+1

Everything seems to be in order for the 240SX, and I leave you with this:



(click image to enlarge)

It (finally) begins.

The CA18DET has been ordered from Jhot and is on its way. It'll probably be here tomorrow.

Also planning on getting some other parts soon:

Buddy Club Spec II
Project Nissan Down Pipe
Intense Power Dump Pipe
Catco 3" Hi-Flow Catalytic Converter
Koyo Aluminum Radiator + Koyo cap
Zirgo 14" electric fan w/ thermostat
ARC SMIC
Nismo FPR
Walbro High Pressure Fuel Pump
HKS Type-0 Turbo Timer
Ziex 512 (205/55/15) tires mounted on the teardrops
Autometer boost/fuel pressure gauges
Circuit Sports inline water temp. sensor adaptor (my car came with the gauge but not the adaptor)
DOHC power steering lines and tachometer (damnit I've gotta find a chuki in a yard soon... or maybe a part-out)
other stuff like water pump, thermostat, belts, hoses, etc. AND a million other things I'm probably forgetting...

Then it's time to start the swap. :)

I also decided to clean out the garage even more. I've spent a total of TEN HOURS cleaning the thing. It's now ridiculously awesome: full 8 feet of work bench FTW!

"Knock"

Brake ahead.

I put in about forty minutes of "quality" time into the car after school Thursday. I decided to check the brakes for fun, so I pulled of one of the wheels and had a look around. I also put on one of Mitchell's wheels—which I actually kind of like—so I'll talk to Mitchell about them. If I end up using them they will be painted gray, so don't worry about the clashing shades of white or anything. They're 16x7 +40 all around I think, so they may be a little sunken... We'll see...















And if I am able to use the wheels, this a hopeful photochop of what they will look like:



In other news, I've seen Borat twice now. "High five!"

The House, as seen through the crazy dream world of a camera phone.

...a basketball.

David Zucker is my new hero—Airplane! and this?!

P.S. I made this. :D

Doodles #1

‽

That, my friends, is the interrobang. Enjoy.

Snakes on a Blog

Snakes on a Plane = the best movie ever. Let it be known, then, that I saw it the Saturday after it came out and proclaimed its coolness before anyone else in the high school. Let it be known.

Another white car.

(click to enlarge)

It's a 1989 Nissan 240SX SE with 208,000 miles. The motor's bad, but everything else is good. Got a pretty good deal on it too, only $500 and the interior and everything else is in great condition. The guy I got it from said he listed it in the classifieds yesterday and it sold today! Right now it's still sitting in Killeen about 20 minutes away from my house, waiting to be towed home tomorrow. I think I'm gonna get a nice new CA18DET to replace the mal-treated KA24E. The deal with getting the car is that my twin brother was handed down my dad's old 1984 FJ60, and my parents told me they'd match the value with my car. The FJ is worth around $4,000 tops, so I've got $3,500 to spend on my car to get it running and safe. Better get my license and get started. :) (Probably not much time for anything else now.)

P.S. Sorry for looking sleepy in the pic. My dad closed the shutter before I knew what was going on... heh.

I can't wait to get started...!

Learning the animated GIF; still learning to cartoon.

Started with a copy of the Dave Chapelle show on DVD, ripped the scene with Handbrake as an .avi, converted it to an iMovie friendly .mov, added subtitles, saved, opened in Quicktime Pro and saved as image sequence, resized with Automator, booted into XP, animated as a GIF and finally saved and transferred back into OS X with a memory stick reader.

Latest photochop:

Suzuki Forenza (aka Chevy Lacetti, the "Reasonably Priced Car," in this season's Top Gear.)

Before




After




(click images for magnification)

Yes, that is an R34 conversion. :D All the grey lines were done by hand with the line tool. I was planning on ricing the car out from the start, and couldn't figure out anything more ricey than an R34 Suzuki for JDM d0riFT0 tyTeNEss. Hehe.

Damn AE86's, A Confusing Line of Nissan's, and RHD?

