Little of this, little of that

Another sunny afternoon that I am sitting inside. Good reason though, all my photos from Yahoo! have now been transferred to Flickr! So I have been going through them adding titles, tags, etc., and making sure that they are ready for the general public. They are a bit hard to find though, since they placed them on Flickr by date, this means that they are hidden at the back of the pack. The best way to find them is to go to collections, and look at the Yukon Trip and New York collections. There are some newer New York photos, but if you look at the groups that have been split up into different catagories, you will find the old ones.

I have also signed the contract for my trip to France. It is very official now, I will be gone from some time in November (probably around the 15th to the 19th) and will be working until the end of September 2008. I will make one trip home in the spring for a visit and to fill up on sushi, then I will be running away again.

I have started sorting out what to do with my stuff now, and sort of have come up with a plan. Still need a few people to say yes to things, but I can't see that as a problem. I just have so much crap to find a home for! Storage will definitely be much cheaper than keeping my place though.

There you go, what is happening now in a nut shell!

Planes and automobiles

Well we had a busy weekend at the racetrack; three days of racing, a lot of on track action and one really big crash.

First of all, it was a "conference" weekend, so we were racing under ICSCC rules and we had a lot more cars here than usual. This lent to bigger groups on track, and a lot more racing action since the ICSCC races offer points which add up to a big championship at the end of the year.

I spent most of the weekend in Race Control watching the computers tick off each car as it went by start/finish or watching the odd car spin out or go off-roading into the grass on turn one. The biggest excitement was during one of the last races, involving a RX-7 and a Porsche 911.

The group that was out racing were some of the big boys, fast cars, highly modified versions of street cars. Lots of time and money have gone into these cars, all for a few minutes screaming around a track at high speeds. It happened almost right in front of us, just down the front straight going into the chicane leading into turn one. Adam, in his yellow 2nd generation RX-7 was ahead and a bit slower than Steve in his highly modified 911 Turbo, and Steve was overtaking Adam VERY quickly. Adam moved as far to the left as possible, and waved Steve by on drivers right. For some reason, maybe he though he had enough room, Steve plowed right into Adam, lifting Adam's car off the ground. Steve's car proceeded to drive up the side of Adam's car and launched itself into the air. Both cars landed, spun a few times and both smacked into the walls on the side of the track. It was amazing that the cars following Steve managed to not get involved in the accident. It was a few tense moments while our Emergency Crew sprang into action and rushed to the cars, hoping that the drivers would both be okay. I saw Adam out first, helmet off yelling at Steve. Shortly afterwards, Steve was out as well, rather quiet avoiding Adam. Both guys were okay, even if their cars weren't.

Adam's RX-7 looks like it should be fairly easy to fix, although it will take a fair bit of time. Steve's Porsche is in a lot worse shape, with the front end all torn up and the steering all crumpled into the firewall. I think that both will fix their cars, Steve has wrecked his a few times before.

We had a couple of video cameras catch the accident, one in race control, one in a Viper following Steve. After seeing the accident in slow motion, we are lucky that only the cars and ego's were badly damaged.


On a more fun note, I found a flight simulator in Google Earth! How cool is it to be able to fly over your house? This guy has a bit more info about it on his blog. If you do try it, go to the Google page with all the control info first, learn what to do and how to do it. I also recommend, after trying it myself, use the mouse control. It is MUCH easier than keyboard controls and will give you a smoother flight. I have already flown around NYC, which is very cool because the buildings are all in 3D and most are textured now. And Andy, flew over your place. Did ya see me? (lol)