Jun 17
Posted: under General, NASCAR, Rants.
I recently had a conversation with a couple of newly found friends at a local bar. NASCAR was on the TV and it was very apparent that my attention was drawn to the boob tube, watching my sport’s heroes chasing each other to the finish line. One of the guys I was with asked me [...] [...more]
I recently had a conversation with a couple of newly found friends at a local bar. NASCAR was on the TV and it was very apparent that my attention was drawn to the boob tube, watching my sport’s heroes chasing each other to the finish line. One of the guys I was with asked me what I got out of watching “guys driving around in circles”. Most of the time, I just brush this topic off whenever anyone asks, because in my opinion and experience, trying to explain my racing passion usually falls on deaf ears. To me, it’s like trying to explain watching golf (which, by the way, I also enjoy). If you don’t get it, you just don’t get it, and explaining is an exercise in futility.
Read more at fastmachines.com
Jun 15
Posted: under Fun Stuff, General, NASCAR, Praise, Rants.
I have a lot of random thoughts that fly through my mind when watching the races week to week, and since my wife really could care less about my ramblings and outbursts while she is forced to watch the races, I thought that this would be a good outlet to get said outbursts off my [...] [...more]
I have a lot of random thoughts that fly through my mind when watching the races week to week, and since my wife really could care less about my ramblings and outbursts while she is forced to watch the races, I thought that this would be a good outlet to get said outbursts off my chest. I also think that we as Americans don’t have the ability or patience to read through a 5 or 10 paragraph story anymore. We have become a “bullet point” society, and need instant gratification. I’m jumping on that bandwagon. Without further adieu, here we go!
- First off, congratulations to Junior nation and to Junior himself. With that win today, he can finally stop hearing the “when will you win a points race again?” questions from the media and fans. The rest of us can stop hearing that question now as well. My only concern is that the NASCAR Cup coverage on ESPN will suffer. Whatever will they talk about now?
Read more over at FastMachines.com
May 29
Posted: under General, NASCAR, Rants.
I live in Minneapolis, in case one couldn’t figure it out from the various rants about the weather and the giant header on this page. This past weekend we had a huge storm that passed through the area, churning up a few tornadoes that ripped apart an entire neighborhood, in Hugo, MN, about 15 [...] [...more]
I live in Minneapolis, in case one couldn’t figure it out from the various rants about the weather and the giant header on this page. This past weekend we had a huge storm that passed through the area, churning up a few tornadoes that ripped apart an entire neighborhood, in Hugo, MN, about 15 miles North of where I live. It was a particularly harsh storm, and it did claim the life of a 2 year old, seriously injured many, and caused millions of dollars in hail and wind damage. Many people’s entire lives were upended in a matter of seconds. To be perfectly clear, I feel for those people in my community, and thank the FSM for my good fortunes, allowing me and my loved ones to be spared. The most damage that I saw was that my flag pole was ripped off my house. That will cost me a whole $10 to fix.
This is not why I am blogging, nor do I want to slight those that were less fortunate than I. I have a simple observation/rant that I need to get off my chest, and it comes down to me being the selfish jerk that I am.
Channel 9 is our local Fox affiliate, and apparently, Fox9 doesn’t make enough money to have the equipment to broadcast anything in HD. From the news to the local-only programming that they churn out, everything is in plain-old “regular definition”. That means that on my nice HD-LCD, everything looks pretty much terrible, with large black bars on both sides of the picture, only using about 70% of the screen, and it is quite fuzzy. Normally, I can handle this, because these non-HD programs are restricted to only what the local affiliate broadcasts, while the national shows, sports, etc, are all in glorious HD.
Back to Sunday night’s storm. Whenever there is even a hint of a “weather event” in these parts, the local weather team likes to take up about the bottom third of my TV with warnings, radars, beeps and bloops, basically anything to get the viewer’s attention and scare them into thinking that they may die at any second. If the wind goes above 50 MPH, forget it. Whatever you are watching gets pre-empted, and the weathermen and women come on, repeating the same phrase every 14 seconds, whatever that phrase may be (usually something about going to your safe place, and what to do if you are out in the middle of nowhere – “get in a ditch!” – I still haven’t figured out how you have TV reception if you are out in a cornfield…). In the summertime in Minnesota, that roughly equates to once a week. We get to know our weather people here very well from May to October. Sunday night was one of these times. Mind you, it was right at the start of the NASCAR event in Charlotte. Did I happen to mention I am a huge NASCAR fan?
I was happily watching the pre-race festivities, in the magic of HD, when suddenly, my TV’s picture shrunk down to 30% of it’s size, then the bottom third was obscured by the aforementioned graphics, beeps, bleeps, and “you will die” info crawlers. I went from 100% of viewing area to about 40% in a matter of seconds. Yes, Fox9 had decided that it was time that they ruin my night.
Here’s my real beef: why can’t we stay in HD while all these alerts are flying around the screen? At least then those of us that tuned in can still enjoy what we sat down to watch, and those that tuned in to see whether or not they were going to end up in the next county could get the information that they deserved as well? I don’t think that this is that much to ask. Because of the size and destruction of the storm, Fox kept the offending graphics up during the whole race. Ask Lori how mad that made me. I’m pretty sure she just went to bed early just so she didn’t have to listen to me any more.
To summarize: Fox9, I know you’re not listening, but I’d still like to know the reason you can’t catch up with the rest of the world and get with the HD program (no pun intended). You’d make all of us that spent a hefty sum on an HD set much happier. Cite all the technical reasons you want, but if Fox25 in Boston can do it, so can you.
I will give credit where credit is due, though. Fox had the decency to PIP the race while they broke in with their weather updates. Even if it was even less space on my screen, I still got to see (but not hear) the live event in the background. More than I can say for the local ABC affiliate, who just decided that the exit interviews after possibly the biggest race in the world, the Indy 500, was just not important enough, and just cut off all coverage altogether. Bravo…I guess.
May 29
Posted: under NASCAR, Rants.
Before the race even started last week, both the Haas CNC cars were confiscated by NASCAR for what it deemed “rules infractions”. If you haven’t already read it, my colleague John Davison at FastMachines wrote about the specifics of the violations on Tuesday. Basically, it boiled down to the team moving the wing by changing [...] [...more]
Before the race even started last week, both the Haas CNC cars were confiscated by NASCAR for what it deemed “rules infractions”. If you haven’t already read it, my colleague John Davison at FastMachines wrote about the specifics of the violations on Tuesday. Basically, it boiled down to the team moving the wing by changing the bolt locations where the wing meets the car. Not on one car, but both the #66 driven by Scott Riggs and the #70 driven by Johnny Sauter. It was announced on Wednesday by NASCAR officials that the penalties for the drivers, team owners, and crew chiefs were some of the stiffest ever handed out:
Read more over at Fastmachines.com
