Sunday, April 06, 2008



I was thinking I might start using this space to track my car racing hobby. Easy to send to people who are interested and easy to keep track of what I've done so far.

On track time through today:

24 Hours of Lemons, Altamont Motor Park, Altamont, CA, October 2007

  • This is a 14 hour endurance race (two 7 hour days) for cars worth $500 or less.
  • Car: 1985 Honda CRX Si
  • Tires: 185/60R14 Yokohama ES100
  • Team was me, Joe Morris, Dean Harvey, Brian Jeffries, Scot Stambaugh, Nick Ganjei
  • Pictures here.
  • Video here.
  • Jalopnik article here.
High Performance Drivers Education Day, Thunderhill Raceway, Willows, CA, December 2007

  • Took my 2005 Cadillac CTS-V (400hp, 6-speed) (since sold) to the track for the first time.
  • Rode on track with instructor, trying to learn the line in prep for upcoming Lemons race at Thunderhill.
  • We also brought the new pisser to get ready for the next Lemons race.
  • Joe rented a 2007 Dodge Avenger.
  • Philip rented a 2007 Ford Focus.
  • Dan drove the Pisser all the way to Thunderhill, with racing seat, no heat, no comforts whatsoever.
  • Pictures here.
24 Hours of Lemons, Thunderhill Raceway, Willows, CA, December 2007

  • This is a 14 hour endurance race (two 7 hour days) for cars worth $500 or less.
  • Car: 1986 Honda CRX Si
  • Team was me, Joe Morris, Philip Milestone, Mireya Aretaga, Dan Wetmore
  • We blew our motor and stuffed it with toy marmots.
  • Pictures here and here.
In January 2008, the racing bug buzzing in my brain, I picked up a SCCA ready 1982 Mazda Rx-7 for SCCA Club Racing in the SCCA's San Francisco Region.

SF Region SCCA Licensing School, Thunderhill Raceway, Willows, CA Febuary 29 - March 2, 2008

  • Once a year, the region has a licensing school for new members who want to get their racing license.
  • Brutal schedule, Fri, Sat, Sun of nonstop racing and classroom instruction.
  • Had a good Friday, car had some carburetor trouble at first but I met a guy who offered to swap his extra carb for mine, and then had no trouble. The car is fun. It has a solid beam axle in the rear, so the rear floats a lot. It is not a stable ride. Because of the solid axle, you can't dial any camber into the rear wheels, so it doesn't squat like all of the Spec Miatas would. But I had some fast runs, even passing some Miatas now and again.
  • Saturday, around mid-day, I started losing power. I came into the pits, actually thought I had run out of gas. Turns out, I blew the motor. I was pretty sad.
  • In order to finish the school, I rented a Spec Miata from a guy who had brought an extra one and had a blast learning that car and staying on track Sunday.
  • I graduated and now have a novice racing license from the SCCA.
  • I towed the car to an engine builder in San Leandro, CA who happened to have a 12A first gen Rx-7 motor laying around. I left the car with him and he put in a used tranny, the rebuilt motor, he reworked the two carbs I had to make one good one, installed three JEGS gauges (water temp, oil temp, and oil pressure) and a nice 5" tach with shift light.
  • I am hoping to run six regional races this year, the first one likely May 23-25, a double regional at Thunderhill (two races Fri-Sun).
  • Tires: 185/60R 13 Toyo Proxes RA1 (required tires for Rx-7 class)
Upcoming: 24 Hours of Lemons, Altamont Motor Park, Altamont, CA, May 10-11, 2008

  • The return of the pisser.
  • We swapped in a JDM motor in the 1986 body and are going to return to Altamont to run with a mix of our last two teams.
  • Team: me, Joe Morris, Philip Milestone, Ryan Gilfoil, Scot Stambaugh.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006


Richard Conviser is the most blogged about person in America during June and July. I am not going to blog about Conviser. But, I just found this picture of him on the barbri website during my normal everyday web cruising and noticed that the filename for the pic is "conviserfrontal2.jpg."

Does anybody else find this worrisome?

I imagine my worries are too obvious to require stating outright, but:
  1. What types of other pictures of Conviser is barbri cataloging that they need to distinguish this one as "frontal"?
  2. How do I get a hold of "conviserfrontal1.jpg"?

Saturday, June 24, 2006

I'm pretty proud of my blog so far. I have to say it really captures everything that a blog should - inconsistency, no message, lack of creativity. It's been over 6 weeks since I posted and I haven't had one new thought come into my head. Some of you are thinking, "No no that's impossible," and it may be, but what's more relevant here is that when nothing comes into your head, to go ahead and post anyway. This is what bloggers do. How many times do you see the "I didn't do anything today" post. Well, neither did I, but I will do you one better - I didn't do anything for the past 6 weeks and I didn't even post about doing nothing. Now that's how we do it.

I have been studying for the bar for a while. It is very fun and rewarding. It is fulfilling all of my wildest expectations. I met my wife, had a baby, wrote a hit song, finished a novel, but most importantly learned about myself. I can't wait to look back at this time in my life and just say, "hey, that time leading up to me failing the bar was a great time." That's a memory I want to make.

Part of the reason I didn't post for so long (other than the reasons involving my limited attention span, disdain for blogging, having to do things in "real life" a.k.a. check my emal), is that I had someone object to some of the content of my first posting. Actually he she it took it very personally. Okay, it wasn't actually my posting, it was a comment. I'm not sure if it was a comment or even a comment to a comment. The whole idea left me feeling dirty. So I left for a while.

One of my favorite things to see on a blog is when people talk about how they've been lazy and haven't posted and then talk about how they are turning over a new leaf or something like that. Let me make something clear here. I am not turning over a new leaf, I am not committing to this project any more than I commit to doing laundry on a Sunday only to do it the following Sunday. This blog will remain inconsistent, uncreative, and quite banal. I recommend you don't read it or link to it.

Thursday, May 04, 2006


One thing I really didn't anticipate when coming to law school was how much lawyers and the law generally defer to doctors. Whenever there is a mention of doctors in our cases or whenever legislatures cite medical testimony, we immediately defer. This is because lawyers are inherently less intelligent than doctors and med school is much harder to get into than law school. I like that this truth is formalized in the law. In unabashed shame, we dressed up like doctors to take this picture for our graduation evite. Prisca rented out the OR.
I invented blogging. I'm not sure how many people out there can really say that, but I can. I also invented pantyhose and bifocals.

I just watched Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at this link. I actually found finding that link a tad difficult because some sites have taken down the video because of "copyright" issues. Is it still cool to put things in "quotes"? Or is that passe? How do you type accents in blogger? I invented this thing and can't even figure out how to use it.

Let me say a few things about this blog. I have no desire to tell you anything about my life or the world. I have nothing clever or cute to add to the millions of blathing dribblers on the internet. I don't even want to reread this in the future to get a sense of what I was thinking about when I wrote this. Nor do I seek attention or notoriety. I happen to like the feeling of the little plastic buttons under my fingers and that is the only reason why I am doing this. I also hope to link to other blogs that are infrequently updated and generally boring. I will do that as soon as I figure out how this works.
Hello world. How many blogs start with that?