Early Sunday update

It's 1am and I'm trying to clear off some things that have needed to be blogged about. This won't get posted until later today, but that is the nature of my writing sometimes.

Photos in the wild

Here's a FlickrMail I got informing me that some of my pictures are being used elsewhere on the net:

:: Schmap: San Diego Photo Inclusion

Hi Burton,

I am delighted to let you know that two of your photos with
a Creative Commons license have been selected for inclusion
in the newly released fourth edition of our Schmap San
Diego Guide:

San Elijo Lagoon Ecological Reserve
http://www.schmap.com/sandiego/activities_daytrips/p=165195/i=165195.jpg

San Elijo Lagoon Ecological Reserve
http://www.schmap.com/sandiego/activities_daytrips/p=165195/i=165195_1.jpg

If you like the guide and have a website, blog or personal
page, then please also check out our schmapplets -
customizable widgetized versions of our Schmap San Diego
Guide, complete with your published photos:

http://www.schmap.com/schmapplets/p=60318210N00/c=SF20282238

Please enjoy the guide!

Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

I'm pretty stoked to hear that my pics are being used by others. This is also the most officious use of my Creative Commons licensed work. I like it.

I've finally learned how to deal with compression valves!

During the past day and a half, I replaced three valves under sink and toilet. It all got started with replacing the toilet fill valve which had stopped stopping the flow of water to fill my toilet with. When I got going (Finally! I've owned the replacement for a year or so!), I crimped the feed hose coming from the wall. This hose was a single unit with the feed valve installed on the wall pipe so I had to completely replace the valve in order to replace the hose.

The same situation was under my kitchen sink and I've been threatening to replace those for pretty much the same calendar year as with the toilet fill valve. Yes, I'm a very "tolerant" person. I've owned a replacement kitchen faucet with a nice extensible handle that's been sitting under the sink for too long.

I'd learned a couple months ago how to replace these types of valves. The biggest headache was that I had to turn off the water for the entire condo building, a total of eight units. That required advance notice (ideally 48 hours) and the time to flush the system (supposedly 40 minutes before work can begin).

So, I finally make the notices and distribute those. I get the replacement valve for the toilet (I already had the ones for the kitchen sink, but more on that later). I bought a compression washer removal tool as well, having had prior experience with those pains in the butt. All set.

Water's off. Removing the valve from the toilet goes okay, even with removing the compression washer. The sink washers won't come off, though, so I cut them away with my Dremel tool. Replace the valves, turn on the water main, tighten the valves down, all good. Or so I think.

The toilet gets completed with little trouble. The sink, though, is my worst nightmare, that being my own lameness in not dry fitting all the parts before installing. Turns out the valves I bought oh so long ago worked all the way up until I wanted to connect the new faucet. Both hot and cold from the faucet were 3/8 inch fittings, but the free outlets from the new valves were 1/4 inch.

Lorenzo was over that night and he's never seen me so frustrated! Grrrr... I really can't stand when I make such an oversight. Plus, I wasn't looking forward to the prospect of having to remove these compression washers as well. Finally, on the hot water lead, I was running out of pipe as I had cut a little bit away to avoid the crimping of the pipe caused by the original valve.

Well, happy ending. Saturday night, I get the correct replacement valves. Really. And, I speak to an employee at Home Depot that actually knows his stuff -- they're there, but somewhat rare. He said I didn't have to remove the old compression washers! He also reminded me to use Teflon tape on all the threads of my work.

I was going to do this in the dead of night, but I was getting tired and impatient, so Sarah and I tell all the neighbors at 8:15 that the water'd be shut off at 8:30 for 30 minutes. I replace everything and get it all tightened down by 9:10. Ahhh. I replace valves.

Lessons from the story?

1) Dry fit everything.
2) Compression washers don't always need to be replaced.
3) Use Teflon tape on threadings used for water. (Use dope for threadings used for gas.)

