Self

Been working in the IT industry since I was 16. I always felt like computers have been a part of my life growing up. The first machine I started to “play” with was an IBM PC Jr. With it’s 16 color display. It had cartridges that you needed to swap out depending on what you were going to perform.

Growing up in a split household, computing provided me an escape. A capability to work with something that would only take my input. Provide me a response, either with an error message or a successful task being carried out. It provided a boolean world to me when there was just too much “gray” around. This afforded me a gateway into the virtual world, I really didn’t have a teacher. I learned by countless trial and error. There was no teacher provided to me, other than the computer itself. A formidable teacher nonetheless. If you were wrong, you just were. There was no linkage to a manual (at least to me at my young age) or man page that I could refer back to. It was guess, after guess and building some odd form of pattern matching to get the computer to do what I wanted.

While my Nintendo console provided a much easier pathway to entertainment, computers continued to spike my curiosity. A bigger spike occurred in junior high school where a good friend had introduced me to “Compuserve”. A service where you’d leverage phone lines to connect to the a very early version of the internet. Soon thereafter, online PC gaming became a thing. This coupled with moving from my Mom’s house to my Father’s house. I was closer to my friend, and would spend countless hours playing video games with him. Learning as I went. I finally had someone else to discuss computers with. From there, it was time to “grow up” and build my own rig. There was no PCPartpicker.com to lean on. It was understanding what parts of hardware would fit together and be compatible. You had to learn both ends of the spectrum. The hardware would either behave or it wouldn’t. IRQ conflicts were a thing, and if you didn’t get it right. The operating system would become unstable. Which would hurt any value of entertainment gain, as your computer wouldn’t be healthy. Therefore, fun couldn’t be had. This is important to call out. This constant loop of improving the computer over time, ensuring its health, the reward it would provide must’ve somewhat changed how passionate I became about fixing things.

I became of age to drive, and so I was able to unlock another desire I had growing up. My fondness of cars, and motorsport. Being the youngest of my siblings didn’t really provide much in the way of bandwidth when it came to learning from my Dad working on cars. It was, “Hold this flastlight for me” or “Go run and get ‘x’ from the house and bring it to me.” I was an errand runner, and while it was awful it provided me some idea as to “What the heck is my old man doing under there?” but just planted the curiosity. On one such day, I remember talking to my Dad about my Camaro, sure I knew how to change the oil, and do basic maintenance. But there was a noise, a tiking coming from my engine that I knew wasn’t right. And so we went out to the car to start the troubleshooting process. “Go get me a broom handle”, I was clearly hearing things. I guess my face showed the surprise of the request. My father dispensed with it and reaffirmed it with the “GO GET me a broom handle”. He wasn’t very patient with me that day and I wasn’t trying test that out. I came back with the broom handle, and handed it over with a sense of “Ok, what now? He is surely either going to beat the car into submission or something”. It was then the errandboy had learned something truly astounding. My dad showed me how to leverage a simple broom handle to listen for knocking cylinder on my old Chevy Z28. Start the car up, and place the end of the rod against each cylinder, placing the opposite end the rod against your fist, then place your fist against your ear. It was a wooden stethoscope of sorts. I was floored when we found precisely which cylinder had the lifter.

Fast forward through some time, and I got rid of the Camaro. My first “real” car was a Subaru WRX. My father was getting older, and so his penchant for working on cars subsided a bit. But I started to hang out with a crowd of other subie enthusiasts. North America Subaru Impreza Owners Club (NASIOC) became bookmarked, and I learned as much as I could about my car.

Modification of it soon followed. I’ll spare you the “mod” list, money was tight as I became a father around that same time. So, I became a helper of sorts to my friends. In turn they would either provide me parts on the cheap as a method to show thanks, and provide me some spare parts that I could then install on my ride. There wasn’t really anything my friends and I couldn’t tackle. VF-34 turbo install? Yep. Gutted down pipe? Sure. Suspension? No problem. The list of capabilities we unlocked on that car were aplenty.

Since that time, I’ve owned the following cars/motorcycles, I’ll try to keep the order together. Yahmaha R6

Subaru WRX 2002 Bugeye

Miata NB

Nissan 350z Track Edition

Acura TSX

Infiniti G37

Jeep JK Rubicon

Subaru BRZ

That list isn’t including some of my daily drivers, or cars that I owned in between. You could easily say that racking up that “laundry list” of cars wasn’t the most intelligent thing to do either. But we all learn as we go, right ?

So why the Honda S2000 now? Growing up, I didn’t have the cash flow to even think about purchasing one. Getting a roadster in your early 20’s plus becoming a Dad, didn’t exactly fit together. It was always one of those cars that I sat in, and knew that I wanted one. But never had the opportunity.

Until now.

So now, I have a car to work on. Friends to do it with, to help me learn from them, and perhaps I can have them learn from me as well.

This site will be dedicated to taking an opensource look at motorsport. How instead of copyrighting things to “lock” down any changes unless allowed by copyright. More so the opposite. How to take motorsport, and provide a sense of sharing. Share what is learned, improve upon it, only to share that new capability for the next consumer and so on.