I really haven’t had time to sit down and write much here since we’ve done some pretty extreme re-arranging of our lives in the last month. Lets hit the hilights…

1) After 20 years I cut my hair off. No I don’t have any decent pictures yet.
2) Daph started her long march towards having her jaw problems corrected.
3) We bought a new house which means
4) We have to sell our current house

The order of importance in those items probably depends on your perspective. The hair thing is pretty shocking to a lot of people. I’ve had long hair since early highschool mostly out of frustration with it being thin and extremely hard to manage. Throwing it back into a pony tail was just easier, except more and more it wasn’t even that and I was just fed up with it. I actually went into the hairdresser asking for a buzz cut thinking that was the only alternative but thankfully she talked me into something more reasonable. I had terrible visions of being utterly fed up with it again in any sort of short/medium length because of remembering how much I hated it the last time I had it this short. The big difference now is that ‘bed head’ is fashionable. A spot of gel and a quick muss and you’ve got a socially acceptable hair style. I still have to swallow my perfectionist ‘its so messy!’ reaction some mornings but mostly its pretty easy and I’m a lot happier. I should have done this years ago.

I know, I know, this post is useless without pics. I’ll find something.

Daph has been long afflicted with temporomandibular joint problems (TMJ in the common parlance) and her change is that she’s started the corrective process. Its unfortunately long, painful and expensive, but the risks of leaving it unattended plus the general discomfort were just becoming too much. It’ll be a long haul of braces, oral surgery and general misery, but it’ll be worth it in the end… Of course thats easy for me to say.

So that leaves… the house. In typical Daph and Gord fashion we went from casually pondering looking for something that had a bit more space and was a bit more ‘us’ than our current starter home, to signing papers in about a week. We did the same thing when we bought our current place, it was one of the houses we looked at on our very first night out with the Real Estate agent and the whole process just tumbled into place. I don’t think its that we’re that easy to please, we just know what we want when we find it. Unfortunately the timing was pretty bad, as the day after we signed the letter of offer I had to go on a business trip to Indianapolis, leaving Daph to handle all the back and forth. She was still here when I got home, though. She couldn’t have been TOO upset.

The house is a bit further out of town on the Bedford side of Middle Sackville but thats really not a big deal. Currently it will add about 10 minutes to our commute time and probably a fair bit less than that once a new highway ramp opens in the fall. The payoff, however, is worth it. The property is off of Springfield lake, although its on the land side, not waterfrontage unfortunately. Its a heavily wooded property with just over an acre of space and the nearest neighbors couldn’t even be shouted to if you tried. Exactly what we wanted. Other things we were looking for were a garage (2 car attached), a good deck (8′ wraparound deck on two sides, lots of room/possibility to expand), an open concept kitchen (excellent layout for entertaining with a great dining room), and not much lawn (lawn in the back, a bit in the front other than that its trees!). This house has it all and then some, and boy do I mean then some. At 2600 square feet its quite a bit more house than we were looking for, and definitely more than we need, but the property was too perfect to pass up and we love the house, even if its too big. I just feel a little guilty that its just the two of us (and our gigantic cats) in such a big place.

Picture gallery of the house here. Stay tuned for the housewarming(s)!

As I write this we’re in the midst of packing, packing, packing and purging, purging, purging. We’ve been in our current house for 8 years now and that leads to a lot of… stuff. So far I’ve done a purge of old computer equipment on Freecycle (Wow, I did NOT expect the response I got!) and today we get rid of a lot of the used car fluids and scrap metal that have been collecting over the years. Its still overwhelming, though. Lots of work yet to be done.

Also our RallyCross season has now ended, congrats to our partner Ian for taking the overall championship as well as tops in Prepared class. Now time to start getting ready for Rallysprint!

The long weekend just isn’t long enough. Especially with the week I have ahead. Yech!

Yesterday a bunch of Subaru nuts got together at a local tuners place for some burgers and boasting. It was a good time and I hope we have more of these over the summer. Its good to talk grease with like minded folks. Unfortunately it planted visions of Stage 2 tunes in my head. Especially when I started adding up how few parts I need to get there. Hmmmm. Stupid expensive hobbies!

Our last RallyCross of the year is coming up this Sunday. I’ll miss the series over the summer but there’s plenty of other things to keep us way too busy. Especially with the upcoming RallySprint events.

In photography news I ordered a pair of new generation Pocket Wizards last week and can’t wait for them to arrive. Truthfully though I have no idea what I’m doing with off-camera flash, but you can’t learn if you don’t try, right? I played around a bit with my Poverty Wizards this weekend but I can already tell I should have ordered another receiver and flash. Stupid expensive hobbies!

I’ll have to attempt this shot again soon, there’s definitely some things I would do differently to improve it. Fun experiement though.

Off to Indianapolis (For work, not motorsports, alas) next week!

RallyCross season is wrapping up with two more events to go. I admit I haven’t been particularly enthused about this season in general. The car was working relatively well (compared to last year, that is), but I just haven’t been feeling it. Half the time I showed up at the event and decided to take pictures rather than drive. Thankfully Sunday’s event reminded me why we do this madness in the first place.

