Reporting live from Lot 2

It’s 6:19 AM here in the tent camping area of Lot 2 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The other three are still sleeping, but I’m hoping that as everyone around us wakes up, they will too.

It was crazy last night, but it was tame back where we are. Next year Amy wants to go even earlier, and it’d been nice to have had a fire going. No loss, though, because I was pretty tired.

Oh, there’s much more movement from the others. Time to get ready!

Dream about the moonlight on the Wabash

My radio was at work. I am set for Sunday.

Forecast for Sunday at Indy: Sunny, with a high near 79. South southeast wind between 6 and 9 mph.

Pistons logo for Harmony 880 remote

Are you a Detroit Pistons fan? Do you have a Harmony 880 remote control? Then this Pistons background for the Harmony 880 is for you! (Note: It should also work on a Harmony 890.)

I used The GIMP to do the image editing.

• I downloaded the gradient background from j3’s Harmony 880 site.
• I downloaded the Pistons logo from answers.com.
• I resized the background to 400x500 (the same ratio as 128x160) using Cubic interpolation and saved it to a PNG (which doesn’t use lossy compression).
• I created a new image of size 400x500.
• I opened the new background PNG as a layer.
• I opened the logo PNG as a layer.
• I changed the opacity of the logo layer to 20% so it won’t make the display hard to read.
• I saved it to The GIMP’s native file format in case you want to change something.
• I resized the image to 128x160 using Cubic interpolation.
• I saved the image as a GIF.

I did most of the image manipulation at 400x500 and resized after because the edges of the logo were too jagged when I did everything at 128x160.

Indy 500

Rain, rain, go away

I prefer seeing 200 laps and a finish under green to seeing 166 laps and a finish under yellow, but hey, at least we didn’t have to drive down there a second (or third, or fourth) day. Plus, our seats in the Paddock are covered so we didn’t mind the rain (except when we had to walk back to the car).

Now to figure out what to do for next year. Request Paddock seats closer to turn 1? Camp overnight? Decisions, decisions.

Katrina and the Tigers

Katrina’s First Baseball Game [Helen’s public gallery at Picasa]

On Sunday, I took Katrina to the Tigers game at Comerica Park. (The Tigers beat the Twins 4-3.) We got there a little late because we took our time at WalkAmerica that morning, but neither of us were bothered by it.

We had great seats — I chose a section near where I sat last year for a coworker’s bachelor party. Katrina mostly wanted to take pictures and eat her piece of pizza (she didn’t want the cherry Icee I got for her), but she did enjoy doing the wave and cheering when everyone else did. (She got confused a couple of times, putting her arms up in the air when the crowd cheered for a good play. I thought that was cute.)

For a few innings we walked around, rode the carousel, visited the store (where I bought her a white Tigers hat with a pink D), and bought cotton candy. After the game, she said her favorite part was riding the tigers on the carousel.