that his car had a press-in piston, rather than those terrible screw-in pistons, but it worked well for that too (as we didn't have a c-clamp around). I'm definitely going to pick that up any time I do rear brakes, as it's much better than the stupid little $2 tool they sold me before. Everything went pretty smooth, and the car hasn't crashed due to brake failure yet, so I think we did ok.

Finally, I got some Halo 2 time in this weekend, and that has been fun. At least I'm occasionally making use of that Live subscription. :-P A big update comes out today, so maybe I'll try playing again tonight.

GM Autoshow in Motion

Went the GM Autoshow in Motion with Teresa and Evan on Saturday, meeting Brian there as well. A moderately good time was had by all. I didn't get to drive anything in the luxury car area, as we simply ran out of time. There weren't even that many great pictures actually. :-P I'm still glad I went, I just wish I could have gone on a Thursday or Friday when the lines were shorter.

Pics ahoy! (here's the open directory if you just want to browse pics without commentary)

The excited group carpools to the event, cursing ADOT for the closure if I-10 and my usual onramp.

In a Buick Lacrosse, looking at possibly the smallest car there, the Aveo.

Ah yes, that's Evan in the Aveo. Big man, tiny car. A match made in...somewhere strange and unfamiliar.

Me driving the old-man-mobile.

The Lacrosse's dash, quite boring.

Teresa behind the wheel of the 400hp Pontiac GTO, 6-speed manual and all. It made nice sounds.

Teresa again, same car. I didn't really like the temperature controls, but other than that, the interior was livable. I liked the instantaneous fuel usage in gal/hr though. :-D

Me in the GTO, probably saying something lame like "why is the volume knob on the right?", then realizing that the driver would use the steering wheel controls, and the passenger would use the knob. :-P

Evan waiting for the C6 drive around PIR's infield. I think this was taken after someone said "there's free blue cheese in the passenger seat." Alas, the rumor was false.

Brian in the same line. That smirk says "my Miata could take this Corvette any day."

Me in the same line, sporting the not-often-seen black cap. The smile says "look at me, I have a hat."

Feet aplenty. Apparently the photographer is a pegleg. Yarrr!

Evan shoehorning into a red C6.

Evan driving away, either waving to his groupies or airing out his pits. I'm inclined to say the latter.

Me getting into the C6. I think that guy had a grease gun in case I didn't quite fit.

Finally, me driving away. That was really just as exciting as actually driving it, as the passenger had us shifting really early. :-\

Free Guinness

Yes, thanks to the fine people at Guinness, I got to drink a bunch of their beer for free. :-D It was part of their "Believer" tour, touting the goodness of Guinness Draught. The draught isn't exactly my favorite, but I heard they would have extra stout available as well, plus being free and all, it would be a shame not to go. As it turns out, they only had draught on tap, and the extra stout was in bottles. Worse, the extra stout was a bit skunked. :-( Had plenty of the draught though, maybe 3 or 4. Pretty decent appetizers as well, including meatballs, a vegetable tray, boneless breaded buffalo chicken, small fried shrimp, chips & salsa, and some kind of spinach dip. The staff on hand was pretty good about bringing out fresh beer when you were getting low, as well. There are still one or two events left in Phoenix, so if possible, I suggest you go (unless you hate Guinness, of course). Click the link above, and when asked how often you drink Guinness, choose one of the top answers. :-P

I took some pictures at the event, which was held at Jillian's. The room we were in was pretty nice, but dark. As such, the pictures are a bit lacking.

Peanut butter off the port bow!

Peanut butter Captain Crunch is awesome. That is all.

Ok, so that's not all. The Cap'n's first name is Horatio.

Really, that's all now.

Google maps...with satellite!

Google added satellite imagery to maps.google.com the other day, and I'm enjoying it. From what I've heard, the images are anywhere from "fairly recent" to about 2 years old.

Some points of interest:
PIR, AMP, FIR.
My home away from home, the local Costco (it's actually on the southeast corner).
Ken McDonald golf course, where I've probably put in more time than all other golf courses combined.
The ASU main campus, including A Mountain near the top of the page.

Who doesn't like a few pictures?

Last week I uploaded some of the better pics I've taken on my camera phone (well, better is awfully subjective). Pics > text, right? Onward!

1. A fine old car, taken on the freeway to...somewhere. It may have been coming back from a Sierra Vista event I went to several months back. I think the picture came out surprisingly well, given the low light level.

2. Viper in a parking lot. Not so unusual...except it's the parking lot at Costco, and unless you're a regular, you're probably going to walk out with more stuff than will fit in a viper trunk. God help him if he needs to buy toilet paper.

3. Same parking lot! This person might have similar problems. How he drove this to a Costco, I have no idea.

4. LAN tournament at an Athlon 64 launch event. The game was Far Cry, which I had never played before. I made it through several rounds though, and was just a couple kills out of making it into the final four people.

5. These were taken from the balcony outside the main conference room in the new building on Mill Ave., "the brickyard". Good views, and the room was full of about 40 Aeron chairs.

6. Beer pong, sport of kings. Unfortunately this game was played on a smaller-than-regulation table.

7. Soft pretzel? check. Que Bueno? check. Beer? check. :-D

8. The pinnacle of 80's wagondom.

9. Just a little cooler, even though it's not a wagon. ;-)

10. Cone decapitation. So sad.

11. "It's a flavor explosion!!" says the cat.

12. The pummelo. Large grapefruit? Martian spider egg sac? You decide.

13. Shiny race wheels, followed by tire stack comparison. From left to right: 205/50-15 Victoracer V700 on 15x6.5 wheels, 235/45-13 Ecsta V700 on 13x8 wheels, 225/50-14 Ecsta V700 on 14x6 (?) stock Neon wheels.

14. Said race wheels on two different cars. Lots of positive comments on them. There's no doubt that the awesomeness level is high.

