Wast3gate -- An explanation

In vehicular parlance, a wastegate is a small device which allows excess turbo boost pressure to be released once the throttle is closed, or a predetermined amount of boost pressure is reached. Today, a modern application might look something like this:

Things mechanical drive my life. I'm a gearhead. It's mostly motorcycles, but it if has an engine, I'm into it. So somewhere along the way, I adopted 'wastegate' as a personal tagline -- a sort of way to live life. For purposes here, it's 'wast3gate' because 'wastegate' was taken -- probably by some kid talking about how cool his mom's Eclipse GSX is, and how when he's finally old enough to drive he'll have mad-krayzee drifting skillz, yo.

Nearly everything in our daily lives and our various popular cultures has a certain artificially inflated value. It's only natural:

"Dude, did you see that movie? It was frickin' awesome!"

"Yeah, I saw it; I thought it sucked."

So I have a sort of internal wastegate. All the hype of the everyday gets drawn in, through the mental turbocharger, and pressurised. I'm willing to process just about anything that's put in front of me. But there's a decisive moment when I stop feeding the compressor and I take a step back -- a sort of closing of the throttle bodies, if you will. It's at that point the wastegate opens up.

Many of the observations you read here will be the effluent from that process. Much of it good, lots of it pretty awful. But don't think of this as a space full of negativity. It's far from that. And don't think that this will be all about gearhead-type things. It will run the gamut.

I sincerely hope most of you will add this blog to to your list of things to read online before getting any real work done. If you do, here are some things you're likely to experience:

• You may be enlightened
• You may be offended
• You may be moved
• You may be pissed off
• You may be saddened
• You may be happy

I hope to have something meaningful to add every day. I hope that all of you will add something meaningful as well. Agree with me, tell me I'm full of crap, tell me I'm completely wrong.

Either way, today's the day for me to start something new.

Best wishes this new year to all.