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rexrcer
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Name: jon
Birthday: 8/25/1984
Gender: Male
Interests: solo2, cars, r/c cars, photography, snowboarding, r&d, gellato, crepes, boba, tinkering.
Expertise: research & design, photography, marketing communications, market analysis.
Message: message me
AIM:  rexrcer
Member Since:
3/28/2004
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| Lookee lookee, matches my seats too, ha!
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| This one was hard to keep under wraps :p. After such a long roller coaster day, the car is back together and fully equipped ;).
 Nice logo huh ;).
 The animated diff looks pretty cool, I like the colors :p. nite.
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| Hehe, Part I of II >:).
 Reinforced clutch fork ;). nite.
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| Some of the sites from yesterday's drive down the street :p.
 An unlikely trio.  "Just" a widebody, but not even wide enough :p haha.  GT3, with a not so hot bumper, I'm partial to the stockness haha.  And the jewel of them all, a pearl white Lamborghini Murcielago. Not the typical Lambo color you imagine. nite.
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| Its that time of year again. New Years! Another year has passed and just like they say, every year it feels like it keeps going by faster and faster. I'm thinking its gotta be the work thing. You work every day, day in, day out and everyday you go through the same general routine. Things changes a lil here and there, but for the most part its the same. You wake up, you hit the snooze, and finally roll out of bed. You drag yourself into the bathroom and wash up and get changed for work. You head in, following your same commute path, that same boring straight line that's spiced up with bits of traffic, or a crazy nut that goes flying by you as they rush off to a meeting that they're late to. You finally get to work and you boot up your machine and start up your programs, before you can finally get into the jist of things and get things done. At the end of the day you hapilly leave the office, just wanting to be away and not thinking about it anymore, where you can sit and let your mind wander away as you forget about your day. You fall asleep and the routine starts all over again. Course the day can have extra lil things in it that bring a smile to your face, or get your heart racing, but that same general routine still exists. For those special moments I wish I could slow time down, just so that I could enjoy every second just that much more, letting my mind wander and not forget about my worries. And of course speed up through those nasty moments that feel like they just won't end. We all know there's more than enough of that in our lives, at least in mine =X, haha.
This year has been a doozey. So much has happened, there's so much to reflect on and remember. The year started off in a rush. Mike was back in the East Bay working on a new development, income restricted townhomes. I was a shoein, at least in terms of fitting the requirments. Income? What income lol? Didn't have a real job that could pay off a house so I fit that slot pretty good I would say haha. But so the houses were pretty nice. You had your two doubles garage townhomes with a tandem or two in between the two of them. The funny thing was I liked the layout of the tandem more than the other two homes, minus the fact that it was a tandem haha. At the first drawing well over a 100 people showed up. I waited and waited as numbers were called, but mine never came up. I guess I didn't pay off Mike enough >: ) lol, jk. My first oppurtunity at home ownership fell through and becuase I didn't want to own a tandem garage home. I can't say that I was terribly ready for home ownership, but it would have been a nice change and a chance at true responsibility. Bout mid summer, my second chance came up again, didn't fare very well this time again either. My number was called, but it was for a tandem once again. Not exactly a prime choice, having made the decision that it would be a double garage or nothing. I put my name on a waiting list and I was soon called upon to make a selection, this time it even included some double garage options! As the excitement grew, we soon came to the realization that even if I were ready for home ownership, my paychecks were saying otherwise, lol. Making monthly payments would be right onthe ragged edge, it'd be difficult times to say the least. Unforutnately I had to pass on this great oppurtunity =(.
