For the past 6 months I’ve been working at Gibi Technologies on Retriever, a pet GPS location service. It’s a pretty awesome GPS tracking device that easily attaches to almost any collar and updates its location on demand or continually throughout the day.

Retriever is waterproof, has virtual fences to alert you when your dog runs off and can send you SMS and email alerts.

We debuted Retriever at TechCrunch Disrupt on Tuesday and it was a definite hit! We had a ton of interest and TechCrunch TV interviewed us backstage:

It’s been a pretty crazy week dealing with all the interest and PR for Retriever. Take a look at our website at getretriever.com, Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

Sears Pointless 2011 is Team Jaywatch’s 4th Lemons race (2nd race with our current theme). Our car is a ’86 325es that had been underwater at some point. We started the race on our 2nd engine and ended on our 3rd. By far this was our craziest and most eventful race we’ve had. The past 3 we’ve been lucky enough to only lose a few master brake cylinders and a head gasket. Our eventful story starts Thursday night.

Being only 1.5 hours from Infineon I make the rather dumb decision to leave at 7pm on Thursday to arrive at the track before it closes at 10. We start packing up around 5 and proceed to load our car (aka ‘Cheesy’, named after a receipt we found in her for a Cheesy Gordita Crunch from Taco Bell) at about 6:45.

Little did I know that the trailer we rented from U-Haul was different than the previous one and our car now catches one of its bolts on the lip of the trailer. We tried backing Cheesy on, no dice, now catches on the frame of the car. It’s now about 7:15pm, raining and dark (rain and darkness will be a recurring theme for this story). Eventually one of us gets a great idea to back the trailer up to the driveway, which is about 4 inches higher than the road and drive Cheesy directly onto the trailer that way. Awesome!

Cut to 20 minutes later and we still can’t back the trailer up correctly because our street is so narrow and trailers are complicated to drive in reverse! With time running out we unhook the trailer and all four of us pick it up by the hitch and push it in place. (That’s only about 500lbs/person to push). We then back the truck up to the trailer and hook it back on. Meanwhile we’re blocking a somewhat busy residential road, many cars have stopped, stared and turned around to find a way around us. Still raining.

We finally load Cheesy onto the trailer, hook everything up and head out at about 8:15pm. One 30′ RV, a truck and a trailer with Cheesy on board. Yay! We might just make it in time! Oh, we need gas. We stop at the wrong gas station that’s at the intersection we need to turn left at but can’t now, so we have to loop around about a half mile through residential roads and lose another 5-10 minutes. Oh well, now we’re on the highway and we might make it!

Oops, we missed our exit for 880N from 237 and now have to do a huge loop around through residential streets again because there’s not enough room to do a u-turn. Another 10 minutes lost. Manage to get back on 880N and try to make up time (RVs can do over 80mph if you try really hard!)

Oh wait, rush hour on 880 is basically 6am-10pm, so we’re stuck in pretty slow traffic for about 45 minutes. By now it’s about 9pm or later, not much of a chance of making it to the track before it closes. Oh well.

We get to Infineon at about 10:20, 2nd in line at the (closed) gates. Since there’s not much to do now, we open some beers and proceed to make our vodka gummy bears!

And put on our helmets for safety:

We get to bed at about 12 or 1 and wake up at 5:30am Friday to enter the paddock area and setup. Oh wait, how will we unload Cheesy? Fellow Lemons racers to the rescue! We back our trailer up to another team’s (empty) trailer with a less steep incline, back Cheesy onto it, move our trailer and drive Cheesy off. Success!

We spend the next few hours setting up and by 9am when the track opens we’re ready to go. I’m first up and the track is WET. I’ve never driven on such a wet track. Cheesy has maybe 90hp on a good day and I’m able to break the rear loose at almost every turn with just a small amount of throttle. Scary as hell.

Checkered flag comes down and I’m on my last lap before coming in. Coming through turn 8 I give it too much throttle and get myself facing backwards. Crap. I slide backwards through some grass and mud and hit the tire wall.

At this point I’m thinking "Great, not a half hour into Friday and I’ve totaled the car. Good job dumbass." I attempt to move but I’m stuck, too much rain and mud.

As I sit and wait I can see that the rear end doesn’t look too bad, and think maybe we can bang out the dents. A tow truck pulls me out a few minutes later and tells me I’m good to go!

