BillyStyle

I happened across a service online that is kind of handy. It’s called DailyLit. The idea is that you can read any book in their database over a period of time by reading it in segments. The segments are sent to you via email or RSS feed over a period of a few weeks or months, depending on the length of the book.

Right now, their catalog isn’t very big, but I’m hoping that they will continue to grow. Nothing I’ve found in there really interests me, but I see it as a lazy man’s library, and I’m all about laziness!

Link: DailyLit

Well it was a great weekend. I don’t know why I waited until now to report on my trip, but that’s just how I am. Friday I flew into Portland early enough to head over to the track with my Dad to see some of the action. We saw some warm up runs of the different car series that were there at the track. The other series were Mazda MX-5 (souped up Mazda Miatas), Star Mazda (240 hp open wheel, rotary engine cars), and the Atlantic Series (300 hp open wheel cars, like the minor league of the Champ Cars). Also on Friday was a drifting exhibition. That was fun to watch. Just like last year, the cars came fish tailing all around the track at pretty high speeds. On some corners, the better drivers just locked in their drift and got those tires heated up so much that a huge cloud of smoke came billowing out from under the car.

Saturday was interesting. It rained the whole day, but all track activities went as scheduled. For some reason, my allergies kicked in full speed, even though I always figured rain knocked the pollen and nasty stuff out of the air; apparently that is not the case. So it was a cold, wet, pretty miserable day, but the cars on track were still fun to watch. There were some spinouts and a couple of minor crashes we saw due to the rain. The Atlantic Series had a race completely in the rain, and it was actually a great race with a great pass near the end by the eventual winner.

On Sunday the weather had cleared up a bit and provided great conditions for a day of races. After another good Atlantic race, the Champ Cars lined up for their first ever standing start. Typically in Portland, there will be a crash in the very first corner of the race because it is a sharp 90 degree corner. There were no incidents this time, and the pole sitter, Justin Wilson, led early in the race. The standing start seemed to be safer and more fair for the race leaders. The race went on without any yellow flags and no cars even dropped out due to mechanical failure until the very last lap, where 2 cars stopped on the track, still not too sure why (I haven’t watched my recording of the race yet).

Justin Wilson led for a good while, but then Sebastian Bourdais did what he always does by passing the leader, only to take the lead over in impressive fashion for the rest of the race. It was the 100th Champ Car victory for team Newman-Haas (that’s Paul Newman for those of you who aren’t into racing…I’m surprised if you’re still reading this here), which is quite the historical mark. Sebastian Bourdais has now won 24 of his 63 career Champ Car starts. Yeah, he’s pretty dominant.

I am an avid concert goer. Well, I have been over the years. Lately, not so much, I’m not too sure why. Anyway, on occasion one may find me at a hard rocking concert where quality mosh pits may be found. I will typically participate in said mosh pits. I find they are a great way to release any stress or frustration that I may have at the time. They’re also just plain fun.

Certain bands have great songs to get people going in the pits. The best bands I’ve seen live for the pits that come to mind are Disturbed, Stone Temple Pilots (yeah, surprised me too), Godsmack, Nine Inch Nails, and Saliva (not so much a fan, but saw them at a festival). I’ve also been to some concerts that are more punk type of music, which is good sometimes, but no good for mosh pits. I think it’s mostly due to the fans that those concerts attract. The hard rock and metal has bigger, more physical fans. Typically punk music has more scronny fans, so their pits end up being those circles of weaklings jumping up and down; no good.

The whole reason I’m posting this is because I found a kind of funny page. It’s all about how to mosh in a mosh pit. The author of the article did a great job actually, I was impressed. If you’ve ever wondered what mosh pits are like, give it a read. Then find your nearest metal show, buy tickets, and go tear it up! I had thought of going to a Static-X concert in Vegas tonight, but I kind of lost interest.

How to Mosh in a Mosh Pit

So if you’re anything like me, or any other human, you probably have the same 1-3 passwords that you use on everything. If you forget a password somewheres, you just try those 3 and you’re bound to get in. That’s nice, until someone approaches you from your digital behind and takes your virtue online. That hasn’t happened to me, and I intend to keep it that way.

I figured that there ought to be some sort of good software to manage passwords, so I could use a number of different ones and store them somewhere safe, as opposed to a post it or some text file on my computer. I found some pretty sweet software, and have been using it for about a month now. I’ve been slowly dumping my old passwords and generating new highly secure passwords that KeePass comes up with for me.

I haven’t really dove into all its features, but the ones I use are great so far. To get into the program you can use more than one protection method. So you can make a key file and a password to get into your password database if you wish. It has a time limit on how long your copied password stays on your clipboard so it’s much less likely to be stolen from there. It can generate very secure passwords for you based on what characters are allowable with the site or software for which you’re creating the password. I’ve got it on my Windows computer, but they have versions for Mac OS X, Linux, and some Palm stuff I know nothing about. Try it out, it’s good stuff.

KeePass Password Safe

Well here in a few hours I’ll be on my way to the Pacific Northwest. It’s time again for the Champ Car race in Portland, Oregon. I’m pretty excited for it this year. The Champ Car series has been on hold for almost 2 months, just due to the schedule, so the drivers will be ready to go again, and I’m more than ready to see them gun it out again. I was able to see them this year in Las Vegas, and those new cars are incredible.

I’ve been going to that race in Portland with my Dad for 22 years now, it’s a great event. This year the Champ Car series has been pretty unpredictable, with the exception of Sebastian Bourdais, who has been his usual dominant self. Some rookies and second year drivers like Will Power and Robert Doornbos have been very impressive.

Last year’s Portland race featured AJ Allmendinger impressively commanding the race to capture his first career Champ Car win, which ended up being the first of a 3 race winning streak. Now that AJ sold out and went to the dark side of racing, there’s not a favorite underdog to overtake Sebastian. I’m hoping that Graham Rahal will continue to do better each race and begin to have a career like his father, Bobby Rahal.

With however the race goes, I’m plenty excited for the trip. I just quit my job at Blvd Home Furnishings yesterday, and things are good!

Woohoo! I’m excited for this finals match up between the Spurs and Cavaliers. I don’t like the Spurs, although they are a solid team. The Cavs are fun to watch, and they beat San Antonio both times the two teams played this season, as well as the time before that in the previous season. Cleveland is a pretty big team, and they can slow teams down surprisingly well. I think Duncan will have his hands full with Ilgauskas, Gooden, and Varejao.

I’m really just hoping to see LeBron dunk over Tim Duncan again like he did here.

In hopes that Cleveland will win their first title in their first trip to the finals, I’m going to predict Cleveland in 6, just missing winning it before their home crowd by one game.

I have a couple of friends who greet me the same every time they call me on the phone. “What are you doing?” And they don’t just say it without paying attention to what they just asked, like most greetings like “what’s up,” “how’s it going,” and others like that. They will sit there and wait for me to answer. I can’t stand it!

I started going with the “nothing much” answer, then sometimes they will ask a follow up question. Now I appreciate awkwardness, but when that happens every time I talk to a certain person, that’s just too much. So then I started making stuff up like “running a marathon” or “taking a shower” or something like that. Then they just get kind of confused and it throws the whole pending conversation off too much.

I don’t know the best way to handle it. I’m considering going with Ace Ventura’s classic answer to Dan Marino’s inquiry as to find out if Ace had any more gum: “That’s none of your damned business and I’ll thank you to stay out of my personal affairs!”