UFO Club Autocross at Marina 2009-11-08

As it gets colder, and holidays cause many competitors to be out of town, autocross season is winding down. This Sunday's event was the only one I will get to run this month. There's another one in December, and then hopefully it'll pick up again early next year.

The course was a very fun one. After a usual painfully slow start, and a 90-degree left-hander, there was an extremely fast slalom. It was spaced so widely that I was able to accelerate through it with the foot firmly pressing the gas pedal into the mat. The 90-degree corner right after the slalom forced me to give up some speed towards the end, otherwise I would be topping out of the second gear there.

My best run ended up being a 53.3xx--not sure when the results get posted, but it seemed fast enough to get me into the middle of the pack, I figure.

Sunbeam Tiger Club autocross 2009-10-31

October 31st marks the day my car won an event for the first time, while piloted by Tris. On PAX, and possibly in raw time as well. I don't have the official results yet, but last I heard, he was about 0.1 second ahead of the competitor, who had a B-Modified car on slicks.

Anyways.

Great event.

I don't know where I ended up, probably in the middle, or hopefully in the upper third. No idea how to get my hands on the results though.

Tristan and I co-drove. We got four runs in the morning and five in the afternoon.

My rungroup rested while Tris's ran, so I got to catch a few rides with him. He worked during my runs, and so the only shots from the event that show my car were from his runs. We forgot to swap the numbers for his afternoon runs, so he's running my number "23" in the shots -- but the folks in timing thankfully figured it all out and recorded his times correctly.

On my fourth run in the afternoon I hit a cone and it got caught in my left wheel well. I knew it got stuck somewhere, but did not know where, and continued my run, only to get a red flag moments later, because there apparently weren't enough cones to replace the one I was dragging. I tried getting a rerun for that, but no dice.

Anyways, it was a fun event, and I got to run pretty good times.

As I learn the site (Santa Rosa Airport), I feel more and more confident on it, and am already looking forward to the next event there, which sadly will be in 2010.

Cars attack!

Yesterday I got attacked by cars (or rather women driving said cars) twice.

First was the PT Cruiser of Death on CA-17, which decided to change into the right lane as I was occupying it. I moved to the right edge of the lane and honked, but the blue monstrosity kept getting closer. I lay on the horn and put two wheels off onto the shoulder, trying to avoid contact, and the driver finally noticed me. She pulled back into her lane and made some apologetic gestures. I used some non-verbal cues to tell her what I thought about her and drove off.

I got home and went to get some food. Parked far away from everyone and walked to the store across the parking lot. I was happily minding my own business as I felt a firm nudge in my forearm and my thigh. I jumped aside and screamed as I realized that a minivan was backing out and into me. The driver got out and her first excuse was "I did not see you!"

"I know you did not see me!" I said. Okay, yelled. I got pretty rattled by this, and used some vocabulary that would have made Samuel L. Jackson proud. I did not get hurt, so decided not to call the police. Just yelled at the lady and walked off to get the food.

Got the food, drove home, and sat the rest of the day out to make sure no more crazy drivers got a chance to kill me.

Kinda ironic that I was at a race earlier that day and all the truly dangerous stuff involving cars happened to me after I was done racing.

Golden Gate Lotus Club autoX 17 October 2009

Last weekend I attended an event hosted by a local Lotus club, and had a blast. The course, though a bit cone-heavy, was a right mix of fast and technical elements, and had a flow to it, so that after the first run I had a pretty good idea where it went.

Here are the raw results by class.

We had a ton of runs, and a wonderful catered lunch, with several dishes, dessert and fruit. All in all, a great way to spend a Saturday.

I was trying to squeeze a few tenths of a second out of my car, to break into 50.xxx, but missed it by less than 0.2 seconds on my last and fastest run.

Got to ride in a supercharged Lotus Elise driven in anger, and even though I expected spectacular performance, I was still very very impressed by handling and sheer willpower of this car to stick to the pavement.

Photo courtesy of Ovidiu. Click on it to see more.

Consumer blues: A click that cost $128

Ten days ago, I messed up when paying my credit card bill online. I selected a wrong checking account from which to draft the funds in the drop-down menu. This morning, I woke up to discover that this misclick has just cost me $128 in an assortment of bank fees.

• First, my bank dinged me for $30 to try and draft funds from an account that had none (this checking account has been lying dormant for a while).
• Then, American express has dinged me for $38 for a returned payment.
• Then, American Express system has tried drafting the funds from the zero-balance account for a second (-$30) and third (-$30) time. Kaching!

