Summer has been busy
It’s been a busy summer so far. We’re just into July and I’m wondering where the summer went already. To start off, the spring series of RC racing at 106 Race Park ended 2 weeks ago. I finished the season in the monster class in first place. Finally a first place finish for me. I’ll pot pics of the trophy as soon as I get it. This week is the beginning of our Friday night series, also at 106 Race Park. I’m excited because the night series brings with it the challenge of racing with less light. Unfortunately it looks like we might be missing our first race this week as it is supposed to rain Friday night. I’m also wondering what the night racing will bring for challenges in photography. We’ll have to see how it all turns out.
Read MoreBusy, busy, busy
It’s been a couple weeks since my last update, I’ve been busy and a bit lazy. I started the new job back on the 5th, so this is my 3rd week there. Everything is going great there. The people I work with are nice and fun to work with. The work is great too. I’ve already made some small improvements to some things on the site. Now I am working on tying together our lead generation system and a virtual call center. So far that project is progressing smoothly.
Outside of work I’ve been busy too. I finally ordered a new camera to replace the older Canon Digital Rebel XT I bought Jess about 4 years ago. The new camera is a nice new Canon 7D. I order a new lens with it as well, a Canon 70-200mm f/4 L USM. It’s a good size telephoto zoom lens. It’s a good size lens, physically, and along with the new camera I feel like a real photographer now. I’m trying to sell the Digital Rebel XT (if anyone is interested let me know). Selling that should be able to cover the price of an acceptable macro lens to add into the collection. Both the camera and the lens are killer, and I think they’ll be prefect for the pics I want to get at the RC Track this year. With a few more lenses I think I’ll have a nice all around setup to take any kind of picture I want. Along with the macro lens I plan to buy a better general purpose lens, and a wide angle lens. I plan on uploading most, if not all, of the pics I take from now on. I’ll still upload the RC Race pics of course, but I want to try and take some other stuff this year. Maybe some landscapes or something.
Since I mentioned RC Racing, I’ll talk a bit more about that. The Spring season is coming up fast. we had scheduled a track clean up day for last Saturday, April 17th, but the rain and ruined that. This weekend, April 24th, and possibly 25th, is also supposed to be clean up now. The next weekend, May 1st, is the beginning of the Spring series. I’m excited and can’t wait to start racing again. I still need to finish rebuilding the E-Revo. Right now it is a chassis without any electronics, shocks, or wheels. The plan for now is to finish that up this week or next. That is still my favorite of the two trucks to run so I can’t let it sit much longer. I still plan on ordering some new batteries, most likely from MaxAmps.com. They recently added their better warranty every order, for free. Now their LiPO packs are warrantied for 3 Years or 300 cycles, and their LiFE packs are 5 Years or 1000 cycles. Those are fantastic warranties for any battery. I’m not sure if I want to go with LiPOs again, or maybe try out the safer LiFE packs. I keep thinking maybe the LiFE might not have enough power, but who am I kidding? I am not a pro level racer, and the .05 seconds a LiPO might give me over the LiFE pack is not going to do much for me. The safety factor is nice, and the faster charge capability is nice too. Those might be bigger factors for me than whatever tiny amount of power difference there is.
Other than that, life is moving on as always. I have not finished any books lately. I am dragging with The Club Dumas. It’s not quite as exciting as I had hoped. I’m working to finish it though, so I can move onto the rest of my waiting list. I now have 11 books to read. I know of at least 1 more I have pre-ordered, it might be 2. I also read that the next book in my favored Temeraire series by Naomi Novik is coming out this summer. I’m sure I will move that to the front of the list if there still is a list by then. I also still have to order the remaining True Blood books.
On that note, whatever it was, I am off for dinner. Have fun and keep it between the ditches!
Read MoreThe “BIG NEWS”!!
So I mentioned in my last post that I might have big news soon. Obviously based on the title of this post, I do have big news. No I didn’t win the lottery, although I did try. I got a new job. I wanted to keep this on the down low until I had the offer itself, and I had told my current employer WSOL. The last thing I’d want to happen is to get a call from my boss asking me why they read about it on the internet first. That assumes someone from the company even reads my blog. Thanks to Google Analytics, it looks like someone out in the Chicago area hits my blog, so I am guessing they do, occasionally.
Read MoreReading/Watching/Listening
Since I’ve slowed down in updates I decided to steal something I see on other blogs, the “Reading/Watching/Listening (To)” posts. It’s pretty self-explantory, but for anyone that isn’t a geeky blog reader it’s pretty simple to explain. It’s a list of what I am reading, watching, and listening to. It’s not literally what I am doing right now, obviously I am writing a blog post right now, but I think you get the idea. Maybe you think I’m the coolest guy around and want to follow in my foosteps and read the books I read, watch the shows or movies I do, or listen the music I like. If not, just call me a self-indulgent prick and move on to the other posts, pics from RC races, or another blog, whatever floats your boat. Anyways on to the list for today, this week, this month, I’m not sure yet.
