Final Race of 2008 for NASCAR

Well here it is finally, the final weekend of the season. With 38 race weekends I really think the season is too long. I love racing, but there has been a lot of chatter about changing the schedule up. It makes sense to me as the schedule is a relic of the past and it needs some adjustments. I really don’t like these later race starts on Sundays. Kathy, Bree, and I went to the Phoenix race last Sunday.

I never really noticed until I was there that the race was starting later than it normally has in the past. As soon as I saw the lights come on around the track I realized it. I also read about all the controversy of ABC bumping the end of the race to cable so they could show thier precious America’s Funniest Videos. What a crock! - NASCAR needs to grow a set and get this ESPN contract straightened out. Makes me sick to think that TV is dictating when these races start. Traditionally this Phoenix race has been a “day” race. Now it is a “late afternoon/ early evening” race. I use to be able to be home by dinner time, but the later start time changed that.

I wanted to talk a bit about the race we attended. If you don’t get there too late, you can park in the riverbed across from the front straight bleachers. This makes for a very short walk to the track compared to where the general parking lot is. We got in right before it filled up. Lately I have given up on sitting in the bleachers.

Rattlesnake hill is the bomb! This is why I like it:

• It has what I think the best view of the entire track.
• You get to spread out to and are not sitting on each other like in the bleachers.
• You also get to bring a cooler to the hill with drinks and food.
• You don’t have to get your tickets ahead of time. I buy them right at the track when we show up.
• The sideshow is fun to watch.

Let me expand a bit more on the “Sideshow”. A big part of going out to an event where there are over 120,000 people is you see some crazy stuff. One guy in front of us was clearly drunk and it was quite entertaining watching him attempt to setup his sun shade tent. He is stumbling about, barking orders to his family, and basically barely got it up. As soon as the wind blew through it went down pretty quick. Very funny. There was also some young couples in front of us and the females, were flashing their chests to anyone who would give them a beer for it. It was definitely a White Trash Sunday!

Tags: BreeAnna, Family, Kathy, Kids, NASCAR, Racing, Weather

As I do not have a lot of traffic I really haven’t had to deal with spam, yet. But I know it will happen. I have seen that I get lots of hits to my comments page but nothing is left so I think this plugin is helping me out.

  Math Comment Spam Protection
» Michael Woehrer (url)
Asks the visitor making the comment to answer a simple math question. This is intended to prove that the visitor is a human being and not a spam robot. Example of such question: What is the sum of 2 and 9?

Install and setup of the plugin is as easy as it gets. Install like any other and activate. There are some settings you can adjust, but I found the default settings to be just fine. Documentation from the author is great and easy to understand.

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Tags: Blog, Design, Guestbook, Internet, Plugin, Theme, Website, Wordpress

I must say that the final Formula 1 race of the season from Brazil was just amazing! With the championship on the line, and the intermittent rains, it really made for interesting television. Ferrari’s Felipe Massa had to win the race and have McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton finish 6th or worse to clinch the world championship. Massa did what he had to do by winning the pole, leading the whole race and actually winning the Brazilian Grand Prix.

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Tags: Formula 1, Racing

Well here it is, Halloween 2008. Halloween is always a milestone each year for me personally. It has lots of meanings. Let’s take a look at the list that develops in my head around this time.

• Summer is really over! Well at least here in Phoenix it is. It means we are definately done with 100+ degree days.
• Christmas is coming!
• I need to be frugal and start saving my money for Christmas.
• The kids grades are not going to get much better by the end of the semester then they are right now.

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Tags: BreeAnna, Family, Kathy, Kids, Personal

This has been a very straight forward and simple plugin for me. I got this when I first started the site so I must say I really do not have any experience in trying to upgrade wordpress versions without it. It has always worked well for me and I certainly recommend it highly as a very easy to use tool. It is important to keep up with the latest versions of wordpress for security & usability reasons.

  InstantUpgrade
» Alex Günsche (url)
Upgrade your WordPress installation with one simple click via the InstantUpgrade panel. Attention: This is a BETA release; if you don’t know what that means, you shouldn’t be using this software.

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Tags: Blog, Internet, Plugin, Widget, Wordpress