T-Shirt weather, extremely fast course, fairly tight competition, this is what Rallying is supposed to be!

The only downside to the day was a newly exposed weakness in our jury-rigged fuel filter system. When you drive really quickly on loose surfaces the entire area gets pretty soundly pelted with all manner of rocks and mud. On my second run the rocks took out the hose clamps to the fuel line leaving me with a DNF. On my third run a rock went THROUGH the plastic filter though it didn’t impact the run. We have some modifications to make before this Sundays event, obviously.

In other Rally News, we had our monthly Bluenose AutoSport club meeting last night and finally put dates on the Rally Sprint events! July 20th and August 16th will see the return of performance rally to Nova Scotia, hopefully with an eventual eye to the return of full stage events! More details are coming as they get worked out.

Hmm, Technology.

After my HD died I spent the weekend rebuilding my machine from a 4 year old clean-system backup image I’d made onto a spare 200GB drive. It was time to clean house anyway, right? Well, fast forward to a week later and a power outage while I was at work killed the replacement. Oi vey. Well, I’d been looking for an excuse to do a major upgrade anwyay, right? A couple of used hardware bits from friends later and I’ve joined the multiple-core computing era. Nothing too fancy, just a Core 2 Duo E6600, 4GB of RAM and an Asus P5B Plus board. Of course video cards have taken an architecture leap since my last machine too so I picked up a 9600 GT card. Overall its just a mid-range machine but its more than enough to handle Lightroom and catch up on the PC gaming I’ve been missing.

In a twist of fate, my building this machine coincided with the release of the Microsoft Windows 7 Beta so I figured I’d give that a shot. A quick and easy way to try out a 64-bit operating system. At least until August when the Beta self-destructs. So far I’m very impressed, it runs well, feels ‘lighter’ than Vista and I’ve had very few problems. I have no qualms about recommending Windows 7 to anyone looking to take the jump from XP, especially if you need a 64-bit OS to take advantage of lots of RAM. (XP and all 32-bit operating systems can only address just over 3.2GB of RAM, no matter how much they show you on properties screens.)

First up was Call of Duty 4 which I enjoyed more than I thought I would. The single player is quite short, maybe 6 hours or so, but the level design is excellent. I can’t imagine the amount of work it takes to make levels like that! I hear the multiplayer is the best part of the game but I’m allergic to playing online FPS games. They destroy my already limited faith in humanity.

After that I fired up Steam and bought Mass Effect. So far it seems fairly entertaining, though after CoD4 it feels pretty unpolished. I know its supposed to be more about the story and feel like a movie, but its a terrible shooter and the graphics engine just doesn’t wow. Its worth the $20 that I paid for it but I’m not bowled over by it so far.

Lastly, and the game I’ve enjoyed most so far, Prince of Persia. This one is a bit of a departure for the series, but for the type of gaming I do, a very welcome one. Some people say its too easy, and they may be right. You can’t die, the combat is easy, the puzzles lead you by the nose a bit, but thats FINE. While I enjoy gaming, I’m not a power gamer. I don’t want to be frustrated or to have my every reflex challenged. I want to spend time enjoying the ‘art’ of a game, not wonder what kind of masochist its authors were. I recommend this one highly for a fun experience.

Anyway, enough geekery.

Sunday was the first Navigational Rally of the year with the ASCC Gold Hills II which was a stupendous success. 20 Entrants in a Navigational rally is unheard of in our region and everyone seemed to have a great time! The weather was perfect with a bit of a warm spell between January deep-freezes and everyone made it to the finish without undue drama. I spent Saturday morning wiring up a borrowed TerraTrip 202+ into Daph’s car for the event which seems to have gone well, especially since Daph came home with a 1st place in Experienced Class! With the advice of Dan Sprongl from Four Star Motorsports I hooked it up using a DSI/VSS interface and by all accounts it worked flawlessly with only three wires to connect, even if it was a bit nerve wracking splicing vital vehicle wires to do it.

Hopefully we can keep up this rally momentum! Next event is the BAC RallyCross #6 at AMP this Sunday!

BAC RallyCross #3 was Sunday, pictures are here.

21 registered entrants! Wow, it was great to see even if it made for a long day. The surface was snow covered with an ice base but luckily we had very few people stuck in snowbanks. Lots of new faces and smiles at the end of the day.

Not a lot of updates, things are pretty hectic. Lets see…

The Atlantic Region Motorsports AGM was last weekend. Mostly status quo for the next year. We have new race rules written by Bruce McNutt which will be circulated for comments ending December 15th and formally posted for the 2009 season on January 15th. Race fees are up a bit as well but everyone expected that.

On the Rally side of things we’re looking at having a great 2009 Season! Subaru Canada and the Subaru Canada Maritime Dealers Association have donated $1000 to the ARMS Navigational Rally Series for prize money! This means we’ll be splitting $500 to the top Experienced and Novice teams for the 2009 NAVEX rally series! That ought to get the competition brewing! Combine that with the BAC RallyCross seasin which kicked off this past weekend and the RallySprint event this spring I really think this will be an excellent year for rally enthusiasts in our area! Oh yeah, and I was appointed the Regional NAVEX Rally Director.

