My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Mon Mar 8, 1999

Used Car Observations, and some PlayStation Thoughts.

There was lots of snow on Saturday, so we went to visit my nephew on Sunday rather than Saturday.

I did a bit of used car inventory cataloging. There are no really interesting cars between days 30 and 39.

I went through doing a quick tour of days 260 to 370, wondering if the mythical '67 Corvette would appear.

On day 270 I found a Toyota '95 Soarer 2.5GT-T with the very interesting colour name of "dark blue mica phtalocyanine".

On day 360 that '92 fiji blue Mitsubishi GTO 4WD is a mere Cr7350. Of course, a player who has only his initial Cr10000 at that point is really warped.

On day 370 there was no black mica Toyota MA70 Supra, so it seems that there are no cars which are always there, but rather just a few cars which are nearly always there.

After returning on Sunday night, I tried to compare my ability with the Sony Dual Shock Controller versus the Barracuda 2. I tried getting A-1 to silver with the Barracuda 2 first. That took 9 days. Then I tried the Sony, and also took 9 days, and didn't manage quite as good a time. But I saved that game anyway. The implication would be that I can play slightly better with the Barracuda 2, but the Sony sure does feel a lot more positive and sensitive. You can really give a tiny amount of throttle, with no slop before it takes effect.

After that I went to Arcade Mode time trials of Trial Mountain, and found that I could easily better the old times I had recorded, using the same cars. I also found, to my mild annoyance, that I could easily beat the Subaru Impreza with the '67 Corvette. I haven't tried the Viper yet.

A recent modification to my ad hoc PlayStation stand consists of two dowels in front of the PlayStation stuck deep into box on which it stands, and sticking up about four inches. This is to prevent it from sliding forward. This became necessary when I switched from using a Barracuda 2 back to using the stock Sony controller. The Barracuda 2 had about two more feet of controller cord, and so my personal style would never pull the cord tight enough to actually move the PlayStation. With the Sony controller, however, it only has a little slack from my playing position, and so, when trying to coax that GTO Twin Turbo around a turn, I sometimes jerk the cord tight...

Perhaps I should get a controller extension cord...