About Me

chris — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:06:11 +0000

You have reached the “about me” section of see story run dot com. Here you will find general information about one Sir Christopher Story. Born in the eighty fourth year of the twentieth century to parents, our protagonist started life with a brief spout of tears and a good nap.

Yada yada yada and he’s 20 something with a silly website-

Quick Info:
Name: Chris Story
Email: email hidden; JavaScript is required
AIM: renderedchild
The Facebook
The Twitter: @seestoryrun
The Myspace

OK, I live in north Texas, the Dallas/Fort Worth area. After highschool at 19 I moved to Arlington to attend the University of Texas at Arlington. I did that for a couple of years in the engineering department. I had planned on getting a mechanical engineering degree before I decided that I couldn’t put up with the math so I quit that.

While I was there I participated in a little thing called Formula SAE. This is a compitition where university students design and build a race car to go autocrossing. It is a really neat program designed to teach students practical engineering principals that don’t normally get picked up in the classroom; management, scheduling, machining, etc etc.

After I quit the schooling business I went to work as a mechanical designer for a small engineering company in Fort Worth; I enjoy it quite a bit at the time of this writing. Most of my job consists of designing mechanical bits inside of a 3D modeling package called SolidWorks, which I adore; aside from the occasional crash. Our company specializes in control systems. Meaning systems that control things, things like computer controled bomb bay doors on fire fighting aircraft or robotic equipment… Anyways its always something new, challenging and interesting, I like it.

In between being born and now I’ve come across a few things I enjoy doing. At this point I’ll take the time to layout some of my hobbies and things I am passionate about. Thanks for visiting my little spot on the web. Check out the images section and let me know what you think or read my blog to see what I’m up to.

Race Cars
Driving, designing, building, watching, old, new, sprint, endurance, dirt, asphalt, 2 wheels, 4 wheels, whatever; if it involves a race car, left and right turns (READ: no ovals, no drag) i’m there. A passion for racing was started early by a dad who raced Go-Karts in the 70s/80′s and SCCA Spec Renault in the 80′s/90′s. I’ve been around racing in one form or another for as long as I can remember.

Karting
My first, first hand experience racing came somewhat early in the form of a 100cc 2 cycle Go-Kart for my 13th birthday (the blue kart pictured below, left). I raced for a number of years fairly successfully and eventually moved up to a 125cc ‘shifter kart’ (pictured below, middle & right). These shifter karts aren’t your grandma’s yard kart, with approximately 40 horsepower and a weight (with driver) of 385 lbs. these karts could accelerate at ~1g to 60 miles an hour in 3 seconds. We would regularly pull ~3g’s laterally and under breaking. The top speed is around 125 miles an hour. We would race in sanctioned races all around the country and did fairly well, though we regularly got out $pent which eventually lead (among other things) to the departure of regular kart racing. I still have a kart (the one pictured below, middle) and take it out to the kart track in Denton from time to time. I have aspirations of racing competitively again.

Formula SAE
At the ripe ole age of 20 I enrolled at The University of Texas in Arlington mainly to participate in the FSAE program. The basic rules are pretty simple; design and build prototype racecar for autocross racing Each year a team must bring a new car to competition, the design can be the same, but it must be a new car. You can pick any engine you want so long as its under 600cc’s and a 4 stroke engine, however all engines must breath through a fairly small restrictor in the intake so horsepower is pretty equal across all engine capacities. As a result of these open rules you get all sorts of neat innovation from the 140+ teams that enter every year. During my stint on the FSAE team I learned a great deal about all sorts of engineering. From manufacturing techniques to management. Whats it really about though? For me, designing and building a world class race car with a bunch of friends and driving it, fast. Where else do you get to drive a 600cc 400 pound car with a full aero package for free? Well, free in the monetary sense… countless all nighters before going to your normal 9 to 5 in between classes isn’t exactly free.

Photography
Taking pictures is another hobby of mine I take pretty seriously. I’ve got a few thousand dollars worth of equipment rolled up in my Canon DSLR. I enjoy taking pictures at motorsports events the most, however silly abstract things and landscapes also interest me. I would say that motorsports photography is the only thing I really take seriously though. The rest is for kicks.

Design
I’ve always had an interest in design, while I found out the expensive way that engineering (read: math) wasn’t interesting enough for me to stick through 5 years, design still interests me. I’ve had my eye on industrial design for a while now as something that I might try schooling for, however a lack of ID schools in the area and a question on how good I’d be at a degree closely related to art keeps me from pushing further on an official level. I do however pursue the talent on my own at home. Surfacing in SolidWorks is something I am going after right now. I’ve got a few pet projects you’ll see me post about in the future.

I suppose I should give SolidWorks a brief explanation, as I am sure you will hear me talk about it many times. SolidWorks is a 3D drawing package many engineering companies use. It is fully parametric, meaning all the dimensions and values you assign things have meaning and can be related to other things. As you change one thing, other things will update off of that change. It is an amazingly powerful software package that can be used to design just about anything.

Skills
From 4 years of drafting classes to years on the FSAE team and countless hours tinkering at various things at home, I have developed quite a few skills over the years. Its still growing. If you are interested in specifics please find my resume and feel free to contact me regarding projects you need help in any area I can help in.

Thanks for stopping by my website, take your time looking around; leave me a comment, let me know what you think.

I would like to give a special thanks to Chris Filmore for helping me with the CSS code behind this website, with out his help my graphics out of photoshop would have never made it to a website.

see story run » Story

About Me