Some say that people buy Ferrari’s to be seen in them. While that might be true in some case, my guess is that the majority buy would the 458 Italia for what’s inside as well as out. Beauty is only skin deep but this bella has it all. Amazing looks and amazing stats to match. The Ferrari 458 Italia is powered by a 4.5 Liter V8 that delivers 570HP and hurls the car from 0-60MPH in only 3.4 seconds. Top speed is 202MPH and it red lines at 9,000 RPM. Perfect exhaust tuning is the cherry on top. From the videos I’ve watched (I’ve only seen one is person but my neighbor has one on order so hopefully I can bum a ride when it comes in) the red line is high and the car gets happier the higher you go. Anyone used to driving a BMW M or other high HP car can surely relate. The happy zone doesn’t even start until 5,500 – 6,000 RPM’s and it gets even happier between 7,000 – 8,500 (or scary if you’re not paying enough attention).

Check it out..

Do some find it offensive to build a mosque (3) blocks from ground zero?
Yes.

Is it legal to build a mosque (3) blocks from ground zero?
Yes.

Does anyone have the right to stop them from building the mosque?
No.

Does the constitution prohibit them from building the mosque?
No.

Do any state or federal laws prohibit them from building the mosque?
No.

What can you do about it?
Complain.

Are we devolving into a Country of idiots who feel that our personal opinions are more important than our laws? Why is this even being debated? Obama gets accused of “hating America” by defending the laws and constitutional rights of the US citizens who intend to build it? (yes they are US citizens) Can someone explain that reasoning to me? You can also bet your red, white and blue ass that American loving contractors and American union workers will line up for a slice of that (13) floor construction cake. Shouldn’t they be accused of “hating America” too? How about the roughly $130m+ injected into the NYC economy for the project? That will pay lots of salaries, feed lots of people and help plenty of folks who are in need. Or is there something wrong with that too?

I’m not a fan of the mosque anymore than watching someone burn a flag, but they have that right. And you, me or anyone else who has an “opinion” on this matter has no legal or constitutional right to stop them. You are certainly free to bitch about it if that makes you feel better, but it will be built. Why not learn from it and question the value of your personal opinions vs the value of the laws that we live by. There are some who would say this glorifies the murders of 911, it’s a “victory mosque” and that it spits on the graves of 911 victims. When the day comes that you find yourself on the unpopular side of a politically or religiously charged event, be grateful that you will have the same rights as the builders of the mosque.

This is not a polical or faith based issue, it’s simply the law.

Voting Democrat:
If caring about people carries a liberal label (say that fast 3 times) then I’m a liberal at heart. My ENT (ear, nose and throat doctor) started lecturing me about “those damn people who drain our economy” and how they need to “get off their asses” and “get off welfare”. Well the closet Republican in me agreed but the caring liberal didn’t care to hear that. I reminded him that he’s wealthy (not all docs are but I know he is) and that he lives in a prestigious neighborhood, comes from a good family and was probably force fed tons of opportunity as a young man. In contrast and since he mentioned “those” people, let’s look as someone who was less fortunate. Sure I could run through the million reasons why but frankly I’m too tired. We can start with money though. Unless you are a truly “special” person (and I don’t mean Olympics), it would be nearly impossible to break that cycle of poverty and lack of education without someone caring enough to lend a serious hand. If your parents are uneducated, you likely are too. If your parents have no morals, you will probably follow suit and so on. Kids are clay and we all know that. So again I could go on and on but I’m tired.

Point is, without social services we could have entire communities similar to those in India where masses are born with nothing, grow up with nothing, grow old with nothing and die with nothing. The circle of life at it’s finest ? Not so much for them I suppose. And BTW when I say “nothing”, that specifically includes opportunity. In all fairness I’m not suggesting that my doctor is an uncaring person, because I believe he is. He was a Vietnam Vet and performed over 800 face and neck surgeries in just one year in Vietnam which makes me grovel at his feet. But for some reason he doesn’t care about the unfortunates (not the bums) he was referring to. 

Closet Republican:
This one is easy… money.

I’ve got plenty of republican friends who vote straight republican party line for the wallet and nothing else. No regard for anything other than their own personal or business finances. As much as I hate to admin it, I like that too. Tax cuts for the rich make sense to me since they typically create jobs. Letting Wall Street execs rape people I disagree with. Zap their nuts with a taser all day long as far as I’m concerned but that’s an entirely different issue anyway. So if I create jobs and contribute to the economy, why not get some extra benefit from that aside from my paycheck? Cutting my taxes would allow me to hire more people, which in turn helps others, which makes me a liberal again.

Doh! Now I’m totally confused.

My definition of cloud computing is quite simple… It’s groups of servers working in tandem to provide a redundant, scalable and elastic platform which you can use to offer services via a web browser. There are plenty of people who would disagree with my definition but I don’t care because I’m one of those 100 people that I mentioned earlier. Now let me break it down in a bit more detail.

We’ll start with “groups of servers working together in tandem”…

When I say groups I don’t mean two, but rather cabinets full of rackmount servers. Lets say for example we have 1 cabinet with say 36 dual proc, quad core Dell PowerEdge servers with 32Gb or ram each. Let’s also say that we have a SAN w/16 TB of disk space. You can build a really nice cloud with that setup BTW. Since the current cloud hosting standard (and I use the term standard loosely) is based on how many instances you can squeeze out of a single server, let’s assume that number is 16 (although it could be considerably higher or lower depending on client requirements I would). I’ve arrived at that number by taking the 2 processors that I have on a single server, multiplying that by the 4 cores per processor and then multiplying that times 2, which gives 16. BTW I’m using very rough numbers and I’m leaving a lot of things out because this is intended to give you an example of how it works. So, we are left with 16 instances that can run on a single server. Based on that math if we multiply 16 instances by the 36 servers that we have in the cabinet, you have the capacity to provide 576 instances and. Since all clients are different and some require greater resources than others, you can rest assured that you will not have 576 identical instances running on this cloud. It’s more likely that you will have say 100 clients using the equivalent of 2 instances. Maybe 50 clients using the equivalent of 4 instances. Probably even some single clients using all of the resources of a single server and then of course at the bottom of the revenue-generating totem pole you have the guys who only want the least expensive option and they will get the tiniest slivers of available. Anyway you’d never want to sell all 576 instances on the server because then you would leave no room for clients to burst for additional CPU or memory requirements. I’m not going into the software and operating system side of this but let’s make the assumption that your server instances can be either Linux or Windows based. Now that we have the technical details out of the way, let’s move on to the basic concepts of server instances and how they’re created and moved around backed up and restored.

On to the “redundant” part of my definition that I mentioned earlier…
The coolest thing for me about cloud computing is that everything is virtualized and therefore virtual. I know that sounds dumb but bear with me as it requires further explanation. The hardest thing for most people to get past when they try to grapple with the concept of cloud computing is the fact that your server instance doesn’t physically exist, yet it looks feels and acts exactly like a physical server. When you reboot it you can access the BIOS just like a physical server. You can slam off the power to it just like a physical server. It can get hacked into oblivion just like a physical server. It can be backed up and restored just like a physical server (but that process is way better in the cloud).

Another great thing about this is the ease and speed of deployment. If you need 50 servers in 5 minutes, you can have 50 servers in 5 minutes. If you want to configure 1 server perfectly and then launch another similarly configured server, you can convert your server into a template and then spin up another instance based on that template. If your cloud is built properly you will most likely not use local storage. When I say local storage I am referring to the physical hard drives that typically live within the physical server that your particular website happens to live on. The reason it’s best to not do that is that you lose redundancy across the cloud. If you have an attached storage device and all of your server instances live on that device, physical servers simply connect to that storage device, grab the instances that they need and then they spin those puppies up. What this means for the average user is that if your instances are running on a particular server and that server happens to fail, your data is still intact because it lives elsewhere. And if the cloud is configured properly, available servers that have adequate amount of free resources will be notified automatically that a physical server failed and it will redirect other physical servers to lend a hand and spin up any instances that were left hanging. This is the auto healing feature of cloud computing has so many people sitting at the edge of their seat. Also if you have all of your data stored in one location it’s much easier to back that up and again if the cloud was built properly, you would have redundant storage or at least a storage device with lots of redundancy built into the chassis.

Now that we’ve learned how instances spin up and how they can be moved around, now let’s talk for a moment about how they are backed up and restored…
Unlike traditional backup systems that connect to your server, analyze the data that has to be moved and then they download the data either on a file by file basis or a block by block basis, cloud computing typically uses what is referred to as snapshots. Snapshots are essentially the equivalent of a photograph of your instance and its state at the moment that snapshot was taken. Snapshots are instantaneous, easy to archive and are fully functioning replicas of your server instances. The key thing to remember about that is the “fully functioning” part. What that means is that they don’t have to be restored, they just have to be booted up. There are people out there who would say “yeah that might be true but they have to be moved from the storage array back to the.. wait a minute, you said everything lives on the storage server, nevermind”. In a nutshell this essentially eliminates the need for time-consuming and often problematic server restores from backup devices. If your cloud is configured properly, you should be able to set snapshots to occur on a recurring monthly, weekly, daily and even hourly basis if needed. You can then select the number of instances that you want to retain and you just created a vast library of backups that you can access if needed. Another great thing about snapshots is that they are 1 ginormous file which makes them easy to move around and securely upload to an off-site location or even to your corporate headquarters for extra safe keeping. Of course, they should be encrypted because they could contain sensitive data.

Now let’s talk about the “scalable” & “elastic” part of my definition…
Scalability is quite easy with cloud computing because it’s typically something that you can do on-the-fly and from a web-based control panel. Unlike expanding the disk space on a dedicated server which requires taking the server down, transferring the data, swapping the drive, etc. Cloud Computing allows you to resize the drive from within the control panel in real-time. Depending on how the cloud is configured it might require a reboot but I would take that any day to double my disk space. Same thing with memory (RAM) because that is something that can be adjusted at the user level through a control panel and you can typically expand up to the available resources on the particular server node where your instances happen to live. But let’s take it a step further and make an assumption that for some reason you feel you need 24GB of RAM for your environment. It’s very unlikely that the physical server your instances would be living on would have 24 GB of available memory for you to utilize. However with a few clicks of a mouse on the control panel your instances could be transferred to a server node that has no other clients on it and just happens to have 32 GB of RAM. So yes it is very possible for a single server instance to have 24 or more GB of RAM. The only limitation that I’m aware of is the amount of physical RAM installed on the server node that your instance happens to live on in that particular moment. But again since all of your data lives on a separate storage device, it’s easy enough for the controllers to instruct a server node that has 32 gigs of RAM to spin up your instances thus providing you with this ridiculous amount of memory that you might need. CPU scaling works the same way so there’s no need for me to go into the gory details again. Bandwidth is a non-issue because most respectable providers have an over abundance of available bandwidth to provide to you.

I could literally go on all day about cloud computing because I am completely fascinated by the possibilities. Clients love it for the ease-of-use and power that it gives them over their environments. Providers love it because of the economies of scale and centralized management. As the clouds of the world mature, I believe that power users will begin to let their guard down and start dropping dedicated servers in droves to hop on the cloud. As long as you don’t take a significant performance hit by moving your application to cloud, the benefits of being on a properly configured cloud are astronomically lopsided when compared to a typical dedicated server environment.

Cloud computing has evolved past bleeding edge and some would say even passed cutting edge but like any emerging technology, there will be pain aplenty. You can mitigate your exposure by easing into it and testing the waters rather than taking your website to turns $1 million per month and yanking it from your perfectly stable dedicated servers and tossing it on the cloud. Rather I would recommend that you incrementally migrate your environment or better yet, build out a virtual development environment that mimics your current production environment. Since cloud instances can be purchased by the hour or by the month, the cost to do this is relatively low. Point is you can build a full-blown development environment that would cost you thousands and take potentially weeks to deploy, probably within a couple of hours while you sip on a latte in your home office. You could stress test this environment until you develop a level of confidence that would allow you to migrate into the cloud without sacrificing your peace of mind.

Thanks for reading this and I really do hope this was helpful.

This morning I was flipping through the use and care manual for the refrigerator when I stumbled upon a section entitled “Sabbath mode”. Apparently Sabbath mode is used to disable interior lights and alarms for observance of the Sabbath. There’s also a function to disable the ice maker while it’s in Sabbath mode. This refrigerator even has a feature so when the power goes out in my home while in Sabbath mode, it will return to the Sabbath mode when power is reestablished. What I’m wondering is how did religion find its way into the manual of my refrigerator and ultimately into my kitchen? I’m unclear what my refrigerator has to do with religion or what religion has to do with my refrigerator. However, as long as it keeps my food fresh, does it really matter? Apparently for some people it does.

This is ironic because the majority of my friends are Jewish and I’ve grown to love them very much. However, my refrigerator having a Sabbath mode seems a little silly. I’m not a religious person, never have been, and likely never will be. I was forced as a child to sit through Sunday school, the complete sermon and additional Bible study classes on Sunday afternoon. It made no sense to me as a seven-year-old child and as an adult, I still struggle to comprehend this mass delusion. My entire family is religious and my mother prays for my soul every night. She does that because she is convinced that I will eventually burn in hell for eternity because I do not believe what she believes. This does not make me love her any less, but it does make me wonder if she has been doubling down (or up) on her medication lately.

Before I bust out a full rant, I’ll put a filter on my pie hole for now. The last thing I want to happen is for some insane, Bible thumping, heat packing freak appearing at my door, hellbent on destroying me in the name of the Lord. I blog for fun and not to insult or annoy people. However, my disdain for organized religion unfortunately does offend the vast majority of people that I discuss religion with, hence the filter.

At this point I’m reluctant to read the use and care manual for my range, microwave and dishwasher. If I complete the ensemble and splurge for the under counter wine cooler, I’ll definitely throw the use and care manual in the trash before I get an opportunity to read it. Knowing my luck, there will be a clause discouraging storage of my favorite wine. Regardless, I would prefer to keep all forms of religion out of  my kitchen entirely.

Until next time.

Some people say Dallas “has no soul”, or that it’s “plastic fantastic”, but I say it’s a great place to live if you travel a lot. One thing I noticed right off the bat was that most women were blond, fake that is. Not that it’s a bad thing and I suppose if I were a woman with mousy brown hair or started to prematurely gray, I would consider hitting the peroxide bottle too. In fact the first joke I remember hearing in Dallas was.. What’s black and blond and black and blond and black and blond? A blond doing cartwheels.

Enough of that, on to the important stuff. Life here is actually pretty good. We have an over abundance of (deep breath) restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, clothing stores, liquor stores, car dealerships, bank after bank after bank after bank after bank after bank, tons of pawn shops, a bazillion car repair places, too many movies theaters, (3d, reg, drive-in, independent, etc..) at least a couple hundred sushi bars, tons of strip clubs, parks, lakes, walking and biking trails, way too many doggie day care centers, lot’s of airports, auto race tracks, sports teams, horse racing, massive arts community, the grassy knoll and way more Churches than you could ever imagine or want to see in one place. You could start your Sunday morning in a Baptist Church, walk to a Lutheran, Church, mosey on down to the Synagogue, skip over a block to the Mosque, drop by the Hindu temple on your way to the Vihara (Buddhist monastery) and wrap up at the 3rd Church of Christ Scientist (whatever that means) all within about one square mile. I’m not joking about that.. they don’t call this the bible belt for nothing and the lord giveth mightily to those willing to venture into the lucrative (and tax free) business of Religion.

Dallas is a great place for the workforce and for business. Texas has as massive economy, great airports, highways and rail systems so goods flow easily in and out. Tech is big here as well since space, bandwidth and electricity are plentiful and cheap. Dell is right down the highway, we have EDS, American Airlines and lots of other big Companies that call Dallas home.

Personally Dallas is a bit drab when it comes to things to do. Sure restaurants, movies, museums and the like are fun but if you want to get away for the weekend, you have to either get on a plane or drive at least (3) hours in any direction (but West) to find anything that does not resemble Dallas. It’s also hotter than hell in the Summer and it gets pretty cold in the winter. We had a full month a few years ago when the temp was over 100 degrees everyday with no rain. We’ve had (2) bouts of snow already this Winter and just saw 12.5″ which is a new record. In fact it was below freezing for at least (5) nights in a row. We can’t really complain though because having lived in NY, I know all too well how mild our Winters are in comparison.

One of my favorite things about Dallas is that I know my way around and I know lots of people. Even in a city of Millions, I find myself bumping into a friend or acquaintance at the market or movies or museum, etc. It’s also a great place to go for long walks if you have a dog (or even if you don’t) although I’m amazed at how may people prefer to sit on the couch when it’s nice outside. I’m not qualified to comment on traffic since I live less than 1mi from my office. That’s by design but I do know that any freeway here can and will become a parking lot at least once during a typical day (weekends included).

So there you have it. Dallas is a fairly new city, it’s mostly clean, fairly safe, nice roads for the most part, great to travel in and out of and most of all it’s economically stable with somewhat mild temperatures. I would have to give it a solid 7 out of 10.

Till next time ~ John

My car is a 2008 M3 E93 (hard top convertible) and it has about 420+HP but weights close to 4,000lbs. While this car is clearly not track ready out of the box, it only takes a few thousand dollars to get you to the promise land, as I’ve learned. My ongoing dilemma has been that all I did was use racing brake fluid (Motul 600 or 660) and pop on racing pads before each event. The stock tires are Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 265/35/19 rear and 245/35/19 front, which are great tires but at 6,000 mi I’ve shredded the fronts and the rears have less traction than the reunion tour of New Kids on the Block. My goal is to be safe, go fast, finish track days without mechanical issues and save money without tearing up my street tires or my wallet. This all led me to the purchase and now I’ll outline a few reasons why I decided to do this.

Speed
Slicks provide better grip which allows me to go faster. Also I dropped close to 20lb of unsprung weight going from stock 19″ wheels to these super light 18′s which makes the car easier to stop, keeps the brakes cooler and lightens the load. 20lbs might not seems like much but it’s huge when it’s unsprung.

Brake Preservation
Dropping the weight on the wheels really does allow them to run cooler which will positively affect the entire braking system and will hopefully allow me to get through events without significant brake fade or other failure.

Tire Preservation
Since my stock tires are staggered (larger in rear, smaller in front) and the new ones are 275/35/18 square (same size all the way around) I can rotate the tires front to back, sided to side, corner to corner, flip them or whatever I need to do to extended the rubber life.

Money Preservation
While I had to drop $3,000 to buy everything, I can sell the wheels, spacers and lugs for pretty close to what I paid for them and I can even resell the tires if need be. So my actual cost when it’s all said and done will be far less than $3,000.

One issue is that since I am still relativity new to tracking my car, I’m learning in leaps and bounds as opposed to tiny increments. The events I frequent use different “run groups” which separate drivers by skill. Everyone starts in green, then blue, then yellow and after that you go red. After red you can probably be an instructor if you want to but I’m still trying to figure out why anyone would want to do that aside from the free track time in the instructor group. We are running at Texas World Speedway this weekend and I will be starting in the yellow group which is a step up for me but I have earned it by consistently driving faster than others in my run groups and by being safe, no spins and never had I gotten more than 90 degrees sideways. Which brings me to my next point that these tires are not very “audible”. In other words they are pretty quiet on the track so if you start to slide you don’t really get a warning, it just happens all of the sudden. The PS2′s scream like Richard Simmons at a George Michael concert. They let you know what’s going on and you can use that sound to make corrections. Slicks are not that friendly so when they let go (as I’ve heard) they just let go really quickly. So I’m a bit apprehensive as they also require a couple more laps for warm up. In fact I run (2) laps briskly and midway through the 3rd lap, lower the boom. At Eagles Canyon I got to run this new setup for a couple sessions and got sideways in a turn only to later lose all (4) wheels in another. Luckily I was able to reel it in quickly on both slides. Texas World Speedway is much faster so I will have less time to react but it also flows better so I’m not running 140mph to a hairpin turn and wailing on the brakes. On to the purchase and installation..

Tire Purchase:
BF Goodrich R1 275/35/18
Two words.. Tire Rack. They kick ass, heat cycled them for me, had them in stock and I got tire totes so I can transport them in the car without messing up the interior.

$1,048.00 – (4) tires
$      30.00 – Competition heat cycle all (4) tires
$      39.90 – (4) tire totes which are great BTW and highly recommended if you don’t have a trailer.
$      82.64 – Shipping to Dallas TX
$ 1,230.54 – Grand Total

~

Wheel Purchase:
D-Force LTW5 Lightweight Forged Alloy Race Wheel 18×9
Bought these at Turner MotorSports which is a great place but they did muff the shipping. They quoted me an extra $100 for 2nd day and when they realized they under quoted me, rather than calling me to ask what I would like to do, they shipped them regular ground. This could have caused me to miss my Sat track day because if they did not arrive on Friday, I was screwed. We were lucky and they arrived at 1PM on Friday so I had time to get them balanced, installed, spacers tested and then uninstalled and put in the tire totes. They sent me a sweat shirt as a “sorry about that” gesture and I appreciated that. Decided to go with flat black since they looked nasty and I like it like that.

$1,159.80 – (4) wheels
$     89.95 – pair of 12.5mm spacers (front)
$     96.95 – pair of 18mm spacers (rear)
$    69.60 – (10) 75mm studs (12 x 1.5)
$    69.60 – (10) 90mm studs (12 x 1.5)
$    45.00 – (20) 17mm (12 x 1.5) open lugs
$      0.00 – (2) loctite 262 thread lockers
$  204.32 – Shipping
$1,735.22 – Grand Total

Here are the tires delivered to my office and the wheels delivered to Autoscope with the spacers and lugs..

These things obviously look great and the weight savings combined with added grip means they should absolutely kick ass at the track.

~

Fast forward a couple weeks after I did Texas World Speedway, Nov 2009

~

Got to run the entire weekend (4 sessions per day) on these new tires and wheels and as expected they made a huge difference. Had one spin coming off the front straight which caused me to slide at least (50) yards off the track into the grass backwards. Don’t really blame that on the tires because I has just passed a good friend and was going way too fast into that corner. The spin was going to happen one way or the other simply because I was way carrying too much speed into the turn and I’m apparently not good enough to convert a rotten corner entry into a blazing exit. On the bright side, my lap times were cut by about (13) seconds which for me is HUGE. I also ran more consistently and on (3) complete sessions, all of my laps were within a few seconds of one another. Best time for me around Texas World Speedway clockwise was 2:04 and my goal there next time is to get under 2:00 by a few seconds.

Here is the spin and BTW, this is after I passed a bunch of cars:

In closing, for anyone trying to figure out which tires, wheels and spacers to buy for an E92 or E93 M3, I can honestly say that I feel as though I made the right choice. It was cost effective, everything is very high quality, the tires are awesome, the wheels are light like you would not believe and the results are in the (13) seconds I shaved off my lap times.

Side note:
I switched to Castrol SRF brake fluid for this last track day at Texas World Speedway and completed the entire weekend without any brake issues. Highly recommended over motul (which is still great stuff).

Till next time ~ John

~

Am I the only person having issue with horrible reception on AT&T in the Dallas area? I think not, since pretty much everyone I know who uses an iPhone is having issues.

Let me preface this by saying that despite it’s obvious shortcomings, I still love my iPhone. However I dislike the reception & rates. Data is fast, stable and works well almost all of the time. Voice is bad to the extent that I can’t (this is not an exaggeration) get through a call without some garbled crud on the other end. I’ve obediently followed the upgrade path as mandated by Apple. Bought the iPhone 1st gen, thought it sucked as a communications device but great for everything else. Held out on the 3G since I suspected something else would be coming soon so I jumped on the 3GS 32GB version.  3G was a huge upgrade in data but the voice started having issues right away. Went to the Apple store and they gave me a new one (kudos to Apple) which quickly started having the same issue. Went back a week later and they told me to reset the network settings and even suggested I turn off 3G and use the “older more stable Edge network”. That didn’t go over too well so they suggested I wait for AT&T to upgrade the system since that would “resolve any issues”. Reluctantly I agree but should have taken that nerd to the mat and made him give up a new iPhone on the spot.

Fast forward (2) weeks.

Tuesday – September 29th, 2009
I’ve struggled with the reception non stop for the past 2 weeks and someone told me today that they had reception issues, get a new iPhone from the Apple store last week and it works perfectly. So my guess is that Apple is instructing their staff to keep the masses at bay with the “AT&T upgrade” spiel in hopes that AT&T will actually do an upgrade one day. My other guess is that the hardware has an issue on certain lots of iPhones (like mine) and getting a new one that was manufactured in a different Chinese factory by a different child, just might do the trick. So I plan to bum rush a mac guy tomorrow morning and not leave his side until I get a new iPhone.

I’ll update this post in a couple days after I’ve had a chance to use the new iPhone for a while.

~

Wednesday – September 30th, 2009
Quick update from the Apple store..

Currently waiting to speak with someone for almost an hour now at the Apple store and jumped on a demo MacBook Pro since they have Wifi here . Will update later to see what happens, but I’m sick of waiting.

~

Friday – October 2nd, 2009
Two days later I have been using my new iPhone with much lack of success. This tells me that that iPhone itself is probably OK but as I suspected, AT&T still sucks. So there you have it, AT&T sucks and my iPhone is jonesing for a new provider. Somewhere I read that Verizon is getting it soon so instead of hearing nothing on the other end you can hear, “can you hear me now” over and over.

My three suggestions
1. AT&T should stop spending money on crap like this and upgrade their network
2. Apple should offer the iPhone through multiple providers and create some much needed competition
3. If you have a real job, get a Blackberry. If you’re an unemployed person with money, get the iPhone

~

Update – Sunday October 4th, 2009
After having spent the weekend in College Station (about 200mi S/W of Dallas) I can confirm without a doubt that the problem is not the iPhone, it’s AT&T. While driving back to Dallas from College Station I had a 2.5 hour call with no drops, no static, no in and out audio and it was crystal clear the entire time. That is until I got within about 20 miles of downtown Dallas and then the reception was very poor and the calls dropped twice until I got home. Unlike North Dallas, South Dallas is very undeveloped and one of the first signs you see of urban sprawl is the downtown skyline. So you are in the country and suddenly you see downtown. Point is I would assume that as my call jumped from tower to tower in the country, they were likely not oversubscribed to death. However the towers that carried my call into Dallas were probably oversubscribed more than AOL in it’s heyday.

So it’s official, AT&T sucks and the iPhone does not.

So anyway I told the guy “no you can’t have $0.25 cents” and he said “thanks allot asshole”. I said “what did you say” and he said “you’re a racist”. So for him the difference between a racist and a non racist is only $0.25? Anyway I suggested he attempt to procure gainful employment (AKA get a f*cking job) and he said “I have one”. Then I said “so why are you asking me for $0.25 cents” and he said “because I didn’t get paid today.. mother fucker”. I literally busted out laughing which I’m sure he didn’t appreciate.

Now this is the truth but I don’t care if that guy was white as a ghost and dressed in a Armani suit, I still would have said the same thing. So he walked off with his middle finger in the air and I laughed my way back to the car but when I got in the car I started thinking about the much larger issue. About his life and what made him hate me the way he did. I’m pretty sure he didn’t hate me over $0.25 cents, so it had to be something else. Then it occurred to me that I really didn’t care because I try not to generalize and am pretty sure that guy didn’t represent anyone but himself, and that he was just another dumbass. It was sad to see him so bent out of shape over $0.25 cents and ready to get into a fist fight because he assumed I hated all black people when he appeared to hate all white people.

So where does that leave us? Who knows and who cares.. I voted to Obama but agree with tax cuts for the rich (because they create jobs). I’m liberal but I believe in people taking responsibility for themselves and I support the death penalty. I’m tolerant but think we should lower the boom on people who milk the system from wall street execs to food stamp abusers. I’m a non believer but respect religion and feel that it has a valid place in society.

We all have a long way to go..

The Solution: Over $800 Worth of Stuff
After dropping $850 on racing pads and fluid over at Autoscope came the moment of truth

The Result: Continued Brake Fade
I expected to get a least a full weekend out of the car but I guess it was too hot, the car is too heavy, my driving style too aggressive and the brakes are simply not good enough. Got fade right away and I was done for the weekend. The event is a 2 day, 4 session per day event and I got the first 2 sessions of day 1 and was finished.

The Conspiracy: I was Not Alone
Also invited a friend who warped his rotors and he has an 08 BMW M3 E92 so I’m starting to see a pattern forming. Oh yea, another friend with an 08, M3 E92 blew out his front rotors too. Now you can call me crazy for taking that car to the track on such a hot day or say that maybe I’m a poor driver (which I’m not) OR maybe this car is simply not ready for the track right off the assembly line.

The Rub: May I present.. Exhibit A:

BMW M3 2008 – 2009 Sales Brochure

This is a stripped down version of the 2008-2009 M3 sales brochure (I removed pages that made no reference to the track to reduce the file size although almost every photo in the brochure was of the car on a race track) and it makes reference after steamy reference to the track capabilities of this car. If they are going to entice you with this stuff then they need to back it up by not balking when your rotors warp after only 40 minutes of track time. In all fairness they did replace my front rotors and pads a month ago after Texas World Speedway but it felt like a favor rather than an obligation. So this time I went ahead and made some minor upgrades to prolong the life of the brakes and save BMW from having to replace my brakes every 3  months. It was NOT worth it and I’m not comfortable driving this car on the track now unless it’s much cooler out.

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Update #1: Got my stock pads put back on today and all of the brake pad sensors were melted (sigh)

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Update #2: I already forgot my rule about no whining without coughing up 3 solutions to the problem, so here goes.

1. Cooling ducts for the brakes (front and rear)
Those massive ducts you see on the front bumper do nothing for the brakes. Drivers side goes to air intake, center is for radiator and the passenger side has a small finned radiator but I can’t tell for what. What I can tell you is that there are no direct or indirect cooling ducts moving air to the brakes (front or rear) and all four wheel wells are blanked off.

2. 4-piston calipers
Porsche has 4 piston, Corvette has 6 piston front and rear, even the Nissan Z has 4 piston calipers so shame on you BMW. Your literature touts track this and track that, but the car comes up short. (but I still love it)

3. Provide some factory options for better performance and durability
This would be tough but how cool would it be to get track worthy brakes, maybe a few other options to reduce weight and increase performance from the factory. This is tough because BMW would essentially be endorsing aggressive driving but it would sure be nice to roll some of that stuff into payment rather than having to spend thousands out of pocket for mods (that might void warranty) just to make it track ready.

4. Bonus Solution
Stop blitching (bitching via my blog) and start spending more money on a better brake kit.  Already bought new BF Goodrich R1 tires (racing slicks, 275/35/18 all the way around) and D-Force 18″ forged wheels (17.8 lbs each) so I am running faster already and really need a brake upgrade to keep getting better. (See below)

All this stuff having been said I still love the car, it handles like a dream, good weight balance and the low end torque is stunning. My complaint is the brakes, lack of cooling ducts and (with the exception of the rotors) lack of heavy duty stopping hardware.