Uwharrie!

On the way home on Sunday, we stopped by Uwharrie National Forest with a few friends, Jeff, Mike, and Dante. Never having been "really" 4 wheeling, I had no idea what to expect. On the way in we stopped by the main outpost, got some maps, aired down the tires, disconnected the swaybars, and took off up the mountain. Dante, having been there numerous times, led the way to the hardest trail, Daniel. I was definitely skeptical of the Jeep making it over all the obstacles and rocks, but it took it like a champ! We finally found the secret of wheeling a Jeep without lockers, left foot braking. Dragging your left foot on the brake while trying to go up a slippery rock/hill slows down the tire trying to spin, and lets grab instead of it just spinning like crazy. Also, it really is about the driving and not your equipment. Dante with his mostly stock, lockerless, 4 door ran through all the obstacles like they were a cobblestone road.

We decided to keep Zoey in the back of the Jeep instead of tying her up at the campsite, and despite the constant bouncing in the back of the Jeep, I think she had fun. During one of the rock crawls at Kodak rock, she decided she wanted to sit in the front seat. Then exactly at the worst possible time, she slipped and popped the Jeep into neutral. It was a little scary at the time, as I thought I broke something :) I took plenty of pics as it was a beautiful day. Thats not a polarizer filter, the sky really was that blue. I realized afterwards I took mostly pics of our Jeep and Jeffs. Dante with his superior 4 wheeling skillz was always up over the rocks and then walking back to help the rest of us, so I only got 1 pic of his Jeep.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Halloween on Franklin Street

One of the reasons we went up to Raleigh was to hit up Franklin street for Halloween night. Having it on Friday should have meant a great turnout. Unfortunately, Chapel Hill got tired of being invaded by 80k people for that one night, so they put in a bunch of measures to bring the number of people way down. They basically discouraged any out of towners from showing up, by blocking parking everywhere and all side roads/neighborhoods. We met up with Cathy's friend Lee and her roomate and went anyways.

I dressed up as a NJ guido, complete with the spiked hair, headband, sweet glasses and double polos with popped collars. Cathy went as facebook. She ended up with a "fail" rating for the execution of the book on the head, as we forgot to measure for the fact that the headband she bought would expand once we put it on her head. Her shirt was great though, and we were able to write her status on her through the night. Lee was a drama queen, and her roommate went as Bristol Palin.

While there was still a decent turnout, it was nowhere as many people as in previous years. Also, the quality of costumes seemed to be down a bit. We did see some funny ones, and even though I got a littly drinky ;) I took some pictures. I'll post them up here shortly.

Lots of Wheeling in Raleigh

Having come up to Raleigh for the week, we decided to meet up with some friends and head out to some in town 4 wheeling. The good power line trails are way closer to Raleigh then they are to us in Atlanta. There are some great trails and mud 15 mins out from house. We finally learned what the Jeep could really do....its a lot.

We started off with a pretty huge hill, and after a few tries to get the approach right, Cathy climbed right up! We finished off the ride playing in the mud. Wish we would have kept the damn windows on, as everything including the interior got covered with mud :) Took quite a few pics. Only a few really good ones, but I'm posting em all as it was all good fun.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Javascript if then shortcut

For some dumb reason, I can't ever remember this shortcut when I need it. Never again :)

varName == (value) ? (true) : false;

Race Car...

She's almost ready for the ARRC (American Road Race of Champions, the Improved Touring National Championship). Got a good amount of work done today. New radius rod bearings, coolant flush, radio install, caliper rebuilds, etc etc. Pretty much all that is left is to bleed the brakes and do a once over on all the nuts and bolts. I also put the new "REDRUM" sticker on the front bumper. I was going to paint it and then put the sticker on, but I decided I'll be doing lots of bump drafting at the ARRC, so I might as well make it pretty during the offseason. Last but not leas, but front splitter is coming in a few weeks. That should give me a bit of downforce in the high speed turns, but also free up a mph or two on the top end. I'm looking forward to that, as started to get to the point where I was going to make the car looser with a bigger rear bar. I think the splitter will be just enough to make it a tad looser then it is today, without going overboard. We'll see!

Project Fatass continued....

So its been about 2 weeks since I started Project Fatass. We sort of took last weekend off when we went camping, and went to the Apple festival and drank a bunch of beer yesterday. Other then that, I've been good and been following the diet. Its actually pretty easy to follow and I like it. I like the lunches a lot better then the usual microwave frozen lunch, and its actually more economical as I don't spend $8 a day on lunch every day. I'm a fan. I've lost 5 lbs so far. If I lose another 5 over the next two weeks, I'll be happy.

