New chapter.

Well, as my family knows, my job has come to an end. This is not very fun and I was nervous about being able to stay in contact with everyone, but it seems like that won't be too much of a problem. I just got a new phone (916) 601-2348 and it's very nice and shiny. It's an iPhone so it has all the Internet access things I'll need. My updates should be a bit more frequent, but they'll also be a bit shorter I think.

This is a fairly exciting new chapter in my life. I haven't liked my job for the past few years (anyone can see this by reading through some of my older posts) and I don't really know what's coming next. While talking with Rilla, I was able to realize that the whole world has been opened up to me. Perhaps I'll get a job on the east coast! Maybe I'll become a super famous racing driver in Germany (not too hopeful on that one though). All I know for certain is that I'll no longer need to put up with my old bosses. I'm looking forward to whatever comes in the future.

One last thing I need to tell you all before I finish this up and that is about my email. My old work email is obviously not being used any more so you'll have to use my new one: robsracing@gmail.com

Now that I am not working, I'll be spending a lot of time planning the wedding and I'll be sure to post small updates about that as they arise.

Good night all.

This week can't end fast enough.

Wednesday night some jack-ass broke my passenger window, grabbed my CD's, Registration & Proof of insurance, and my small folding kite. All I got to say about that is "Why?" I can understand wanting to steal someone's CD's. But my Regristration and proof of insurance?! What the hell can that DO for someone who isn't me? I really hope I can find this punk ass kid... I had like 80 CD's and at about $15 a pop, that comes to like $1,200 worth of music. That's a goddamn felony. Can you imagine it! Getting a strike on your record and losing your right to vote because you stole some CD's. I'm absolutely fuming about this. I actually feel vengeful. I don't want justice, I want revenge.

Anyway, I was also gonna write about the wedding plans today, but something happened there that made my blood boil too, and before I write something that I regret writing, I'm going to give a few more days to let myself cool off. I just want this thrice damned week to end.

Here's that video of my RC Drift car goin' 'round some fireworks.


Another easy quote today, but I thought it was apt.

"Y'know, it woulda' been worth him keyin' my car if I coula' caught him doin' it."

(Sorry... I'm not sure if that is the direct quote... it might be a little off. It's been a while since I've seen this movie.)

Some Stuff.

Rilla really wanted to see the pictures of my new Drift Shell. I posted them on Face Book, but I can't tell if she's seen them or not, and I'm certain that Dad hasn't, so I'm also going to place them here. Check it out.

These are the concept sketches that I used to see what I wanted to do.





These are the final product of all my labors.




Here are some pictures of the lights in action.



It was a monumental undertaking for me. I spent around 10 hours on the buckets to hold the lights alone, and another 4 hours learning how to wire them up properly. I think that I spent about 35 hours in total getting this project complete. It looked good on TV though. One of the people that was on camera with us TIVOed the segment and burned it to DVD. Once I get a hold of that DVD I'll be sure to upload the video and show everyone. It wasn't as much air time as we had hoped, only one 4 minute segment (we were told that there would be 3 or 4 4 minute segments) but there was some breaking news of some sort... no idea what it was though... probably budget crap (a little off topic, but I'm not going to vote for a single incumbent the next time 'round). It was fun none-the-less.

I'll hit y'all up later with video and other stories.

Very easy quote today, but I saw it recently and it made me laugh.

"There is no doubt that our attractions will drive children out of their minds."
"What are those?"
"Small versions of adults, honey."

More work Drama.

My last post I said that my job seemed all sorts of secure because there's no one else to do the work I do, but it seems like that security isn't quite as solid as I thought. First of all, let me state that I haven't lost my job, nor have I been told that they'll be letting me go any time soon. That being said however, I'm still kinda nervous. My bosses have had a falling out. At the beginning of the month Joel dissolved Accurate Fire Protection. We're finishing up a few jobs over the next 3-4 weeks, then that's all for Accurate Fire. Tom has started up another company that he is going to run with a new partner that has more than 25 years experience in this business with the name "Shelter Fire Protection." If all goes well with Financing to get enough capital to finish the start up of Shelter Fire, then I'll just transfer over to that company. With any luck I won't miss so much as a day of work. Just... kinda keep me in your thoughts... I'd appreciate it.

Outside of that, I've been keeping myself busy with my RC Drift Hobby, and wedding plans. I'm at the office today painting another body shell for my drift car because I'm going to be on TV this Thursday. Good Day Sacramento on ch. 31 has invited us to be on their program. That should be fun. Since the MG shell I have isn't a Japanese Import (I'm not a fan of the Japanese Import/Tuning scene), Jeremy suggested I get one for the TV spot because the Drifting Scene is very much about the Japanese Imports. I followed the letter of the law in this regard, but not the spirit. I bought myself a Honda S2000 shell which is obviously a clone of the classic British Sports car; Two seat, rear drive, convertible sports car. I hope it will look OK, but I think I may have reached beyond my abilities again. I'm putting some pretty intricate hand painting on it, and I'm putting Lights on it. I had to teach myself how to wire up LED's... it's not too hard, but it is time consuming. I also had to custom build some light buckets for the LED's to go into. In all, there's going to be 10 LED's all powered by one 9V battery for this car. Two white lights in each head light, two red lights in each tail light, and one red light in each of the exhaust tips to make them look like they're glowing red hot. I hope it'll look alright... once I'm done with it (probably tomorrow or Monday) I'll take some photos and post them for you.

Oh, if any of you are concerned that my possible lack of employment will delay my wedding again (therefor making you rethink booking a flight) don't worry, we're still going to get hitched if I lose my job. The reason why it was postponed last time when Rebecca lost her job was because she wasn't living with me at the time and I couldn't support the both of us. But we live together now, and if I lost my job, we'd still live together, we're still going to get married. The wedding plans are moving along smoothly. I'll be sure to write more about that next post.

