Almost done.

I am about to go insane with anticipation. It takes everything I have to just be patient and let the guys at Superior Performance take the time and finish Betty up. They are putting the chrome on and buttoning up some final tweaks. Here are some pics, including one of another car that has been taking up my time (an illustration project for Coates Kokes):

Pumkin Carnage!!

Got a tree this weekend! Yeah! Christmas!

More pics!

Betty revealed a little more today... I was in the neighborhood so I stopped by to visit. They have finished the wet sand and buff and are essentially done. They are going to put the windows in and bumpers. I am going to spend the weekend putting the chrome on.

The color is spot on. More than I could have imagined. Woo hoo!

Polish!

Now that the car is finally painted I've kicked the chrome polishing in to high gear. Betty has a lot of bling and it looks kinda grimy right now. Plus, she has a bunch of pieces (one of them pictured below) that have a silver inlay. I've seen a lot of Skylarks with the inlay taken off for an all chrome look. Having done the inlays, I can see why. It's a pain in the ass! It looks a lot better though so I will tough it out.

I used a polishing wheel on some stuff but found a soft cloth and some Dursol (Für alle metalle as it says on the tube) did wonders. Check it out:

Paint!

Had another conjugal visit with Betty today. Paint went on this week and she is lookin good! Bob was doing a wet sand and buff today to finish things up today so these pictures don't really show how good the paint looks. The clear coat dries with an orange peel texture so they wet sand with really fine grit sand paper and then buff it to a glossy finish. The end result is spectacular. The color is exactly what I had in mind and the metallic finish looks beautiful. I can't wait to get all the chrome on.

It feels even better! I ran my hand over the fender and almost... well, you get the picture. I did say it was a conjugal visit. :-)

More brain crack! Threadless tee: Wetfloor

Hey!

I submitted a tee shirt design called Wetfloor
to Threadless.com to be voted on and hopefully printed.

If I get enough high scores the shirt will be printed and
sold from the site and I will win some prizes. Take a look
at it and if you like it, sign up and give it a score.

URL: http://www.threadless.com/submission/95236/Wetfloor

Thanks!

P.S. I'm sure Threadless would be happy if you bought a tee too! ;)


Threadless.com
Earth's Best Tshirts
http://www.threadless.com/

5225 N Ravenswood Ave #101
Chicago, IL 60640
United States of America

I'm officially an Apple Software Developer!

I've been an ADC member for a while now, I've made a couple mock-ups of software for Apple, and I ALMOST went to the WWDC this year. And I guess I did make the SkylarCast widget. But now it's official.

With Hero Tracker, I am officially on the Apple web site (!). Well, it's exciting to me anyway. If you don't have it already, get it now!

Don't be a hero hater.

Skylark Update!

Went down to Superior performance today and had a conjugal visit with Betty today. She's in primer and lookin great. All the body work is done, just the finishing touches on the body. They're aligning all the surfaces and making everything super straight. Bob (owner) explained that they lay down a guide coat made up of primer and a graphite powder. Then they sand down until they only see primer and metal. This gets rid of any minor fluctuations in the metal.

Here is some video I took with the Sony W100 (I left the DV at home):



I used the new version (iLife '06) of iMovie to lay in the audio and do the nifty bumper in the beginning. Ain't that cool? Just dragged the pics in to the drop zones and added it in like you would a transition or the like. It seems like I spend a lot of time on stuff like this, but I really don't. iLife just makes it really, really easy (yes, I know I am a total Apple fanboy).

And here are some pics:

Hero Tracker II

Get the new Hero Tracker here:

http://web.mac.com/a4sline/iWeb/Site/herotracker.html

Now for Google Gadgets and Mac Dashboard Widgets!!

Hero Tracker!

