f1vlad.com

Difficult day today, started off by trying to put new sway bar at Zak's Auto Industries. Turned out I left some bushings at home, and COBB ones did not work. So now I am riding swaybar-less until I get bushings and its brackets, which again, I have COBB ones, and I need OEM ones to fit Perrin sway bar.

As far as downpipe, everything went quite smooth, until the last bolt came into the play, the one that bolts intercooler. It broke. So Zak had to drill in and tap it.

So it is now officially stage 2, we'll see where it goes next. System is still learning stage 2, reportedly needs up to hundred miles for learning process to get done.

Well, I am happy to say that my recently acquired netbook is now sold to a friend.

After a few test drives and benchmarks, I decided that it's quite weak to do everything I will want it to do. So I am going to be going with either a custom box or a more powerful netbook. Need to think about this.

Just got off the phone with COBB Tuning and have to admit, I am pleasantly surprised with customer support. They're sending me some revised hardware to fix sway bar problem. We'll see what I will end up doing given that I just ordered one piece sway bar now. Maybe I'll sell this COBB one then.

New upgrades are going on the car soon, the following are leaving warehouse today:

• Catted downpipe, to complete stage 2.
• 22mm rear sway bar, to replace COBB rear sway bar that is a piece of junk.

New parts are Perrin Performance products distributed by Subimods.com.

<vlad 2:16> The Formula One Teams’ Association has thrown the sport into total chaos by announcing its eight members will set up their own breakaway series at the end of the season.
<vlad 2:16> a joint statement from Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, Renault, Brawn, Toyota and both Red Bull teams issued on Thursday night said they had grown tired of the governing body’s demands and had been left with “no alternative” other than to initiate a split.

FOTA press-release indicates the seriousness and of the matter. "...teams therefore have no alternative other than to commence the preparation for a new Championship which reflects the values of its participants and partners. This series will have transparent governance, one set of regulations, encourage more entrants and listen to the wishes of the fans, including offering lower prices for spectators worldwide, partners and other important stakeholders...Note to Eds: Statement issued by FOTA on behalf of BMW-Sauber, BrawnGP, Scuderia Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes, Red Bull Racing, Renault, Scuderia Toro Rosso, Toyota."

I really hope this is not the end of Formula 1 and some compromise will be reached. I have been a huge fan since my early teenage years and love this sport so much!

Today got my yearly NH inspection sticker on at DFA in Nashua. I was quite surprised by the guy not even paying attention to my tint. I proudly reminded him to check my medical waiver, to which he replied that "I was all set".

I was mostly afraid of the car not passing due to lose link on sway bar that is still lose. I need to get around to buying another sway bar.

Today I found out that if you don't want to do any sort of modifications to adjust your site for IE8, you don't have to do that. It isn't ideal situation of course, but there definitely could be circumstances where this could be necessary; for instance, web developer got fired.

The following tag will make this happen:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

It will display standards DOCTYPEs in IE7 Standards mode and quirks DOCTYPEs in Quirks mode.

More info about this is available on MSDN website.

Today got my first normal bicycle — Specialized Rockhopper Comp Disk for $520, hard tail, all disk brakes. The guy who was selling it, on craigslist, said it was barely ridden, two or three times. I wasn't too optimistic about it, but when I saw it, it was truly essentially brand new. So I am quite happy with this purchase. Equivalent brand new is $770.

Other bikes that I considered were all brand new:

• 2009 Iron Horse Warrior 4.0 $699.95
• Garyfisher wahoo-disc $659.99
• Mongoose Vanish $283.95

And surely for illustration, my old bike that I gave away:

Yesterday dropped the car off at Gatecity Collision Center to do some warranty work on trunk lid rusted spots. It's been only one day but I already miss it; also it's on ebay still with auction finishing in 23 hours. I do want to sell it, but at the same time I know I will miss it a lot.

Today I finally got determined to fix a stupid COBB sway bar that became undone a while ago in Florida.

Visibly entire sway bar is rust, but what can you do. I used metal brush to clean it off and re-secure end link.

Immediately, car felt different; and most importantly, I didn't have alignment problem any more! I did suspect that sway bar would affect alignment, so this is just a confirmation.

Unfortunately, on my way back from Black Swan Robotics, where I fixed my car, I did few errands. By the time I got home, sway bar was undone again. It must have been much less than 30 mi for it to come undone again.

At this point, probably this sway bar is junk. I will likely just buy a new one that is one piece.

Geotagging and what you can do with the map is truly amazing these days. However, there is still not many ideal services that can do everything map related. But combined together, a handful of them can create a super cool and powerful representation.

Few days ago, I discovered a new Russian free travel social network and created my profile.

It is not perfect by any means, but the ease of data input has generated a really cool map of places I've been to. This isn't complete, I still need to remember some cities I've been to.

Some day, I want to combine a number of various tools to create some sort of dashboard of all my travels.

Plenty! Why carputer? Is it really necessary? After my first carputer, I got me an iPhone. After iPhone, I became discouraged in using cheap Lilliput Chinese touch screen. Because its quality was simply crap compared to iPhone. So somehow back then I had hopes that all my carputer needs could be realised by a smart phone. It is almost true still, but carputer is still better. So overlooking the fact that carputer is simply cool thing to have, what are the benefits from having a carputer.

The biggest thing that empowers a carputer need is nothing else but a mere fact of having a constant Internet connection and what it could bring. I have a pretty amazing unlimited mobile broadband internet provided by Sprint, which allows me to enjoy a numbers of things while in the moving car. The keyword there is moving. With my carputer in the past, I could park somewhere hopeful to hop on someone's WiFi to get done what I needed. Now it's a whole different story I have Internet wherever [pending mobile coverage], which gives me lots and lots of freedom:

1. Streaming music (pandora.com, imeem.com, blip.fm, last.fm).
2. Streaming radio (moskva.fm, molode.com.ua, etc.).
3. Streaming TV/news (hulu.com, joost.com, russiantvonline.com, etc.).
4. Download podcasts (podcastalley.com, rpod.ru).
5. Download [via torrent] TV shows and sport events that I missed.
6. See right on the moving Google Earth where I am driving at any given time, i.e. GPS navigator.
7. Local places finder (cheap gas, particular restaurant, specialized store, hotel, etc.)

It's quite obvious from the list above, that Internet connectivity is a key factor here, since I have that mobile broadband internet, it's a perfect opportunity to enjoy all these new innovative services, why not? There is no need to carry 200gb worth of media in your hard drive.

I just read a very thorough article on mobile broadband in USA: Engadget Labs: The best mobile data carrier in America. I highly recommend this article to all interested parties, but can't stop wondering about one thing, that is how all four carriers are now essentially provide internet that is limited. If you reach certain quota, and it's quite ridiculously small, you will get cut off in best case scenario. You will get charged by kilobyte/megabyte in your worst case nightmare scenario.

After visiting New England carputer meet, I became interested to build something again. Certainly, this time it would be nothing as ambitious as my previous undertaking, it was an amazing endeavor, but it was an expensive and time consuming one. Worst of all, it was not a mobile solution, that is attached to the car, which is not ideal for person like me, who doesn't keep cars for too long.

So, this time it's going to be a semi-mobile solution, which I will be able to take out of the car easily. This build has began with buying a new Asus EEE PC 900 on ebay.

Immediate plans for the general setup include some sort of mount, and stable power source. Thinking about second battery, but undecided yet. I already have Sprint mobile broadband card, which pretty much lets me listen to anything online — pandora.com, imeem.com, moskva.fm, etc.

Progress can be tracked at my carputer page.