plus_c's Xanga

My clean driving record - 2001-2007, RIP

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:13:31 GMT

Six years of a clean driving record are gone this weekend. With my lead foot, I'm actually kind of surprised it took this long to get my first actual ticket. I got stopped on US 360 tonight on the way home, clocked doing 75 in a 60 zone.

I guess I should count myself lucky - I'd been going much faster at stretches, and I guess this makes up for all the times I should have gotten stopped but didn't over the past couple years or so. Still though, a $150 ticket really sucks.

K&N Air Filters - a must for every car.

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 01:21:34 GMT

One of the things I've been meaning to get for my car for the longest time is a K&N rechargeable air filter. I finally broke down and ordered it after having changed the air filter twice in my car over the course of a year last week, and it came in today.

Why a rechargeable air filter? If you look at the air filter in your car, it very much resembles a coffee filter on steroids. It's made of paper with a rubber surround, and fits in a plastic box inside your engine. There are a couple of things that the K&N filter solves -

Try putting your hand on the other side of a coffee filter (or the air filter in your car, for that matter) and blowing through it. You don't feel much on the other side, right? Well, instead of your hand, when installed, on the other side of that air filter is your engine. The K&N filter is made of synthetic materials that allow much more air to flow through to the engine. More air to the engine means better combustion - fuel will burn more completely.
Once a paper filter element is "done", it's done. You have to throw it away. The K&N filter has recharge kits available, which are basically canisters of a special kind of oil. This oil helps the filter do its job, and so you recharge the filter as often as you would change your air filter.

Initial Impressions - because more air is getting to the engine, everything seems to happen just a little bit faster. Throttle response is better, it takes less throttle tip-in to rev-match on upshifts and downshifts, VTEC kicks just a little harder, the car doesn't complain nearly as much when coasting in second...overall drivability is vastly improved, and the car is quite a bit more fun. K&N claims fuel efficiency improvements, but I'll have to wait to measure that until after the first tank at least - I'm having too much fun driving the thing! Also, the filter seems to have gotten rid of this whiny sound that the engine would make at idle, although I'm not sure exactly why that would be.

Price and installation - for my application, the filter was about $47 direct from K&N, with a few dollars for shipping. Installation took literally less than five minutes - open up the air box, take out old filter, put in new filter, close up air box. If you have any trouble with this install, it would have to do with the positioning of the air box under the hood. Considering that a paper air filter for me costs over $20 from AutoZone, the K&N is an incredible deal.

I save money on air filters because I'm no longer changing them every 6k miles, I'm getting better performance *and* better gas mileage, and the environmental impact of my car is lowered (slightly) by using less paper filters - this is a no-brainer of an upgrade, especially with the install as simple as it is. Seriously, all of you guys need to be running K&N filters if you aren't already. Order from www.knfilters.com.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 23:56:15 GMT

I just got home from autocrossing in Virginia Beach. The lot today was on a Naval Base - to be exact, it was the launch ramp for Assault Craft Unit 4 at Little Creek Naval Base.

The rest of the photos are on my Facebook album, but this one I needed to share here:

Wine festivals are fun.

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 00:19:12 GMT

So I ended up trekking up to Centreville today for the Vintage Virginia Wine Festival, and had a lot of fun (even though meeting up with people apparently failed miserably. Lesson of the day - remember to actually take important things like people's cell phone numbers with you before leaving the apartment.) I tried a whole bunch of different kinds of wines from five or six wineries - the details all sort of run together now. There was a German-style winery, various Merlots and Cabernet Sauvignons and Cabernet Francs, a few Chardonnays, a Pinot Grigio, a couple of Vidals, and others whose names escape me at the moment. The European-grape varietals were, to me, not very exciting - they were pleasant to drink, but nothing spectacular. The standouts of the day all came from Chrysalis Vineyards,a winery in Middleburg that specializes in grapes that grow well in Virginia's climate. The owner of Chrysalis led a tasting seminar in the afternoon, and the wines we tried were made from two different varietals of grape - the Vigonier (a grape that grows in the Northern Rhone Valley of France, and also happens to do quite well in Virginia), and the Norton (a Virginia original, and apparently the most disease-resistant varietal of grape in the world). I'd never had either of these two varietals before today, and they were quite unique. I'm not sure I'm a white wine fan anymore, so the Vigonier doesn't do that much for me. The Norton, on the other hand...wow. Definitely unlike any red I've ever tasted. Not too tannin-y like I find most Cabernet Sauvignons, not too sweet, not too oak-y, just very complex and good to drink. I made sure to compliment the vineyard's owner profusely after the tasting, and before I left bought three different wines made from the Norton grape.

