Received my “5-year watch” last week; this was a gift from the company for employees who’ve worked here for over five years. The choice of the watch is up to the individual; traditionally these have been Omega watches but over the years people have gradually chipped away at this trend so although they still try to steer you towards getting an Omega, you can now easily choose something else without a hassle. In my case I chose the Class Sport from Zénith featuring a Zénith El Primero automatic chronograph movement.

I’ve been wrestling with the decision for months and considering it for years; originally I wanted an automatic (self-winding) skeleton watch—one with the mechanical movement visible from the front of the watch—but found that these watches were all priced far below or far above the price range in which I was looking. With much prodding and guidance from my friend Sandy—an ardent watch enthusiast—I shopped around and considered hundreds of different watches. I made my final decision independently though it was in part because I’d heard good things about Zénith; it’s not “exactly” the watch I wanted but I’m very happy with my choice nonetheless.

Tired of paying outrageous rents and not having anywhere to store all our car parts and equipment, my friend Jason and I decided to rent a house together. We found a fairly nice house in a good neighbourhood next to the San Jose Municipal Golf Course. I for one can’t wait to move in, as I’ll be saving almost six hundred a month in rent, won’t have to deal with noisy upstairs neighbors, will have a place to work on my car, and a nicer place to live in general (where the air conditioning works in a larger area than a 10′ radius in one corner of the living room). I got the keys this weekend and have started moving a few items, though I have a full month of overlap in my leases so I’ll have plenty of time to move in the upcoming weeks.

Amazon.com has a new feature on their front page that they’re calling a “plog” (for “personalized blog” or something like that). Basically it’s a blog-like journal of canned Amazon.com reviews of new products, customized according to what products you’ve bought/browsed from Amazon in the past.

The latest entry is about My Life, former president Clinton’s autobiography… in which I’ve incidentally had very little interest. What’s most fascinating and/or puzzling is how Amazon prefaced the “plog” entry:

My Life was released today; we thought you’d be interested because you bought Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball Calendar: Prima’s Official Strategy Guide.

Hmm? What’s the connection?

My friend Sarah and I were wandering around Japantown San Jose last night and the place was really depressing. At 8pm the place looked deserted, with almost all the businesses closed except for a few restaurants. Quite a few storefronts were empty, businesses that had simply shut down for lack of, well, business. In fact the whole place looked even worse than when I’d last visited it a couple years ago.

The busiest place around there was the Buddhist temple nearby, where there was some kind of ceremony—a funeral we guessed from all the people dressed in black.

I found myself low on cash and when we went looking for an ATM I finally realized why Japantown is so dead: there are no banks or ATMs closer than about five blocks, and almost none of the restaurants there accept credit cards. A reflection of modern Japan, Japantown SJ is not; post-war Japan maybe…

My friends and I use the Bush-ism “strategery” (or “strategerie”) to refer to an ill-conceived and/or poorly-executed plan of action (which would be considered “strategy” if it were not so ill-conceived and/or poorly-executed).

Saw Spider-Man 2 today, and went to a friend’s birthday dinner at Benihana… all of which had nothing to do with my home country, but happy Canada Day anyway!

… the chocolate ones that are almost like M&M’s but not quite. Anyway today a friend remarked that you can’t buy Nestlé Coffee Crisp chocolate bars here in the States. I’m not a big chocolate bar junkie, but just thinking about it is making me crave one…

It’s interesting, the subtle differences in consumer products across the US-Canada border, that for the most part you don’t really notice. For instance:

• Smarties here are those sour pill-like candies; in Canada they’re candy-coated chocolate almost like M&Ms.
• Kraft Macaroni and Cheese here, Kraft Dinner there.
• Kellogs Corn Pops are rather different here than in there; in Canada they’re more puffy, more round, and more sugary;
• Oreo cookies: I could swear they’re different here, the chocolate cookie part being a bit more floury, not quite as crisp… but maybe they changed the recipe or my memory is defective, because last year I brought over a couple packages of Canadian Oreos and I really couldn’t find much of a difference from their American counterparts.
• Here you have 1-quart milk cartons, which are almost the same size as the Canadian 1-litre cartons, but as Google will tell you, a quart is a bit less than litre. Curiously enough, soda (or “pop”) is sold in 2-litre bottles here, just like in Canada.

