Friday, June 13, 2008
I'm drivin' heah!
J and I went on a tour of Timken at Clemson's new joint venture, ICAR. First a huge thanks to Ron and Timken for allowing us to come take a look at their operation. There were around 25-30 people who showed up for the tour and were instructed to bring a racecar or unique car if they had one for a group picture. The Focus with her dented hood didn't quite make the cut. A supercharged/turbocharged Honda hatchback, 2 Lotus Elise and a Daytona Coupe were among my favorites who showed up. As the Roush built V8 powered Daytona Coupe left, it scared the crap out of J and I. The straight pipes with side exhausts were LOUD! We were also standing right next to them.
Timken is a "white collar" machining facility as described by our wonderful tour guide whose name I didn't catch. Basically it's a two story building with a plethora of engineers, math aficionados and managers upstairs who sit around and think up new bearing designs. They send those designs downstairs, get a few made and test it to see if they revolutionized bearing design or if the crack monkey is back in action and they should try again. They also have many rooms for testing all the spinning parts of an engine. They might get a design from an automobile manufacturer, or a part, and they will test it for them and send the results back.
Huge pieces of machinery that start with a spool of smooth metal and then form that into a bearing abounded. The engine testing lab was loud. They were testing the bearings around the camshafts as they spin. They use electric motors to turn all these machines instead of gas, but it's still loud. We were not allowed in the metrology lab, where they super accurately measure their parts, but it looked really neat. We walked around and I kept wondering if they hired any chemists or materials scientists. I found him! We walked past one lab which had an instrument which said spectraflame, which I can only assume was an AAS, or atomic absorption spectrometer, where the lone chemist hung out all day surrounded by engineers. I imagine any chemistry related question gets posed to him or her, whether they like it or not. J wondered how many women Timken employs. Very good question.
Then we had a lecture on sound and sound control. It drug on a bit but was also informative. The SCCA, sports car club of america, has set that no racecar can be louder than 103 decibels, but there are a few ways to beat the system, or at least use the system to your advantage.
Since I picked up J from work and she didn't want to follow me home in Tercel, we drove home together and I drove her to work this morning. It was fairly trafficky but not too bad. (I guess congested would be a better word there) There was a Jeep Cherokee left lane hogging because he felt his 72 in a 60 was fast enough to warrant it. The 4 or 5 cars backed up behind him seemed to disagree. Our exit was coming up so I accelerated into the middle lane just as the Lincoln Towncar in the middle lane was moving into the right lane, so I kept my foot in it and planned to accelerate past that car to get to my exit. Whilst this occurred, the Cherokee left lane hog encountered yet another left lane hog who was going even slower than him; a red Civic if you're curious. Cherokee sees the Towncar move over and without signaling, starts to pull into the middle lane; the only problem with that being there is an accelerating black Focus that is already plugging the hole left by the Towncar. A simple honk of my horn avoids the impending accident and I pull into the left hand lane and exit. The Cherokee does the same after I get out of the way and proceeds to get very close to the back of my car. Even when we turn onto the surface street and I slow down to the very slow 35 (especially after hitting 80ish on the freeway) with a gentle cajoling from J, he stays behind me. The speed limit goes back up to 45, still there. I move to the left lane to ready us for our turn and he stays in his lane but doesn't pass. I don't look over as he drives by but he does drive by on his way to work instead of doing something crazy like following me to work for a discussion. The strangest part is that he was a school resource officer with "Police" and lightpod on his Cherokee. When he exited with me I was mildly concerned that he would pull me over but seeing as how we were both in the wrong for speeding and he was clearly slower traffic not staying to the right and changing lanes without signaling, I wasn't too worried. So to that officer, sorry it went down like that and no hard feelings.
If I post this weekend it will entail my trip to Drift Atlanta back in May with some pics that are up on my Flickr account if you want to get a preview and check those out.