15. Finally, what proved to be an meaningless threat. The Wagovan is a good car, and it was lots of fun to drive, but it couldn't quite keep up with the Miata (ok, so 3 seconds off on a 60-second course). Again though, fun to drive, and it looked GREAT on those wheels.

Comments

Ok, so with the new version of the software, I'm going to try opening up comments again. If you'd like to leave comments, please sign up for a TypeKey account. They don't ask for much information, and it just makes things generally easier (I hope). If I start getting a lot of comment spam again, I might have to go to a setup where only people with typekey accounts can post. :-( The format of everything comment-related is still kinda weird, but I'm working on that.

Autocross, 007, sugar

Drove out to the autocross on my new street tires, the Falken Ziex ZE-512. GREAT price, decently quiet, good ride. I enjoyed the course this month - felt like it had a high average speed, but the maximum speed wasn't that high at all, maybe mid-50s at the most for me. Felt kind of busy, and I'm sure my line left lots of time out there. I never really felt that I put together a great run, just mediocre. I'm missing all of that front camber I lost, especially on the two big sweepers on the course. :-\ Fun course though. The "three runs count" idea was interest, and certainly added some pressure when I coned my second run. Ended up with 3 clean runs though, so it wasn't all bad. My pax score counting 3 runs was only one point more than my score counting 1 run, for whatever that's worth.

Leaving the event early meant there was actually time to do other stuff on Saturday, so we finally went to the James Bond exhibit at the Arizona Science Center. It was pretty interesting. They had an Aston Martin DB5 from one of the earlier movies there, which was nice. Also several props, such as the Oddjob hat and Jaws' chrome steel jaws. I especially liked seeing some of the original drawings of gadgets and such, and old movie posters (including a number from other countries), so that was cool.

Last night we finally played my 007 Scene It! game, after an Easter filled with sugar and other generally unhealthy stuff. With just two people it goes pretty quickly unless you play where you can only move when you answer a question right. It really pointed out that, despite liking Bond movies, I couldn't tell you much about them. :-P They're all on my "to watch" list now, along with all of the LOTR movies with commentary. Hopefully I'll pay more attention this time. You really have a shot of doing well if you can remember the following about each movie:
- the name of the movie
- where it was in the order of release
- which actors played Bond
- brief plot summary
- the main villian's name
That alone should give you enough info to make a really good guess at most of the answers.

Alas, in all of that business, there was no time for GT4.

M3 Power vs Quattro

I can't afford either of the new cars that come to mind when reading the above title, and I don't know how the companies managed to come up with such names. Today brings the comparison of the Gillette M3 Power and Schick Quattro razors. :-P Battery vs none! Three blades vs four! Whose cuisine will reign supreme?? (....wrong show...)

I've been using the M3 Power ever since it went on sale at Costco several months back. I used the Mach3 Turbo before that, and the regular Mach3 before that, so there's a bit of history there. Also note that I'm using Turbo blades rather than Power blades (which I think are a bit different), as I bought the Power well before I ran out of Turbo blades. Past experience with the M3 Power has been good. The vibrating feature does seem to work, as I definitely noticed a difference when switching from the Turbo to the Power. The battery also adds some heft to the razor, which I like.

The Quattro is different in a number of ways. Most obvious is the fourth blade, and the head itself seems noticeably larger. The head also has several thin metal strips running perpendicular to the blades, which I believe to to help prevent nicks. The handle itself is noticeably bigger and heavier than the M3, and it feels pretty good. There's lots of metal in the handle, as opposed to the M3's plastic handle. The angle between head and handle is less than the M3, but it doesn't take long to adjust to the difference.

In use, I'd say the Quattro provides an equivalent, yet different, shave. I think the end result was a bit smoother than with the M3 Power, but it came at the expense of comfort. It felt like it was pulling on hairs frequently (or at least more frequently than the M3), and that wasn't so good. But the nick-resistant blades seemed to work, and as I said, the end result was pretty smooth. I suspect that using actual Power blades might bring the M3 back up to the same level. It should be noted that the Quattro was definitely easier to rinse, something the M3 has never done well.

I'm almost out of blades for my M3, so if I were to switch any time, I think it would be soon. That said, I don't know if I will. I've heard that the Quattro blades are more expensive (which I don't doubt), but worse, I don't know if Costco sells them. If not, that would give a distinct price advantage to the M3. I'll continue to use the Quattro until the blade is done, so perhaps it'll last longer to make up for the higher price.

You can't go wrong with either model. If you're using one of these, I don't see any reason to switch unless you're completely out of blades, and want to try something new. :-P

My cat's breath smells like cat food

I thought I'd throw everyone off with a title that doesn't relate to GT4. :-P

I haven't played much in the last couple days, actually. Just haven't had the time. Tonight I started the GT World Championship in the F1 car, and it's going ok, but a bit tiring at times. I just finished Opera Paris Reverse, and it's such a tight track that you really have to focus the whole time. The other problem, I've noticed, is that rumble strips have been transformed into Colored Speed Bumps of Death. If you hit any more than just the edge of one with that car, you get enough air to really throw you off. I'm still getting used to the incredible grip the car provides, even after playing with the F1 cars for many, many hours in GT3. Hitting braking points has turned into one of my biggest issues, as it's easy to hit them too early, then have to accelerate up to the turn. >:-O Just three more races to go now in the series. Oh, and I have to go back and beat Hong Kong again, because that's just an evil track that should die.

Got my tennis racket back from the shop a couple days ago, after I took it in to be restrung. Played a match that night, and things were really hit or miss. I played about 8 games in a row where I hit a lot of good shots, but after that I just fell apart and did lots of stupid stuff. I must have had 10 double faults, way more than usual. Lots of shots going long as well, again way more than usual. I think I ended up losing 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 or something.

