Glenn’s Pit Lane

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…)

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?

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.

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).

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.

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!

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!

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).

The last few weeks have seen me doing a lot of driving around this area and across the state. The more I live here in western Washington, the more I fall in love with the area (well, besides the ultra-liberal politics, but that’s a different issue entirely.)

There are extremely scenic mountain vistas, we’re relatively close to the ocean, there are lots of Solo events to choose from, there’s a decent racetrack just down the road, the wife is happy, the kids are happy, and there’s just a lot to be able to do, both individually and as a family.

Well, the Hoosiers are done. Steel showing after 33 runs — although I guess that long power slide to the finish at an event helped them along a bit.

I was fairly happy with the A3S04s that I had on the car last year, although I knew that they were holding me back. The A3S05s might be good for a lighter, lower-powered car, but on the Z they melt. Literally.

So, I got a set of used 710s from one of the T2 Zs after they had used them for a race weekend. These tires, even used, are better than the S05s! Even hot, I’ve got more grip than the S05s ever had (1.29g vs. 1.19g), and unlike the Hoosiers, the 710s stick almost instantly!

Now, I can see that I’ll need to get a set of new 710s that I can use for both the Packwood National Tour and Topeka National Championships. I’ll still have these current 710s that are awesome for regional events, and the new 710s for the “big” events.