Timken is a "white collar" machining facility as described by our wonderful tour guide whose name I didn't catch. Basically it's a two story building with a plethora of engineers, math aficionados and managers upstairs who sit around and think up new bearing designs. They send those designs downstairs, get a few made and test it to see if they revolutionized bearing design or if the crack monkey is back in action and they should try again. They also have many rooms for testing all the spinning parts of an engine. They might get a design from an automobile manufacturer, or a part, and they will test it for them and send the results back.
Huge pieces of machinery that start with a spool of smooth metal and then form that into a bearing abounded. The engine testing lab was loud. They were testing the bearings around the camshafts as they spin. They use electric motors to turn all these machines instead of gas, but it's still loud. We were not allowed in the metrology lab, where they super accurately measure their parts, but it looked really neat. We walked around and I kept wondering if they hired any chemists or materials scientists. I found him! We walked past one lab which had an instrument which said spectraflame, which I can only assume was an AAS, or atomic absorption spectrometer, where the lone chemist hung out all day surrounded by engineers. I imagine any chemistry related question gets posed to him or her, whether they like it or not. J wondered how many women Timken employs. Very good question.
Then we had a lecture on sound and sound control. It drug on a bit but was also informative. The SCCA, sports car club of america, has set that no racecar can be louder than 103 decibels, but there are a few ways to beat the system, or at least use the system to your advantage.
Since I picked up J from work and she didn't want to follow me home in Tercel, we drove home together and I drove her to work this morning. It was fairly trafficky but not too bad. (I guess congested would be a better word there) There was a Jeep Cherokee left lane hogging because he felt his 72 in a 60 was fast enough to warrant it. The 4 or 5 cars backed up behind him seemed to disagree. Our exit was coming up so I accelerated into the middle lane just as the Lincoln Towncar in the middle lane was moving into the right lane, so I kept my foot in it and planned to accelerate past that car to get to my exit. Whilst this occurred, the Cherokee left lane hog encountered yet another left lane hog who was going even slower than him; a red Civic if you're curious. Cherokee sees the Towncar move over and without signaling, starts to pull into the middle lane; the only problem with that being there is an accelerating black Focus that is already plugging the hole left by the Towncar. A simple honk of my horn avoids the impending accident and I pull into the left hand lane and exit. The Cherokee does the same after I get out of the way and proceeds to get very close to the back of my car. Even when we turn onto the surface street and I slow down to the very slow 35 (especially after hitting 80ish on the freeway) with a gentle cajoling from J, he stays behind me. The speed limit goes back up to 45, still there. I move to the left lane to ready us for our turn and he stays in his lane but doesn't pass. I don't look over as he drives by but he does drive by on his way to work instead of doing something crazy like following me to work for a discussion. The strangest part is that he was a school resource officer with "Police" and lightpod on his Cherokee. When he exited with me I was mildly concerned that he would pull me over but seeing as how we were both in the wrong for speeding and he was clearly slower traffic not staying to the right and changing lanes without signaling, I wasn't too worried. So to that officer, sorry it went down like that and no hard feelings.
If I post this weekend it will entail my trip to Drift Atlanta back in May with some pics that are up on my Flickr account if you want to get a preview and check those out.
Labels: chemistry, driving record, Focus, police, racing, Tercel
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
I'm addicted to rageahol!
-Homer when his family confronted him about being a rageaholic. Let's see if Google can help with the episode: “I am furious yellow” Episode#: 287. Sounds good.
J is dirty. She has trouble keeping her vehicle clean. She doesn't dirty it up but throws trash and paper everywhere. Mostly it's in the passenger floorboard, which makes it easy to clean up but inevitably something will get lodged underneath the seat and inspire some car cleaning yoga.
I just paid $28 for an oil change which involves oil and filter, tire pressures, clean the windshield and vacuum out the interior and check all the other fluids. Yes it would be cheaper to do it myself, but I know the guys at Xpress Lube on 123 in Clemson, they're amazingly fast and cool guys. They're car guys too and it's nice to support a locally owned oil change franchise.
