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July 13 If you wanna go fast, don't be stupid, go karting!Yesterday I was running down to Harper with my wife to pick up our daughter after class, and as we merged on to 53, I saw a Scion tC fly by in the left lane, going about 90 MPH (by my estimates) in a 55 MPH zone. "Idiot," I thought to myself as he got further and further away from us.
Then in the distance I saw his brake lights as he closed in on a clump of traffic ahead. But I guess he misjugded his closing speed, and I saw the car swerve into the grassy median. The car started sliding and yawed right, back onto the road. Then the tires (somehow) hooked up and the car went straight across three lanes of traffic, miraculously not getting by any of the other cars on the road.
Then the car smacked a light pole... Well, actually it went right through the light pole, one of the big metal ones that line the outside of expressways around Chicago. The pole was severed in half by the car and went flying through the air.
Then the car went down into a ditch, up the other side, got airborne and flew through a fence. It finally came to rest on a frontage road.
We, along with several other cars, immediately pulled over to see if there was anything we could do to help. By the time we came to a stop, some of the other drivers who had stopped had already reached the car. My wife tried calling the cell emergency number, but got put on hold. But, a couple other people were on their cell phones already, so I assumed emergency services had been contacted. Judging how the people around the car were reacting, there were (luckily) no fatalities or dismemberments. Since there wasn't anything special I could do that the others already there couldn't (and by this time, people were coming out of an apartment building along the frontage road), we continued on to pick up my daughter. 20 minutes later, though, as we passed the accident scene again on our way home the emergency crews were using the jaws of life to extract the passenger. It was that nasty.
I don't know what's up with Rt. 53, but I see all kinds of moronic activity on it. A while back a pair of sport bikes went flying passed at, I'd guess, 120 MPH, weaving through traffic. A 3rd gen Eclipse then flew by trying to keep up with them, which actually made me chuckle. "Give it up guy, you don't have a chance," I thought to myself. A couple days ago I was travelling in the middle lane with a Charger SRT8 tailing behind. He waited until another car was going to pass me in the left lane before he nailed the gas, jumped in front of the other car and went flying past me.
Wow. He can easily out-accelerate my 180HP stock Jetta. I'm in awe.
Or maybe not. I guess he's been burned by enough Corvettes that he's content with smaller fish.
Seriously folks, if you want to go fast, go karting. It's safer for you and it's safer for the people around you. It's more fun because the tracks are designed to be challenging, instead of public roads designed to move the maximum number of people from point A to point B. It lets you drive at 10/10ths without worrying that you're going to stuff your car into a traffic lamp.
More importantly, though, it gives you a controlled environment with feedback. You can try out different lines and compare lap times to figure out what's fastest. That's difficult to do on the street.
Have a happy and safe weekend!
Ben July 12 No more Formula 1 in the USA for nowLooks like it's official, according to the Indy Star.
While I dislike Tony George for what he's done to open-wheel racing in the US, I have to say I've been very impressed
with the F1 race at Indy. While the road course at Indy isn't exactly Spa or Suzuka, it is unique among the current F1 tracks, and I always feel a sense of awe whenever I enter Indy--the place is incredible. Since the ticket prices are so low compared to any other F1 race, I have to think it's been break-even proposition for Tony, he just wanted the prestige of running an F1 race. So, I send a hearty "thank you" to Tony George for the previous eight years he's hosted the race.
I can see Bernie's position, though: he can go to a place like Turkey or India, where apparently the governments don't have second thoughts about handing over $40M a year or whatever Bernie wants for a sanctioning fee. It's a good business decision, capitalism in its most basic form.
But I see some cracks forming--already he's talking about running some of the far-flung races on Saturday night so the races run at a better time for the European audience. Whoa, wait Bernie: if emerging markets were truely important to you, why aren't you rescheduling the European races so they come on at prime time in, say, Bahrain? Hmm....
Long term, I think Bernie's strategy is going to falter--at some point in time, the governments supporting the insane sanctioning fees are going to realize that they'd probably be better off using that money for, say, reducing poverty or improving education than allowing twenty cars to drive around a track for a couple of hours. And then it's going to be bad because the internal F1 cost structure will be based on the high fees, and once they're gone, it's going to be difficult to realign them.
