Quote from PMD9409 :

And I thought I would be the only one without one, but you? Just wow.

Good things come in 3's? No facebook here either.

Quote from PMD9409 :

Woke up this morning and it was 6C with 30mph winds, how ironic.

Back up to 20C by the weekend however. Finally got to turn the heater on in my car. Heats up so nicely for never being used.

Funny needing the heat at 6C, I have my window partially down still. Sounds like you are up here in Pennsylvania. It's been in the 40's all week, but warming up to near 60 all this weekend.

Quote from XCNuse :

Is it me or is winter setting in kinda slow this year? I'm in the south in the US, but the temperatures are even warmer than I recall last year.. for now at least lol

Of course though I say this and it's supposed to rain / snow mix tomorrow here

You're in Georgia for crying out loud. You shouldn't even be having winter. I should be traveling to Georgia to escape winter.

Winter has been extremely mild the past 2 years where I am, which is normally many many 12+ inch snowstorms through the season. Haven't had much in terms of good snowstorms for 2 years. It is now past Thanksgiving and we've only had one dusting of snow, which worries me for the January/February time when we'll probably get dumped on this year with the mild start.

It's first day of deer season in Pennsylvania today. There should be several inches of snow on the ground. Instead, it has been 60° F all weekend.

Quote from MAGGOT :

On the computer, anyways... pretty sure I played a couple on the Intellivision that my dad had stored in the basement. I bet that makes me look older than I actually am...

errr... I had an Intellivision... when they were new...

My first racing game was this....

Quote from tristancliffe :

Anyway, the point is, I can't help really.

Thank you Tristan, it's all fixed now. A huge help

Seriously, after reading seemingly hundreds of posts on the Apple website about similar complaints as far back as 2007, I finally found a post that was fairly recent and talking of the current version whom said he fixed his. Reset Winsock. Did that and I've got connection.

The ID problem was that I created it online and within iTunes, it was flagged because a CC number wasn't associated with it, which I don't want to do. I created a new account after attempting to download a free app so that I could select NONE as the payment and I don't have to have a CC associated. The kids will just use gift cards they get for their birthdays and such.

Never did get a response from Apple support though.

Howdy folks, new to iTunes. The kids are getting iPods for Christmas (yes, I'm old, getting for the kids, not myself.) I want to have them set up, their mp3 music transfered over, maybe download a couple of games for them.

Don't have the iPods yet. Windows XP, downloaded iTunes (10.5.1) and installed. Tried to create an Apple ID. I get to "Welcome to iTunes" screen with CANCEL and CONTINUE buttons. I click CONTINUE and nothing happens. I later found out if I let it sit for 20 minutes it gives me an error with something about iTunes not being available, but didn't note exactly what the error said.

I ended up creating an Apple ID online. I can log in online just fine on the Apple site. Within iTunes, I try to log in and it gives me "This Apple ID has not yet been used with the iTunes store. Please review your information." There is a CANCEL and REVIEW button. I click REVIEW and it goes to the "Welcome to iTunes" screen and again upon clicking CONTINUE, nothing happens. This is where finally last night I left it alone for about 20 minutes and got the not available error.

Going to try it out on the work laptop this long 5 day break from work (holiday over here for us) but that won't help me out with the home computer if I can't get it working. Hoping some more experienced with Apple stuff folks could shed some light. I've read nothing online except how the support from Apple with iTunes is completely useless and am still waiting for a response from them (so the uselessness of support is being confirmed thus far in my eyes.) I thought Apple was suppose to be the sliced bread of computing and electronics and works perfectly? I'm not seeing it thus far with my first experience.

Quote from Bmxtwins :

Kinda OT, but any1 know a good car for the snow? Looking for something safe and thinkin of the suburururururur hatchback. Just got my learners permit today after being too lazy for a whole year.

Any car with cheap snow tires on it. It isn't about the car one bit, it's about the tires.

Quote :

Depends what sort of snow were talking about - are we talking ice (anything with 4wd and good tyres should be ok), or are we talking about drifts (ground clearance required)

1994 Honda Civic, 175,000 miles on worn out snow tires through 3 feet of old snow in work's parking lot. Enough ground clearance for that? Stopped in the middle of it with the snow plowed up the front onto the roof and on the sides up past the bottom of the side windows. Pulled right through it. It is all about snow tires driving in snow.