Tercel had her oil changed. She's at 183,000 miles now and still going strong, or at least strongish. She needs a new flex joint in her exhaust and sounds pretty mean now with the exhaust exiting just below the driver instead of at the back out the muffler. The exhaust is still going through the catalytic converter, so it's just loud and not environmentally damaging. She drives great and after an alignment (maybe this afternoon) she'll drive even better. But her interior leaves alot to be desired. I saw a newer Tercel, probably '95 or '96, and it's interior was immaculate. Gorgeous cloth seats that looked brand new, and maybe they were. So far, and especially with gas being almost Europe expensive, my plan is to get J a newer, nicer car that is still fuel efficient (sorry Hummer, large SUVs and trucks) and for me to daily drive Tercel and put Focus in the garage and slowly turn her into a race car. Of course that depends on whether or not we have a garage at our next place and also if we live in the city, we probably won't need 3 cars, so I would have to change my plans then also.
We'll see. I was watching Motorweek yesterday and saw the 2009 Porsche 911 GT2 and it was truly amazing. Then they mentioned the base price of $192,460. GAH! I had no idea. I can only start to imagine spending that much money on a car. You could get so many toys for that much money. You could get another house for that much money and get your money back once you sold that place instead of losing most of it via depreciation.
Okay, off to work!
J is dirty. She has trouble keeping her vehicle clean. She doesn't dirty it up but throws trash and paper everywhere. Mostly it's in the passenger floorboard, which makes it easy to clean up but inevitably something will get lodged underneath the seat and inspire some car cleaning yoga.
I just paid $28 for an oil change which involves oil and filter, tire pressures, clean the windshield and vacuum out the interior and check all the other fluids. Yes it would be cheaper to do it myself, but I know the guys at Xpress Lube on 123 in Clemson, they're amazingly fast and cool guys. They're car guys too and it's nice to support a locally owned oil change franchise.
Tercel had her oil changed. She's at 183,000 miles now and still going strong, or at least strongish. She needs a new flex joint in her exhaust and sounds pretty mean now with the exhaust exiting just below the driver instead of at the back out the muffler. The exhaust is still going through the catalytic converter, so it's just loud and not environmentally damaging. She drives great and after an alignment (maybe this afternoon) she'll drive even better. But her interior leaves alot to be desired. I saw a newer Tercel, probably '95 or '96, and it's interior was immaculate. Gorgeous cloth seats that looked brand new, and maybe they were. So far, and especially with gas being almost Europe expensive, my plan is to get J a newer, nicer car that is still fuel efficient (sorry Hummer, large SUVs and trucks) and for me to daily drive Tercel and put Focus in the garage and slowly turn her into a race car. Of course that depends on whether or not we have a garage at our next place and also if we live in the city, we probably won't need 3 cars, so I would have to change my plans then also.
We'll see. I was watching Motorweek yesterday and saw the 2009 Porsche 911 GT2 and it was truly amazing. Then they mentioned the base price of $192,460. GAH! I had no idea. I can only start to imagine spending that much money on a car. You could get so many toys for that much money. You could get another house for that much money and get your money back once you sold that place instead of losing most of it via depreciation.
Okay, off to work!
Monday, December 03, 2007
Final Portfolio
Those are what I have to grade by Wed. Ugh. I really don't mind grading but when it's a report and there are a stack of 50-60, it's a daunting task. Not dissertation daunting, but still daunting. I plan to get home and grade furiously until they're done then I can get back into my book. It took me about 15-20 pages to get hooked but I really can't put it down. Blindness by Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago. There is an epidemic that causes white blindness. They know hardly anything about it but know it is contagious but are not sure exactly how. All the blind are quarantined in abandoned buildings and they're at max capacity. Something big is about to happen. I'll let you know how it ends, unless you want to read it for yourself.
