Jack M

Nice choice for a first bike that you won't outgrow soon, possibly ever. It is sure to become a cult bike as it will probabaly not sell well next to the Suzuki SV650, and will be discontinued in a handful of years. Cult bikes are cool, I have one...

Justin..... do you eat quiche?

There is one green bottle sorta skunky beer I will drink - Carlsberg. It's like Heineken if Heineken was actually good. I have a friend who runs a high-end wine and beer shoppe. Yes, shoppe. He says that the Belgian Abby beers that are so delicious and have such creamy meringue-like heads could not be produced in the states due to health codes. He says that the buildings they're brewed in are ancient wooden structures that have mold, mildew, and other stuff growing on the ceiling that flakes off and wafts down into the brewing kettles, resulting in the goodness that can only be found there.

...they told me at about 32k miles that the steering rack needed to be replaced for ~$1200. WTF??? You would think a solid hunk of metal would be indestructible. May have been a scam because the steering felt fine. Bastards. That was the only major repair in 5 years of owning it. Otherwise, that car commanded no respect, but damn for cheap basic transpo it was fun to drive. I researched it and at the time it had the most power/torque in the class, even more than a basic Jetta. Excellent transmission (manual, of course), light responsive handling, and the thing cornered absolutely *flat*. I can see why people race them.

Maudite set the Unibroue hook in me, but I've since discovered the beer that it is trying to be: Gulden Draake - waaaaay better. Try Unibroue's Don de Dieu too - verrry smooth for 9% abv. oh hell yes. Optimator is one of my faves. A German restaurant sorta near me has it on tap. Bzzzz - wrong. Guiness is lighter and lower in calories than a lot of beers. Pour a black and tan and the Guiness floats on top. And the low/fine carbonation makes it very easy to drink.

trial to decide legality of dvd ripping: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,260961,00.html

I will actually enjoy a Corona with lime on a hot day if someone gives me one, but that's the thing, it is only tolerable with lime. Yes, I do not understand the skunky beer thing. Heineken, et al, smell and taste like the business end of a skunk. Literally. What's up with that?? And Stella - they try to play the "made in Belgium" card, but make no mistake, it is no Belgian-style beer. Just another skunky Heineken rip-off. You want Belgian, get Leffe, Hoegaarden, Gulden Draake...

That sounds good! What do you call it? The "Pama Lift"?

2 parts 100% blue agave Tequila (avoid 1800 and Sauza) 1 part orange liquer (Gran Gala or Grand Marnier) 4 parts Margarita mix 1 to 2 parts OJ (fresh squeezed is best, from concentrate is worst) 1 part water juice of one lime wedge shake vigorously with ice. I have another that uses all fresh squeezed juices, but it's a minimum 6 hour process.

Let me make myself clear, there are zillions of better beers, of course. I'm just saying if you're in the mood or crowd for cheap beer, it's the least offensive and somewhat enjoyable (especially if it's 95 degrees out and/or you've got a long afternoon/night of carefully paced drinking to do). Hey now, there are many crappy imports.... Stella Artois Heineken Molson Moosehead Becks Corona... I could go on.

Whenever I'm feeling poor, or if I'm forced to go along with a crowd of posers who think slumming with cheap beer is the hip thing to do, I reach for The Champagne of Beers.... Miller High Life. 10x better than PBR for similar coin.

(donning flame suit) PBR.

Wow Neuffy.... you really seem to believe government is the answer to all our problems. It could be, in a perfect, Star Trek Next Generation, fantasy world. However can you think of many things the government actually does really well and really efficiently? Or even competently? I can't.

Yeah, I think the rules cover this pretty well, although not explicitly. If it's an ebay auction for used gear, then all's well, imo. However if a link is posted that goes to an ebay *search*, like for a particular seller or whatever, and the search results include new gear, the link will be pulled unless the poster gets permission from Fin.

http://www.bomberonline.com/VBulletin/showthread.php?t=17

You're all barking up the wrong tree. Deaths by motor vehicle accident in 2005 totaled 39,189. http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/ Do you care? If yes, then you will surely agree that clearly the government needs to step in here. We need to: - Raise the minimum driving age to 21. - Impose a maximum driving age of 75. - Instate a federal seatbelt law, and allow police to pull you over just for not wearing a seatbelt. - Issue automatic speeding tickets from data gathered by in-car GPS systems, automatic toll systems (EZPass, FastLane, etc), and traffic cameras. - Govern all vehicles to a maximum speed of 75mph, and maximum horsepower of 100. - Outlaw driver usage of cell phones, mp3s, blackberries, CDs, radio, paper maps. - Enact a "zero tolerance policy" for drunk driving, and lower the BAC limit to .06. - Outlaw motorcycles. We have the technology and the ability. Nevermind the constitutional rights and civil liberties that will be trounced. If one life is saved it will be worth it... right?

