I have now driven my car on an actual NASCAR track

This weekend, I attended the first day of the NASA (no, not that one) HPDE event at Pocono raceway.  I registered for HPDE 2 (which is intermediate) because I only had one prior track day with NASA (my other experience was through other programs or just the track days in Germany).  Chrissy and I drove up Friday night and camped on the grounds for the night.  It rained all night, which was a bit annoying, and then in the morning it was foggy, rainy and overcast.  It was so foggy that we couldn't start the event :(  It didn't look good all the way up through about lunch time when the fog suddenly started to burn off, and burn off quickly.  This meant that we had to cram a full days worth of events into half of a day though.  This is where things got crazy.

They had two different track configurations running in parallel.  The North course, which uses turns 1 and 2 of the tri-oval and a road coarse section through the infield on the north end (duh).  And then there was also the brand new South/East course combination in the other end of the infield.  The North course was 2.5 miles, the South/East course was about 2 miles.

NASA muddled with the schedule and my group ended up being third to get onto the South/East course that day (after the Hyper-Drive and Instructor Groups).  That course was windy, off-camber at times, and fun as hell (especially in the Rabbit).  Because of the screwed up schedule, while we were supposed to have an instructor for our first session, we were given the permission to go out without an instructor if we were comfortable (I was).

After we finished that session, we had to meet with our group coordinator/instructor, Steve Van Blarcom, who has what must be the sickest M3 in the states.

Our reprieve from the track was short because 10 minutes later, we were on the North Course running clockwise.  My first lap I joined the line following Steve to see the line through the infield section, and then was off.  I was hitting about 112 mph before braking to turn into the infield.  I was hitting close to the same between turns 2 and 1, but I was slowing to around 90-95 entering turn 1.  Because my car is short on horsepower, I wasn't able to build much speed at the top end going down the straight, hence the small differential between Turn 1 and infield turn-in.

Upon getting off the North Course, I found out that we were already supposed to be on the South/East course again because the North course was behind schedule (since for the second weekend in a row, a white lotus crashed during one of the sessions.  I booked it over there, and did my next session.  After that one we had a brief reprieve.  During that reprieve I talked to our group-leader to see if I could get a check-ride to move up to HPDE 3 during one of the last two runs of the day.  I REALLY wanted to get moved up so that I could run the full tri-oval course with groups 3, 4 and instructors at the end of the day.

Steve didn't make it out during our next to last run, so I was a little nervous about making sure I got the check ride, but my bigger issue was with another driver on the track.  His car was MUCH more powerful than my little Rabbit, but i was kicking his ass up and down the skill areas of the course.  A train was forming behind me (while I followed him) so I would point one of them by on the back stretch, and he would point that person by on the front stretch, and this repeated for 3-4 laps.  That was very frustrating, but we talked after the session and everything worked out.  (you will see it once I upload that session).

The last session of the day, Steve made it out on the track with us (and blew the doors off of all of us) but he saw enough to give me my checkoff and get me my HPDE 3 wrist band.  With that all squared away, I was supposed to have about 30 minutes of downtime before running the full oval, but then they announced it was happening immediately so I had to go hop in the car and go.  Unfortunately, this meant I didn't have time to change the battery in the Go-Pro so as I am sitting on pit-lane about to pull out on the track, hit record, and it died about 30 seconds later. :(

During that last run, I found out what the practical top-speed of my car is: 120 mph.  The car just didn't have anymore pull in it after that.  Braking into Turn 1 and Turn 2 at that speed is an awesome feeling, but the fact that the car just couldn't accelerate much the last half of the straights just showed that the car needs MORE POWER!  All-in-all, it was AWESOME.  I moved up to HPDE 3 with NASA, I was able to run THREE different track configurations at Pocono, and I was able to drive on a super-speedway.

I want to give a big thanks to NASA, Pocono Raceway, the NASA staff, volunteers, flaggers and our group instructor Steve for an incredible weekend.  Photos from the weekend are posted on Flickr and videos from the weekend will be gradually uploaded to my YouTube account.  Enjoy my photos and videos from other track days at well.