Ding, Jeep is done!

So after about 3 weeks of being down, and probably 12-14 hours of total work, the lift is on. I worked on it about 2 hours a day, every 3rd day, lol. I guess thats the nice thing about having plenty of other cars to drive. I took the car to 4wheelparts after the install to get the caster and pinion angles set during the alignment. Figured the $100 was well spent, as never having even seen a stock Jeep, I didn't know exactly what the pinion angle should be. They ended up finding that the front trackbar bushing was busted, something I missed during the install, so the $$ was well spent. Another $200 later, we had a pimpy adjustable front trackbar with spherical ends.

We took the Jeep out yesterday for its maiden voyage, up to the Apple festival in Ellijay. While the festival was fun, our search for some 4 wheeling in that area was a big fat FAIL. We ended up playing in some construction sites and gravel roads and found out the lift was a success. The Jeep is a beast now. Once we add the front locker to it shortly, it will be pretty much unstoppable.

Here are a few pictures in "highway" mode with the top up.

"Project fatass"

So my parents just "got" me the NutriSystem package after calling me fat for the last year or two. Guess I'll turn this into Project Fatass and see what I can do. I weighed in this morning at 224.0 and started the diet. I also have my plan to get back to "fighting shape". I've been playing soccer and tennis and just realizing that I'm way out of shape compared to where I've been in the past. Few years of sitting at a desk and playing with cars I guess :)

The nutrisystem is pretty cool so far. Good amount of food, but spread throughout the day, so you are not hungry. I think the main goal is showing you how much to each, and by liming the amount, making sure you don't overeat. Also, splitting up your food categories, so you get enough of everything. One of the first things I've noticed, is I don't eat much dairy and veggies at all. This plan has me do 3-4 servings of dairy/protein a day.

I'm also going to take the next season off of soccer and tennis and hit the gym and mountain bike to get some strength and endurance. I'll be back with a vengeance for the spring season :)

Quest for cheap radios has ended

In an earlier post, I talked about how I was going to get a nice cheap radio setup for the race car. Well, after turning on the Midland GPRS radios from Bass Pro shops that sat around for a while, I figured out they were busted. Crapola. So I decided to get "real" radios instead. After messing around on Ebay and finding some Chinese knockoffs, a friend suggested I call Sampson Racing and see if they had any used gear. They hooked me up with a set of Vertex radios, crew chief headset, and a PTT button, all demo gear out of the owner's race car. Sweet! Cameron at Conover Motorsports is going to build me a badass antenna, and I will still have my "cheap-er" radio system.

• Vertex 5-watt - $160
• Crew Chief headset - $90
• PTT + free car harness - $25
• Driver helmet gear - $140
• Badass Conover antenna - $50
• Misc adapters (headset to radio, car harness to radio) - $25

In the end, I've spend $500 and ended up with around an $800 system. My cheap ass is happy :) Looking forward to being able to hear my crew at the ARRC

The Urban Sophisticates

A couple of weeks ago, we went up to Raleigh to visit some of out friends and also see one of Cathy's favorite bands, The Urban Sophisticates. They are a mix of hip hop with horns and have a great sound. They played at the Pour House in downtown Raleigh which is always a good time. I brought the camera, but ended up doing more drinking then picture taking and it showed :) Check out their website as they have their music streaming on it.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

How to make a MacBook Pro hibernate

Since I've had the MacBook Pro I've been wanting it to "hibernate" instead of "sleep" when I close the lid. There are times when I've shut the lid, stuck it into my backpack, just to not look at it again for 3 days over a long weekend. During that time, even in regular sleep mode, the battery dies as the laptop is not all the way off. My Thinkpad on the other hand can fully hibernate, in which it turns itself all the way off and stores its current state to the hdd.

Turns out that the MacBooks have the same mode, but its not an option in the menu. After a little digging, I've found a site that tells you what to do. I've outlined the steps below for "mac noobs" such as myself.

• Go to Finder, Utilities, Terminal
• type pmset -g | grep hibernate
• You should see that your hibernate is set for mode 3. This means when it sleeps, your items are saved to the RAM and power stays on. What you want is to set that to mode 5 which will function just like windows hibernate, and actually turn your laptop all the way off while saving where your state to the hdd.
• Create two aliases, one to enable mode 5, and another to set back to 3 if you want.
• Type alias hibernateon="sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 5"
• Type alias hibernateoff="sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3"
• Now when you type hibernateon, it will set that mode to 5. Once you do that, type pmset -g | grep hibernate again to confirm that you are on mode 5
• Your laptop is now set to hibernate like windows when you close the lid. If you ever want to revert back, run terminal again and type hibernateoff

How to make iPhone ringtones from MP3s

This is easy as pie. With the below steps, you can take any MP3 and make it into a ringtone for your iPhone.