At the same time my time at UPEK was coming to an end. As the year carried on I could tell I was becoming more and more autonomous with myself. I had a daily agenda of things to do in addition to all of my long term and short term projects. I was starting to complete flyers from the ground up and was able to get things done. My two biggest projects came in the form of a product deployment and a cartoon flip book that illustrated our products. I must say that I'm rather proud of those two peices. The product peice I pretty much got to take over production of both the plastic shaping and fitment in addition to the paper insert and the contents that would be put inside it, so I worked on it from day one of dimpled snap together package turned in to easy open and shapely. The flipbook was another awesome peice that was just amazing to watch as it chagned and evolved as we made changes to characters, their profiles and their scene development. An absolutely fantastic peice that I am extremely happy with. The whole piece was just so fun to put together, even the approval process was fast despite going through what seemed like fifty million revisions. It was pretty amazing how quickly we got these two peices put together. As everything wrapped up I found myself being offered with a new job. After a few interviews here and there I found myself with an offer to start at the new place. After battling it out with my prior job and this new one I ended up going to the new job. My first real job, all on my own =).
Its been tough adjusting to it all, but I've managed to get comfortable with my posistion and I've even worked myself into a daily agenda of things to do. I'm still adjusting to a few things and I'd love to have a greater knowledge of all of our products, but that'll just take a lil more time before I'm at that level. I have been getting to travel though. I just started going to trade shows. The first one took me to Chicago and wow, what a city. For someone that's never been to a real city outside of San Francisco and LA, Chicago is tottaly different. I found myself in complete awe and amazement at all the sites around me. All of the parks were so much fun to sit and just watch your surroundings, especially some of the artsier parks, simply amazing what can be accomplished. I wish I had a camera when I went. I really should have just bought a disposable one just to take pics with, oye, next time I guess.
Orlando was nowhere near as fantastic. Everything was so flat, the roads were super smooth though, probably one of my top perks for being in Florida, too bad I didn't have a lowered car there on crazy stiff springs :p haha. I was probably most bitter about seeing the Disneyworld fireworks as the plane landed. It was in plane view and I just sat helplessly and watched as our plane went further and further away from the show. I wish I could have gone after the trip ended, would have been nice, well assuming I had people to go with too haha, oh well.
The year has been quite an amazing year for the car. It has undergone so much change and we've put it through so much development its hard to believe where the car was standing prior to the start of the season. With changes to class rules and PAX equalizations I decided to change the car's class and with it bring the car back to a more "streetworthy" state. It didn't take much to bring the car back to spec. All I had to do was put the back seats back in and remove the additional camber kit. A great loss, but a very welcome change so that I could have my back seats back. Just goes to show how far away I was from taking full advantage of my prior class rules. As the season started the car had all sorts of issues. Getting the balance and the front end grip back was going to be a task, to say the least. The front end just would not bite. The car pushed and wallowed in the worst of ways. The class change almost seemed regretable.
We started off with small changes in hopes of getting the car to turn. We put in a bigger front and rear sway bar to try to control the roll now that the car had less camber. It worked, to an extent that is haha. Things didn't stay simple for very long though. I spent a long morning measuring out my shocks in every dimension, a few nites and weekends remeasuring and rechecking various other dimensions, but I made the plunge and went with Advanced Design. Steve designed me a set of 4 shocks for the car. Custom made, custom valved, double adjustable, nitrogen charged race shocks built around my needs and my car >:). Its almost surreal, I have race shocks on the car, full fledged race shocks requiring rebuilds at least every two seasons if not every season lol. A bit higher maintenance, but the performance jump and the sheer capabilities of the shocks is absolutely amazing. Adjustable in every which way and fully user rebuildable at home all on my own. Of course with such capable shocks I upped the spring rates again, I think I'm on to my fourth spring balance change now. Approximately six times stiffer than stock. Its hard to tell when the suspension is actually compressing lol. Next up I threw on the motorsport rear perches, in all their articulating glory to help put down the full spring rate hehe. It rides firm to say the least, race car with A/C as I've been told hahaha. As though that wasn't upping the game enough I tweaked the alignment even further, toeing out the rear end to force the tail to come around. Its quite nice actually, took a lil while to get used to and deffinetely requires two hands on the wheel to keep the car steady, especially at speed, when the car likes to wander back and forth :p haha. Next up we fitted the car with 285 wide tires w/ matching 9.5in wide wheels. All the work pulling the fenders and trimming the liner and fenders was all worth it though.
