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Pete J.

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Everything posted by Pete J.

  1. My preferred poison is made by a company here in California called Alsa. They have been in the chrome auto paint business for years. They were the original suppliers to the Mercedes F1 team for there 'chrome' cars. There Mirrachrome paint really does a good job but unfortunately it has gotten really expensive. I got mine when it was $100 a quart and those quarts are now $400. They often go on sale for half price but that is still $12 and ounce and that is much more expensive than the alternatives. When I bought mine, I split it with 2 friends and that is enough chrome paint to last 10 lifetimes. The nice part about it is you can use their speed clear over it and it still retains it's chrome look. He is an airplane I did 5 or 6 years ago.
  2. Your model got me looking on the internet for the royal coronation coach and I have the say, if the box art is any representation the model is a really crude. I found the real deal on Buckingham's web site and the real deal is much lighter and elegant in line. They kind of have the impression of the original and some vague lines, but it would take a ton of work to make a decent representation. This is not unlike a lot of early models of everything else.
  3. Just went back and reread the first page and it is not surprising that the majority of us are in the middle. The test shows a standard bell curve and about 15 points either sided are the majority. of the population. To find most of us in the 35 to 65 range means that we are representative of the population in general. No surprise.
  4. Another person with a 54. Hmmm, this is interesting. We are not as mentally unstable as I would have thought!
  5. I grew up on a farm and am aware of farm accidents. The machinery is inherently dangerous and farmers, especially during harvest time are in a hurry to get the crop in. I remember one time my dad bought a dozen XL gloves. I asked why and the answer scared me half to death. He said that he kept loosing them in the corn thrashing machine because as he untied the bundles, the twine would catch on the gloves and jerk the glove off his hand and into the machine. He was lucky. When he left this world he had all of his fingers and toes. Quite an accomplishment!
  6. Oh yes, the vaunted English motorcar industry. There are far too many jokes to mention about that. I remember working of a friends MGA and a TR6. Fun as heck to drive, but owning them was a constant repair operation. Of course at that time the only ones who seemed to be making reliable cars were the Japanese. I won't even go into the German stuff. I had a 911 and it too was beautifully engineered, but fixing it was grossly expensive just for the parts alone. I replace the heat exchangers and the parts were a little over $1,000 and that was pre catalytic converter and 40 years ago. I think it was a close race at the time as to who had the worst stuff. The Brits or the Italians. At any rate, European sports vehicles were an "acquired" taste.
  7. I remember when I moved here. Coming from Michigan and Washington, I was stunned by the number of old cars on the road here. In other states cars just don't last. They start rusting and then they are gone. Doesn't happen here in the warm and dry air. Throw in a really strong car culture and you get to see things on the road on a regular basis that just don't happen elsewhere. I would bet that on a drive up the I-5 I would see more classic, collectable, exotic, hot rod and other cars of interest than you would get at most shows elsewhere.
  8. Very true but some of us have had the opportunity to live in a lot of places. In my case it has been Nebraska, Michigan, Texas, Washington(state) and California. I have spent time(more than a month) in Alabama, Mississippi, Vermont, Florida, Alaska, Ohio and Maryland and Montana(if you count the many, many weeks I have spent there visiting relatives). I have driven across every state but North Dakota and Wisconsin. I have been out of the US in Japan, Thailand, Guam(well not technically out of the US) the Philippines, the Bahamas and Diego Garcia. It doesn't make my opinion any more valid, but I can say that I have made an informed decision to live in California. It suits me well. I know it doesn't suit others but I love living here. I will save the others for visitation.
  9. I take good care of my phone too, but there are some aspects of the cell phones that I just hate. The biggest is there lack of tolerance for getting wet. Any kind of wet! A few drops of moisture and they seem to go ballistic. Some are now getting better but you would think that something that you expose to the elements would be a little more resistant to that type of thing. Oh, and they pretty this things up with a slick plastic shell so they will slide out of a pocket at the least provocation and bounce off the floor. They also seem to have a homing sense for a toilet, just like a tornado and a trailer park. Yea, I take care of mine, but they seem to be the kamikaze's of the electronic world.
  10. Ah, the fish Taco and it's multitude of permutations. The true original fish taco is really street food. Street venders have carts by the fish market and buy a white fish direct from the boats. Bread it with a cerveza batter and fry it. Add some shredded cabbage, salsa, a few slices of pickled jalapenos and some white yogurt sauce and a flour tortilla. Probably not what they serve in Fells Point. Here it is kind of like a Coney Island hot dog or Philly cheese stake. It is best in its original form, but there are other great versions of it. My wife is from Baltimore and my daughter and her husband are there while she works on her masters degree. I have spent many a happy hour in Baltimore. The east coast bakeries are just full of stuff you can't get here on the west coast. Fenwick on Harford road for sticky buns and butter cake is my favorite. And crab! Oh, the crab. Every neighborhood has its crab house and Maryland blues steamed Baltimore style are just unbeatable. Not to mention the crab cakes and crab soup. "Balemer" has crab houses just like California has Taco shops. It just isn't the same anywhere else. Oh, and Fishers popcorn and Tastykakes and Thresher's Fries. Don't get me started on regional foods.
  11. I lived in Oscoda,Michigan from 1973 to 1977. It just didn't suit me. Got tired of snow and cold and Michigan has plenty of that but frankly not much else. The year I left the high for the month of February was -17. I'm not going to bag on Michigan, because like everywhere it is home to many that love it, but I've lived there and for me, I'll take California with all it's perceived faults(San Andreas and others) any day. By the way the danger of earthquakes are grossly exaggerated. There have been less than 130 deaths related to earthquakes in the California in the last 30 years. There are an average of 140 deaths each year from blizzards and extreme winter weather. I'll take my chances with in an earthquake any time to a blizzard. Oh, one last thought, I could care less about professional sports. Give me a good college football game any day. By the way I am a devout fan of one team in the Big 10. There are three local watering holes here who show this teams games exclusively every Saturday and the places are packed.
