Leinninger.com

From the field...

For What It's Worth...

April 6th, 2003:
Michigan weather sucks. Go figure.

My god. What is with the weather? Last Thursday an ice storm took out the power everywhere north of us. There’s 5-6 inches of snow on the ground. It’s 30 FREAKIN’ degrees outside. It’s April!!!! It’s supposed to be warm out. Birds should be singing! Flowers whould be blooming! Good grief!

Regardless of the weather, I’m ready to do car stuff. I got my up-pipe back, and I’ve been logging data on my WRX. I’ll probably get a good deal on a rear swaybar and possibly even a set of summer wheels & tires. Sweeeeeet.

- Duane

March 27th, 2003:
Spring is here! I just want to do car stuff.

I am seriously geeked. It’s springtime, the weather is getting nice, and I’m thinking about car stuff. So, I used the standard 1/4 mile trap speed and vehicle weight (including driver) method to figure out the horsepower of my Camaro and WRX. My Camaro (3791 lbs, best et: 13.826, best trap speed: 105.13) puts out 351 hp to the rear wheels and roughly 403 hp at the engine. My WRX (3262 lbs, 14.115 et, 95.73 trap speed) makes about 228 hp to all 4 wheels and between 262 and 273 hp at the engine (not sure due to the all-wheel drive system). Although these are rough estimates, the calulcations I used have proven to be within 5 hp of the actual dyno’ed results.

- Duane

March 25th, 2003:
I vent about XSLT… it sucks. I rant about PHP… it rocks.

We’ve used XML/XSLT and Servlets at work for almost 2 years. Initially it appeared to be a sane solution. As time has passed, we’ve realized serious limitations (especially from a font-end develper’s standpoint). The final straw was the decision to develop a content managment system (CMS) using this technology instead of my suggestion of PHP. We’re nearing completion of the CMS and due to sloppy work-arounds, slow backend development, and technical limitations, I’ve decided to develop the same system using PHP on my own server with my own time. So far, I’ve accomplished 2 days worth of work in 4 hours.

The weather has finally improved. Ahh… Now, to find time to work on my car…

- Duane

March 19th, 2003:
Archived System Update

A wireless version of this site is available at http://wap.leinninger.com/. The latest news and changes are viewable on most WAP-enabled wireless devices.

- Duane

March 14th, 2003:
I fry my monitor. Co-worker fries her SUV.

My digital CRT fried about a month ago. 3 weeks ago, I won an eBay auction for a replacement. It finally arrived today. The official celebration will start when I inspect it for damage and make sure it powers up. Update: The monitor is in several pieces and has to be degaussed badly. I guess my feedback for this auction will be less than positive.

The weather was attrocious this morning. I shouldn’t be suprised by this after 27 Michigan winters. However this morning it was really bad. A woman at work drove on the expressway in four-wheel-drive low. Apparently, this overheated her drivetrain and toasted her starter… which, in turn, burst into flames once she came to a stop. Driving in the snow for 45 minutes (normally a 15 minute drive) was worth it, just for that.

- Duane

Devtroit