• Grab the MP3 you want to turn into a ringtone and using Audacity turn it into an MP3 that is less then 30 seconds in length.
• Drag the newly shortened file into iTunes
• Find it in iTunes, right click on it and choose "Convert to AAC". It will make another version of the song.
• Find that song in your iTunes folder library (probably c:/..../My Documents/My Music/iTunes) and rename if from .m4a to m4r. In iTunes, delete the m4a that you made.
• In iTunes, go to "file" then "add file to library" and select the newly renamed m4r that you made in the step above
• Now you can sync with your iPhone and you will have a new ringtone to select.

The Quest for cheap racing radios

In car radios are a very "nice to have" in our amateur racing world. The crappy this is, that a nice radio setup is just south of $1k, while the bottom of the line systems are $600. I had a chance to spend that kind of cash on the race car earlier this year, and correctly opted for the data acquisition package. Having data in the car has allowed me to very quickly pick up time at new race tracks, and also find more time at my home track. Frankly, I don't see a point in even doing practice or test days w/o data.

Back to radios though. I had to buy a helmet headset for a few endurance races I've done, and also my codrives with Lyman last year. With that, I had a small but expensive chunk of the system out of the way. I decided to put together a cheapo system with the rest of the components, and we'll see how it works out

Below are the pieces one needs and how I got them, and for how much.

• Radios - I found Sampson Racing uses Midland 5 watt radios in their "cheap" radio package. Found mine at Bass Pro Shops for $50 for the pair on closeout. Sweet.
• Driver - Headset/headphones I had to buy before. $140, no way to get around that one. Any cheaper/crappy mic or headphones and the crew chief cannot hear the driver.
• Car - Two components needed. The car harness, and PTT. Car harness connects from the driver to the PTT button and to the Radio. I picked this up for $0 since Lyman had a busted connector on his and just bought a new one. Connector needs some re-wiring. We'll see if it works. PTT is $40 from Sampson Racing.
• Crew Chief - Need a fancy crew chief headset. This needs to be noise cancelling in order to work trackside while cars are going by. Most of the time these are right around $180 or so. I found some on ebay for $100 new. We'll see if that works, but it seems to be the same stuff as the more expensive one.

The above system should work for some of the parts of the race tracks. To have full track coverage, you need nicer (read: $$$$) radios with an external antenna. Depending on finding some used ones, I will do that later, but for right now, I'll settle with having radio communications for the front half of Road Atlanta.

My total outlay so far is $330. Same components, but 1/2 of the price of the bottom of the barrel system, and 1/3 the price of a middle of the road system. We'll see how it works in November at the ARRC

Working on the Jeep is harder then I thought

Almost done putting the Jeep back together now. We got a heck of a deal on it through craigslist so I couldn't resist pulling the trigger. Its a 4" Superlift with the RockRunner upgraded adjustable control arms.

Figured with the Jeep everything is so much bigger, that it all should just be easier. Well actually couple of those bigger things just make it a pain the ass. The springs are almost 3 freaking feet tall :) Between that, the gigantic control arm that was a pain to put in, to the giant axle, dang.

Last Sunday I started by taking the front suspension off. The nice thing about the big garage and 4 cars, is I can put it back together when I want. Today I finished installing the front suspension and the new extended brake lines. I still have to finish up the rear and then do some brake bleeding. We're going out of town this coming up weekend, so it probably won't be completed for a few more weeks. I'll have some "in progress" pics up soon.

All we got left is the paint

So the kitchen is 95% done! Cabinets with pimpy soft close sliders are all in. Appliances are in. Finishing touches are almost done. We picked the final paint color tonight and I'll be picking some up tomorrow to get the wall paint finished. After that, the trim/doors are going white and the crown molding gets installed. Finally the stair banister pieces are getting traded out for nice metal ones and we'll be able to call our downstairs "finished" :)

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Hiking in North Georgia

After the Barber race on Memorial Day weekend, we decided to go hiking on the Amicalola Falls trails around Ellljay, GA. The hiking was pretty good, but like last time, the views weren't quite there. There were more trees then you know what to do with, but no clearings or balds to see any views. We got to stop by the falls and walk the 600 steps to the top. Good exercise :)

This area is the start of the Appalachian trail on the south end. I still want to take a long weekend and go hike some of the trail. We'll see when we get to it

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Get Parameter from Querystring via Javascript (getParam)

A while back I posted a method to grab all the querystrings out of a URL and parse them into arrays. While that is very useful sometimes, its overkill for other situations, when you have 1 or 2 variables in the querystring and you know their names already. For those times, I like to use a function "getParam". It takes in the variable name and returns you its value from the querystring.

function getParam(name) {
  var regexS = "[\\?&]"+name+"=([^&#]*)";
  var regex = new RegExp( regexS );
  var tmpURL = window.location.href;
  var results = regex.exec( tmpURL );
  if( results == null )
    return "";
  else
    return results[1];
}

Barber!