I did some routine maintenance on the cars this weekend. I used "Sea Foam" in both cars to help with carbon build-up. Both received new wipers, 3 for Focus, 2 for Tercel. Tercel had a new headlight installed. I also cleaned up Focus' battery which had some corrosion, bluish snow stuff that I can only assume is copper (II) sulfate formed from the copper of the wires and the sulfate from the batteries' sulfuric acid.
All that's left is a coolant flush for Tercel and replace a turn signal in Focus. I'll probably finish that up this week or next weekend. J is running a 5K next weekend too.
Oh! We also picked up a Carolina (Blue) Sapphire that is really pretty and smells amazing! We put it up last night and got the lights on. J went a bit crazy and successfully jammed it full of 800 clear lights. Pictures will be posted.
I did some routine maintenance on the cars this weekend. I used "Sea Foam" in both cars to help with carbon build-up. Both received new wipers, 3 for Focus, 2 for Tercel. Tercel had a new headlight installed. I also cleaned up Focus' battery which had some corrosion, bluish snow stuff that I can only assume is copper (II) sulfate formed from the copper of the wires and the sulfate from the batteries' sulfuric acid.
All that's left is a coolant flush for Tercel and replace a turn signal in Focus. I'll probably finish that up this week or next weekend. J is running a 5K next weekend too.
Oh! We also picked up a Carolina (Blue) Sapphire that is really pretty and smells amazing! We put it up last night and got the lights on. J went a bit crazy and successfully jammed it full of 800 clear lights. Pictures will be posted.
Labels: 5K, cars, Focus, Tercel, weekend
Monday, June 04, 2007
Wait, what was in that box?
We hit up Blockbuster, returned some movies, picked up some others and exchanged a piece of paper for a free Wii game rental. We decided on Marvel Ultimate Alliance because most everything else was out. It isn't a terrible game but it isn't going to win any awards. If you're a Marvel fan, you would love it. In between levels, you can switch your party of 4 with any number of Marvel heroes. Thing, Daredevil, Elektra, and some I had no idea existed like Moonknight and Ms. Marvel. During play you can switch to any of the 4 characters in your party. The problem for us is we played through the first 3 levels and then had no idea what to do. It's a decent multi-player game for the Wii if you're tired of mini-game type games but I'm saving my pennies up for Zelda and Resident Evil 4 when it come out.
We pulled stuff out of closets, threw some stuff away, boxed other stuff up. I think we have a pretty good plan. We move on 6/15 and that week we are going to bribe a neighbor into using his truck to take our old couches to GoodWill and this will really open up space in the living room for the real moving which will happen on Fri. evening. For some reason the Penske truck place has different rates for a full 24 hr. truck rental so instead of $55 for 5 pm to 5 pm, we are paying $35 for 5 pm to 8 am. It's worth $15 to me to wake up that early, even though I might have to promise J some breakfast to get her out of bed. I'm planning on taking at least that Fri. afternoon off and getting a jump on moving. We have lots of little boxes that we don't need the truck for.
Oh yeah, also on Sat. morning [originally I was to go bouldering in NC with Subaru, his wife and some other folks but the forecast was foreboding so everyone bailed] Subaru and I put replaced Tercel's struts. Care to venture a guess as to how many of 4 were completely blown? J guessed 4 and was close. 3. 3 of 4 struts were useless. But Tercel now feels like a new car! And I keep toying with the idea of keeping her as my daily driver and taking Focus off of insurance, taking the plates off and making her a full-fledged race car, but that is very space dependent. Of course, now it's painfully obvious what Tercel's shortcoming as a car is. Tires. Remember our tire discussion from the other day? So Focus wears 205/55/16s. Tercel is rolling around on some paltry 165/80/13s. That's alotta sidewall my friend. And lots of sidewall means lots of sidewall flex. I found some inexpensive 175/70/13s online and will be getting those sometime soon. But what I really like about Tercel is her bolt pattern and that she's a Toyota. She has a 4x100 mm bolt pattern which is shared with most econo cars on the road today. And she's a Toyota so she'll run for a long time, but when she does bite the dust, just plop in a new engine and keep on running. Nice. I just hope wherever I end up I can find some cool guys to help out with engine stuff like that. It isn't a one person job by any stretch of the imagination.
