Yesterday I received the club tent map for Carlisle. Different from previous years where we have been listed as TripleWhiteFox.com, this year we are listed as the “Fox-Body Feature Mustang Club”.
We are at location “J” of the red section which is the Mustang show field. Entry is through Gate 3 where you will take a right and go to the third row down.
We’re getting close to show time!
The full map is here.
I tweeted about this event when I first heard about the Coyote 5.0 swap at Carlisle. I was just reminder of it when I received a “Fast News from Ford Racing” last week. Apparently, if you correctly guess how long it will take to do the swap you could win $1,500 in Ford Racing parts.
Predict How Long It’ll Take to Swap a New 5.0 into a
Fox Body Mustang and Win $1,500 in Ford Racing Performance Parts!
You don’t need to be a mechanic to enter the “Coyote Countdown†engine swap contest at this year’s Carlisle (PA) Ford Nationals – you just need a good guess to win $1,500 in Ford Racing Performance Parts. The winner must most accurately predict how much time it will take for Kurgan Motorsports to swap out the original engine from a partially restored Fox Body Mustang and replace it with a brand-new Ford Racing “Coyote†5.0 V-8. The contest showcases how easy it can be to swap a Coyote 5.0 using Ford Racing’s crate engine (M-6007-M50) and wiring installation kit (M-6017-A504V) into an older Ford vehicle.Before the swap takes place at Carlisle, you must submit your guess online HERE.
Enter online, winner need not be present.
I received my gate pass a couple of days ago.
I haven’t heard from a lot of people about whether they are attending or not. If you are attending and I haven’t added you to the official list, please let me know that you are attending and which days. With our busy schedules and gas prices being what they are I can see why some may be unable to commit until the last minute.
This year I refrained from sending out any mass emails. I figured that the audience for this site knows we are doing this since this is year number 5. Maybe that was a bad assumption?
I was thinking about how to get the word out so, in order to find who was talking about Carlisle 2011 and Mustangs, I Googled “Mustang Carlisle 2011” and was surprised to find this site as the number two entry.
Searching for “Carlisle 2011 Mustangs” puts this site first. Interesting.
As I have previously mentioned, I finally pulled the trigger on a new laptop, the Lenovo Thinkpad T520. I wanted a solid and reliable laptop and the Lenovo T-series has offerred that for many years.
It was tricky to time the purchase as Lenovo is constantly changing the configurations they offer as well as the coupons available.  My interest in Lenovo started in March when the T510 was available. I almost went with the T510 when a really great configuration was obtainable for the mid $700’s. For a while I kicked myself for not jumping on that deal as I watched and watched the pricing but then justified my indecision as I decided to wait for the T520 with Sandy Bridge.
I found the Lenovo forums at notebookreview.com to be very helpful in figuring out the discounts and the finally configuration.  I pretty much bought the most basic configuration that met my needs and opted to do my own upgrades since purchasing them from Lenovo are more expensive  than buying them aftermarket. From Lenovo, I configured the following upgrades for the standard T520i:
From Amazon, I also ordered a Corsair 4 GB DDR3 Laptop Memory Kit to add to the standard 2GB of RAM. I ordered a Intel Solid-State Drives 310 series – Solid state drive – 80 GB to install via the mSATA slot which allowed me to keep a spinning HDD which I upgraded from the standard 250 GB 5200 RPM drive to the Western Digital 320 GB Scorpio Black SATA 7200 RPM.
The upgrades were painless and only involved removing a few screws to gain access. Memory and HDD install from the bottom. mSATA SSD installed unde rthe keyboard. It was kind of weird to crack open a brand new laptop but everything I read about Thinkpads indicated that they were among the most serviceable out there. Â My overall procedure was as follows:
I didn’t decide on the HDD upgrade until a few days later.
Now that I have it all together, I am very happy with the result. I have my OS and applications on the 80GB SSD and my data on the 320 GB HDD. Boot up and general operation are really fast.
I’m a very data-oriented person. I find satisfaction in recognizing, in seemingly random situations, numbers that are meaningful to me.
For example, I have been agonizing over spending money on a new laptop when my current one was still mostly meeting my needs. When I finally pulled the trigger on a new one, I paid online using my credit card’s one time use account number feature. The last eight digits of which were exactly my birthday (YYYY MMDD). Weird. But, it helped me rationalize that the purchase was meant to be.
Anyway…
Last weekend, a bear visited our yard. We have heard there are bears in the area but have never seen one. I looked out just as this guy successfully lowered our bird feeder. The feeder is suspended about 15 feet above the ground using a rope and pulley system. He must have unhooked the rope looped on a j-hook on the tree by pulling it off the hook.
He cleaned out the feeder before moving on. While he was there I snapped many pictures of him. I took one as he recognized that I was watching him. At that point, I realized he was tagged. As I later reviewed the pictures I zoomed in and found a number very familiar to me.
