Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in loudener's LiveJournal:

Friday, March 23rd, 2007
12:25 pm	Another Car blog... The Drive is Why Have you ever been anxious to get off work not for the “usual” reasons but because you want to get in your car and drive? I have. Would you rather take an extra 30mins to go the long way around rather than sit still in traffic? I would. Do you smile at the revving of an engine? I do. Have you felt your heartbeat at a stoplight when you are waiting to take off? I have. Would you rather drive with your windows down than use the A/C? I would. Do you get excited at the thought of getting to drive “The Twisties”? I do. Have you ever offered to drive somewhere just to get in your car and drive? I have. Would you rather have a car and rent than take a bus and own your own home? I would. Has someone ever asked you “Why?” and you didn’t have a good reason? Yes. The next time someone asks, “Why?” You tell them, “The drive is why.” If they don’t understand that they aren’t motorheads/enthusiasts/drivers/whatever else we are. Whether you drive a 600hp drag monster, a trailered autocrosser, daily-driven drifter, or just an unmodified A to B ride; remember that we all share one thing in common: The Drive. By Brian Levy Please share this with any people you think enjoy “The Drive” (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007
3:42 pm	...Yes, have some. Are you the gate-keeper? (This relates to the subject) I figured I would post a small blog up here. I usually use myspace to drop info but since I haven't done so here in a while I am gonna post. So, Hi. I am good. I don't have a Mustang anymore. It was a good call, in the long run, but it's slowly driving me insane. I am halfway through the second semester of the MBA program. So just shy of 1/3 done over all. I am still working for the same moronic boss who sucks at life. The changing weather along with changed both personal and professional have left me feeling a bit odd. Not "bad" just odd. Like everything is slightly off kilter. Hopefully that will change with time. Not much else truly exciting. I'll post again later some time. No promises when that will be though. So, Bye. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 17th, 2006
4:05 am	Bizarre Fate? Coincedence? Alright so I have just had THE wierdest night I have had in a long time... As some of you may know I am moving in with Tommy a friend of mine from HS. In fact from my HS marching band. Tonight he got into LA for his move back to Vegas. I am in LA to help him out. He got it and I was with a friend of mine from HS, Alan. I've stayed in contact with Alan so that was not a big surprise. So the whole evening is about to get wierd... Alan and I go to Tommys soon-to-be old place and hag with his friends. There are two other Arcadia High grads there. We all know the same freakin folks and are havin a good laugh about stupid things from HS. Alan and I decide we are gonna get outta there because it's turning into a "lets see how fast we can get drunk" party. Not our scene. Alan and I goto a local bar (in Monrovia) called the Brass Elelephant. Alan runs into a gal he dated ONCE like 5+ years ago. She remembers all this crap about him and he can't remember her. After a few other random bar conversations we get ready to leave and he endsup with this chicks #. HI-larious. Alan and I bail because California sucks and has this thing called "last call". It sucks, that is why I live in Nevada. Alan and I end up at the Dennys on Huntington Dr in Duarte. Alan brings up the idea of fate. You know do you believe in it, have you ever had an odd experience that sorta stuff. Now I have already had an evening of running into random people that I know, and in walks Deanna from my HS. I haven't seen her since Graduation in 1998. She, Alan, and I talk for about 10mins catching up. She's doing well for herself. She getting ready to get married, has a good career, and she says her family is well. We talk about all kinds of shit. So damned random. It was like having a HS reunion. All these people I know from HS all in one night. Was it a bizzare set of circumstances that fate guided? Or was it just random coincedence? I don't know but there it is... I'm going to bed. This night has been totally wierd. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 15th, 2006
