BMW M1 Homage Concept Car

Now while I'm not in the market for another vehicle at this moment, I do think I may have found the best looking car I've seen in a long time.

The BMW M1 Homage

That view would strike fear into almost any person who looks into their rear-view mirror and sees this thing gaining on them.

The side profile is sleek and looks like it would cut thru the air like a knife.


And even the rear looks awesome...

Hardy Heron

The newest version of Ubuntu Linux has been released! Known as Hardy Heron and also know as version 8.04, this one is suppose to be better than ever.

I'm at this very minute I'm installing it within the Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 environment. The older 7.10 version of Ubuntu had some serious video and mouse issues when trying to install it this way. So far I haven't seen any of that. It's still not totally straight forward. I found these instructions which have me up and going great so far.

FIGHT THE MAN, use Linux!

Tech Support from the 1930's

I have the Core77 design blog added to my Google Reader account. This evening I saw they added a story about "Tech Support from the 1930's". It's a YouTube video from a Western Electric training film showing people how to use them new-fangled dial telephones. I laughed at the "Oh Gramps, that's yummy!" comment from the girl who's having trouble with her Algebra homework. Algebra? They had math back then? ;-) Also interesting was the part how they should how they were going to cut-over to the new system. Wow!

Part One...


Now, in this part what I found interesting was that the dial tone sounds like it was recorded when they were electrocuting a prisoner in the Huntsville Prison. (For all ya non-Texans out there, that's where we kill 'em.)

Part Two...


I found these interesting in that they give the date and time of the cut-over in 1927. Wow, nearly 81 years.

The Change is A-comin'...


NOTE: This video has no audio...


I like this video since I totally remember the coolness factor of our new Trimline phone with the rotary dial. A few years later we got the touch-tone model in our house...


To think what all these folks would do with a cellphone.

Irving Bank Robbery

A bank near my workplace and my daughter's school was robbed earlier today by 4 machinegun weilding bandits...

WFAA-TV Channel 8 story

Scary.

A new week, more rain

It was nice weather today to ride the motorcycle to work but the forecast for the rest of the week is sketchy. Maybe Thursday might be the next clear day with no chance for rain.

Accuweather forecast for Fort Worth, TX.

I had to stop for gas this evening on the way home. Cost me $10.71 to fill up the bike. The mileage came out to be 42MPG. It been as high as 50 or so. Although during this last tank full I've been running it a bit faster on the highway than before so I guess that's why the mileage dropped.

Another storm video

Another strong storm front blew thru the DFW area this past Thursday evening. Tornado sirens were going off in both Fort Worth and the Irving areas. The video below is of a nearby lightning strike at home. So close in fact that it caused electrical interference in the camera recording this. Just a word of caution, the sound is a bit loud so watch the volume on your speakers...

NOAA's Summary

OK, last posting about that storm. One of the local radio scanner boards posted this link to the NOAA summary of the storm. Seems they estimate the wind we got here at home to be 70+ MPH. That's kinda my estimate from watching the video.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/fwd/April0910/april0910.htm

W.

The aftermath of the storm

Wow, it's been a couple of days. To follow up on my earlier post regarding the storm. Here's what happened. A major line of thunderstorms moved thru the DFW area early Thursday morning (4/10/2008). Trees, power lines, and fences were down all over. Power was lost to thousands of homes. Luckily we escaped with no damage whatsoever.

This video clip below is from my security DVR focused on our front driveway. The camera and DVR run on a UPS made for a computer so that's why they stayed up and running even when the power is going up and down. I was impressed by how well the mount stayed steady. It's a beefy camera mount but for it not to even wiggle at all... nice! The company who makes it is called RAM Mounting Systems.

My wife and I were awake at the time doing last minute tax preparation. When the winds hit, we grabbed our 3 year old daughter and I got them into closet in the master bedroom. The electronic wireless rain-gauge showed a 3.9 inches/hour rainfall at the peek of the storm.

A major power line was knocked down just south of my workplace. I work in a VERY large data center with a redundant power system. My employer also has a building across the street which houses hundreds of people. It doesn't have a power backup. When the outage hit they were moved to our building. My crew and I spend the entire day Thursday trying to setup workstations, phones, and network connections for everyone. We were stuffing folks in conference rooms, meeting rooms,... everyplace except the bathrooms which were busy places themselves. The thing is... we'll have to move them back early next week. :-(

Here's some other pictures of the damage I took while driving around the neighborhood. Click on the picture to goto Flicker to see the full pictures and info about the pics.