Went to Sub-Culture Cafe for dinner tonight, they make some good stuff. It's nice to see a sandwich shop that uses good meats and cheeses, and it's probably worth the extra money. If you're in the area, check it out.

Other items of potential interest

First and foremost, today is Pi Day.

(from H@r@ld's Pi Page)

Also, we bought a Roomba Discovery this weekend, utilizing a 20% off coupon and gift cards from our wedding last year to reduce the price greatly. It's pretty cool. Quieter than a normal vacuum, and definitely smarter. ;-) You can read all of the details about it on the site. Given how rarely we vacuum, this should definitely keep the floors a bit cleaner. Set it to clean when you go out, come home to a clean foor. Sounds good to me. Might not clean as well as a Dyson or some such thing, but the convenience level is very high.

A fine day to live in Phoenix

Great lunch today. Chipotle chicken bowl, sitting outside under a cloud-free sky, right at 70°. Really makes me want to ditch work and play some golf.

Softball, GT4, and necessary purchases

Let's start with "necessary" purchases first. Last week I bought a Samsung HD841 DVD player. Our current dvd player is a Pioneer 5-disc changer, and while I like having a changer, it has had some problems. One, it doesn't always recognize discs, which is a pain. Two, during layer changes and menu repeats, there will be a loud *pop* in the audio, and I have no idea why. This model from Samsung seemed like a great deal - Costco had it for $99, and not only is it really shiny, but it has DVI output and will upconvert to 720p/1080i. It plays SACD's and DVD-Audio as well, but that's not much of a concern for me. Tried it out on a 720p projector, and it looked pretty good. Quite the bargain, IMO. Now I just need an HDTV with a DVI input. ;-)

Also on the necessary spending front, I spent most of yesterday with the Logitech Driving Force Pro wheel & pedal combo for GT4, and it felt great. Now I need to buy one of those, as well as build a frame on which I can mount it. It really made the game a lot more involving. I've always hated wheels & pedals for racing video games, but this one was so much better than any others I've tried.

After that glorious transition, on to GT4! It has been a couple days since I played my own game, so it's hard to remember exactly what I did, but I'll try. I did more of the Special Condition races, completing all of the tarmac events on easy, and the Tsukuba wet race on Normal. The easy Rally d' Capri gave me a Toyota rally car, but I'm undecided as to whether I want to sell it for some quick cash ($250k+ I think), or use it for future dirt/snow rally races. It really should be a lot better than the STi I'm currently using. The easy Tsukuba wet gave an RX-8 Concept, which I think I should be able to build up for the Mazda RX-8 Cup, which in turn gives an RX-8 LM race car - probably the only cool RX-8 in the game. ;-) Tsukuba wet at the normal level gave a Mazda6 touring car, which looks pretty cool, but I have yet to drive it. I don't see any good place to race it, so it might just get sold.

I bought an Elise to use for the British Lightweight and Elise Cup races, but I was fooled into buying the Motorsport Elise. In GT3, I believe it came with adjustable suspension, downforce, etc. Now it doesn't come with any of that, it just costs 40k more than a regular new Elise, and is a bit lighter. Anyway, winning the lightweight race meant I finally got a 1971 Europa, and I used it to dominate the Lotus Classic Cup, winning a '62 Elan. I was going to use the Elan for the European Classic Car Championship, but I don't know that I'll be able to get it fast enough to take on the 300SL or E-Type. Another option is to modify the Ginetta G4, which is probably the lightest production car in the game, at just over 430kg (2/3rds the weight of the Elan). That's about as far as I got.

Not quite sure what I'll do next now. I did a couple of the Honda Type R races, and finishing that series would get me the Honda HSC concept, and that could be cool. I'm not really motivated to finish the FF Challenge and Honda Cup, as you get the Mazda6 for both of them. I might go the 300SL route and do some of the historic races. I could use some built cars I already own to do some manufacturer's races. Or maybe I'll get all bronzes on the B license to get a Lupo to use in the Lupo race. :-P

On to something less nerdy now. My church softball team won the league championship on Saturday, going undefeated in both the season and the double-elimination tournament. In particular though, my highlight was the end of the first game we played that night. In the bottom of the last inning, we had runners on 2nd and 3rd, and needed one run to win the game. I was on deck, and they intentionally walked the batter in front of me. So now I'm up, and I hit a hard shot between the pitcher and 2nd baseman to win the game. :-D

Chipotle rises up

Fantastic lunch today. It was a nice day when I left the cube, so I thought "man, this would be a good day to sit outside Chipotle with a burrito bowl." I didn't get there until 11:30, so I figured I'd have to wait in line for while - not so! Walked right up. Then, for whatever reason, my bowl and drink were free! "Don't ask," they said. Fine by me. :-D So I enjoyed my burrito bowl in the sun, on this fine 70° day. A high point in the day to be sure, regardless of what else happens (though let's hope the rest of the day is equally joyous).

Of course, there's a downside to this - I was going to use the change from my lunch purchase to buy a soda this afternoon, and since I didn't pay for lunch, I now have no $1 bills. :-P

Mr. Chipotle manager & cashier, I salute the both of you.

Underwhelming

Did I spell that right? Perhaps.

Went to Capistrano's for lunch today, as my car is having that alignment done, so I can't go anywhere that's not within a reasonable walking distance. This place is right across the street, and the only place available besides the cafeteria. The sandwich was good, and I like the fact that they use Boar's Head meats and cheeses. My sandwich was a bit smaller than I expected, unfortunately. I was expecting something in the 6" range, and this was maybe 4", 4.5" tops. If I go back, I'll have to get the full size. Also, I asked for the italian, and it looks like I ended up with turkey! Maybe next time.

Underwhelming.

