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By now most of you have probably heard about the deadly accident in the CA desert that killed 8 people. It was an off-road race -- and one of the trucks lost control coming off of a jump and rolled into a crowd of people. There are various stories out there of it, CNN has one, Autoblog has another, etc.

Now  I was going to just let this go and be sorry for the families of those that were lost… it was an accident and probably should have never happened. That should be that… but this morning there was a friend of one of the people that died on the Today Show running his stupid mouth about it.

Let’s get one thing clear… this is an off road truck race… not a moped race. They race big trucks, fast, through the desert, over jumps, and through anything they come across. There should be a certain amount of common sense that this can be quite dangerous. I think the danger is inherent in the activity -- both as a driver and as a spectator.

What happened sucked. It was quite awful for the people involved and now for their families… but this guy on the Today Show… to insinuate that it was the driver’s fault, IN ANY WAY is fucking retarded. I’m paraphrasing here, but the guy basically said these driver’s have a “responsibility” to be more careful where there are spectators.

I’m sorry, what? Does this guy know that it is a fucking race with big, huge trucks going really fast? No, they don’t have to be more careful, they’re racing for your entertainment. You think people want them to just pussy-foot through some area because there are spectators there? No. They don’t.

If you’ve ever seen an event like this (or Rally racing) you would see that people often get quite close to the course. It’s part of the thrill, as they say. You can get so close to the racers going by… and in this case, people got too close. It was a spot where there was a jump and people love to watch that stuff. It is where the action is. But if you’re not smart enough to put yourself in a safe location when this is happening, then it is no one’s fault but your own.

Consider this -- if the driver had still lost control and wrecked -- but there were no people there, it would have been viewed as the most awesome thing ever. But since there were people there (by their own choice!) and they died, it is now a tragedy and IMO, might go a long way to shutting down this event. That would be another tragedy, I think.

If this guy wants to talk about the driver’s responsibility -- how about the responsibility of spectators and having some common sense? Sure, it seems cool to be so close to the racing and be a part of it -- but if you don’t realize how dangerous it is -- for even a second, you shouldn’t be there.

I’m sorry this guy lost his friend… but that doesn’t make him any less of a fucking retard for trying to place ANY blame on the driver.

Here’s a good example of how close people usually get to these things… this is a Rally video, but it is much the same as the off road racing is… tell me that in these clips that the driver’s should slow down b/c people are there and that the people are not responsible for their own actions… go on, tell me.

Just under a month ago, I installed Windows 7. The next day I noticed a freezing problem. Ok, so it wasn’t so much “freezing” as it was some sort of graphics issue.

Initially tried disabling Windows Defender and EFS. I really had no idea what was causing it. And the few threads I found online didn’t seem to have any more of a clue than I.

After taking a few minutes to think about it the next time it happened, I recalled the Aero Peek function and some of the other weird stuff that Aero does. Perhaps a graphics problem? So I’m running an Nvidia 8600 GTS from XFX with 256 MB of memory. Driver was 100% up to date directly from XFX for Windows 7 64 bit. Then I disabled Aero and went to the Windows classic view.

Have not had the problem since. That leads me to believe it is either a driver problem, a video card problem, or an Aero problem.

Today I downloaded an updated driver and have turned Aero back on. Now it is merely a waiting game to see if the problem has been actually fixed or still remains.

EDIT: Nope. Still not fixed. Turned Aero back off. Back to Windows Classic.

Just when I thought I got all of my computer problems straightened out…

The “combo drive” (CDRW+DVDROM) in my Macbook decides to shit the bed. OK, so it’s not totally dead – but it makes some awful noises and decides to randomly spit out a disc it’s trying to read. Definitely a drive problem. Does the same thing in Windows. I wasn’t even able to play Starcraft that I installed on it. Just ejects my disc.

eBay to the rescue though. $60 later and I have a replacement drive on the way. This time figured I’d go with a “superdrive” … or what Apple calls a DVD burner. Damn things are expensive.

A new replacement drive is $100+ and some were as high as $200 depending on where you look (iFixit, I’m looking at you). With instructions from iFixit, it shouldn’t be too hard.
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I don’t really read that often. I mean, I’m lucky if I read one or two books each year (if that!). This year seems to be different. I supposed I’m actually trying to find things that actually interest me.

Like what, you say? Well I read one book earlier this year that I heard about through one of the blog sites that I read daily. It’s about cars. The book? Driver by Alexander Roy (on the left). Fascinating to me. I read it in about 2 weeks (amazing for me considering that I don’t read on any regular basis). I even bought a copy for a friend as a bday present.

So what else could I find that I would be interested enough in to read and enjoy?’, ‘Well there’s another blog that I check in with from time to time (though it has been going through some changes lately so who knows). I don’t even remember how I heard about it… just ended up there from somewhere else a while back. The blog is a parody of Steve Jobs (he’s the big guy at Apple). And it is written by “Fake Steve Jobs” who actually turns out to be Daniel Lyons (formerly?) of Forbes magazine. I have no idea who this guy is… but there’s something about his writing style. It’s entertaining.

The book? Ya, that is another parody. It’s called Options by… you guessed it, Fake Steve Jobs. It details (as a parody) the stock options “backdating” problems that Apple went through in the past year or two and how “Steve” deals with the problems that arise. I just finished it tonight. Took longer than expected but I didn’t really focus on it too much.

I guess I don’t really like to read your typical best seller or murder mystery, or biography… or whatever. I need something a little different. I did pick up another book at B&N today though… My new one? James Bond. Devil May Care.

I’ll let you know how it goes.