4th of july weekend...

so i know its a little late for this.... actual 4th of july, watched fireworks at a friends house... heres the standard "fireworks" shot, blurry as heck

next day, there was an exotic car gathering near here and there was a lamborghini gallardo that showed up, kinda customized in little ways...

that night we went downtown to celebrate mollys birthday and there was a V8 lotus esprit that pulled up beside us at a light!

yes, there was way more to this weekend besides cars, but i dont post people pics on here...

lightning!

finally captured lightning with my camera... its actually a frame from a video i shot out of my office window this afternoon...

intermarque car show 2008

ok these pics are a few weeks old (been really busy!) but this is from the annual intermarque british car show held every year at the radisson hotel in plymouth.
first off, my car:

john's esprit (same car as mine, different wheels):

series 1 lotus elise (one of VERY few in the US... this is waht tehy looked like in europe before they were redisigned and brought to america):

new lotus elise (note the visual changes):

the older lotus cars from our lotus club in MN:

aston martin v8 vantage:

delorean!!! I STILL WANT ONE OF THESE! (this one only had 5000 miles on it!):

I got to park next to it and take pics of my two favorite cars in the world that arent lamborghinis!

thats all! there were a number of other awesome cars there but these were what i was really there for.

mini canon!

check this thing out! this is a small iron/steel(?) canon that is made to fire little blackcat firecrackers. you put them in with the wick first so it comes out a little hole in the back and then you light it and they explode and the shreds FLY out the front. I dont remember blackcats being that loud but I think this thing REALLY amplifies the sound because it made my ears ring on the initial test fire.... im thinking also that if i cut doen a blackcat to half length, a nice 10mm ball bearing will fit in the front and this will actually be a miniature canon that fires a projectile!

stupid clone buildings

ok this was originally going to start as an update to teh new building being built over by southdale as they are nearing completion...
here it is:

now, i noticed something about this building that i have noticed on some other buildings in the area... the use of that tan sandstone color walls. i wrote down a list of all the buildings that have been built in the past 5-10 years around here and the list was quite long. i plotted them out all on a map of the area and realized that they are ALL within a half mile of each other. the other day i was out driving and decided to check out some of them in detail and this is what made me notice the striking simmilarities of all these sandstone buildings...
first, here is the map of all the buildings below:

look at how close they are to eachother!!!!
anyways here is the gallery of all the same colored buildings. this is absolutely retarded. even the windows match style on damn near every one of these buildings!!!!
best buy headquarters... not how they used the slightly "unfinished" color look on some of the upper floors? that is repeated many times below:

NEW (past few months) hilton hotel (youd think theyd want to stand out a little from all the other buildings for being a hotel for christs sake!):

express scripts building:

NEW (past month) office building across the highway from express scripts, using that oh-so-clever unfinished look as if they conviniently "forgot" to color the sandstone beams on one side of the building:

tria center (across the god damn STREET from the new hilton!):

centennial lakes office park (there are 4 more JUST like this surrounding a lake in back):

building across the highway from the new hilton using that same "we-didnt-care-about-finishing-the-top-few-stories" mis-matched sandstone bullshit:

this one is being built in the SAME FRIGGIN BLOCK as the one above!!!!:

and then i just drove by this one on france where general cinema at centennial lakes used to be... see that tan slab??? thats MORE OF THE SAME GOD DAMN STUFF!!!!!!!!!! this ones going to look just like the rest!!!!

holy christ! didnt they teach anything else in architecture class around here? or did the contractor for all of these buildings drop out after learning the first sandstone lesson? this is just pure stupidity! You can LITERALLY find a point in teh city where if you stand on it, you can actually see EVERY FUCKING ONE of these buildings with only having to turn your head SLIGHTLY from side to side!!!gah, im done.

updated the ak47 with a new romanian side folding stock, new romanian front handguards, romanian bayonet, black pistol grip, and a new hungarian 30-round magazine...

with the uzi, posing pretty...

next up, glock 19, 9mm... (whenever the bush tax rebate comes)

K!

hellllllllllllll yeah look what i got yesterday!!

its a romanian ak-47 rifle... the real deal!! this rifle started life as a fully automatic machine gun over in romania (more countries than just russia produce the ak) and was modified to semi automatic in order for their civil guard (sort of like a bad ass police force) to carry. in the past decade or so, they have adapted a new bullet and disassembled all of their old ak47s. a company over here bough all of the leftover parts and imported them, and through a combination of US made parts and romanian spare parts, this complete rifle was formed. it came with two 30-round magazines, but i will be stocking up on more soon...I will be adding some custom modifications in the next couple days, so stay tuned!and no, i dont plan on using this rifle for anything more then target shooting. you are a brainwashed moron if you think that just because it has a large magazine and a pistol grip, that its going to be used in a shootout in a mall or something. take your thick-headed ideas somewhere else.

new job!!

ok so a couple weeks ago i found a new job working at us bank home mortgage out by the airport... i am in the loan closing department doing re-disclosures and flood zone certifications (hard to explain the actual technical details)... but this is my first time as an office worker / cubicle dweller...
here is the building:

and here is the view in my cubicle every day from left to right... the last shot with my coat is behind me as i sit at the computer... (and yes, peoples personal loan and financial data have been edited out of these shots...)

bird of fire

so my dad got some new wheels for the firebird today! hes EXTREMELY happy! I think they make the car look totally awesome too...