Chaos Terminal

2008-01-09T16:10:00.000-08:00

It's auto show season and I'm already lusting after a few of new concepts:

The new Saab interior is very Saabesque but gorgeous. This just goes to show how numerous, minor, incremental tweaks can improve a design from acceptable to breath-taking.

The press pictures are contrast-deprived and reduce the visual punch the CTS-V should have, but again, the interior! I would gleefully slip into the luxurious folds of those seats, caressed firmly yet gently as I forced my will upon the highway with 550 HP.

2007-12-21T13:15:00.000-08:00

I think I've figured out the perfect automotive combination for performance-minded people in Seattle. Many of us spend upwards of 1.5 hours every day driving between Seattle and the Eastside, usually in stop-and-go traffic. The side streets of Seattle experience congestion as well and our hills are second only to San Francisco. Sounds like a terrible place to own a manual, eh? It is, to be honest. I've got 39k miles on it now and I'll be damned if my clutch makes it past 50k. You know those people that get 300k miles on a single clutch? Their daily commute takes them from Bumblenowhere, Ohio to Flatsville, Kansas. Clutch longevity isn't about miles, it's about clutch engagements and how rough the engagements are. I digress.

Though it is not available in many vehicles as of yet, the DualTronic transmission from Borg-Warner seems to offer the performance benefits of a manual with the ease of an automatic. The DualTronic, known to many as the DSG in various WV Group products, is a computer-controlled, dual-clutch transmission. Since it uses clutches instead of torque converters, you get none of the parasitic loss of an automatic transmission. The two clutches can independently engage different gears, the algorithm of which can be changed on the fly. If you're on a Sunday drive, gently accelerating while in third gear, fourth gear will be pre-selected. Well below red line, the first clutch will disengage and the second one will smoothly grab onto fourth gear. Looking for performance? The system can be put into full manual mode. The algorithms can be changed such that if a potential downshift situation is detected (sudden reduction of the throttle with concurrent application of brakes, for example), the second clutch could pre-select a lower gear instead and rapidly snap to it as decelleration is detected (8 milliseconds is the publicized shift time). Good compromise, eh?

Even better than just having the option of throwing your DualTronic into automatic mode would be the inclusion of Bosch's Adaptive Cruise Control. Available on various luxury makes such as BMW and MB, the latest version is capable of full stop-and-go control. I'd absolutely adore being set a maximum cruise speed of 65 MPH and then let the car get me across 520. I'd definitely be attentive and not place full trust in the technology, but this would allow me to relax my left foot and frustration after a hard day of work.

I bet that the 2009 BMW M3 will be the first vehicle available with this combination of technologies. BMW have announced they will offer a DSG-style transmission at some time for the M3 and sources say it is coming in the spring of 2008. BMW already offers adaptive cruise control as an option so they may incorporate the latest stop-and-go system by then as well. It'll be years before this combination is available at a reasonable price.

2007-11-27T11:25:00.000-08:00

It only took a few months of calendar time and about twenty hours of actual time, but my photo gallery is finally available at bibik.org! It has been updated with numerous pictures from this year, as well.

2007-10-31T13:19:00.000-07:00

Home Theater Plans!

What I have now:

Audio/Video

Onkyo TX-SR504 7.1 110W A/V Receiver

Onkyo Front / Centers : Dual 5" woofers and 1" tweeter

Onkyo Surrounds: 3.1" woofer, 0.75" tweeter

Onkyo Subwoofer: 230W 10" woofer

Westinghouse 37" 1080p LCD

Xbox 360 Premium (no HDMI)
Composite-only set-top box

Crappy speaker wires from the Onkyo HTIB
Wooden speaker stands for fronts and surrounds

During the move to the condo, all of my surround speaker stands broke so I'm currently running 2.1 audio. Since I finally own a place, I figured I can finally do something decent with the surround speakers. Since I'm in a condo, I can't run the speaker wires completely hidden in the wall (no access to ceiling or floor and no desire to rip open the wall at every stud!). I looked into a few different ideas for hiding the wires:

Under the baseboard
Under the carpet
Using flat wire and painting over it
Run cable raceway along either the baseboard or crown molding

The only solution that seemed to work would be to use raceway so I picked up a few hundred feet of corner raceway from CableOrganizer. The room with the home theater has a bay window, a few hallways, et cetera so the only way to run the cable is as such:

From the receiver down to the baseboard
Over to the bay window wall
Up the wall to the ceiling
Across to the wall parallel to the TV
Along that wall to the wall parallel to the bay window
Part way along that final wall

The raceway was just delivered last night and I'm quite impressed. It's attractive, well-sized, durable and not too heavy. Installation shouldn't be a problem at all. Based on this fairly annoying Dolby site and the fact that I have to mount the right surround at a certain spot, I've found what I would consider the optimal positioning for the four surrounds. I'm going to get some cheap wall mounts that offer some adjustability.

Here is where I'm not quite so sure as to my plan. I know the speaker wires will be run along the ceiling and then will have to drop a few feet to the speakers. I could try to make it look extremely clean by running the wires behind the wall for that short stretch but that would require putting EIGHT holes in the wall. I could make very small holes; just enough to fish the wires. I could install keyhole plates but if I'm running the cables to the exact location of the speakers, why bother? I could also just run more cable raceway down the wall. I think I'm just going to run the wires bare for now while I contemplate these options.

