A little while back, I blew the engine in my 06 Solstice (toy track car). A vacuum / boost reference line running to the wastegate worked it’s way loose (I really need to buy stock in LocTite), and, in an episode of spirited driving, the turbo went full-boost.

That means about +30PSI, as opposed to the +7PSI that I’m targeting.

And, the result:

Good times.

In the process of replacing the engine, I installed a full set of DDM braces (strut tower, rear cross member, backbone/driveshaft closeout panel), a Spec aluminum flywheel, and Wilwood 6-piston, 14″ front brakes. (The rear 4-piston FLS set will wait until I figure out a parking brake solution.)

It’s still blowing white smoke out the exhaust. Since I’m not losing any coolant or any other fluid, no leaks, etc., I think it’s just burning off what’s left from when the original engine blew.

Word to the wise: check your harness grounds! We spent the better part of a week chasing what turned out to be a loose ground in the engine bay fuse block.

Fun in beautiful San Francisco!

This is my first time at GDC. I’ve already met a lot of very cool people and learned quite a bit. Hopefully this won’t be my last trip.

I picked up a 2006 Solstice 2.4 NA a few weeks ago for use as a track and autocross car. It’s a great car – light(ish) weight, awesome suspension, 5 speed (6 would’ve been nice), and, of course, it’s a convertible which is always good.

My only complaint is that it is a little underpowered. The stock configuration only makes about 177hp (or about 140whp), which is just unacceptable. Having to shift from 5th to 3rd to pass on the highway is annoying. My daily driver – an 06 G35 coupe – makes a little over 300hp at the crank, and it’s my kid hauler.

So, what to do?

TURBO TURBO TURBO MUAHAHAHAH

(I’d rather to an LS1 swap, but that’s going to have to wait until my toy budget is replenished.)

So, I picked up a second-hand, but never installed,  Performance Autowerks (aka, Werks) Stage 1 300HP kit  from eBay for much less than retail. Between the price of the car and the turbo, I’m still many thousands of dollars ahead of where I’d been if I bought a stock GXP.

My Dad and I spent last weekend tearing the car apart and getting about 90% of the way through the installation. Unfortunately, I left the instructions at home in Dallas, and his shop is in Oklahoma, so we just winged it.

Here’s the car, sans some components:

Dad making some sparks (cutting off a small chunk of a bracket to get everything to fit:)

SOME of the kit components. (There are a LOT.)

More to come at some point in the future.

C++ rewrite of my FDTD-based optics simulator. This one is a 620nm (red) source fired into one of two parallel single-mode waveguides.

I lika da pretty pictures.

I’m still trying to find time to migrate content from a VM of my old web server. In the mean time, I found an archived version of the page at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

I’ve made a few updates, and posted it at the old (apparently oft-cited) link. Enjoy, and email me if you have questions or comments.

Woohoo!

I’m not giggling.

Well, not overtly.

Much.

I get to bring Audrey and Gwen home tomorrow!

Born 24 August 2014 at 1:15PM CST:

Gwendolyn Rose Lively. 8lbs, 1oz, 20″ tall.

Our last child, and the first girl. Hopefully she’ll wind up looking *something* like me, unlike the boys.

Hopefully this explains why I’ve been so busy, and the blog has been silent.

Also, Wyatt started kindergarten yesterday! We basically dropped him off at school at 7:30AM (remember when school started at 9:00? WTF?), went back home to grab a few things, then headed to the hospital for the delivery.

Crazy day.

In other news, since getting RIF’d from ARM at the start of June, I’ve interviewed with:

Google (I am NOT moving to California, and the Chapel Hill office is small enough that hiring is rare.) (Note: PLEASE do not ask me about the interview questions. They were nice enough to fly me to Mountain View, so I figure I should respect the lengthy, excruciatingly-detailed NDA I had to sign pre-interview. Also, I have no desire to be sued.)

IBM Watson Labs (well, kinda – there was a lot of portfolio talk and I got to interact with some seriously smart people)

… and a local game company that shall remain nameless until I receive the results of the seven hour(!) interview I had last week.

This is actually a great time (personally) to be unemployed. I get to pick Wyatt up from school, spend a lot of time at the hospital with Audrey and Gwen, and, in general, do all the things I want to do.

Life does not suck at the moment.