Porsche Tuning Knows Drama!!!

What a silly day yesterday was. It seems we have two different tuners jockeying for our alliance. The funny thing is neither of them have anything to worry about in that department but because they don’t like each other I guess there just had to be some drama. I’d make for a good politician I guess as I had to appease both sides and put them to bed with a bed-time story. It wasn’t fun at all and one of those days that I hadn’t planned on having. Things move smoothly when we stick to the the plan and schedule. The wheels tend to come off otherwise.

Anyways, I got a few more things done to our white 996TT so it’s looking better by the day. The folks that see it are usually blown away so it was worth all of the hassle to change over from the black car I think.

Cold Brr…

This isn’t what I had in mind when I came to live in California. It’s been so bloody cold this past couple of weeks I may as well go back to London and spend winter there. My dog hates it, I hate it but the turbo cars love it.

 Joan had a bunch of doctor appointments down in LA and so she’s only coming back tomorrow night with her friend Cliff. Nice guy and doesn’t mean any harm but for some reason I’m just not feeling very sociable. I’ll be fine but I just feel like hitting the sack when I get home these days. The customers and all their chatter drains me.

It’s a little scary starting the month a bit on the low side in terms of the account but I know it’ll be fine later on it’s just not fun thinking ahead and then there’s holidays. With James’ parents here and then the ThanksGiving holidays we kinda fell behind a bit in terms of being “full steam ahead” as usual. Anyways you can’t work all the time…

Oh Geez.

Flipping heck. There goes the truck. Yups, we traded it in on an 07 Audi A3 S-Line DSG tonight. It’d be good for the shop and it’s one fun car. OMG do I love the double clutch system. I’ve driven the F1, SMG and now this and DSG is light years ahead of the game. Really the way of the future. The way of the future. Show me all the blue prints. Show me all the blue prints. Show me the blue prints.

Tomorrow it’ll be flashed to 290HP hehe.

Expect The Worst And Get Something Less…

I thought today would be a pretty buggered-up day but as it turned out it was ok. I didn’t have to go to the doctor. The 997TT programming worked out great and the customer was thrilled. We’re going to be one of five places in the US able to do the modification so we should start seeing orders coming in via UPS/Fedex I hope. It’s a complex/dicey process but it does work.

There were so many people dropping in today and phone calls that I got lost. People still want to use me for technical support but if I’m busy assisting customers then I don’t answer the phone, which means I’m not wasting my time as such.

The white 996TT looks the bomba. I just hope James fixes the clutch release- or should I say “spring loading cock action” so we can drive it properly.

At Work… Again…

So we “had” to go into work again today to install a 997S exhaust system. The guy drove down from Fairfield so it was no day off for a Canadian and Brit. The 996TT has had some more bits put on it and other than that I finally sold one of those 997S Europipe set ups, which I’m looking forward to hearing/seeing etc… They make some amazing quality stuff those guys.

Joan and I had a slight tiff last night over the phone for some reason. Well the reason is that she’s down in LA with her family and I’m not. I guess she has a point but I just can’t help it, I do have to work and take care of things up here and she knows that I don’t find her family the most enticing. I do try when I can and I’ve been friendly/supportive to them even when I don’t agree but I guess there’s too much BS from before which always gets brought up. Either way I think it’s because we miss each other mostly. She’s going to be driving up tonight although my money is on her showing up tomorrow instead. I might watch a movie tonight. Either the new Bond or something at home. I feel pretty listless today so I don’t want to do much of anything.

Monday Moaning

So I hung out with the dog most of yesterday watching football, going for a walk and generally lazying about. I’ve been looking forward to today because on the home-front we’re canning Comcast Cable in favor of the DishNetwork stuff. More HD channels, cheaper and faster internet. Not too bad to be honest. Glad to be rid of Comcast. Image quality is terrible on half the channels that are analogue and the ones that are digital are a mixed bag anyways.

 Work has been quiet today and with James in SF with his family I’ve paid some bills done the sales tax and even managed to make a disk image for the Blu-Ray firmware update.

Normal Service is Resumed

Well after such a good Thursday I knew something was going to happen and sure enough it did as Thursday night I spent the entire night throwing up thanks to a migraine. James drove me home thankfully so at least I was at home instead of at work. I did go back in on Friday and a good thing I did because I got a lot accomplished again.