I am going to toss the included speaker wire, get some bulk wire and do this right. I'm pricing wire out from Blue Jeans Cable, Parts Express and Monoprice; looks like PE is winning. I'll run bare wire at the speaker and use banana plugs for the receiver side. Using those plugs will alleviate the headache of trying to do side-entry screw posts for 18 connections of 12 gauge wire! Just getting these speakers finally mounted and using some quality wire should help immensely.

But what about after that? The TV is currently sitting on an ugly IKEA TV bench, the 360 is hiding behind that, the cable box on the other side and the receiver is the only thing in the bench. Unfortunately, the only place for the center channel is under the bench! Highly suboptimal. My desire would be to wall-mount the TV, wall-mount the center channel just beneath the TV and hide all the cables. Hiding the power for the TV would require something like a PowerBridge and right now, the TV itself is doing all the video switching. It has to deal with the 360, cable box and the PC I have just off to the side. Running all of those cables up the wall sounds terrible! The receiver I have now can do 3x component and 3x composite in and does composite out. That would cover everything but the VGA (or DVI) in from the computer, which I can deal with for now.

An HDMI-switching receiver would be a great investment as I could just have the single HDMI cable run up to the TV. I could even use a DVI-HDMI cable to connect the computer to the receiver. I'd also replace the TV bench with an open component rack, for better cooling. The receiver and 360 both get extremely hot! Since I would have space on the rack, I'd probably get either a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player to enjoy the setup. At that point, I might try to upgrade the speakers but they seem fine to me. I'm not an audiophile by any means.

Ah dreams, oh for the want of time and money to make them true.

2007-10-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

Clare and I just found the cutest cat in the whole world and he's turning out to be quite the lover!

We had been scouring petfinder.com for the last few weeks, toying with the idea of getting a cat. I'm pretty much settled in to the condo, Clare is staying with me every night and we both wanted a pet. She's more of a dog lover but my little condo just couldn't support a dog lifestyle. We've sent each other tens of petfinder.com links but none of them seemed like "the one". Finally, Clare sent a link early one morning titled "HHHOOOOOOONNNEEEYYYYYYY!!!" and a wave of realization hit, here was the one!

I had a few criteria in mind when picking out a new cat. These criteria were not of the "must have" variety, but more of the "must not be" variety:

Cannot be a kitten. Everyone wants a kitten. Kittens only temporarily end up in shelters; they get snatched up immediately.
As a corollary: cannot be fairly young. No one wants an older cat, so the older, the better I would feel about adopting.
Cannot be in perfect shape. A healthy, pretty kitty will be adopted over time. There is little chance a healthy, well-behaved cat would have issues being placed in a wonderful home.

The cat that Clare linked to was six years old, had a teratoma removed from his neck and needed a tooth removed. On the other hand, you could tell he was so sweet and once healed up, would be beautiful! He's a Siamese mix: mostly a domestic short-hair body but with blue-points and the cutest blue cross eyes! We ran through a few name ideas but since he's mostly a light cream color with blue points, I came up with the name Roquefort, or Ro for short. Here he is:

2007-09-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

I'm a bad dork. For the first time since my parents bought a Tandy 1000 and then some Acer with a Pentium 60, I've purchased a computer instead of building my own from parts. I've been running my last homebuilt computer for over five years now and loading a simple video now takes five steps:

1) Shutdown all other programs
2) Fire up Task Manager
3) Kill any rogue process that is taking up more than 10% of the CPU (I'm looking at you, trustedinstaller.exe! Hey, svchost, pipe down!)
4) Fire up the video and pause it after it thrashes for 20 seconds like a fish outta water.
5) Promote the wmplayer.exe priority to High, but NOT real-time. High allows the player to suck up enough resources to play a video properly, real-time seems to override the scheduler causing... problems.

After watching the first four seasons of The Sopranos in this fashion, I decided enough was enough and started trolling for deals on new computers. After realizing that buying a pre-made system was cheaper than assembling one, I focused on Dell deals. Finally, I picked up this system for only $520:

Core 2 Duo E6550 (2.33 GHz)
1 GB RAM
80 GB SATA drive
DVD-ROM
20" LCD

That processor stuffed in a mini-tower with those other components sorta seems like stuffing an AMG 6.2L V8 into a Festiva (...if only engines were free, I'd have a great LeMons car there) but my old computer has a DVD burner and I'll upgrade the new computer over time. That processor retails for $200 on its own, same with the monitor!

I barely booted the computer before reformatting the drive and installing a fresh copy of Vista Ultimate. So far, I'm happy with the box and the 2 GB of RAM I have coming my way will only improve the situation.

2007-08-31T12:34:00.000-07:00

Last night, Kendra and Brendan invited me out to Bleu to meet a coworker, Aric and his wife, Cherie. He's a well-read, activity-focused editor for Amazon, she has rapier-sharp wit and a knack with words to the point where she's a highly-proclaimed author. She has a large following and I'm assuming he does as well, considering how engrossing his blogs are. It felt good just to be in their presence.