The other highlight of the day had nothing to do with wine. A local Volvo dealer showed up to the wine festival with a brand new Volvo C30 hatchback. I'd never seen one of these in the flesh before today, and...damn. That car is sex on wheels, or at least the closest one gets to it in the mid-$20k price range. The example that the dealer had shipped down from Canada (the C30 doesn't go on sale Stateside until September) was this very light green color, with the bottom "lip" of the car done in a chocolate brown. It doesn't sound very appealing, but trust me - it was absolutely gorgeous. The Alcantara seats were black and silver, a theme that was repeated throughout the very Scandinavian interior. From what I could tell during a brief sit in the driver's seat, the controls fall neatly to hand, in the way that I love my Prelude for. Shifter action was precise, with good throws - I was initially afraid that I would accidentally grab Reverse while attempting shifts to 6th, but working the shifter through its pattern I found out that would be much more difficult to accomplish than I feared. The 18" wheels, shod in Pirelli P Zero Rossos, are a perfect match for the rest of the car. I told the Volvo sales rep that I wanted to drive home with it - fortunately for me he wouldn't make me a deal on it then and there. Conclusion - dear God I want one.

An update on the job search

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 00:13:53 GMT

So it's June 1st, and here we are -- already? Damn, time sneaks up on me.

I've been sending out job applications for positions that seem to be up my alley, but it's been difficult. With the work I've been doing, I end up being interested in positions that require many more years of experience than I have. On the other hand, none of the jobs in the "fresh graduate" sections of monster.com.hk or jobsdb.com are interesting to me. With my level of experience (or lack thereof), it seems to be really difficult to get an employer to pick up the phone and give me a call. I've had a phone interview, but nothing came of it, and it was for a job that wasn't even based in Hong Kong. It would have gotten me there eventually, but the position itself was in New York. At any rate, I digress - bottom line here is that as of today, I've yet to land an interview with someone in Hong Kong.

I'm beginning to wonder if dad is right, and I'm just going to need to take the plunge and move back and look from there. For sure, it'll lower a bunch of the barriers that I'm running into, and will allow me to at least get my foot in the door for an interview. The prospect is a little scary though...

I just remembered something important.

Thu, 03 May 2007 22:56:54 GMT

The registration and inspection are due on my car this month! This gives me the opportunity to get the vanity tag I've been wanting:

So, now the question is - with or without the exclamation point?

This makes finishing 2nd to last in STS not nearly so bad.

Tue, 01 May 2007 01:41:34 GMT

2000 Honda Prelude: $9200
Gas to Philly: $70
Magnetic numbers: $30
Philly SCCA entry fee: $40

Out-driving a spoiled 18-year old with a Porsche 911 Turbo paid for by mommy and daddy: PRICELESS

Best part of all - he's about to be a freshman at Penn, so as long as I keep visiting on Philly SCCA weekends I'll be able to hand him his ass again and again for at least four years. Bwahahahahahahaha.

Country roads, take me home

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 23:02:05 GMT

Today's realization: When (not if!) I move back to Hong Kong, I'm going to have to buy myself a motorcycle - a car may be impractical there, but a motorcycle would be the perfect compromise. If I didn't, I'd probably miss being behind the wheel too much.

This realization came sometime late this afternoon, at 60mph on Virginia's State Route 5. I've discovered that this is a particularly good road for a nice, relaxed cruise. Gentle, sweeping curves keep you awake and interested, but don't goad you to go balls-out or make you think too much about your driving. No traffic, and nearly no traffic lights either, so as not to disturb your rhythm. And for much of the stretch between downtown Richmond and downtown Williamsburg, the road is canopied by old-growth trees - on a sunny day, the canopy cools things down just enough that you don't have to be moving fast to not be over-warm in your car.