Quote :

Lada Niva.

Tough to find one of those in the US.

Last edited by mrodgers, Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:58.

The only accurate weather forecast in the US is when they look outside and state what the current conditions are. They even get that wrong 35% of the time.

They've been forecasting the world is going to end and we are all going to die for several years now, yet we only get a few inches of snow. Not near enough for the world to end and us all to die.

Quote from BlueFlame :

I just know you didn't catch that one. Deformation it looks like rust, but I'm guessing it's just mud, looking at it again.

No, you're probably correct. It is probably rust. It is so difficult to keep plastic from rusting....

My question is, when you live with the women folk and you go somewhere in the car, when it is 5° (-15C for you folks) outside and you are wearing a coat, why does the inside of the car have to be 100 because it is cold outside?

I find this at work as well. I work in a control room which is inside the manufacturing building. It is 5° F outside, yet still 90° inside the plant with extreme humidity that comes from steam molding, and everyone wants to turn the AC off in our control room "because it is cold outside." Sure, it's cold outside, but it is over 90 with extreme humidity outside of the control room. We're not working in the 5° outside, we are working in 90° with high humidity levels.

Haven't posted since after the summer vacation....

It's picture time for the school kids, so Wifey dolled the girls up so we could go outside and grab some pictures instead of blurry (blurrier than even mine with a crappy camera....) boring school pictures. Really sunny out though, would have been nicer with some cloud cover.

I'm no good with Lightroom in editing and didn't bother loading them up into photoshop yet. I want to get rid of a lot of shadowing on the faces, especially with the leaf shadows on those few. Lot of red in the oldest one's face too. Will do all that when I get them ready to upload for printing. And yeah, I'm getting rid of the neighbor's lightpole for print and when showing my daughter how I can get rid of the hairs showing up on her black shirt, she asked, "Why are you zooming in on my boob!" LOL.

Last edited by mrodgers, Sun, 16 Oct 2011 02:57.

I clear out history often, so it thinks I've never visited lfsforum.net.

I swear I posted this the other day.

I just work in boring old manufacturing, something getting to be a rarity here in the US...

Quote from matijapkc :

Well, probably it's 7, but doesn't make much of a difference...

We didn't even have touch tone phones when I was 7. You had a big dial you had to spin, LOL.

I don't have a real cell phone or smartphone history. I've only ever had prepaid phones. $23.66/month for 3 phones (Wifey, oldest daughter, and mine, youngest doesn't have one yet.) Previous to a few months ago, we had 1 prepaid that my wife and I shared depending on who was at work.

I know most of you are single so you only have 1 phone, but I find it quite funny when people say you shouldn't have a car payment for something that you need to get to work, but yet will spend the same as a car payment so the family can walk around with a phone attached to their head. Last I looked, I think 4 smartphones would run about $250/month.

This is what I love about the VW 1.8T. The torque (173 ft-lbs) peaks at 1950 RPM and holds level until around 5000 RPM. I can't stand having to rev a wimpy 4 banger near redline in normal every day driving.

If I find a hill in front of me, I just give some throttle. If I find 3 cars in front of me being driven by snailmen and I want around them, I just give some throttle. Every other car I've ever owned, I'd have to drop at least 2 gears and set myself up for an overtake (meaning getting the RPM up from downshifting and leaving some space to start accelerating well before the passing area to be able to complete the pass.) My Jetta, I typically just leave her in 5th and just press the throttle. If I would drop a gear at 45 mph, I can be well over 100 if I'm overtaking a car very easily and that is overkill. Doesn't matter if I'm heading uphill, downhill, or level.

Gets me into a bit of trouble though, since I have several big, steep, and long hills I commute to work on that previous cars I would have to drop a gear or two down just to hold constant speed. In the VW, it is too much fun to ease down on the throttle and accelerate with ease in 5th from about 2200 RPM up the hills.

