mirror70
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Posts posted by mirror70
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Well, actually it's very good for making a VERY HOT wire.
2hrs later, the veins in my arm returned to normal size.
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No worries about the casinos - I'm too poor to even dream of going in one. I'm also too cheap. :)
More basic questions: What electrical system do they use? Where should I fly into? In practical terms, what is the exchange rate like? (ie, how much would a meal cost?) What is "business casual" dress like? this one is probably a stretch: how likely am I to find an unsecured wireless network to leech off of?
I'll be in Macau and busy for the 3 or 4 days of the grand prix, as well as a day or two on either side of the event depending on the team's schedule. Since I've never been to Asia, I figure this is as good a time as any to make a trip of it. Are there any recommended stops (be specific as I know nothing of the region) or suggested itineraries to follow? FWIW, I love hiking and mtn biking and as a general rule prefer those activities to what's available in most cities I've been to.
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Any idea what the weather will be like? or what currency to bring? Sights to see? Customs I should be aware of?
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I may be going there in November during the F3, F3000, and Formula Renault championships for a couple of job interviews. I have neither been there nor do I have any friends who have, so I have no idea what to expect. Have any Bombers been there before?
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I play on four wheels in the off-season.
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I'm going on an Alaska cruise at the end of August and will have 3 and a half days to kill in Vancouver. I was thinking of maybe spending two of those at Whistler as a sort of teaser to hold me over until November/December when New England opens up. Will Whistler even open then? If so, what would conditions be like?
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Austin Liquors in Worcester on umm....it's either Park or Goldstar - whichever one the Harr dealerships are on. There's also another one on Rt9 in Shrewsbury, in what used to be White City.
Best beer selection I've ever seen.
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I stopped by the beer store today and discovered that they now carry the full selection from Unibroue. They also had (and yes, I did actually count) 11 stouts, 2 porters, 17 lagers, and 31 ales which I had never tried before.
By the time this summer is over, my biceps will be huge from all of these 12-22oz curls.
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It's 81ºF outside.....I think somebody is trying to punish me for buying a Prior yesterday.
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I was a bit surprised at ECES by how much interest there was from both soft booters and skiers. On every run at least one person would ask me about it and I'd say half of them found their way down to the demo tent. It was very cool.
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Originally posted by Jack Michaud
I just gotta give a shout out to whoever it was here that recommended Dogfish Head - Raison D'Etre. Best new beer I've tried in a long time, and I've tried some good stuff!
IIRC, that was me :) I believe I recommended it because you mentioned liking Unibroue's la Fin du Monde.
If I'm wrong and you haven't tried La Fin du Monde, I recommend that you do. It is similar in character to Raison D'Être but is different enough so as not to be boring.
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Cool. I'll be there Thursday night through Monday afternoon. I'll probably be on the island from 9-5 every day making friends in the pits.
A bit off-topic and a reach, but.....you're not looking to hire any obnoxious jerks for the summer, are you? I know an "almost graduated" ME who lives in your area and is looking for summer income ;)
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Depends what software you're using.
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Oh, and remember to bring either your passport or birth certificate - BUT NOT BOTH. Coming back into the US a couple of years ago I was detained for around 30 minutes because we had 4 forms of ID for only two people. When we opened the glovebox to get our IDs, the officer saw that there were three passports and one birth certificate inside. He wasn't too pleased. (my friend has dual-citizenship and brought both passports for some reason; I had an expired passport and a birth certificate)
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Staying outside of the city is possible, but I don't really know what your options are for doing that.
When you stay outside of the city you miss out on half of the experience. When 300,000 people invade a city, great things are bound to happen. :) In previous years, car clubs have had streets closed off so they could have car shows, BMW has setup an outdoor nightclub, the drivers have given outdoor press conferences, etc etc. There's also always the odd chance of running into someone involved in F1 - last year I ended up having drinks with some of Renault's mechanics.
For Saturday I'm not really sure what time you should get to the track. The qualifying format is new this year, so I don't really know when the crowds will be there. On race day, you want to get there in the morning and claim your viewing location (unless you would rather walk around). You should probably pick this location on Saturday. There will be stuff going on all day long on the island, so don't plan on just showing up for a couple hrs and then leaving - while you could do that, it would be a waste.
The race track is on an island. There is no parking on the island unless you're a high roller with passes to the Paddock Club. I have only stayed in the city when I've gone, so I always just park my car near where I stay and then leave it there all weekend. There is pretty decent parking in the city if you need it. Access to the island is via the Metro, and you can get to all of the nightlife on foot.
