Flying Parallel Parking Jarb

"May all your inside rear wheels come unstuck from the pavement!"



for the record, that took me an hour to do in Paint Shop Pro for what would have taken me 5 minutes in Photoshop... and It would have looked real with PS. I jacked the car up for the sole purpose of the above photo - entierly because of Dan's comment - heres the origonal image:

Home, Muffin and a Bunch of Stuff

I went home to my parents house this weekend to drop of the Corrado for the aforementioned work. I took a picture of a tulip after some light afternoon rain. Muffin and a bunch of stuff came back to Cruces with me.

intercooler update

The original plan to mount dual side mount intercoolers has been drug out into the street, shot, and left for dead. The new plan is bigger, better, cheaper, and way cooler (pun intended).

The turbo outlet will be clocked 180 degrees so that it is pointing straight down, the piping will be plumbed down behind the engine block aside the downpipe, and then between the oil pan and transmission, into a single horizontally mounted 18.5x6x3 core. We're mimicking the location of the eip tuning SMIC. Click to enlarge the pic and you'll get a really good feel for future location. In the end, other than the location, it will be completely different from the eip setup.

Instead of running the return pipe from the intercooler to the intake manifold on the passenger side like the eip set up does, we'll have it going up on the drivers side. Making it more similar to this second picture. This will make for less overall pipe and make the bend into the throttle body more natural. Note however, that the pipe you see on the right of this second picture wont be there on mine (that's the one routed behind and under the engine block).

Give Jaime Kennedy his iPod back!

I’ve got some new music for everyone to check out. First off: the 2007 rerelease of J Dilla’s Rough Draft. Originally released in 2003, It’ll change your life. The beats really win it over for me, you hear a pause that seems out of place at first and then it fits like it just needs to be there. It almost reminds me of a Thelonious Monk album – the silence is just as important as the sounds and you don’t know where the next one is going to come from.

For the ultimate chill, check out Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina’s Elis & Tom. If you like Astrud Gilberto and The Girl From Ipanema you’ll defiantly dig this stuff. I thought it would be good back ground music for studying but it surprised me, the entire album has these moments that simply cause you to look up from your book and stare at the nearest spot of color – for me, the painting (of Leif’s) hanging above my desk, or outside if the window is open.

Jack Johnson fans, check out Sing-a-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George. I was turned off at first because I thought it would be childish like an actual “sing along”… and then holy shit balls! The album includes tracks with guests Ben Harper, Matt Costa, and good ol’ G. Love. Oh and get this, when you buy the album it comes with a downloadable coloring book! To quote the iTunes review, “Could Jack Johnson get any cooler and more laid back?”

If you don’t know who The Streets are check ‘em out. At the very least, download “Fit But You Know It.”

It’s funny the other day I decided I wasn’t listening to enough Neil Young, so the next time I was at Hastings I picked up my last recommendation: Neil Young’s Living With War. Like Sleeps With Angels (in response to Kurt Cobains death) Neil just comes right out and says it about the Iraq war. It’s raw, it’s true, it’s emotional, and it’s bitter sweet (on one hand I love the sound and the music makes me feel good, on the other hand the lyrics hit home and I morn for the intense loss of life and immorality of this political war).

DSMIC

Next up on the list of projects is to increase the reliability and effectivness of the Corrado's turbo. I hope to cool the intake charge considerably, there by reducing overall operating temperatures, decreasing the need to use fuel to cool the combustion chamber, increasing power output and increasing fuel economy.

I've devised a plan to mount dual side mount intercoolers (DSMIC) in the front fender wells in the location of the stock G60 units. Rather than using the actual G60 core, I'm turning to Konstruct Performance in Santa Fe to put together a custom set up. I sketched this in class today - it provides a general schematic of how the flow will traverse from the compressor to the intake manifold.


The two SMICs are piped in seires. Air from the turbo's compressor will be cooled sequentially as it passes through each air to air heat exchanger. Piping will remain relativle small in diameter to minimize the pressure drop (2" - 2.25"). The DSMICs will be sized to cool a maximum of 15lbs of boost, i.e. the core sizes will be large enough to reject the heat induced by a pressure increase of 15 psi.

I'm calling this stage 1.5. It'll be an upgrade from the initial stage 1 but isnt quite stage 2, as I have no intention at this time to increase the boost. So for now it's 4.8lbs of boost all day long.

New Tails

The long awaited package from Europe came in! New tails for the Corrado (smoked and red) and a head light leveler switch. The leveler switch will allow for +/- 30 degrees of vertical in-cab, on-the-fly adjustment.

The Needle

Organ Needle is the higest point of the Organ mountains in Las Cruces. The climb assends 4,000 vertical feet in only 2 mi. The trail is overgrown by brush and disapears for long sections acrros the granite rock faces. We had to scramble and climb over some serious stuff.

Here's the route:

Some pics along the way:




Yeah! The summit:


It was a hell of a time. I'm glad I did it before I become a flat-lander.

