That’s how long I’ve been working on our car (aka ‘Cheesy’) for 24 Hours of Lemons and finally got to race it on the track. Six long months and I’ve finally done it. The first few minutes on the track I was a little emotional and when we finished up the race the second day I was emotional again. It’s an amazing feeling to put so much time into something and actually achieve it. It’s one of the best experiences of my life so far.

I honestly didn’t know what I was getting myself into in the beginning! Just finding the car and meeting the rules and regulations was a lot of work. Getting the car competitive was even more.

I’m incredibly proud of my teams and the car. It once was a piece of crap that ran on 4 of 6 cylinders, brakes barely worked, horrible suspension, bad tires and look liked crap. Now it’s actually slightly competitive; we can pass other (slow) cars!

The feeling of being on the track, racing bumper to bumper with other cars, squealing tires around turns, pushing yourself to brake later, accelerate harder and push yourself to the limit is an addicting experience. Working on a car with your bare hands, slowly improving it bit by bit is also addicting. Being able to point to something and say ‘I built that, it’s awesome because of me.’ is fulfilling.

Here’s a list of everything I can think of that we’ve done to the car:

• Stripped interior, dash and all extraneous weight (glass, carpets, headlights, etc)
• Had a roll cage installed
• Installed racing seat and harness
• Widened racing seat
• Raised racing seat so we could see over the steering wheel
• Mounted brake light to trunk
• Installed fire extinguisher
• Bled brakes (multiple times)
• Upgraded all brakes and 2 rotors
• Replaced engine (which also involves removing exhaust and drivetrain)
• Lowered the suspension by cutting the springs
• Installed new front struts
• Had new straight exhaust installed
• New rims & tires
• Built new dashboard with gauges
• Changed all fluids many times (oil, coolant, transmission, differential)
• Built ghetto cool suit system (best thing ever for a hot race!)
• Painted entire car
• Installed kill switch
• Decorated car
• Replaced master brake cylinder (twice)
• Mounted radio
• And many other random things that broke or were required by the judges

We turned this:

Into this:

Our first race our fastest lap at Thunder Hill was 2:37, now our fastest lap is 2:33, so we’re definitely improving!

To wrap it all up here’s a video of our fastest lap. I’m super excited to race again in December!

• 800m row
• 3 sets of:
  • 10 sit-ups
  • 10 stretches holding a pole from waist over the head to back with both hands
  • 5 YMW’s (hold weights in each hands, make ‘Y’ with arms, ‘M’, then ‘W’)
• 10 minute sprint, do as many of these sets as possible (I did 6):
  • 5 pull-ups
  • 10 push-ups
  • 15 squats

Needless to say, I am beat. But, I’m hoping to do the Tough Mudder in October, which looks awesome!

Overall 24 Hours of Lemons is an awesome experience. It’s over a hundred teams and everyone is there to have fun and enjoy the art of keeping a crapcan working just long enough to finish a race. There were lots of hilarious themes:

Our car was a 1986 BMW 325es (the ‘e’ stands for economy, meaning we had a much lower horsepower engine than a normal 325) nicknamed Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Even though it had been completely underwater at some point before we purchased it (mold growing on the engine block and all the carpets and insulation were completely waterlogged), it proved itself worthy, completing the entire race with minimal technical issues.

In-car video of us racing:

Our best hack for the car were our temp guages:

Yep, those are cooking thermometers. Other ends were zip tied to the radiator. When they beeped it meant we were overheating, or, the roast was done.

Honestly I think Lemons racing is much closer to real racing than taking your fancy car to a track day for a few hours. We became 100% knowledgeable about every piece of the car.

We stripped out the entire interior (actually a lot of work), replaced brakes and rotors, tires, brake cylinder, removed the A/C unit, removed windows, removed the entire dashboard, replaced the gas line, installed the racing seat and harness, re-routed wires, installed a kill switch (which involves cutting a 1-inch thick wire, not an easy task), re-routed coolant tubes and so many other crazy hacks. You form an emotional attachment to your car after you spend so many weekends working on it.

