Played hockey tonight. Another 11pm game. A few of the guys didn't show up so we had to play short. We lost 5-3. At the end D was dead with exhaustion.

I drove with Ryan to the game. He told me a cool story. The company he works for hired a few stunt drivers to to drive Ryan and his team around and show them car tricks. It's a real buisness expense; Ryan's team is working on a car racing video game.

Well, Ryan expected the stunt drivers to show up at the track with special stunt cars; they didn't. They went to Hertz and rented regular rental cars. ("Don't worry! We paid the extra $8.00 for insurance.") One of the stunt drivers started off by saying "The cars have many safety features that make it difficult to do stunts. We turned them off by pulling most of the fuses. We also tighten the parking brakes." The drivers then proceed to run the cars through their paces. By the end of the day parts were flying off. One driver bitched that his power steering belt popped off. Another mentioned that he broke a parking brake control cable. The tires were bald, and the parking brakes were smoking.

Apparently this is par for the course in the auto racing video games industry. Ryan mentioned that on another game, the sound man was collecting various car sounds. For one sound he rented a car, set the parking brake and drove it up a hill, gas to the floor. It ended up melting the rear hub caps.

I will never buy a used rental car.