Check out the latest widget! The team here at McAfee spent a couple hours creating a Google Gadget and a Dashboard Widget called Stephen Colbert's Hero Tracker. It displays an RSS feed of heroes around the world. It's a work in progress, so it may change, but check it out and tell me what you think:

Download the Hero Tracker Dashboard Widget Now!

Ignore my last entry - I have become what I hate

I got all fired up this morning because I miss read an article. I am still pissed at Jeane Moos, but the Musharraf thing was way off.

Biased Media

I don't think I have used this blog for political statements yet, but I am so outraged right now, I have to get this out.

Yesterday President Bill Clinton was making the rounds for his Global Health Initiative and he had an interview with Chris Wallace. Mr. Wallace, in my opinion, ambushed Clinton with a question about his administration's response to the Bin Laden threat. Clinton was outraged. He accused Mr. Wallace of being a Republican puppet and then preceded to explain how his administration had, in fact, done more to address the issue in 6 months than the Bush administration has done in years.

The media has taken this story and used it to lambaste Clinton. They have brought on comedians as experts to remark on the interview, they have focused solely on Clinton's anger and totally ignored the facts. Jean Moose criticized the man's socks. Slow motion video of his socks slipping down!!! She even worked in his denial of having sex with Monica Lewinski. This is a travesty.

Meanwhile, on the homepage of CNN.com, the headline reads, "Musharraf: Iraq war makes world more dangerous" WHAT??? Who the hell cares what Musharraf thinks?? How about the newly declassified documents that show that "The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement." and that "If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide."

This article is virtually non-existent on the CNN homepage.

Hmm... safer? Maybe we need to sit down and define what "safer" means? Maybe we can define what journalism is too.

New pics

No pics of the car but you can see what I am doing at home to help.

Skylark Widget!!

I loaded Leopard on to the old G5 last night and have been having some fun. I backed up my Tiger system but everything seems to be running smoothly. We have it running on an Intel-based iMac at work. Having it at home makes me more appreciative of some of the new features in Mail and iCal. I don't really use those apps on the iMac.

I also built myself a little widget that loads pics of the Skylark from my Flickr RSS feed. Not perfect yet, but not too shabby for about an hour of work in Dashcode. Check it out:

Download the widget here

Skylark Update

Kelsey and I went down to the body shop and visited Betty Buick. She is doing fine. Making friends and looking better everyday. The pictures here don't tell the whole story. If you look closely you can see a lot of improvements. She didn't have any really HUGE dents. The small dents she had are getting smoothed out.




You can see one of the major dents here has been totally smoothed out. The last set of pics showed the same area with fiber glass. The fiber glass has been smoothed out and sculpted now:

Revised Charlotte

Flash really butchered the illustration I did for the "Charlotte Hearts Bacon" tee I did for Threadless so I revised it. Hopefully that will change anyone's mind if they were rating low because of quality.

Threadless Design

One of my designs made it in to voting on Threadless! Check it out and vote for it!

Painting the Skylark

The Skizzer is finally getting painted. It has been down at Superior Performance for about 2 weeks and they've made some progress. I went down today and picked up my wheels (I'm restoring them while the car is in the body shop). I also snapped some pics while I chatted with Rene, the body guy working on my car.

Here are a few:

The green moss looking stuff is fiber-glass. They are using it to fill in a bit of body damage:



Some sanding. Rene says the car is an extremely straight car. Well worth the investment.


Rear shot. You can see they have removed the bumpers and all the glass:


Front shot. You can see I've put the original steel wheels while I restore the rallyes:



Rear. I kind of like her with all the stuff off. She looks tuff:

HD-DVD vs. Blue Ray vs. HD-ADD

HD-DVD will lose. It will lose for the simple fact that it is easier to say Blue Ray. Who the heck thought up HD-DVD. I mean, come on! What is wrong with DVD-HD?? It at least rolls off the tongue.

I think I have HD-ADHD or HD-ADD. My learning disorder is in HIGH-DEF!!

