A lot of automotive technology that is employed today comes directly from Formula One racing. I was perusing the 2006 rules this evening (how exciting!) and noticed the following rules that pertain F1 engines:

• 5.6 Variable geometry systems:
• 5.6.1 Variable geometry inlet systems are not permitted.
• 5.6.2 Variable geometry exhaust systems are not permitted.
• 5.6.3 Variable valve timing and variable valve lift systems are not permitted.

I don’t know of any production vehicles that have variable exhaust geometry, but many drivers today enjoy the benefits of variable valve timing and variable geometry intake manifolds. It’s a shame to see that further racing development of these items have been banned by the sport’s governing body, the FIA.

Who knows? Maybe because of these highly restrictive rules, other innovations will come out of Formula One; although there is talk of a 3 year engine development ban, which wouldn’t be good for the future of engine development. The FIA needs to search their soul and determine what F1 racing really is. Is it a grassroots effort using only old, crude technology; or is it the high-technology showcase that it has become? Somewhere in-between isn’t that exciting.

F1 Update: Michael Schumacher (the Michael Jordan of F1 racing) won his third straight race today in his home country of Germany.

The best boss I ever had was Tom Rachfal. He was the Vice President of Sales when I was a Regional Manager for Tapco. I heard that he left the company not too long after we sold it. He always treated me fairly, with respect, and never gave me any grief over my family connection to the company; although I worked really hard to make that a non-issue.

One of the things I miss most about working for him is when he’d get a piece of information about a customer of mine and if I wasn’t in my office when he walked down to give it to me, he’d leave it on my desk with a note saying “Mark – WTF?”

How can you not like a guy that is so direct?

If you needed proof that early adopters come from all walks of life, here are some very exclusive pictures. I don’t think anyone other than me has ever seen them. These early adopters have languished in anonymity for long enough. The pictures were taken with my Casio QV-100 digital camera (0.3 Megapixels) ten years ago. How did it come to pass that I was in a position to take candid photos of these young men in their urban neighborhood? Well, it didn’t actually come to pass.

I really wanted one of these new-fangled digital cameras, and the only one that Computer City (bought out by CompUSA) had in stock was an “open box”. At the sales counter, I took it out and looked it over. It looked fine. When I got home and connected it to the computer though, I noticed that someone had beat me to the punch and there were some photos stored in its memory. I can only surmise that the pictures that were on it are the previous owners of my camera. So without further adieu, here are some real, old school early adopters.

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Below is a photo of my old Lexus and my friend’s old Mustang GT (he has since totaled it). You’ll need to read the license plates to make this photo interesting. This photograph is almost five years old now.


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UPDATE: Here is an after photo of the Mustang:


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As I mentioned in a comment regarding Josh’s blog post, we took a trip into a reasonably crappy section of town today (7^th St.* and Indian School). Compared to a lot of the places that I’ve been to in Detroit proper, it was pretty nice.

One day about a year and a half ago, John and I had some time to kill while waiting for something or other downtown, so we decided to take a drive to look for the worst parts of Phoenix. We drove around the area of 27^th Ave. to 43^rd Ave. north of the 10 freeway.

The thing is, we couldn’t locate anything that I considered that bad. I don’t mean “bad” as in I’d still like to live there, I mean “bad” as in I’m concerned for my personal well-being. As I’m sure Joshua would agree, there are quite a few places in Detroit where you should be concerned for your personal safety.

Except for the car thefts and the meth labs, living here is probably less hazardous to my health**.

* For those who don’t know, Phoenix is arranged in a grid system. There are a bunch of east/west streets that have names (normal-ish names) and the north/south streets are named using a numbering scheme. Central Ave. runs right through downtown and to the west are the avenues and to the east are the streets. So the first road to the west of Central is 1^st Avenue and the first street to the east is 1^st Street. The street numbers increment outward from there. The system is really cool; you can tell just by the address number approximately where something is.

** For the record, I haven’t actually lived within the Detroit city limits since I was 5 (there are several sections within the city limits that are indeed fine and safe). I grew up (since 5) in the rural suburb of Milford and then moved around amongst some of the others before finally moving to Arizona in 1999.