2007-08-31T11:21:00.000-07:00

I do not understand how to live life for myself.

I'm so afraid of what other people think that I never challenge myself, I focus my energies into characteristics and abilities that come naturally and I spend too much money on trinkets (some of which costing hundreds of thousands of dollars) to bring more positive attention to myself.

I'm trying to get over this. Paying attention to the attention only causes anxiety, reducing my abilities and making me look worse to other people. 'Tis a silly cycle but it's a roundabout with an a single entrance that closes behind you. I've spent numerous years fearing failure to the point where I've been paralyzed into doing nothing certain nights but reading (and not posting to) internet forums. I'm going to beat this.

2007-07-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

Travel pack list:

Clothing

Shirts
Undershirts
Pants/shorts
Underwear
Socks
Shoes
Special requirements?

Swimming
Rain
Formal function
Hiking
Exercising

Toiletries

Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Shaver
Shaving cream
Hair brush
Hair product
Deodorant
Cologne
Medicine

Electronics

Camera

Memory cards

Charger

Cell phone charger
MP3 player

Travel-specific accessories

Passport
Book
Pillow
Snacks

2007-07-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

The Concept

Of course I'd heard of the inaugural running of the 24 Hours of LeMons; the concept reeks of genius. What is LeMons? Teams of 4-6 drivers race a car for 14 hours with a slight catch. Any costs not related to safety have to come in under $500. The classification for "safety" is painted with a wide brush as it includes the obvious items but also allows for items like tires and brakes. Here is the full list of items that are not included in the "under $500" umbrella:

Roll bars/cages
Driver's seat
Fire extinguisher
Harness
Window net
Braking system
Wheels
Tires

EVERYTHING else must be acquired and installed for under $500. Labor you do yourself is free, if someone else does it, that goes against the $500 total. There are two checkpoints that are used to try to keep people honest. First, the organizer can buy any car after the race for $500. That set of custom coilovers that you attempted to make look used by covering in dust, dirt and oil then set to bake in the sun for five weeks? Hopefully someone notices your ability to pirouette on apex and calls you out on it. Second, after the car clears the tech inspection, the BSF judges come though. For every estimated $10 you spend over the $500, you are awarded one Bullshit Factor point. Each point will take a lap off your final total. Considering how much we ended up spending on the car and how over-prepared other cars seemed, I wouldn't be surprised if the average per-car-cost was closer to $1,200 - $1,500. More on that later.

In the light-hearted vein of the race concept, LeMons also featured quirky qualifying events and mid-race punishments. We completely missed the announcement for the extra credit qualifying so I have no idea what the events were. Anyone? The punishments were proposed to keep people from racing like maniacs or making this a demolition derby. If the corner workers noticed you were blocking people from passing, making unsafe passes yourself or intentionally hitting people, you were black flagged. Off to the Wheel of Misfortune! Other punishments are for specific transgressions. Some of the punishments I remember:

Eggman: A hole is cut in your roof above the driver and crates of eggs are attached all around the hole. You turn, brake or accelerate (you are accelerating, right?) and eggs are dumped on your head. Don't forget, it's roughly 110 degrees on track!
Grill of Damocles: It's no sword, but imagine a steel plate with eight spikes protruding. Using some additional steel bars, the plate is welded to the front of the car with the spikes pointed inwards. Ram yet another car and feel the sweet taste of release as the spikes penetrate your radiator, expelling life force and your chances at winning this race.
Al Gore Junior: Belching bluish smoke lap after lap? Time to pay penance! Black flagged, off the course and handed a shovel? See that baby tree over there? You get to plant it pit-side and water it before your car is allowed back on track.
Legion of Odor (Amulet of Aroma would have been better): Looks like both you and your car need accessories! In addition to the necklace of unwrapped putrid cheese, your car's exhaust manifold is also coated in the stuff. Guess what? You get to wear that amulet all weekend. Even in the pits. In the heat.
Chin Music: Boom box with an automatically rewinding cassette player and Norwegian sea chants on full volume, zip-tied into the car where you can't reach it.
Train in Vain: Training wheels are welded to the sides of your car. How is this a punishment? Some teams may have benefited from not cornering on their doors.
Barnyard I and II: The outline of a barnyard animal in steel plate is welded to your roof decreasing your glorious 0.48 cd.

The rest of the race details are less interesting and are covered on the main site.

The Crew

Our team was formed on Something Awful. Team OMGWTFestiva is comprised of four goons from Seattle that knew each other from autocrossing, one of the more active racing goons from TX and a TX friend. The Seattle goons would take care of the car and getting it to the race while the TX guys were going to fly in for driving duties. I concentrated on pictures of the car and race so I don't seem to have pictures of everyone individually. Here's a group shot from after the race:

From L to R: Sanjeev, Dale, Richie, Nat, Mike and Jack (Our only dedicated pit crew member, Shawn, took the picture)

Nat is the Festiva expert and did 95% of the necessary work on the car. He also trailered it to CA and back so REP++ to him. Dale and Jack have track experience, are knowledgeable about repairs and were much faster than the rest of us. As for the rest of us, I guess that makes us just tagalongs!

