My 1st Trip to a NASCAR Race

Saturday April 4th was my first trip to a NASCAR race. I was glad I prepared for the event that was louder than you could ever imagine. I wore my shooting earmuffs over a set of Walkman-style earplugs. I programmed some frequencies I found on the web into the police scanner and luckily some of them were the correct ones. I listened to Carl Edwards (#60) for most of the race although I did switch over to #29 and #18 later on. The camo hat was me blending in with the crowd. ;-)



We had awesome seats. They were located down near turn one. As the race started the sun went behind the stadium so the sun didn't beat down on us. At the beginning they lined up trucks on the track...



...and used them to take the drivers on a parade lap. The drivers rode in the bed of the pickups.



This is my attempt to use my Olympus 770SW point-and-shoot camera, set to it's maximum optical zoom setting, and aim it through a pair of binoculars. The pic didn't come out as bad as I thought it would. It's of some of the officials looking over the pace car, a new Chevy Camaro...



Another camera/binocular mashup. This one showing the where the drivers left the stage and hopped in the trucks for their parade lap...



Here's a video showing the track. The lady singing and the fiddle player made it a good time to try out the hearing protection! ;-)



But afterwards they had a lady who won a radio contest sing the National Anthem. She was much better. Please forgive the "Mr Shakey-cam" I had especially in the beginning of the video. Watch the video until at least 2 minutes into it for the fly-over.



There were no big wrecks during the race just a spinout and one guy sliding into a wall. Here's a video showing the cars as they restart after a caution...



The winner was Kyle Busch (#18). Here's the pic of him crossing the finish line...



And here's a picture of him passing by our seats seconds later...



I've gotta say I had fun. I may very well try attending another NASCAR race in the future. Imagine that!

The New Dodge Challenger in the wild

Spent the day at Cabela's Sporting Goods store with my father-in-law Ramon, brother-in-law Jorge, and his brother Efrain. When we pulled into the parking lot we spotted these 2 cars sitting there.



Just beautiful! The orange one was a R/T model with a Hemi. The black one was a SE model. I really have a love for the early 70's models. These newer ones reflect all the best qualities of the originals, IMHO.

Space Shuttle stop

I missed the Space Shuttle as it made a stop at the NAS JRB in northern Fort Worth the other day. :-(

Video of the Space Shuttle leaving Fort Worth


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Still Shakin'

So far we've gotten a total of 6 earthquakes...

More quakes being reported by Channel 11

A map by Channel 11 showing the locations

4 quakes

Local Channel 11 is now reporting that we got a total of 4 earthquakes overnight, 2 of which were large enough to feel.

Our Poltergeist Home

Wow, this is bizarre!

Last night was my last night on 2nd shift and as Murphy's Law would dictate it was busy as hell so I wasn't able to leave until 11:30pm, a half hour late. I drove to the Walgreen's pharmacy on Central Drive and Bedford Road about a mile and a half from home. I needed to pick up a prescription for this nagging cough. While in the pharmacy, Cristina called me and said she was sitting on the couch in the living room when she heard something like footsteps in the attic followed by the wall between the living room and the bedroom move. I need to come home ASAP.

Hum, the wall "moved"? So I headed home. I grabbed a flashlight and begin the process of looking around the house. I saw a black cat run across the backyard (no lie). I went to look in the attic.

Well, I found nothing. But now come this morning I know what it was... a 3.0 earthquake!!

Here's the story from the Dallas Morning News

Video news from the local Channel 11

Preliminary report from the USGS

A map of where it occurred from the USGS.

HOLY CRAP!! I definitely didn't see that as a possibility! Add it to the things to worry about which could happen to the house. Along with tornadoes, grassfires, airplane crashes, foundation cracks, gas leaks/explosions, and robbery.

A Day at The New DFW Founder's Plaza

On Saturday, Abby and I visited the newly opened DFW Founder's Plaza observation area at the DFW Airport. It's located on the northwest corner of the airport versus the old area which was at the southeast corner. This location is better since during the warmer months the prevailing southerly winds force the planes to land north to south making this area a prime location to watch landing planes. You had to brave the cold winter winds to watch landing planes at the old place.

This is the old beacon which was moved a few hundred yards from it's old location to be at the plaza.


The Plaza has a map showing the location of the runways.


Abby watches a plane take off.


The closest runway is "18-Right"...

Gustav

Ya know, in our old house I would have said "Bring it on!" cause it was just so high above the surrounding terrain that flooding wasn't a remote chance. With this new place, I'm a bit concerned.

I finished today cleaning the parts of the rain gutters I can reach. I have a section on the back of the house that's bent up pretty badly. I think it got messed up when the big tree fell before I bought the place. That piece is pulled away from the house a bit so some rain will run between the gutter and the house. Oh well, can't fix it now. I cleared out some brush and dirt along a fence line where I saw standing rain water gathering before. I hope the water will run under the fence easier now. I shut the sprinkler system off. There's room in the garage for the Pilot, Prelude, and Shadow. The Jeep will have to rough it out in the driveway. The wireless rain gauge is on the patio table and ready to go.

Who knows? The storm could bring us nothing but I know at this moment NOAA is showing it coming right at us...


Like I said, I'm not worried but I am concerned.

UPDATE: Gustav was LAME!! We got only a slight breezy day and some spitting rain from it here in the DFW area.

The New Dallas Cowboys Stadium

I was traveling southbound on Industrial Blvd in Euless, TX Sunday morning and snapped a shot of the new home to the Dallas Cowboys.


If you can't tell, it's that large spacecraft looking thing on the left side of the road in the distance. According to Google Earth this picture was taken 7 miles away!!

Come to think of it, maybe it is one of the spaceships from Independence Day...


(source: Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions) <<< A VERY COOL WEBSITE. CHECK IT OUT!

;-)

"Obama" selling Kias in the DFW area

A local DFW Kia dealership is running an ad for new Kias using an Obama look-a-like. Having lived in the DFW area long enough, I know this particular car dealership likes to run ads like these. I remember a campaign of ads on the radio they had featuring Bill Clinton some years back. Well, John Stewart and The Daily Show picked up on the ads and here's his take on them.

BTW, this is my first attempt to embed a Hulu video. Crossing my fingers...

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