12:08 am	An open declaration... A blog entry for later... I am writing this to be blogged later as I have no internet acess at the moment. (Gotta love Cox Cable... NOT) Anywhoo I am dropping this blog as an open declaration of my future intents with my current car and plans for my next one. If you aren't into cars then skip to the last paragraph of this blog and read why I am making this open declaration. Part one: My current car. As most of you know I LOVE my car. It is the frist vehicle that I have cared what it looked like as well as how it performs. It's a great ride. Here are the quick and dirty tech specs: 2001 Mustang GT Automatic Hardtop with TransGo shift-kit and K&N cold air intake and a Flowmaster cat-back exhaust. It's nice in it's current configuration but I want more. So to follow will be: a 70mm TB and plenum from Blue Oval Industries, High-flow cats and and x-pipe exhaust, B&M hammer shifter, and an SCT chip with a tune for 87 oct and for 91 oct, rear seat delete, race seats in the front with 4 or 5 point harnesses, and 3.55:1 gearing in the differential. The hope is that with all thses mods I can get my ride into the sub 14 range with 87 oct and even faster with the 91 oct tune. We'll see. Part two: Future plans. Well I can't take it any more (see why below) but the next car I buy will be a manual tranny OR an SMG or DSG (same thing; read below). Most likely it will be manual though. I'm not sure what car I want to buy. If it ends up being another mustang 2005+ I will probably sell my current mustang and get a new GT with a manual and lightly mod it. If it isn't and I get an econo box car with a manual I will keep my mustang and go nuts with a Kenne Bell 1.7l super charger and 4.10 gears, ect... thus transforming it to a street legal beast. The target then would be the 12s in the quarter mile. Here is why: Almost two years ago I drove my first manual tranny car in a while. I did because I was curious how it would feel. It had been a long time since the last one I drove. I enjoyed it but convinced myself that I would hate it later in traffic. I had two friends get small cars with manuals and drove them. It bit me again and yet I still managed to get away from it. Every time I saw one I got the urge to drive it. Three things have convinced me to go manual next time. 1.) I rode in a buddie of mine mustang with a manual and it was a world of difference. It was great. 2.) I find myself drawn to little cars with manuals because they seem like fun. An engaging drive without so much power to get myself in trouble. 3.) I got hosed tonight by a guy in a Subaru WRX Sti. (Those fuckers are fast as hell!) I got hosed for two reasons he had more horses than me and two he dropped a gear and took-off and I got left behind waiting for my tranny to drop a gear to catch-up. I'm done. I need a 5 or 6 speed tranny. I test drove a new (2006) GTI with a DSG (Direct Shift Gearbox) also known as an SMG (Sequencial Manual Gearbox). It was AMAZING. SOOOOO responsive. It was sick. I loved it. That little GTI was fun as hell to drive. If get a GTI I will have to skip the 6-speed manual and go for the DSG. It was cool. There you go. Perhaps you don't care perhaps you do. Whichever is the case, that is my open declaration. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 30th, 2006
3:00 am	Moving Day (CRAP!) Moving Day… (Crap!) So I have been planning for the inevitable for the last few weeks. I am moving. I hate it. You hate it. We all hate it. Why is it that we all choose to do it in the summer time when it’s the hottest? It’s funnier that way. I have been up, down, and around about having a place to stay. Thus, I can live out my days of college (again…) with a stable place to call home. I found a High School buddy who has moved out here from Arcadia, CA. We were in band together. He is a year younger than me and has been married and divorced already. (I think I am getting a late start on life here.) But that is neither here nor there. He will be a valuable asset to me because his soon-to-be ex-father-in-law (note the large quantity of hyphens needed for this sentence) is the landlord and a good guy. The house is nice. The neighborhood is a downgrade from the one I am leaving though. Thus, I will have higher insurance payments for my mustang. That blows. What is good is that the garage (or car-hole for the lesser of you) is mine. It’s a decent one-car but it has storage space AND room to work on my mustang. I now have a stable place to work on cars again! Yaayy! It’s near the 95 but it’s near the 95 by the Rainbow Curve (read: traffic-jam central). It’s all right though. Only a 20min drive to UNLV. The house has been completely redone. I guess the previous tenants tore the place up somthin’ fierce. Bob (the landlord) did a damn fine job getting the place put back together. It looks great. Hopefully Tommy and I can make it home. While the craziness of moving is going on tomorrow (later today? Why do I always write these things late at night?) I have an interview at 3pm for ANOTHER GA (Graduate Assistant) position. I am getting sick of these damned interviews. It’s the same thing every time. I go in have a great interview and then NEVER hear back from them. This has been the case with real-jobs AND these GA positions. I suppose that I should qualify the last one. I had it in the bag and they dropped me for a “minority” Grad-Student. God-Bless affirmative action? Fuckers. “I’m sorry sir. Your skin is white and you aren’t from another country AND you have a penis. We can’t help you we are a public university…” Smarmy sons-of-bitches. So I have this interview and it’s just another stop on my day of insanity. So, I will go in with my suit and tie make her happy have a great interview and never hear from her again. Just some more interview practice. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. Someone let me know when I am doing it for real, okay? Okay. That aside I am playing shuffle the rental cars with my buddy Matt who works a local car rental joint. He’s gonna help me out and get the shuffle of shit that is my “stuff” (George Carlin, stuff, funny as hell) over to the new place. Its gonna suck. But that is moving. At least I will have both a truck AND a van. Try moving all of your possessions with a 2001 Mustang. It is not the hot set-up for that. Oh well I have better get some sleep before I completely ruin my good look before my oh-so-not-important interview practice. More later… Perhaps Sooner. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 25th, 2006
