greg1647545532

I've never heard of having to find a certified welder. The cage will get inspected, which includes someone examining the quality of the welds. All they care about is if the welds meet their standards. Best course of action is to ask the sactioning body directly.

I believe the touring 5speed was dropped for 08, so you're stuck with the 2 years if you want a sunroof. Check out mazdav.com for better info. There were waaay more sports (base model) sold with manuals. You can always get a set of leather seats from a wrecked car on eBay and sell me the cloth ones if you find a sport -- I wouldn't mind having a spare set for when my kids destroy them. If you want to test drive my 09 sport you can pm me. I found mine through dumb luck.

The 318s had a lot of problems with head gaskets. I'm not sure if they ever figured it out, but I know I've spent a lot of time trolling craigslist and finding sub-$1000 318s with blown gaskets. If I were single I'd probably have bought every one of them to flip. eta: disregard. They'd fixed it by mid-94: http://www.unofficialbmw.com/all/engine/all_m42_profile_gasket_faq.html

"In Pool Comp you will assume full dive gear with double hose regulators on the dive tanks and swim along the deep end of the Combat Training Tank. Soon, as swift as a shark attack, you are tossed around like a rag doll and will have all of your gear and tanks torn from your body (see video (2 mb) quicktime required. The regulator hoses are tied in outrageous knots by the relentless underwater aggressor (instructor Psycho)(see video (2.2 mb) quicktime required. You are in a precarious position and could easily panic and bolt for the surface. However, if you don't want to fail the test and be rolled from training, you find your source of air and untangle the knot to be able to breathe underwater. If you accomplish this you must re-don all of your gear properly and return to the surface. This is no small chore - just another day in the life of a Tadpole trainee." None of that sounds like waterboarding. It sounds like hell, no doubt, but I can't find anything that says SEALS are trained to suppress the drowning reflex that happens when water enters the airways. Maybe they're waterboarded so they know what it feels like, but that's different than being trained to control it. Can you find me something specific so I don't have to spend hours looking for what you're talking about? I mean, I gave you a very specific, very graphic first hand account of someone who waterboarded themselves. Give me something that specific that I can read that counters that guy's experience. I'd be interested in that article. Got a link? lol, you go find out the old fashioned way. I don't think as much of SERE is as classified as you think it is, that's all. And generally people know when to shut up -- I trust that my friend isn't going to tell me things he's not supposed to. I've talked to dozens of aircrew members who had to go through it, and I have a hard time believing that the all happened to forget to tell me that they were giving me classified info. I mean, people even blog about it.

This isn't worth arguing over. I found 1 account from 1 guy who said "I had no control over this. It was a reflex. I don't think I could train myself to suppress it." I'm not arguing that I understand human physiology better than you, or that I'm more well versed in SEAL training or whatever. All I'm saying is, the only first-hand account I can find says it was different than normal pain. Find me a first-hand account that disagrees and I'll reconsider. lol

Hey, I'm just going off the first-hand account of a guy who tried it. Maybe you can train to control those reflexes, but I doubt it's like normal water training. Hell, the guy in my link even said he swam one time without breathing until he passed out. Seems like he knew a thing or two about water training. Who knows. Try it and get back to us. lol

From the link I posted, I don't think it's about tolerating pain or mind over body. The guy who tried it said it was a completely involuntary reflex response to water entering the airways. It's not about holding your breath because they're literally pouring the water into your nose/mouth. In any case, I work with a SERE instructor. I'm sure he's witnessed more than a few water boardings. I'll ask him about it this weekend.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=448717 A staunch conservative waterboarded himself to see how bad it was (after arguing for years that it wasn't torture). Cliffs -- he said he'd rather smash his fingers to bits with a hammer. 2 days later he said he had recovered his wits somewhat and said he might rather keep his fingers, or might not.

Or they can tell HTC to get bent and get phones from a different supplier. Ain't like HTC has a lock on Android phones. As long as Verizon/Sprint/et al charge for tethering, I can't see them tolerating this.

yesyesyes!!! :masturboy:

Wheel options are getting good for these cars. No reason to get Rotas or Drags or whatever. 949 racing is the (IMO) gold standard for cheap, strong, and light wheels: http://949racing.com/ Team Dynamics also makes a good wheel, but it's somewhat blah. Actually, just go here: http://www.good-win-racing.com/Mazda-Performance-Parts/Miata/Wheels-Tires/Wheels.html Alternately, tire rack makes a kickass wheel: http://www.tirerack.com/wheels/WheelCloseUpServlet?target=wheelCloseUp&wheelMake=TRMotorsport&wheelModel=C1&wheelFinish=Black+Painted Available in various colors.

