My third HPDE

All the Corvette guys took a group photo. That's me in the exact middle (third row, second column, green shirt).

Whoot! Just finished my 3rd HPDE this past weekend. It was a blast as usual! Every time I get back from one, it just rekindles my fire and passion for the sport (which tends to die down between events).

Chasing down an NSX.

I did really well, I think. I passed (I would guess) about 40 cars and only got passed twice. The two that got me were my pit buddy Jason (~570 hp C6 Z06) and someone in a modified Porsche Cayman S (racing slicks and engine mods). To be perfectly honest, Jason got me twice and the second time an instructor driving a Porsche 911 took the pass with him even though I only signaled to Jason. I stayed with him though and eventually returned the favor... :)

Jason in front and me about take my position back from the 911.

Mike (C6) and Justin (Mustang GT) were there again. Always nice to see those two familiar faces keeping me company in the pits. This time Mike's son Brady was there, sharing Mike's car. It was funny to hear the three of them talking shit to each other the entire weekend. Out of the three, Justin was the fastest, then Brady, then Mike... each about 2 seconds faster than the next (per lap). Justin cracks me up. He's a super nice and jovial guy, but he's pretty competitive (in a friendly way). He always jokes about how it is a competition, despite how many times the organizers emphasize that it's not... ;)

Justin likes to change his passing signal into "the bird" right as I go by... I usually return it... ;)

Two interesting things my instructor taught me. First, I'm driving too hard a lot of the time. I'm driving at 110% and roasting my tires which leads to overall slower times in the end. He said to back off a bit to keep the tires from getting greasy towards to the end of the session. Second, he said that I'm taking some corners artificially fast... the car's computer (competition driving mode) is saving my ass. So the latter half of the event was driven without the computer at all (zero traction control and zero stability control).

I enjoy driving solo (see shit eatin' grin), I find it strangely relaxing.

As much as I want to pretend I'm a good driver, I'm not... none of us really are at this level. We're just extensions of our instructors. They show us the racing line and give us their opinions on how to take each corner, we memorize it, then it's just a matter of how much balls we have and how capable our cars are. Lucky for me, my car is on the top of the food chain and I have shockingly? surprisingly little fear of wrecking it. :)

Hunting down a G35 Coupe.

It's also a little depressing going to these things. A lot of the people into racing are usually wealthy (it's an expensive sport), and I'm reminded of how little money I make and how I simply can't afford to take it to the next level, despite how badly I want to. Wheels, racing tires, racing brakes, trailer and a place to store the trailer will cost several grand... of which I don't really have. Sigh.

iPod Nano Brick

Picture says it all... you will brick your iPod Nano (3rd generation) if you use the stopwatch feature while listening to music.

I happened to Aimee and it could happen to you too! Jeez, we haven't been having a very good Apple experience thus far. Oh well, still beats the hell out of Windows.

Easy Ethanol

(Jay Leno's 600 hp E85 Corvette)

What does GM think the future fuel source of autos will be? Hybrid? No, although they make a few models to "keep up with the competition." Plug in electric? No, although they are trying their damnedest to bring the first one (Chevy Volt) to market, again to "beat the competition." Diesel? Heh, no.. I don't think they have any interest in that.

No, none of that stuff... they're betting on E85. Why? One reason, according to Maximum Bob, is that it requires the least amount of change to our current lifestyle and fuel infrastructure. If we all switch to E85, what would be different? Nothing really... we still fill up our cars at gas stations like we have for the past century. Furthermore, any car can be converted to use E85 for like $100. Path of least change is good.

Great, so why aren't we already on E85? Well, the current method to produce it (with corn) is somewhat difficult and inefficient, but the main reason, IMO, is that we simply don't have enough corn to make a dent in our nation's fuel consumption. Hell, even if we converted 100% of our farm lands to corn, we still wouldn't have enough.

Enter Coskata and their "breakthrough" method for producing cellulosic ethanol...(click for full article). Another article here.

To summarize...

• patented process to produce ethanol from almost any carbon based matter (garbage, plant waste, old tires)
• consumes 3 times less water than other processes
• generates 7.7 times the energy it takes to produce it (vs 1.3 times for corn based ethanol)
• reduces CO2 emissions by 84% compared to gasoline
• GM expects to have the facilities to produce 50 to 100 million gallons per year by 2011
• less than $1 per gallon

Sounds pretty promising, no?? I dream of a day when I can have a 600 hp, guilt free sports car!!

Tunnel of Death

(thanks to Adam for the link)

Ok, I usually hate blog posts that just recap another cool post elsewhere, but I had to do it... this video is highly entertaining!!

It's traffic camera footage of a tunnel in Russia. It's the longest tunnel in Europe or something, but that's not what makes it interesting. What makes it interesting is that a river runs over part of it and leaks water onto the road... and winters are very cold in Russia.

Btw, this collage was supposedly made from a single day's worth of traffic footage.

Red Tortilla Soup

This is a modified version of Spicy Tortilla Soup by Becky Bradshaw of Bedford, Texas.