The Car

Nat found the car, a dirt-track-prepped Festiva with a roll cage already installed. The Festiva came stock with a 1.3L engine but this came with the 1.6L long block, very similar to the engine in the '90-'94 Miata. Here she is as picked up:

The chassis, transmission and cage were just fine. The suspension, brakes and radiator were all well-worn. Here is the list of what we had to do to get the car ready:

Strip decals
Install seat mount
Install seat
Install harness
Replace brakes
Replace radiator
Install drain plug in radiator
Replace rear suspension
Install lexan windshield
Install window net
Replace wheels
Replace tires
Remount battery
Replace all fluids

Nat found better brakes, radiator and rear suspension at the junkyard for very cheap. Since the car was purchased for $350, we (Nat) did all the work ourselves and only used junkyard parts, we were definitely within the $500 bounds.

In the end, she weighed about 1600 pounds and could spin the tires in 1st and 2nd easily. There was so much low-end torque and 1st gear was basically on the "Liquefy tires" setting, I used 2nd as the lowest gear for almost the entire race. I only needed 1st during a yellow flag while on a slight incline. Since the suspension was worn-out stock, body roll was hilarious. Any force was met with an equal and humorous opposite force. Accelerate and the nose shoots to the sky, turn side to side and wallow around, brake and you'd occasionally touch the front bumper to pavement. The tires we used were fairly tall, increasing the ride height which didn't help in the least. The brakes were sufficient... until something I'll tell you about later.

As one of the taller members of the team, I was quite worried about the seat and pedal positioning. The dirt trackers must have been 5'9" or lower as the roll cage harness bar allowed for very little leg room. Our first attempt at mounting the seat had my knees bent tighter than 90 degrees. The pedals also had excessive height so I was practically putting my left knee through the window to get to the clutch. We adjusted the seat mounts lower, putting the seat back a little bit at the same time. I didn't even notice the cramped position during the race. If you're comfortable, it's not a race car, eh? Here is how she looked once at the track:

Preparation
After Shawn, Sanjeev and I made a detour from Oakland to San Francisco specifically for a trip to H&M (shout out to my W&W buddies), we all met up at the hotel in Livermore to discuss strategy. Jack and Dale talked about race basics while the rest of us tried to figure out how long we could last in a hot tin can with no fan, let alone any sort of cooling, in a full race suit on a hot track. We figured we'd start with 20/30 minute shifts and move toward 1 hour shifts as we got comfortable. We worried about hydration and figured we would need a glass of Gatorade every hour for the whole day. 15 gallons of Gatorade mix would at least hold us off for awhile.

On the day of the race, half of us went on a water, snacks and supplies run while the other half prepped the pits. Thank goodness I picked up folding chairs and a 10'x10' canopy at the last minute. The beating sun, dirt pit and sand storms would have knocked us out alone. After prep, Shawn and I went around to scope out the competition.

The Competition
The first characteristic I noticed about the other cars? Almost all of them had a goofy paint job. What did we neglect? Paint. Luckily we kept the flames from the previous vinyl job and had huge numbers made up. Most cars had a theme or at least a garish coat of cheap paint. We had a stock color and some random decals but it didn't look so bad. Here are a few of the interesting designs or important cars:

Mitsubeasty

Canola Rollas

Freak SHO

Lemon Lappers

Holy Rollers

Wankel Wankers

Day One
We passed tech and the BSF test without issue, the car was running fine, everyone's gear was checked out, we all had our competition licenses (though I had to wait over an hour in a 20 person line to get mine), the pits were set up with the canopy, chairs, drinks and snacks... we were locked and loaded by the 2:30 PM start time. Since he knew the car the best, Nat started us off. He did the recon/warm-up laps and then was out there for the green flag. Instead of deciding on positions and qualifying and griding, they put everyone on track, chose a random car and a random lap. When that car had completed that specific lap, they dropped the green flag and everyone was off! Starting with 90 cars on a 1.1 mile course is insanity. Imaging terrible traffic (think 520 W from 4 PM to 7 PM in Seattle), a dirty and dusty road and add the fact that everyone wants to get home first while no one cares about slamming into your car!

Luckily, we made it through the initial scuffle relatively unharmed. Jack jumped into the car next and less than an hour into the race, we suffered our first bit of major damage. The #60 Fallen Angels car (women drivers!) were the first to play pinball with us:

We used up our first bit of luck for the day. All of that was body damage as we couldn't see any damage to the tire, wheel or suspension! Richie got a stint, I had my stint and then Sanjeev hopped into the car. The details are fuzzy; no one was watching the track for the following incident and Sanjeev was spun around and couldn't see the culprit. We aren't 100% positive, but various clues lead us to believe it was Freak SHO. At the hairpin, Sanjeev was following the correct line when another car came squirting in, tight to the apex. Sanjeev turned the drivers side front corner into their passenger rear. The car was knocked partially off course, the drivers side front wheel was very askew and the car would not fire up!