I head back to the paddock (MUCH slower this time) and the team and I inspect the damage:

Not too bad, we pull the rest of the bumper off and call it good! Time for someone else to drive! Austin is up and heads out.

Austin gets about 15 or 20 minutes of track time before he loses oil pressure and the engine dies on him. Crap. Cheesy gets towed back in and we start diagnosing. After checking various things (I’m the least knowledgeable team member, I have no idea what the real experts on the team did) Cheesy suddenly has oil pressure! Yay! We think the problem is electrical and decided to head to tech.

We get all dressed up and make our way to tech with a nice framed portrait of Hasselhoff for the judges and a boom box blasting "I’m always here".

Sadly, we fail tech for a bad weld, missing exhaust hangers (although the car made it through tech at two other races with the same exhaust setup) and a loose air intake. Easily fixable.

The judges love our theme and ‘gift’. After showing Judge Phil all our receipts and documentation he gets bored and lets us through with 0 penalty laps, yay!

After attempting to fix our issues once we fail tech again. On our third try the inspectors are happy with our fixes and we’re good! Time to suit up again and hit the track.

Dmitriy hits the track and gets 2 laps in before Cheesy dies again. This time with some nice smoke from the engine. Hmm. After he’s towed in we diagnose more and find out that we’ve cooked the engine due to a failed thermostat that broke shut:

And a coolant hose that was eaten by our alternator:

So we drove Cheesy hard and fast with just about no coolant flowing around the engine. Sometime during this diagnosing we turn the engine over with a spark plug removed and it sprays water about 10 feet. Really not good.

So the engine is toast and we have no spare. Gayest E30 Ever! team to the rescue! They happen to have a spare engine that works and are willing to sell it to us. The only condition is if their engine blows we have to pull the engine from one of our driver’s 325e that he drove to the track. Deal!

At about 6 or 7pm we begin the engine swap. In the rain and wind.

At around midnight (I think) we manage to yank the engine and transmission and proceed to disconnect the two. We’re slightly stymied by BMW’s amazing method of connecting the engine to the torque converter via 3 VERY difficult to reach bolts and many other bolts around the housing. Once we disconnect the two we attempt to mate the ‘new’ engine to the old transmission (oh, did I mention it’s an automatic?).

Now that we’re pretty damn tired we can’t figure out how connect the torque converter to the transmission. No matter which rotation we put it in on it doesn’t go all the way in. At about 4am we realize we’re not getting anywhere and decide to get a few hours sleep.

We wake up at 8am Saturday, optimistic that we’ll be ready for the race (HA!). Another hour of fussing with the torque converter and we get it connected to the transmission.

We spend the rest of the day getting the engine back in, hooking everything up, etc, etc. At about 5:15pm we’re ready to go! Just enough time for a few laps!

Marshal suits up and heads out. Yay! We’re finally racing! Although the engine is running REALLY rough. After the checkered flag we attempt to start Cheesy and she won’t run for more than a few seconds. Crap.

At this point I’m feeling burned out and know that I really can’t offer much expertise. So I decided it’s time to dispense our vodka gummy bears and skittles vodka!

After Marshall and I wander around for a while, making other teams very happy with free alcohol, we meet up with Chris, who is famous for this:

After chatting with him for a few minutes I complain it’s hard to carry 5 bottles of liquor and a pot full of vodka gummy bears. Chris’ response is "Why don’t you use my limo?". Hell yeah!

We drove around for about an hour dispensing our vodka goodies from the roof, it was probably one of the coolest things I’ve done in a long time. (Did I just say that?)

After we run out of gummy bears we head back to our paddock. Dmitriy, our E30 genius, figured out that one of our sensors was connected to a wrong connector and that’s why Cheesy wouldn’t start, hurray!

At this point we don’t have much to do, which feels weird compared to the previous night. We spend some time cleaning up and head to bed at midnight for our first solid night’s sleep in two days.

We wake up Sunday morning at about 7 and prep. Dmitriy is up first and says the engine is running a little rough, but at this point we say "Screw it, just drive.".

The rest of Sunday is rather uneventful (thankfully!). Marshall locks up the wheels going into turn 9 and goes four wheels off, but the judges are lenient and let us off with just a verbal warning. I get a great hour of driving in, Cheesy isn’t fast, but she can brake much later and take corners faster than most cars, so it’s a lot fun to pass people that way.

