Archived News starting from 09-23-2012 and earlier
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With my
new car delivered less than a week ago, it was time to
beat the crap out of it.
Having just barely 500 miles on the odometer, I decided break-in was good enough and signed up for it's first Autocross.
I was of course the star of the show, with no less than 10 people asking how well it drove and how the seats were on long trips. I replied with "awesome"
and "it only has 500 miles so I don't know." Compared to the Cougar, this car handled like it was on rails. I decided to turn off all stability/traction control for my runs, but in hindsight wish I had tried a few
with it on. My classification was under question since I had street tires and the car has only been available for two weeks, but my
assigned group had nothing to worry about since the 80% driver, 20% car rule was in full force. Hopefully during my next race I'll be slightly less
excited and maybe get my side of the equation up to 50%.
As far back as
4 years ago I fancied a Focus ST.
Unfortunately, the north american product team at Ford never thought it was
"homologated" for the US market until
4 months ago when
I was finally able to place an order for my current dream car. Today I finally
took delivery of the beast.
I arrived in full creep gear with my Focus ST hat and badge (from
Myrn) and happily dispensed with a significant amount of cash for the
privilige of driving what I've been obsessing about for years. The 1,000 mile break-in period is like a torture sentence, and I've considered putting a block of some sort under the gas to keep me honest.
Tonight was also the release of Borderlands 2, so James and I took it for a spin to pickup our copies of the game. The Gamestop manager asked who had the Focus ST, so already I'm a superstar.
Back to back birthday weekends is where it's at.
While the last party had pinatas, parachutes and animals, Lexi's party had cotton candy and a bouncy castle.
It's clear to me now that I underfunded Lilas party, but she is partly to blame having been born on a day that prevents any outdoor activity.
Our first stop was the bouncy castle, where Lila was initially unsure of what to do, but quickly got the idea. Her lack of mass was a
disadvantage, especially when bigger kids joined the bouncing, but it was easily her favorite thing of the whole party. To combat this lack of mass,
she immediately began eating cotton candy which was a source of confusion at first, not knowing if it was something to eat or play with.
After tying baloons to her failed to amuse me, I decided to write a warning about her recently soiled diaper on one and begin the public humiliation
she will have to endure her entire life with me as her father.
Lila had her
first birthday party aside from her own today.
It was a lavish affair at a cider mill, with an entire barn set aside for the festivities.
Wandering around the cider mill, Lila discovered goats will eat anything you give them, flowers should not be picked, and tractors are still
a bit too big for her to safely operate. A pinata was beaten, a parachute was deployed and Lila finally ran out of energy after several hours of
adventure. A new bar has been set for toddler birthdays.
For some reason, this week is Navy week in Detroit. The big impact of this is two navy ships
docked on the Detroit river. Our lunch today
included a stop to check them out. While the more modern destroyer
was heavily guarded and apparently off limits, the older wooden ship was open for business with only a
hilarious patrol boat guarding it. Canada still seemed miffed about the war of 1812 as it made a point to deploy an even larger modern destroyer to remind us just how dangerous they are. It was effective in keeping me on the Detroit side of the river.
Lastnight Lisa found out her 12 hour shift was cancelled. Not willing to relax on labor day, she began planning a garage sale of epic proportions. I told her the city requires a permit for garage sales but this information had no impact on her deep rooted need to sell our crap. Happy to be purging our clogged house, I kept my mouth shut and let the sale unfold. I even lugged up some crap from the barn and put 4 signs in strategic locations. I was surprised at the turnout, with a $250+ total take, and a good amount of crap gone. My fight to donate whatever doesn't sell is looming, but I'm hoping the earnings put her in a better mood to let things go.
After several years of encouraging Lila to participate in my various Battlefield games, I had all but given up on her gaming career. Recently, I managed to get into the MechWarrior Online beta and after installing and playing a few rounds, Lila asked me to lift her up. She was fascinated with the laser and missle noises, and grabbed the mouse and managed to make a few hits on some enemy mechs. This whole time I was pushing Battlefield I see now I should have been exploting her love for battle mechs.
As I wait for my
Focus ST order to be filled, I bide my time reading every scrap of knowledge about it available.
Today I found a comparison between my future turbo and the space shuttle, which was clearly designed for the nerd target market. It worked perfectly as I now believe
that since the same material used in space shuttle turbopumps is also used to manufacture my turbo, I'll essentially be driving a space shuttle. If I needed any reassurance to keep
waiting for my car to get built, that would have been enough.
Digging through boxes of junk stored under my stairs, I discovered some original toys my mother had stashed long ago for me to pass on to my future children. Amazingly, I did in fact find a woman willing to have sex with me and now have a daughter to accept said toys. I gladly cleaned up and handed her some dinosaurs from the early 90s show creatively titled "Dinosaurs," some California Raisins, Micro Machines and a few crappy transformers. I did not, however, give up the 1988-1990 era McDonalds Transformers (OK, they look more like crappy GoBots) I found. I decided to keep these for myself even after discovering they are essentially worthless on eBay. In fact after discovering they did not appreciate I immediately made a bad decision and purchased the remaining members I did not have in my collection. They now sit on my desk at work, reminding me of my childhood dreams of NASA and exploring Mars that remain as yet unfulfilled.
The Windows 8 RTM released today for MSDN subscribers, a club I belong to through work and am therefore special. My first task after the install was of course the
performance index which seems to have a higher upper-end from Windows 7. The next logical step was to get my
first Windows 8 game achievement out of the way before diving into the new full screen start menu. While I tried to adopt the new idea of a full screen program launcher, my head just wasn't ready to accept it so I jumped to desktop mode and felt secure again. My first achievement did require embracing this new
metro modern design, and while I remain tepid the familiar pop of the cheevo helped warm my frigid fear ever so slightly. If it managed to wean me off PC gaming and into the console world, so too will it bring me into the full screen start menu. The Xbox achievement is still my master.
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