Considering how light our car is and how fragile the completely untouched front suspension was, damage was expected. I don't think anyone has pictures of how it looked while being towed in because we were all rushing around trying to think of how to fix it. Basically, the leading edge of the front wheel was pointing outward. We jacked up the car, took off the wheel and Nat was able to quickly diagnose the problem. The hit had bent the lower mount of the strut and we were without a spare. Jack and Sanjeev immediately set out in the Chrysler 300 rental to find some glorious store that would carry a front strut for a 1991 Ford Festiva. We also had an issue of the engine not turning over to fix! The hit was actually so hard that the bent strut was pushing through the wheel well and pushed the engine flush against the passenger side wheel well. Once the bent strut was removed, the engine was freed and the little bugger fired right up. Here is the damage the pulley caused:

About an hour and at least four stores later, they found a new strut at Autozone. Just in case, they bought two. A little spring compression here, a few busted knuckles there and the car was back to whole in no time. ...or so we thought. Not too much later, the car is towed back to the pits and what is this? The driver front tire is off and sitting in the hatch! Our immediate thought was that we were in such a hurry to get the car back on track that we forgot to tighten the lug bolts. This is when I started to get frustrated. Getting knocked out because we sustained damage is one thing. Knocking ourselves out with stupidity is simply unacceptable. Luckily, the rotor was intact and very little damage occurred. Tighten the bolts, double-check all the bolts and back on track! ...ah crap, here comes the tow truck again...

Courtesy of Autoblog:

We lost the same wheel again!? We figured it wasn't an issue with the lug bolts. The hit we sustained that took out the suspension must have caused a hell of a lot of force to the bolts and damaged the threads in the hub. A little investigation and we could tell that the third set of replacement bolts just wouldn't catch. It was almost 9 PM by this point so we knew we couldn't find parts at this time. We'd either need to replace the entire hub (with a very slim chance that any store would have those in stock) or tap out the hub to accommodate bigger bolts. We adjourned for the evening, battered, bruised and deflated. Our plan was to get up early, hit all the stores we could and try to get a new tap set. We were also given a little bit of hope as one of the teams might have a big enough tap set early in the morning.

Day Two
We had to attend a mandatory drivers meeting at 8:45 AM so we figured that since none of the stores would be open before 9AM, we would just go check in, let the race start without us and we'd start the part search. Turns out the team with the tap was looking for us around 8 AM and then the guy with the tap set left. Periodic phone calls to the guys looking for parts showed they were coming up empty handed. No hubs were to be found and most tap sets only went up to 12 MM x 1.75 (the size of the current-yet-damaged threads). At the track, we found someone with a tap set but it also wasn't big enough. Using the other car, Sanjeev and I set out to find some more ice and pick up lunch for everyone. That only left Richie, Jack and Shawn back at the track with the car. My Spidey-sense kicked in and so I texted Shawn. Turns out, they decided to try tapping with the 12 MM x 1.75 anyway! Nat said it probably wouldn't work but the guys also scrounged up some longer lug bolts from another team. The original threads only went so deep. They tapped the whole hub and the longer bolts were as firm as a green cantaloupe (as firm as tightly torqued coarse-threaded metal-on-metal could be).

We rushed back to the track to see the lil' bugger out there, driving around just fine! We missed probably four of the seven hours from the first day and the initial two hours of the second day. Traffic was lighter and they were supposedly giving out more black flags. Being the smallest and possibly lightest car out there, this was definitely to our advantage. We traded off drivers without incident until about 40 minutes before the end of the race. I was finishing up my third stint and coming up the back sweeper when suddenly the car started to shake violently with a thudding sound from the passenger side front suspension. Luckily the back sweeper is where the pit entrance is so I just pulled off immediately. As I was unbuckling back at the pit, everyone was asking me what I hit! Nothing, but it turns out that both of the front tires were canted in with some extreme positive camber.

We pulled the wheel and the ball joint had popped out in addition to the top bolt hole of the strut being completely ovaled out. Putting the ball joint back together was easy, but we weren't so sure about the strut. We had lent a spare tire to a BMW team and they repaid us by having the exact bolt necessary. We torqued it to Grayskull and back and tossed her back on track. No idea how it was possible but we finished the race, saw the checkered flag.

Aftermath
We placed 54th out of 83 cars, 316 laps completed. We missed maybe 2 hours the second day so we were on track (or doing a normal pit) for 8 hours (57% of the time). We figured that if we were on track the whole time, we would have placed closer to 25th. Not bad for a legally prepped car!

What would we do differently? If we could start over completely, a tougher car would be excellent. With the smallest car, we were easily pushed around. With the Festiva, maybe we could have some sort of cage around the wheels, protecting the fragile suspension. We would also remember our spare parts! Of course we wouldn't have had everything to recover from the various maladies of the day, but it would have helped. Spare tools would be nice as would some sort of cooling for the driver.

Are we going to do it again? Definitely. We have a sunk cost of the various driver suits, pit materials, the car itself (which could be easily campaigned again) and we have the knowledge. Prior entrants seem to be favored for application acceptance as well. Enough people have shown interest that I can easily see having two teams. A handful of teams ran multiple cars side by side, even the exact same type of car. That could be fortuitous.

Do you want to do this in October? Let us know! Wrenching and track experience are highly desirable.

