Saturday, 27th of December, 2003
It's time to get some acceptable tires in the snow - the Bridgestone Potenza RE92s that I have on the car now were not acceptable in the snow - I'm down to about 5/32nd tread, which probably explains it. I remembered the Potenza RE900s to be pretty good on my Cavalier last year, in the 185/70 13 iteration. They were awesome in the dirt, about average in the rain and had stiff sidewalls for a 70-series tire, so I decided to get them in the 195/70 14 iteration for some snow and winter highway driving on the Subaru. I went to Autotire again, as they've always been awesome. It's interesting, cornering on the RE900s is, if anything, slightly better than the soft RE92s that come on the stock WRX, and pretty comparable with the RE92s inflated to 35 psi. Straight-line braking traction is not as good on the skinny 195/70 14s as the 205/55 16 RE92s, though.
Can you fit a whole set of WRX wheels and tires in the back of my car without folding seats down?
Friday, 26th of December, 2003
Picture - Yes.
Saturday, 20th of December, 2003
Why does everyone stand up for the Hallelujah chorus in Handel's Messiah? Because back during one of the early performances of it, King George II of England was present. Hearing the words "King of kings..." in the chorus inspiried King George to stand up in recognition of Christ, the King of all kings. And, according to the rules back then, whenever the king stood up, everyone had to stand up.
In the baroque times, they tuned organs to almost a full step up from the 415Hz A that they had back then (a half step up from the modern 440Hz) in order to save on materials for constructing pipes. In the end it adds up. My question is, why didn't they just eliminate the lowest note? That has the same effect...
Friday, 19th of December, 2003
Went out the new Best Buy store today, and they had a PS2 with the Logitech Wingman Force wheel hooked up, and Need for Speed: Underground in the machine. Sweet! I had to start the "Underground" mode from scratch. It was funny, I got to select from the following cars: Honda Civic, Peugeot 206, Mazda Miata, VW GTI, Mitsubishi Eclipse, Dodge Neon, and Toyota Celica. I chose the Miata of course, for maximum handling. The person in the game said, "Ohh! What a weak car!" Then I proceeded to bomb through 9 races winning 1st place without any contest at all. The only one I had trouble with was the drag race, but as long as I shifted at the right places, I could just edge out the GTI. The "drift" contest was hilarious. I wasn't even close to really doing anything too fancy, but I managed to win by 3X the number of points because I had RWD. Hahaha. Another funny thing is every game you get bonus points for things like near misses, clean sections, air time, etc. These points get multiplied as your "reputation" increases. You increase your "reputation" by buying decals for your car. I found that to be absolutely hilarious. The music was definitely a complete ripoff of the latest "2 Fast 2 Furious". After a few races I unlocked several tracks, unlocked a bunch of "mods" for my car and even "won a free mod". I also managed to unlock the Mitsubishi Lancer ES. Hmmm.
I found it to be entertaining, though, and I would definitely buy it if I had a PS2. The Wingman system is also just like my computer - pedals that slide everywhere. But the force feedback in the game was pretty well done - I could feel when I was drifting, etc.
Thursday, 18th of December, 2003
Tuesday, 16th of December, 2003
Picture - I went to Schnucks today and did a double-take... those are some nice looking aftermarket rims too.
Monday, 15th of December, 2003
Knoppix became useful in yet another way tonight. I'm working on this laptop that has a pretty messed up hard drive - probably some virus or something, that prevents Windows XP from installing on it without reformatting the hard drive. Problem is, there's a bunch of data that is needed off of it. On a laptop, it's not so easy to just take out out the hard drive and pop it into another computer and transfer the files off! But Knoppix made it almost as easy - just pop the CD in, boot to Linux without touching the hard drive, plug it into the network, and transfer the files over the network via smb to another computer. That's better than any Windows tool that I know of...
Saturday, 13th of December, 2003
Tuesday, 9th of December, 2003
"Greetings from Urbana. Go Illini.
The siege has been broken. Turkey has been eaten. Which brings us to... 7
The BLITZ!!!!
Where, in 3 weeks, I have 4 finals, 1 chem test, 1 chem quiz, 1 econ in-class writing assignment (done), 1 big music assignment (done), 1 piano recital, um... let me think... no more chem lab... and a partridge in a pear tree."
Monday, 8th of December, 2003
Saturday, 6th of December, 2003
Picture - You thought I had a lot of brake dust on the outside of the wheel - take a look at the inside view!
So while the wheels were off for tire rotation, I was able to take a look at this "passive four-wheel-steering" system that's apparently on all Subarus. The lateral links in the rear are of unequal length and sit at different angles under normal load, so that when the suspension compresses, the front lateral link extends farther than the rear one, inducing a slight toe-out. The other rear wheel, the inside tire of a turn, will have toe-in. No wonder my car has some over-steer tendencies - even when in neutral.
Wednesday, 3rd of December, 2003
I was feeling a little inspired tonight and I started playing with colors. How about this color for my menu bar?