A future in meteorology

I didn't think it would happen two days in a row - forecast shows rain, leave the sunglasses at home, and the sun comes out. As a result, I was sneezing all during lunch. Who needs the weatherman when I can determine rain or shine by my eyewear for the day? :-P

Sunglasses vs rain

Bah. I don't know how I do it, but apparently I can control the weather. It seems that any day where rain is in the forecast, all I have to do is leave my sunglasses at home, and the sun will be out all day. Happened several times this weekend alone. Now I'm all squinty. ^_^

Beer, shoes, shocks

I planned to do this over several entries, but as always, I got lazy. Imagine that.

The El Paso tour is about 10 days away now. I felt pretty good after the autox this past Sunday, as I wasn't hitting cones all over the place like my last couple events. I thought the time was pretty decent too. Brandon was out there taking pictures, and he got a bunch of good ones of my car. If I can overcome the laziness, perhaps I'll post some of the better ones. Here's a sample of what he took that day. Still have some work that needs to be done before the tour, but that's what next week is for, right?

Went to BJ's the other night. One of their special beers that day was called "Quad", described as a "strong Belgian ale". It was pretty good, I'd definitely have it again.

My brown docs have finally been retired. Served me well for almost 9 years. Money well spent.

Koni has finally started making race-valved, pre-shortened shocks for Civics/Integras/CRXs. Front shocks are 25mm shorter, rears are 15mm shorter. All have the SPSS3 (I think that is) valving, which I guess is how they valve most Yellows for racing these days. Hopefully they'll hit the street at about $1k/set. A tempting product for me, as I would have zero downtime in going to a shortened/revalved setup...wouldn't have to go back to stock shocks for the several weeks my current shocks would be out for service. That valving would let me go to higher spring rates as well....hmm....maybe 600/750 sounds good. :-D

And the most recent thing...we had a power outage at home for a couple hours this morning. I woke up to an occasional beeping noise, which I recognized as the UPS for my computer in the other room. I looked up to check the time....where'd the clock go?? Turned out our entire building was dark, and this was around 5:15. After stumbling around in the dark, I set the alarm on my phone for 6:30 so I could get up for work, still having no idea how I would shower in the dark, or get my car out of the garage. :-P Fortunately the power came back on at about 6:40, and I made it out the door in time. Now I just have to go reset all of the clocks. >:-O

Tennis Superstar

Not really. I did, however, win my first match in as long as I can remember last night, which was great. More importantly, I made a couple significant changes over the course of the match, and they both helped a lot. The final score was 1-6, 6-4, 7-5 I believe. After figuring something out with my serve, my first serve percentage went up significantly (from maybe 10% to 50%), and everything that was in, was fast. My weakest spot by far was the one-handed topspin backhand, something I usually do fairly well. Yesterday, it was just terrible. Balls were hitting the ground before the net, that's how bad it was. I think it's from using a new grip with an old swing though, so maybe I can fix that in the future.

A new ice age is upon us

Check out the forecast for today. I think I'm going to need a bigger jacket. :-o

Ugh....sugar overload

This is why the Super Bowl is in January - because you eat enough junk to last you the rest of the year. :-o What was on my list? Let's see...
- M&M's
- Chewy Chips Ahoy
- Oreos
- Nachos
- BBQ potato chips
- Sour cream & onion potato chips
- Pineapple upside-down cake
- Some mash of random mexican food flavors all in one dish
- Sandwich with 2 cheeses and 3 meats
I didn't just have a little of each of those, I kinda had a bunch of all of them. ;-) The game itself I thought was pretty boring. Though that might be just because it's the only pro football game I've seen all season. Whatever.

Things...and stuff

Which Website are You?

Blankness no more!

blah...site has been blank for a week, and I haven't posted anything since January 12th. Nice.

Well, last time I posted, I talked about just getting a Tivo. So what's new with that? The Tivo is fantastic, as expected. I'm no longer missing episodes of Good Eats or Mythbusters. I picked up a USB network adapter, so now I can listen to all of my mp3's in the living room, which is nice, and as soon as my Tivo gets the upgrade, I'll be looking forward to copying shows over to the computer. :-D

Christmas was good, got some nice stuff. I somehow received 24 cans of tennis balls, which I know will be put to use. I used some Christmas cash to buy myself a new racket as well, thanks to a good Big 5 sale. Used a little more of that money to buy a new softball glove as well just the other day, but I haven't had a chance to actually play with it yet.

Car stuff - went to a weigh day, got a chance to weigh and cornerweight my car. I was stupied and filled my gas tank before I went, so I didn't really try for perfect cornerweights. I think we got them to within 19lbs, and I raised the front of the car as well, so I don't think there will be any more tire/fender rubbing issues. The biggest pain was just getting the swaybars reconnected. :-P I was all set to have some offset bushings made as well, but it looks like that won't be happening. There's just not that much camber to gain at the upper arms, and getting camber at the lower arms means increasing the track even more than the wheels already did. So the stock UCAs are going back in soon, and some poly bushings have been ordered to replace the stock rubber bushings with 130k on them.

So what's next? A frigid autox in Tucson this weekend, and hopefully the El Paso NT at the end of February. I think I'll be happy if I don't finish last. ;-)

Hooray, another blank page.

So my site goes blank for a day, and I start hearing about it from people. :-P

Been playing a lot of Halo 2 recently. Haven't touched single player, but multiplayer has been fun. My real goal is to have my level higher than Brian's level. :-D I'm especially enjoying the deathmatch, as I can unplug the headset and play a while. People don't talk to each other much during those matches anyway, and the games are always the same 6 minutes.

Before that I was playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Ton of fun. The nitro add-on for cars is great in San Fierro, as it's modeled after San Francisco, and there are huge hills everywhere, making for some great jumps. I just finished the flying school too, so all of the airports are open to me. There's really just way too much to talk about. I'll definitely be going back to at least finish all the missions.

Looking to the future, it looks like GT4 is still scheduled to be released in mid-December. Can't wait.

