RB Wheels Has a Few Wheels

Don't Piss Someone Off and Leave Your Car in their Possession

ZR1 in the Wild

People who race Mazdas like Corvettes apparently, the ZR1 in particular. I found this example parked in the Mazdaspeed pits at California Speedway during a NASA event. It would have been nice to see it on the track, but it was brand spanking new and shiny. I can understand the desire to let it break in a little bit longer before stretching its legs on the track.

NASA Racing, Its Been Awhile...

Old E46 M3 Exhaust For Sale

I finally got motivated and have listed the Hamann exhaust from my old E46 M3 on EBay. The exhaust is famous or something because it was in a tv show... scroll down to learn more on that.

We Brought a Dog in the Club

Joe wanted to bring his pit bull Damien into the club. He had to prove to everyone he could make it happen. Damien made it inside. A dog in a club attracts a little attention... He didn't stay very long though.

Someone Needs to Make Direct Injection Upgrades

I have a great desire for a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro 2LT. The reason is that I want to twin turbocharge the sucker. However, what will hold me back for awhile is the lack of upgradeability in the direct injection fueling system. I really want to see what kind of power can be pushed out of that motor though (the 3.6L V6 VVT DI). I want to take down Nissan's VQ37! In the meantime I suppose I could try and poke at the engineers who work on that engine to see what kind of numbers they think could be pushed out by the stock direct injection system.

Temescal Canyon Pool

I just discovered this pool at the base of the hills in Temescal Canyon. I came upon it after I read an article about teenagers dying in car accidents speeding on Pacific Palisades Blvd (it doesn't look extremely curvy, just wide, teenagers can be stupid). I used the satellite view of Google Maps to check out the road, of course in satellite view I always check out the nearby pools as well. Upon discovery of this pool in its serene location I thought, "Hey I want to go check it out one day!" I inputted its location into Google and sadly I was confronted with an LA Times article describing the recent bulldozing of this swimming hole.

The Malibu/Western Valley area has a big lack of regulation size pools. I know because I searched far and wide to see what options I had for swimming after work when commuting through that area. Backyard pools are ok and all, but most are tiny and you don't meet anyone new in your own backyard. Community pools are wonderful and they are disappearing at a high rate due to their high maintenance costs. This pool's case is particularly disheartening because the true owners (the city) would not invest in its repair. The leasing operators (YMCA) said they would fork up for the repairs, but they wanted to make sure their investment would see many years of use which could not be promised by the true owners. I miss the East Coast at times, where many pools are private.

Import Racers

Back in 2005 (or maybe it was 2006 when it aired) I did a tv show that aired briefly on ESPN2 called Import Racers. Only a few short years later it is very interesting to think about where everyone has gone since it happened. The host Sal Masekela is now all over E! on top of his duties hosting all that is the X-Games. Eric Hsu has gone onto work for the motorsports power name, Cosworth and Tanner Foust has become a superstar driver. Then there is myself who has moved on to engineer for General Motors. Progress is beautiful, eat that Audi! Check out the show below:

Windows Home Server

DSC_0109, originally uploaded by merritr.

I got my boyfriend an HP Media Server for Christmas. It runs with the operating system Windows Home Server. I found the software PlayOn that can serve Netflix and Hulu to a PS3, XBox, other media boxes and coming soon, the Wii. Thanks to enterprising individuals before me I easily found directions on the web to get the program loaded onto the server in order to start feeding movies and tv shows to my PS3.

Upon getting the connection going I came to the realization that my cable internet BLOWS. I have always wanted to avoid using cable service of any sort, but for internet it was really my best bet. Now streaming video to the PS3 over wifi was not the ideal setup, I will fix that by running a Cat6 cable in the near future, but that ended up being the least of my issues. When video streaming, or using any significant amount of bandwidth, my cable modem disconnects. The modem log file is filled with synchronization and downstream pulse failures. Tired of all this I have realized that Verizon Fios internet is available in my area. I will be getting it installed soon and hopefully I will be satisfied. I am really excited about finally getting a package with fast upload speeds. I am getting the 20Mbps up and 20Mbps down pacakge. Finally website management won't hog so much time, something I can't spare.