Category: General

Things so normal as to not fit neatly into any other area.

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General

Another Track Day Hits the Books

October is here and that means another trip to Thunderhill to track the C6. This year was no exception, and although I’m tired and a bit sore the car and I are no worse for wear, so far as I can tell.  The stats of note for this round of driving are as follows:

  • Average gas mileage: 8 MPG
  • Top speed achieved: 121 MPH (when I managed to look)
  • New things learned: Skipping the cool down lap means cooked brake fluid (and no brakes)
  • Sad fact: The gas gauge read empty at just 124 miles… while lapping another car, thus ending my driving for the day

I could find no new cool cars at this track day to take photos of so an artsy pic of my car and helmet will just have to do this time around.

Categories
General Rants

CA DMV SMOG boondoggle

CA DMV logo

For those of us living in the republic of California and owning older vehicles, we have to put up with an annual mandatory visit to a “certified” SMOG test station to see if our vehicle is still “legal” to drive on the road.  Unlike safety inspections found in other states, however, this test is nothing more than a way to extract additional money from your pocket if you wish to keep driving on the roads.  It works like this:

  • You first pay about $90-ish for the registration and license fees
  • Instructions tell you to go and SMOG test your vehicle for “a nominal fee”
  • The SMOG test station finds ways to have their costs add up to $65 or more
  • If your car doesn’t pass the “test” you have to pay the $65 again once you figure out what’s wrong

This setup seems like a way to fleece those folks who, like me, mindlessly follow the rules set forth by the state.  I’ve seen cars with current registration stickers which clearly spew forth a toxic stew while driving, so am I to believe that the DMV feels these furnaces of CO2 pollution are OK to drive on the road?  Meanwhile, if you haven’t replaced your car air filter in a couple of years you fail the test and another $65 is removed from your pocket.

All of this silliness is almost enough to make someone move out of state, or at least put their vehicle registration elsewhere.  Sheesh.

Categories
Flying General Work

On Flying, Firefights and Fleeing

Just over a week has passed since I was RIF’d from my most recent job at AMD.  It is taking some getting used to waking up in the morning with no structured day or firm place to go.  On the plus side, I am using substantially less fuel than I was just a few weeks ago, so that must be good I guess.  In the meantime I continue to look around for what my next gig will be.

Next on the list of things to be worried about is my flying or lack thereof.  I’m at a point in my training where I must complete a written test before I can get any closer to getting my pilot’s license.  It’s a bear, since it is an array of questions, numbers, arithmetic and other stuff that I have to know cold before I go in and take the test.  I’m getting better, but rote memorization has never been my strong point.

Finally, I’ve used my abundance of spare time to go around the house and fix just about everything that is doable by myself.  With that complete I’ve spent a lot of time visiting Liberty City (in GTA4) and Turkfrackistan (in BF: Bad Company).  Sadly, neither of these locations helps me either exercise, meet women or get a tan.  I do get to meet new and interesting people, then shoot them, so it does have some perks.

the 86 file

Categories
General Review

What did you do on Super Bowl Sunday?

I’m not a sports kind of guy so while everyone else in the USA was busy guzzling beer and cheering for some football team or another I was tackling my own challenge: the tear down and installation of a new MGW short throw shifter in the C6. It certainly wasn’t a cakewalk to do but now that I’ve done it I have a better understanding of how the various plastic bits on my dash came to be together.

The whole goal was to reduce the shifting throw (the back and forth motion) during gear changes and on that part it was a success. The downer is that some parts of the instruction process were a bit vague and my parts on the car were a bit different than the instructions dealt with. An email has been dispatched to the company supplying the new parts and we’ll see if I can improve the situation. All in all, it probably wasn’t a super hard thing to modify but it did involve a lot of patience and ingenuity to get all the bits apart and then reassembled again.

Oh, and it wouldn’t be a complete day without me messing up something. I now have no emergency flasher button as I forgot to hook it up again when I reassembled all the parts. Luckily (sort of) that I have to do another tear down once the email comes back with advice on the fit and throw issues I raised.

Shifter

Categories
General House Technology

The Hoopty DTV Antenna

If someone ever wanted to know what lengths I would go to in order to get high def TV programming, this is it.  With a large helping of PVC pipe, fittings, caps, a half mile of coax, an indoor FM antenna, a UHF/VHF combiner, some bolts, wing nuts, washers and a bonafide real antenna (DB2) I have produced this monster eyesore on my patio deck.

DTVAntenna

It points toward Sutro Tower where most of the Bay Area’s HDTV transmission antennas are located and it doesn’t do half bad, considering I’m more than 50 miles away.  It’s reasonably weatherproof and it doesn’t cost a fortune (at least not yet).  It picks up almost all the stations I care about and feeds them to my DirecTV HR20 and Windows Vista Media Center PC.  It is even reasonably wind-proof, as evidenced by recent 40+ MPH winds. 

In short, it seems to work pretty well even if it is sad to look at.

Categories
General

Grape bar goodness

Since I always seem to be writing about flying, I thought that I’d deliberately throw in one post that has nothing to do with that.  I have determined that my life is not complete without a Dreyer’s natural grape fruit bar.  Sure, I’ve written about it before, but I now now that I really badly need to have a box of these goodies in the freezer at all times.

It is made of grapes, so it has to be healthy, right?

Categories
General House

The Earthquake

I can now say that I’ve fully lived through an earthquake.  This week a 5.6 magnitude trembler rolled, quite literally, through the house at around 8pm.  Furniture moved, things swayed, and dishes clanked.  And it was all over in about 30 seconds.  I’ve certainly been through earthquakes before, but strangely never at home and not one this big.

Nothing was ruined and only a few items fell out of place.  Best of all there wasn’t a sense of real panic or desperation, just a feeling that something was going bonkers and that I should probably find a spot where things won’t fall on my head to ride it out.  I certainly want to acquire some safety gear and supplies now, though.

Categories
Flying General

Some Flights, A Lot of Work

It’s been a month and I’m still pounding out the daily work schedule and trying to sneak in some flying where and when I can. Along the way I’ve slowed down my corporate travel, but that ends this week, as I start hitting the road to see customers wherever they may be. That can only mean less GA flying and a lot more bad airport experiences.

At least I’m still employed, right? I could have ended up like these poor hosers.

Categories
Flying General Rants

Too Much Travel, Too Little Flying (GA)

It seems that I’ve been on the road constantly, and that I’ve done very little general aviation flying.  Upon looking back at my schedule since January, it does appear that most every week and weekend I’m in another city or country, talking to a different customer or partner, eating at a new or similar restaurant and staying at another hotel chain.  I certainly have the flight miles (and nagging cough) to prove it.

I also have started lacking in my ability to get to the local airport and fly, and when I do get out to the airport these day my skills aren’t what they used to be.  That’s a bummer, as I feel like I’m going backwards in my training, and that really bites.  The learning to fly stuff is what helps me keep my head clear of all the work related mumbo-jumbo, but  when it isn’t going well its hard to have a good outlet.

Here’s hoping I get some serious downtime in the near future and can get back on the pilot learning curve, pointed upward again.

Categories
General Site News

Just trying it out

I’m going to try this new theme for a bit and see how it works for me.  Maybe more photo’s will slip into the design if things are easier (and more fluid) with this layout.  We’ll see.

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