As some of you know, I've been trying to push the limits of myself, and my MR-S, on the deserted backroads of Orlando for months now. Learning to control my "undriftable" car and developing some sort of reliabilty in my performace has been... well... elusive.
I have pitch black video of my latest practice, which I am unsure if I will upload for your enjoyment. I can deliver a short screenplay for those who are interested:
- Understeer
- Delayed initiation
- Breif inertial drifting at corner exit, immediatly canceled by 10 degrees or less of countersteer.
Tina tells me that it feels like I'm holding back because I don't want my MR-S to look like a crumpled-fender, faded paint drift car. She's right, try as I might to deny it. I love washing and waxing and flogging a gorgeous looking car.
The thing is, I totally know the line where the back comes loose, but at that point control is totally lost. My MR-S transforms from a grip heavy track car to an AMTRAC train off its rails. The rear end yanks control from the front tires and I'm 2 feet in, trying not to damage my car and look like a total jackass.
I've been told by other MR2 drivers that the drifting area is a thin wedge of steering angle and throttle input between these polar opposites. Trouble is, most of these guys only power over drift, which is something I've already mastered and generally classify as redneck hooning, not drifting.
I think I need a better point of reference, like a ride along in an eight-six or an s-chassis drifter to see what I can learn. Any Orlando area drift meetips?
Tina got a tip from a coworker about a stunning Christmas light display in Orlando near Winter Park. You can see the twin Christmas trees reaching into the sky from Tangerine street, so it's hard to miss even if you're not looking for it.
The stat sheet on the donations bucket says that the entire display takes nearly a month to set up, and electric costs exceed $800 monthly.
Who remembers the scene in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" where he loosens one bulb and the entire city's Christmas lights go out?
Despite the doomed auto industry, this car guy has been pretty upbeat. The Race-Life project is starting to really accelerate, and I had a decent drift session this weekend. Unfortunately, I attempted to share this experience with Tina, which didn't turn out well. I had a second gear power-over drift turn into a mad grab to stay out of the median. A nearby Honda enthusiast got a great view of it, and he probably thought poorly of me. I'm trying man, and I think I'm doing well for not having an LSD.
My professional endeavors are wrapping up nicely. In the next week or so, Furniture Decorating, a furniture blog and interactive community, will be ready to accept its first users. My professional efforts are much more refined and polished, mostly because of Gabe's ingenuity and Renzo's creative eye.
I've been receiving many half-hearted tips in my inbox about monstrous layoffs in the furniture business. While this is great, cutting edge material for Furniture Decorating, my heart goes out to the thousands of employees without a job this Christmas.
Tina and I put the last nail in Gears of War 2 today, but I hope we'll still spend some time with it in the next few weeks. You'll probably notice a few tweaks to up on this site as the week progresses as I try to give you what you want the way you want it (for free even!).
If you're anything like me, spending time in North Carolina is bittersweet. The 10 hour pilgrimage is dangerous and unproductive, the people are absolutely foreign and frustratingly naive, and the delights are simple.
But damn are the mountain roads curvy.
The tragedy is that my MRS is ill suited as a road trip car. My obsessiveness combined with the lack of a trunk makes the 10 hour drive a silly prospect. Every time we pile into one of Tina's parent's SUVs, I found my mind wandering across the road, dreaming of a frantic hillclimb followed by a life-defining downhill run. I know I'm not alone. In what I considered the twistiest of mountain passes, I spied a man at a tourist information center at the mountains summit posing for a picture in front of his Gallardo Superleggera. I suppose that If I spent $240,000 US on a vehicle that is made from two of the most expensive materials in the world, I would endure the oddities of North Carolina to attack some of the most challenging corners to be found on a rural public road.
Unfortunatly, on the way home I saw another man with similar aspirations who did not fare as well, though his instrument of choice was a $6000 Mitsubishi Eclipse. I could envision the exact sequence that led to his car going off the road and into the ravine. Understeer can be a bitch.
To alleviate my automotive frustration, I spent the next weekend prowling the vacant tourist areas of Orlando, drifting my little heart out. The session was short but rewarding. While I'm constrained to power-over and clutch-kick drifting until I get my ebrake cable replaced, I still managed to maintain a respectable angle in a 2nd gear hairpin, especially considering that every person who knows I drift tell me how terribly my car is suited to the sport.