So the guy shouldn't have been using his work laptop for work? It's one thing for IT guys to vent about dumb users, but it's another thing for corporate policy to be "If our employees can't figure it out, it's not our problem."

My dad worked for P&G. P&G was a big Novell NetWare client and insisted on using it well past the point where windows was doing everything Novell did natively and better. It made my dad's work laptop a constant pain in the ass. They finally switched to normal AD domains around 2005 or so, but his laptop, up until he retired in 2008, had some Cisco wireless connection manager that overrode the Windows one. If you tried to open the Windows wireless connection manager it just said, "There is another product on this machine used to manage wireless connections" and that was that. The Cisco software wouldn't let you connect to anything that didn't meet a certain security standard, which included my WPA home network. He could connect at work just fine, but I couldn't get that thing to hook up to my home network to save my life, and I even worked as systems admin for a few years. There's no way he could connect to a free wifi hotspot with that thing. Also, for several years the Pentagon was custom ordering laptops without wireless chips. We'd get them with the wifi activity light, and even a physical switch on the laptop to turn on/off the wifi antenna, but there was no wifi chip inside. Confused the snot out of a lot of people who couldn't figure out why their wireless wasn't working. Airport guy may very well have been stupid, but I'm just saying... sometimes companies make it needlessly hard.

Any idea how well these handle? What about the brakes? Think it could hold up to track duty?

I usually stand behind law enforcement in these cases, but increasingly there's video evidence that makes it hard to do so. This is one of those cases, even though the real crime here, IMO, is the dumbass system that sends swat teams to people's houses over stupid shit. Two things stand out to me: 1) People get so invested in this "cops have a stressful job and can do no wrong" mentality that they can't change their tune in the face of convincing video evidence, and 2) People get so invested in this "guns make the bad guys go away" mentality that they support retarded self-defense strategies. In support of point 2, I wonder -- what's the self-defense value in standing at a doorway, crowding your way into the line of fire, emptying your weapon? At a minimum, 2 of those guys should have pulled the fuck back. It's like, "What's that guys? He's got an assault rifle? Lemme see, lemme see! Let's present 4 targets instead of 1!" Realistically, 0 of them entered the house, so if the guy inside was so goddamn threatening, back off and lob in some tear gas or something. Seriously. Squeezing the trigger until it goes "click click click" is not always the best way of extricating yourself from harms way. Especially if you're intentionally putting yourself in harms way to serve a warrant. The swat team completely controlled the situation there. The fact that they had to "shoot their way out" of the front door jamb speaks volumes about their planning.

Thanks for the advice guys. Ends up I was able to get a plumber out there short notice and he cleaned up all my shit, did all the work I was going to do, and showed me why my joints sucked, all in less than 3 hours. Thank god for pros. He also mentioned the shark bites and how they're pretty awesome.

I had great success on all the joints I did on my bench vice using the above steps. When I went to splice them into the old pipes attached to the ceiling in my basement, it didn't go so well. I think mostly because of step 1. 3 of those 4 joints failed... badly. Consider my confidence shaken.

I can't sweat copper, apparently. Basically redoing a half-bath from scratch. Anyone want some side work?

slow car fast > fast car slow.

Watching movies must be a painful experience for you.

Must have been a shitty marine then. He didn't treat the home intruders as a proper threat and apply ROE and equal force. Amiright?

SWAT killing a marine is like strapping buttered toast to a cat. What will the internet make of it?

Yeah but the Clerks argument basically says "The first death star, ok. The second one was full of contractors." Which is true. The second one also never blew up a planet. Blowing up the first one was a lot more justifiable than the second one.

@Bobby Lee - Well, Robin Hood is a classic socialist, so...

It's more of a gray area. Would you shed a tear for the cooks at Auschwitz if we had somehow evacuated all the Jews and carpet bombed the place? /Godwinized