Here's the 3 views edited into one clip

A Cool Train Video!

Today I was willing to sacrifice one of my cameras to try and get a video I really wanted. I actually thought that this was the last time I'd see this camera in one piece, but there was a shred of hope that it would make it through.

To my complete surprise the train passed and it was still in one piece! I took video from two separate cameras and am going to be combining them into one clip, but for now this is the coolest view and I just had to share it.

The photos are of the one camera as I was bidding it farewell and the other is of the other two cameras I had setup with different vantage points.

Enjoy!

Stuck Going 80 on the Highway.

Just had a rather interesting occurrence a few hours ago. Meagan, Liam, and I were driving home in our 4Runner. I know everyone's heard about the Toyota stuck throttle issues and well, it happened to us. I still wouldn't trade this thing for a Honda Pilot or Jeep, I really like the 4Runner. In my case it was purely a mechanical issue.

I had set the cruise at 75 and a bit later I realized I was going 80. I tried to cancel the cruise and nothing happened. Hit the brakes, nothin', still cruising at 80 without my foot on the gas. Then I turned the cruise OFF, still nothing. At this point I began to realize something wasn't right. I removed the fuse panel inside and began to look for the cruise control fuse. Couldn't find it. Still going 80 and haven't yet told Meagan anything was wrong. So, I then politely asked if she could get the owners manual and try to locate the Cruise Control fuse. Which prompted the question, "What's going on?" So, I explained it and she got a little scared (panicky as I later found out) but I couldn't tell at the time. There wasn't a cruise control fuse to be found inside the car.

At this point, I didn't know it was a mechanical issue. That's why we were looking for a fuse. I thought it had just malfunctioned and I wanted to disable it by removing the power. So, now the goal was to stop the car safely while trying to keep the engine from over revving. I'd depress the brakes and slow us to 60 or so, it wasn't easy, then I let up and it'd speed back up to 80. I shifted it into neutral to see if it would cancel the cruise. It didn't. The engine quickly revved to over 5000 rpm. This is when I realized it must be a mechanical problem and I was just going to have to get it to a slow/safe enough speed and then kill the engine and come to a nice controlled stop.

I could have at any point just shifted it to neutral and slowed to a stop. However, I was trying to save the engine as well.

So, I commenced stopping it the only way that was left. I applied the brakes and muscled it down to below 20. It wasn't happy to be slowing down, it was shaking quite a bit. Side note: I need to replace my rotors. It was actually shaking A LOT. We got to below 20 and I turned the key to ACC and shifted it to Neutral. The engine shut off and I continued to apply the brakes and pulled the e-brake to come to a complete stop.

I hopped out and opened the hood to figure out what went wrong. That's when I discovered the linkage was physically stuck. I unstuck it and checked a few other things prior to starting it up again. It started fine and we made it home safely. Once home, I sprayed the linkage with lubricant to keep it from happening again. I'm also going to call the dealer in the morning to see if they'll do anything about it.

Yeah, pretty crazy huh?

Albert Einstein was a smarter man than I realized!

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

I came across this quote a couple minutes ago and thought it was pretty funny and in a large part... true. It is true we take from what we seen and that there are few original ideas out there. It's how we combine what we've seen and add our own ideas to the project... and how well we hide our sources ;-)

So Long MySpace... Oh sorry, it's My_____ Now.

I just canceled my MySpace account. Before it would let me go it took me to this screen. It says "We're sorry to hear you want to leave. Please let us know why. You can really help us improve Myspace."

There was one option that they don't list. One that is most likely the main reason anyone leaves Myspace. But it's not one of the choices... I was nice enough to add it for them in this Photoshopped screenshot. I chose bored though, since it was closest to the real reason.