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2008-06-11   Not much since I got back. As soon as I returned I had an abundance of work to do. There's nothing like coming home to 400 e-mails to make you smack your head. At least my workload should lighten in the coming months; right now it's just hectic. I'm getting pissed at all the night meetings. Half the time I can barely understand the India or Taiwan groups. There connections suck and the English is bad. I know they try, but it's almost imossible to break down bad English with a bad phone connection. Plus, they don't answer the damn question most of the time. Ah well, nothing I can do about that.   I also had a weekend of auto-x as soon as I got back. I did my first run w/ GGLC Saturday and then SCCA Sunday. Saturday was pretty fun since we got 11 runs + lunch. Sunday sucked w/ only 3 runs and my friend Charles beating me by 0.2seconds! I attribute it to ligher wheels and 30 WHP more...maybe. I got auto-x class on the 22nd and then run two w/ GGLC on the 28th. There's SCCA on the 29th, but I'm not getting stuck out there til 6pm+ again. 2008-05-26 Back from NY!!! Trip here! 2008-04-14 So much auto-x to do, so little recover time to do it. Everytime I get back from Sunday auto-x, I'm EXTREMELY tired! Sucks getting up at 6am or earlier. I'll still keep going though; nothing like a good auto-x to hone some skills. Work's still the same. One of my projects should have most of the heavy workload done soon, so I'll be able to relax a little more. I gotta look for a new projec though now that this one is coming to a close, so I need to make sure it's something interesting. I'll probably do something memory related. I also have to take more classes...but who the hell can stand a 3-8hr class. I mean, wtf! No one has that kind of attention span. I just hope I can survive some of these. P.S. I look like a redneck with a hat on... 2008-03-30 Ah another great weekend day spent at Golden Gate Fields. No matter the number of people that show up or the delays, I always like going out here. The weather is nice, the view is great, and the people, for the most part, are fun to talk with. 2008-03-29    Been a fun couple of weekends. Got together with Andrew and George one weekend to play Smash Bros. and Rockband. Tons of fun, unlocked lots of Smash Players, and found out neither of us can sing :-) Following weekend my old duplex-mate Tong came down to San Jose. So me, him, LizT, Chow, and Couche got together. Surprisingly we grabbed Korean BBQ. Normally Mr. Couche is a, as he says, "meat;cheese;bread" guy, but he liked the Kal Bi. We laso did some Smash trash talking and more Rockband (you can never get enough rock band). Once again, none of us could sing. Liz was alright, but the rest of us should never be heard w/o alcohol.    I also got a chance to install my new Greddy Evo2 CBE I picked up from Speed Element. The car is louder at idle, but much quieter when you actually get on the gas. It's true 3" too so I don't lose any power. I'll see how it holds up in the next auto-x sound check.    At work, I've been really busy. My main project is reaching its finale so people are picking up speed and throwing e-mails left and right. At the same time I have to test systems to help fulfull my main job role as well as do extra classes on my own to increase my value. After these tasks slow down somewhat, I plan on taking some time for personal programming. I haven't done any C# in about a year and nothing game related in even longer than that. IT's time to get back to DX programming, Windows UIs, and .NET web apps. 2008-03-16 Ah...nothing like a clean car to make the day. I got the parents' house around 10am and didn't finsh detailing 'til 4:30pm. The car looks so perfect now. I even used some special glass polisher from Zaino to remove any small waterspots and misc things that my normal Eagle 20/20 can't; pics below. On a side note, I also installed a new stereo so I could have a bluetooth connection with my phone. It'll be CA law soon to have hands-free cellphone talking soon (even though that doesn't solve the problem) and I hate the ear piece, so this was really the next best solution. It seems to work pretty well, but I wish they had a movable external mic instead of just the built in one. Some friends have said I sound too low while others say I'm perfectly fine, so who knows. I did run into a small issue installing this thing. The gauge of wire was slightly higher than the last deck. So when I went to use my old wiretaps, they ended up being just a tad too big. They'd cut the rubber insulation but not enough to actually make physical contact. So even though they felt good in the the taps, they weren't actually working. Went to radio shack for some higher gauge taps and the lady there was so dumb. I asked where the wire taps were or where any stereo equipment might be. She said that she didn't even know what a wire tap was. I looked anyways and found what I needed within a minute. She then said I should've told her what they call it in a smug voice. They have a giant tool box style area with everything and calls them ALL connectors. That's it. No actual names. Just a giant box with pics for each drawer. I swear, the dumbest frigging people work at radio shack. /rant off. At least it's finally in now and working with everything :-) 2008-03-12 Well, it's been an extremely long time since I posted an update. I've been a combination of quite lazy and quite busy. Sometimes I'd get in the mood to update but then realize I want to play online with some friends (or get work done). I got requests from friends bored at work who wanted me to update so they have something to read, so here it is :-) For the past few months, I've become quite enamored with auto-x. I've gone pretty much every other weekend. I started off the season with Norcal UFO at Marina for some rain auto-x and then did all SCCA SF region matches. For the most part, I've been pretty competitive with times usually withing 2-5% of the top person in my group who uses racing slicks. It's also provided quite a learning experince for suspension and tire pressures. There was so much I didn't know that causes massive driving style changes and time gains. Now I'm fine tuning every auto-x so I can find something that grips well, is stiff, but not so stiff the back end comes lose. This last weekend's auto-x's at Golden Gate Fields were amazing. On Saturday, March 08th, there was a wet practice event. Only 40 or so of us showed up and got a total of 12 runs! It was eight hours very well spent. I also got to help setup course and meet some of the SCCA heads. The only downside is my car got destroyed by mud water as you'll see in some of the following pics: Sunday was completely different. It was PACKED!! There were about 245 drivers there. So it took forever to get to our run group. Plus, I was dead tired since the night before I went from auto-x to Berkeley to meet up with Karen to see a Jazz thing in SF. The day was still fun since I got to run with some new friends I've made. Next time you won't be so lucky to beat me by 0.04 seconds Charles!!! There are vids up of my runs too on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/DarkCSE At the end of Sunady's auto-x, I got a suprise call from my old friend Chris who ended coming back to San Jose for a bit. Normally he's in LA working on cool animations for games and what not. You can check out some of his clips here: http://www.chrismagovern.com. Since we couldn't hang out Sunday, I took a vacation day Monday for some much needed r&r and called him up. It was a pretty cool day just hanging out with the guy. It's too bad he's not up here/I'm not down there more often.