Read MoreWhole lotta stuff goin’ on
It’s been a while since I posted, the last one was when I got my shiny new Slash 4×4 Platinum. Well, the Slash is no longer shiny, and lots of other things have been going on keeping me busy. I’ve been trying to split time three ways basically which is tough. With the new Star Trek Online game coming out I’ve been playing that a lot, which is taking a large chunk of my time. It’s a fun game, once they work the bugs out it’ll be even better. For anyone who liked the old Starfleet Command series this game might have some appeal from the space combat aspect, but the ground combat might get annoying. My other hobby which I mentioned before, Warhammer 40k is also starting to take more time. There was a major update to the army I play this month, and now I am working on updating my models to have the fun new stuff they added there. I bought a lot of paints and brushes so I could start working on that, and have gotten a couple test paint schemes together so far. Once the 3 or 4 test models are done I’ll post them up here, maybe even have anyone who visits vote on what I should go with for the rest of the army.
Lastly there is the RC racing, which for the winter has taken a back seat to the other stuff unfortunately. It’s cold, and I hate the cold. It is not fun to be out in, and it makes me not want to get out of the warm bed in the morning, especially on weekends. I made it up to The Barn yesterday, first time in a few weeks though. I had fun, although I did not do to well on the track. The 4×4 Open class has picked up nicely, 7 entries yesterday. They’re all Slash 4x4s for now, but hopefully once the other manufacturers release their 4×4 trucks there will be more competition there. Matt posted what Steve Slayden posted on the web about his thoughts on a Slash 4×4 setup, which seems to work well for Matt. I did what I could at the track to add those changes in, which is just moving the camber links, shock locations, etc… There is more to it of course, Slayden suggests different diff and shock oils, springs, and plenty of other stuff. If you’re interested in taking a look, the original post is here, Set-up help from Steve Slayden. The minor adjustments I made seemed to help a bit on the track, but the major work with the diff oil and shocks adjustments will probably help more. I’m not sure when I’ll add those in, I am planning on finishing my test paint schemes this week for 40k, so working on the Slash might not happen until next week or later. The truck still handles really well, even with the out of the box settings. My first race out there I took first in the main, no TQ though. The Platinum edition seems to slide a little better in the turns from what I saw, than the regular. The only upgrade I am considering right now for the Slash 4×4 is a steering servo. The stock one isn’t bad, but I think it seems sluggish, and very difficult to center for me. I’m not sure what I’ll go with, but it’ll be high speed I am sure. Unfortunately I heard that Traxxas is not making any more platinum editions for the Slash 4×4. I am not sure why, maybe it was not worth it for them or something, but I think it is a poor decision to do that. They need to have a BnD (Bind n’ Drive) type system like Losi has in my opinion. Losi does have the edge there I guess as they are owned by Horizon Hobby, which of course also owns Spektrum. Spektrum is really popular right now, and that makes it much easier for them since the BnD system is for Spektrum radios. If Traxxas could make a receiver that will talk to a Spektrum transmitter, they could do a BnD, and I wouldn’t need to have any extra Traxxas 2.4 radios lying around. I am not sure if that would ever happen, I doubt Traxxas would want to endorse a competitor’s product, but you never know. On the flipside, the new Traxxas 2.4 radio, with the Traxxas Link is a vast improvement over the older 2.4 that I got with my E-Revo Brushless. The newer radio can now handle up to 10 models I believe, and has adjustments for things like exponential steering. I still wouldn’t use it over my Spektrum DX3R, but it’s a better radio to start with, and wouldn’t need to be replaced as quickly as the older version for anyone who is somewhat serious about racing.
Other than the hobbies, other things have been busy as well. Work is nuts, lots of stuff going on these days. I moved my “office” from the edge of the living room by the kitchen to the corner by the windows. Now I am more out of the way while I work, and it gave me room for my new setup. I went down to Mohegan a couple Sundays ago, had a great time, and even left with $200 more than I went in with. The drive home was nothing short of a nightmare, averaged 35 mph from CT all the way home. The snow storm was insane, and I did not see pavement pretty much from about 20 minutes before the MA border on through the entire way home. It took me a little over 4 hours to get home.
Off to go play STO, paint something, or maybe read or relax, who knows. Have fun and “keep it between the ditches”.
Read MoreHappy Holidays and stuff
I figured I’d throw out a little update, there isn’t much going on to update with though. Obviously Christmas and Hanukkah have come and gone, and we are in the last week of 2009. Hopefully everyone got some nice RC stuff in their stockings, under the tree, near the menorah, or whatever you do for gifts, hopefully something. We don’t do any decorating for the holiday’s. We had a real tree out first year here, and a tiny fake one the next year, now two years running we have not done either. So we hide out gifts, not even wrapped, somewhere. I got Jess a couple sewing books, how to make stuffed things, probably to use as pet toys, or whatever. I also got her a gift card for Delia’s, and a makeup organizer thing. Jess gave me the first 5 books from the Sookie Stackhouse series. Those are the books the HBO show True Blood is based on for anyone who watches, or was curious what the hell I am talking about. We also got stuff down at my Dad’s and from Jess’ grandparents. Mostly gift cards or money. A pair of mugs for Jess and I, and what is becoming a tradition my niece’s school picture for the year.
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