As I said the 08/09 RallyCross season kicked off, we had a test and tune at AMP a few weeks ago that was fairly well attended and a very white event at SSW yesterday. The Audi is still eating fuel filters while we de-crud the tank but thats expected. Of course it works better when we HAVE the filters in the car to swap. Unfortunately Daph and I will be missing Event #2 which is it for 2008.

BAC 2008-2009 RallyCross Series
October 26 – AMP – Rally Cross School / event
November 23 – Scotia Speed World
December 7 – Scotia Speed World
January 4 – AMP
January 18 – Bridgewater / AMP Rally Cross School / event
February 1 – AMP
March 1 – Scotia Speed World
March 15 – AMP
March 29 – Scotia Speed World
April 5 – Scotia Speed World
April 19 – Scotia Speed World

Test and Tune

RallyCross #1

Really, its not. Where’s that global warming??

The Jack Canfield Memorial went off quite well. A couple of early Red Flags threatened a long day but the foolishness seemed to be reserved to the first 10 laps (which took us an hour to complete!). Overall it was a great day with some impressive racing. It was good to see so many cars on the track again with drivers who were actually having FUN! This is what racing is SUPPOSED to be! Now if we can just bottle that formula and spread it over next season!

Two weeks down for Targa and still no post. I know, I know. Its like every other blog on the intertubes…

Targa Newfoundland 2008 has come and gone in September. This year was a good, solid event with some significant changes in many aspects of the organization and out involvement. First of all Targa is no longer affilliated with ASN Canada/FIA. On the surface this sounds like a big deal but really it didn’t make a whole lot of change. The rules are pretty unchanged and other than having to arrange a special ‘Targa’ license it was pretty much the same for entrants.

On the TV coverage front we were working with TV2Go Productions this year rather than the previous ATV Productions. TV2Go isn’t new to Targa, having done the television coverage for the event’s first three years. As such we hit the ground running and they were a pleasure to work with.

As for us I took on a rather significant new role for Targa 2008, that of the event’s official photographer. I was pretty apprehensive in taking on this role because I haven’t don’t a lot of paid photography. Sure I’ve sold pictures before directly to consumers, to magazines and to newspapers, but I’ve never sold a picture BEFORE I took it! All in all the week went quite well, however. By the end of the week I’d taken over 10,000 pictures (some would argue that shooting that much is just compensating for lack of focus) and I came up with reasonable photo packages for just about every car. Of course I’ll be processing pictures until Halloween, I’m sure.

Once we got back home it was back to my real job for the Medusa Medical annual User Group. Once a year we invite our customers from all over the world to come to Halifax for several days for various seminars on our software, as well as networking and social opportunities. It may sound rather dull and slow but its anything but. Working with EMS and Fire agencies is a fascinating experience and its great to see customers talking to each other and cooperating for the benefit of everyone. In the end it means we make a better product and they get a better experience. Win/win!

For local motorsports the pavement competition season is drawing to a close. Tomorrow is the final ASCC slalom of the year at Atlantic Motorsport Park. This event was actually rescheduled from last week due to weather. On October 13th we’re closing out the Sedan racing season with the inagural Jack Canfield Memorial Endurance Race. A 3 hour Endurance race for all comers. We’re already set up to have more cars out to his event than we’ve had on the track in years. I can’t wait, both from a series perspective and the great photo opportunities!

RallyCross season starts up October 23rd… I guess that means we had better get off our duff and get the rally car out of storage, huh? Where does the time go?

A Targa post is coming, I just need the time to write it. Stay tuned!

… what have I been up to with all this no-updating?

Well, bringing spoon.org back up to speed, for one. I think that things are pretty good in that regard. I’ve got the new gallery back up and running and populated with all of 2008′s photos. Have a look there for entries like the Halifax Pride Festival and Slalom at Slemon 2008.

Other things keeping me busy… I’ve been asked again to be the official photographer for Targa Newfoundland 2008 and this time I’m taking them up on the offer. As such I’ve been busily preparing things for that role. I had some business cards made up and arranged things like backup camera bodies and some upgraded lenses for the event. I’m sure no matter what I bring I’ll wish I had more but it will definitely be an interesting chanllenge. You can find more information as its available on my Targa Photos Page, complete with an online order form for photo packages.

This past weekend was the annual stop at AMP of the Parts Canada Superbike Championship and we figured it was time we took in the show. A couple of long days on various corners and it was a good show indeed. No serious incidents and some great national-calibre racing! Did I mention it was long days?

Slalom at Slemon was enjoyable, more or less. Terrible weather Saturday meant many, many off courses for competitors and a lot of folks’ enjoyment suffered as a result. Thankfully Sunday was dryer and folks were a bit more content. I’m pretty happy with how the Miata handled though I’ve been playing too much with the rear sway bar. I still can’t decide if I like it better soft, stiff or not hooked up at all. Currently the car is setup with the latter which is the preferred configuratin for wet handling. The chances are pretty low that I’ll make it out to another slalom this season though so I should probably just hook it up again.