Traffic in and out isn't bad at all. The only real traffic is at the border crossing. As I learned last year, if you try and get in to Canada at 3am, plan on allotting as long as 25 minutes just for the guard to approve you. Usually, getting into Canada is a breeze and takes at most 10 minutes. Getting back into the US is the hard part. Last year it took, iirc, about 2hrs to get through. That was on the Monday after the race. The year before, we came back on Sun and still had to wait about 2hrs. We always cross on Rt89 (I think it's still 89 at that point) because it's simple. You may find it faster to stay in Canada and cross further east, maybe by Rt91 or even some place in NH. The speed limits in Canada are so frustratingly slow (and radar detectors are illegal) that I just put up with waiting 2hrs at the border.
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Pics from General Admission:
Jordan F1 into Turn 8 (note the faintly glowing brake rotor)
A Can-Am car I can't identity, turn 7
A Ferrari 360 spins coming out of turn 2
Straight leading up to the hairpin, warm-up lap
On the last pic, check the EXIF tag and do a little math. The shutter speed was 1/500th of a second. In that time, the car moved about one sidewall, and the sidewall is about 7". That works out to about 198mph.
From my view in grandstand 22 last year, I could watch them brake for the hairpin. They stop so frikkin fast that the fact that they're initially going darn near 200mph simply doesn't register. All you see is a car explode from the trees and then go 40-50mph for the hairpin. Unreal.
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The links are fixed now. I swear the cause of the typo was my keyboard!
As far as I know, the only rooms available in the city right now are dorms at McGill. Those are CAD$60/night and they require a 3 night reservation. It sucks to have to pay for a couple of extra nights, but even so, it ends up cheaper than a regular hotel room. I think they may even have internet access, too, but you'll probably be out all day for the race and then all night after that. I've never stayed in one of the rooms before so I don't really know a whole lot about them. The past few years I've ended up staying in a McGill sorority house :D
Link for the dorms: http://www.mcgill.ca/residences/summer/bmhrvc/
I have two rooms booked that I don't think I will be using (staying in a sorority again). If you're definitely going, I can give them a call tomorrow and see if they'll transfer the rooms, or if not we could probably work something out.
I don't think we've met before. I was at ECES but spent most of the time alone making sweet love to a demo board of one manufacturer or another. I did see you, however - that carbon fork looked really neat.
I'll post a few pics I took a couple years ago with the GA tickets. Just gotta track them down. Not sure where I put the 35mm ones, so you'll have to settle for blurry digital ones (my shutter only goes to 1/800).
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From Sec 24 You'll be able to see the cars braking for the hairpin and then going through it. They actually come up to grandstand 21 doing a bit over 180mph, and in the length of that grandstand slow to 30ish for the hairpin. This means you could potentially see overtaking under braking as well as glowing brake rotors (although most teams run large enough rotors in Canada that they don't glow - at least not like they did in Bahrain). Last year there was also a minor accident here involving Rubens, iirc. Every grandstand also has a clear view of a jumbotron so you can watch the race going on on the rest of the track.
Here are a few pics (bandwidth warning) I took from 22 last year. In the space of this grandstand, the cars went through an entire gear.
Pic 2 (you get to walk through the pits of all 3 trailer races - this was Formula Renault 1600)
I haven't sat in Sec 12 before, so I'm not certain what I'll be able to see. I think I should be able to see the opening straight (although at that distance, without a whole lot of depth perception), the Senna curves (possible opening lap pile-up) and then the short second straight. I actually walked through this grandstand last year after the race (at the end, everyone rushed the track so I got to walk a full lap - it was very cool) and have some pics of the views from a few different grandstands, but they are all on film somewhere.
Another option is to go with General Admission. You don't get a seat, but you can walk almost the whole track and sit anywhere along it. If you want to get really close to the cars as they whizz by, this is your best option. Don't expect a whole lot of picture ops unless you have good reflexes and sub 1/3000 shutter speeds. With the general admission pass, you still get to walk through the pits of the trailer races.
Hope that helps, at least as a start. Feel to free to ask more questions as you think them up.
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I'm in grandstand 12. I was in 22 last year.
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It seems to me that the slopes, at least in the east and in particular southern Vermont, get more and more crowded every year.
Then again, that may just be because I keep going faster and faster.
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Doesn't F1 Boston have an outdoor track near you? The outdoor track has shifterkarts.
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Your cracked Subaru block reminds me of a story....
