Road Photo of the Day: Curves Ahead

A slight alteration of theme, at Paul Wigton’s suggestion: Road Photo of the Day. I hope you enjoy it.

This was shot last year on Montana Highway 279 northwest of Helena. The question is who shot it? I know it was taken with Mark Collien’s camera, but I can recall taking a shot like this somewhere on that trip. I know both of us drove portions of this road, and I was playing with his Nikon whenever I was in the passenger seat. I know I did my best to grab shots at the end of the day that I knew I snapped, so perhaps this is one… who knows? Mark?

If it is your shot Mark apologies for the blanket application of my copyright. 😉

Car Photo of the Day: This is not a car…

…but it is just as evocative. This is a spot near the highest point on this particular road. This photo was taken in the late summer of 2006, when the western US was literally consumed by large forest fires. That is why it is so hazy.

There is something about that sweep of asphalt, tight switchback, and the promise of more of the same that make me want to just… go.

Car Photo of the Day: Wrenching.

Not really a car, but one of its major components. In this case a rather famous one. While you guys ponder the nature of this machine I’ll be out in the barn wrenching on my daily driver. The recent cold snap forced me to switch to running 100% petro-Diesel and I suspect that has contributed to a common malady in VW TDI engines, a clogged EGR/Intake manifold. I’m pulling both the EGR & the intake manifold off the Jetta’s much-smaller-than-this-photo’s engine and cleaning out the accumulated soot. Thankfully there is a wonderful community of smart folks online, in the form of tdiclub.com who share all the “how-tos” of TDI maintenance freely. Armed with that info, I’m off to do battle! Wish me luck & See you soon!

Cleaning up after a break in.

ok, not really.

Ever wander out to your car, which had been left sitting in a presumably safe parking spot to find a window broken? That moment of gut-wrenching shock as you recognize the violation on your personal space and property? Well, I had that happen to me this morning, except it wasn’t my car, or my house… it was this website.

Last night between 11:10 and 11:18 somebody hacked my site. They used some flaw in PHP, or even WordPress itself to change permissions on some of my files and create a WP admin account for themselves. Thankfully that is about as far as they got before they were locked out by our server software. The lock-out is total though, which is why the site was down from that time until this morning when I woke up and was able to start putting it back together again with some help from two good friends of mine, WRD and Nick. Bill helped me figure out what had happened (he also built the system that detected the intrusion and shut down the site) and start me on the path to fixing it. Nick provided me with a little insight into mySQL-fu when Bill was away at lunch. (Thanks again Nick! I owe you another sushi dinner!)

It took me a while, but I was able to root out the compromised accounts, get the site running again (re-uploading a lot of stuff from backups, which was easier than trying to find what was broken and fix it!) and then take some steps to tighten up security on the administration side of WordPress. I locked everyone, including MYSELF out of the admin section all day until I was confident I had locked down access to it. Once I confirmed that my security mechanism was in place I let myself back in…

So that is why there was no CPotD posted today. Or anything else for that matter. I was cleaning up the broken glass and ripped up dashboard of chuck.goolsbee.org.

Car Photo of the Day: TwoFifty @ around Nine O’Clock.

Winter is in some sort of odd state of suspended animation here in the Pacific Northwest. Unlike our usual slate grey skies and endless mist falling on cedars, we have high thin clouds, pervasive non-rain, and cold-ish, but not too cold temps. It has been a weird winter. I hope that doesn’t mean we’ll have a wet summer, as I count on running a few rallies this year, including the Monte Shelton, where this 250 (whose particular designation, GTE maybe? I’m not a Ferrari expert, I have forgotten) was photographed after the sun set over the Pacific. Of course I have a lot of small jobs, and maybe one big one (brake system rebuild… sigh) on the Jaguar to do. I haven’t even LOOKED at the car, much less done any work on it. Need something to get me motivated!

This photograph is really not that great… the background is way too busy and that chain link fence really screws up the horizon… but the light on the car is wonderful and I’m too lazy to clean it up in Photoshop. Just mentally ignore the distractions and soak up those dying reflections in the paint as you contemplate warm summer evenings. 🙂