What really perplexes me is that it was two computer systems talking, and the operational cost to either financial institution to deny the payment and to cancel it might not even amount to a $0.01 per transaction.

The fees imposed on me for one small mistake are clearly designed to maximize the financial institutions' profits, not offset the costs caused by my mistake.

So this morning I set about talking my way out of these fees. I started with Amex.

The customer support agent (CSA) picked up almost immediately and asked "who he had the pleasure speaking with." I introduced myself, and without further ado explained what the problem was. I was able to state the exact amount of the transaction in question, so David did not ask me for any additional identification. (The phone system before him did some additional authentication stuff, so this was reasonably secure.)

After looking at my account and seeing that in the many years I have had it, it was in good standing, with never as much as a late payment, David has removed the $38 penalty from my account. I thanked him profusely and considered this to be a good start.

Next was my bank. Coastal Federal Credit Union, which was a much less polished customer experience. The agent sounded sleepy and grumpy and did not make any attempts to make me feel like I was welcome. I did not catch the agent's name, mostly due to the sloppy way she spoke. After hearing me out, she placed me on hold to look up the transaction in question, something that took a surprising amount of time, to the tune of 3-4 minutes.

When the Coastal CSA came back, she said she would remove the last two $30 fees (a total of $60), but would not be able to do anything about the first $30. Considering that I have been with this credit union for more than five years and this was my first slip with them in all this time, and also taking into account that I have just paid off their car loan, I hoped to be cut some slack. Apparently not.

Gender profiling... There's no way to do it right

So I signed up for a "Corporate Perks" program through the benefits provided by my employer. They said if I signed up today, I may win a Kindle.

Anyways, I went in there, and here's how they present the "Everyday Savings" screen. Some categories are highlighted in bold type, and some aren't. Just so you know, the non-bolded categories also contain special offers. I even selected one of those to take the screenshot for ya, peeps. You see anything funny about what categories got highlighted?

• Beauty & Fragrance
• Flowers & Gifts
• Food & Wine
• Health & Wellness.

Notice a pattern there?

No?

The pattern I notice is that stereotypically female "interests" are highlighted for me. I tried finding different reasons to explain this selection, but could not. So this is my story and I am sticking to it.

Oh, and just to be clear: I don't care for being profiled. Be it by my gender, age, nationality, race, or profession. It's never fun.

Shopping in SF

Went shopping with Carlota and Sue yesterday in San Francisco, and returned home with this amazing find! It's custom-made, and has been ordered by someone about a year and a half ago and never picked up. I got it for half-price, and it fits me, like it was made for my figure! That's pretty astonishing.

I had no idea how much my waist can compress, either.

Looking forward to a Halloween party or a costume fest to wear this to!

On a side note, I almost bought a Kawasaki Ninja, in a beautiful metallic blue with yellow stripes. Five or so years old, with less than a thousand miles on it. I'm still thinking about it, but it's hard to justify buying a second vehicle when my existing one only sees use on weekends.

Smile! You're in public

I wasn't going to post about this clueless encounter originally, but changed my mind after posting a picture on FaceBook in which I dared to not smile, thus causing an outcry about how I looked "sad," "pissed," "upset," or "disappointed." All just because my face was at rest in this picture.

So what happened to me before the public outcry that I please put a pleasing facial expression on when observed, was that I was enjoying a nice seafood dinner and a drink in Halfmoon Bay. The bartender and I were bantering all the while, and when I was ready to pay, I was in a very good mood. I signed my check and was putting my wallet away as the guy sitting in a chair one over from me, who has so far not made any attempts at communication, demanded "Smile! It's Saturday night!"

I experienced a weird mix of emotions as a result.

• The sentence seemed to indicate that the mood he was reading from my face was somehow unfitting for a Saturday night, yet I was perfectly happy after a great meal and a nice conversation with the barkeeper.
• His remark also seemed fairly impolite in the context of our previous lack of communication.
• Finally, I felt like he was intruding on me, demanding that I arrange my facial features in a certain way, regardless of how I was feeling. Assuming for a moment that his interpretation of my facial expression was correct, and I was unhappy for some reason, his demand for a smile seems callous.

I remembered reading about the phenomenon of strangers demanding smiles from women at some point in the past, so I googled it, and here's what I came up with.

This passage is found on Page 247 of Sex differences and similarities in communication by Kathryn Dindia and Daniel J. Canary.

So women are expected to smile more, and when they don't they are assumed to be grumpy. Nice. At least we now know why the guy at the bar took it upon him to heroically brighten my mood.