As for F1 in the US, here's my prediction: As long as Bernie's in charge, there will be no US race because nobody's going to put up the type of money Bernie's looking for. But once he moves on, I think the car companies will apply enough pressure to his successor that they'll have to come back.
And when that happens, I think Indy will once again prove to be the most logical choice to run the race. July 09 Jetta fully functional again (for now!)I came to a realization while fixing the door lock module a couple of weekends ago, something that Larry alluded to in his comment: unreliable cars make for outstanding online communities, since everyone's sharing thoughts on the best way to fix their cars :-p I haven't bought a shop manual for the Jetta, so instead I just looked for stuff on the internet and wow, there's a gold mine out there for the Jetta/Golf. The do-it-yourself guides on VWVortex were just fantastic, better than any shop manual I've used.
One nice thing I noticed about the Jetta door was that the door lock module is connected to the handles via cables, instead of the usual metal rods--I found the cables much easier to disconnect and reconnect than the rods. Also, VW's approach of having the window regulator hardware on a removable inner door panel seemed a bit unique; I hadn't run into anythink like that before, but then again I've only had the doors apart on a handful of cars. I'm not certain it's a better approach, but it is different.
Once I had the door lock module out I could see that the sensor switch had partially disintegrated. I debated trying to replace just the switch, but honestly, I didn't feel like going through the trouble. Plus, the cam that the switch rides on was pretty gouged up, so it seemed like it would more of a pain then it's worth.
I will say I've had much better luck with VW parts guys than the service guys. Whenever I had to bring in the car for warantee work, we'd always have exchanges like this:
The car is off warantee now, but I was getting really tempted to bring in my container of used brake fluid when I had to bring it in so I could get them to stop bugging me about it. Seemed like it would be a bit more dramatic than just showing him a receipt. ;-)
Anyway, the parts guys seem a lot more sympathetic and have a decent sense of humor. I think they realize that the people coming in for parts are in a pretty bad mood because:
So, thus far I've had good experiences with them. The door lock module was out of stock at the closed dealer, so I ended up driving to Evanston to pick one up, which had me experiencing the wonderful irony of using an 18-year old Corvette to pick up parts for a 4-year old Jetta. The guy also chopped $20 off what I was expecting to pay, so that helped. Of course, if it were just a $5 switch in the first place.... I also pulled the door panel on the Sebring this weekend to fix a power window that was going up more than it was supposed to, and that turned out to be an easy fix--there's a plastic clip on the window that normally acts as a window stop, but it had someone gotten loose and was just flopping around. So now my current "things left to do with the cars" list is:
Oh yeah, but our central air went out on the house yesterday, so that'll be top priority for a bit here. I'm sure it'll be an inexpensive fix... hahahahahaha Ben July 02 Champ Car at Mont-TremblantWell, my original thought for this blog was to have interesting & different posts about software development topics. As time passes, though, I realized that I don't spend enough time with bleeding-edge technology to consistently make insightful posts. So, instead I'll just post whatever's currently on my mind.
First up: the Champ Car race at Mon-Tremblant. My take:
Then Justin switches to rain tires and goes off almost immediately. Doh! What the heck was that?!?!? Sebastian Bourdais getting booed by the crowd when he started whining about Dornboos blocking him was classic. Contrast Bordais' words after Mont-Treblant with those of Justin Wilson at Mexico last year after Bourdais RAN INTO HIM on the last lap, knocking Wilson out of the lead: Wilson (Mexico, 2006): "Unfortunately on the last lap, I went wide into turn four, Sebastien got a run out of turn five, and you saw the rest." Bourdais (Mont-Tremblant, 2007): "Wah wah wah!!! Doornbos wouldn't let me through! Doesn't he know who I am??? *sniffle* I WANT MY MOMMY!!!!" Don't get me wrong, I think Bourdais is an fantastically talented driver, on par with the likes of Alonso and Raikonen. But he's cancer for the Champ Car series. For one, he's just too fast compared to the current drivers in Champ Car. He needs to be in F1 to test his mettle. Second, he's just not a person Champ Car fans can get behind--way too much of a prima donna, quick to complain when things don't go his way. I'll be very happy when he's out of Champ Car. Ben |
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