Towards the end of the day one cylinder stops firing, but that’s a minor issue, the engine still works and we manage to finish!

Cheesy at the end of the race:

All in all, one hell of a race! Looking forward to our next one at Arse-Sweat in August!

• Source code management (git, svn, mercurial)
• Branches in scm for development and production
• Separate test and prod server
• Deployment scripts/tools
• DB upgrade scripts
• Some sort of framework (Django, Rails, CodeIgniter, anything)
• CSS reset
• HTML5 doctype
• Follow yslow rules
• Bug tracking software
• Specs!
• Feature list
• Roadmap
• Schedule
• QA
• Code review
• Monitoring – nagios, munin
• Print out scm revision/changeset in comment at bottom of webpage
• Print out server name in comment at bottom of webpages
• Coding standards/guidelines
• Automated benchmarking/profiling, SLAs

What else?

I’m back after 3 days of driving our ’86 BMW 325es, aka ‘Cheesy’ at 24 Hours of Lemons: Arse Freeze-a-Palooza. For those of you that aren’t familiar with 24 Hours of Lemons, it’s a 2 day race of $500 or less cars. A theme is required, which makes the race into a half parade, half jalopy competition. Teams attempt to out-theme and out-crappy each other with hilarious spoofs and old rust buckets.

This was our team’s 3rd race at a 24 Hours of Lemons event. Overall this was our best race for both our theme and performance. We learned quickly that a funny theme and a bright car are two highly valuable assets at Lemons, so this race we spent a majority of our time on our car’s decoration and costumes.

We had tossed around a few ideas and the idea of lifeguards seemed like a good one. Chris, one of my teammates suggested the name ‘Jaywatch’, a funny pairing of one of the judges name’s and the greatest TV show of all time. With that, we went all-out with our theme. Bright yellow paint, giant ‘Jaywatch’ logo, red light bar, ‘LIFEGUARD’ stenciling, rescue tubes and full-on lifeguard costumes. The judges and fans loved it and we could see our car from 1/2 mile away.

Cheesy’s performance was also top-notch this race. This time we chipped the engine, stiffened the suspension and adjusted the throttle body and kick-down switch (did I mention it’s an automatic?). That combination with sticky tires and great brake pads was a perfect setup. We were MUCH faster this race compared to previous ones. We could accelerate faster, brake later and carry much more speed through turns. We could also keep up with many of the leaders on the track through the corners.

All of our drivers had track experience (3 of us prior Lemons races), which was a huge asset. We knew how to race and the car was fast, the biggest hurdle was traffic with 170 cars on the track!

Timeline

Friday

Woke up at about 7am in our RV at the track. Chris and I headed out for fuel and breakfast while Drew and Marshall prepped Cheesy for the open track day. Gassed up, checked tire pressure and Chris took the first stint. No problems on the track, car handled well, no more shaking and rattling than usual.

After Chris came back to the pit to change drivers Cheesy flat-out refused to start. Turn the key: nothing. After some troubleshooting our first diagnosis was a dead alternator. Called a parts store: $297 for a new one. Ouch. We talked to a few other teams running BMWs and got all sorts of suggestions from jumping the car on each pit-in to daisy-chaining 4 or 5 batteries together.

We called around to a few junkyards nearby and found one that might have a few BMWs in stock (they don’t keep inventory). Drew and I jumped in his M3 and took off as fast as possible for Bakersfield, 30 miles away. Meanwhile Chris and Marshall did further troubleshooting and discovered that we probably weren’t charging the battery at all during the last race because we pulled the instrument cluster. Oops. Apparently there are some electronics in it that regulate charging the battery. They quickly spliced some wires and connected the mechanism to our camera switch so when we charge the battery we run the camera and vice versa.

Drew and I made it to a junkyard a little after noon and scanned the lot as fast as possible for another mid-eighties 325. We were incredibly lucky to find one the back right corner that was in amazing condition with virtually every part still intact. Drew quickly yanked the alternator while I pulled out the fuel pump from the gas tank for a spare.