 Just a smidge sideways :p.
Finished off the year with a third place trophy for one of SFRs biggest classes. Went to my first National Tour event this year too. Our trip to San Diego was one to remember, I'll never forget it. We left probably 5 hours later than we wanted to. It was a pretty cool caravan though, 3 tow vehicles towing a car on a trailer. We had it all planned out, we would make it to SD late evening into the morning, but still early enough to get some sleep before the practice day. Of course nothing ends up working out as planned. Not even an hour into our trip and we were already having issues. Blown out tires and underinflated tires began the curse. These incidents slowed us down imensely, we had to make so many detours just to make sure everything was still ok. Losing a car on the way down would umm, well be more than tragic, lol. After a million coffee and bathroom breaks we made it to our hotel, it was 7am, lol, longest trip to socal ever hahah. A quick power nap and we were back on the road, headed to Qualcomm Stadium for the practice event and registration.   Ben and I got a hang of the car pretty quickly and we were soon in trophy contention by the end of Day 1. What an exciting way to start the weekend. I gained a new nickname out of this too, 4th gear, lol. Nothing like a headrush to put into perspective just how blindingly fast the lil civic is haha.  Ken and Jaime in Jaime's Type R.  Gil and Noel in the Subie.  OoO... trophies.  Looky, looky, 3rd place!!!  4th Gear made a reappearance at the Atwater National Tour =D.  A wet start to our local tour. It was umm wet, and windy, a miserable start, but the car handled great lol.  The Lechon Racing Team :p.  Not everything lasts forever though. I got into an accident on the way home one night. If I was just a few minutes earlier or just a few minutes later I woulda missed it all and everything woulda been fine, but I guess its all in the timing. On a dark stretch of freeway I saw a semi truck spare tire laying in the freeway in my lane, I noticed it too late to avoid it completely and hit it end on. As I hit it the car was sent airborne, ala BTCC style and landed w/ a squiggle. Luckily most of the damage was cosmetic, but still =(.  Scharffen and Scharffen :p. I only got a chance to go snowboarding once this year. Kinda sucks, but it was a lot of fun, went up for a few nights and got to play in the snow with all my friends. I wish more of em could of come up but oh wells, next year, haha, or well, now its this year, lol.
I am starting to go biking again. Too bad I started so late in the year, only got a couple of rides in before the weather got way too cold and way too wet. It was a lot of fun though, deffinetely have to do more riding this year and get back in shape, not to mention lose a few pounds around the stomach line lol :p.
 Group pic of me, Scharffen, Dave and Dawn on our first ride, after getting lost ;) lol. I also had my first really big spill. I was coming down a pretty steep section, it was pretty rutted and rocky, and well hardpack racing slicks don't work too well in the rutty junk, doh! I was navigating between the rocks trying to stay on the hardpack when I realized that the brakes weren't exactly slowing me down even though I was hauling on em. One thing led to another and I saw what I thought was a nice soft bush. I went for the crash and landed in a thorny bush, but that wasn't the worst of it, my leg rode up on the tire, tearing up my leg and leaving black rubber tread marks down my leg hahahha. In case you're wondering I still have the tread marks and they're blacker now lol. Battle scars! Awesome ride though and the tread marks, so rofls hahah.
 Tire rash!
I ended up going to my old job's holiday party too haha. They needed a camera guy to snap off some pics. Hey free dinner in the city and get to see old friends, why not?! It was nice seeing everyone, but soo many people didn't show up, lame, wish I coulda seen them all again, grr.
 My requisite holiday, floral, wine glass picture :p.  Umm yea, they pulled out a chocolate machine, I couldn't help myself lol.
So here's to the new year and more change and excitement and everything inbetween =).
John Mayer...Dreaming With A Broken Heart.
Happy New Year.
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