BTW, I found out the hard way that my security DVR outputs videos in an AVI format encoded with DirectShow (aka - Dshow) and YouTube doesn't like that format. I found some software on the web that will convert it to a plain-jane AVI format

MAJOR THUNDERSTORM

A major line of thunderstorms just moved thru the area about an hour and a half ago. The tornado sirens were blowing. I grabbed the family and moved them into the bedroom closet. I'll provide more info later after I get more sleep now.

The front driveway cam caught the wind and rain. I'll upload a video clip when I can.

Election '08

I first heard this take on the classic 80's Twisted Sister song, "I Wanna Rock", last week on the local Live 105.3 radio station during the "Big Dick Hunter Wild-Ass Circus" show. The song' lyrics were written by a member of Twisted Sister who is a devoted Obama supporter. I think it's an awesome remake of the original. Enjoy the video and support my man B-rock...

5 years of service

Finally after 5 years and a few weeks I have a new work laptop.

My old laptop... my buddy... my companion thru many, many work-related problems was an IBM Thinkpad X30 running a Pentium III Mobile at 1.2Ghz and with 512MB of RAM. It had a cracked case near the palm area of the keyboard and the "Pentium Inside" sticker is nearly worn to the point of not being readable. But it was a fantastic laptop. A never had a real problem with it's speed until a few laptops in the FBI and Veteren's Administration went missing a year or so ago. Then Corporate Executive (or Legal) office got nervous about one of us losing a laptop and whatever customer data contained there on. They got Corporate IT to force a mandatory encryption on our harddrives. Sadly, the old gal just couldn't handle it. The last 6 months have been painfully slow ones.

The new one is a Dell model with the usual Core 2 Duo running at 1.8Ghz and has 1GB of RAM. It's sleek with a wide screen and a bright silver finish. But I'm not sure if it'll ever live up to the high standard set by my ol' X30.

Here's hoping my ol' X30 eventually finds a new home thru a bulk re-seller on eBay. Job well done.

First ride with the new helmet

It was a great day today but sadly I was too busy to enjoy it on 2 wheels. Finally, around 8pm I got done all of the chores I decided I was going to do tonight and I headed out for a night time ride. I headed down Beach Street and then West on I-30 into Fort Worth. I turned north on Rt183 and headed back home. I put 30 miles on the bike.

The new helmet performed VERY well. It didn't have quite as much airflow thru it as I was expecting but then I realized the airflow was being blocked by the windshield on the bike. The face portal is much better than my old one. I found I was able to view the speedometer located on the tank easier now. I had to tilt my old helmet down to view it. The new one is a just a eye glance down now, very nice.


Overall, no pinching or binding at all during the ride. Cristina did laugh at me for my "corn-row" hair style I had after removing it. That could be an issue after riding to work. I might have to take a comb to work or wet my hair once I'm there.

The weather is suppose to be nice tomorrow so I'll probably be on 2 wheels heading to work. Look out for me.

Finally got a helmet that fits me. It's a Shoei RF-1000 in the color of Antracite. It's a dark metallic gray. The color matches the pin striping on my motorcycle. It also will hide fingerprints better than glossy black would and hide bug splatter better than white. At $416 after taxes, it was ALOT more than what I wanted to spend on it. I was hoping one of the HJC models would fit since they all were less than $200 but everyone of them pinched here or there. At least it was cheaper than the $500+ models from Arai. Looking forward to getting out and riding with it.

I was shopping around last night for a mirrored-colored "spectra shield" for it. OUCH! Everyplace I saw was wanting nearly $60 for one. Normally, I would just use my sunglasses under the helmet like I normally do but now I see how extremely easy it is to swap out the shield on this model. It finally makes it practical to have a tinted shield and a clear one.

The start of something new

The sound of trumpets begin to play as my blog is created.

Now what? Hum, I should say something creative or interesting. Drawing a blank. I guess I can say I hope to write in this blog some musings about life and stories in the news. Maybe someone will read it, maybe not but whatever. It could be fun.