Pullin’ From A Dig

Well, I took the SRT4 up to Fontana, about an hour and a half drive north of San Diego, to California Speedway. They were having an open invite at the drag strips for people to bring their vehicles in and see what they can do. I have never drag raced, legally or illegally, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to try it out.

I had to leave at 4 in the morning in order to arrive by 6, when the gates were opening. They only have a set amount of cars that they let run, so to get there early is important. There were probably around 500 cars there competing, including about 30 or so SRT4s. I didn’t know anyone when I got there so I went around and visited with a few people.

Because I’d never dragged before, I went and checked out the ‘tree’, the lights that start the race, so I could figure out how everything works. Basically they have two photoelectric cells on the track, as your tires cross the first one, the first light goes on, when you cross the second one, the second light goes on and you are ‘staged’, or ready to run.

Then there are three yellow lights, and they go off, 3, 2, 1, then a green light that tells you to drop the hammer. The best basic strategy is to hit the gas right when the third yellow light turns on, because your human reaction time will cause you to have a slow start if you wait for the green.

I was able to do three runs down the strip, and I never did get a great start. On my first run, I was up against a Mustang GT, a car that is typically a couple of tenths slower than the SRT4. It was also that driver’s first time drag racing. The tree was way faster than I expected and I got bogged down at the start.

Then, as I shifted into second, YIKES, my shift knob flew off. So there I was with my shift knob in my hand, my car starting to redline, trying to think of what to do in a split second and avoid blowing my motor. I ended up dropping the knob and grabbing the stick, which felt very foreign of course (it’s hard to shift like that when you aren’t used to the ‘feel’ of the stick), and by the time I shifted into third, I was way bogged down and cost myself a lot of time.

The really bad thing about bogging down going into third gear, is that third is the monster gear for the srt4. There are very few cars on the road that can match up with the srt4 in third gear. With the turbo spooling full bore, it has a sweet spot in third gear that just won’t quit. But I went into third at low rpm due to a bad shift so it took a long time to catch up. This stunk because in second gear I was pulling hard on the Mustang, and I ended up losing to him by about 3 tenths of a second, pulling hard in 4th but without enough time to catch him.

My first drag run ever:

                 Mustang           SRT4

Reaction Time:    .788              .884

60 Foot:           2.301            2.491

330:              6.340            6.710

1/8:              9.658            10.073

MPH:              140.87(?)        74.04

1000:             12.525           .000(?)

1/4:              14.979           15.309

MPH:              91.39            92.48

I was, of course, disappointed. I wondered if I would be in the 15’s on my first run ever, but that wasn’t the way I wanted to submit to it.

For my second run, I went in with one of the other SRT4 drivers. I got a better start, but unfortunately, my shift knob flew off again, BLAH!! I recovered better, but that still goofed me up badly.

These were the stats from the second run:

                 His SRT4        My SRT4

Reaction Time:    .540             .670

60 Foot:          2.308            2.320

330:              6.060            6.667

1/8:              9.102            10.043

MPH:              81.64            74.40

1000:             11.710           .000(?)

1/4:              13.933           15.234

MPH:              101.53           94.47

On the third run, I made up my mind I was going to shift more carefully to keep that shift knob in place. I was going to run against that same SRT4 again, but he got stuck way ahead of me, so I ended up running against a Camaro. I got my best reaction time, but the Camaro just blew my doors off. I had a lot of wheel hop, and that cost me a little time. It wasn’t too bad though, and I ended up with my best run of the day.

These were my stats from my third run:

                 Camaro           My SRT4

Reaction Time:    .262             .469

60 Foot:          1.517            2.463

330:              4.404            6.452

1/8:              6.906            9.702

MPH:              97.67            76.23

1000:             9.093            12.449

1/4:              10.965           14.846

MPH:              119.82           94.01

There was a good 25 to 30 mph constant head wind, but I’m not going to blame that for my less than stellar times. I shouldn’t be too upset though, this is the first time I’ve ever done the quarter mile, so I know where I need work. My Aeroforce Pro gauge is awesome, I used it to read my first quarter mile, and it was dead on, within 1 to 2 one hundredths of a second, and right on for mph.