Now if we could only know what women themselves think about this! Oh wait! We can! They find it just as annoying as I did.

Surprised? Incredulous? Here's more, from Alas! blog. And another Alas! article.

You may be asking, why does what some may see as an innocent attempt to be friendly even merit all this research and thought. I could not put it into words better than Lucia in the second Alas article, so I would like to end my post with her quote:

"Of course, we all know why this issue is a feminist one: Some people don’t believe women have a right to boundaries. Women do."

AAS-Autocross-2009-10-04

Went to AAS round 10 at Great America Park on Sunday. Results have not yet been posted, but I know that I did not run my best at this event. When they post, the results will be here: Best OA | Best Indexed

American Autocross Series caters to muscle cars and their courses tend to be wider, and less technical, consisting mostly of sweeping turns of varying radii. For some reason, I find it hard to remember where the course goes when it is a succession of turns with a few technical elements, and so yesterday I spent most of the time driving cone-to-cone, and being surprised by the turns, never setting up right for them.

Being lost on a course all the time contributed to frustration, and I pretty much blew my last run while trying to shave off another second from my fastest time. I left at least two seconds on the course, and I know the car was not the limiting factor in this one.

I prefer SCCA-style technical "house of pain" courses, with tight slaloms, offsets, Chicago boxes and lane changes all over the place, and do much much better on courses like that. To a degree, it's a matter of taste, and I doubt I will ever fall in love with never-ending sweepers, but it's also something to work on. I have to learn to deal with courses of any type eventually if I want to post consistent results.

On a positive note, two of my friends came out to watch the event, and one of them, Thierry, rode with me on four out of five runs. I may have succeeded in getting them interested enough in the sport to give it a try.

It was a lot of fun (and helped me concentrate) to explain the techniques and the physics of driving to Thierry.

I hope to see him and Ludger at one of the upcoming autocrosses soon!

How'd you guess there were autocrossers in that parking lot?

No, seriously, how did you know?

AT&T, why do you want my SSN to let me use DSL?

Also, why do you make me spend 4 hours at home waiting for the technician to troubleshoot why my line is dead, and then force me to pay $120 for the said technician to physically flip the switch that's not even INSIDE my home, in order to enable the connection that was supposed to be working from the get-go?

Between you and I, AT&T, I don't really like you much anymore.

Not that I ever did.

Saner bar, insane performance ;)

Course layout Day 1
Results Day 1

Last weekend I was at a two-day event organized jointly by two local clubs and my little S2k performed beautifully. This was the first autocross after the front anti-sway bar upgrade, and I was very pleased with how the car handled.

My little yeller Honda is now so eerily stable in transitions and responds to steering inputs so much sharper, I could not get enough of transitional elements.

There was one slalom on the second day, with 33 paces between cones, where I was flat, accelerating all the way to the rev limiter through it.

On the first run, I started with 32 psi square tire pressure, and noticed some tendency to push in fast corners. I was able to balance the car with running 2psi less in the front tires. I ran 30/32 f/r for the rest of the event.

Course layout Day 2
Results Day 2

I was also using a chest strap restraint for the first time, one that goes around the back of the seat and around the driver's ribcage. For starters, I went with a cheap version and bought an oversized utility belt that was long enough to fasten around the seat back and me.

The difference was amazing. Because my body was now being kept in the seat by both a lap belt and the chest strap, I found that I did not have to hang onto the steering wheel for stability and so could control my steering with more precision. I also did not have to brace myself against the dead pedal with the left foot, making for smoother shifting.

On both days, I was very satisfied with the times I ran. On the first day, I coned away my fastest run, a 53.677. On day two, my fastest time was a 48.009. My fastest run was in the morning, and in the afternoon the pavement was too hot and tires were giving up. I was losing 0.1 second each run, even after spraying them down with water.

All in all, this was a great weekend and I was able to ride during a few great runs and to learn a lot. The car gives me a new feeling of confidence with the new setup, and I can't wait to run it again at the next event.

Chicks in stick cars

At autocross today I had a fun encounter of the clueless kind. It has been a while since one of those. I was already getting worried. Nah, I wasn't.

Anyways, I was watching the others run with my buddy Tristan, and there was a guy there also watching, and he chatted us up. So Tris was telling him how he ran and what line he picked through the course etc. when I said something about how I took the slalom, and this guy goes "Oh, you run too?" With such a surprise in his voice and on his face.

And I say "Why yes, I do. Even though I don't have a penis."

This is when he got all defensive.

I only thought "gotcha."