I've been unceremoniously devoured by life as of late, which is hear is a common happening. The broken menu links on this site are almost symbolic of all the things I'm getting not-done. I'm becoming used to trains of thought that are continually being set for newer, fresher ideas, or just to free up disk space to handle the natural disasters I flirt with on a daily basis.
Christmas, for someone who enjoys videogames, begins somewhere in late September. I gave unhealthy portions of time to Too Human, and Infinite Undiscovery. At the end of my time with each title, I felt like I came away with very little. My latest time sinks have provided ample amounts of imaginative experiences and rewarding gameplay.
The Last Remnant has some of the most in-depth RPG combat I've seen since Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and a super rich art style to boot. The story is pretty scattered and open-range, which is unusual for a JRPG. The combat alternates between forgiving trash mobs, to outright infuriating boss fights. The half-way-through-the-game trio of boss battles took me 11 tries to defeat. Unfortunately, the combat becomes very 50/50 toward the end as soon as you wrap your head around how heavily battle rank weighs on each battle. Furthermore, a studied knowledge of an opponents repertoire of abilities completely overshadows planning and strategy. The texture pop and frame-rate issues echoed by every reviewer is present, accurate to their descriptions. I'm very forgiving and look right past it, but most people are not like me.
On other nights, I've been enjoying Gears of War 2. The co-operative experience in this game is second to none, and you can really feel the Epic roots in this game. Gears 2 is a game designed to be enjoyed. Non-sensical damage, absolute disbelief, a grotesque art style, and unusual FPS conventions were thrown right into the mix to create a digital confection of pure delight. Tina, a staunch non-gamer, enjoys this game more than she'll admit. The ability to set her difficulty lower than mine in co-operative mode has created a cool experience that is rewarding and entertaining for both of us.
Yes. She is better at it than me.
Like the game itself, my description of Fable II will be short. The writing in Fable II is unmatched. Even games with excellent writing, like Half-Life and Bio Shock could learn much from Fable II. Reaver, a character you will not meet until the end of the game, is almost like a literary treat for completing the game. Given that there is virtually no death penalty in Fable II (you simply rise up like a zombie to fight again, though you may have permanent scars), it is very easy to complete this game in 1 weekend. I predicted this, so heavily suggest that you rent the game, as I did. There was so much time left after completion, I spent the next few hours actively trying to get an STD, which turned out to be much more difficult than saving the world, or becoming a notorious mass murderer.
Somewhere in this thread, I was going to talk about web development, racing, the auto industry, Orlando, and some amazing drifting I did in my "undriftable" car this weekend. I was also going to bring up how I feel like tearing down every section of this site but the automotive stuff down, and how bad I want to be on the track again, and somehow I delivered a dissertation on winter 2008 XBox 360 releases (without even mentioning Fallout 3). My PC's speed is equivalent a bead of sap rolling down a maple tree right now, because Windows just discovered that I'm still on service pack two. This is why I never get anything done.
After months of researching the T-Mobile G1 and their plans for 3G expansion, I finally caved in.
I bought an iPhone.
This is the first Apple product to cross the threshold of my home, and with good reason. I've always been an advocate of the PC and an opponent of Apple for a few pathological reasons. These contrived arguments include but are not limited to:
I've been told that this is just the first step into complete Apple subversion, but I am still clawing at the soil of reason, fearing that if I don't actively continue to resist their products that I will be cavorted to a subterranean lair where I will be assimilated into their insidious hive-mind.
Speaking of hive-mind, take a look at what Charlie is doing in San Francisco. I haven't been a active in their network since my pitiful creative attempts prior to the materialization of the first Natural Selection (I was called Freemantle back then), but I've been diligently following their progress for over 9 years now. Natural Selection was a drawling that Charlie did on some type of flowchart when I first met it. I wish I was in a position to help them.
Time has been in super short supply for me. At work, we relocated to an office and I somehow lost 2 hours a day in the process. That is somehow being balanced between this website, the race-life project, a piece of genre fiction, and another project that as of yet has no name. Time will tell if I can keep all of that up and still maintain a healthy relationship.
After a weekend at a funeral, nothing picks you up like going to see your favorite emo-metal band, Silverstein, at the Hard Rock cafe. After circumventing Ticketmaster's convenience charges and spending a day cruising wireless stores for a new phone, we eventually made the trek down to Universal Studios.
