Simon Rules!

For reasons related to my life, I am not permitted to call my car “my other love”. So, I will just say that last week I said goodbye to my Lancer Evo VIII, and picked up a Lancer Evo X MR. Goodbye, faithful old car!

Hello, new:

The new car has a 6-speed sequential gearbox, which is technically a manual, but it has three automatic modes. In sport and s-sport, the car will downshift in anticipation of a corner and blip the throttle, similar to how racing drivers do heel-toe braking (that is, pressing the clutch and brake with the same foot). It also has S-AWC (super all-wheel-control), which is an evolution of the previous stability enhancement device that has been a part of the non-US Evos for a number of years. This version will actually kick out the back end of the car during a turn if understeer is detected in order to push the car to the centre of the corner!

Edmunds recently reviewed the Evo against the Nissan GT-R, Audi R8, new Porsche 911, new Elise and 2008 STi, and the Evo surprisingly flattened the $80,000 911 around a test track and mountain road. Only 2 seconds behind the R8, with some minor performance upgrades it would beat all of the cars in the test.

The car also has an altimeter, for when it is flying.

Following on from my rant about Monster Cables, here is the latest plight in my life. I got a satellite radio for my car in 2002 back when they were still pretty expensive, and I still have it now. It works, but the volume knob broke off. I glued it back on in only the special way I can, and now it is wonky (bent, for you US readers out there). So I called up Pioneer to get a replacement, and they sell one – for $35! This is for a piece of plastic – it doesn’t have the actual volume control included, just the little piece of plastic that you turn! They know you are not going to buy a whole new stereo over a matter of $35, so they can charge what they want.

Incidentally, I bought it.

This gets worse though. The radio comes with a little remote control for the most lazy driver who can’t even reach 24 inches over to the front panel to change the track. It takes one of those button batteries, and it has a small latch to keep the battery in. Note exhibit A:

This is a piece of plastic about 25mm across (an inch), and they charge $11.77 for it! It’s smaller than a freaking Lego brick! Hello people! You can hold the battery inside with a piece of tape!!

I am going to be one of those nerds who watches a new SciFi TV show and then posts on his blog a day later poking holes in the plot. Their first mistake: they picked the Mustang GT500 as the new car (the original was the Pontiac TransAm). It is a slow, boat-like wannabe race car that cannot turn corners without flipping on its back faster than Paris Hilton. It evokes none of the “wow” response that the original car did in the early 80s to impressionable young boys. Why didn’t they pick a decent car, like the Koenigsegg CCR (below)? Probably because this show is just a marketing machine for Ford.

In the original TV series, Pontiac refused to let the writers mention the brand of the car on air because they were getting so many requests for the car, which they didn’t actually sell. I thought Ford made a good decision when they announced they were selling the special Knight Rider edition of this vehicle, but then again, I discovered that the sheer amount of advertising for this car during the commercial breaks meant that the 2-hour slot had more commercials than actual show. So what did this spectacular car do during this 2 1 hour show? Well, it’s bullet-proof, like the old car, but only if it is switched on! In one scene, the computer was switched off, and one of the windows broke with glass falling all over the street during a chase. In the next instant, the computer was turned on, and the glass magically reappeared! So, the car has a reservoir of liquid glass that it can use to fashion new window panes at will? Excellent.

Also, in one chase scene, the car was driving up a mountain pass whilst being pursued by a Ford SUV. It was only barely managing to keep ahead of the SUV. For a moment I thought this was silly: an SUV should never be able to keep up with even an average car around such tight corners, but then I remembered the reason: this is a Mustang. In terms of gadgetry, what did the car have inside? We saw two things: an LCD screen (my wife’s car has one) and a pop-up gear shifter (the Jaguar XF already has one, see 1:55 in the linked video). Wow. “Back in the day”, the original Knight Rider had things that were never seen in cars before – tiny TV screens, GPS-like tracking and more buttons and lights than a 747.

Worst of all: William Daniels, the original voice of KITT, is still alive – so why use Val Kilmer?

It’s about time I upgraded my car’s speakers. I have a very nice head unit (CD player), but the speakers in my current car are the worst out of every car I have ever owned (except for my 1978 Mini Mayfair, which didn’t have any). They distort with bass and the front doors vibrate like crazy. I bought two pairs of Polk DB6501 component speakers on eBay, and they finally came after 3 weeks of anxious waiting. Component speakers consist of separate woofer and tweeter speakers for each channel, and a crossover is used to separate out the signals for each. Here’s one of the woofers:

Pretty.

I mounted two woofers on the rear shelf (parcel shelf, as we say in England), without tweeters. Putting tweeters there would only serve to pull the soundstage further behind the listener, and this is a bad thing, according everything I have read. Here’s one of the crossovers dangling loosely in the boot. Note to self: JPEG compression doesn’t work too well with images that consist mainly of noise-like areas.

I bought some Dynamat squares for the front door speakers in order to reduce any rattling. Dynamat is a strange product that consists of black sludge that feels a bit like Silly Putty sandwiched between a piece of wax paper and foil. You pull the wax paper off and stick it on the surface you are going to mount the speaker on. You then screw the speaker into place with the Dynamat sandwiched between them. It’s stupidly expensive – $25 for two 10×10 inch squares – and I bet it costs them pennies to manufacture that amount. It really worked though! Literally all the unwanted vibration in the front doors is gone! Here is a speaker mounted to the rear deck:

When all six speakers (counting tweeters) were installed, the results were impressive! I get more sound at the same amplification levels due to the higher sensitivity and the bass distortion is gone! On some songs it sounds like I have a subwoofer in the boot, which is what I was aiming for, because I don’t really like them. Bad news though – thanks to all the fiddling with settings I did, one of the knobs snapped off the stereo and I can’t find a replacement anywhere.

