Posts Tagged ‘racing’

New year resolutions

January 2nd, 2010

In the interest of putting things on “paper,” here’s a list of things I would like to accomplish in 2010.

- Write on this blog more. To help with that, I joined Project 52 which is the subject of a recent post of mine.

- Learn some new skills to help pay the bills. I want to learn some programming and scripting languages. I am looking into classes at UW-Madison, MATC, Herzing College, and a few online options. There are a few people at the office that can manipulate the hell out of data with a few scripts. Jealousy? I haz it.

- Improve this house. There are plenty of projects to do around here. The ceilings need repair in the master bedroom and dining room after ice dam damage a few years ago. I want to remodel the bathroom and kitchen, but I think we’ll only have the budget to tackle one of those this year. I may let Geri paint a room or two as well as she has been bugging me about that for the last two years.

- Organize this house. As Geri and I have been putting the Christmas decorations away, it is clear to us that we lack organization. We’re trying to stuff 1500 sq ft of $hit in this 1000 sq ft house. I think it is time to utilize the attic space and come up with other storage miracles.

- GTD. I started down the GTD path, but I’ve strayed often. I use Things on the Mac and iPhone on a daily basis, but it is currently a glorified to-do list. I have David Allen’sGetting Things Done,” but I haven’t made the time to read it.

- Paint the garage. I think that is self-explanatory.

- Start saving aggressively. Whether the money will be used for a new house or for fertility treatments (more details in a future post,) we currently lack an emergency fund.

- Race! I ran in a 250 lap endurance kart race at Sugar River Raceway in 2009 and had a blast. It filled the void left by the lack of running the track at Gingerman Raceway in the Corvette. This may conflict with aggressive saving, but there’s also the component of my sanity to consider.

- Spend more time with friends. Geri and I have started this, but we could use more face time with our friends. It is a great distraction to the day to day grind.

- Start my damn podcast already. I’ve probably spent about $500 on software and hardware, and I’ll I’ve done is the interview with the filmmakers of “Welcome to Macintosh” which is posted here at the Typical Mac User site. I’ll use the podcast for items that can’t be covered by a blog post. It will be random release and random topics.

- Read more. I think the only books I read in 2009 were written by Wil Wheaton. I’m setting a goal of completing a book a month. I’ll need to get the GTD thing in place so I have more time to read. Should be a challenge.
- Most people will put something about losing weight or getting healthy on their resolutions list, but I started that in December. Ha!

Project 52 | Posted by Tony

Back home again in Indiana

May 24th, 2009

It is 8:45 local time and we’re headed to Indianapolis for the “500.” I’ve been going to the race since 1988, the year that Emmerson Fittipaldi put Al Unser Jr. into the turn 3 wall during the last 5 laps of the race. Bastard.

I can’t remember being this excited on raceday morning since ‘88. Race analysts and racing legends like Mario Andretti and Rick Mears say that 12-14 cars have a legitimate shot to win. I think the smart money is on Helio to win if someone doesn’t take him out during the race

Conditions today are hotter and more humid than the teams have faced all month. Humidity means more drag and downforce on the car, but the higher temps will produce less grip for the drivers in the turns. The experienced teams should have enough data from past years to make the right adjustments. Newer teams will struggle for the first 100 laps but should be able to recover if they didn’t choose the wrong gears in the gearbox.

My predictions:
My head says Helio Castroneves will win but I would like to see Paul Tracy Mario Moraes pull it off. Paul needs one last hurrah in his career. Mario has been running very well all month and his team, KV Racing, has been making the right changes to the car.

Milka Duno will be out before the halfway point and she will blame something on the car.

Sarah Fisher will stay on the lead lap if her pit crew doesn’t make a mistake today. She is a small team with a limited budget, but I would like to see her do well.

Danica has matured since her debut in 2005. I’m not sure that Michael Andretti calling the shots for her is a good thing or not. I guess it is better for Marco that Micheal isn’t on his pit box today.

The Target boys will be strong. I think Dario will perform better than Dixon today. Look for a Dario and Helio race toward the end.

Then we have the greatest variable of all, weather. Scattered showers are predicted during the race. Don’t remind my dad that he forgot to pack his rain poncho. He’ll just blame my mother anyway.

No matter what happens, it should be a great race day in Indianapolis.

racing | Posted by Tony