Actually it was both. It served him right because he's so smug and so, well, Michael Moore. But it also impressed me that he would own up to being wrong.

http://www.sugarloaftoday.com/chat/viewtopic.php?t=709 text: (author unknown) For those that are close to the Sugarloaf community you will be sad to hear that Dennis Parsons passed away this afternoon. His death was very sudden and there are very few details about his passing and about funeral arrangements. But if I hear more I will pass them on. As you know Dennis has been with the lift department for over 25 years. I remember him working on Spillway when I was a child and he commanded so much respect from my family and friends. He always kissed the ladies when they were in the spillway maze. His personality, his love of the community and his pure and good nature was the model of customer service for Sugarloaf. While I was there, everyone looked up to him as a model of how a Sugarloaf employee should act. The company has annual service award named after him. I am sure he will be missed by everyone in the Sugarloaf community, I know I will miss that smile and his pattened "Have a goooooddddd day!!!" when we get on the lift. We will miss you Dennis.

http://dict.die.net/comeuppance/ that's what I meant.

for some reason I just find this funny.... got this in an email forward... source unknown... --------------------------------- Rope a Deer? I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that since they congregated at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away) that it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home. I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, who had seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes my deer showed up...3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it. It took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and received an education. The first thing that I learned is that while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. That deer EXPLODED. The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope with some dignity. A deer, no chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I originally imagined. The only up side is that they do not have as much stamina as many animals. A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point I had lost my taste for corn fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death. I managed to get it lined up to back in between my truck and the feeder...a little trap I had set beforehand. Kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and started moving up so I could get my rope back. Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head...almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts. The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now) tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that when an animal like a horse strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape. This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and three times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down. Now when a deer paws at you and knocks you down it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away. Now for the local legend. I was pretty beat up. My scalp was split open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was bleeding pretty good and felt broken (it turned out to be just badly bruised) and my back was bleeding in a few places, though my insulated canvas jacket had protected me from most of the worst of it. I drove to the nearest place, which was the co-op. I got out of the truck, covered in blood and dust and looking like ****. The guy who ran the place saw me through the window and came running out yelling "what happened" I have never seen any law in the state of Kansas that would prohibit an individual from roping a deer. I suspect that this is an area that they have overlooked entirely. Knowing, as I do, the lengths to which law enforcement personnel will go to exercise their power, I was concerned that they may find a way to twist the existing laws to paint my actions as criminal. I swear....not wanting to admit that I had done something monumentally stupid played no part in my response. I told him "I was attacked by a deer." I did not mention that at the time I had a rope on it. The evidence was all over my body. Deer prints on the back of my jacket where it had stomped all over me and a large deer print on my face where it had struck me there. [ I asked him to call somebody to come get me...I didn't think I could make it home on my own. He did. Later that afternoon, a game warden showed up at my house and wanted to know about the deer attack. Surprisingly, deer attacks are a rare thing and wildlife and parks was interested in the event. I tried to describe the attack as completely and accurately as I could...I was filling the grain hopper and this deer came out of nowhere and just started kicking the **** out of me and BIT me. It was obviously rabid or insane or something. EVERYBODY for miles around knows about the deer attack (the guy at the co-op has a big mouth). For several weeks people dragged their kids in the house when they saw deer around and the local ranchers carried rifles when they filled their feeders. I have told several people the story, but NEVER anybody around here. I have to see these people every day and as an outsider...a "city folk"...I have enough trouble fitting in without them snickering behind my back and whispering "there is the dumb-ass that tried to rope the deer."

Haven't read it, but your description reminds me of Bowling for Columbine. Michael Moore sets out to make a "documentary" (purposefully in quotes there) about how we need more gun control, but has a huge comeuppance in the end when he discovers that Canadians own more guns per capita than we do and have less crime and less gun crime.

I lost Scream of Consciousness, and Hear No Evil. Fortunately Ch!ll was upstairs. BobD, I'm trying to imagine why one would have a sump <i>and</i> a floor drain. I have a sump but no drain. Erik, the burner and blower (it's forced hot air) on my furnace were both completely submerged. Apparently electric motors are waterproof as long as they're not powered when they get wet. My furnace was able to be repaired at minimal cost. Hope yours was too. (Also a freezer, sawzall, and a drill all took a bath and survived unscathed )

what did the civil engineer say to the mechanical engineer? "you want fries with that?"

My neighbor has a battery backup on his sump pump. It lasted for 5 hours in this storm. That didn't cut the mustard. We both just bought generators.

man, I wouldn't go below 1/2hp at least. Even though you don't have to push the water up very high, you want good volume to be able to recover quickly after an outage, or just to keep up with a heavy storm.