Ingredients

• 1 HEB rotisserie chicken (I like honey mesquite flavor)
• 1 large yellow (sweet) onion
• 1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 8-12 corn tortillas, coarsely chopped
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, chopped
• 2 cans (10 3/4 oz) tomato puree (or sauce)
• 2 quarts low sodium chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1-2 tablespoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon cayenne powder
• 2 bay leaves

Procedure

1. De-bone chicken, shred it up kinda with your hands, set aside.
2. Coarsely chop the corn tortillas. I usually just cut them into strips like 2 inches long and 3/4 inches wide. Set them aside.
3. Make a puree out of the onion by chopping it up and blending it with some of the chicken broth. Put it aside.
4. In a very large pot, sautee the garlic and cilantro in the vegetable oil. Try to go easy on the oil cuz it has a lot of fat.
5. Dump in all the chicken broth.
6. Dump in the onion puree.
7. Dump in the shredded chicken.
8. Dump in the chopped tortilla.
9. Dump in the tomato puree.
10. Dump in all the herbs and spices.
11. Bring to boil, reduce heat and let simmer until the tortilla pieces kind of break apart and thicken the soup.

This is an awesome recipe if you can get it to come out well... :) It tastes so damn good! The trick is getting the right amount of herbs/spices/tortilla for your tastes. It's easy to do that since it's a soup. Just start small and keep adding and tasting.

The really great thing about this recipe is that it's not bad for you at all. Check out the ingredients. It might be a little carby, but at least the fat is really low.

All Natural Smoothie Recipe

Ingredients

• small (6 oz) Yoplait Light
• 6 oz skim (fat free) milk
• teaspoon natural peanut butter
• one frozen banana (ripe)

Procedure

1. Put frozen banana in blender.
2. Dump in yogurt.
3. Measure skim milk in empty yogurt container, dump in blender.
4. Put in peanut butter.
5. Blend till smooth.

The flavor of yogurt largely determines what this is going to taste like. I like strawberry cheesecake, white chocolate raspberry, mixed berries, or vanilla.

This is so easy to make, tastes great, and isn't bad for you. It's very (simple) carb heavy, so I tend to eat it after working out.

If you're looking for protein, substitute pasteurized egg whites for the skim milk.

OS X Leopard Woes

(Image plucked from Google Images)

I've been talking about getting Mac for a long time. I'm kind of tired of tweaking, configuring and sometimes battling Linux. I just want a simple home computer (mostly for Aimee and her new iPod) that "just works."

And that's Mac's big schtick (sp?) right? They just work. Ask anyone who uses ones and they'll tell you... they'll never go back to the broken PC/Windows world. It seems like Mac/OS X is so awesome, that converts don't just become fans... they become fanbois (that's super extreme fanboys).

Well, I finally picked up a Mac Mini with OS X Leopard... here's my take on it.

Home/end/pgup/pgdown keys don't work as expected.
Home and end take the cursor to the beginning and end of a line respectively in EVERY F-ING OS IN EXISTANCE... except for OS X. And that's fine... I'll just learn the Mac way to move the cursor to the end of the line. Well guess fucking what... it's different for different applications!! Here's a sample of what the keystrokes are for beginning /end of a line for different OS X apps. Most OS X programs: command+left / command+right Terminal: ctrl-a / ctrl-e Firefox: who fucking knows / command+right

Massive security issue.
The first day I had the machine, I had to reinstall the entire f-ing OS because for some god knows reason, it was starting every program as root (administrator for you Windows people). There is a long thread about it that ended with the guy throwing in the towel and reinstalling OS X, just like I had to.

Sluggish and hiccups.
Sometimes when I'm typing, the cursor will just freeze for a sec and then when it unfreezes, all the characters come out all at once. Also, minor hiccups (slight delays) when choosing menu items, sending instant messages, or closing apps. There is a thread on Apple's support site about it.

The mouse acceleration is crappy and non adjustable.
Wtf is Apple such a pretentious piece of shit that they force their users to buy a $20 shareware app to adjust something that should have been adjustable in the first place?

Answer: because Apple isn't about choice or freedom... iTunes + iPod.
iTunes -> iPod is a one way street. There is no way to get songs on your iPod back into iTunes (say, in the case of reinstalling the OS like I had to do the first night I had the machine). Also, imagine this... You happily use iTunes and your iPod with your home computer, but then you take your iPod to work and decide you want to download a song and put it on your iPod to listen to at the gym on your way home from work. Think again, asshole. Can't do it without erasing all the songs already on your iPod.

No focus follows mouse policy.
This is just a personal gripe. If you're a seasoned Unix user, you might understand.

Doesn't reconnect to wireless network after waking up.
Aimee loves this one. Almost everytime she wakes up the computer, she has to connect and enter in our WEP password manually to reestablish the internet connection. I think I've tracked this down to a Keychain Access issue, but it's still not resolved 100%... and it pisses me off because....

I thought Macs "just worked."