Tractor

Nah I don't do early morning stargazing anymore. If anyone wants to do a star party sometime I got a relatively large telescope and live in a pretty dark area now. If anyone else has a telescope and/or wants to learn some stuff about the night sky I'm up for it. I also usually get the solar filter out and check the sun for spots while I'm waiting for optical assemblies to reach ambient temp and before sundown. Heres a pic of the moon I got the other day under pretty high winds so its not as clear as I'd like. http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f185/EWhytsell/IMG_0328.jpg I can get good resolution down to a 1/2 mile area on the lunar surface on a great night. That crater is one of the larger ones though. Evan

To bad the suns nearly up when this occurs in our time zone.

If its something important or hard to replace easily I almost always go for the OE part. Especially with my toyotas. Evan

I kinda like what Eric was saying on this topic about maybe there being WMD's, but we don't want anyone to know where they came from. I remember at least a couple of speeches that Bush made back when the Libs were really pounding the "we want proof of WMD's" talks where Bush said something like this "As for proof of WMD's they were a number of them found, but the details aren't for the world to know at this time." That is a very odd thing, but then again from a republicans point of view Bush has done some very odd things in his time in office that make us all nuts. Mostly things exactly like this. He says he's got proof, but won't prove it and call out the libs. He bends to the will of the libs all the time and works with them more than we'd like. It wouldn't matter to me if there were nukes and they were "made in the USA" at least now Saddam doesn't have them. Besides its not like Bush gave them to him. His dad, Clinton, Regan, or any number of congressmen could have been involved over the last 20 to 30 years. Bottom line is we are working to correct the mistakes the UN, NATO and us have made over the last 60 years since the end of WWII. Its possible that they were more or less necessary mistakes to help in the defeat of the Russians. The entire middle east was designed by the UN after the war and its a mess. What to do about it? Who knows. Isn't it ironic that the worlds oil lays under that mess. Kinda serves the UN right to have to deal with all this BS now. For all we know the weapons have "made in france" stamped on them and are current models. We could be trying to help them save face for some reason. No clue and it doesn't make since to me, but I'm not a world leader. Evan

http://www.thepeoplescube.com/images/Jihad_Against_TroopSurge.jpg Evan

Being a huge Star Trek fan I really love that sig. BTW great joke. Evan

If its a car and its a good deal theres a reason. Thats at least what I know about them. Unless you know 100% what you getting and what your going to do with it and worthless shit talk doesn't = reason to buy a car. I just go by that rule and save lots of money. Evan

On a brighter note at least the jobless rate is remaining very low so you probably won't have to take what ever job you can find and with your skills you can probably get decent starting pay at most companies. The mortgage industry may not be a very easy thing to stay in at this point. It looks like at least for the next couple of years as more "arm" loans reset there is going to be trouble. BTW this market correction has created some great buying opportunies. Especially in gulf coast oil with hurricane season still approaching its peak and a couple of storms already enroute for the coasts:-) Should be some good swing trading in the comming weeks. Evan

Yeap. Its a storage cabinet. There are a few additional tray options you can get in place of it. 1 3000 sheet tray or 2 500 sheet trays. With the 2 500 sheet trays you can also get an additional 1500 sheet bank that attaches to the right side. I'd look around for those on ebay as well since they are very nice additions. Evan

Yeah the finisher is pretty easy to remove. I'd probably leave it attached since its the small one and I'd only transport the copier upright. Simply taking out the toner on that model won't do anything to keep it safe and clean. The drum and developer units have toner in them as well. That model will have 2 pull out handles on each side of it and can be lifted by two guys in good shape. I'm pretty sure its over 300 pounds. I work for MT Business Technologies now and I can tell you that us and Com Doc the best in the business. I guess IKON has been better in the past and between Gordon Flesh, Com Doc and MT we have all but ran them out of Ohio. They just don't service machines well and thats not smart in our business. We follow the maint schedules to the letter at my office. Our corp office up at mansfield http://www.mtbt.com sells used stuff sometimes. Not sure how much, but I know I can usually buy them for the wholesale price or if there really out dated I can get them for scrap price. Evan

I just saw this, basically its got 700,000 to 1,000,000 copies on it from the description and for that model its about half way through its life. I still wouldn't expect any serious problems with it since we have them run up near 2 million before we normally take them out of service. It could easily need a PM done and the parts alone would run you probably 900 bucks to get it into top shape. BTW thats a very good copier model. Probably my favorite box since DFAS has over 75 of them and they all make me lots'o'money. I'm not sure how many copies you do in a month, but for most small businesses that is a very big copier and could easily go 5 more years. Evan

I hope its as good as the original ones. Would be very hard to be that good though. Alot of us grew up on those movies. I know I listened to the movies on tape at bed time many times as a kid. Evan

My uncle has been with TDameritrade and is probably going to switch now unless he can talk them into some competitive rates vs scottrade and most others. About any of them will be the same. The main difference between online systems is that some are "Online stock brokers" and some our large investment firms with offices and just happen to provide online services. The larger firms like scottrade since I'm most familar with it usually have very up to the second tickers that you can have running on your PC if your going to do any day trading. Very good access to stock data (ie charts, SEC forms, and usually some type of gain/loss tracker to help make accounting at tax time easier.) I guess my suggestion is at least sign up with one of the big guys to get great info and expert help if necessary and also sign up with one of the super low price online brokers to do your trading if you wanna keep transaction fees to a minimum. Lots of guys do this who do hundreds of trades per year. The most it would cost you with alot of the bigger guys is that you'd have to put up like $500 in an account to get started and you could just open an IRA with that account or something and get the tax deductions from investing in it. BTW yeah all my stuffs in the red except good'ole Budweiser as well. I had been doing great going in and out on some others lately, but everyone got all scared off by bad news from banks. Evan