Fun weekend! First off, the facilities at Barber are top notch. Everything is "F1 Quality". From the manicured grass to the buildings/bathrooms, to the timing tower spectating areas with TV cameras on all the parts of the track.

I've never been to Barber before, so as I posted about previously, I played a bunch of video games to try to get used to the track before I drove it. It was certainly time well spent, as other then the obvious G's that you feel, the visuals were right on with what I was seeing in real life, down to the braking points/zones.

I started out with qualifying on Saturday morning. I was able to use the new Dash3 part of my DL1 to display sector times and lap times, and I was able to run some decent times right off the bat. After only 6 laps on the track, I qualified 2nd in ITA and right after hometown boy Chuck Baader in his BMW, who was sitting on pole. Chuck put in a new motor since last season, and my time was faster then everyone's lap times from this race last year, so I felt pretty good.

In no time at all it was time for the afternoon race. I started on the inside with Chuck in front of me. Got a decent, but not great start and took it easy for the first few turns. In the corkscrew turn, the 3rd place qualifier, Steve, had his air flow meter break and basically stall out on the outside of the turn. Just happens that I was on the inside, and the 4th place car of Willie Phee was right behind Steve. This allowed me to get a huge lead on Willie. By this time Chuck has pretty much checked out on the rest of us, so it was a very boring 15 lap race for me, basically driving around by myself and getting bored.

In nice contrast, Sunday ended up being a lot more exciting. I tried to find more time out there during qualifying, and got closer to Chuck, but still qualified 2nd. This time I got a GREAT start and pulled right alongside of Chuck before turn 1. As we entered Turn 1 three wide, Chuck got hit, and in turn hit me, which sent both of us off into the grass, still on the throttle, not letting up. Steve was able to get by both of us and started off a great battle with Chuck for the lead, while I hung back and watched. I was being held up in the turns by a higher classed (ITS) RX7, which was supposed to be much faster then I was. I ended up hitting him a few times in turns trying to push him out of my way as I couldn't pass him cleanly. After a few laps, he got faster and then started getting in the way of the Chuck/Steve battle ahead of me. In the meantime, my car started overheating a bit. I had a bunch of grass stuck in the radiator opening, and also was right on this RX7's bumper not getting any airflow. I lost focus in a few turns and lost a bit of ground to the lead pack. Chuck ended up passing Steve for the lead and I started reeling both of them in from 3rd. After a few fun laps of chasing and battling, I was able to pass Steve under braking into the hairpin and started to try to chase Chuck down. Unfortunately I wasn't able to come back all the way and ended up in 2nd again, with a 2 second margin to Chuck. Not bad!

All in all, I feel good for this being my first time at Barber. Both Steve and Chuck live within miles of the track and have a lot of experience here. Chuck's 325 BMW is also a lot better here then my car. He's got a LOT more torque to get out of the tight turns, and my car never gets a chance to stretch its legs. Never even get into 5th gear. I also ended up eating two fairly new front tires because of all the wheelspin that I get out of the very slow turns.

Now I take some time off and work on the Jeep/House. Going to start working on the car again in a few weeks to get it ready for the ARRC in November.

2 ways of Javascript menu or navigation highlighting

The following two ways are the way I do client side javascript menu highlighting. These work well if you have a site navigation or menu and you want to dynamically highlight the page that you are currently on. I use Method 1 when I have only a few items in the nav, as the JS for it is super easy, or I need to have relative URLs in my menu. Method 2 is better when there are a lot of items, as it relies only on the href and url and doesn't need any extra stuff in the HTML. It does need absolute URLs in the menu href's though in order to match correctly with the url.

Method 1 - This method relies on the fact that you will put id's on each of the a elements with the value of the file name of that file. The HTML shows what I mean. The JS then just looks at the file name of the URL and makes that ID active. Super easy. There is also an "else" statement at the end of the JS so if the file name is blank because you are on "http://yourdomain.com/" it goes ahead and highlights the index menu item.