We booked it out of Bakersfield asap and headed back to the track. Drew and Chris put in the new alternator as fast as they could so we would have time for tech inspection and track day:

After that we headed to the safety and BS inspection. The safety inspector was super thorough compared to previous races. He saw a lot of brake fluid on the brake reservoir and almost didn’t pass us, but after some convincing him that we had fixed the leak he let us through.

BS inspection was a little less tense than before even though the judges hate BMWs. They loved our theme and since we brought documentation of the parts we fixed/replaced they were less suspicious of us cheating. Once they saw we had an automatic transmission and we gave them a nice bribe of bourbon they didn’t bother checking the car any more and gave us 0 penalty laps, yay!

After that we were back on the track around 3. I finished up the track day with Cheesy with no problems. Later that evening we swapped the front brake pads for new ones and called it a night.

Saturday

During the night it rained so by Saturday morning the track was quite wet and had a lot of huge puddles in it. Jay (the organizer for the event) told us to not be stupid and take it easy out there during the drivers meeting in the morning. Drew took the first stint and was part of the 20 minute parade on the raceway under a yellow flag while all 170 cars slowly joined entered the track.

Once everyone was on the track the green flag was dropped and all hell broke loose. Try to imagine the sound of hundreds of engines with no or little exhaust revved to the limit. Then imagine many of them looking like this:

or this:

or this:

careening around corners, squealing tires, spinning off the track, etc. In short, it’s quite the spectacle.

Everyone’s first stint was flawless, no black flags and no mechanical problems. We learned the car uses 6-7 gallons/hour with the new ECU, so we went through far more fuel than assumed. The track ran out of 91 octane, so we had to pay $8/gallon for 100 octane, ouch.

During Drew’s second stint he was bumped from behind and it almost broke off the bumper, which ended up flapping in the wind. I was on radio and saw it hanging on by one or two screws and immediately told him to pit asap. Drew pitted, Chris and I drilled some screws through the bumper into the body panels and he was back on the track in about 10 minutes to finish up the day.

That evening we checked the standings and we were 58th place I think, which was not too shabby. We knew if we stayed consistent we’d move up as other teams had mechanical problems.

Later that night we toured the paddock with Cheesy, pouring other teams shots of Skittles vodka that Drew had made. Most teams were very appreciative of our free alcohol (who wouldn’t be?). Our last stop was at B Team Racing’s (aka the Pussy Wagen) garage, one of my favorite teams and a top 5 finisher in the past 3 races:

The B Team was amazingly friendly and allowed us to pour over their car and tech. They are super organized and have optimized every part of their car and process. Specialized jacking plates, huge gravity-fed fueling system, HAM radios, tuned engine and so many other optimizations. It was a great to learn from a team that has more experience than us. Hopefully we’ll be seen as competition in a few races!

After hanging out with the B Team we headed back to our paddock and got some sleep in preparation for day two.

Sunday

Woke up early again because the start time was an hour earlier compared to Saturday. At the driver’s meeting Jay announced that they were adding ‘Lost Hill’, an especially tricky hill + corner to the track. And that they were reversing the direction of the race. This meant the past two days of experience with the old track configuration was practically worthless. Oh well, that’s Lemons for yah!

After the meeting I suited up and took the first stint for the day. Getting on the track was slow as usual, but after a few laps the green flag was dropped and we were off! The track was a little damp, but nothing terrible. I pushed myself harder this time because I was much more familiar with Cheesy’s abilities and passing other drivers on the track. Towards the end of my stint I actually passed the Pussy Wagen, which completely surprised me. I was ecstatic, they were in 5th place and I was faster!

Well, not quite. Turns out their driver was taking it easy to learn the track and I was far overconfident for my abilities. A few laps later I attempted to pass a car on the outside through a gradual right hand turn. Unfortunately that gradual turn ended in a much sharper left hand turn which I could not negotiate. I drove the left side of the car over the berm, which lifted both tires off the ground for a split second, making it impossible for me to turn safely. I decided a better option would be to drive off the track into the dirt and not make a fool of myself or spin the car.

Once I returned the track (slowly and much more cautiously), I headed to the judges pit for my punishment. Phil listened to my story about how I was overconfident and dumb and gave me a ‘automatic discount’ since we had an automatic transmission. I was off scott-free, thankfully. Jay, the head judge also got a chance to see our theme and really liked it. Overall I was pretty luck to not damage Cheesy and not get an embarrassing penalty.