3:15 am	It tasted like French Toast... It tasted like french toast… So this evening has led me to a place I have been before. Aimlessly driving through Henderson and Las Vegas with no real direction and trying to figure out what the hell is going on in my life. I do that from time to time. Driving helps me think. It dulls the savage beating of stress in the back of my mind. It allows me to contemplate things but at a distance while I have the gratifying feel of a steering wheel in my hands and a gas pedal underfoot. I just need to beware of the Police from time-to-time as they don’t like it when my foot reaches too far to the floor. As I drove I contemplated my relationship with my girlfriend. It was the main stressor of the evening. I wondered about different things. I attempted to make sense of some and gave up on others. I reached the conclusion that no matter how much “relationship chess” I played it wasn’t gonna make anything better right then. Most likely I will just take it as it comes. It will be alright. I moved on to other things. My job search (if you are hiring let me know! ;D ), my house/apartment search, my Dad, my Sister, Grad School, ect… I managed to make my way all the way to Lake Las Vegas. It’s a typical destination for me whilst I contemplate the meaning of my navel and other such world-affecting things. I sat at a bench for a while. Tried to call a friend, he was busy though. I enjoyed the lapping of the water until these post-collegiate ass-clowns began tossing a football around making too much noise for me to think. I got up and moved down to the boat-slips. I sat for a little while longer and decided that I had enough of Lake Las Vegas and left. The drive out was interesting I had a small jaunt with a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo. It was fun. Then came the road-block on Lake Mead (the south one…). I Couldn’t get through to Boulder Hwy because Henderson Police can’t deal with a crash scene to save their lives. Its no wonder my buddy Dave calls it, “Hender-tucky.” I turned around and took a back way to get to Boulder Hwy. It took me past my old house in Henderson. I began to think about something that my friend (who incidently was the one I tried to call earlier) had said about our time in that house. It was fun. There was five of us living there with 5 cars and 3 cats. If we hadn’t gotten along so well there would have been bloody murder in that house. However, we got along famously and had good times there. But, I digress. My friend commented that those might have been the best times of our lives. I hope not. I refuse to be that guy that revels in his past. I’ve got too much coming-up to have had the best times already. This thought hung with me the rest of the night. I drove past the auto dealerships at the Valley Auto Mall. I drove by Findlay VW and contemplated what it would be like to own a GTI with the SMG tranny. I think I’d like to test-drive one. I may buy one when I can afford a daily driver AND a weekend car. I made my way out of Hender-tucky in to the not-so-fabulous Lost Wages. I eventually decided I was hungry and I was gonna goto O’Aces a local dive Sports Bar/Grill/Video Poker Bar/Whatever else. The food there is always okay. It’s never great and it’s never sucky. Tonight (or this morning for you nit-pickers) something was off. I can’t put my finger on it but it was seriously off. Examples: The water tasted like it had lemon juice in it, but it had no lemon in it. The coffee tasted like it was, well, sour for lack of a better way to describe it. The bagel I got with my breakfast was tiny-as-hell, and the eggs tasted like french toast! What the hell can you do to make eggs taste like french toast!? This was the first time I had ever been so displeased with my food there that I had to make a comment to the waitress. She had the chef make new eggs but it was too late. I had lost my appetite. I wondered, was this the culmination of my evening? Was it a sign? If so, what the hell did it mean? Then I realized something, I had been off all night. Nothing was quite right. Everything I had thought about left me feeling “a bit off”. Perhaps it’s a sign that things are no longer gonna be the same. Perhaps it means that I can’t go back to the way things were. Perhaps what I see as clear isn’t. As my Uncle Brad would say, “Perhaps. Then again, perhaps fucking not.” Still the eggs tasted like french toast. What a night… (1 Comment |Comment on this)