<div id="topMenu">
    <ul>
        <li><a id="index" href="">Blog</a></li>
        <li><a id="about" href="about.html">About</a></li>
        <li><a id="race_car" href="race_car.html">Race Car</a></li>
        <li><a id="contact" href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>            
    </ul>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
var fileName=location.href.toLowerCase().substring( location.href.lastIndexOf("/")+1 ).split('.')[0];
if (document.getElementById(fileName)) {document.getElementById(fileName).className = "active";}
else {if (fileName == '') {document.getElementById('index').className = "active";}}
</script>

Method 2 - This method does not need any id's in the a elements. What it does it look through the href statements in your menu and compares them to the URL. This method works better for larger menus.

<div id="topMenu">
    <ul>
        <li><a href="http://www.tomhoppe.com/test/index.html">Blog</a></li>
        <li><a href="http://www.tomhoppe.com/test/about.html">About</a></li>
        <li><a href="http://www.tomhoppe.com/test/race_car.html">Race Car</a></li>
        <li><a href="http://www.tomhoppe.com/test/contact.html">Contact</a></li>            
    </ul>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
var theUrl = location.href.toLowerCase();
var navLinks = document.getElementById('topMenu').getElementsByTagName('a');

if (theUrl == 'http://www.tomhoppe.com/test/') { navLinks[0].className = 'active'; }
else { 
    for (var i=0; i<navLinks.length; i++) {
        var NavLinkUrl = navLinks[i].getAttribute('href').toLowerCase();
        if (NavLinkUrl == theUrl) {navLinks[i].className = 'active';}
    }
}
</script>

Does training on a video game actually help you in racing?

I've got a race at Barber Motorsports park in Birmingam, AL this weekend. As someone at work called it "LA" for "Lower Alabama". I have been there a few times for Grand Am races to spectate, but never driven the track. With the wear and tear implications,the fact thats its already a 3 race weekend (I'm running a SARRC Race Sat and Sunday, and Dan, the previous car owner, is driving in the Saturday ProIT), and the fact that I wanted to do this little experiment, I'm not running the test day on Friday. That means my first view/action on this track will be qualifying on Saturday morning for the SARRC race.

I'm usually pretty good at getting up to speed because of my autox experience, so I'm not TOO worried about this. Just in case though, I've spent quite a few hours behind the wheel of a couple of PC Racing Sims on the track. The two sims I've been playing are Race07 and rFactor. They are both fairly realistic and with my wheel/pedal setup, feel great. Also, compared to a few real videos of the track, I think they have the layout and corners fairly nailed. I've been driving a Mini Cooper in Race07, as its the closest thing to my Integra, and a VW Rabbit in rFactor.

I've probably got about 2 hours or so of video game track time now and plan to spend another hour or so over the next couple of days. We'll see how close the game is to real life and if things like brake points and landmarks are close enough so I can qualify near the pointy end of the field!

I also posted on the roadraceautox.com forum to see what others thought

Work work work work .......

I've noticed that after working a TON, as in 80+ hour weeks for a few weeks, when that stops and I go back to "normal", I have a real hard time adjusting to "normal" life. I get home and its as if my brain is used to still running at 100mph and not being able to just "sit still". Real wierd feeling. Almost as if I'm lost just relaxing, and always feeling like its wierd that I'm not "doing something".

Or maybe I just need a vacation ...... :)

First foray in PHP

So I've been a windows guy personally. Its just always what the companies where I worked used, and what I personally used. The web forum that I run has been using an antiquated ASP forum software for a while though, and it was time to move on. After evaluating some of the options, looks like vBulletin using PHP was the best one.

I have to say that I'm very impressed with my experience so far. PHP is installed and has been running like a champ on our IIS 6.0 server. The vBulletin and mySQL installs both went super smooth and I had the new forum up and running and data transferred in no time. I also made some custom php pages for redirects and the like, as well as a few edits to vBulletin's pages.

I'm happy with the speed in which I was able to sort of "pick up" php. I was a little worried at first about being able to jump into it, but its like an "easy" ASP with a little bit of asp and javascript syntax all thrown into one. All in all, easy to learn and because of the community support, there is all kinds of mySQL and php info out there on google.

Regular Expression Cheat Sheet

I just wanted to give myself a reference for a regular expression cheat sheet. This is much easier then forgetting and having to google for what I need. Pretty much all you ever need to know to setup a regexp.