ME 510, Digital Signal Processing

Ok, here’s my problem with this class. First, it’s a distance education class, which means there’s zero interaction between the teacher and the students. Second, the professor is boring - he reads equations off of power point slides. Third, it’s impossible to complete any of the homework assignments, and the tests aren’t any different. Forth, the professor does not return graded quizzes/home work/tests; it’s just a score via email – your score is 34% (fuck me). Lastly, and I don’t me to use this as an excuse because after all I did sign up for the class, a mechanical engineer has no place in a class titled Digital Signal Processing.

I’ve given up on the lectures. Like I said, all the guy does is read off of his slides. The killer is, due to the overall poor performance of the class he’s taken some self initiative to dumb down the slide content so we can all follow. Now we get shit like: “the arithmetic mean is the sum of all the data points divided by the number of points, it’s just the average. As simple as that, the average.” I’m ready to shoot myself so I take off early every time.

Since I’ve given up on the lectures, I rely solely on the text book - a book described by an Electrical Engineering Professor who teaches the under-grad DSP courses here as: “The worst book ever written” (fuck me again). Why are we using this book you ask, well the author is from Albuquerque as is my professor and $100 says their good friends.

Supposedly he’s not out to fail anyone, so I guess I’m guaranteed at least a D (fuck me sideways).

Now it’s all up to the final project, I’ve never been able to complete the projects in the past so I have little hope in completing this one. Basically I’m fucked.

Siriusly

After much todo and debate I've come to the conclusion that I'm not, in now way, an ipod kind of guy. Fuck it, its not my thing, I'm not particularly hip, and I suck at making my own playlists - inevitably incapable of selecting tracks by myself for myself for what myself feels like listing to.

So for half the price of just the ipod hardware it self (not including the (legally acquired) cost of 40 gigs of MP3's) I've got my self a mad variety of music at the touch of the dial, Sirius satellite radio styles.

Today, after installing the Sirius receiver in the car I started driving around listing to all kinds of channels. I couldn't get enough. And then I realized I was in Alamogordo and almost out of gas, so I filled up at $3.29/gal (fucking useless war on Iraq) and flipped a bitch back to Cruces.

crazy

Just thinking about it right now... question. Why is it that every advertisement for dating/interested in meeting other singles/find love/do it doggy style with hot bitches/meet new and exciting people/relationship advertisement illustrates a female and not a male?

Maybe if the ad had dudes on it the girls that everyone was trying to meet would join.

As an aside, look at the clevage on this girl (click to enlarge photo) is it photoshopped, or something wierd? I dont know, maybe i'm just tripping.

Everyone Else > Dell Shipping

Thats the last time I'll ever get excited about ordering anything from dell. Compare Dell:

Order Date: 4/17/2007
Shipping Method: Next Business Day
Est. Ship Date: 5/2/2007
Est. Delivery Date: 5/3/2007
Carrier: Not Shipped

Versus the other package I ordered today:

Type: Package
Status: Pickup - On Time
Scheduled Delivery: 04/23/2007
Shipped or Billed on: 04/17/2007
Service Type: GROUND
Weight: 5.00 Lbs

Send that fucking shit now already!


Edit: The RAM has arrived (early), it's installed, and holy crap the lappy hauls ass!

Ginkgo Biloba for the Lappy

My brother is all about the supplements, and he's got Nate using them now to! Both of them have noticed an increase in short and long term memory capacity after taking ginkgo biloba. Fuckin' seriously.

I've been monitoring RAM usage on the new lappy sense day one. It's pushing balls to the walls (86%) with only a single ie browser open. Today I scored some dope shiz, ginkgo biloba styles: a fuckin money DDR2 200-PIN SODIMM, PC2-5300/667 MHz, 2 GB (2 x 1 GB) Memory Module Upgrade Kit.

EDIT: WHAT THE HELL?
Order Date: 4/17/2007
Order Status: In Production

Shipping Method: Next Business Day
Est. Ship Date: 5/2/2007
Est. Delivery Date: 5/3/2007

I'm an Idiot

Like all bad ideas this last one started out as a good one. I thought I could effortlessly lighten the color of my hair by using "Blonde" shampoo. In retrospect I don't know what I was thinking and fully realize the stupidity of my actions. Ultimately I've even become embarrassed by my purchase and would consider hiding the bottle of shampoo in the event of company.

Last night, I had the thought: I know I'll transfer the contents of the "Blonde" shampoo into my previous (more manly) shampoo container. I dont know what's worse.

Grindhouse

For anyone having second thoughts about seeing the movie Grindhouse, do it. I saw it. It was money. Every second. Warewolves of the SS by Rob Zombie especially won it over for me, and then there were the females, those bitches were smokin!

This exerpt from a movie review does it for me:

... a group of randy Texas girls (McGowan among them) fatefully meets a hard-driving stranger named Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell, enjoying himself immensely). Back-roads mayhem ensues.

Go, now. Go see it. Do it.

Forest's Golf

This is a commercial made by a Brazilian ad agency to support the launch of the new 2008 Golf in Brazil. Channeling Forrest Gump, the subtitled, 2-minute spot turns "Run, Forrest, run!" into "Drive, Forrest, drive!" ~Autoblog