Anyway, it was an awesome experience and I’m already psyched for our next race in August! See you on the track!

I’ve been working on Personas for Firefox for almost a year now and only in the past few months have I started to understand the impact and possibilities surrounding them.

Previous to Personas the only way to customize Firefox was via an add-on or theme. While this resulted in a fantastic ecosystem, only developers familiar with XUL, JavaScript and CSS could do this.

Enter Personas, a simple, easy way to customize Firefox. Create two images of your liking and in a few minutes you’ve customized Firefox. In a few minutes you’ve exerted a small amount of control over a piece software on your computer, possibly for the first time.

I firmly believe that the more control people have in their lives the happier they can be. Personas opens up customization, art and the potential for beauty to millions more people around the world. Personas aren’t just ‘background images’ or ‘wallpapers’, they are extensions of ourselves, our interests, our hobbies and passions.

Give people a canvas and they’ll create art, even in the most difficult of situations. Personas gives people a new canvas, but one that is digital, global and with hundreds of millions of participants. Personas brings art into millions of people’s lives on a daily basis.

Art can be controversial, emotional, human. Art can change your opinion, open you to new ideas and emotions.

We’re starting to see a fantastic mix of personas. Cute, funny, beautiful and inspiring. The past year for Personas has been wild and exciting. I expect the next few years to be the same.

Attribution:

Wear It http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/156977
Yakuza Paint: http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/98983
WINHS of FLASH: http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/159007

I cannot describe how excited I am to race this BMW around a track with dozens of other $500 beater cars.

In case you don’t know about 24 Hours of Lemons, it’s a race of $500 cars around a regular racetrack. Extra leniency is given to awesome costumes, themes and decorations. Our team is named ‘BVD Skidmark’. You can guess how we’ll be dressed

Firefox 3.6 is out! Download it now!

Well, it’s 2010. Holy crap. As usual, our predictions for the future are usually far off the mark.

A few goals for 2010:

• Exercise I can tell my metabolism is slowing. I’m 26 now, gotta start putting effort into staying in shape. Parts of me are starting to crack and hurt even though I don’t do anything all day.
• Expand hobbies Work (while pretty awesome with lots of great co-workers), has definitely taken up much of my time. I need to push harder for things I like to do other than work. Ultimate frisbee, snowboarding, driving, books, writing, photography, etc.
• Move up professionally I think I’ve gotten wrapped up in whatever project I’m working on at work and forgotten about long-term goals. I need to balance projects with personal work goals.
• Spend more time daydreaming/relaxing This is a big one. I believe unstructured time is best for coming up with new ideas and solving problems. Simply taking 1/2 hour to and hour a day to stare out a window or let my mind wander would allow me to come up with new ideas and solve current problems in my life. I definitely spend too much time consuming media (TV, computer, podcasts, etc).

That’s all I have for now. Seems like not too many, but a few could be expanded upon into lots of time and/or projects.

Happy new year!

Here’s a screencast of some of the new features:

For more info, check out the Mozilla Labs blog post about it or visit the site!

Sarah asked me yesterday to help her with editing Firefox’s userChrome.css to show favicons in the Bookmarks Toolbar. Vlad had written up a post about it, but many commenters had tweaks and fixes.

So I’ve put all the code I used together onto GitHub here: http://gist.github.com/186269. Add that to your ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles/*.default/chrome/userChrome.css (or create it if it’s not there). And you should be ‘good to go’!

Quite possibly one of the most profound books I’ve read in a while. I know that sounds cheesy considering this looks like yet-another-Malcom-Gladwell-copycat book, but it’s really that good.

Paradox goes far beyond the normal ‘more stuff means more choices’ topic and dives deep into psychology, sociology and cultural anthropology. He touches on the changes in our lives that have occurred the past 50 years and how the idea of more choice == more freedom is actually detrimental to our mental well being.

Highly recommended.