undead astronauts

“Chinese company Hybrid Kinetic Motors announced plans Thursday to construct a new green vehicle manufacturing plant in south Alabama, bringing 5,000 jobs to the state.

so evil, lol.  at least they left the front airbags in.

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/08/17/report-enterprise-sold-cars-after-removing-side-impact-airbags

Well, I thought it was pretty awesome.  Skip to 1:50.

http://consumerist.com/5308464/video-toyota-employees-taped-stealing-from-watching-porn-in-customers-truck

This guy suspected some foul play and contacted the management of this place two times only to be ignored.  The third time, he placed a video camera on the passenger side door and recorded some youtube goodness.  Good guys +1.

Time to break out the flamethrower.

http://jalopnik.com/5271247/scary-caterpillars-attack-honda-civic

http://www.thelocal.de/society/20090514-19273.html

It was Friday afternoon and just got off of work. A pretty heavy rainstorm had just passed by leaving everything drenched in its path. The path I take home is a standard 4 lane road. Two for coming, two for going. The roads have a poor drainage system so the water usually pools up on the right lanes. But today, the roads were pooled more than normal.

So, I’m driving home and traffic is slower than normal due to people dodging these puddles. Average speed was 40-45 where the posted speed limit is 50. Getting eager to get home and growing somewhat impatient, I decided to pass along through the left lane.

First Puddle. I check my speedometer and I was cruising just a bit over 45. Now, my car has a responsive AWD system and I use all season sport tires. I figure to myself,” Yeah, I can take this. Hell my car was built to take this.” So I drive through.

Sploosh!

There was more water than meets the eye. Enough water to wave up onto the hood of the right side of my car. It made a fairly impressive wave onto the sidewalk as well. Through the steering column I could feel the front lose a bit of grip, but not enough to lose control.

I didn’t see it for myself, but I know I was probably smiling stupidly like a kid. “Ooo… I spy another. Let’s GO!”

This time I’m humming along around 50-55 mph. Puddle looked to be the same as the previous one. My car and I decided to say “Hi” to the puddle. It definitely noticed my presence and gave a helluva wave back. It kicked up so much water, it pretty much covered the whole right side of my car in water. There was so much water, I wasn’t even able to see how much was kicked up over the sidewalks.

There were a few more puddles like the previous too, and I drove through them as well, screaming “Whoo-Ha!” as I went. It reminded me of all those scenes where you see the young kid in rubber rain gear jumping purposely through the puddles. Except this kid was jumping through with a 300hp machine.

I was almost home, when i saw the grand finale of puddles. This puddle stretched the entire road. Maybe it could have been called a stream. Who cares? I was determined to drive through it.

I probably hit the puddle faster than I wanted to. Nevertheless the waterworks amazed me. It was like those car commercials you see. The car hitting the water and then twin plumes of spray bellowing from each side of the car. The plume on the right side was so large, that I hit cars in a nearby parking lot. I let out a laugh and glanced out to my right to check out my handiwork. Wondering, who did I splash?

The Ohio State Police.

I cursed under my breath and prayed to all the spirits and gods I could think of hoping that the cops wouldn’t pull me over.

The flare of blue and red lights pretty much dashed all my hopes. Immediately a number of scenarios raced through my head. Was I going to get a ticket? Oh hell, they might get me for reckless driving. Shit they better not impound my car. I don’t want to go to court. Maybe the cop is a chick and I can seduce her. Shit. The cop is a guy. Wait, the cop looks a little gay. Maybe I can seduce him…

Luckily, I was within speed limits, and only got a lecture on safety and was sent off with a warning.

Puddles Rock.

Homewood Porsche 935

This is pretty awesome, the square in the picture is about 5 minutes from my house.  I ate there last night :)

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/27/another-alabama-force-gets-porsche-police-car-this-time-a-935/

It all began with a leak from one of their engineers that Tesla only had $9M in the bank and that they might not be able to deliver cars.  There was a big investigation, and that engineer was fired.  Fine, end of story right?  Nope, CEO Elon Musk hatched an ingenious plan to catch more potential leakers.  He sent an email requesting signatures for a new NDA to everyone in the company, slightly altering details in each one.  This basically left a “fingerprint”, and he would be able to tell who leaked what to the media.  Unfortunately he didn’t tell his executive team about the plan, and the general consul forwarded his personal copy to the entire company.  Of course then the cat was out of the bag, and everyone knew that he was trying to set them up.  Not only that, the NDA email was leaked anyways (the consul’s version).  The best part is, he began the email with “I’m a big believer in trusting employees.”

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5164035/tesla-ceo-in-digital-witch-hunt

When I created this blog, I didn’t really know what I was actually going to put in it.  I figured it would just be something about my day or what I was doing at the time, kind of like a glorified Twitter.  But I was flipping through an issue of Hot Rod magazine, and WOW.  An amazing Camaro by Erv Woller, perfectly clean and heavily modified.  But you’d never know, because the mods were so professionally done.  More importantly, I realized what I could post here.  Every time I see something on the web that makes me go WOW, I’ll link to it.

Simple enough, right? :)  If I ever buy a muscle car I’m putting Audi TT parts in it.

http://www.hotrod.com/featuredvehicles/hrdp_0903_1969_chevy_camaro/index.html

In order to fully appreciate what this guy has done, you have to know what a normal 1969 Camaro interior looks like:

Yeah, I know.