The 1985-1987 Toyota Corolla Sport GT-S costs way too much. I can't afford it, and in all practicality, it's a 20 year old car. So, I started looking around for a newer, cheaper, RWD car — and I found one. The Nissan 240SX:




The top model is the three door hatchback, whereas the bottom is the two door coupé. Those particular models are based upon Nissan's S13 chassis, which was their cheapest sports car sold from 1989-2002. The S13 was marketed as several names around the world. In Japan, the S13 was offered as both a coupé, and a hatchback. The coupé had fixed headlights up front, and was branded as the Nissan Silvia. The hatchback had pop-ups and was called the 180SX. Both were introduced in 1989 with a 173 hp 1.8 liter turbo-charged straight four known as the CA18DET. When they brought the car over here in the same year, they dropped the turbo charged motor because insurance on it would have too high for their target market, and put in a 145 hp single overhead cam straight four, known as the KA24E. They also opted to replace the fixed headlights on the coupé with the pop-ups from the 180SX and branded both cars (the 180SX and the pop-up nosed Silvia, both featuring the KA24E) as the 240SX. In 1991, the CA18DET was replaced with the then-new SR20DET, 2.0 liter, 205 hp, turbocharged straight four — but in North America, the 91' and newer models were given the KA24DE, a new dual overhead cam version of the KA24E. Many 240SX owners opt to replace their KA motor with the SR20DET as it makes more horsepower in stock form and has more aftermarket support. Others opt for the high-revving CA. Some people turbo the KA, but most KA's have over 200,000 miles and would need a rebuild anyway, so they'd rather buy a Japanese motor.

I have several goals, of which possibly none will be accomplished, but here they are anyway:

• CA18DET
• RHD (Pointless, complicated, and impractical conversion, but cool nonetheless.)
• S13 Silvia conversion
• White, with GANSTA TITE CARBON FIBER STICKAS YO

Just kidding. :)

It's just a tad subjective.

Cars

Two relevant car stories, one concerning the popular Pixar Animation Studios film, the other concerning what I shall be driving and working on for seemingly the rest of my life.

Cars, the movie, was good. Better than I thought it would be, as cars seem like a hard thing to turn into a suitable replacement for a human being. But it worked, and a 911 does fall in love with a race-car, and that's that.

The other car, the more important car, is the subject of my thoughts right now. I have several options here, but A) no sports-cars and B) no domestic's. I'm not a GM/Chrysler guy, period.

What I'm currently looking at now is the Toyota AE86, known here as the Corolla GT-S, a rear-wheel drive sport coupe/hatch known for its drivability and poise. (Not brake-horsepower. It has 112.) You probably know it as the Trueno, Sprinter, or some other variant. I believe it was in NFSU2 as a Corolla, so there ya go. It was also in Gran Turismo. Anyways, it's a rare little car (the hatches are impossible to find around here), but it's fairly cheap compared to *ahem* some other people's cars— about $3500 for a decent one.




The reason, you see, that I want this auto is that I want something to do. Working on a 'Yota that's been out of production for 19 years and that no one knows what the hell it is: priceless. It'll give me something to do, while you drive your fucking Jeep Liberty.

Have a nice evening.

608 Cliff Drive

Coming March 2007.

Bloody miser.

General Update:

• As of 31 May 2006, Belton Super Wal*Mart is verified to have at least (8) white Nintendo DS lites in stock. The launch date is technically 11 June, but screw the technicality. Wal*Mart can do whatever the fuck it wants. Also: (2) Xbox 360 premiums were in stock as well.

• This is going to be my next R/C. Then probably a TLT/Pede/Bruiser hybrid. That'll be a fun build. The one there is from a guy over at R/C Crawler.

• I've gotten stickied over at Ultimate Traxxas in the E. 'Pede forum concerning the Jato wide conversion. This is how my truck looks right now.

• This is probably the sweetest Bruiser ever. And it only costs $830!

• My very own Mantis has been looking very photogenic as well.

• Top Gear is the greatest show ever. Can't wait till Monday morning for the BT widescreen rip. :D

• The MacBook Pro's screen crack is completely normal to me now. Even if I'm watching a crappy show like American Dad on it.

• I'm still in love with this desktop I made a while back:



• Dudley called. I don't have to go to graduation. (Umm yay for being in concert band.)

• Speaking of concert band... *sigh*

• Last day of school today. Now it's boring summer.

Radio control fun.

Lies.