The new Rammstein cd is officially released here tomorrow. I think I may buy it. That would bring my total number of cd's purchased this year up to....one.

Here I am, maybe what, 8 weeks after I ordered my new race wheels? Still no wheels. Bah. Who know that heat-cycled-to-death Vitcoracers were harder than Kumho 712's? :-P

Softball! Played the last game of the season on Saturday, with just a tournament remaining. Teresa actually had to play because were were short a few players for the first game, and she came through with a clutch hit in the last inning to help us come from 4 down to win. :-) My glove has seen better days, so I think I might get a new one before the next season. I've had this one since...hmm....I think since I was about 12, and playing little league. Quite a long time.

Update time!

I can't even remember what has happened since the last update.

First, this is where I'll be tomorrow afternoon:

That's the entrance to the new Costco Home store, conveniently located right next to the regular Costco that I visit almost every day.

Item #2: Dinner of champions

Went to Home Depot a couple weeks ago and saw this old wagon I liked. :-D

Saw this one in Tucson. Does everyone in Tucson drive cars this lame? Perhaps. ;-)

To them, I say:

At the same location as the sign, I also saw this fine piece of machinery:

And finally, a decapitated cone.

Unrelated to all these pictures, I picked up the new Grand Theft Auto game on Tuesday, and it's a lot of fun. Great music. I really don't know what to say about the game as a whole, other than the fact that I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

Fun with the new phone

I've had my 6600 for what, a week or so now? I'm liking it so far, just need to find more good software. I'm happy to have a camera with me all the time now, even if the pictures aren't that great. Some stuff from the past week is presented below.

A fine automobile at in the Costco parking lot:

A lesser vehicle in the same parking lot:

Evan and I went to the AMD Tech Tour at the Hilton in Scottsdale a couple days ago. The first picture is of some great ice cream they were serving (well, the toppings made it great). I didn't get a good picture of them, but I had about 6 really good crab cakes as well. :-D The second picture of a lan party they had going on there, all Athlon64-based machines playing Far Cry. I took fifth!

Finally, a few pictures from a balcony on the top floor of the Brickyard in downtown Tempe.

Doth mine eyes deceive me?

Lo! A new car of the week! So, it has only been a month (or two...ok, three) since I had a new COTW. Why the 350Z? It doesn't matter why, I just like them. :-P

The picture I used came from the Fikse site, which has many other very nice pictures of cars with exceedingly expensive wheels. I particularly like the Christmas-tree-hauling Mercedes. :-D

Reise, Reise update

When Rammstein's new cd was initially released, they also listed released dates for other countries. The US and Canada won't get it until November 16th. :-( Why Israel gets it over a month before us, I have no idea. :-P

New Rammstein CD

Finally, Rammstein is releasing their new cd Reise, Reise. It's due out on September 27th in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Who knows when it will get here, but this will probably be the first cd I've purchased in a while.

Garbage is releasing a new cd as well (probably next year). That's two cd's I might buy within a year!

Star Wars is looking great

Yeah, I don't post for a solid two weeks, then 3 posts in a day. I know.

Picked up the Star Wars original trilogy from Costco on Tuesday, and finally sat down to watch Episode IV last night. I'm amazed at how good it looks (despite being on a 27" tv using s-video), and it's been forever since I've seen SW in widescreen. Anyway, I'm glad the movies are finally on dvd, and I can't wait to watch the other two.

Time for a new phone

With my phone acting up (outside display going blank, then main display going black) and Teresa's phone being generally beat up, it was time for something new. Ordered two new Nokia 6600's from Amazon last night, so I'll finally have a camera phone, and I like the fact that it can sync with Outlook. $25 AR, so the total price is pretty cheap. They both should be here around the end of next week I think, so that should be fun.

Happy Birthday!

Caffeineslug.com is 2 years old today. :-)

Woo for cheap furniture

The battle begins!

Costco Home: opens October 29th.
Pros - it's Costco!!
Cons - probably more expensive than Ikea.

Ikea: Open November 10th.
Pros - Sweeeeeedish. And they have meatballs. :-)
Cons - probably lower-quality furniture than Costco.

Who will take it? Who's cuisine will reign supreme?

Return of the great Costco sample day

Having endured several weeks with mediocre weekday lunchtime samples at Costco, today was almost as good as a weekend (in quality, though not quantity). Waffles (with syrup or whipped cream), corn dogs, bbq chicken wings, and "meatball and mozzarella" lean pockets topped the list. They also had some sort of fake meat substance. :-P In related news, at least one California Costco now offers their hot dogs at the food court with either a bun or a low-carb wrap.

World Beard and Moustache Championships

I didn't even know something like this existed, but it has to be the coolest thing ever. Be sure to check out the categories and the gallery!

Mmmmm....garlicy

Another lunch at YC's today, and wow, am I smelling like garlic. I'm sure one day my co-workers will buy a bubble where I can reside after lunch to contain the smell. :-P

Costco sample jackpot

One of the best sample days in recent memory:
1. chocolate cake
2. corn dogs
3. hot dogs
4. chicken egg rolls
5. beef taquitos
It was like having an extra meal!

*How* many people were in that van?

Saturday morning I was taking my dad to the airport (a little before 6), and as we're driving on I-10, we see this white 15-passenger van with Mexico plates being followed by a police car with its lights on. After being followed for several miles, the van exits at Broadway and slams on the brakes, throwing plenty of tire smoke into the air. It comes to a stop, and I see 6 or 7 Mexicans jump out of the van and just start running down the off-ramp. I couldn't see if there were any more, as we had already passed them at that point, but it was still pretty funny. On my way back home the van was still there, but with maybe 6 police cars around it.

Costco discoveries

While doing my post-hot-dog Costco browsing, I see that they have introduced two fantastic new items since Wednesday:
1. Haier Stainless-Steel Kegerator, $500
2. The Complete Far Side: 1980-1994, $80

#2 is especially tempting!

