X-mas Break.

I've just recieved information from LANL about winter break employment. I've decided to go for it for the following reasons:
1. it's interesting stuff, and it sounds like they've got something lined up for me to do.
2. geographically it'll but me closer to the snow, I've been really excited about getting to ski this winter.
3. finally, I wont beat around the bush - I need the money.

This creats a delema with my current employment situation. I'm going to try to getout as peacfully as possible with the intent to try to get re-hired on my retern in mid-january. I'm also prepared to get into an argument and burn every bridge imaginable. This afternoon I'll have more information about the outcome of all this.

edit: The resignation went well, I was able to give about two weeks, and i'm told although they wont beable to hold a job for me they would deffinatly consider me if I wanted to come back afterwards.

Caution, Vanity Ahead

This morning on my way to school was vanity plate day. There were three slow moving drivers in front of me making me late - incedently all three of them had a vanity plate on their hoopty.

Silver Buick: “INSURE”
White Yukon: “MOMZILLA”
Orange New Beetle: “PUNK’N”

When I get home tonight I’m going to try to look for a picture of the all time best vanity ever spotted…. The obligatory, “SKANKIN.”

WWJD… with an old office chair?

I stumbled across this last night in the Corrado forums. I laughed until I cried, then I showed Chelsie, she laughed to. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this was: “Oh my god, I’d better not show this to Leif, it might give him an idea.” That said, Leif, if you see this post, don’t get any ideas.


From the looks of it office chair racing combines the danger of street luge racing and taking your bike off sweet jumps. At least this guy’s wearing a helmet… If it were me I’d probably upgrade to a full faced motorcycle helmet though.

Finally, I speculate that in the future office chair racing will replace drift racing as the most controversial SCCA sponsored race event.

Dubmodder

In an effort to procrastinate I've spent some time messing around with a cool v-dub site. It's basically photoshopping made easy. In keeping with the recent mk5 discussion I've used it to create the following two images. Enjoy.

Attitude < Par

I work as a line cook at the Sunset Grill at the Sonoma Ranch Golf course. That said; work sucks for one reason, and one reason alone. The head chief is a rage of mood swing hell. When she's in a good mood she's a joy to be around and she's taught me alot about cooking. But, if we get a big order in she comes in and takes over, she tries to do everything herself, she starts yelling at everyone, she’s trying to help – god bless her but it tends to put everyone on edge and it brings down the cheerful attitude of the kitchen. I think it could be made better if she spent more time trying to be a god of a line cook and focused on activities more typical of a head chief. That, and she needs a volume/mute button.

Other grievances I have are miniscule; one of which is the logo. Are those carrots? WTF!

After school gets out for the semester and I have a little more free time I intend to put in some applications around town. I’m looking to get out of the food service business. As my profile says: I’m in serious need of a good part time job.

Are the parts in yet?

I await patently for part to arrive at the dealership for the Corrado. They were supposed to be in on friday - allowing for a swift weekend Corrado fix. We're all waiting on a thermostat housing cover and all the o-rings that seal its three flanges. the total cost was about $26.

Leif has really pulled a lot of weight on this project. Lets hope they come in. That is all.

More US spec-tacage

They've got some pics out with some other colors. Seems to look a little better not in red. At any rate this is more of a pic post than anything.

Finally, this looks the best. The suspension, allthough still obviously higher off the ground seems to have settled a little in this picture.

To put all this in perspective look at the ride height on this Touareg, VW's SUV:

The wheel well gap isnt all that different...

I say this with a lump in my throat and a heavy heart: the US spec 2005 GTI is no where near my origonal take on the car.

