Well, I’m back in school trying to get a MBA at the UC Irvine Graduate School of Management Merage School of Management.. this is my last and final year.. the last year is the best, I think, because thats when you take all your elective courses, classes that are more specific to certain fields.. for example, I’m taking F251 Marketing Research this quarter with Professor Wheeler.. he’s a cool guy.. especially since he’s into cars.. I handed him a copy of DSport Magazine and as he was flipping through it, he actually “knew” the car parts.. like camshafts, connecting rods, pistons, etc.. which brings me to the point of this post.. for class, me and 3 other classmates decided to use DSport Magazine as our class project.. we met with Mike (THE publisher of DSport) and learned that he had a problem.. DSport’s subscriptions, as a percentage of total circulation, are much too low when you compare the ratio to other automotive enthusiast magazines like Sport Compact Car, Super Street, Turbo & Hi-Tech Performance and Modified Magazine.. so we set out on our task of designing a questionnaire in an attempt to figure out why this is the case.. our objectives are basically:

1. To find out why a consumer would purchase an issue of DSport Magazine from a store for $6.99, yet not subscribe.
2. To find out why a consumer WOULD subscribe.

Normally, I wouldn’t have blog’ed about it, but we fell behind a little bit so now we’re in a rush to collect data. We’ll need to start analyzing data by next week. So I’mnow asking for YOUR help.

Ideally, it would be best if YOU have purchased an issue of DSport Magazine or at least seen/read the magazine before. If not, you can still help if you subscribe, purchased, or have seen/read a comparable magazine, such as Sport Compact Car, Super Street, Turbo & Hi-Tech, or Modified Magazine.

The questionnaire takes about 3-4 minutes to complete.. there will also be a drawing for participants. If you choose to participate in the drawing, you will be asked for some contact information at the end of the survey. Contact information is separeted from the survey results so as to maintain privacy and anonimity. None of this data will be sold or shared with anyone except for DSport Magazine/IDRC. If you choose NOT to participate in the drawing, you will not be asked for any contact information. Mike hasn’t finalized the prizes for the drawing, but he told me that first prize will probably be a set of Rota wheels, unless they can get something better.. of course, you CAN just take the survey just to help..

The survey can be reached here: http://www.aricswebsite.com/phpsurveyor/index.php?sid=4

There should be a link to it from DSport’s website by tomorrow or Monday.

Thanks for your help. If there’s interest, I’ll post the results in about a month after we finish our report and presentation.

Cars, General | No Comments »

So I was cruising my own links when I came upon a short comment on 6togo (yeah, I got an Infiniti, I couldn’t wait 10 months for the IS350 ).. “Lexus IS Has Secret Cheat Code that Enables Massive Peel-Outs”.. AKA how to disable VDIM.. I followed the links and wound up at clublexus.com..

Here’s the procedure to disable VDIM, electronic steering, etc.. the only thing that stays enabled is the ABS:

1. start the car with the parking prake on
2. then foot brake twice, keep the foot brake down after the second time
3. then parking brake twice, keep it down
4. repeat until skid light is on the dash
5. it will reset when you restart the car

At first, I was really sceptical.. so I read up to page 5.. take it for what its worth, it was from the internet, after all.. however, if I had my own IS350, I would try it.. hell, this procedure is a lot like the factory ECU reset procedure for my G35 .. anyway, here are a few comments from people on clublexus.com..

i was able to confirm that the sequence code does atleast keep the trac off light showing on the dash display. i ran a test on a sharp turn and kept the wheels spinning at over 40mph. that light still stays on. i would not recommend it for daily driving, the back wheels are broken loose very easily. sure it’s cool to know it is available, but time to move on.

Well just got back from taking My IS350 w/sport setup to an scca event.

The disable VSC/VDIM trick works for certain and turns all the gadgets off. No question. I was able to hang the ass out on turns and whatever else I wanted. Had a blast!

However, VDIM when enabled really is pretty good stuff for giving you a nice strong run on a course for amateurs and probably a lot of mid-level guys too. When I muffed one of my runs and did a DNF I enabled VDIM for the rest of the course and was pretty impressed. It really does not get in the way for the most part unless you run a really bad line and screw a turn.

Here’s a pic of a 2006 Lexus IS350 laying some good rubber..

Cars | 2 Comments »

You regular visitors may have noticed my site has taken on a new look. I finally found some time to upgrade to WordPress v1.5.2. Having done so, made available a bunch of themes other, more talented WordPress users have created for the benefit of us less talented WordPress users. I’m really amazed at what some people will do for the benefit of others in the WordPress community.

To give proper credit, my site is using the Connections theme made by Patricia Mueller. I still need to change it up a bit so as not to look exactly like the creator’s own website though . Thanks Patricia and thanks to everyone that has contributed to WordPress.

While I’m at it, I should plug another piece of open-source software written by Jason Cleeland, PHPSurveyor. For my marketing research class, we needed to complete and administer an internet survey. I looked at a few different packages, but most lacked a lot of features that a survey SHOULD have so as to minimize bias (cookies, randomized answers, etc.). And overall, most open-source solutions just lacked many features that you would expect in a survey (conditional branching, scale answers, attitude scales, etc.). I did find one called Opinio, but it was $750. I didn’t even bother with the ‘lite’ version. PHPSurveyor pretty much had everything I was looking for and it was available under the GPL, can’t as for much more.

General | No Comments »