All in all I had a lot of fun and I learned a lot. I improved steadily throughout the day. My overall goal is to break into the 13's with my car 'as is'. I'll for sure be headed up to Fontana again sometime, I just hope they let us have more runs. I should do better. After I superglue my damn shift knob in place.

Oh, and there were some people had the new Impala SS's, and they were impressive. I thought SOMEONE might find that interesting heh heh.

The Ongoing Adventures of Sirius Satellite Radio!!!

My buddy midas bought me a lovely early Christmas/coming home gift... the Sirius satellite radio. I finally installed it when I got out here to San Diego, and I really do like the music, it has stations of rock, classical, rap, old time music, new music, comedy, news, sports, you name it.

This receiver transmits to my factory radio using FM signals. Now, typically you tune your factory radio to a spot on the FM dial that is all static, and then broadcast on that channel from the Sirius receiver. This works well, unless you are in an area like San Diego, where EVERY spot on the FM dial is cluttered. If there isn't a radio station on the frequency in question, there's crossover traffic from stations on either side of that frequency.

This causes my satellite radio to sound more like AM radio than even FM, much less the crystal clear sound that digital satellite radio supposedly is famous for. On a recent trip to Arizona, the sound was crystal clear, so it's the clutter on the FM dial in San Diego that is causing the problem.

I called Sirius about the problem and they recommended an "FM modulator". So yesterday morning I went to Fry's Electronics to find one. Now, Fry's is one awesome store in terms of size and content, but I waited for 10 minutes in the car audio department, then finally went and found a manager to get some help, which seemed rather ridiculous, considering that the store had like no customers at the time. When someone finally arrived to help, I realized that an FM modulator would need a power source, which was unfortunate, because my car has only one power outlet (cigarette lighter) and it would already be used by the Sirius receiver.

The sales associate recommended a new product from Sirius, the Wired FM Modulator. For $20, this product would wire direct into your antenna port on the back of the stock radio, and then you plug your antenna into a tiny black box, and you plug a wire into the output on the Sirius receiver, for crystal clear sound, without the need for external power either.

I bought it, then took my dash all apart to get to the stock radio. As I pulled the antenna out of the back of the radio, I noticed a problem. Dodge is now using a different antenna plug than what I was accustomed to. The typical plug for antenna had always been a male plug with a smaller male plug at the end that looked like a large needle. The Dodge antenna plug, however, was a plastic male plug with a female plug in the center, looking more like a electrical plug than an antenna plug. So now I have my dash all torn apart and I can't even use the product I took the dash apart for.

No big deal right? I'll just get myself a couple of adapters for the plugs. So back to Fry's I went, and this time waited for 15 minutes for an associate to show up before going and getting another manager so I could get some help. "Oh yah we have just what you need" and the sales associate brought out the adapter, of which I would need two for the stock radio and stock antenna plug. Then I saw the price, $19 bucks a piece.

So now I was dealing with one $20 FM adapter, and two $19 adapters to make the primary adapter work. Overall the cost of the adapters was getting up to the cost of the Sirius radio itself, not to mention the cluster of wires and plugs and general clutter that I was going to have to deal with. This went beyond my tolerance for a reasonable fix to make this radio work correctly.

Because of this and the crappy service I got at Fry's, I returned the original adapter and got my money back. I called Sirius and told them that it would be in their best interest to make a version of the FM adapter that works with the newer antenna plugs, but I doubt that will make any difference. Now I'm looking to use a low power FM wire transmitter that was used with the earlier model. These are hard to find though, sold out on most of the websites I've looked at. Fortunately Sirius is selling them with some of their new sets, so I should be able to get one before too long. I can't believe it's so difficult just to get this to work right, though.

Oh Kramer...

Well, Michael Richards really stuck his foot in his mouth a few days ago, reacting to heckling by some audience members, he launched into a racially insulting tirade that sparked anger from minority leaders and members of the entertainment industry.

Now National Lampoon's has taken the clip and added it into several related clips from various Seinfeld episodes to create what they call "The Lost Seinfeld Episode".

