Our first snowfall in the new house. The kids are EXCITED about this, and I have to admit that it does put me more in the mood for Christmas.
I’m glad that I got my Christmas lights up the weekend after the weekend after Thanksgiving (I would have gotten them up the weekend after Thanksgiving, but I couldn’t find the clips for putting up the outside lights – so I had to get new ones). It looked like we had five boxes of lights, it ended up that two of those boxes were empty (I didn’t put the lights back in the boxes after the last time they were used in Vancouver), but I found the other two strings, so I was able to get some lights up, just not all the way across the front of the house. Our neighbors rented a cherry-picker for putting up their lights on the higher parts of the house, and I’ll probably get in on that next year.
Weather Radar, Dec. 14
With the impending snowfall a couple of days ago, I went to check the radar and found an interesting picture. I imagine that the ski resorts were happy to see snow, and the radar was probably just reflecting their thinking. Look on the south-east side of the image, and you’ll see what I mean.
I’m grateful for what I have, yet frustrated at the same time. Hebrews 13:5 says to be content with what you have, but it doesn’t say that you have to be satisfied. That’s right where I am – content, yet not satisfied. I can – and will – do more for myself, my family, and my friends.
Thoughts
We got a break!
We had an accepted offer in on a house, but that didn’t happen (funny how an individual breaking a contract is verboten, but a company can easily do it). So we had to quickly find another house — and we ended up finding an even better deal. So, we’re in our new house, and just in time by the looks of the financial markets (and since we don’t consider a house an “investment,” we’re OK as long as the bank doesn’t call the mortgage).
There’s still quite a bit of “stuff” that we need to go through, plus a few things that are left to get, but we should have enough room for what we’re planning on keeping.
Now that we have a home, and Kelly’s doing better, maybe I can focus on work, business, and racing again.
Uncategorized
I wish we still had our old house!
It is very frustrating to try to find an affordable house — even in this market. People still seem to believe that the market isn’t soft, that home values aren’t going down — or they’ve borrowed against the inflated value of their home, and now they’re stuck. There are people trying to sell existing homes for significantly more than the same floorplan is being sold brand-new. In addition, the banks don’t want home values to go down, because then people will walk away from their homes, because they’re upside-down on their loans. So, current homeowners don’t want prices to go down, and neither do banks. In my opinion, that’s a recipe for disaster for the homeowners and the banks.
It makes it tough for those who are looking for homes (like me). Personally, I think that the housing market is possibly close to “the bottom,” but things could get really ugly if the local economy takes a hit. In addition, it’s probably going to take a year (or two) for the housing market to recover. In addition, the “freewheeling loan market” is gone, so all of the “mortgage money” that used to be freely available is pretty much gone. Thanks, guys! (grrrr…)
Thoughts
So, snowfalls 6 and 7 over the last couple of days, although the weather isn’t quite cold enough to keep the snow on the ground for very long, although it’s after noon here and there’s still snow on the grass.
So I’m starting to get ready for the autocross season. The new (to me) shocks are installed, the new tires are here (and they’re getting taken to a friend — Karl Coleman at Tight-n-Tidy Racing — to see if he can get them mounted. The old V710s are spoken for, and it sounds like there is interest in the the A3S04s and Enkei wheels. Hopefully someone will be interested in my old shocks, and maybe even the OEM shocks. If not, I’ll just make sure that they are in a safe location if I ever have to send the Konis in for rebuilding.
The last slush event for the 2007 season is tomorrow, and then it will be almost a month before the first local event. Normally I’d be going to the San Diego National Tour, but we’ve (e.g. Kelly) decided to save the money this year so that we can hopefully buy a house in the area. Anybody got half-a-mil laying around that they don’t need?
Racing, Thoughts
OK, this is snowfall number five out here on the west coast. Temperatures may have been warmer this summer, but they are significantly cooler this winter.