Last fall I had an extra Civic motor (a crappy B16) that was going to be chucked. What do car guys do with extra motors? We blow them up!
Or rather, in the case of this motor, we try. The abuse this thing took was unreal. We tried simple things like changing to an engine computer that bumped the redline up from ~6k to about ~8k. After a few minutes driving around with the revs bouncing off the limit, we had to try something else. Higher revs were needed! How could we get the motor to rev above redline? By shifting into 1st at 65mph! Seeing the tach momentarily buried was priceless. How the motor survived that I have no idea.
So what are some other ways to kill a motor? Well, supposedly draining the oil and then driving like that will kill a motor. An hour later (with countless trips to redline) the motor was still running strong. We needed stronger magic.
Does everyone know what hydrolocking an engine is? Basically, before the spark makes the gas go boom, the stuff inside the engine gets compressed big time (10 or 11:1 in this motor, iirc). Hydrolocking is what happens when water, an incompressible fluid, ends up inside the engine - stuff breaks, sometimes in a spectacular fashion.
To hydrolock the car, we popped the hood, took off the intake, and hooked a garden hose up to the throttle body. At WOT, revs bouncing off the limiter (remember, this is still almost 2000rpm higher than stock and there still is no oil in it), when the water was turned on what happened? The motor bogged a little bit, sputtered a little bit, and then hot water started coming out of the exhaust - and the engine kept running!!
What ultimately killed the engine was having a brick left on the accelerator while the coolant was drained (with no oil, the higher redline, and a garden hose pumping water where it doesn't belong). Of course, even then it took a few minutes for the engine to die. And die it did! With an apple-sized hole in the block and a horribly bent rod.
Oh and did I mention that this motor had over 330,000 miles on it?
The moral of the story? Don't wait for your Honda to die before replacing it. It will last longer than you will.
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I've owned my current car for 3 years and 48,000 miles.
My previous car, a 1990 Acura Legend, was originally purchased by my father and worked its way down through my family to end up with me. It had 207,000 miles on it (and still ran like new!) when I sold it to someone to use as his commuter car. Well, I guess he has a pretty serious commute - in January he called to tell me that he had passed 300,000 with it!
Not only that, but the car went those 100k miles, and all 200k it was in my family, without a single unscheduled repair :eek: To put that in to some kind of perspective, my Audi (with a warranty!) had already cost me more to repair in the first 5k miles than that Acura cost anyone in 300,000.
Not only that, but the car went those 100k miles, and all 200k it was in my family, without a single unscheduled repair 
PSA: 110V AC is NOT good for making a hot wire
in Carving Central
Posted
I didn't get burned, but a styrofoam cup and some concrete did.
Here's my story, cross posted from another forum........
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A friend and I wanted to cut some foam for a plug, but we didn't have a hot wire. We figured we could make our own easily enough using a dimmer switch, an extension cord, some 20ga safety wire, and good ol' fashioned 110V AC current. Also used a surge protector so we would have a convenient on-off switch should the need arise.
Well, we bent the pipe to use for the span, wired everything up, set the dimmer to low, and powered it up. Nothing happened. I went and got a styrofoam cup an stuck it on the wire so we would know when it got hot. Cup wouldn't stay in place, so I held it while it was on the wire. After a bit of waiting, we got impatient and started turning the dimmer up. When my friend reached halfway, still nothing was happening. The wire wasn't even getting warm. Well, my friend turn the dimmer just a little bit further and then:
Click for sound effect
There was a sound like a lightsaber being turned on and all of a sudden not only was the styrofoam cup on fire, but half of it had fallen to the floor. Timed perfectly with the startup of the lightsaber, the wire was also glowing brighter than I've ever made my turbo glow and was so hot that it expanded so much that there was about 6" of sag in the middle (over a 6ft span). The hair on my arm (the one holding the cup) was standing on end, all of the veins on it had popped out, and I could not only hear but also feel the 60hz humming up to my elbow.
I don't know how long the wire was on for because everything was happening in slow-mo. Well, I saw our apparatus begin to fall over. At about 45deg I'm pretty sure I yelled "Off! Off! Turn it off!" and the wire landed on the concrete. At about that time my friend flipped the switch and the wire quickly cooled. Of course, it had already burned the concrete.
It took about 2hrs for my the veins in my arm to return to normal. During that time it felt like a nonstop adrenaline rush from the elbow down.
At that point we decided to dismantle some of the bodywork and cut our profiles once we had a DC power supply.
The End.