VWoA reports an official INCREASE of 15mm in ride height over the german spec version but judging by the early press release photos all I can think is, Holly 4x4 Batman. The turns are all yellow instead of clear, and the seats dont look like anything special. The base price is said to be $22k (lower than expected) but the options packages seem unnessesarially coupled with unwanted features - dramatically increasing the end price. For example, Why on earth am I requiered to have satelite radio and a sunroof just to get a decent set of cloth sport seats?? There's black plastic molding in all the wrong places especially on the rear bumper. The optional 18" rims look like something more suited for a matchbox/hotwheels car, and although I havent seen pictures of the standard 17's that will come on it I doubt they'll be any better. Color options are far to limited for a car planed for such high production numbers (where's the GTI laser blue? yellow? reflex silver?) - black seems to be the only color that looks decent. The fake plastic honey comb looks horable and reminds me of the plastic honey comb that comes on non-functional ford mustang wind scoops, it you look closely there seems to be a few cutout near the bottom, whats up with that! My bet is the standard "sport seats" will designed around the typical fat american ass and will be more like the base model jetta's "comfort seats" I'll be taken aback so far if we ever see any of the cool plad-pattered sport recaros from europe. The bumper relectors on the rear bumper of the german spec car have migrated to the front... and they're yellow now. I'm so disapointed.

Fuck it. What do I care anyway, right? I'm not in the market to buy a new car anyway.

It’s Electric, Thermo-Electric

Oh man, so today I finally got to test the thermoelectric cold plate assemblies I’ve been putting together. In ambient room conditions the cold side reached a low of 19 degrees F. It was really cool to see the transition of the condensation that formed on the plate – it started out small, then bigger droplets formed, the droplets would get to big and run down the side. After a little while they’d stop running, then all of a sudden the condensation would freeze and the plate turns white. When we left it on for a while the frost really started to build up. It was supper cool, literally.

"Normal" Corrado Problems

Whoa! Coolant everywhere, as far as the eye can see… ok just that puddle there under the car… that that green one there… It’s a volkswaggen… they’re pretty rare, it’s called a Corrado… they only sold them in the US for 5 years… YES I KNOW ITS LEAKING COOLANT!

Any way the Corrado is shut down for the moment. A small coolant leak turned into a very big coolant leak today. I spent two hours tonight with Leif tearing the entire front end apart with flashlights trying to pin point the problem. We found coolant leacking from 1) the lower radiator hose to the thermostat, 2) the seal between the colling tube/crack pipe and the thermostat housing, and 3) from a crack in the thermostat hosing cover.

The so-called “crack pipe” is known to be a weak element in the cooling system. I sourced an independent group of Corrado enthusiast engineers who craft and sell the beefcake version of the crack pipe. See picture. The idea is to replace as little many components as possible to avoid unnecessary costs… but I’m thinking… while the car is apart… if this thing is going to bust ass in the next month or so I might consider buying one of these beefed trail guides.

I don’t know, I’m pretty sick of coolant problems in the Corrado. I’ve had to replace neary every pipe, every hose…. With that I’ve taken this opportunity to modify a new polo.

Lost: 1 Can, Last Seen: Near that bush over there

Fuel up the four-wheeler and make an ammo run to Wal-Mart, its here! It’s the 2005 Coors Light camouflage can, I scored a case of eighteen 16oz cans. Don’t set these tall boys down next to any foliage or you may never find them back.

For your viewing pleasure I have placed one of these appropriately nicknamed “camo cans” in a wilderness setting. I think it blends in rather well; I would defiantly think twice before I brought a case with me on my next drunken autumn walk (not much of a hunter my self).

I have found however that the camo cans ability to blend in atop the more urban setting of my desk or refrigerator is piss poor at best. In fact I’ve found that the non-camoufalged normal silver cans are much easier to lose track of on the desk, and dont even get me started about when I wear my silver gloves.

BFGed

Well I did it; I finally bought some tires for the Corrado! It ended up being $346 for all 4. Which in all actuality is a pretty decent deal considering I got the BFG g-force sports that were on the top of my previous list.

They should come in at Discount with in 7 working days. Stay tuned for the official first impression post.