As far as winter goes, I grew up with four seasons, so I’m used to snow for wintertime, but I don’t like driving with all of the “newbie” snow drivers, especially those who have no clue that “Summer-only” tires don’t work too well in cold temperatures, and even worse when there’s ice and snow on the roads. At least I have all-season tires on my car, but still 260+ HP and 250+ Tq is not easy to drive when you can spin the tires in fourth gear.
Well, the 2007 autocross season is almost here, and although I’m scaling back my travel this year (no San Diego National Tour, and possibly not going to the National Championships in Topeka), I’ve picked up a new set of double-adjustable shocks and a new set of “championship-sized” tires. Now I’ve got to start all over again learning the car!
Work isn’t too bad, it’s not like working for myself, but I’ll never get rich by working for someone else, even if they are very successful.
Racing, Thoughts
I spent some time the last day or so updating certain features on my server (which is behind a firewall with only specific ports open). Early this morning I finally installed Java 1.4 to 1.5, which meant that I could then install Tomcat 5.5. Tonight I’ve updated MySQL from 4.1 to 5.0!
My server is now a bit of a “mish-mash” of distro-provided packages and updates. Once I have some time later this weekend, I’ll remove some of the dependencies that provide MySQL functionality via the distro-provided packages and switch to either pre-built (like MySQL) or locally-built (like a lot of other stuff I have).
Thoughts
As I write this, I’m still stinging over the thorough humbling that I received at the National Championships. Not only did I drive poorly, but I also had some bad luck at the event. At least I arrived at the event with everything I packed, this year!
Now I need to think about all of the additional stuff I need to make the car even more competitive — double-adjustable shocks, wider tires (and the associated “place that will mount them”), and possibly additional “lightness” and power (ie. new exhaust). In addition, I’ll need to take some time to figure out what all of the adjustments that I’ll have available can do for me.
Another thing is that normally I don’t have a co-driver at local events. Perhaps that is “playing with my head” as well.
Let the “second guessing” begin. 
Racing, Thoughts
OK, probably most people wouldn’t care, but I’m finally getting to the point in my driving where I’ve finally trophied in a National-level Solo event. Not only that, but I’m getting closer to the “national top guys” in the class.
I’m pretty excited about this, but I still need to do more. The National Championships are coming up soon, and it would be extremely nice if I was able to trophy there — even better would be if I was the fastest 350Z driver!
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Good thing that I called the gas company last night! It turned out that we did have two small natural gas leaks at the meter.
After changing the bearings on the trailer, I thought that I smelled burnt grease. Before I could identify the source, I became “de-sensitized” to it and couldn’t find it. I smelled it again a couple of days ago but couldn’t pinpoint where it was, but it was definately related to the hot water heater running. Last night I smelled it again and (finally!) called the gas company. There was enough gas in the air outside the house that the “sniffer” that the gas company uses was ticking slowly even before the tech got near the meter!
Now I’m glad I made that call!
Thoughts
Well, spent this weekend doing both mental and physical stuff.
My file system abstraction library is pretty much complete for now. I added the ability to recognize case-sensitive file systems, added POSIX support, and re-designed the copy and move so that they take a destination, not a destination parent (so that you can copy into the same folder or move and rename at the same time).
My second “big” project for the weekend was to re-pack the bearings on my tire trailer. I’d been hearing some squeaking sounds, and decided that it was time — especially after the 4000-mile “dash across the US” to attend the Solo Nationals last September. It looks like I might have been a little late, although I didn’t feel anything really wrong, the right inside bearing showed traces of being “locked up” at some time, and the outer bearing race was somewhat loose. That’s probably the source of the squeaking.
Next step will be to move the axle on top of the springs, and get some 12″ tires instead of the 8″ that I currently have. That will “transform” the trailer into what HF calls a “high-speed” trailer (simply because the 12″ wheels don’t spin as fast as the 8″ wheels at the same speed).
Racing, Thoughts