Entries from April 2005 ↓

I’ve been in the outskirts of Chicago the last few days for the EndUser library conference. It has been a pretty good conference and there were some good sessions, but I’m ready to go home now.

I left early on Tuesday morning, April 19 for my trip to Arizona with my father. We flew out of Philadelphia and had a pleasant and uneventful flight. We did have to make a change in Cleveland, but everything went smoothly. Continue reading →

On Saturday, April 23 I attended the first NASCAR Nextel Cup race ran under the lights at Phoenix International Raceway. As with the Busch race I won’t bore you with to many details of the race as you can find that elsewhere. Continue reading →

On Friday, April 22 I attended the first NASCAR Busch race ran under the lights at Phoenix International Raceway. I won’t bore you with the details of the race as you can find that elsewhere. We drove down from Sedona, checked into the Days Inn and then made to the track by about 11:30 AM. Busch quailifying was up first followed by Nextel Cup qualifying and then the Busch race. During one of the breaks I sampled some track food. I had a tasty “Tex Mex Burger” and a Lemonade. The two items cost $9.00 all together. Not a bad price for a major event, although not great either. Continue reading →

I made it to the second race of the season at New Egypt Speedway on Saturday, April 16. They went with the same no heat but for the modifieds format they used last week. Despite a 25 minute long red for a driver that needed a helicopter ride to the hospital we got out about 10:00 PM. Maybe this format will get us out of there at a reasonable time after all. They claim they want to make the show last from 7 PM to 11 PM to the summer. I’m not sure if that will happen, but a three and a half hour show might be doable judging from the first two weeks. Continue reading →

I’m a little late with this update, but it wasn’t because it was a bad race. In fact, it was probably the best NASCAR modified tour race I ever been too. I’m sure you can read about it somewhere on the web, so I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ll give you a few highlites…
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VALA, the Victorian Association for Library Automation Inc., aims to promote the use and understanding of information technology as it applies to practitioners in the library and information dissemination industries has aVALA2006 Call for Papers for their 2006 conference. Abstracts must be submitted by April 30 2005

I made it to the season opener at New Egypt Speedway on Saturday, April 9. New Egypt can be considered my home track as I live about 7 or 8 miles from it. New Egypt started a new format this year that calls for no heat races in any division besides the modifieds. The rest of the divisions call for qualifying based on lap speeds during special warm-up sessions. They are doing this, supposedly, to save time. Internet boards have been flooded by the controversy this radical change has become. I’m still not for it, but it worked out OK and the race was finished by 10:15 PM. Since the racing started at 5:45 PM it is a long show, but it was better then most of the races last year. I’m not sure how much the new format helped time-wise or if the earlier finish was more based on shorter breaks between races and no intermission. However, it seemed to help but we’ll have to see if this continues. Continue reading →

Looks like we have some good weather for racing tonight. I live on a road that many race cars take to the local track and watching the haulers go by is getting me excited for my first D.I.R.T.-style modified race of the year.I’m looking forward to the New Egypt season opener tonight and then I’m heading to Thompson CT in the morning to watch the NASCAR Modified series race.

Motorsport.com: News channel has the transcript of a press confernce involving some NASCAR Nextel series Ford crew chiefs. I agree with Pat Tryson (Mark Martin’s crewchief) on what NASCAR should do. He said “To me, it’s a no-brainer. If you’re low, you finish 43rd. If you’re high, you finish 43rd. But they’re not gonna do that and that’s OK, so then they’ve got to figure out what they’re gonna do.”

Sadly, Tryson is right that NASCAR won’t do it. But I really think they should do what he says. That is what most short tracks do.