I had my first mechanical DNF (“Did Not Finish”) at autocross this weekend. It was my first run of the day on Saturday (and the car’s second, as Jason was co-driving) and about a third of the way through the course, there was a loud popping noise and suddenly the car just started shuddering as I continued to try to apply throttle. I eased off and then had the car just crawling along with very little power; every time I tried to apply more power the car would start bucking slightly (and not go any faster). At first I thought I’d blown something in the driveline—the rather-worn clutch being the obvious candidate—but Jason said that wasn’t the feel of a clutch slipping.

I limped the car off-course and back to paddock and then a look at the boost gauge (am I glad I installed one!) showed what the problem was: the turbo was not making any boost; every time pressure would go positive the engine would sputter. The obvious thing to check was all the hoses in the turbo system, so I spent about a half-hour crawling around under the car taking off the underbody panels so I could inspect the intercooler hoses. Then, checking under the air scoop Jason spotted the problem: the flex section of the upper intercooler hose had blown off at one end. “Coincidentally” this had happened at one of the clamps I’d loosened last week while working on the car. Oops! Apparently I hadn’t re-tightened it, or not enough.

After that it took only a few minutes to get the hose back on, everything put back together and the car back on grid. We managed to get most of our runs done in the remaining time, but things were very rushed—every time we’d pull in we’d have only enough time to quickly spray down the tires to cool them, change the numbers on the car and swap places. As a result the new Falken Azenis Sport tires overheated and were not very grippy at all.

Sunday went more smoothly with nothing unexpected, though keeping the tires cool proved to be problematic with Jason and I each doing five runs on the hot concrete of Atwater. By our last couple runs, even though we both drove better our times did not improve. Nevertheless I think I definitely worked some of the kinks out of my driving technique so it was a weekend well-spent.

I definitely learned a lot this weekend; first and foremost: “When something on your car breaks, the first thing to check is the last thing you touched!”

A few highlights from the past couple months:

• Went to the Subaru Rim of the World Rally in Lancaster, just north of Los Angeles, with a couple of friends. Spectated and helped out with a few minor tasks on the fairgrounds and the super special stage, putting up sponsor banners and signs. This was my first rally event and though the obvious difference between rally (or “rallye”) and other motorsports is the racing around in dirt, gravel mud and other rough unpaved surfaces, what struck me most was how grass-roots it was and the degree of camaraderie between the competitors, helping each other out when their cars got stuck or broken down. The atmosphere was very friendly; for instance we were just wandering around in the paddocks checking out the cars and one of the teams offered us drinks. It inspired me to want to someday get into rallying myself, and a friend and I have pondered building up our own rally car; not the Evo, of course—starting out rallying with a $30000 car is an easy way to make a $30000 wreck.

• Autocross: I’ve been autocrossing almost every weekend, and while results continue to be mixed—still progressing slowly up the learning curve—I’m still enjoying it a lot, and making quite a few new friends along the way.

• Installed a navigation system—the Pioneer AVIC-N1 in my car. The system features DVD-based navigation, MP3 disc playback, vehicle dynamics display, and a host of other pretty cool features. Though not without its quirks, for someone who gets disoriented or just plain lost as easily as me it’s proven to be an invaluable resource, especially when getting around unfamiliar towns such as Atwater and Lancaster. I posted some installation notes up on NorCalEvo.net.

• Installed a stainless steel clutch line in my car and replaced the brake and clutch fluid. A stainless steel line should hopefully “balloon” a bit less than the stock one, making clutch engagement a bit more consistent and preventing undue wear to my car’s clutch which has suffered rather heavily due to my beginner’s mistakes.

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