After my time with the judges I headed back to our pit area to switch drivers. Chris was up next and was out on the track soon after my boneheaded mistake. The next few hours went by mostly uneventfully. On Drew’s last stint he was black flagged for going two wheels off (IIRC). Since our radios weren’t working very well I was quite surprised by him yelling at me to suit up when he came back to our pit after being ordered to switch drivers by the judges.

I suited up and headed out as fast as possible. After a lap or two I began to notice a severe engine power loss around 4k rpms. A lap later it consistently happened coming out of every single turn. I assumed fuel starvation and radioed in to the team that I was coming in for fuel and someone better suit up fast.

Once I got back to our pit area we fueled up Cheesy with over 13 gallons of fuel! With a 14 or 15 gallon tank we were definitely experiencing fuel starvation and thankfully not a mechanical failure. I hopped back in Cheesy and headed out to finish up my stint. Or so I thought.

Once I was back on the track with a full gas tank Cheesy was doing great. No more power loss. I raced hard and did my best to make up for lost time. After about 20 or 30 minutes I noticed white smoke pouring out of the back of the car. I first though it was from my tires, but after a few seconds realized it was definitely a problem. I slowed down and babied Cheesy all the way back to the pit.

When I arrived Cheesy was still belching white smoke from the exhaust. We opened the hood and confirmed our fears: a blown head gasket. Nothing too serious as the engine didn’t overheat, but it put us out of the race for good. The team was somewhat sad, but overall still upbeat considering how lucky we were. We only missed out on an hour or so of racing, so we still managed to finish 68th (I think, official results haven’t been posted).

Since we had an hour or two to kill we packed up a bit and headed to the observation tower to watch the race finish. Team F’ed Up won after losing the past five races by only a few laps. Needless to say they were beyond ecstatic.

We put back on our costumes for the award ceremony and were the subject of a few catcalls and photo opportunities. Good to know we were noticed! After the awards ceremony we packed up and headed out for the long drive home. We all felt great about our third race and had tons of ideas for how to improve next time. We should be at Infineon Raceway in March at 24 Hours of Lemons: Sears Pointless. See you on the track!

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Make sure you specify a full URL in window.postMessage like so:

parent.postMessage('hi there!', 'http://www.ryandoherty.net');

If you use a URL like: ‘ryandoherty.net’ you’ll get a very obtuse and unintelligible error message. I searched the internet for about 20 minutes to no avail. The error message apparently pops up for a number of other reasons. I’m posting this to hopefully help other people out!

Note: the following opinions are mine alone and do not in any way reflect my former employer Mozilla.

A few of you may remember my project ‘Cesium’ that started over a year ago. It was an idea I had to automatically record ySlow scores for websites. It was started by an intern under my direction and myself during the summer of 2009. Needless to say, it never launched. There are a few key reasons this happened (all directly my decisions/mistakes), and if you’re familiar with software development you won’t find any of this surprising.

Not invented here syndrome

This was my biggest mistake. When I announced my intentions, Sergey Chernyshev emailed me about his project ShowSlow, which was almost identical to what I envisioned for Cesium. Stupidly, I only saw ShowSlow for what it was instead of its potential. We could have worked together and added new features to ShowSlow that I wanted for Cesium. It certainly would have given us a huge head start, considering ShowSlow a) already worked and b) people were using it.

The next time I start any project I will seriously consider using/working on another project that meets 50% of my needs. Adding new features to an existing codebase is usually far easier than starting something from the ground up.

Choosing an unknown language and platform

Cesium’s codebase uses Django, which was picked by my intern (and approved by myself). Now, I don’t think Django is a bad framework or Python is a bad language, they simply were wrong for us. My intern had little experience with Django and I had none, which is certainly a bad situation when you need to get a project off the ground in a predictable time frame.

During the start of the project, I should have chosen at least a language and framework that I was familiar with. Learning Django and Python was time-consuming and could have been avoided. Remember: if you need to get a project out the door fast, stick with what you know.

Poor time estimates and priority

Again, another bad decision on my part. After my intern left at the end of the summer, Cesium was about 50-60% complete. In my head I think I believed it was closer to 90%, therefore I didn’t give it as much priority compared to other projects. I continually thought ‘Almost done, just another week or so’. Maybe if I was a Python and Django expert and worked 60 hour weeks.