.	Matches any single character (many applications exclude newlines, and exactly which characters are considered newlines is flavor, character encoding, and platform specific, but it is safe to assume that the line feed character is included). Within POSIX bracket expressions, the dot character matches a literal dot. For example, a.c matches "abc", etc., but [a.c] matches only "a", ".", or "c".
[ ]	A bracket expression. Matches a single character that is contained within the brackets. For example, [abc] matches "a", "b", or "c". [a-z] specifies a range which matches any lowercase letter from "a" to "z". These forms can be mixed: [abcx-z] matches "a", "b", "c", "x", "y", and "z", as does [a-cx-z]. The - character is treated as a literal character if it is the last or the first character within the brackets, or if it is escaped with a backslash: [abc-], [-abc], or [a\-bc].
[^ ]	Matches a single character that is not contained within the brackets. For example, [^abc] matches any character other than "a", "b", or "c". [^a-z] matches any single character that is not a lowercase letter from "a" to "z". As above, literal characters and ranges can be mixed.
^	Matches the starting position within the string. In line-based tools, it matches the starting position of any line.
$	Matches the ending position of the string or the position just before a string-ending newline. In line-based tools, it matches the ending position of any line.
\( \)	Defines a marked subexpression. The string matched within the parentheses can be recalled later (see the next entry, \n). A marked subexpression is also called a block or capturing group.
\n	Matches what the nth marked subexpression matched, where n is a digit from 1 to 9. This construct is theoretically irregular and was not adopted in the POSIX ERE syntax. Some tools allow referencing more than nine capturing groups.
*	Matches the preceding element zero or more times. For example, ab*c matches "ac", "abc", "abbbc", etc. [xyz]* matches "", "x", "y", "z", "zx", "zyx", "xyzzy", and so on. \(ab\)* matches "", "ab", "abab", "ababab", and so on.
\{m,n\}	Matches the preceding element at least m and not more than n times. For example, a\{3,5\} matches only "aaa", "aaaa", and "aaaaa". This is not found in a few, older instances of regular expressions.

Granite!

I can't believe I'm blogging about a kitchen instead of the race car :)

Poor "RedRum" has been sitting in the driveway getting rained on. I discovered yesterday that I have a coolant leak somewhere. Looks to be around the middleish of the motor so maybe its a cracked hose or similar. Going to diagnose this weekend and get her ready for the Barber race at the end of August.

Ok, back to the kitchen. We got the granite installed today. Looks absolutely AWESOME. We also decided to punt on the track lighting. Having 6 halogen bulbs gets HOT and there isn't quite as much light as we wanted. We are going with 4 5" recessed canned lights instead. 300W of brightness :)

The wall and new lights are getting installed tomorrow, so we should have a "done kitchen" by tomorrow night.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

The Kitchen continues

So despite a few minor setbacks, Robert (the contractor) has been kicking ass on the kitchen. We started the install with him cutting a hole in his arm on our microwave mount when he "discovered" a hot wire just hanging inside the wall. The PITA continued as the wiring to remove the soffett was a lot harder then originally planned. They actually have to undo some of the wires from the fuse panel and re-run it in order to make it fit. It ended looking great though!

Yesterday the cabinets started going in and are now fully installed. The only thing left is to shim the one next to the fridge and the wine rack above it. We also had the trash compactor installed, the new boxes put in for our track and pendant lighting, and the wall for our backsplash/bar built.

Tomorrow morning the granite installers come to template out and Robert is going to finish off the wall as well as install our fancy shock "auto close" drawers. Over the weekend I think we're going to start to paint and also install all the lighting now that the boxes are ready. I'm thinking I might also tackle the under cabinet lighting now that all the wires are run already :)

I took a few shots along the way to show the progress.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Kitchen Part Deux

Today started the install of the new kitchen. We picked out some awesome "mocha" colored cabinets from a local shop in Macon. They have everything from solid wood sides, to the soft close drawers. We also got the 42" tall cabinets and are removing that soffet from above the current cabinets. The tall cabinets should make the kitchen look a lot taller. Also getting some "baltic brown" granite installed, under cabinet lighting, and ceiling track lighting with some pendant dropdowns. Should be pretty "pimpy". Here are a couple of pictures of the work in progress so far. It looks really weird having a "blank room" instead of a kitchen :) Tomorrow the new cabinets go in, Wednesday the lighting, and then Saturday the granite gets installed.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Road Atlanta Win

I had another awesome weekend at Road Atlanta. This time it was a super super hot July weekend with a SARRC 15 lap sprint race, and an ECR 90 minute enduro race with the old car owner as codriver. The sprint races are the ones I focus on, while we were just running the enduro so Dan could keep his competition license. In SCCA, you have to run 2 races a year to maintain a license.