Take it easy everyone.

Mark must be super busy, because he didn't guess on the last quote and it's from his favorite movie American Beauty.

New Quote:
"That's a big Twinkie"

I've been busy too.

Looks like my *edit* two *edit* siblings have been as super busy as I have.

I've been busy because recently my job has been secured. In these hard times, our company has had to lay off more than half of our field workers, and because there haven't been many new jobs coming in for design, our other two designers and our receptionist have all been laid off too. That means our company is back to the way we were about three years ago. It's just our office manager, Tom, Joel, and me now (our superintendent hasn't been laid off, but he was moved back into field work rather than office work). I've been super busy completing the last few loose ends of my ex-coworkers projects for the past two weeks or so along with the few jobs that have come up. I think I'll have a lot less stress moving forward from now because all of those loose ends have been neatly tied together, but it's still awfully lonely here in the office. It's still a bit of a relief because we all knew that layoffs were coming, but we didn't know who was on the chopping block and now I know so long as the company survives, I've got income. It just sucks that I've had to put in all sorts of Own Time to get everything done.

On a more positive note, as unimportant as it is, I finally figured out how to make my TV play my XBox 360 in HD. It's great to finally be able to read the text on the screen. I'm also still doing my drifting thing just about every other weekend. Here is some video from a chase car from the last big meet up at William land park.

I think I'm getting a lot better. I still haven't gotten bored with it. There's another meet this weekend that I'll be attending in a parking garage. It's a new location for me with an unfamiliar surface, but hopefully I'll still have some awesome skillz on it.

This Saturday, Mike and I are going to be hitting the lake by my apartment. I finally have his boat working 100% and now we just need to test it out on the water. I'll see what I can do to perhaps get some video of it so you can see how that goes too. I'm really getting into this whole RC thing. I wouldn't bet against it that I may get into RC flying before too long... perhaps that will be a better midlife crisis than a motorcycle.

Thanks for being patient with my lack of updates guys.

Quote Time:
"I think 'lagoon' and I think waterfall, I think tropical. This is a cement... hole."

I mean it! Hobbies are fun!

So my last post was about my RC Boat, this post is about my RC Drift Car. I got into this pretty much the same time as the boats. I have a neighbor, Jeremy, that had one, and after playing with it for a bit I decided I had to get one too. One Graig's List later and I had a fairly decent drift car for super cheap. It's a slightly older electric touring car called the Losi XXX-S and it's got a belt driven four wheel drive system which is wonderful for drifting.

Jeremy helped me out a great deal with set up, which was a lot more extensive than I thought it would be, and now it runs extremely well. So far we've locked the rear differential, tightened up the front, gave it a little bit of overdrive to the rear wheels, changed out the shock springs, and changed out the regular plugs on the batteries to a plug with lower resistance to help keep heat down. There's still a whole lot I want to do to it, but the changes we did were the only cheap ones, the rest are triple digit cost and I'm not ready to spend that kind of dough.

Jeremy is also one of the creators of a Sacramento based drifting club and I joined up with them. Every week or so we meet up for practices and such. Last weekend however, there was a fairly large meet with a tournament and everything! I was able to find out just how well set up my car was. See?


Woot 2nd place. Got a trophy an' everythin'!

This group of guys are really awesome. If you remember I tried to get into buggy racing, but the people in that hobby were very competitive and unhelpful. They all felt that their set ups were trade secrets and they didn't want to give their competitors any advantage at all. This drift club is the complete opposite of the buggy club. Everyone is there to help everyone else. Here's a perfect example; I was doing a tandem run (which is when two people are competing against each other at the same time) with one guy, and on our second run his car broke down. Rather than just let him have to forfeit, I helped him out. The belt drive on his car had frayed a servo wire and I took the time and soldered it together for him, then put on a zip tie to make sure that those wires wouldn't rub against the belt again. After that was done, we finished our run and luckily I still won that match up. That wasn't the only example of that day either! These guys are wonderfully laid back just out to have a fun time.

Here are some more pictures of my Car and my Trophy. There's also a short clip of my car drifting around a part of the track.

Hobbies are fun!

So my friend Mike has a friend and co-worker named Jim who bought three remote controlled boats from an estate sale for $75. All of them had been neglected for some time and none of them ran. Since Mike knew that I had that RC Buggy, he figured I knew more about this stuff than he did. I was given the offer that if I could get them up and running, or at least could show them what they needed to get them up and running, I could keep one. Well, I got the first boat a couple of weeks ago, and after a dozen or so hours of research and elbow grease, I got it working! Boy, am I glad I live on a small lake (it's more like a large pond).

Check out these pictures! It was super fun.

As you can see, it's kind of an old boat. Nonetheless, it's still a very good boat.


It's an older style K&B outboard 7.5 cc two stroke nitro motor. I found out that they don't make any more. I did find a website that still makes newer models of this motor, and therefore can get some parts for it, but they're all sorts of expensive. Here's to hoping that I don't break it.


This is me just cruising kind of slowly. I never had a real chance to open her up on the water because it kept stalling out on me. I have to learn the proper settings for the carb a little better... then I'll be able to see how fast this sucker really is.


Even without full throttle, you can see that it can cook.


This is me giving it a little too much power as I put it in the water. I almost flipped it!



All of these pictures came from some video that Rebecca took with mom's old Sony Handicam, but as of yet, I don't know how to copy the video on the tapes to my computer. As soon as I figure that out though, I'll be sure to post it.