Rent one from a rental company. They are simple to operate if you can handle a video game. A mini excavator should cost around $250 for 8 hours of use on the meter + a delivery charge. I use Ohio Rental in Mt. Vernon, but I"m not far from there and I've also used Sky Rental in Westerville. They have a great price if you need to use something for an entire weekend for a bigger job since they charge you by the day instead of using an hour meter. You get to run the crap out of it for the same price as most others. Evan

If you wanna throw some money at something now and see what happens get in on budwieser (ticker BUD) now. Alot of the day traders I talk in forums with like buying it at around $49.50 per share and then dumping it at over $50. I guess its a pretty consistent stock for doing that and with all the news scaring off the dumber investors its now down below $48. It'll be back above $50 again once the smoke clears from the earnings reports over the next few days/weeks. On tip I can give you and that I didn't follow myself this time around (kicking myself for it now,) is to try not to trade much around the quarterly earnings dates. If anything holding out until the prices fall and then jumping in could be a good bet. At least then I wouldn't be waiting for things to get back to the levels they were at Last Monday when I held onto Fifth Third and another really small company to long. I coulda walked away with some nice profit and then bought back in today, but I was a dumbass. Oh well its always a learning experience. "Never swing for the fences." Also try superior investor as a forum to read posts on. Its pretty good for info. Quite a close nit group of day traders that don't have anything better to do than trade and play tennis:-) Evan

I use Scottrade. $7 dollar stock trade fees and free mutual fund trades if they are in there list of over 10,000 funds that qualify for it. I do some swing trading on it. Also if you want to learn alot go to investopedia.com to open an account on there real market simulator and also to read all there articles and other info. There are also a few others that are nearly 100% free, but they usually don't stay free for long. I went with scottrade because they have a couple local offices and if things get really messed up I can go yell at a real person. If you got any more questions I'll do what I can. Evan

Well normally I'd agree with you, but I got one of those jobs now and love it. Best company I've ever worked for. The 2nd best I've worked for also had a very workable policy like that. Both family owned/operated and both at the top of there respective industries. Evan

I believe the scapegoat story. Its not our job to question company policy. Its simply our job to shut up and do it. You can always have suggestions assuming your company has an open door policy for things like suggestions/comments. I also agree that this is very normal to take backup tapes home. Sure the kid could have done something different, but in reality if the data was that critical they should have had a brink truck or some other off site data security company handle it like other companies do. Also didn't anyone else hear that the interns supervisor or what ever position the guy had was also forced to resign? It was on WOSU 820 all day the other day. Also notice how at first is was only 25,000 ohioans then it was a few hundred thousand and now its a freaking huge number. Kinda cool ain't it now that memory is starting to fade from the original story. Oh well guess this is something for us guys in the IT fields to learn from. Evan

Yeah around here building is really about the same as buying except for one simple thing which was enough for my wife and I to build a house. "You don't have to pay $200K+ for some house built in the early 1900's with old tech in every part of it." When you build a home you get alot of headaches, but not nearly as many as you'd have remodeling an older one. especially if you don't like that sort of work. I have a very deep hate for anything resembling construction since I grew up with parents that did that during my entire home life. I did however install my own driveway, water line, voice/data/video/audio wiring, and am about to doze the place and plant grass, but thats all fun work involving heavy equipment:-) BTW where did you guys build? I got 5 acres up north near Marengo. Looks like its going to be a city up there very soon. Alot of houses and a few developments going in this summer. Evan

Cool maybe I see you around there. I fix all those copy machines you guys got in building 21. Evan

Cool. I know the feeling I'll be able to move into the one I had built in about a week and wow do I hate moving stuff. Evan

I think this type of thread always turns into my style kicks your style war. Really it comes down to what you want from the classes. I've taken Shurin Ryu (Okinawan) which was very traditional with an instructor who was totally into the "religous" aspects of the eastern arts as well as just killing people. I've also been 180 degrees around to a very modern school which used boxing techniques as the primary hand fighting tricks, used the usual karate kicks, and then used Ju Jitsu for the ground work. I personally liked the traditional school since I"m a history buff as well. I really didn't like the modern stuff and the instructor was pretty pussy and while all the shuffling that boxing comes with was a good workout it just wasn't karate to me. The guy had about 50 lbs and nearly a foot of height on me and I could take him standing or on the ground. He just didn't have the heart of a warrior if you get what I mean. so just find something you like and maybe even something a buddy is into or get a buddy to come along. I know its more fun that way. Sure wish I had the time. Maybe I'll set myself up a nice dojo again once I get out in the country in a few weeks and make myself not all lazy:-) Evan

Wow. If that was real that was awesome. Evan

If your in town I'd say stay in your upstairs area, if you got kids otherwise stay in your bedroom and continue to listen for sounds if you have an alarm system. If you hear someone its probably a good idea to give vocal warning that if the door starts to open that they will be shot. Not much else you could do really if the police show up to fast its likely someone will get trigger happy and thats never good. I'd never trust the police running around in my house while I was armed. If you live out in the country and theres no way the police could get there within the time it would take you to investigate your property I'd say comming down the stairs ready to fire would be the best course of action for your safety and everyones. I wonder how many burglers are sent running into the night once the alarm goes off vs how many continue their assault. Might be good research for just this type of situation. Evan

I heard on nation public radio that in Iran they have a "day of kites" of something where everyone in town flys kites. Seems simple enough, but these dumb fuckers put razors and other sharp objects on the kites to try and cut the other kites from the sky with them. I guess its some type of contest and alot of people manage to get cut pretty bad. Can anyone find anything about this? Might be good for a CR vid thread. I guess theres alot of death from getting tangled in electric wires also. Evan