Finally, a new update!

OK, four months between updates is bad.

I mentioned on one of my videos that my daughter (now 1) is very active, so I can't really just leave her to go jump on my computer. My 6-year-old son can keep an eye on her, but he's not always great about it and working the overnight shift means I have very little energy. I may be going through a shift change in the near future so we'll see how that affects things.

Anyhow, when I have been playing it's been Grand Theft Auto V, as evidenced by my last several videos. Twitch has a new direct export to YouTube feature, which is why the live streams I uploaded lack my usual intro. The annoyance being that it wasn't able to upload it all at once, hence the 15 minute bits.

I recently acquired Gran Turismo 5 for PS3, as anyone who follows my Facebook page knows. God I forgot how much I loved that series (though I probably could have just read my old blog post about it as a reminder). It was rather funny trying to drive a car in GT5 (a fairly accurate simulator) after spending so much time playing GTA V (and its arcade-y driving model). But I made the necessary adjustments. I am by no means a great driver, but I'm better than I used to be.

One of my missions in Gran Turismo is to collect every classic muscle car possible. Here is my list so far:

1969 Chevy Camaro Z28
1970 Dodge Challenger R/T
1970 Dodge Charger 440 R/T
1970 Plymouth Superbird
1970 Chevy Chevelle SS 454
1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1
1966 Shelby Cobra 427
1962 Buick Special

Of course, old school muscle cars have a tendency to be very poor track cars (though they get better with tuning and upgrades) so for races outside the confines of 1979 and earlier, I have a few favorites:

2010 Chevy Camaro SS (700 hp, all upgrades)
2010 Subaru Impreza WRX STi (508 hp)
2009 Nissan GT-R SpecV (850 hp, all upgrades)

Recently I also purchased a 2009 Audi R8 5.2L FSI Quattro for races requiring German makes. I'm not fond of it as the rear mounted engine gives it a certain quirkiness at times (i.e. I spin the hell out on it a lot, not easy to do on an AWD vehicle). It's mostly upgraded (870+ hp) needing only the weight reduction and chassis reinforcement upgrades..

The Camaro was really my go-to vehicle for quite some time, up until I reached the Expert series races. There's a series for turbo-powered cars with a race on the High Speed Ring track (very easy) that rakes in $36k for a win, against cars in the 300+ hp range. The Camaro is a normally aspirated vehicle (albeit with a supercharger) that's ineligible, while my modestly upgraded WRX sedan was already running over 400 hp. I made sure to upgrade the suspension and transmission (the full customize transmission is one of the most important upgrades for your vehicle; for money I took my Camaro to the Supercar championship race on Daytona. $17k per win!) and went nuts. This was around the time I decided to get the GT-R, as it's one of the best cars for the money imo.

At some point I'll tackle the Gran Turismo and Polyphony Digital championships, but I haven't decided what car to run yet. I want one with a racing modification, or at least a full-on race car, but we'll see what unfolds. I need to stop blowing money on muscle cars for a while though.