"I feel the need..."

"Hello everyone, I am glad to see you all here today.  We have a new person joining us today.  Why don't you introduce yourself"

"Hi, my name is Mike, and I am addicted to speed"

"Thank you Mike. It takes a lot of courage to admin you have a drug prob.."

"I never said I had a drug problem.  I am addicted to driving fast."

"You need to leave now"

I have a problem.  Well, it is really more of a hobby, but it is an expensive, time consuming hobby.  You may have gathered from my blog that I am a bit of a car nut (and I will be writing another post about my "car problem" another time) and that I like to go to the track and drive.  Well, last year was my first 3 trips to the track stateside, and this year, well, I am going to be spending a lot of time driving around in large, jagged circles.



So far this year, I have done a TrackDaze event at New Jersey Motorsports Park, and a Seat Time event at Summit Point Motorsports Park.  I have a TrackDaze event next weekend at Summit Point, a NASA event at Pocono the following weekend, and a Summit Point FATT event on the 27th.

And that just covers July.  To make the Rabbit handle the track better,  have updated the front brakes to R32 brakes with Racing pads and slotted rotors, the rear brakes to GTI brakes and I put in high performance brake fluid and stainless steel braided brake lines.  I will be changing out the rear sway bay are sway bar end links in the near future, and I removed the back seats and the spare tire surround from the car for weight reduction.



The car has spent a fair amount of time the past few weeks up on jack stands as I prepared the car for the track season, and then performed the pre-trackday inspections before heading off to the track, which I have to do later today for next weekend.  It has also spent a fair amount of time at the gas pump too.  After July, there are three at least more track days I want to do this year:  one I am booked for in September at Summit point, a TrackDaze event in August at VIR (which would be my birthday present), and a NASA event at Watkins Glenn International in September.



The last one of those will be hardest to work out (I want to do the full weekend but Chrissy's work schedule may not allow it) but those are my plans for the year.  I might also look into the NASA fall finale at Summit Point as well, as I hope to continue to move up the ranks in NASA HPDE to possibly be an instructor in the future (because instructors get free - as in beer - track time!).  Shorter term, I may pursue becoming an instructor for Summit Point FATT, and I will think about that more after I see how I handle my lines next weekend.

Prepping Klopfer for Another Year at the Track

I have been suffering from track withdraw since my last track event of last year, and this recovering from surgery crap has made me miss a few this year already, but I am almost all healed up and I am registered for 3 track events already starting in June, so I need to finish getting Klopfer ready to hit the tarmac.

First, a recap of what I have already done to the car performance wise.  Unitronic Stage 2+ chip tune, APR Carbonio intake, AWE Tuning exhaust, JOM Coilovers, and R32 front calipers with slotted ECS Tuning rotors.  Just this week I had to swap out the engine speed sensor since it had gone bad and was causing misfires.  NGP Racing has the car right now to check on a vibration (which was mostly fixed when I swapped out the damaged tire last week) and to raise the front end to eliminate the forward rake and give the front suspension a bit more play.

Things I have planned for the coming weeks include GTI rear brakes, stainless steel brake lines, racing brake pads on the front of the car, racing DOT4 brake fluid and an oil change.  I missed out on getting some GTI sway bars cheap, but eventually the sway bars will need to be swapped out.  I am also going to start investigating having a roll-bar with harness bar put in the car.  And, if we won the lotto last night (haven't checked the ticket) I will be putting a C2 Motorsports Turbo on the car....but that is highly unlikely.

All that said, I am considering giving Klopfer a name change.  Given all of the performance enhancements, and the fact that I am still pointing out that it is a Rabbit (and not an R32) I think this might be appropriate.

What if Science Could Prove that Gods Didn't Exist

For starters, I am writing this blog post at 3 AM after waking up at 1:30 and not being able to go back to sleep.  It may not be as coherent as it is in my head, and I couldn't think of way to accurate capture all of my thoughts.  I also think that if I really dove into all of my thoughts on this subject, I would be writing for a very long time and no one would read that novel.  With that said, enjoy this thought experiment.