Racing last Sunday

Last Sunday, I attended the Novice School given by some of our local autocross clubs. I learned some great stuff to improve my driving.

Saturday was a three hour classroom session with presentation by Ron Chapman. This was at C2 Motorsports in Kearny Mesa. I plan on doing business with them at some point. First off will be the replacement Green Air Filter for my car, an aftermarket replacement that has rated an increase of 5 hp!

Sunday morning was a lot of organization and orientation. All the participants were broken into groups of about 4:1 students to instructors. The parking lot was broken into 4 exercises, generally described (by me) as: 1) slalom, 2) decreasing radius turns, 3) cone gates, and 4) hairpin/finish. The afternoon had us all racing the four exercises strung together into a single course.

Lessons from the class (as posted at sdsolo.com)?

* Seat time. Period.
* Look ahead.
* My car can still go further than I can.
* Racer's are fun. (I knew that already)
* Volunteer Race Instructors are cool.
* I want to work course before driving next time.

Driving on the street just can't provide the same experience as seat time on a course, regardless of how hard I drive. I imagine at some point, I can translate what I do on the street using only The Power of my Mind, but that's such a stretch right now.

Looking ahead makes total sense to me. I learned to do that with reading music in order to keep up. It's an interesting mix of trusting my skills to play what I've already read while allowing enough mental bandwidth to comprehend what I'm heading into in the next few seconds. I don't yet trust my skills to not knock over cones when my attention is ahead of me and I'm still trying to find the sweet spot of how far I can look ahead and process fully. Reading the course is a lot to think about at speed, at least for me.

The people were all really cool. Lots of generosity of spirit amongst everyone. I relish that environment where I can strive as hard as I can without fear of bruising someone's ego or riling up the unruly, all while getting lots of information and guidance.

The afternoon was broken into two groups and I was racing in the first, which worked for me at the time as I was itching to drive. After working the course while the second group drove, though, I think I would get a lot of value at working course first. While out there, I watched nearly fifty or so runs by various drivers and I could see what worked and what didn't. I didn't get to drive the course again after watching all the other drivers, but I had a head full of ideas to try. I'm going to try to arrange a session where I work course first.

This was my first time on racing tires having just picked up some used Kuhmo V700s. Having recently replaced my stock shocks with Koni Sports, and then now having the advent of race tires, I have sooo much room to go before reaching the limits of my machine. That translates to a really large fun zone
insert link for me.

Once again, my envelope for what is possible was extended drastically from just a single ride with an instructor. The fact that I had two rides with two different instructors was icing.

My ride with Barbara in her Corvette showed how it's possible for the car to attain an ideal direction at the apex of a turn through throttle, torque, and assertive steering. My steering in comparison was slow and cumbersome.

My ride with Carl in his Integra showed how brisk and assertive steering can shorten a slalom. His steering inputs were quick turns and then quick returns to center. Mine were much slower causing a more gradually curving path for my car rather than his straighter point-to-point path.

Here's hoping I can manage to attend November 4th's runs at Qualcomm. I need seat time.

Oh, btw, my four times from running the full course were: 57.754, 60.904+4, 56.837, and 57.444+4. My first lap was the time to beat after everyone had taken their first turns. Pretty flattering, but I couldn't maintain consistency. I'm really happy with my times, though, and the net result was major Perma-Grin(tm).

Vedic star charts are profoundly accurate!

I met with Prana, a friend through Neil who offers healing in a variety of ways. We spent Friday night from 5-7p together and I've only been able to talk about it once since with any clarity or coherence. Lorenzo was hanging with me later that night and I just couldn't quite wrap myself around the reading enough to talk about it by then.

As a record, here's my birth time as read to me by my mom from her copy of my birth certificate: September 16, 1966 @ 12:55 PM, Roosevelt Hospital, New York City, NY

More on this later, but for now, "Wow." Also, please allow me to pimp his site.