My Car Made The Shoot!

The Scion United website finally got updated with pictures from the event, including a couple pictures of the cars setup for the commercial. And guess who’s car was in the shoot (if you read the title of this post, you cheated, haha).

You can see the camera in the lower left of the picture, my car is inconspicuously noted.

So it isn’t front-row-center, but I can’t complain. So when the commercials start showing up, look for my tC, second level about middle. Its the one with the silver grill.

New Car!

No, not for me. For Kerry!

Last night, we signed the papers for a 1999 Volkswagon Passat GLX. Its a really sweet car with all the features – Heated Leather Seats, Dual Climate Control, Power everything including passengers seat, sunroof, 8 speaker sound system, 190hp V6 with 206 ft\pds of torque. Everything.

Anyway, she couldnt drive it home last night because its not insured, but today we are going to get the insurance and when she gets the car Ill take pictures of it, for now all I have is the one picture that the dealer had on the web.

FW: Unbelivable

Its one thing to admire awesome photographs emailed to you from your co-worker or friend. Some of these things are genuinly spectacular to look at. But please, dont be a leming about it … Below is an email I recived just a little while ago claiming to be pictures of the Space Shuttle Columbia as it exploded in space (apparently the pictures are taken by an Israeli satellite.) Can anybody tell me whats wrong with these pictures?

Click on any for a full sized view.

Disney MGM (Disney Day 5)

[fa:p:a=disney-mgm-disney-day-5,p=3,id=469349713,j=l,s=s,l=i]It’s amazing what 10 hours of sleep and some well chosen anti-histamine drugs can do for a cold. I felt really quite good this morning. MGM is like Disney’s version of Universal Studios. This was the first day that I had ALL my camera equipment with me, so I snapped a ton of pictures, I’m not sure if all of them are worth publishing, so you may not see all of them.

We even got some special treatment at MGM. This year at Disney World is “The Year of a Million Dreams”. And they granted us a dream. In the form of a “Dream Fast Pass” Which was a badge that gave us a Fast Pass for 6 of the rides at MGM. Granted, we didn’t need it so much at this particular park, but we still used it a few times, and enjoyed having won something just simply by walking around.

Keith and I rode on the Tower of Terror, which seemed a little more cheap than the one in Anaheim, however we found out later that the ride is completely random, including lighting … the stuff that leads up to it, and the number of falls and whatnot, so it could have just been a bum random setup (I don’t know if “cheap” is the right word. The ride had more story than the California Adventure version, but the actual rising and falling of the ride was far less intense. Kyle and I agreed that the ride must be 3+ stories shorter than the California Adventure version – Keith).

We also rode on the Aerosmith Rock ’n’ Roller coaster. This was awesome. It’s one of those rides that launches you from the ground using linear synchronous motors, and is sort of like Space Mountain, as it takes place in the dark. But the best part is that there is timed Aerosmith music being pumped into your seat [SWEEEEEEEET EMOOOOTION – Keith], with a sub woofer under you bum, and two speakers near your head. We rode that one basically twice in a row within about 40 min, thanks to our Dream Fast pass, and a regular fast pass.

We also went and saw their stunt show, which involves a bunch of well choreographed car action in some highly modified little cars; including one car that is built completely backwards so it can be jumped safely in reverse.

Epcot (Disney Day 2)

[fa:p:a=72157600097357557,p=2,id=465885070,j=l,s=s,l=i]We got a nice early start after being well rested from the previous day’s lack of activity. We took the earliest shuttle to Epcot and turned in our vouchers that we had bought at the hotel for our tickets. Remember the idiot/sneak from the hotel who setup the bogus car rental? He also didn’t give us the tickets he said he was giving us. Instead of getting park hopper (which allows us to go to multiple parks throughout a single day) we got the basic Disney park ticket so we couldn’t go to more than one park in a day. Which wasn’t a big deal with our schedule, but we still paid $10 more than it would have cost at the gate for the same exact ticket [and the guy at the hotel claimed we were saving $3.50 - Keith].

Fortunately that’s basically where the bad stops part of our trip (I say basically because there was still one last downer on the trip). Epcot is made up of two sections; the front half of the park is an exploration into technology and the future, and the back half is a large-scale World’s Fair where you can visit many different countries from around the world. The back half doesn’t open until 11am, so the park was pleasantly empty when we got there. We rode just about everything they had there, more than I should probably list, instead I’ve attached a map and ride list.