2007-06-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

Let's see if I can even make it a week on a diet like this:

2000 calories per day
30-35% protein from whole food sources (no shakes!)
10-15% carbs like spinach, broccoli, green beans, asparagus, zucchini, cauliflower, different color peppers, carrots, tomatoes
55-60% fat with an even mixture of saturates, polyunsaturates, and monounsaturates
Roughly: 200 lbs, 2000kcal, 150g protein, 50g carbs, 132g fat
Four meals a day, even split of macronutrients
Supplements:

5g of BCAAs and 2.5g creatine 4x day
Greens+ 1x day
Multi-vitamin 1x day
ZMA 1x day
3g fish oil 3x day
3 Hot Rox 3x day
Power Drive 2x day

The biggest issue I see here is creating the proper meals four times a day. It will probably take 1.5 hours per day in prep and cooking so this is definitely a strong commitment. I should probably just go to the store once a week and have a huge veggie chopping session. I could then portion it all out then so I don't have to think before each meal.

2007-06-11T20:56:00.000-07:00

Chicken satay? That worked. Chocolate-covered cherries? Also worked. Curried rice pilaf? Fine. Persian kabobs? Not so good! I cannot make a tender beef recipe to save my life. They tasted fine, especially since I marinaded them for 48 hours in yogurt, onion and mint, but they were tough again. Does anyone have tips for tenderizing meat? I know it's not just the cut of meat I used as I have tendency to do this to every cut of beef. The pieces were grilled to a medium, medium-well state, so I'm sure that hurts it. I bet if I had a grill and a good marinade, I could do it right.

2007-06-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

Introducing the OMGWTFestiva.

I figured I should start discussing my impending doom at the hands of an econobox racecar. As previously announced, I'm partaking in the 24 Hours of LeMons in a little over a month. We picked up a Festiva in track form for $350. The car spent the last two season dirt track racing down in Monroe and while being a little more than beat up, the decals also had to go:

Putting a roll cage into any other car would have cost about $1,000 minimum so we saved quite a bit of cash right there. The chassis, cage, engine and transmission were solid. The suspension, brakes, wheels, tires, seat, harness.... not so much. Here is the list of what we have done and will do:

~~Strip decals~~
~~Install seat mount~~
~~Install seat~~
~~Install harness~~
~~Replace brakes~~
~~Replace radiator~~
Install drain plug in radiator
Replace suspension
Install something in place of windshield
Replace wheels
Replace tires
Remount battery
Replace all fluids
Paint?

The suspension is halfway done, I believe. One of the other team members is doing most of this work and I do believe he has replaced the rear beam. The fact that the car was in "working" condition from the start was a huge benefit. It was obviously trailered home when purchased, but here is a video of it firing up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWNj6SeC9g8. Push button start what.

Another requirement is that every team member must have a proper helmet and race suit. I have the helmet (three seasons of autocrossing, thanks) and I'm pretty sure of which suit I want: G-Force 545, in blue of course. Clare calls this the moonsuit and strikes off into endless giggles anytime it is mentioned. I'm pretty sure I'll need to clean pee off the carpet when she actually sees me in it.

We should be finishing up most of the car this weekend. I'll try to get a large number of pictures but those will wait until after paint if we decide to do that. Look back here in about six weeks for a huge trip report; I'm psyched!

2007-05-29T19:08:00.000-07:00

Vancouver trip report! Laura, Erin, Brian, Adam and I tried to plan a weekend trip to Vancouver for months but couldn't find a time slot where everyone was available. We just assumed that something would be going on for Memorial Day so we didn't even consider it. Luckily, we were all free and thus it had to be done.

Our first stop was Sequim as Erin just had to go back to the "petting zoo" that she visited with Jon previously. Turns out, it's called the Olympic Wild Game Farm and allows you to drive into the park with deer, bison and yak. They're so accustomed to people feeding them that they will swarm your car, like so and so:

By the end of this little adventure, the car windows were completely coated in yak slobber. The only sad portion of this little excursion was the "Wild" part of Wild Game Farm. They had lions, tigers and other wild cats in impossibly small cages in the middle of the park. None of them looked healthy and none even felt like standing up. Small-time operations simply should not be allowed to place animals in such poor conditions.

I cannot recall who brought it up, but somehow we started discussing Ponderosa and the fact that you got access to an all-you-can eat buffet AND a full meal, usually of steak, a baked potato and Texas toast. None of us had eaten there since we were a kid and all had fond memories. Of course, reality would probably state that the culinary experience would be less than memorable, but we still joked about it throughout the whole trip. Because of this, we ended up going to a buffet when we stopped in Bellingham for dinner. If you like grease, you'll love Izzy's!

The trip up to Vancouver was surprisingly easy; the Blaine border crossing helped as we pulled up and were only ten or so cars away from the checkpoint. We were all feeling a little ill from the greasesplosion of Izzy's, but pulled up to the hotel before 10 PM. A few showers and a complete change of clothes later, we descended upon the town for a little (a lot) of debauchery. With five people, getting a single taxi proved impossible. Instead of taking two, we tried walking. Half way there, we realized the error of our ways, grabbed two cabs, reconvened and observed how completely crazy the nightlife of Vancouver can be. There were at least eight clubs with a cover over $10 and a line that would have taken 30 minutes or more. Instead of going dancing as originally planned, we ended up at a smaller but still clean enough bar and went through three pitchers of beer. At this point, Erin was basically begging the group to go dancing and while I was up for it, the rest needed convincing. In the end, we conned Adam into joining us and danced until 3 AM or so. There were multiple bachelorette parties which always makes the club scene more interesting.