Been reading To Kill A Mockingbird lately— great book; however, the whole first-person tense is irritating. Nowhere near like a first-person videogame. The problem is, I'm not a girl and the "I" is. Very distracting; third person limited would be much better in a novel like this, although the style would be sacrificed. Alas, I ramble.

These past few weekends have been crazy. I'm back into R/C, my Traxxas Stampede has been running well lately with the Novak SS5800, yet I yearn for more power as a mere human. I've spent God-knows-how-much bringing my two cars back into circulation (maybe $100?) but it's been worth it. It's so relaxing to have something to do actually.

I also had band auditions, managed to do well. Several projects, had a symposium on whether or not videogames corrupt people, it ran 40 minutes and Mrs. Boren was very pleased. Also my abilitiues as a blogger were horrifically stunted, yes yes? The crack in my screen is less distracting now, school sucks even more, and I have a scavenger hunt for biology due Wednesday.

Bland update, maybe a video for you guys sometime. (That is if Videoegg releases a Universal Binary of their uploader or youTube decides to stop being completely gay.)

Either would suffice.

Pushing the limit.

Sorry for the delay— I've been busy getting set up on my shiny new MacBook Pro (2 ghz, no less). This equates to: the transfer of RSS feeds, bookmarks, video, and documents from my old rig, the installation of Microsoft Windows XP, no doubt with the help of Boot Camp, of which I owe deeply for its native ATI drivers allowing me to play Half-Life and F.E.A.R., and finally the wonderful experience of this:



Yep, that's my two-week-old MacBook Pro's screen. And yes, that's a crack. A real, OMGWTF crack in the screen. It happened last night — I was editing together a montage — and iMovie HD crashed. I lost an hour of work, so I yanked my earbuds out, punched the desk, and stormed the room. Here's the good part: when I yanked my $9 pair of earbuds out, they swung across the desk and smashed into the MacBook's screen. Not even kidding. Ten seconds of being frustrated = cracked screen on a computer that cost more than some people's car. I was deeply upset— I just made sure to stay away from the computer while I had my iPod on. Who knew? So I'm not sure what to do now. It's pretty distracting, and they'd have to replace the whole display to get rid of the problem. I don't even want to know how much that would cost... At least you can still use the computer— I admit I'm glad my earbud hit there instead of the middle. Either way, it's going to cost me selling my soul again to fix it if we decide to go that route. I just ponder, am I the only retard to have this happen or what? *sigh*

ZOMGWTF H.R. 4437!!!1!!!1

Protestors often show an alarming lack of knowledge over what exactly they're protesting— take, for example, the The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 protest and its relatives. The high school had a great morning today; the majority of the Mexcian (gomgomgom don't call them "Hispanic") students were parading around the campus, proudly displaying Mexican flags, face-paint, and green T-shirts— I laughed at first. Then I realized these kids had no fucking idea what they were talking about.

Let's analyze, shall we? The point here is not to describe the whole situation at hand, but to give insight into a very specific event that happened at my high school today regarding H.R. 4437.

H.R. 4437 is a relatively complicated issue for some (read: most) of the illegal immigrant population, all eleven million of them— and they're not all Mexicans either— some are German, some are French, some are Canadian. It's not a personal attack on the Mexicans as some would say (very liberally they say this). The bill:

- Requires up to 700 miles (1100 km) of fence along the US-Mexican border at points with the highest number of immigrant deaths.
- Requires the federal government to take custody of illegal aliens detained by local authorities. This would end the practice of "catch and release", where federal officials sometimes instruct local law enforcement to release detained illegal aliens because resources to prosecute them are not available.
- Mandates employers to verify workers' legal status through electronic means, phased in over several years. Also requires reports to be sent to Congress one and two years after implementation to ensure that it is being used.
- Eliminates the Diversity Immigrant Visa program.
- Prohibits grants to federal, state, or local government agencies that enact or maintain a sanctuary policy.
- Incorporates satellite communications between immigration enforcement officials.
- Requires all United States Border Patrol uniforms to be made in the U.S. to avoid forgeries.
- Institutes a timeline for deployment of US-VISIT to all land-based checkpoints.
- Requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to report to Congress on the number of OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) apprehended and deported and the number of those from states that sponsor terror.
- Formalizes Congressional condemnation of rapes by smugglers along the border and urges Mexico to take immediate action to prevent them.
- All illegals before deported must pay a fine of $15,000 to the state in which they were apprehended.
- All children born to illegal immigrants in the United States will become wards of the state.
- Requires DHS to conduct a study on the potential for border fencing on the US-Canadian border.
- Sets the minimum sentence for fraudulent documents at 10 years, fines, or both, with tougher sentencing in cases of aiding drug trafficking and terrorism.
- Establishes a Fraudulent Documents Center within DHS.
- Increases penalties for aggravated felonies and various frauds, including marriage fraud and document fraud.
- Establishes an 18-month deadline for DHS to control the border, with a progress report due one year after enactment of the legislation.
- Requires criminal record, terrorist watch list clearance, and fraudulent document checks for any alien before being granted legal immigration status.
- Reimburses states aiding in immigration enforcement.
- Housing of illegals will be considered a felony and subject to no less than three years in prison.
- Allows deportation of any illegal alien convicted of driving under the influence (DUI).
- Adds human trafficking and human smuggling to the money-laundering statute.
- Increases penalties for employing illegal aliens to $7,500 for first time offenses, $15,000 for second offenses, and $40,000 for all subsequent offenses.*

Notice this: It absolutely does not say anything in here about "Mexicans losing their freedoms" etc. etc. The problem is, all of the Mexicans at school are taking this as a personal attack, and saying that the government "is out to get them" and "my mommy is going to be deported" and everyone is pretty much buying into their bullshit. Read over the bill, do it. Come on. The problem is that most protestors have no idea what they're talking about.

My Spanish teacher, Crystal Wiley, has said this repeatedly: the only reason our Mexicans in BHS are doing this is because Temple's Mexicans did it, and Temple's Mexicans did it because Dallas's Mexicans did it, and the pattern goes on, leading right back to real protests, not high school kids waving flags and talking about Jumping Whitey— it's disturbing in its insanity, honest-to-God. I'm shocked that someone as "learn-ed" as the Mexicans make such a valid argument: Brain Tetzlaff asked one why they were protesting, and they said, "OUR FREEDOM!" And I laughed— everyone did. They're free. They're in America. They're an empty body to fill with the protest of the week, a useless shell of a person with no desire to truly form an opinion, and they expect us to act reasonable for it— we have some retarded people here, folks. And I'm sad to say they're from my high school and they managed to organize a rally with the press, cops, and everyone doing nothing seventh period— at best, they've managed to be real good skippers. *sigh*

I'm way too tired to keep thinking about this, honestly. I planned on going on much longer, but it's just hard to form coherent thoughts right now. I think I may watch the local news tonight and see if they actually air footage of the official rally organized by the prinicpal, and what exactly they say— it's going to be interesting, that's almost certain. 20/20 is on now, talking about the issue: may watch some of that. Oh well, here's nothing. Hope it wasn't boring, my myriad of readers.

*Source is Wikipedia, where it's flagged for "needs citation."

Less schoolish matters.

I'm still planning something big and new, but there was a delay that I couldn't control— a shipping delay. So stay tuned, hopefully I'll have time to finish this off next week, but homework is pushing me to maybe next weekend. Yikes.

The execution of arbitrary code.

I've drawn a startling parallel between myself and a computer: the execution of arbitrary code. As the nerdy so well know, arbitrary code is code executed (run) for the heck of it— no point except to make no point. Operating systems have weaknesses which can be exploited in order to do such things, such as the rootkit fiasco Sony started in November or a typical XP virus— running code the system is not necessarily meant to be run to get somewhere. This is exactly how our weaknesses as humans come into play: we all have our weaknesses, we all have our desires and dreams. It's human nature. But: others exploit us, like a computer virus, using our weaknesses to exploit our weakness and run their own arbitrary code. It's a rudimentary conclusion, but the nonetheless an important thing I realized: just so much as hackers work hard to crack Sony's PSP FW v2.60, other less obvious people work hard to run this "arbitrary code" on us. It's startling that I had to draw a parallel with computers to get this point across to myself, but its the way I think— no matter how twisted it is. So I'm off to be exploited like a dirty little rootkit. :-D

The pre-U.I.L. band concert was tonight; it went desperately okay, as interestingly worded as that sounds. Tomorrow is going to be the fun day, that's for sure. I've got a lot of stuff coming up to be working on, and I'm excited. Finally ditching this creative block (ahem) I've been having a while too. Let's just say: no more progress bars saving Photoshop documents from now on... (Pending it arrives tomorrow as planned.) Hopefully I'll have something up this weekend just to give you a preview on what exactly I plan on doing. And yes I'm happier than a lottery-winning drunk.

Determination vows "considerable."

I was determined to not make a new post unless I had successfully purchased a MacBook, as sort of a weak attempt at strike, which had the considerable effect of making me extremely thirsty. The computer, I suppose, is simply a mythical object, shrouded in mystery "like the sun" and sadly lacking in "OMG I EXIST" department. My arrogance deceives me and you win, MacBook Pro. You're ugly, harsh name and stunning factor have done me in—

Enough of that.

The Holy Grail aside, my legs hurt. Hurt as in stiff. Hurt as in the only thing I can do is sit around and play Xbox— damn-I'm-cool-right-now. Hurt as in why does Austin Park 'n' Pizza have such tiny little go-karts. Hurt as in hurt, misconstrued, indescribable hurt. So hurt I sit here, often not smiling and not making happy comments about your earrings, sad one. Hurt as in the burning of a thousand babies — oh wait that's laughter — nevermind. Speaking of such, What's the difference between a baby and a $20 bill? [Pause here to think, please. -Ed.] ...I've never thrown away a $20 bill before.

Had a test today in Mrs. Allen's, woe upon me for the dark sin I hath committed, for cheating hath not taketh place upon this day, but failure hath, and my words are like a ribband around a velvet slipper, without a point and without a single place to attach to, oh, woe, upon me! Mercutio deserved not to die, for he was without fault, for he was the one who had been of intelligence and smug arrogance— my hero.

Did I mention we're reading Romeo and Juliet in English? Enough of that.



I've gone and downgraded my PSP's firmware again to v1.5, as you can see in my screenshot*; it seems I'm going to stay there a while. Only legit 50's like me still use v1.5— you're a legit retard if you use v2.6 and play Splinter Cell. Legit back-ups FTW!

Oblivion is mind-numbingly awesome.


* I apologize for the black line, it seems my PSP capture tool is not particularly the best... Oh well. Oh yeah and I blurred out the MAC address. Why? Because I'm paranoid.

Praise the Lord.

My hard drive successfully mounted in the G4 tower— the enclosure was bad, not the drive, so my legit backups (roflcopters) of Futurama are fine, along with Family Guy, House, and 24. Yayness. I've also managed to drool more about the MacBook, but the thought of actually ordering one then waiting 3-4 weeks for it to get here makes me sick. I wants it now, damnit. Oh well, just a material thing. Not something worth freaking out about.

The PSP's price has been knocked down to $199, but a cost: 2.61 firmware. That means no homebrew, no emulators, and no downgraders. Stupid Sony— the only thing I use my PSP for is Nintendo emulators, and blocking more homebrew only alienates the community even more. There's no way I'm upgrading past 2.0 now; our friendly neighborhood hackers over at PS2NFO will just find more ways to work around firmware restrictions, and I find myself disgusted because I have to update to 2.5+ to player Daxter, or pirate the thing. So I have no choice— it's a situation I don't like to be in, but oh well. I can't bring myself to upgrade.

Oblivion seems to be the new "it" for Xbox 360, so I'm looking forward to getting my hands that pretty soon, but the idea of Alex and I fighting over it seems to be pretty disconcerting. It's already a big enough problem to share as it is, let alone share a game like Oblivion: it's an obsession. So here we come painful sharing. Let's do this in style.

I have a speech to give tomorrow in Comm. App., it's pretty much going to suck but who cares. That's the only thing I have to worry about right now, and it's a distant way off— almost.