I'm a Seinfeld fan so I thought it was hilarious. Someone did a lot of work to find all of the clips they put together, and they did a great job.

I'll Just Park Here In Your Living Room

While in Iraq I rarely watched the news, because quite frankly it was just annoying to watch the complete bullshit that CNN and others try to pass off as 'reality' about Iraq when in fact it was trumped up speculation about how much we are 'failing to show results' over there. Anyone who really believes that has quite obviously not been to Iraq and talked to any of the Iraqi people. Enough said about that.

When I was in Nebraska I watched the news quite a bit because my parents and others watched the news every day when I was growing up. When you've lived in the same area of the world for your entire life, most of all the news you watch relates to you in one way or the other because you can see something like a car crash and "Oh my, that is a bad intersection, I could have told them that!"

But now that I'm in San Diego, I don't typically watch the news because A) I don't really know much about the issues they bring up, and B) A story about a "bad wreck on the corner of Chelsae Street and Horshire Blvd" has no bearing on me because I just don't know where that's at. I'm sure if I were here long enough I would start to recognize what I see, and the stories would relate more to me.

From what I have seen on the news though, there are a lot of people out here that mistake a personal residence as just another place to park their car. I swear, every news program I've watched, maybe half a dozen or so, has included a brief story about some idiot who went crashing into someone's house. I wonder sometimes if I need to install some concrete barriers out in front of our residence to avoid these crazy California drivers who insist on smashing into houses.

I'm still getting used to the people out here. Disrespectful, rude, discourteous, need I go on? I would say the word 'polite' is just not known out here, and it's not just driving, even when you are walking somewhere they act like idiot assholes. They back up in front of you, cut in front of you to look at something, standing in the middle of aisles talking with their whole family and not moving when you are coming down the aisle. You pretty much have to get rude and say "EXCUSE ME, WOULD YOU MIND LETTING ME THRU?" like some sort of real life Garth outtake from Wayne's World or something.

Well, we were out traveling around, looking at external hard drives and other computer stuff at Fry's electronics, and we decided to go look for a place to eat. We drove around for a little bit and decided on something Italian, because I really wasn't in the mood for burgers (we ate plenty on our trip to and from Arizona) and neither of us was into Mexican or Chinese.

Then we noticed a little ApplebackClone (what I call all the cliche eateries that look alike) type Italian place called Carinos and we decided to try it out.

It was a pleasant little place done up in that 'southwestern' kind of flavor, adobe looking walls, painted a soft yellowish tan, with high beamed ceilings. It was a pleasant place, not too light, not too dark. We ordered our drinks and got the italian nachos for an appetizer. I remarked to belly that the nachos were excellent, maybe as good as Old Chicago, my favorite.

They also had all you can eat bread, and with the skillet prepared pasta meal for me, and spaghetti with meatballs for belly, we got our choice of salad or soup. I took the Ceasar and belly got "mo' naked hos" with bacon soup. Everything tasted great, and the food was wonderful, but then a little problem came up.

We finished our soup and salad and then after about five minutes the waitress brought us more bread. About five minutes later I turned to belly and wondered aloud about how long it was taking to get our main dishes out to us.

This was just the beginning, we waited for FIFTEEN MINUTES more before they finally brought out our food. From the time we ordered to when we received our main dish, it was roughly 45 minutes, a full 25 minutes of sitting with our thumbs up our asses when the salad and soup were finished.

This was really disappointing to me, because I would have no problem going back to this place to eat again, except the poor performance by either the cook or the waitress getting the order to the cook will pretty much ensure that I will never eat at Carinos ever again. They didn't even bother coming over and trying to explain what was going on, we were just left there by ourselves waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Oh well, like I said, we won't be back there, ever.

Right now job hunting is a priority, and I'll be getting into that heavily this week. I have plenty of money in savings but that's right where I want to keep that money. My goal is to buy a house when we move out of California, and if I spend much of my savings it will hurt any chance of getting a decent house, so I really don't want to do that.

I'm sure you'll hear more about California in the coming days.

At least Fry's is really cool.