Operation Cheap Lunch: Extended Edition

...has come to a close. After 8 consecutive work days of spending <$3/day on lunch, today I spent $4.59 at a Jamba Juice right next to where I got my haircut. I tried one of their new flavors, which is supposed to have "1/3 fewer calories". While waiting for it to be finished, I checked out their book with the nutritional information. 440 calories vs the typical 700-ish for a regular one, with 53g of sugar vs 90-ish. They're sweetened with Splenda, apparently, and I would guess that the rest of the sugar (or at least most of it) is naturally produced by the fruit.

So anyway, that's the end of the cheap lunches. Average price over the 8 days was $1.64.

Gee, what a surprise

Another hot dog for lunch! You'd think I would get tired of them after a while...oh well.

Another day, another hot dog

Went to Costco again. Today, however, I learned that the Simpsons Season 4 box set has been released, and they're carrying it for $30.99. Woohoo!

It continues???

No, Operation Cheap Lunch is over, but the spirit of cheapness still remains. Another $1.62 Costco special today. :-D

Operation Cheap Lunch: Day 5

As the battle draws to a close, Day 5 brings me back home to more chicken strips, garlic hommus, and diet code red. Estimated cost: $2.50.

Total lunch spending for the week: $8.24. :-)
Total pieces of gum consumed in an effort to mask garlic breath: lots.

Operation Cheap Lunch: Day 4

Day 4 takes me back to Costco for the second consecutive day. Total cost: $1.62. Another success. One more day to go!

Operation Cheap Lunch: Day 3

Day 3 of my quest takes me to Costco, in search of the famous hot dog & soda combo. Total cost: $1.62. Success again! 3 for 3 so far. I should also note that Costco has gone to new napkin holders, and blue 20oz cups.

Operation Cheap Lunch: Day 2

Lunch today was a plate full of grilled chicken strips from Costco, with some Waleed's Garlic Hommus and a glass of Diet Code Red. Estimated cost: $2.50. Cost of keeping co-workers and vampires away with garlic breath: priceless. Success!

Car of the Moment

Yes, that's updated too! The new Chrysler 300C. I like it.

Operation Cheap Lunch: Day 1

This week I'm on a quest to spend less than $3 at lunch every day this week, after spending $6+ every day last week. Today I had lunch at my parent's house. Total cost: $0. Success! :-D

DVDs galore

After finally obtaining another DVD rack the other day, I finally combined Teresa's DVD's with mine, and the DVD Collection link has been updated. Up to 194 now, I believe. :-o

Softball game last night...

...leads to a nice big bruise on my shin this morning. Yeah, I'm sure I won't hit that on anything over the next few days. Woo.

Come here looking for wedding pics?

Here they are.

I'll try to get a permanent link up soon.

Weddings pics are up

You can see them here.

Full-size pics available on request, just send me an email and I'll find a way to get them to you.

Some...stuff

Moved my old bed over from my parents' place tonight...it's like having a real guest room now. :-P People can finally stay here!

My wedding present from Teresa came the other day - a Lucasi L-D3 pool cue. Played with it for the first time the other day, and it's pretty nice! It looks good, feels solid, and hopefully it will improve my game a bit.

My tv card came last week, and I'm definitely enjoying it (it helps that it was pretty cheap). There's no tv in the room with my computer, but with two monitors, there's plenty of desktop space. Now if only I had cable. :-(

And yeah, I haven't had a "car of the whenever I feel like it" in a while. Sorry. :-P

Wow...old stuff under the bed

Going through more of my stuff today, I found some old games that belong to my dad and/or his siblings.

First up, an old hockey game. You know the type I'm sure: metal players, each controlled by a stick that can be moved in and out, as well as rotated. No idea what year it's from. (click for larger pics)

Next, the APF TV Fun, model 401, from 1976. One of many pong consoles from that time. Took a whopping 6 "C" batteries! I think I brought it home a while back (since I didn't have a real video game system until partway through high school), but all of our tv's were too new to hook it up properly. :-P

Finally, Computer Football from 1969. Basically, the person on offense would pick their play from the table. Then the person on offense would press one black button and the red button, and the person on defense would pick one black button. The combination would light up the bulb on one row, and you matched that with the column for the play you chose. Then just do what the table says (interception, fumble, number of yards gained/lost).

Still cleaning out that closet...

More stuff. First up, the putting mat. Might take a while to fully relax once you take it out of the box. Slight left to right break, iirc. Want it? Come get it.

Next, some crazy shoes I bought and never wore (well, wore them once maybe). Make an offer if you're interested.

Finally, I have a lot of stuff in my "garage sale" box now. Old baseball bats, a basketball, rollerblades, The Club, an XXL Compusa shirt (still in the bag from when I worked there, it was too big!), and a bunch of other stuff. What fun.

Again, more stuff

First, the golf balls. Take anything in that tray you want, except the spike wrench. Some of those golf balls might be older than me. :-P

Second, a gigantic K&N air filter. Used for maybe 3 months. Dimensions of the filter section are approx. 8" long by 5" diameter. Make an offer...or maybe just show up at my door and ask for it, whatever.

More free stuff!

Ok, well not really free. :-P Anybody wear polo sport? The big bottle is full, small bottle is mostly empty. Big bottle seems to retail for a little over $50. If someone would like to give me half that for it, I would be most appreciative. The little bottle would be free. LMK.

Anyone know where to find this?

It belongs to my parents, actually. Leroux Triple Sec, 60 proof. Probably kinda old, as I've never seen them drink it. :-P If you know where to buy it, please let me know.

The things you find in your room when cleaning...

Hooray for Penguin mints. :-)

Free stuff

I have several of these dvd holders that I need to get rid of:

I have maybe 8-10 or so. Let me know if you want them. :-P

Great, I see my own site and it's blank.