Even in the depressed economic climate, Universal Citywalk buzzes with positive energy. It probably has something to do with the revenue they generate from charging $12 for parking (GM, Ford, are you listening?). There is a pretty cool feeling about seeing one of your favorite bands in a clandestine venue like the Hard Rock Cafe. Amid the signed photos from such successful, enduring artists such as Sevendust, Static-x and Creed... yeah, they let anyone in here.
I learned a few things at this concert.
- Chiodos is kind of a big deal
- Indoor venues are over-rated when the general admission floor consists of smelly, overweight Pete Wentz fans
- I'm just not as into Silverstein- or more accurately- this genre of music, as I used to be
I can attribute that to a lot of things, but being in a happier, busier, and more productive time in my life probably has a lot to do with it. Rap is back on my playlists in a big way, which I think has more to do with the genre being resurrected from the club music shit that has dominated the radio for the last 4 years than my personal leanings.
Not to say I didn't have a blast at the Silverstein Chiodos concert. Except for that Taiwanese couple. They can burn in hell.
This was my second Autocross event in Central Florida. I ended up kicking ass (I thought) and more importantly, meeting a whole bunch of really cool people. Check out the gallery for pictures of some of the really well-built cars competing at this event.
Believe it or not, this website was built to be more than a repository for the thoughts of an amateur club racer and his equally amateurish pictures. Without sounding totally narcissistic, Slip Angel was built to be about all of me, not just the Otaku car-guy aspect of my personalities. Don't judge me as vain; I perform this selfless act with you, my reader, in my heart. There are way too many people out there who create a sort of third-world media. A writhing writing mass of faux journalists and bleeding heart activist bloggers that seek to stuff the smallest piece of now-trivia with as much opinion and fluff as they can muster.
If you're in to these shit-filled donut holes, you're not alone. The internet is teeming with visitors scouring for the most exquisite and rare delicacies derived from excrement. They savor each morsel and revel in the relative exclusivity of their particular deviant pastry.
I hold to the notion that there is another plateau of human consciousness that eschews this formula, and looks to find the beauty of the human mind that justifies its pathological instability. These connosours of human personality aren't so concerned with who you're voting for, or what's on your Facebook page. These art critics are more concerned with the brush strokes that make an individual unique, complex, and (daresay) lovable. In this space you will find out that I spend my nights (and mornings) figuring out a grand variety of things and solving problems in my life, not yours. If you were looking for help in your own situation, there are some people out there who can help. They are called psychiatrists, and I hear that their services are quite expensive.
I feel like the events are a much larger universe are aligning against me, like a colossal magnifying glass purpose built to channel misery into my life. On top of the $248 Sunpass bill I just had to foot, I picked up a check engine light on the way to my interesting court date. More on this later.
At the court house, I was more nervous than anything, and I stood amongst the jittery citizens of Orlando just trying to get through their court date and on with their lives. I finally asked for help from the man who appeared to be the public defender. He examined my two violations and told me that he could only dismiss one. He was calm but firm with me, saying that he would only be able to get one of them released and I would have to plead no contest to the other. He sympathized with me and made me feel like he too was frustrated with he system that kept assigning these insane fines for a simple transponder malfunction.
Lies.
The man who let me assume that he was the public defender was actually the Orange County prosecuting attorney for these toll cases. Only one other person in the courtroom pleaded no contest, some people with three times the tickets than I had them dismissed without any convincing reason. He singled me out as someone who deserved to pay this fine, and "negotiated" for me to do so. There was no legal council there.
I was asked to pay because I came dressed nice with checkbook and wallet in tow, and because an expensive-looking sports car was on the ticket stub.
My check engine light worries me to no end. Sebring is tomorrow, and it seems like some higher power does not want me to attend. I'll be spending the rest of the day today attempting to remedy this problem, which I hope is just a service reminder for my 70k mile maintenance.
Max Payne is nothing like the trailers would have you believe. Congratulations to Mark Wahlberg for being able to fire two semi-automatic shotgun rounds in under 2 seconds while his generic action movie assailant somehow misses him from a 5 yard range with his way-too-many-scoped assault rifle in full auto. Similar praise is due for the marketing department, which had the whole audience believing that somehow this movie was about an army of fallen angles operating in secret to end the world, rather than being a movie about Mark Wahlberg shooting steroid/lsd junkies for two hours.
Update: My Spyder is suffering from trouble code P0141, a faulty o2 sensor heater in bank 1. I unregistered from Sebring and put those monies into my pre-cat removal funds.