The Wii is still awesome and I can't wait to try it out in our new house.
My Xbox died this weekend. We were watching a DVD and it froze. So we restarted it and a message popped up saying "Your Xbox needs customer service." Nice work Microsoft. Just in time for me to go out and buy a 360. I wonder what they would say if I called up and said my Xbox was broken. I still have quite a few Xbox games that I enjoy playing and it was our main DVD player in the living room. For the record, I would like to point out that to this day I have still not purchased a standalone DVD player. So far the only DVD players I have bought have been a Xbox and a PS2. Honestly, I'm waiting for the format wars to die down a bit before I make the move up to a PS3 or Xbox 360. I just wish the Wii played DVDS. I hear it's coming down the line, but it isn't here quite yet.
We pulled stuff out of closets, threw some stuff away, boxed other stuff up. I think we have a pretty good plan. We move on 6/15 and that week we are going to bribe a neighbor into using his truck to take our old couches to GoodWill and this will really open up space in the living room for the real moving which will happen on Fri. evening. For some reason the Penske truck place has different rates for a full 24 hr. truck rental so instead of $55 for 5 pm to 5 pm, we are paying $35 for 5 pm to 8 am. It's worth $15 to me to wake up that early, even though I might have to promise J some breakfast to get her out of bed. I'm planning on taking at least that Fri. afternoon off and getting a jump on moving. We have lots of little boxes that we don't need the truck for.
Oh yeah, also on Sat. morning [originally I was to go bouldering in NC with Subaru, his wife and some other folks but the forecast was foreboding so everyone bailed] Subaru and I put replaced Tercel's struts. Care to venture a guess as to how many of 4 were completely blown? J guessed 4 and was close. 3. 3 of 4 struts were useless. But Tercel now feels like a new car! And I keep toying with the idea of keeping her as my daily driver and taking Focus off of insurance, taking the plates off and making her a full-fledged race car, but that is very space dependent. Of course, now it's painfully obvious what Tercel's shortcoming as a car is. Tires. Remember our tire discussion from the other day? So Focus wears 205/55/16s. Tercel is rolling around on some paltry 165/80/13s. That's alotta sidewall my friend. And lots of sidewall means lots of sidewall flex. I found some inexpensive 175/70/13s online and will be getting those sometime soon. But what I really like about Tercel is her bolt pattern and that she's a Toyota. She has a 4x100 mm bolt pattern which is shared with most econo cars on the road today. And she's a Toyota so she'll run for a long time, but when she does bite the dust, just plop in a new engine and keep on running. Nice. I just hope wherever I end up I can find some cool guys to help out with engine stuff like that. It isn't a one person job by any stretch of the imagination.
The Wii is still awesome and I can't wait to try it out in our new house.
My Xbox died this weekend. We were watching a DVD and it froze. So we restarted it and a message popped up saying "Your Xbox needs customer service." Nice work Microsoft. Just in time for me to go out and buy a 360. I wonder what they would say if I called up and said my Xbox was broken. I still have quite a few Xbox games that I enjoy playing and it was our main DVD player in the living room. For the record, I would like to point out that to this day I have still not purchased a standalone DVD player. So far the only DVD players I have bought have been a Xbox and a PS2. Honestly, I'm waiting for the format wars to die down a bit before I make the move up to a PS3 or Xbox 360. I just wish the Wii played DVDS. I hear it's coming down the line, but it isn't here quite yet.
Labels: moving, Tercel, tires, video games
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