Imagine that tomorrow, the world awoke to the headline "Scientists Prove There is No Such Thing as 'God.'"    What would happen?  Well, atheist might throw one hell of a party, but in reality, would anything change?  And to be clear, I am not just talking about God with a capital-G here, I mean any deity that is praised the world over, from Allah to Zeus and everything in between.

For starters, you would have those who didn't get the news due to censorship or lack of connection to the outside world.  For them, nothing would change at first.  Of those that do get the news, here are some of the ways people may react.

1. Label the scientists who made the discovery as heretics and continue believing their religion.  They may also promote that schools "teach the controversy"
2. Denial - IT NEVER HAPPENED!
3. React violently to such an affront to their religion of choice and attack either those scientists directly or science in general
4. Accept the science but remain connected to their religion out of tradition, comfort, or kinship
5. Have a crisis of faith and not know what to believe.
6. Just not give a shit
7. Go absolutely crazy because "Nothing we do in this life matters anymore because there isn't a God and no afterlife" - Come on, you know some would react that way
8. Consider it a test of their faith and dig into their beliefs even longer - "The dinosaur bones were put there to test our belief"

Much like science proved the Earth was round, and revolved around the Sun, it would take some time for this type of discovery to gain wide-spread acceptance among those who were believers.  I mean, we still have people who don't believe in evolution, or vaccinations. Even atheist might be a bit skeptical at first because having scientist make such a discovery, and then have someone find a flaw in their work, would only drive people to religion more.  

As the acceptance grew, religion-based regimes may begin to topple, which then may lead to serious power struggle conflicts in the middle east that erupt into all out war as the number of people who still believe in a higher power begins to fall but they cling bitterly to those beliefs because they were the source of their power and control.  The lack of afterlife consequences for their actions might be enough of a factor to push some people over the edge from controlled to chaotic. Those who are still devout believers might also start to react more violently to their religion being stripped away from them.  

So, in reality, I think we would be just as fucked then as we are now.  We would still have those who believe in religion, although their numbers would be smaller.  We would still have those that react violently to anything that is against those beliefs.  There would be tons of money thrown into research by religious organizations trying to overturn the scientists' findings.  The only hope would be that we could weather the shitstorm of the initial discovery and eventually come to accept the findings as facts, although it would take generations to do so, and there still would be holdouts.  

So, what would you do if you saw that headline plastered on every major news outlet tomorrow? I, for one, would probably call out of work that day because I would want to stay away from the crazy and watch it all unfold from the comfort of my living room.

Random Blog Post is Random

For some reason, taking Percocet just before I went to sleep meant I would only be asleep for 2 hours and now I am fairly wide awake, so I figured I would capture a few things in a single blog post.  First up, sequestration.

A few days before I left work for my surgery, I drew a skull and cross bones on the dry-erase board and wrote "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter, Sequestration Looms Large" around it.  While I still don't know if I will experience any ill effect (such as furlough days) I have received word that several people I know and work with will be gone from my office very soon as a direct result of sequestration.  Well, now I feel like an asshole for writing that one the board (although we knew it was a possibility).  I actually have zero idea how this makes me feel about staying in that office versus transferring to another one.  I definitely need to get back    in the office to find out more information before I can make a decision, as well as not be on Percocet when I decide.  I continue to be very torn between the desire to see my project succeed versus my comfort working in the organization.  Who knows, maybe the decision to move to another project will be made for me before I even have a chance to come back.

This extends into what was going to be another blog post of it's own that I was going to title "Annual Performance Reviews or How I Learned to Hate Myself by Using Buzzwords." About 2 months ago I had to turn in my performance self-appraisal.  This is the horrible several page document where I have to write "Hey, look at me, I'm awesome!  Promote Me!" 5,000 times.  That is very hard for me to do and I end up asking for input from several people.  Since I turned that in, I am still sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear if management agrees with the document or if I am not good enough again this year.  If they promote me, then I guess that means I was a good enough word-smith this year, because it honestly isn't about what I did because my management doesn't know/understand.  It will be about how well I wrote about what I did.

