Well we had a house party this last weekend and it all went very well, Whitney and I are now engaged and she is rocking on the wedding plans. We’re not even engaged for a week and she has already setup the venue, dates, and we have the wedding party planned, things are a movin! It was nice to have most of our friends and some of our family around for the event, I managed to keep it a secret from basically everyone. I had picked up the ring a few days prior, and the sales guy asked me if I had told anyone, I informed him that only he, myself, and god knew that I was there picking it up. Needless to say that Whitney was very surprised when I asked, shocked would probably be a more appropriate word, but it was a great weekend.

I’m now on my last week before I start my new job, getting a bit nervous, as I have been out of it for awhile at this point, but I am also very excited and anxious to get in there and start kicking some ass. I’ll be doing mostly automation and configuration management for them, lots of fun projects should be on my plate, but first I’ll need to get intimate with their infrastructure, here’s to hoping it is well documented. I’m looking forward to getting on the job and getting to know the folks, they seemed like a good crew and I’m hoping my initial impressions are right about them, as I kinda miss working on a team that I enjoy being around.

In other news I ended up buying a new set of wheels and tires for the STi, I had a blowout on one of my tires, I actually think it happened long before I noticed it. I came home yesterday from running some errands and I could hear it hissing, and my first thought was “oh great, well I hope I can find my patch kit”. Then upon trying to find the leak I could feel an odd ridge all along the back side of the tire, and I was fairly certain that it wasn’t supposed to be there. So I turned the wheel to the side and the entire sidewall had separated from the tread. I probably could have got more life out of the tires had I paid attention to the wear and rotated them at the appropriate time. I got almost 30k miles on summer sport tires with a very soft rubber compound so I can’t complain too much, they lasted at least as long as advertised.

I also replaced the wheels, not because I had to but had wanted to for awhile. The stockers are nice, BBS wheels, under 20lbs each, but they were getting beat up, and I wanted something lighter, ended up with some Kosei wheels that are just shy of 15lbs each. They look pretty nice, pretty close to stock actually which I like, but should be easier to keep clean and of course I shed ~10lbs from the rotational weight of the car, which is awesome! I still have over 400 miles to break in the new tires but they are the Dunlop ZII Star Specs sized at 245/40/R17, they are a great set of decently priced summer sport tires, I used the ZI’s for years before these came out. They are a bit loud, but the STi is already not a very quiet car while riding, nor is it the most smooth ride in the world, but that is not why one buys a WRX or STi.