The weekend started out with qualifying, and I put myself on pole by 2 seconds for the SARRC race. I only ran a 1:44.3, but considering the hot weather, it was a pretty good time that I was happy with. In the afternoon, Dan got in the car and shook some rust off, putting us middle of the pack for the start of the ECR. Saturday evening was eventful, with me leaving the new brake pads I needed at work. We had to drive back from Road Atlanta and ended up spending the night in Marietta. Next time I'm making a list before leaving the house :)

We put on the older Hoosier tires for Sunday morning's 90 minute ECR. Immediately, I noticed a vibration above 100mph, which was probably an out of balance tire or two. I came into the pits after about 15 minutes instead of my 45, as I didn't want to hurt the car. It wasn't worth continuing with everything shaking, as this wasn't a points race or anything. We took the tires off and got them balanced with enough time for Dan to get 45 mins in the car, and finish out the race. No damage, no real wear on the car, success!

Sunday afternoon was the SARRC Sprint. I put on some fresh(er) tires and got ready to kick some butt. It was a fairly uneventful race, which on one hand was nice, but I would have like to have a little more of a fight. I drove hard for 5 laps and put some time on the rest of the field. After that I put it on cruise control and finished off the win. It was the first win (out of 2 races) in the new car. The last one I broke an axle with a 15 second lead on the last lap :) Brian Cembor also came out to watch and took my camera for a spin. He ended up with a few great pics of my car, as well as Kirk's Golf. These are also the first "evidence" of the new car on track! As a photographer, I never get to take pictures of my OWN car.

On a sadder note, it was a weekend full of carnage for some other racers. Everything from spins, to wall hits, to totalled cars, to flips. I got lucky avoiding the bad luck and came out of the weekend with no damage, other then the scrapes on the front bumper from some bump drafting :)

View the pictures using Picasa instead

The Laptop "Drive of Shame"

Funny article I read today from slashdot. I've done this I think 3 times in my 4 years at WebMD. With a 20+ minute commute, that sure sucks!

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29791

Finally worked on the race car

After what seemed like an eternity I finally got to work on the race car this morning. The next race is Road Atlanta next weekend. All the qualifyings will be on Saturday and then I will be doing a 30 minute sprint race by myself on Sunday morning and then splitting a 90 minute enduro with the old owner in the afternoon. Late July in Atlanta should be scorching so I'm going to start drinking water starting Monday. This should be a well attended weekend, so I should hopefully have some on track photos of the race car finally. Its nice being a photographer, but no one takes pictures of YOUR car. This time I'm going to set loose my camera with a bunch of friends and we'll see what comes out :)

On the car note, I finished rebuilding both axles today. Just need the boot clamps and those can go back in the car. Holy CRAP that is a messy job. The grease that came out of the old ones was super nasty, but other then that, they looked great. Not sure if I'm going to drop the $300 on raxles unless I keep on breaking them. Hopefully the redline grease prevents the failure I had last race. Other then that, just need to bleed the brakes, a quick oil change, get the new tires mounted up and make sure all the bolts are tight. Might also do a quickie alignment to make sure everything is still square.

Lastly I broke out the powerwasher and washed all the mud off the jeep. It looks sort of weird being clean! We probably won't get another chance to get her dirty again till August :(

Never fear, the iPhone is here

Finally! Corporate email support, 3G, GPS, and now I've got one :)

It was quite an adventure this morning, as I got in line around 6:30am at the store a few mins from our house. I was 55th in line (lucky number, sweet) and there were people that spent the night waiting.

The whole process with AT&T was a total and gigantic clusterfuck. Their systems were up, their systems were down, their systems were slow. They did something last night so where the staff had no idea what they were doing and were reading off instructions off printed sheets. Half the people that showed up to buy a phone had no idea of contracts, some didn't have their license on them, just plain WOW

At least I had my laptop and wireless, so I got a bunch of work done while I waited. I got the phone and busted out of there after the lady told me everything was perfectly setup. 3 hours later and I've still got No Service. Time to call AT&T. Coming from Verizon, I'm real happy to have the iPhone, but real skeptical on being an AT&T customer. I hope this experience so far isn't repeated on down the road :)

More 4 Wheeling!

Our friends Jeff and Anna came into town from Raleigh for the long weekend. We went out on the town for a few days and went for some more serious 4 Wheeling on Saturday. I kicked myself the whole time for forgetting my camera for our day through Atlanta on Friday and fireworks in the Decatur square. Next time we go out on the town I'll be sure to bring it.