Anywhoo, I'm putting all my money on Sony and Blue Ray. That is, if I had any money. Speaking of spending money, I am painting the Skylark. I am going to try and blog the experience. I am very excited. It has been a dream for so long.

David

Pigs = Bacon

I don't hate pigs.
I just love bacon.

BK Stacker!!

Dude!! King Stacker!! 4 beef patties, 4 cheese slices, 2 slices of bacon all between to sesame seed buns! Yeah!!

The design team at McAfee was poking around on the Burger King site, checkin out the flizzash, and came accross this 1000 calorie, 68g of fat (30 of which are saturated) beastie. We were so amazed/disgusted/etc that we had to see it for ourselves. So we got in Ryan's A4 and sport-shifted it down to the local BK. We had some lunch (whoppers carried the day I recall) and got a Quad Stacker to go.

We brought it back to the office and sent out an all-call challenge. Whoever ate the Quad Stacker got to be the Burger King for the day! With a crown too. A foam-core septer was suggested but in the end we decided it was too ambitious. Here is how it went down:

The King Stacker:

Bring it King Stacker!


AAHHH!!! Too much meat!! I hope I didn't anger King Stacker with my posturing!


WTF?

What? Yeah, I do look pretty hot in this crown!


If you want a King Stacker eaten, sometimes you gotta do it yourself:


Holy! When you zoom in close enough, you can see satan.

Flew to the Beach with Joe

Flew with Amy's Uncle Joe to the Air Museum in Tillamook. Flew in a Cesna from Salem and landed at the museum. Lots of fun! Here are some of the many pics I took:

The Plane:
The Pilot:
The Destination:

One of the many planes I saw:

Top Gun Quote Generating Plane:


A plane tyring to eat Joe (he escaped, dodged to the right at the last moment):

Cougar!!:


Naked women on side of plane that is offensive to my daughter:

Sweet:

Holy Crap on Your Mom's Shoes!

Wow. I jhust spent the last hour listening to the non-stop knowledge pouring out of Ze Frank's mouth (which happens to be connected to his ass). Wow.

I've been following along with the whole Amanda Congdon vs. Rocketboom saga. It's actually been kind of boring and immature. The good thing is Amanda's blog, Amanda Unboomed. That's where I saw the link to the Ze Frank show.

Cool.

Rocketboom Un-Amanda'd

It is a sad day in the blogosphere. Amanda Congdon has left Rocketboom. I hope they work things out. It is such a public process its kind of painful.

New Job

Well, its day 3 of my new job here at McAfee. It's really amazing. I am so glad to be back in the user interface design biz. The team here is really passionate about their work and have the skill and experience to make it happen.

I still haven't got IM working but I found out the last name of the IT dude and sent him an e-mail. Hopefully I'll be able to get that set up soon. For now, my main job is becoming an anti-virus software expert. I have virtually no experience using any kind of anti-virus software whatsoever (being a Mac user) so its all kind of foreign to me. So far I am intrigued by the challenges that system administrators face when managing large networks.

It all seems kind of dry but its actually really invigorating. Designing for complex tasks that people do everyday is a great challenge.

Ultrasounds of the next NASCAR Cup Winner

Here are some scans of our last couple ultrasounds. THe big one comes up in 6 weeks. We'll find out whether or not NASCAR's 2023 Cup Champion will be a boy or girl. :-)

Flash Interface Fight

For anyone who has spent many hours of their life living in the Flash application, this is awesome (pretty cool even if you haven't):

http://abum.com/file/shadow/animations/17632.swf

New Camera - Sony W100

I got Amy a new camera for graduation. There is some debate about whether I bought her a camera for her, or for me. Of course, I bought it for her but I am enjoying the 8.1 mega-pixels. Still holding out for a Digital SLR anyway. Here are some pics:

The Verne L. Wagner Television Shop

I like the sign

My cow. I forget his name. Its really awkward when we're hanign out.

My dog, Penny.