Granite!

I can't believe I'm blogging about a kitchen instead of the race car :)

Poor "RedRum" has been sitting in the driveway getting rained on. I discovered yesterday that I have a coolant leak somewhere. Looks to be around the middleish of the motor so maybe its a cracked hose or similar. Going to diagnose this weekend and get her ready for the Barber race at the end of August.

Ok, back to the kitchen. We got the granite installed today. Looks absolutely AWESOME. We also decided to punt on the track lighting. Having 6 halogen bulbs gets HOT and there isn't quite as much light as we wanted. We are going with 4 5" recessed canned lights instead. 300W of brightness :)

The wall and new lights are getting installed tomorrow, so we should have a "done kitchen" by tomorrow night.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

The Kitchen continues

So despite a few minor setbacks, Robert (the contractor) has been kicking ass on the kitchen. We started the install with him cutting a hole in his arm on our microwave mount when he "discovered" a hot wire just hanging inside the wall. The PITA continued as the wiring to remove the soffett was a lot harder then originally planned. They actually have to undo some of the wires from the fuse panel and re-run it in order to make it fit. It ended looking great though!

Yesterday the cabinets started going in and are now fully installed. The only thing left is to shim the one next to the fridge and the wine rack above it. We also had the trash compactor installed, the new boxes put in for our track and pendant lighting, and the wall for our backsplash/bar built.

Tomorrow morning the granite installers come to template out and Robert is going to finish off the wall as well as install our fancy shock "auto close" drawers. Over the weekend I think we're going to start to paint and also install all the lighting now that the boxes are ready. I'm thinking I might also tackle the under cabinet lighting now that all the wires are run already :)

I took a few shots along the way to show the progress.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Kitchen Part Deux

Today started the install of the new kitchen. We picked out some awesome "mocha" colored cabinets from a local shop in Macon. They have everything from solid wood sides, to the soft close drawers. We also got the 42" tall cabinets and are removing that soffet from above the current cabinets. The tall cabinets should make the kitchen look a lot taller. Also getting some "baltic brown" granite installed, under cabinet lighting, and ceiling track lighting with some pendant dropdowns. Should be pretty "pimpy". Here are a couple of pictures of the work in progress so far. It looks really weird having a "blank room" instead of a kitchen :) Tomorrow the new cabinets go in, Wednesday the lighting, and then Saturday the granite gets installed.

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Road Atlanta Win

I had another awesome weekend at Road Atlanta. This time it was a super super hot July weekend with a SARRC 15 lap sprint race, and an ECR 90 minute enduro race with the old car owner as codriver. The sprint races are the ones I focus on, while we were just running the enduro so Dan could keep his competition license. In SCCA, you have to run 2 races a year to maintain a license.

The weekend started out with qualifying, and I put myself on pole by 2 seconds for the SARRC race. I only ran a 1:44.3, but considering the hot weather, it was a pretty good time that I was happy with. In the afternoon, Dan got in the car and shook some rust off, putting us middle of the pack for the start of the ECR. Saturday evening was eventful, with me leaving the new brake pads I needed at work. We had to drive back from Road Atlanta and ended up spending the night in Marietta. Next time I'm making a list before leaving the house :)

We put on the older Hoosier tires for Sunday morning's 90 minute ECR. Immediately, I noticed a vibration above 100mph, which was probably an out of balance tire or two. I came into the pits after about 15 minutes instead of my 45, as I didn't want to hurt the car. It wasn't worth continuing with everything shaking, as this wasn't a points race or anything. We took the tires off and got them balanced with enough time for Dan to get 45 mins in the car, and finish out the race. No damage, no real wear on the car, success!

Sunday afternoon was the SARRC Sprint. I put on some fresh(er) tires and got ready to kick some butt. It was a fairly uneventful race, which on one hand was nice, but I would have like to have a little more of a fight. I drove hard for 5 laps and put some time on the rest of the field. After that I put it on cruise control and finished off the win. It was the first win (out of 2 races) in the new car. The last one I broke an axle with a 15 second lead on the last lap :) Brian Cembor also came out to watch and took my camera for a spin. He ended up with a few great pics of my car, as well as Kirk's Golf. These are also the first "evidence" of the new car on track! As a photographer, I never get to take pictures of my OWN car.

On a sadder note, it was a weekend full of carnage for some other racers. Everything from spins, to wall hits, to totalled cars, to flips. I got lucky avoiding the bad luck and came out of the weekend with no damage, other then the scrapes on the front bumper from some bump drafting :)

View the pictures using Picasa instead

The Laptop "Drive of Shame"

Funny article I read today from slashdot. I've done this I think 3 times in my 4 years at WebMD. With a 20+ minute commute, that sure sucks!

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29791

Finally worked on the race car

After what seemed like an eternity I finally got to work on the race car this morning. The next race is Road Atlanta next weekend. All the qualifyings will be on Saturday and then I will be doing a 30 minute sprint race by myself on Sunday morning and then splitting a 90 minute enduro with the old owner in the afternoon. Late July in Atlanta should be scorching so I'm going to start drinking water starting Monday. This should be a well attended weekend, so I should hopefully have some on track photos of the race car finally. Its nice being a photographer, but no one takes pictures of YOUR car. This time I'm going to set loose my camera with a bunch of friends and we'll see what comes out :)

On the car note, I finished rebuilding both axles today. Just need the boot clamps and those can go back in the car. Holy CRAP that is a messy job. The grease that came out of the old ones was super nasty, but other then that, they looked great. Not sure if I'm going to drop the $300 on raxles unless I keep on breaking them. Hopefully the redline grease prevents the failure I had last race. Other then that, just need to bleed the brakes, a quick oil change, get the new tires mounted up and make sure all the bolts are tight. Might also do a quickie alignment to make sure everything is still square.

Lastly I broke out the powerwasher and washed all the mud off the jeep. It looks sort of weird being clean! We probably won't get another chance to get her dirty again till August :(

Never fear, the iPhone is here

Finally! Corporate email support, 3G, GPS, and now I've got one :)

It was quite an adventure this morning, as I got in line around 6:30am at the store a few mins from our house. I was 55th in line (lucky number, sweet) and there were people that spent the night waiting.

The whole process with AT&T was a total and gigantic clusterfuck. Their systems were up, their systems were down, their systems were slow. They did something last night so where the staff had no idea what they were doing and were reading off instructions off printed sheets. Half the people that showed up to buy a phone had no idea of contracts, some didn't have their license on them, just plain WOW

At least I had my laptop and wireless, so I got a bunch of work done while I waited. I got the phone and busted out of there after the lady told me everything was perfectly setup. 3 hours later and I've still got No Service. Time to call AT&T. Coming from Verizon, I'm real happy to have the iPhone, but real skeptical on being an AT&T customer. I hope this experience so far isn't repeated on down the road :)

More 4 Wheeling!

Our friends Jeff and Anna came into town from Raleigh for the long weekend. We went out on the town for a few days and went for some more serious 4 Wheeling on Saturday. I kicked myself the whole time for forgetting my camera for our day through Atlanta on Friday and fireworks in the Decatur square. Next time we go out on the town I'll be sure to bring it.

I only got a few good pictures on Saturday as it was very sunny. Time for a polarizer filter. Jeff's Jeep has a 4" lift with some big ol' 35" tires and right now can handle a bit more the Cathy's. Its got built in "button press" axle lockers and it was awesome watching it climb up a few sandy hills where Cathy had some issues. He also tore through some serious mud. Made for a good shot.

I got all jealous and just happened to score a sweet 4" lift on craigslist the very next day, so soon we'll be right there!