I only got a few good pictures on Saturday as it was very sunny. Time for a polarizer filter. Jeff's Jeep has a 4" lift with some big ol' 35" tires and right now can handle a bit more the Cathy's. Its got built in "button press" axle lockers and it was awesome watching it climb up a few sandy hills where Cathy had some issues. He also tore through some serious mud. Made for a good shot.

I got all jealous and just happened to score a sweet 4" lift on craigslist the very next day, so soon we'll be right there!

Better Firefox bookmarks toolbar

I hate having "toolbars" under my address bar as it takes away real estate from webpages. Having said that, there are pages that I want access to with one click and not having to go to "bookmarks" and searching for them. I found a cool little way to have your cake and eat it to by moving the bookmarks toolbar items to the main file toolbar. They fill out the otherwise unused space between "Help" and your window controls.

• Enable your Bookmarks Toolbar under View, Toolbars.
• Go to View, Toolbars, Customize
• Drag the "Bookmarks Toolbar Items" from the Bookmarks toolbar to the top bar next to "Help"

Now you can change those items around to have shorter descriptions so they fit. I ended up removing the names and going by just the icons. When you bookmark something that you want in there, just add it to the bookmarks toolbar and it pops up there. Brilliant!

Dogs and new lens

Yesterday ended up being the last day we had Rascal as a foster. I was figuring it was about time he got adopted out, and I did just buy a new lens for my camera, so it was time to take some pictures.

The new lens is simply awesome. Its the 24-105L and its miles beyond the 17-85 that I had before. Instant focus and great contrast and colors. I had to adjust the photoshop workflow a bit as I no longer need to do anything to the pictures before posting :)

On the dog note, Rascal did get adopted out today, which made us a bit sad. He was an awesome dog and if not for the fact that I won't allow 3 dogs in the house, Cathy wanted to keep him. We got a new hound/lab/something mix, Jess, for the next few weeks, so we'll see how Zoey adjusts to having a new friend around

Google AJAX Libraries API

Kind of old news, but Google is now hosting the latest and greatest versions of the most popular JS libraries including jQuery, prototype, script_aculou_us, etc

Because of the gzip compression and fast response of google's servers, these files get to the users fast!

You can either use google's loader or just link to the permanent paths of the files.

The Ajaxian has a great article on this

"4 Wheeling"

Since it was so nice yesterday, we decided to take the Jeep out for a little bit of 4 wheeling. A few weeks ago, we scouted this area about 30 mins from the house, and there looked to be a good bit of fun trails. Anything from mild to "break your car".

This was my first time doing some serious off road and it was a friggin blast! The Jeep is way more capable off road then I thought it would be considering the mild lift/mods. In one spot, we got out of the truck to inspect the road and were both a good bit cautious about the coming up maneuver. After getting into the truck, it went through it in about 0.2 seconds. It was easy!

Now I'm really looking forward to 4th of July weekend as we'll be doing a lot more serious wheeling when some friends from Raleigh come down to visit in their newly lifted Jeep Unlimited

Camping

Over memorial day weekend we went to do some camping in the NC mountains. We tried a new spot, Fire Creek, next to Hayesville. While the hiking was great, the views kind of sucked. Hence no pretty overlook pictures. This was the first time out camping/hiking with Zoey and she had an absolute blast. She was a great dog off the leash and she had a blast playing in the streams.

The 4Runner also proved itself off road. We picked a far away camping spot, about 6 miles down a hole ridden gravel/rock road. Got the point the GPS had no idea where we were anymore :)

The pictures aren't the greatest quality, but it was a great time!

The Jeep has some new tunes

After driving the Jeep for about a month now with the crappy stock stereo it was time to upgrade! Out went the crappy OEM tape player and the blown paper speakers. In its place we installed a nice Kenwood CD player, Polk speakers, a hardwired XM Radio setup, and a Infinity Basslink subwoofer. I ran all the wires nice and neat under the dash and carpet and the install looks great.

We ended up picking the Basslink over a traditional sub in a box for the space saving design, as well as the integrated amp. It has 2 10's in that tiny box, and packs quite a punch. After hearing it in the open top Jeep, I went ahead and ordered one for my Mazda.

This whole setup works AWESOME. We got to the point that driving 50 on the road, you can't hear the road noise. Only awesome music. It can get to the point where it hurts your ears without distortion with plenty of thump. We'll be the ones pissing people off at stoplights :) Cathy loves it!

I also got off my ass and started to arrange the workroom that is right off the garage. I still have to get a "house tools" set to fill up that corkboard. At least now, I have a workbench to get some stuff done. Once we get the new cabinets for the kitchen, the old ones will go in here.