I will also add in my "Tragedy and Gun Control Part II" thoughts to this blog post.  First off, I was wrong. I predicted that there wouldn't be any changes to gun control laws after Sandy Hook.  Well, I was wrong.  Several states have started passing legislation about magazine/clip size, "assault" weapons, and gun registration and background check requirements. Some of these I think should have been done a long time ago (such as mentally ill people not being able to purchase firearms) but at the same time, what constitutes "mentally ill"?  If someone takes a low dosage of medication for anxiety or slight depression does that mean they can't own a gun now?  If that is the case, lots of people won't seek help for their minor issues so they can continue to purchase firearms, and maybe that minor issue will grow into something worse down the road.  The information about what the guidelines are for that have to be very clear, as mental illness already has a stigma associated with it where people don't want to seek help, don't give them another reason to turn away from help.  Regardless, overall, I support initiatives like that and the closing of loopholes for gun-show sales.  I would even support a requirement of a safety class and shooting lesson for the purchase of your first weapon, but it would have to remain affordable.

The magazine size and assault weapons bans, I am more on the fence about those.  I can support them overall as I described in my previous post, but I just don't see them having much effect in reality.  In fact, there has actually been a run on those guns and clips/magazines. From this CBS article from December:

"I normally sell about 15-20 [AR-15s] a month. I've sold about 30 in the last three days," said Rick Friedman, who owns RTSP in Randolph, N.J.
...
Brownells, the world's largest firearms supplier, says it recently sold more than three-and-a-half years worth of AR-15 magazines in three days.

So, take from that what you will.  Like I said in my previous post, you don't need an AR-15 to hunt a deer, I have no problem with them being banned, just don't see it helping that much.

I think that is enough random stuff crammed into one blog post.  I should try and get back to sleep.

Socially Inept Yet Social

Turns out there are actually 4 or 5 blog posts I need to write.  Here goes another.  If I get multiple written tonight I will pre-date the other's for publishing later.

I have always been somewhat socially awkward and introverted.  It can take some time for me warm up to people but once I do I can be social.  If I am at a party with people I don't know where I can't easily fit myself into the conversation, I will drift to the fringes and sit off on my own.  Lately, I have been more social though.  Almost too social.  Actually, in the last 6 months I have been more socially active than I probably was the previous 6 years.  It has actually been nice.  I have met a lot of people that I have only known virtually for a couple of years.

A couple things have made this possible.  Mostly due to more energy and more self confidence from having lost as much weight as I did.  While I certainly hadn't been completely missing out on life, I hadn't been living it as fully as I have been lately.  It has certainly be nice.  I hope to continue enjoying life this way!

Amusing Quotes from Work

On twitter, I mentioned that there were some blog posts I needed to write.  This will be the first of those.

"Why are they being so stupid" - Coworker 1, about customers IIRC

"Utilize is like use with a top hat and a monocle" - Me
We just finished going through our self-appraisal performance review documentation that contributes to if we receive promotions.  People throw a ton of manager speak and buzzwords into them because you need to if you want a chance of promotion.  'Utilize' is one that is often thrown in that doesn't really add anything though.

"[Coworker 2], your build is failing harder than Lindsey Lohan at a sobriety checkpoint" - Coworker 3
Some automated application builds were failing over and over and over again.

"You can't argue with crazy" - Coworker 4 regarding their spouse.  Enough said.

These are just the gems that managed to make it on our dry-erase boards at work.  There have been plenty more.  I will also give a shout out to or office mascot, Humphrey the Dog.  Coworker 1 accidentally set him off in the middle of the office around lunch time.  There was much scrambling to muffle the sound.  We also have a Tribble in the office that makes noise when touched/moved.  We have toyed with the idea of strapping Humphrey to the Tribble and then setting him off.  Obviously, we wouldn't be able to do that with other people in the office.

Other blog posts I need to write:
Tragedy and Gun Control Part II
Annual Performance Reviews or How I Learned to Hate Myself by Using Buzzwords (working title)