2010-03-28 St Petersburg Grand Prix

Loop gave the engineering team a weekend pass to the 2010 Honda Grand Prix at St Petersburg. Alex and I went Saturday for the first World Challenge Race #1 where Volvo finished 1-2.
On Sunday, Jessica and I picked up Alex and Matt at 10am. Then we went to downtown St Petersburg for the World Challenge Race #2. This time Porches got 1st and 2nd. Notable cars: a VW Jeta GLI that was very quiet, an Acura Integra that was so out of class that it got lapped by the leader in less than 10 minutes.
After the race, we walked around the paddock taking pictures of the cars. There were a few cool cars there. We also got to sign on the hood of an RX-8.  In the Indy paddock, I was busy taking a video of a GoDaddy car that I didn't see Danica Patrick riding on a scooter along side of it.  Video
In the afternoon, it started to rain. At first it wasn't so bad, just a drizzle. We walked around, got some food. Jae just got there and joined us. Then it started raining harder. We went back to the Indy paddock (which was in a parking garage) and hung out there for a bit.  Then John came and joined us.
After a while it didn't seem like the rain was going to stop any time soon, we decided to leave.  Since John recently got there, he decided to tough it out and stay for the race.  While we were heading back to the shuttle, it started pouring. Even though we had ponchos on, our shoes and legs got soaked.
Overall, it was still a fun day. The race got postponed until tomorrow at 10am.
Pictures.

Chasing definitions

Ever get frustrated when trying to look up a definition of a word and find that the definition is a different form of the same word?  When googling, Merriam-Webster is usually one of the top results.  Here is an example, taking the first definitions of each word:

• incongruence: incongruity
• incongruity: the quality or state of being incongruous
• incongruous: lacking congruity
• congruity: the quality or state of being congruent or congruous
• congruent: congruous
• congruous: being in agreement, harmony, or correspondence

By the third definition (incongruous), you find out the definition in a form that you can understand.  But Merriam-Webster uses a variance of the word as its definition multiple times (six level deep in this case).

Check out my on-going attempt at normalizing English.

2010-03-14 Dolphin Boat Ride

Our friends Jessica and her fiancé JP came over to visit us this weekend.  Saturday evening we went to the Side Splitters comedy club.  It was pretty good.  The audience was full (with old people). 

Then we had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen at the International Plaza.  Our previous times were pretty good, but not this weekend.  Our food took about an hour to come out.  I ordered a salad, so it wasn't so bad.  JP's Hawaiian pizza was luke-warm and looked like it's been sitting out for a while. He asked them to reheat it.  It came back luke-warm again.  He sent it back and just wanted a regular cheese pizza.  That one came back luke-warm too.  So he finally asked for a manager and got it off the check.  We ended up going to Chic-fil-A afterward.

On Sunday we went on a dolphin boat ride on the Sea Screamer in Clearwater Beach.  The whole trip took a little more than an hour.  But we spent most of the time just riding around the bay and maybe 15 minutes looking for dolphins.  Video: 

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