greg1647545532

When I'm driving around in my minivan and I want to downshift around corners I just depress the clutch and downshift, because only bitches buy automatics.

I need to go play military this weekend. Hope the rain clears up and everyone has a good time.

Nice vid. What tires are you on?

I drive by there at least once a month, and I stopped in once to buy something. Waited in line for almost a half hour before I bailed and ordered it online. Totally not worth the trip, and their display stuff is only useful if you have a classic muscle car. I will say, I fucking love having the Jeg's store over there on 11th. That's store has saved my ass on more than one occasion.

Tell me they're letting him keep the m4.

This makes me feel stabby.

Thinking I might actually show up for this one...

Can you make a k-car handle?

This is a really fascinating subject. As a fan of dead-simple cars, I would love for automakers to make an indestructible DIY machine that will still be on the road in 40 years. The problem is that new car buyers get to dictate the cars that get made. New car buyers keep their cars, on average, something like 5 years. That's why bumper to bumper warranties rarely go over that. Automakers just flat don't care what happens to the car after 5 years, because the second owner who's stuck with monster repair bills was never a lost sale to them in the first place. As long as the first owner was happy and stays brand loyal, they win. The other thing is that the optional equipment on a 10 year old car effin blows unless you bought a top of the line Merc or something. Now a mid-grade Elantra comes with the same standard equipment as a 10 year old E-class. What does that mean? The guy who buys a new truck is going to get sick of it after 10 years anyway, and buy a new truck with all the new bells and whistles, better mileage, and better safety equipment. Even if his old truck runs like a top and has cost him nothing in maintenance. YOU might want to keep a car for 20 or 30 years, but if so, you're not the sort that gives money to the automakers. You buy used, and therefore your opinion doesn't matter. And, to make it worse, America has set up this stupid relationship between dealerships and automakers, by requiring automakers to sell cars through independent dealerships. And the dealerships don't make any money on new car sales, they make it up in the service and parts departments. So even if an automaker decided to make a car that was easy to fix and would run for 30 years, despite the fact that there's no incentive for them to do so, it would have the added detriment of pissing off their dealer network. The only answer, I'm afraid, is to keep buying old cars.

Yeah, you no doubt contribute to their bottom line, but you don't contribute in a way that gives you any say in what cars they produce, unfortunately. And neither do I. Even if someone made the perfect car -- say, a RWD 6 speed 250hp 4-cylinder 2200 lb 5 seat compact wagon with sporting intentions and not a lot of bells and whistles, I'd still wait for some other chump to eat the depreciation. The financial incentive is too strong not to, even though I know damn well that it's not in my own best interest as an enthusiast. Unfortunately, every other enthusiast has the same plan, which would make this magical car pure poison to a dealer. Which... surprise! is exactly what happens to every enthusiast car ever made. R32 anyone?

+1 on the hotness. I especially like the shelf for coolers and stuff, and the locking toolbox is very nice. I'd love to have that versus loading up the back of my car every time I go. Unfortunately, it's well out of my budget. But most people who do track days have much better budgets, so I still think it's priced well.

This is exactly what I'm saying. He blames the gov't, but it's really your neighbors. Fucktards. I haven't bought a new car since 2004 and I probably never will again, so I'm part of the problem, even though I have a Mazda5 with a manual. Some poor Mazda dealership probably sold it at a loss the first time around just to get the thing off the lot and then I bought it used, pleased as shit with myself, meanwhile not helping the situation at all. ETA: I found the thread in question, and yeah, the forum is a bit more high-end than I first pictured. Plenty of people buying S6 Avants and whatnot. But I also feel like everyone in the US who actually bought an S6 Avant was present in that thread. All 2 of them.

"Internet fanboys buy 15 year old Audis. We don't see a dime from those sales. Rich 65 year old white guys buy new Audis. So, fuck you, internet fanboys. We're building cars for the people who actually give us money." Which means mid-size sedans and SUVs with automatic transmissions and cheap gas engines. Just like every one else trying to make money selling new cars in this country. Aside from the A5 sportback, every other car on that list isn't here because they don't think they can make a profit on it, because the people who actually buy new don't want sporty or fun. If they thought there'd be enough demand, they would pony up for the crash tests and minor engineering changes. But "quit your whining you cheap-asses" isn't good for business, so he blames the gubmint like everyone else.

