I was cruising westward on Wilshire in Santa Monica and pulled up next to a black 2001-3 Mustang GT.

Me: Nice car!
Driver: Huh? Oh yeah! Thanks!
Me: What exhaust do you have? Sounds nice!
D: Magnaflows.
Passenger: The question is, what do YOU have?
Me: Bassani with FMS short tube headers.
D: Nice!
P: *presumably notices the roll bar* Holy crap you got some shit up in there!!
Me: *pulling off* Yeah, a little.

"Holy crap you got some shit up in there!"

Haha! That's awesome.

Ok I'm a geek.

I spend a lot of time working with the ravings of a deranged mind Debian Installer. I also like working from home, so I spent some time working out a solution that involves VMWare and NX

So here I am couchsurfing on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles, looking out into the garden of the house I'm staying at, running VMWare on a machine in Mountain View, displaying it on a Xen instance physically residing who knows where and connecting to that via NX from my laptop, installing Linux over and over and over and over....

The dogs sure like LA. It's warm. They actually WANT to be outside. Me? I'm too hot. I like (or, rather, am used to) the cooler weather in Pacifica.

Fizzy and Nova are smart too. They knew we were 'home' the moment I pulled up to Scott's house from work last night and they'd only spent one night there.

The house dog, Batz, has been trying to play with them. Problem is, Batz is about eighty pounds of energetic black lab and he's a bit too much for them. Nova tried to make friends with the house cat and was roundly, firmly rebuffed.

Well, the dogs and I have survived our first day in LA.

The mutts have been great so far, even tolerating about seven hours in the Mustang on the drive down. They were a little bit of a challenge at first when we first arrived at the Google office because they wanted to explore, but one of my coworkers showed me a visitor lounge with a door that I can use. It's so nice to see how adaptable and confident they've become, especially Fizzy, though I'm sure that it helps that I've brought along their blankets and treats and toys.

I've been here a day and it's enough to confirm in my mind that the traffic here would be the death of me. The Mustang is behaving so far and it's a kick to have it here, though all things considered I'd rather be in the GTi.

Gemini 2009!



In a word: best. party. evar.

(Why is it that I keep going to parties and still keep saying that? I must be going to the right parties...)

Ah, the Mustang. It's hard to explain why I have such a strong emotional attachment to a big, dumb lump of a machine. Car people just KNOW, so I don't have to explain it to them. To the rest of you, especially to the ones who wonder why I can't part with such an environment-rending car, well, I got nothing.

I'm driving the Lotus 4th of July weekend in a two day event with Hooked on Driving. The last time I was in Michigan, I made a spur of the moment offer to let fellow SCCer Thom drive the Mustang at the event, if he'd cover his airfare and track time. To my mild surprise and great pleasure, he accepted.

The upshot of this was that I needed to get the 'Stang battle ready. I'd been limping around on the street with brake and steering gremlins, which was fine, but I knew there was no way that the car was trackable. Since there was no way I'd track it with the Lotus available and since it was good enough for the street, I had no motivation to fix it. I spent a little time hemming and hawing, trying to find a local Mustang tuner to look at it - one that had no connection to Apex Motorsports - and finally just took it to Dietsch Werks.

• Front and rear brake job (including freeing a frozen caliper on the driver's rear)
  
• Fluids
  
• Alignment, steering rack adjustments (the alignment was comically bad)
  
• Corner Balance
  
• Full tech inspection
  
• 4pt. harnesses

Oh man, what a difference. It actually TURNS IN now, as opposed to slopping from one direction to another. It STOPS and, bonus, WITHOUT wanting to fly off the road to the right.

To celebrate (and also because the GTi is throwing codes) I took it on a road trip to Belden, CA for Gemini. Nominally about a four hour drive, I got caught in traffic on the way out and took nearly four hours just to clear Sacramento. I did better on the way back, doing it in a hair under four. The car actually felt good, aside from the punishing the clutch gave my left knee in the heavy traffic. It was even fun and - dare I say it - predictable when I attacked a few corners out in the twisties, though I didn't push it at all.



I'm driving it to LA tomorrow, for a two week work trip.

Ah, the iTunes remote control app for iPhone.

We live in great times.

Better than Agile Hitler, but not up to snuff with the rotards: