Apeboy's Musings…an 800lb Gorilla with digestive problems

GearSpace - The Car Enthusiast Social Network

GearSpace is a social network site for car enthusiasts that I have created. Registration is free, and all features are available out of the box.

The idea of the site is to combine social networking aspects of Facebook/MySpace, with full blogging.

The site offers image and document hosting, group creation (e.g., for clubs) with event calendars, discussion forums, and full profiles for gear heads to maintain.

This is a service I should have setup for the reef tank community, because it was very needed. Cars already have a good presence on the web, so this probably wont take off, but at least I got experience deploying and managing it.

…so I don’t go burning through my very expensive RFTs, I went ahead and purchased a new set of tires/wheels for the track.

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In an impulsive run, Nia and I did some autocross this weekend at the  Central Florida Racing Complex.

We went with her new Meep… a 2007 Mini Cooper S… bone stock!

Meep put up some respectable times as we both took turns on the track.

Here’s a preliminary listing of times:

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It seems trendy to announce your departure from the S.S. Titanic of political parties (the Republican party), but I liked some of the statements Sullivan made in his recent article, “Leaving the Right“. I added stars besides the ones I felt really really moved by.

**I cannot support a movement that claims to believe in limited government but backed an unlimited domestic and foreign policy presidency that assumed illegal, extra-constitutional dictatorial powers until forced by the system to return to the rule of law.

I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt.

I cannot support a movement that so abandoned government’s minimal and vital role to police markets and address natural disasters that it gave us Katrina and the financial meltdown of 2008.

**I cannot support a movement that holds torture as a core value.

**I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power.

**I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful.

I cannot support a movement which has no real respect for the institutions of government and is prepared to use any tactic and any means to fight political warfare rather than conduct a political conversation.

**I cannot support a movement that sees permanent war as compatible with liberal democratic norms and limited government.

**I cannot support a movement that criminalizes private behavior in the war on drugs.

I cannot support a movement that would back a vice-presidential candidate manifestly unqualified and duplicitous because of identity politics and electoral cynicism.

**I cannot support a movement that regards gay people as threats to their own families.

**I cannot support a movement that does not accept evolution as a fact.

I cannot support a movement that sees climate change as a hoax and offers domestic oil exploration as the core plank of an energy policy.

I cannot support a movement that refuses ever to raise taxes, while proposing no meaningful reductions in government spending.

I cannot support a movement that refuses to distance itself from a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh or a nutjob like Glenn Beck.

I cannot support a movement that believes that the United States should be the sole global power, should sustain a permanent war machine to police the entire planet, and sees violence as the core tool for international relations.

Does this make me a “radical leftist” as Michelle Malkin would say? Emphatically not. But it sure disqualifies me from the current American right.

To paraphrase Reagan, I didn’t leave the conservative movement. It left me.

I continue to hold many of the Libertarian principles that made me vote that way in the two previous elections (before the last one), but right now, the banner is being carried by impostors scrambling to pickup the pieces and fill the vacuum left by 8 years of Bush and Neoconservatives.

..google the title and you’ll get a number of responses for this article. I found the reference in a recent Paul Krugram article on a similar subject.

Some choice excerpts from the original 1964 paper;

But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.

another good one;

Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist agents, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by Jesuit agents, so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.

Went to our first Tebow gator game this weekend. Our previous game had been while Chris Leak was here.

A little slow to start (as they’ve been all season, it seems), but a win is a win!

So this Halloween we decided to go kayak camping. We’re normally pretty bad campers… setup camp in a comfy park with showers and amenities, and for dinner make a run to publix to grill something yummy.

Though we only did it overnight, this was a bit rougher than normal.

We paddled aprox. 5 miles from the Cedar Key #4 bridge public boat ramp eventually leading us to the Hall Creek entrance. We then took the creek up to the “campsite” entrance.

When we first arrived at the “campsite”, we couldn’t really tell much, as it wasn’t obvious to us that this was it. We got out of our kayaks into mushy ground and tried to find a trail into this small tree island. Eventually Nia found something resembling a trail, and when we walked in we were completely surprised. The grounds were cleared with stacks of wood and debris, and the grounds were relatively nice.

The other thing that made this campsite kind of neat were all the monarch butterflies at the site. It was kind of bizarre, in fact. There were 30+ of them flying about in just this little area, and it made for a pretty interesting sight.

…the only thing we need to remember for next time is: TIDES!

When we arrived at the site, it was high tide, so it was easy to get off of the kayaks and onto land. When we left, it was low tide. To call it ‘difficult’ would be an understatement. We had to grab planks of wood and push down the tall (and sharp) grass to make a path to the part of the creek that wasn’t 100% mud.

read on a digg.com comment posted to a Beck digg:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

Then, after spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, I drive back to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and the fire marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log onto the Internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

At the request of Don, our agent from Tom Bush BMW, I took another photo of Indie + my car for the calendars they send out.

woof.

Went out to the track today with the Gainesville Road Race Club.

I had an amazing time. Everyone was very down to earth, friendly, and willing to help out.

I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but my best time (as recorded by my iphone, so who knows how accurate) was 63.5 seconds. Based on the fact that the Arial Atom (!!) there got 59.5, I’m feeling pretty impressed by this car.

Here’s a PDF output of my speed and G forces, as well as the track layout.