Quote from Michael Denham :

Since the cars I've had a couple of helis, and after I realized I didn't have the patience to learn about repairs and setup I sold them and bought a plane Here's a video of the plane...

http://youtu.be/EdwmZLYlbwQ

Very nice. I have the micro T-28 as I said and I'm debating on the larger T-28 or the Corsair. The Corsair is a great looking plane. You need some retracts on that

You typically don't see to much slow flying videos with the warbirds like that. Here's a great looking video of a T-28 and Corsair doing some formation flying. They look fantastic flying together (not my video obviously as I have a micro, just sharing...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... VwSls&feature=related

What do you say to a woman with a black eye?

You say nothing. She's already been told once.

Yup, wash it. It's pretty amazing what a little mud will do underneath a car. Take it from an American ex-4wheeler, you need to give the underneath and behind the wheels a good hard soaking with a hose. After that, you can try to figure out what is wrong. Do the cheapest first, wash it.

Quote from dadge :

how can you call a FWD economy car that's comfortable, big and automatic, sporty? compared to what? a horse drawn cart?

I was stuck in one of those Dodge Calibers with the CVT transmission. Biggest pile of crap I had ever driven.

It's "sporty" I guess because it revs to 6500 rpm and never waivers from there.

It was a rental for a work trip. 8 hours I spent on the highway which was fine. Car was fairly comfy for an 8 hour drive. Took it home since I got back after the rental place was closed. Next day I drove it on the 2 lane roads about 30 minutes away. It revved to 6500 rpm and never moved from there. That's all it did was rev nonstop. What a PITA car it was. Don't know how people can stand driving CVT transmissions. Far worse than a normal automatic, which is saying something because automatics are completely worthless.

Quote from hrtburnout :

That's only a little less than 12000 kilometers a year, which is not too bad imho.

~7000 miles per year, very low over here. Average is 12,000/year.

I owned my first brand new car for 2 years. Bought in 1993 with 25 miles on it, sold in 1995 with 64,000 miles on it.

Just bought my Jetta almost exactly 1 year and 2 weeks ago. 78,000 miles on it. Now have 96,000 miles on it. 18,000 miles in 1 year and all I do is go to work and back with an occasional trip to the store.

My question is, with a Ford with 154k on it, what kind of maintenance and repairs does that mileage incorporate. On my old Toyotas, that would be a grand total of 3 front brake pad changes, 1 rear brake shoe change, and a clutch change. Judging by my Ford, it would probably be significantly more in that kind of mileage (I already have more money in routine maintenance on my Ford with 84k miles than my previous 5 Toyotas in combined 500k miles...)

Last edited by mrodgers, Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:08.

You guys can have your cars.

I've got one of these....



Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to hold a DX6i radio in my hands, control an airplane in the air, and hold a camera up to my eye all at the same time, so you have to settle with seeing just a stock picture.

Need to get me one of those $15 keychain cameras to record some flight videos. Can't talk my daughter into recording with the camera for me.


I highly recommend. It's a Parkzone Ultra Micro, a mere 16 inch wing span I think. Flies in the backyard. $99 over here both in BNF (Bind and Fly) if you have a Spektrum transmitter or same price for RTF with a cheapie X-Box controller looking 2.4GHz transmitter.

With all the talk about summer/winter tires you guys have, what are you considering summer tires? What kind of compounds/mileage/traction/wear/bad weather performance, etc do you get?

Over here we have our choice of basically 3 types of tires (cars).

Summer or performance tires. These are generally expensive, gives fantastic traction on dry surface and wear horribly. My car had summer performance tires on it when I bought it and they last a whole 10,000 miles. That's less than a year for $279 each (some are cheaper and some are more expensive, but they are generally much more expensive than all-seasons.) Summer tires also are terrible in the rain. For the entire time I had these tires on, driving in the rain was basically like waterskiing. I had to drive horribly slow on my way to work holding up cars and cars of traffic behind me because I couldn't do more than 40 mph or my car would hydroplane on the smallest amount of water on the roads.

All-seasons are what 95% of the people put on their cars. They aren't the best for snow, but driving in the rain is no different than driving in dry conditions. These last anywhere from 35,000 miles to up to 80,000 miles depending on the particular tire (based mostly on how much you pay.)

Pure snow tires. Obviously these are for snow. I was amazed at my first experience with a small car and snow tires coming from 15 years of driving Toyota 4WD pickup trucks. My Honda Civic with the snow tires did every bit as well in any kind of snow (over 3 feet in our work parking lot, not the massive 1-2 cm that you guys have been talking about the last 2 years...) as my 4WD's have done. The compound is very hard and such in warmer weather there is no traction on dry pavement.