And as the sun shone, Ryan's recording of the last PennYo concert played, and the wind whistled through the interior of my car, I found a temporary bliss. For those 50 minutes, the road, my car, and I were one, and the rest of the world ceased to exist. All the problems of work and of the other aspects of my life were suddenly a million miles away, and this was all I needed to be happy. Just me, a precisely-crafted piece of fine machinery, and an open road stretching out before me like a long black ribbon. This, I thought, is a bliss that I don't particularly want to give up, career ambitions or no. The solution, then, is to learn to ride a motorcycle before moving back, so that every once in a while I can experience this same feeling of bliss without (most of) the headaches of owning a car in one of the most densely-populated cities in the world.

Note to self: Take motorcycle safety course, and get M certification on license. Purchase the rest of the riding gear I need, and possibly a 250cc motorcycle to get familiar with while still here in the States. Add aforementioned tasks to Hong Kong move list.

I'm really doing it this time.

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 02:12:53 GMT

I need to post-date this entry so that it stays on top. I need all of you out there in Xanga-land to help me do one thing - and that's to get me back to Hong Kong. Now, I don't mean help in the financial sense or anything like that - what I mean by this is that I want y'all out there to keep me on schedule. The date of this entry is my deadline - one year from now, I want to be posting from Hong Kong, in a new job. So, as I see it, here are my major deadlines to keep (this list will change as I add tasks and complete them):

Task - Deadline
1. Buy Chinese-English dictionary - 4/2 COMPLETE, 4/2/07
2. Polish up resume - 4/16 COMPLETE 4/14/07
3. Send resume to my aunt in HK - 4/16 COMPLETE 4/14/07
4. Figure out requirements for repatriating to Hong Kong - 4/30 N/A - yay for HK right of abode
5. Scope out possible jobs on http://monster.com.hk - 4/30, but this one is really an ongoing task
6. Submit at least 5 applications on monster.com.hk - 5/2 - 3 submitted as of 4/9 COMPLETE, sometime between 4/13 and 4/20 (I don't remember when)
7. Get at least one phone interview - 6/1 (maybe?)
8. Arrange for an in-person interview - 7/1 (maybe?)
9. Execute in-person interviews - TBD, no later than 12/31
10. Get hired - 12/31
11. Last day at current job - 1/31/08
12. Find a subletter and move out - 2/28/08
13. Find housing in Hong Kong - 2/28/08

Move back to Hong Kong - 4/1/08

So, here's what I want you to help me do. If I miss a deadline, I want you to nag me. Nag and bitch at me about having missed a deadline until the task that's late has a big COMPLETE next to it. In the meantime, I need to practice reading and speaking in Chinese (both Cantonese and Mandarin) as much as I can - also nag me about doing this.

This latest Hong Kong trip has made me really realize that I want to do this, and that this is what I've wanted all along. Now, I need to keep my eye on the prize, and I need you guys to help me.

I've been busy after work this week...

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 02:50:13 GMT

I don't remember exactly when or how this idea began, but a couple weeks ago my coworker mentioned she was doing a fundraising competition thing for the National Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I don't remember how exactly I thought of it, but I suggested a photo slideshow with a small voiceover of her explaining what the deal was and why people should donate to the cause. She loved the idea, and so for the past week I've been working feverishly on this video outside of work. The video was really "done" on Wednesday, but when I tried to upload to YouTube the first time...the voiceover was gone! WTF?! I spent the next two nights bashing at GarageBand, iMovie, and YouTube, trying anything and everything I could think of to get the video to work. Finally, by some miracle I hit upon the fact that the voiceover had been recorded in stereo, and the stereo-to-mono conversion was somehow mangling the voiceover track. Using Audacity I managed to split the tracks apart so that the audio in the slideshow would be already mono, and YouTube couldn't mangle it. Voila! It worked!

And now, without further ado, here's the video:

If all of you out there could help me spread this as far as you can, I'd really appreciate it, as this coworker of mine is a great friend, and she's got her sights set on a very ambitious goal. Thanks!