The next morning, we assembled the crew, had a little breakfast and headed out to the aquarium in Stanley Park. I didn't go in my previous visit to Vancouver but frankly, aquatic creatures just aren't my bag. After that, we walked through a sizable portion of the park and ended up at Granville Island for a little market shopping. We picked up breakfast for the next day and then washed up back at the hotel. Since my last epicurean experience at Chambar was so amazing, I dragged them all there for our nice dinner out. If you don't get a bottle of wine and entrees are only $25, how can five people spend $370? One word: beer. Belgian beer to be specific. After cocktails, we ordered beer after beer at roughly $10 a pop including some contained within interesting glasses:

I was privy to a Piraat, a 21 proof ale! I could feel it rewiring my brain. Though the group was tired and it was a Sunday, somehow Erin and I convinced everyone to hit the clubs. When we pulled up to the concentration of clubs, Adam was about to piss himself so we went into the first place possible. We lucked out. Even though we just left dinner, Brian and I ordered a pound of the hottest wings this place made, went through two more pitchers of beer and ran into one of the funniest guys I've met in awhile. Calling himself the Brown Boy and using such quaint phrases as "Save a horse, ride a Brown Boy", he didn't charge us for the second pitcher and then got us into the club across the street for free. Though called The Buffalo Club, the only Western aspect was the mechanical bull. Another couple of pitchers later, we were good to go until 3 AM again. Brian tried to ride the bull, but they shut it down while he was in line. Unfortunately, we also saw a mildly overweight girl ride the bull with her shirt and bra pulled up to her neck. Of course I got a picture but of course I deleted it the next day.

It wasn't until 11 AM that everyone arose from their beer-impaired slumber the next day. The Capilano Bridge was the last Vancouver destination and despite my timid warnings, we all dropped $27 CAD for the privilege of walking across a bridge and seeing a few exhibits. The suspension bridge freaked out Adam and Laura, making the payment that much more painful. The ride back was seemingly uneventful, mostly because I read most of an issue of the Economist and then slept the rest of the way.

A lovely little trip.

2007-05-16T00:15:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm sick of the current flavors I have for protein (dutch chocolate, fruit punch and strawberry) but at the rate I consume protein powder, I will be. Luckily, True Protein offered a sampler pack of some of their premium flavors. Unluckily,

As I work through them, I'll give updates:

Lemonade: Faithful representation of powdered lemonade, doesn't taste too well mixed with protein powder.
Orange: Stronger flavor than the Biotest orange I had when doing the Velocity Diet, a bit sweeter and more tangerine than straight-up orange. A contender.
Fruit Punch: Already have this, tastes just like kool-aid fruit punch and mixes surprisingly well with protein.
Strawberry: Already have this, the flavor doesn't quite overcome the base taste of the protein so seems like watered-down strawberry Nesquik
Chocolate: Already have this, it's chocolate! Need I say more? Actually, it's dutch chocolate, so it's slightly more earthy than your average chocolate powder.
Banana:
Vanilla:
Chocolate Banana:
Strawberry Banana:
Banana Cream:
Strawberry Cream
Orange Cream:
Limeade:

2007-05-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

Never, I repeat: never, accidentally double-dose a powerful thermogenic. I'm currently bug-eyed, completely over-amped, jiggling in my chair and it feels like I'm generating enough heat to melt my desk.

2007-04-27T17:16:00.000-07:00

The cause of my insane tire wear was pinpointed to be the fact that I was running THREE TIMES the recommended amount of toe-out in the front. "Toe" is the angle of the tires in relation to the direction of travel so my tires were pigeon-toed to an excessive amount. Since I also had a bit of negative camber (the inside edge of the tire is pressed down more than the outside edge), the inside edges of my tires were being eaten alive every mile I drove.

The Focus has a pretty easy toe adjustment bolt so I'm now back in spec. I really should pick up a camber kit if I want to do this properly, but here are my alignment details as of now:

Front Left:
Camber: -0.8
Caster: 2.5
Toe: -0.03

Front Right:
Camber: -0.7
Caster: 2.6
Toe: -0.03

Rear Left:
Camber: -1.0
Toe: 0.01

Rear Right:
Camber: -1.6
Toe: -0.01

With the proper equipment, I'd like to run -2.5 degrees of camber up front, -1.5 in the rear and zero toe in the rear. These values should be fine for now. I took the car out for a spin with the new tires and alignment with my road racing buddy and he was quite impressed, even though it's a FWD car.

2007-04-26T15:29:00.000-07:00

The horribly uneven wear on my tires I was talking about? See some pictures over at Facebook.

2007-04-25T19:58:00.000-07:00

I still hate Kate Bush. WOXY just had to play Aerials and the portion where Kate is laughing in response to a bird chirping for what seems to be several hours? I hope she chokes on a falcon.

2007-04-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

Very few components matter as much as tires on a performance vehicle. Acceleration, braking, handling; anything involving a force exerted on or by the car is completely at the whim of the traction provided by the tires. "Traction" is but one characteristic of the performance of a tire; others will be discussed later.