Porcshe to Acquire 20% VAG stock

“In a move billed as a defensive maneuver on the part of the Stuttgart-based sports car manufacturer, Porsche AG announced that it plans to acquire roughly 20-percent of Volkswagen AG. The purchase is intended to protect the manufacturer of brands including Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT, Skoda, Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti from a potential hostile takeover, given the company’s shared chassis and technology projects like the SUV platform Porsche’s Cayenne shares with the Volkswagen Touareg and Audi Q7 as well as the company’s new hybrid technology shown in concept form at the Frankfurt IAA two weeks ago.” (vwvortex)

Whoa. But hey wait a minute… Porsche and VW/Audi have always been in bed together anyway. Or should I say the Porsche family and the Piech family. They're all the same. If they'd start sleeping with the Quandt family they would gain BMW too. What is it about Volkswaggen… man I cant explain it.

My impression is that this is a good move by Porsche. Volkswagen is publicly traded and by acquiring 20% of VAG stock they secure a vote on the VAG board as a major stockholder. This should help to prevent assholes like Kirk Kerkorian from acquiring a solid share as was speculated (who single handedly distroyed Chrysler by doing the same thing). VW isn't selling it specifically to Porsche because it's not VW's to sell. Porsche will acquire it from shareholders.

As far as anyone can tell right now, it seems the companies will be basically independent. It's feasible Porsche might have more sway with the VW board being a major shareholder, but it certainly wouldn't have any controlling interest (only 20%) and VW would have no interest in Porsche, so none the other way either. About the only thing we're likely to see of this deal as it is now is perhaps increased partnership between the two manufacturers on development of future projects.

Can you say new 914?

Procrastination-smashtication

So you’d think that after several years of working with groups all of us (by us I mean every one of the mechanical engineering seniors in my group) would have learned that a 50+ page lab report should be started early. This would imply that we exert a little extra effort though out the week in order to get said lab report done with out having to pull an all-nighter every Sunday.

Admittedly this Sunday some sort of miracle happened. We finished (aside from a major proofreading) an ME 445 lab report in one sitting. We started writing at about 1pm today yesterday and finished at 2:30am today. Not having done any work in preparation for this effort I’d say we did pretty good. Tomorrow I will take the report to Kinko’s to have it printed in color and probably get it bound real nice.

There’s a side bet going on for the class where in the group that does the worst overall at the end of the semester has to buy a keg for the rest of the class… it was Kluk’s idea. Most humorously, while working tonight we received a call from a group member(not Brandon) of another group(Brandons Group) in the same class… two of their group members(Brandon and another guy) were MIA and they had also just started. So far it looks like Kluk is buying the keg at the end of the semester.

Right now I’m just killin’ a few brain cells trying to relax a little so I can get some sleep. I got really stressed out today thinking this wasnt going to get done. They’ve got some really good triple in stock at the beer store that I’ve been sipping on.

New Digs for the Turtle

So I’ve got this turtle… for the last year, maybe a little more the turtle was just cruising around the house with out any one place to call home. I thought it was neat cause he got to run around where ever he felt like going and it was always exciting to play a good game of find the turtle… he’s some where in this house, but where is he?

At any rate Chelsie brought it to my attention that these were not proper living arrangements for the little guy and that he needed more. Admittedly he’d been pealing a lot lately and it appeared to be due to a lack of hydration.

This alluded to me spending all Saturday morning researching box turtles online. Turns out the little guys like it between 70-80 degrees F at a relative humidity no less than 20% (more is always better) and require a large water dish that they can sit in to absorb water through their water absorbers located somewhere not in their mouth.

This then led to a trip to PetsMart and dropping 60 shells in order to create the proper environment for our little one. We got this super sweet stuff called “Bed-a-Beast.” It’s made of ground coconut shells and comes as a small brick that expands in a bucket of water to make a moist terrarium substraight suitable for turtle habitation. Two different types of over-priced special box turtle food were also purchased as through research it was discovered that our turtles favorite food, Banana, gives him the shits… so that’s why he spent all that time in the bathroom last week!