Just hangin’ in the warm Texas summer

Nothing much going on today, woke up early, had breakfast before noon and lunch before 1400, read some funnies on the computer, and then read a magazine that came in the mail. I’m just posting to the blog because I’m bored and I have a compulsion to write something, anything.

I did a weight comparison between the kit Speedway Motors sells and what I’m building with the same body and basically their frame is two 10 foot lengths of 1.5″ by 3″ 0.120 wall tubing, not very rigid and basically just enough to keep all 4 wheels pointed in the same direction. Tube weight is roughly 84 pounds for just the rails, plus a few pounds for the crossmembers and we’re looking at about 110 pounds for the complete frame.

The frame (latest iteration) for my car is a bit more complex than that and while it uses lighter tubing it uses more of it. The latest iteration has a few inches less front hoop for the cage, but a couple inches more rear hoop to keep the driver’s head and hands inside the cage. The previous iteration had both hoops at the same height and just over the driver’s head but the required bracing around the inside combined with my hip injuries made for a car I couldn’t get out of after I got in. I could have dropped in no problem, but getting back out requires contortions I can’t do anymore. Anywho, rounding up on the weight calculator gets me 1.77 pounds per foot, and a quick and dirty calculation of how many feet I have gets me, 86 feet or about 152 pounds for the Sprint-T frame. A little heavier, but orders of magnitude more rigid in just about every direction, x,y,z, and θ (torsion).

I’m still checking in every day to increase my chances of winning the 0.060″ overbored 302 that Power Nation is giving away, but I’m still noticing that I am still 10 friends short of the maximum 10 friends entering on my page. C’mon people, I know I have at least 10 people reading this blog that want to help me win this engine.

I bought another e-book, but this one came with a dead tree edition too. Or maybe I should say I bought a dead tree book that came with an e-book. A web comic I read has decided to do an art book for the last 10 years. They posted the first page February 11 2010 and the art book goes through 2020 with lots of erotic side stories (shows boobs). I donated to the Kickstarter and now I get a copy of the art book in dead tree and electronic formats. The dead tree edition is due sometime in December. I’ll share some pictures when I get it.

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Still hot but bearable

I knocked the thermostat down a couple of degrees F and it is much better. The current temperature in the office is 77°F which feels much better than the temperature of 79°F from before. It’s amazing how much just 2° makes in comfort level.

I’m still mostly on a daywalker sleep schedule. I say mostly because I need to be up before noon, but I haven’t been. I need to get up earlier to go to sleep earlier. Also, I need to take my sleep meds earlier to fall asleep earlier. But things are still not working up to tolerances, never mind working up to specifications, and I don’t know how to get up to tolerances.

The end of next month is the 20th anniversary of my death by murder by motor vehicle. It is weird for me to think about it, but I was dead 20 years ago. I still have nightmares about it that I didn’t have right after the wreck because I was still having nightmares about the horrible abuse I had growing up. But the statute of limitations expired a long time ago on that and on the guy trying to kill me (because it was a misdemeanor when it happened and the SoL was only 4 years) basically the ship on that one sailed and sank before Obama’s first administration. Hell Obama hadn’t even run when the SoL expired at the beginning of the second Bush term. Not right at the beginning, the wreck was 12 days before Bush was interrupted reading an age-appropriate book to elementary school children to get told about the first plane striking the Twin Towers so the SoL expired well into the first year of the second term of the Bush administration.

But in less than 60 days it will be two decades since one life ended and a different life started and I’m still trying to grasp the significance of the event.