So, you guys talk all the time about summer tires, what do you mean by summer tires? Over here, we would have to replace tires yearly if running "summer" tires as they only last 10-15,000 miles.

When you mention winter tires, what do you mean? Where I am, cold weather runs from November through sometimes all the way to May. We also can get heavy snow all through November until about March, but often get hit with the occasional snowstorm in April and even early May (by snowstorm, I'm talking 8 inches or greater.) We would put winter tires on in October and remove in April. So we could get 6 months worth of running. Outside of October through April, the temperatures are too high to run the hard compound winter tires.

So, when you talk summer tires, are they summer tires as I've described, soft compound dry traction only? Or are you talking all-season tires which have longevity and wet traction that summer tires over here are severely lacking?

Average tire cost here is roughly $100-150 per tire for all season and roughly will last on average 40-60,000 miles, which is average of about 3-5 years. Summer tires are generally above the $150 cost, the particular tire that was on my car when purchased was $279 each and as I said, lasted slightly above 10,000 miles.

Tires are the absolute only thing you can do about driving in adverse weather such as snow/ice. You can NOT predict road conditions as conditions are not static everywhere you go. Snow and ice conditions are constantly changing from the air temperature. You can have snow that is as grippy as driving on a dry dirt road and snow that is so slippery you can't accelerate or brake in no matter how "good" of a driver you think you are and how "careful" you brake or how "well" you read road conditions or how slow you drive. Same with ice. I have driven on ice that was no different than driving in the rain, and driven on ice that the car will slide across even if you magically plunked your car down on it at a stand still. There is nothing you yourself can do with your driving about snow/ice driving, but the tire you have does broaden the abilities of your car to brake, accelerate, or stay stopped once you've managed to stop.

And antilock brakes is the worst thing to ever be put on a car in my opinion. Traction control has enabled me to manage barely through last year's winter getting to and from work with the crappy "summer" tires, but antilock brakes have many many times nearly caused me to crash because of the car not allowing me to control and taking it over from me.

Quote from KiRmelius :

And people can't fix shit by themselves, that's why workshops take so much money for repairs. Lots of unskillful zombies there.

Nope, just not worth fixing the garbage products that are available today. Has nothing to do with "unskillful zombies".

If you buy a package of pencils that are 10 for $1 and happen to break one, do you run out and buy wood glue to glue the 2 pieces back together to fix it or do you just toss that one and use another. That is how products are today with practically anything smaller than a car. They are throwaway products.

You can pay $600 for a lawn mower. It lasts 2 years before it breaks and then it will break every year. It costs $450 to fix every time. In 4 years you have $1500 into the tractor with purchase and repairs. Or you can just throw that broken tractor away and buy a new one every 2 years. Now the cost of 2 new tractors in 4 years is $1200 instead of $1500 fixing the same tractor.

When I bought my house in 2000, it has a washing machine from 1968. A 32 year old washing machine still kicking. Sure it used a LOT of water, but it still worked. My wife grew up with water problems, thus she worried about the amount of water it used and wanted a front loading machine that uses hardly any water. $650 it was. Lasted 8 years before it broke. Just the part alone to fix it was $450. Instead of spending $450 and tearing the entire thing apart to fix it just to have something else break again and again and again year after year because it is built to break these days, I spent another $50 and bought a new washing machine that are now $500 to last another 8 years.

Quote from e2mustang :

wrong.im from a country where u cant buy anything so u fix everything.
i just live in usa,where why u would u fix a rim when a new one costs 20 bucks more.

More like where everything available is so cheap and cheaply made that you don't repair it, just buy a new one every year because it's going to break every year and cost you more to repair it.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

No-one notices except the person who spends hours waxing their car.

Pic is a thing of beauty! I don't spend hours waxing the car, it only takes minutes to wax. It's the hours and hours of polishing that takes the time. I knew better than to buy a black car....

You do give up though once you get older and have more that has to be done with life. I polished and detailed my car so well that I actually changed the color. Your reflection was miles deep in the paint and the car changed color as the sun moved across the sky from morning til dark.

Now, I practically hurry up and run outside to squirt some soap on the car when I see rain clouds rolling in.