Miss Piggy is voiced by a MAN!

I’m assuming the phrase “Come to Jesus” comes from that scene in Flight of the Intruder where Fred Thompson’s character, acting as lead in the court martial of Jake Grafton and his bombardier says, “I hope you both realize that now is the time to come to Jesus.”

Anyway, one of my guys screwed-up. Again. I yelled at him last time for his transgressions, and so I get to go to a meeting where a manager gets to “discuss” with me about his options.

Check this out:

on June 15th I received a: “Congratulations you won a Mini
Cooper” flash on the website and an email stating the same.

The next step is they’re going to be sending me an affidavit in the
mail within 3 weeks that has to be returned within 3 weeks (21
days).. then they have to verify my bottle cap and affidavit and
then it could be up to a year until it’s delivered to the BMW shop
and then I have 5 days to pick it up… so if all of this happens
correctly … I won!

Okey, here’s the scenario:

I’m moving to my new house 2 miles down the road on a Tuesday. No one’s free on a tuesday, save my mom, my aunt, Whitney’s dad, and me.

This is looking…umm…troubling.

More than likely, I’ll ask the leasing office if I can stay until July 2nd, so that I can get a regular moving crew over here for the really heavy stuff.

>>sigh«

My GTO is up on the block.

Guess I can only have one cool, impractical car at a time :D

* * *

In a related note, whitney and I were driving Toyotas this weekend. Hated the Matrix, really liked the Corolla. Really solid little car.

There are some people doing really neat things with technology. But, on the whole, my company is not doing it. So, I ask myself, why is this so? Some thoughts:

* Lack of the “R” in “R&D”. It’s trite to say that 99% of computers is “programming” and 1% is “Computer Science,” but it remains true that the challenge today is analyzing problems and finding appropriate solutions. The thing we’re missing is knowledge transfer from the cutting edge to the troops in the trenches.

Here’s a blast from the past I found on ‘Wikipedia’:

Dennis M. Ritchie’s Homepage

And there, a barely tarnished gem, a PDF of the 1974 C Programmer’s Manual. 25 or so pages that clearly delineate the language that would inspire hackers throughout the world.

Today sucked as a team lead; it’s as if my post from yesterday came to fruition, as I had to dress-down a team member for not doing his job, only to be criticized by the offended party for being too heavy handed.

Look, if you don’t want me to keep my people in line, then don’t come to me with crap like, “_____ isn’t doing his job. He’s off in la-la land while we’re way behind. Now, are you going to talk to him, or do you want me to do it.”

Here’s a pic to illustrate just how hard life is for the outside edge of the front tires of an AutoX MINI;

My Mini weighs ~2500lb in autocross trim. I’d say 2000 lbs of that is on that right front tire in this sweeper. I need some CAMBER dang it!

Had an epiphany about why I like Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen” and NBC’s “Apprentice”: People get fired. In today’s professional world, mediocre performers remain year after year, bringing down the average productivity of the group. Because there’s no turn-over, there’s no real incentive to replace those people who’ve lost their edge with fresh faces with new ideas.

There’s a very real thrill associated with seeing white-collared folks dealing with the same crap (job insecurity, performance requirements) that blue-collar folks deal with every day.

Mr & Mrs Smith, starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt was one of the most entertaining and genuinely funny movies I’ve seen in a long time. A preposterous mismash of “Spy versus Spy” and The War of the Roses, the film hinges upon the genuine chemistry between Jolie’s type-A techno spy against Pitt’s type-B, shoot-from-the-hip spook.

Okay, these are two of the sexiest people on earth, and they’re given this kind of premise. This movie’s going to sell popcorn :-)

Mark Rivera designed a great, fast course at the LFUCG dump truck training pad, and this time I brought the MINI instead of the GTO.

video

Coursemap

I was #6 on PAX. Had a really good day, in a 3-way battle for the HS trophy. I kept getting better throughout the day, starting with a 41.2 and ending with a 39.8xx. Only .18 seconds separated first from 3rd :)

My MINI is fine.

I drove home tonight and did accel. runs in 3rd & 4th from 25mph or so, and could detect no slippage. I also did no-throttle starts just feathering the clutch, and found no chatter whatsoever.

So there’s $1k I can put back in the bank. Whew!

Admittedly, the car does stumble when starting from a standstill with the A/C on, but it’s a 2700lb car w/no power.

As is my custom, I gave away the punchline before telling the story. Whitney and I had an ‘05 MINI Cooper (stock: 115hp), with the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT)

CVT’s fascinate me…imagine two pulleys connected by a belt. If the ratio of the pulleys remains the the same, you get a defined gear ratio. Thing is, in a CVT, the pulleys can vary their diameter, and hence the amount of mechanical advantage they provide. Great technology, but CVT’s are a dead end: No design yet devised can reliably handle much more than 200 ft-lbs of torque, so they’re only good for small cars.

Niiiiice new 19" flatscreen here at The BMW Store in Cincy.

Well, turns out the fender-bender here is going to cost me a new wheel for the loaner and a new section on the bumper to install, so that’ll probably be $95 in labor + $40 for the bumper section, plus Lord-only-knows for a new 16" allow wheel.

Fun times. Plus, I get to drive back to Lex, stay at work until my product is fixed (say, Saturday morning…).

Well, I ran into Mike while taking Patrick to the car dealership, and he said he’d price me the install of a new clutch, pressure plate, throwout bearing, lightweight flywheel, AND 4 shocks to replace the worn-out units on my MINI, and only charge me 10 hrs of labor. Plus, he only charges $45/rate-hr for labor.

:-) Cars. They giveth, and yet, they taketh away.

Perhaps I bragged on my dealership too much. Perhaps I smiled a bit too much at the autocross when I told them, “The dealer is going to replace my clutch for free!”

But, they’re not.

Did some reasearch; apparently both clutches in the MC + MCS are total crap, and have been expiring at an alarming rate as the fleet of ‘02 and ‘03 coopers approaches 50k-75k miles.

Found a clutch, pressure plate, and throwout bearing that look nice and sturdy
at MiniMania.com

Taking a walk along the sprawling, strangely busy throughway beside my apartment, I found myself eaten by bugs, and eaten with thoughts, as though my mind found peace enough to speak to me once again. It’s been a long while, but my brain seems there for the first time in a long while.

I’m strangely proud of myself that I was able to convert 40 degrees Celsius to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, applying a touch of 5-th grade arithmetic. In other news, it’s 104 DEGREES IN INDIA. Granted, the 91 here isn’t so temperate.

1. Red Sox Win World Series
2. Woodward & Berstein give-up who Deep Throat is
3. Apple switches to an Intel chip

REPENT!!!

Muhahahaha: link

(WARNING: 15 MB download)