I guess I need to post more. :-P

Last night I moved all of my A/V stuff from my room to the new apartment. As is the case with any good project, I had a bunch of leftover parts (about 8 cables) when all was said and done. The setup should be a bit better than what it was before though. My room looks pretty empty now with all that stuff gone.

New tires! Toe-out with plenty of negative camber finally got to the old 712's, and I corded one of them last week. Time for a new set, and probably an alignment.

This is me after 2 great margaritas, a huge and delicious steak kabob (nearly a pound, so I'm told), and about half of an equally-sized chicken kabob.

And finally, a pic of me putting gas in a thirsty '89 Suburban that I used to move stuff. At least it takes regular.

What? You want updates?

My laziness shows through once again. Some stuff to read, in no particular order:

I started taking a C# class at CGCC a couple weeks ago. Since I'm still unemployed, it's nice to actually be doing something. The class is still pretty easy so far, because there are a couple people in the class that have never done any programming. I haven't learned a new language in a while though, so it's fun.

I ran in the first National Tour event of the year a couple weeks ago [results]. The Miata in my class busted out Hoosiers for the dry stuff, so that hurt. A poor performance the first day meant I ended up third. Lots of rain...and so cold, most of the weekend. One of the longest weekends I've had, ever.

Like I said, I'm still unemployed. I've been playing a lot of video games lately, mainly PGR2. I got all golds in the Kudos World Series, and all-platinums is impossible, so now I'm pretty much just playing online. I should probably try playing some other games now and again. :-P

The fall season autox banquet was last week, and plenty of fun. Besides the t-shirt trophy, I walked away with a little pewter pylon, a bottle of wine, and a 12V tire inflator. The food was good and the drinks were expensive, as usual. A good time though!

The wedding is now 38 days away. :-o

I owe the state gov $190. >:-O

I guess that's about it.

Latest COTM

The recent Car of the Moment is the 2004 BMW Williams F1 car, with it's funkdafied new nose. :-P More pics available here.

Guess I gotta say *something*

Looks like my lack of posting has caught up with me, as the front page was blank last time I checked.

My list of xbox games has continued to go up...in addition to PGR and Halo, I now have PGR2, Top Spin, Crimson Skies, DDR Ultramix, and SSX Tricky. In PGR2 I'm probably 60% done with getting all the golds in the kudos world series or whatever it's called, with some silvers on kudos challenges holding me back. I had enough tokens to buy the "good" cars for each class though, so playing online should be a little more fun now. I got to "Legend" status and #1 in the world in career mode in Top Spin, but I haven't played it since. Crimson Skies I've only played a bit online, there just hasn't been time for it. DDR is pretty fun...I bought a couple pads on ebay, and given that I had never played before, it's tough. Definitely a different learning curve than most other games. I've probably spent the most time this week playing more Tiger Woods '04. Had my first double eagle about a week ago, then another one a couple days ago. Finished the World Tour, maxed out my player's stats, and now I'm just trying to win PGA Tour events.

So, yeah, I've pretty much just played video games since Christmas.

I did manage to get some cool stuff for Christmas. Teresa gave me Samba de Amigo maracas, which was really cool. Have to send back the set in the smaller box though, they don't quite work. Got a replacement tire pressure gauge, a couple video games, xbox controller, some dvd's, and the aluminum jack from costco. Time for pics!
Maracas:

I used to play Jeopardy on the N64 all the time with a couple of my friends, it's a great game! :-)

Teresa also gave me the Indiana Jones set, and Volume 2 of the 007 box sets.

New Car of the...uh...Moment

I said to Teresa, "quick, name a cool car!" The Diablo was her response. :-D

I'm not good at writing updates

So I'll try harder, but no promises! Same goes for that "Car of the 'Week'".

Found it!

Yes, the mp3 player was in fact in the pocket of the pants I wore that day. When I realized it was missing, I must have checked the wrong pair of pants! It got dressed this morning and found it. :-D

Ah, good weekend

Thursday, two Thanksgiving dinners! Plenty of turkey, vegetables, etc.

Friday I got up early for the annual day-after-thanksgiving shopping at Best Buy and Circuit City with some friends. Got there around 5:30am, and the line was already quite long...we were about 5 stores from the beginning of the line (not small stores, mind you). I found a few of the things I was looking for, but not everything, unfortunately. Plenty of great deals that I just couldn't bring myself to spend the money on. I felt bad about not buying more, even.

Hmm...

It seems that I may have misplaced my recently-purchased mp3 player. I usually take it to work with me. Last time I remember having it was taking it home for lunch on Monday...but I don't remember if I took it back to work or not. It's not likely that I left it at work, because it sits right next to my cell phone on my desk, and I took that home. I haven't done a complete search of my car, but I know it's not under my seat or in the main storage areas. I can't seem to find it at home anywhere either.

I hope I didn't lose it. :-(

Car of the week?

I finally found a car suitable for Car of the Week - the Mitsubishi Starion. I've seen one around campus lately, and it's just a cool car. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any good pics of one. If anybody has one, feel free to pass it on.

Goldfish

The bad news: original Goldfish have 19g of carbs per serving.
The good news: one serving is approximately 55 pieces.

Goldfish are good.

Testing some new software...

Blah _blah ^blah

Stats

Thought I'd post a couple graphs.

First, my autocross stats. Every autocross I've done since I started is listed, color-coded by class. Here it is.

Second is a graph of weight vs time, which I started 2 weeks after my diet began (on 4/1/03). As such, you'll see that it starts at about 230lbs, rather than the 240lbs I actually weighed when I started. Just recently I hit my driver's license weight of 190, something I haven't been at since late '95. Here's the graph.

wow

Having never done anything remotely close to this before, I actually ran for 20 minutes straight tonight, which was a little over 2 miles. :-O

New cotw

CotW for this week (late, I know) is the Mercedes E55. I like the HP wars. 469hp @ 6100 rpm, 516ft-lbs @ 2650 rpm. That's good stuff.