The SVT Focus uses Continental ContiSports as the OEM tire. For an OEM tire, the Contis were an aggressive choice as numerous "performance" cars ship with sub-standard all-season tires. The best example of this would be the Bridgestone Potenza RE92s included on the Subaru Impreza WRX as the handling capability and 227 HP of the WRX completely overwhelm the tire. Considering the WRX is touted for its all-wheel drive and thus ability to drive in all sorts of conditions, shipping with an all-season is a satisfactory compromise. The Contis are purely a summer performance tire and perform abysmally at cold temperatures, let alone in the snow! I was able to crawl home when a freak hailstorm hit Redmond, but thankfully all roads between work and home were fairly level. If I had to get back to where I live in Seattle now, I highly doubt I would have been able to get up half the hills I would need to take. All summer tires act this way, so that aspect is not surprising, but the dry performance for a stock tire was quite competent. Moving from all-seasons to a summer tire is a dramatic jump so I was definitely happy moving to the Contis on my 2004 Focus in comparison to the all-seasons on my 2003 Focus.

Roughly 12k miles into the life of my car and tires, I developed a slow leak in the passenger rear (don't you hate leaks from the rear of a passenger?). Instead of replacing that single tire like a normal person, I used this as an opportunity to upgrade the whole set. After careful research and deliberation, I decided upon Kumho Ecsta MXs. This was a compromise of price, dry performance, wet performance and durability. The performance improvement was noticeable, but nowhere near the jump from all-seasons. Traction was improved in the dry, the tire was more predictable at the limit, though there was less feedback as it reached that limit (the Contis howled like a bitch in heat before they broke from the leash). I never did autocross the Contis but I'm assuming I wouldn't have been that much slower than on the MXs.

At least four months ago, I remember running over a HUGE pothole, expecting torn-off body work, a bent rim, a scraped tire and damaged suspension components. The car seemed to drive fine, so I figured there were no problems. At the last autocross of the 2006 season, I couldn't seem to hook up, especially in the slaloms (or as Shawn calls them, shaloms!). At the first few autocrosses this season, the issue worsened and was absolutely impossible to overcome as I increased tire pressure. Instead of pulling the tires off for an inspection, I could tell just by looking at the outer edge that the MXs were toast. They survived 18k miles and probably 10 autocrosses, so durability was impressive.

The replacement tire research was less oriented toward wet performance and durability. I wanted to maximize performance (autocross season is in full swing) and there is a good reason why I don't care about durability (Jan2008, Subaru something something). For $140/tire, shipped, installed and balanced, I picked up a set of Falken Azenis RT-615s! So far, the performance jump is closer to the all-seasons-to-summer jump than the Contis to MX jump. I have yet to find the adhesion limit of the tires; my traction control (which I keep forgetting to disable) jumps in before the tires even start to screech.

The reason why I was having such difficulty in the slaloms was made painfully apparent and is probably related to that huge pothole I hit. I'll upload pictures tonight, but the inside edges of my front tires are completely bald! The outer edge is probably closer to 40% viable so I some how picked up some negative camber AND toe (not sure if it's out or in). I have an alignment scheduled for Friday afternoon so if anything is damaged, I can hopefully pick up the parts before the autocross on Sunday. To say I have high expectations would be an understatement; if I don't place at least in the top 10% of novices, I'll be highly disappointed.

Third set of tires and I just hit 30k miles on the car; that is the sign of an enthusiast.

2007-04-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

New stack time!

Before breakfast
300mg KA-R-Alpha-lipoic acid (Bulk)
1000mg Acetyl-L-Carintine (Jarrow)
225mg Ashwagandha (Jarrow)
500mg Rhodiola Rosea (Nature's Way)
1000mg Piracetam (Bulk Nutrition)
50mg DHEA (Biochem)
3 Multivitamin (Jarrow)

Breakfast
2000mg Vitamin C (Costco)
5mcg Vitamin D (Costco)
500mg Calcium (Costco)
500mg Fish oil / 25mg GLA / 100mg CLA (Costco)
300mg Alpha GPC (Jarrow)
120mg Ginkgo Biloba (Jarrow)

Before lunch
300mg KA-R-Alpha-lipoic acid (Bulk)
500mg Acetyl-L-Carintine (Nature's Way)
250mg Rhodiola Rosea (Nature's Way)
500mg Piracetam (Bulk Nutrition)

Lunch
2000mg Vitamin C (Costco)
5mcg Vitamin D (Costco)
500mg Calcium (Costco)
500mg Fish oil / 25mg GLA / 100mg CLA (Costco)
300mg Alpha GPC (Jarrow)
800mg Garlic (Jarrow)

Post workout
90g Custom mix (40% whey, 35% dextrose, 25% maltodextrin) (True Protein)

2007-04-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

Photo album, comments, and blogging all in one system? Befriend me on Facebook.

2007-04-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to say hi to all of the lurkers out there.

2007-04-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

"..traveling along a learning curve starts from a point where you have to think everything through step by step and ends at a point where you can perform the work in question unconsciously."
- Ken Schwaber

2007-03-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

Random quotes for today:

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.: H.G. Wells

To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe