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Letter from May 20, 1945

May 20, 1945

Dear Buster:

At long last the letter I've promised for so long.

Last updated: September 2025

Introduction

Assetto Corsa has become my go-to tool for practicing autocross and track craft between real events. With Apple Silicon and CodeWeavers CrossOver Gaming, it now runs surprisingly well on macOS without needing a full Windows install or a virtual machine.

TL;DR: Best day ever for me. I let ChatGPT draft this based on my notes and data for the day.

Event: Golden Gate Lotus Club Autocross — November 1, 2025
Location: Laguna Seca Lakebed, near Monterey Bay, CA
Car: 2013 Porsche 991.1 Carrera S (Bridgestone RE-71RS, 32 psi hot)
Results: Official Results 

Introduction

After clearing a lingering airbag fault on my 2013 Porsche 991.1 Carrera S, I decided it was time to explore what the ThinkDiag+ tool could really do. 

My goal: customize how the car behaves and bring a few hidden factory options to life—Sport Plus, Porsche Sport Exhaust (PSE), full-time cluster lighting, and TPMS settings for my track tires.

This project turned into a deep dive into coding, diagnostics, and a little bit of trim repair along the way. Here are my notes to help me track and log my work.

Date: August 2025

Rig: Logitech G920 • Assetto Corsa (PC) • Parallels/Windows 11 on Mac mini (M4)

TL;DR

I’m running Windows 11 under Parallels 20.x on a Mac mini M4 running MacOS 15.6.

I tried all the suggestions I could find via Google and AI clients to figure out how to get Logitech Ghub working in this scenario. No luck.

So I finally went back to something I had setup years ago; working with the Controls option in AC and that seemed to work in this limited scenario.

See the companion article on Racebox Setup.

Viewing Data

Tap the Track icon to look at data that has been collected.

Select a session to review. In this case it was the 3/16/25 Loma Prieta event. In the screenshot below, the green indicates the fastest lap.

See the companion article on Racebox Data Analysis.

RaceBox Mini Application Instructions for Autocross- Ed Fisher comes from a forum post I came across while trying to learn how to use the device. Mods by me based on v2.1.3 of the Racebox app for iOS and my particular process.

Setup the Course

I recently was going through old photos and scanning interesting things. One thing that I’d had in my possession for years but never looked at was a swim meet program that my Great Aunt Ethel sent to her brother Ted (my grandfather).

The Marstons lived in Honolulu from around 1910-1935? Ted, Ethel, Stan and Warren were all active in local schools, attended McKinley High School and swam for the Outrigger Canoe Club.

After years of no maintenance on a weirdly growing set of redwood trees at the Santa Cruz house, we started to get a failure in the fence. The debris was pushing the fence into the neighbors yard. 

We had gardeners try to keep it clean, but it really needed a stump grinding. We hired StumpKing and Kyle got the job done.

Here's before and after.

Began the year with a trip out to the Seymour Center to play with the touch tanks.

Replaced the patio uplights that had been installed in the new patio in 2012. The constant moisture and exposure had dulled the lights and in some cases they were shorted out. So we bought replacements and I rewired them back up. Here's a before, during and after look.