I’m actually kind of surprised that I convinced myself it was almost done. When I’ve worked on other projects I’m usually the person tallying up estimates, doubling them and providing more realistic estimates for when it will be done. I think I let hubris cloud my judgement.

What I should have done was realistically estimate how long it would take for each feature/bug, multiply that by two then take a look at my other priorities. It would have shown there was at least a few more months of development. I could have then asked for dedicated resources or pushed off other projects.

In the end

A few weeks went by, then months. Eventually my disappointment in being unable to complete Cesium turned into avoiding it. So it sat. And sat. I now (personally) consider it abandoned and there are plenty of other better tools just like it out now. In all, it’s a humbling experience but certainly an educational one. Nothing really revelatory about why it was never completed, nothing new. But at least I learned a few things in the process.

ok i will be graduating with a degree in MIS this spring. many companies what software or web developers who know multiple languages like (HTML, CSS, PHP, JS, VBscript)

i heard it takes 10 years to become master in something. I know a little about each language but for someone to become fairly proficient in ALL of these languages i do not see how software engineers do it. Or do software engineers/web developers just having a fair working knowledge of each language? I hope you understand my question. Basically i want to apply for jobs but when companies ask for web developers that know multiple languages i cant say i am very efficient in ALL the languages. But i do have a little working knowledge and i can always improve.

When I read this email I new exactly how Chris felt. Most job descriptions are daunting. So many technologies! It’s easy to feel inferior and not apply. Here’s my response:

Hi Chris,
I understand your frustration with job postings, many of them list
lots of technologies and decades of experience. I have a lot to say
about job descriptions, getting experience and how to learn. My email
will be long, but I think it will help you a lot.

First off, most job descriptions are about 50% exaggeration. Companies
describe their ideal, perfect candidate. Unfortunately those people
don’t exist. There’s no way anyone could be an expert in 5 programming
languages and frameworks for 10 years when some of those technologies
didn’t exist 5 years ago. Descriptions full of buzzwords are often
used to attract many different people. Usually what happens is if
someone doesn’t know a particular language or technology it’s ok as
long as the applicant can learn it on the job. If you know a language
a little bit it’s usually not to hard to pick up the rest.

Also, a good company will look at potential during an interview. If a
candidate seems smart and able to learn quickly, they are usually a
better option than someone who has only worked in one or two specific
technologies for a decade. It depends on the job, but in my opinion
brains and ability to learn is more important than knowing a language
or technology in and out.

In my opinion there are a few skills for programmers that are most important:

1) Ability to learn/teach themselves a new technology/language. This
is mandatory. Technology changes so fast you cannot rely upon what you
learned in school. By the time you graduate it will be antiquated. You
need to know how to read documentation, Google effectively and be
willing to dive and and make mistakes while learning. There is a
phenomenal amount of information on the web about anything you’d need
to learn. You just need to find it Pick a technology or language
you don’t know and start building. Read tutorials, read books, build
something (doesn’t have to be fancy). Go to clubs or meetups about
technologies you’re interested in. Most of all, don’t stop learning.

2) Communication. This is #2, but probably should be #1. I cannot
stress this enough: If you can’t communicate effectively it doesn’t
matter how good a coder you are. Writing, speaking and negotiation.
I’m not a genius programmer, probably in the 60% or 70% percentile,
but I attribute my success to my communication skills. Write clearly
and succinctly. Talk professionally, be friendly. *Listen* to people
and understand their needs. Communicate your status regularly. Tell
people what you do.

With those two skills you will be ahead of probably 80% of all
programmers out there.

Regarding what you know now, apply to the jobs you want! What’s the
worst that can happen? You’ll get a lot of interviewing experience,
which is always good. And if you get a job, even better! Don’t sweat
not knowing everything, just focus on continual improvement and
learning.

Hope that helps,
Ryan

What do you think? Anything I missed or you’d like Chris to know?

This Saturday I’m participating in Tough Mudder, the toughest one-day endurance event on the planet (according to the website). I’ll be braving water, tunnels, mud, fire and a glacier (really). It’s a 7 mile event that takes 2-3 hours, so it should be exhausting. Glad I’ve been working out!

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!