For my birthday, Amber surprised me with a trip on the Royal Gorge Train, which is a 3 hour train ride with dinner in a rare dome car, through the gorge in Cañon City, Colorado. It was amazing – as it travels, it has lights on the sides illuminating the gorge.

My friends Joe & Jen also gave me a ticket to see Mandy Moore at the Fox Theatre in Boulder this coming Friday! I have wanted to see her live for years but never had the chance. Oh, and we plan on meeting her. This is the great ticket they made me. Watch this space!

Shockingly early last Monday, I went to the DMV to get my new licence. I hate the DMV with a passion. My work visa was due to expire on Sunday but I hadn’t received my extension approval in the post yet. Hey, it’s the US government, they take ages to do everything. So I am caught in the middle of a stupid legal problem where I can’t drive because the DMV won’t give me a licence, even though I am legally in the country, a tax-payer, and have a fully registered and insured car. Cheers!

Driving along I-25 and a pick-up’s tyre burst (it looked like a retread) and a piece landed really close to my car. On further inpection when I got home, the side of the car is scratched really badly through to the primer. Can I just say that you people who use retreads to save yourself a few $$ are a bunch of cunts.

I have been doing various stuff in the last few weeks including getting our wedding programmes ready, repairing my old laptop again, repairing my new laptop, helping out a ten year old with his first science project (he got a medal for it), and trying to sleep amongst that.

Anyway, aside from both my laptops breaking in different ways (which bugged me), here are some other things that bug me.

MySpace

It doesn’t work very well, does it? I have mostly stopped using it and now use Facebook a lot more. MySpace is extraordinarily slow (sometimes my homepage takes minutes to load), I am constantly getting those silly “unknown error” pages, and people insist on decorating their pages to the extent that Safari and other alternative web browsers cannot sensibly render them. You would think that with all their money they could invest in a decent server farm and perhaps a CSS/HTML validator to ensure all alterations look right in every browser.

People Who Drive Like Lunatics

OK, here’s something that’s a bit out there, so stick with me. Turn signals are not optional. You are supposed to signal before moving into the other lane, not after or during. For bloody hell’s sake, why is it so difficult to look and signal before you change lanes? This week I have almost had my car obliterated four times because some fool in his/her 3 tonne beast didn’t think to look. Don’t drive in the middle lane of the interstate at 15 under the speed limit because it’s easier for you. Don’t. See that line of traffic streaming past you on each side? They all hate you. Your 4×4/SUV cannot stop quicker than a car in the snow. Don’t assume it will. Please, make the driving test more difficult.

People Who Send HTML Emails

ARGH. That’s all I will say.

Not Reading Manuals

Example: every digital surround system I have ever seen (other than mine) has been set up incorrectly. They are usually connected with analogue stereo RCA connections, and set up for simulated surround. Why spend all that money and not at least read the first page, which tells you how to connect it up? It’s really not hard to follow the simple instructions (manufacturers usually include a quick 5-minute setup sheet) and use the “auto” mode settings that most receivers provide.

Close-Mindedness

It bugs me when other people assume their view is correct just because they have not considered others. This can be as simple as the old argument between Macs and PCs, or as complex as the creation vs evolution argument.

People Who Say “I Could Care Less”

You say this when you are trying to express how little you care about a particular issue. If you say “I could care less” as in figure (a), you are implying that you don’t care as little as you could right now, i.e. that you do indeed care a little. If you say “I couldn’t care less” as in figure (b), you are telling us that your level of caring is as low as it can possibly go.

I have finally updated my page! I have put lots of new pics up, and some more old ones too. In December, Amber and I went to England for Christmas and the New Year. We had a great time and went to see my grandparents in Hull, and on the way I took Amber to Sherwood Forest. We didn’t see as many sights as last time we went to the UK, but we got to see all of my family at least. It was great seeing my cousins Sarah, Gemma and Andrew in Hull.

I also managed to go to Milton Keynes without ending up in hospital! For those who don’t know, there is a curse attached to me when Milton Keynes is involved. Once I went to buy some new trousers and a shirt and got involved in an accident with a bus – a bus hit my car and I ended up bleeding all over my old trousers and shirt. Then another time I went snowboarding on the dry ski slope and fell down, and ended up in casualty (ER) again!

Some kind person left a shopping trolley (cart) to go astray in the King Soopers near where I work, and the strong winds that day carried it right into the side of my car. I am getting it out of the body shop tomorrow, and I have got new BBS wheels from the Evo MR to go on it this weekend. Pics to follow!

What did I blow my money on this weekend? A new Mitsubishi Evolution VIII!

I got a great deal after talking the garage down $6000 on the price and giving me $100 above the trade-in value for my old Focus. Specs are 0-60 in 4.8s, 1/4 mile in 13.4s at 104mph! I got it in black, of course, and it comes as standard with Recaro racing seats, Brembos all round, all-wheel-drive and 17″ rims. Here are some more pictures.