New car of the week

The new car of the week is the Acura NSX. I like the fact that older models are finally getting affordable! Plenty out there for under $30k.

Car of the week

As you may have noticed, I added a car of the week feature on the left column. I've been meaning to comment on them as I post them...basically, whatever car I'm liking that week becomes the CotW.

The first one was a TDI Jetta. I liked the idea of low-end torque, pretty good mileage, and a generally useful car (and I still sorta miss my old Jetta).

Week 2 belonged to the 3rd generation RX7, just because it's one of the coolest cars out there. :-P

Week 3 was the 850 Csi, 12 cylinders of goodness in a great-looking body.

And this week, the Aston Martin DB5 - James Bond's car of choice for several movies, including one of my favorites, Goldfinger.

new toy

I finally went and bought a portable mp3 player this weekend - the iRiver iFP-380T.


The link has all the specs on it. It's tiny, easy to use, and it's on sale at Best Buy this week. The only downside is that it doesn't include the arm band, which is included on the 256MB and 512MB versions.

It's about time!

All 20 007 films will be released in three box sets on November 18. :-D
news article

I have the first set (released a few months ago), and I really can't wait for the next two. According to the article, it looks like they'll stop printing the Bond DVD's just a couple months after the holiday release.

Yarrrr!

I finally saw Pirates of the Caribbean last night. It was great! There's really a shortage of good pirate movies out there. If you go see it, stay until after the credits.

So much suffering

Internet connection is still down at home. :-( Someone's supposed to come by and fix it today - hope it'll be ready to go when I get home this afternoon!

Minibosses!

I just got back from a "concert" (I use that term loosely), where I experienced three concert-related firsts:

1. First concert that was BYOB


2. First concert in a storage facility


3. First concert where I show up, and a small pack of nerds is playing Magic while waiting for the first band to start

Next up was a band called The Sharp Ease, an all-girl band out of LA. They had a good drummer, and the music was pretty good overall, but I didn't really care for the lead singer that much (who found a way to work interpretive dance into the songs, it seems).

The final group was The Minibosses. This group doesn't even have a lead singer. All they do is cover Nintendo theme songs! Only the original Nintendo games, nothing from Super Nintendo or newer. All the classics were there - Castlevania, Megaman, Contra, Punch-Out...I really enjoyed listening to them.

So why did I put "concert" in quotes earlier? Like I said, it was in a storage facility of sorts. The room we were in was maybe 15x40 or so, and aside from band members, there were probably only 25 people there. Most of which were nerds that came to see the Minibosses. :-)

Look what the cat dragged in...

Somehow our cat managed to bring a live hummingbird into the house! It flew around for a while, and is now perched above the front door:

Ah, the semester is over

This will be my first semester with a GPA greater than 3.0 in a while, so that's good. Aside from a couple short vacations, it's nothing but work from now until late August. Hopefully I'll have enough saved at the end of the summer to buy some cool stuff.

My GT3 completion % is slowing making its way towards 100. In the last update I forgot that the arcade mode time trials counted towards completion, so I went back and did most of those. All I have left there is the first rally stage and the complex string. I finally completed all of the professional races, so now all that's left is the endurance races, and they shouldn't be as tough as the TT's, just more time consuming (~12hrs for the remaining enduros). 98.2%, I'm almost there.

Last month

I no longer feel bad about not updating the site that often. I don't do much that's news-worthy. I'll try to cover the last month here though.

I started playing golf again! Hadn't touched a club in several months, but the weather has been perfect lately, so I went out there. Shot a 44 for 9 holes my first time out, then an 81 (38/43) a couple days later on the same course. I'm really looking forward to more golf this summer - one of my golfing buddies in Tucson is coming back to the game after surgery, and his brother is going to be back up here this summer to work. Plenty of opportunities to play more! That said, I'm going to work on that web-based golf stats program I made a few months ago. I have a local test environment this time, so hopefully things will progress a little quicker. I plan on starting from scratch and planning it out, rather than just hacking the whole thing together as I learn php and mysql a little at a time.

A couple weeks ago I went to Speedway for the first time with some autocrossing friends - it was a blast! Not quite what I expected (in a good way). Results can be seen here. We're going again this weekend, so I hope to make a decent improvement.

Shortly after my last update I started the Atkins diet, and it's going pretty well so far. Today is the first day my scale has read less than 225lbs in a long time. My first goal is 215, then 200, then my driver's license weight of 190 (when I was 16 and only 5'11"). Eventually I'd like to get to around 175 or so.

New Years update

Happy New Year! I haven't updated this page in nearly two months, so I figure it's about time I said something.

First of all, I'm now engaged! Hooray me.

Bought a new cell phone with some Christmas gift cards - the Samsung S105. It's pretty cool, if I do say so myself. Big color screen, among other things.

Speaking of Christmas, I got some pretty cool stuff! A bunch of my friends chipped in to buy me a new header for my car, which a fellow autocrosser had put up for sale. Can't wait to install it! I somehow received a ton of Simpsons-related stuff this year - the Simpsons Trivia Game, a Homer bottle opener, some boxers with just about every character imagineable, a freezable beer mug, and one of the Burger King watches. Also got a 19.2V cordless drill/light/screwdriver set, a couple dvd's, a few PS2 games, a new PS2 controller, and a vast array of gift cards.

I actually passed all of my classes this semester, in the hardest semester yet. Hopefully it'll all be easier from here on out.

Going back a little further, I went to the Phase I Evolution school for autocrossing - I think it helped me a lot, but I still have to work on implementing what I learned. I didn't do much better than usual at the next event after the school.

Stuff that magically showed up at my door last week

1. Netgear 2-port print server
2. Skunk2 camber kit
3. 1.5x and 0.65x lenses for my video camera

It was a good week.