[fa:p:a=72157600097357557,id=465893299,j=r,s=s,l=i]There were a few worth mentioning though that stood out in particular to us. “Mission: Space” is freaking awesome. The ride is physically in a simulator pod that is created to resemble a rocket cockpit. They have two versions of the ride the “More Intense” and “Less Intense”. Obviously we did the more intense, and it was well worth it. The simulator spins at an incredible speed making you feel like you are really accelerating from 0 to 6000 miles per hour [it actually blurred my vision similar to what happens when you stand up too fast - Keith]. It makes your cheeks push back, and it’s hard to move your arm forward.

My Second Favorite was oddly not a very intense or even busy ride. It was a simple floating boat ride that took you through some information about how farms work and whatnot, but the thing that made it interesting was the incredibly impressive array of things that they were growing inside of their greenhouses. Massive fruits and vegetables, including 9 pound lemons, thousands of tomatoes from a single plant, and other incredible things. See the pictures for more.

After we had exhausted the front half of Epcot, we made out way on a tour of 9 different countries. We had gone to the UK for some mediocre fish and chips for lunch, so we started on the other side. We didn’t make it through all the countries, but we had a good time of it, and by the time we were all done with the day I think all of us (or at least me) were rather tired.

“Clean Your Desk (no i am not drunk)”

Last night I went over to my good friends Chris and Michelle’s new place to show them the wedding video I made for them, and while I was there my cell phone battery died when I finally got home to plug it in I had two voicemails, and some presents on my desk from my extended roomate family

This is a picture of my desk, with the teddy bear and pair of notes (click for large picture):

My detective skills tells me the first one is from Becca and Cody, the second is from Jenn. They were both folded in half, so there are two sides (and thus two pictures) of each.

By the slurred words on my voicemail, and the mild ramblings of these notes, I apparently missed a good time last night . If I can come up with a good way to record my voicemail I’ll upload it.

Well, I had today off, so I caught up on some sleep and went ahead and cleaned up my desk, so for Becca (because I’m sure she started it ) here is my now clean desk!

Grills and Headlights

Below are before and after pics of my new Grillcraft MX Series Grill. Sorry for the moderatly bad pictures. lighting inside the garage sucks, but I wanted to get it done before Kerry came over. Click for a large view.

Overall, it isn’t a very difficult modification to do, the worst part was that in the kits, some idiot at Grillcraft changed the nuts from the u-shaped clip-on type that you see for a lot of body panels that you can put over a hole and it stays in place, to one of these flat nuts that required me to hold the nut in place while getting it attached. This may not sound like it was a big deal, until you realize the nuts end up INSIDE the grill, where you cannot possibly hold it with your hand.

Anyway, I rate it as a two beer job and with the exception of the bad nut experience and a slight misalignment (my fault) on the bottom right grill I am very happy with it.

[fa:p:a=car-parts-and-pieces,id=503493699,j=l,s=s,l=p]I also ran across an exceptional deal on a set of halo projector headlights (like what you see in BMW’s) for the tC. Left is a picture of the headlights (again, click for full view). I expect I’ll see those sometime next week and when I install them, I’ll look at fixing the one skewed grill and probalby buy the U-clips from an auto store to actually secure all the bolts on the grills.

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EDIT: WAY better pictures are available now in my tC gallery: http://www.indemnity83.com/album/friends/my-cars/2005-tC/

Slight Confusion on the Donner Album

I think there was some slight confusion about the album(s) for the Donner trip. Because I seperated the trip into days, the “Newest Album” on the right was only showing pictures from Sunday.

I’ve gone ahead and told the site to not show the individual days as part of the “Newest Album”, so for the time being (until I upload a new album) the Newest Album will take you to the overall Donner album, where you can pick which day you want to look at.

Sorry for the Confusion.

F-ing Hot

Sorry for the harsh words, but F-ing hot is the only way I can describe the weekend, and upcomming weather. It reached 111.6 degrees here today, and according to the weather forcast for this week it wont be dropping below 100 until Sunday. Even as I post this, at nearly 9:30 at night its still 93 degrees outside. But I hear through the news that the Sacramento valley isn’t the only place baking, it would seem a vast majority of the country is well into the 90′s for this week. Tomorrow might get interesting.

I was out at Folsom lake for the weekend, and I’ve uploaded a selection of the pictures (including pictures from Candices camera) that you can take a look at, but I’m pretty darned tired so I’m going to head to bed and see if I can squeeze some time in my day tomorrow at work to post about the trip.

Fireworks

I’m kind of in a rush, I need to leave for work (actually a training class this morning). But I wanted to take a quick minute to upload the fireworks pictures for all to look at. Sorry I can’t spend more time describing but the pictures will have to do the talking for me. Check them out in the Fireworks – 06 album.