Yesterday James, his parents and I all went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium to see the “new” Great White. I hadn’t been in a long time so it was about time I went. The whitey was smaller than the last one but a lot healthier. I wonder how long they’ll keep this one? We luck  out on the weather and walked all around Monterey. Really nice way to take Saturday off. On the way back we stopped at an Indian restaurant, which certainly isn’t in tune with eating half a sandwich at Subway but what can I do? It’s my favorite food so I endulged. We missed the UFC stuff and instead Brendan, James and I all moved/re-located the entertainment system and watched the Blu-ray version of The Great Raid. I’m still not happy with the image quality on the DLP so it needs some tweaking and without the firmware on the Blu-Ray player it’s still got some issues. I’m suprised the crappy Sony reciever I had actually supports 1080p switching? Or does it? It says it does but who knows really. Back to the movie… I hadn’t heard of it but for some reason I’ve always been interested in anything WWII related. Maybe it’s because 99% of my non-existant family all perished in one way or another during that period. Or maybe I’m just sick? I don’t know. The movie clearly had some serious money behind it but you can’t really go wrong with one of those “This is sort of what happened during the war” stories. 501 US POWs that were abandoned by McArthur in the Phillipenes in the early days of the war theater against Japan were still alive in one of those sadistic work/death camps. I didn’t happen to know the story of their succesful rescue during the latter days of the war but it was interesting to see the portrayl of the lack of respect that the Phillipenos had with the US millitary but especially so with the Japanese army. As usual they are the type of people/countries that really suffer. In the face of unsurmounting odds they still side with the US/UK, even if they are adandoned, forgotten, betrayed or neglected. For some reason they take an alliance seriously where as we seem to always have “issues” keeping to our side of the bargain. Nevertheless the movie only touched upon that and quickly returned to being a “feel good winning the war” affair after all but one of the prisoners was rescued. I’m sure the real mission was much more hairy and some of the sacrifices will remain untold but it sure seems like a different era? Today people “have” to be first and do all sorts of crazy driving just to get in front of you and possibly cause you to crash so the idea that anyone in today’s world would risk their life for you when they can’t even be so kind as to let you merge into a fucking car lane is obviously a sad state. I often wish I had grown up in those days. I would have liked to have seen what I am really made of. I would like to think that I would have fought, died for my country (whichever one that is I guess) and more importantly bonded with people that were willing to sacrifice for you.

Arrogant?

For me to say this is surely a sign of things having changed in my life. People that know me have always said I’m pretty hard on myself and negative about my abilities to do anything but really for the first time in my life I feel like I’m in my element. Really I am. I’m possibly the best at what I do as is James. We’re on top of our game. It’s hard hard work but damn we are good at it. Tonight I had a conversation with the Porsche dealership… I came up with an idea to take us to another level in terms of exposure and profit/work. I need to plan this right but if it works out. Wow we’ll be on fire. OK arrogant asshole off now…

Working it to the bone

Another crazy day here at work. From morning till night the phones were ringing off the hook, people dropping in left right and center. Crazy. I can’t even remeber half of the stuff but that’s what my outlook calender is here for. It seems we’ve really gotten a good reputation through the hard work over the past 18 months and word sure is spreading. Fast. More stage II 997S’ got booked today. More 996TT’s. More of everything really. Except I didn’t sell my black car yet. The dealer offered me a partial trade on a 996 GT3 which is nice but not really all that helpful at this point.

The Emails I’ve been getting from customers really keep me going and more enthusiastic than ever. Every time we do something to a car they are so darned happy and it shows. It’s mostly a real pleasure as well.

 Joan changed us from Comcast over to the Dish Networkfor less money and way more HD channels. Perfect. And our DSL speed is doubled and cheaper too. Not a bad day’s work honey. Just in time for the TV to be delivered tomorrow.

 James’ parents are coming in tonight and I’m going to take the C2 home with me. Boy is that car something else. Everytime I take ANYONE out in it, they go crazy and want an intake, flash, short shifter, exhaust and sometimes even suspension and/or brakes. Amazing. It does half the work for me.

Great White Shark

Well that’s what we’re calling the 996TT. We don’t have a good plate for it yet but there you go. It’s going to need them soon because the motor is actually in the car. The clutch experiment that James tried isn’t going to work sadly but we’re getting close to the car actually running.

The other white car has a new plate (FINALLY) and tags so we can really drive it. The plate reads YT5HARK (aka white shark). I’m going to start daily driving it as it’s a lot of fun. We got some new carbon fiber wing end caps finally that don’t look as goofy as what we had before so that’ll be nice.

 A 997S guy picked up his stage II and he’s super-happy as usual. I like doing those. It’s a simple set up with an exhaust, cats, headers, intake and a flash. They get about 35hp and better sound. They like it every single time.

 For every nice guy there’s always an annoying one. There’s a guy that wants a “cash price” (yeah it’s that sort again) for PSS9s, H&R sways and the install all in like 5 minutes while he waits on Friday. He must be too embarassed to “rent” a $20 car for a full day and instead has to hang around at our place. Never understood that. Anyways, I’m pretty close to just saying “Please take your shit somewhere else” at this point. Wouldn’t be a bad thing because we’d have today, tomorrow AND Friday for our own car stuff. As of Monday, we’re taking in James Wong’s stock 2005 Turbo S and doing a full GT800 conversion, engine build etc… and putting his yellow one back to stock. That’s going to take most of the month.

I watched The Da Vinci Code finally last night. I was too busy to see it in the theater at the time and it’s not my cup of tea- religion that is. But from the stand point of entertainment it wasn’t so bad. It had Ian Mckellen in it (Sir Ian) who is always interesting to watch. The idea that Christianity is all built on bullshit is a sound theory but the reasoning the author gave could have been more realistic but that would have caused a real stink!

 I really want to plug that Blu-ray in on the new TV but it’s nowhere to be found as yet…