Half-Empty

I've been in an ugly state these past few days, often wondering exactly why school exists for any other reason than to make me crazy; its boring and cruel disregard for intelligence is forcing me to sleep in class instead of learning in class, and I'm fairly certain that I missed something — the ability to be smart comes with the ability to be ignorant — and I'm left somewhere in-between, thinking about the things that drive me to happiness and the things that drive me to anger, typically in the opposite order stated above. My brand-newish firewire hard drive, for example: it no longer seems to want to mount, so I'll be forced into a situation of anger and hate due to the fact that updating from 10.4.3 to 10.4.5 while it was plugged in totally obliterated my data, of which I hadn't backed up yet. (I didn't have anything to back it up to, for one thing.)

But evils, necessary as they may be, still push me to what Kali so eloquently describes as "my man period," of which I honestly hate— I hate hating, I hate writing about how I hate hating, and I honestly wish hating was less hateful so I won't hate myself nearly as much when I hate on other people. Oh bloody well, mate, 'cause it's not going to change anytime soon, for me at least— I've got many more people to mistreat, in some valiant effort to prove that I'm useful, and not a worthless slob incapable of gathering the motivation necessary to read a book and take a drivers' test, because I'd rather have a new computer to play with. The people I choose to take on are not the weakest, but the middle-class of the social structure in school, insecure in their friendships, moods, and dress. They're the vulnerable ones; they're the ones to bully if you have to bully, because they get hurt the most, and take it the most personal— easy targets with ripe rewards, and, once, again, I find myself hating what I write and how I think once more, but who cares. It might be all a charade for all I know.

Just realized:

Google "decline1."

My Xanga is the first hit. Heh.

Enough remodeling, I'm moving in.

I think I may have managed to fix this template into something I like a tad bit more— my apologies to the original creator, 
Dan Cederholm, but it's pretty much open source right? Heh. 

Oh well. I'm off to playing Halo or something.

For Shame

I feel cliché in going as far as bashing Myspace again, but such a useless service seems to spur anger in my soul, which is typically happy and sterile. It crashed Camino. I wanted to actually use it for once to look at someone's profile, and I'm greeted with the astounding, shocking event: crash and burn. Myspace's servers are what? Ten year-old Texas Instruments laptops? Come on. I know you have 1234123452345 users, Mr. Myspace, but so do Maddox, Amazon, and eBay. Get the picture. Make your site usable, make it something worthwhile, block slideshows directly embedded in the profile, block video, block music. Personality may be "cool" but it ain't at the expense of saneness everywhere. So I move to Blogger, free, fast, and with a focus on something that could lead to somewhere. Plus a widget so I can post from Tiger's Dashboard. Yayness. So this rant ends.

Spring Break saw the family going to Houston, half the week at Lauren's, half the week at the Mercer condominiums— another typical trip, with the exception of an exciting visit to Body World at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, and I can attest that seeing a skinned man in real life is about as gruesomely disgusting as it sounds. I can say without a doubt now that I have seen, in person, a man holding his heart in his hands, conveniently skinned and kneeling for my viewing pleasure. Disgusting, is it not? They didn't let me take pictures either. Darn.

I'm still trying to figure out how to make my own template for this site. I feel like making a real web site sometimes, but the realization of coding makes me tired. So, let's code for something that's slightly easier! I think I may just poke around in the code of a template and change some of the colors/images/etc. I like the look of this, but not necessarily the color. Black and white would be much better.

MacBook Pro's are insanely, disgustingly awesome. I love them. I want to mingle with them. They pwn you n00bs. I saw them at the Galleria's Apple Store— I think I'll order one now, despite the hissing core, flaming MagSafe's, and bright strip on the LCD. Screw Rev. A "curses." I also want to boot XP on them so eventually I'll be able to play some games. Right now there aren't any driver's for the ATI GPU in the Mactel's. Half-life 2 soon though, soon. Then maybe F.E.A.R. I could always just tempt myself to World of Warcraft too, but $15/month is too much to get banned for using a macro keyboard. Stupid Blizzard and their virtual dictatorship.

I guess it's too bad I really can't get a MacBook Pro... yet. :-D

These times, they change.

It's typical me: off to a new blog, disgusted by Xanga's immaturity, and quite frankly still hating the hell out of Myspace. It's only purpose is to give our friendly neighborhood pedophile a hang-out spot, having been banned from the local Ben & Jerry's and desperate because no one under 13 goes to Starbuck's, and that's the only place within walking distance from his job in a faceless corporation where he might have the chance of glimpsing something he deems interesting. Myspace= teh suck.