+1. The wine cooler thing is a red herring. Doesn't mean dick in this situation. The kid's crime is ground-worthy, but that's not even that important. The two most important things in this situation are 1) that the dad carry-through with his threats, and 2) that both parents are on the same page in terms of punishments. Even if they initially disagree, kids need consistency. If mom says "you're grounded," dad's job is to be right there in lockstep. If he disagrees, they need to hash it out in the bedroom after the kid is successfully grounded.

A spike is the best he can hope for. Anyone who's been to Biloxi knows the lasting value of casinos on shitholes. I like the "stuck with it like aids" comment.

"She's in Maui" seems more natural to me. Like, she's over there, in Maui, as opposed to, she's over there, on that island in the Pacific known to the natives as Maui.

Previous date was in June. This is a massive improvement. I've already got it on my calendar.

I would say "IN" is acceptable in nearly all circumstances involving vacations to islands. I'm going to be in Australia, or in Ireland, or in Cypress, or in Maui. "ON" seems to work if you're talking about a geographic feature - on Mt. Washington, on the Thames, on a deserted island. However, as soon as you start talking in terms of political boundaries, I feel like you should switch to in -- In the Azores, in Bermuda, in Hawaii, in Haiti, etc. So it depends on if you're talking about Maui as a political entity, or Maui as a geographic feature.

This is why I practice my bowstaff skills every day. All you CCW people can take down crackheads, but I can take down crackheads and ninjas. I don't back down from ninjas either. Respect.

It's taken me most of my adult life to get over my school snobbery. I dropped out of OSU to join the military and finished my degree at some crap school that nobody cares about. I always intended to go back to OSU for a master's degree, just to get the name on my resume and regain some pride. Ends up that after 8 years of job experience, nobody really gives a hoot where you want to school; my current employer never even asked where I got my degree. If you're 22 and you're applying for an entry level job with a bunch of other 22 year olds, a good school can set you apart. If you're older, a BS is an important checkbox to have ticked off, but your previous work experience, even if it's not directly in the same field, is what can and should set you apart from other applicants. Some companies will want fresh college grads, others will want people who have some experience. YMMV. My personal opinion is that you can't go wrong either way.

The ZR1 and GTR examples are good, but I don't think they necessary apply here. Generally speaking, road courses are road courses, and there's not going to be any situation where GM is like, "Well, we showed the ZR1 ripping it up at Road Atlanta, which it can handle just fine. You took it to Laguna Seca, which exceeds the design limits." Some tracks are harder on cars in different ways, but I'm sure GM does enough testing on enough different tracks that they can feel confident that it can handle any of them. If you exceed the design limits and hit a wall, that's driver error. If you downshift instead of upshift and grenade the valvetrain, that's also driver error. There's no corners where they're going to say, "You can safely take that corner at 110 a few times, but reliability will suffer, so you should have known to only take it at 95." Which is exactly the case here. They might show the Raptor bombing its way through the desert, but they didn't show it taking that exact obstacle at that exact speed, and at some point you need to draw a line at what's reasonable to infer from their advertising. If this Raptor club went out and launched their cars at 100 mph over a 20 foot jump and destroyed their front suspension, you'd be right to point out that the commercials never showed anything that extreme, and that people would be dumb to think their trucks could handle it. Cruising along at 60 on a dirt road, totally in-line with their advertising. Hitting a giant ditch at 90mph? I'm leaning towards saying that Ford doesn't have an obligation here since they never explicitly said the truck could do that. The Raptor is in new territory. Off road trails are going to vary wildly, and Ford designed a vehicle that can take X abuse; what sucks for them is that X+1 or X+2 levels of abuse are just a few mph or a few good rains away, and they can't control how ballsy the owners are going to be. If they cave at the X+2 level, then the slippery slope starts, and before you know it the guys who took that 20 foot jump at 100mph are crying because the guys who only took at it 90mph got their trucks fixed under warranty and they didn't.

When I was in school I was taught that planes fly because the air on top of the wing has to move faster than the air on the bottom of the wing. Ends up that was complete BS. Fuck school.

"Pluto and Charon are sometimes described as a binary system because the barycenter of their orbits does not lie within either body. However, the IAU has yet to formalise a definition for binary dwarf planets, and as such officially classifies Charon as a moon of Pluto." Give it enough time and The Man is going to take away Pluto's moons as well. But it can still be the awesomest, moonliest asteroid ever.

It's pretty pathetic, as far as planets go. One hell of an asteroid though. What would you pick? Shittiest planet, or awesomest asteroid?

pm coming