  12. Yup, we got that. We also have 800 miles of gorgeous Pacific coast line and stunning beaches, the redwoods of Yosemite, the west side of the Rockies. Fish Tacos. The best weather in the world. Fish Tacos. No tornados, or hurricanes and all blizzards are restricted to the mountains. Any kind of entertainment you can imagine be it Hollywood, Disneyland, Legoland, etc. Fish Tacos. Sports of all kind. You can surf in the morning, hang glide for lunch and snow board for the afternoon. Fish tacos. We have 3 NFL teams, 5 MLB teams and 3 NHL teams and 5 MLB teams. Oh and lets not forget the people that the Beachboys made famous, the California girls. But other than that, I can't think of a reason to live here.
  13. Was headed over for a little dinner and this snuck up behind me. Oh, the joys of living in Sourthern California. Just to spoil the fun, look what was right in front of me and beside it! Hummm, no plates!
  14. There are currently 48 self driving cars on the road in California. To date there have been 4 accidents. Two with the cars in self driving mode and two not is self driving mode. I have no idea what to make of that.
  15. HOA's have been around for a long time. I have lived in HOA communities for the last 27 years. I can not say for certain, but generally the HOAs are set up by builders when they build a new development and are primarily there to manage common areas such as community pools, recreation centers, green spaces(parks and road landscapes). These areas are jointly owned by all the homeowners' in the development and they all pay a common fee to keep them up. The other rules came along later to control the look of the community to keep it the same and when the developer designed it. Rules get modified from time to time, but generally it is in small ways. I have never heard of a community setting up an HOA long after the area was developed, but then I suppose it is possible. It is unlikely that they could get away with imposing rules on someone if the HOA came alone after the fact without unanimous consent of all home owners. Kind of an ex post facto law type of thing. I would think creating an HOA after the fact would wind up with a lot of lawsuits and bad feelings. It is most unlikely that it would be worth doing. By the way the really bad issues with HOAs and contentious litigation are the HOA's in the wealthier communities where the lawyers live.
  16. This is the same argument that people who move into a neighborhood that is on final for the local airport and then complain about the noise. If you are buying a house in an HOA neighborhood, the buyer is responsible for understanding the rules. Here in SoCal the law states that a realtor is responsible for providing a copy of the bylaws from the HOA before the purchase of a home and making the buyer aware that there are bylaws. It is up to the buyer to read and understand them. It is all about personal responsibility. Too many people want to blame someone else for anything that goes wrong in their life. Sign a contract? Make sure you understand it first.
  17. Hyperbole! I am so sick and tired of every news caster feeling the need to exaggerate and make everything worse that it is. There are few things in the world that qualify as horrific, horrendous, ghastly or hideous. The mass slaying of 500 people qualifies. A two car accident on the freeway, doesn't. The kidnapping of hundreds of young boys and making them suicide soldiers, does. A father taking his child from an abusive mother, doesn't. An earth quake in Nepal that kills thousands, does. A shaker in SoCal that scares a few people doesn't. Give me the news without all the editorial hyperbole please! I am capable of being horrified on my own without you telling me how horrific(in my mind the most overused work in the news today) everything is.
  18. I've written retail department schedules before and it is always a BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH shoot, especially with employment rules. No employee wants to work an hour or two. If they are there for more than 4.5 hours they get a 45 minute lunch(unpaid) so if you use them for 5 hours you get 4:15 work and nobody want to work for 4.5 hours, take lunch, work for 15 more minutes and go home. Some employees just don't show up, especially college students on Sunday mornings and they often have tests that take all day. Sometimes all want the same day off so if you say no, they just don't show up. On top of that no matter how well you predict customers, you will always have times when you have twice as many customers as employees and others when you have twice as many employees as customers. I understand some of that, but have to agree that if you have management standing around, they need to get busy.
  19. I feel your pain man! Two years ago I had to put down our beagle of 14 years. A tumor was taking over her chest cavity. Still brings a tear to my eye thinking about it.
  20. Ok, I'm going to say it. I'm tired hearing people ragging on the moderators! Moderating is two things. 1) A thankless job 2) A subjective job. Number 2 first. I recognize that the moderators are using very subjective standards to manage the topics and language on this site to keep it family friendly and limit the number of flaming sessions. I like that. I may not always agree with that, but they are doing a reasonable job. I have seen few blowups that got out of hand. Are they even handed? Well, that is the problem with subjective criteria. If you get deleted or censured, you will not agree with them. If you think they are "picking" on you, perhaps you need to rethink your position. I have been censured a couple of time(very mildly) but when I looked back at it, they had a point. I crossed the line. If you don't agree with them, then perhaps you need to find another place to express your opinions. Freedom of speech is a prohibition of restriction of lawful speach by the Government and does not apply to private citizens in a privately held forum. You have no freedom of speech rights in someone else's house. Number 1- They are doing a thankless job. When was the last time anyone said "Thank you for deleting my post"? Well, I really can't imagine anyone doing that, but they do it with what in my mind is a great deal of diplomacy and consistency. I have never seen anyone of them call someone out in public. So to the moderators, I say "Thank you and keep up the good work!"
  21. Wow, that is cool. Is there any mention of a commercial sponsor? I remember the TV show Death Valley Days was sponsored by "20 mule team Borax" soap and thought there might be a tie in. Sorry, showing my age here a little bit. By the way, one of the hosts of the show was Ronald Reagan.
  22. Don't know what to say about that one that is within the bounds of civility!
  23. So, I'm building a set of 5 USAF Thunderbirds aircraft(yea, I know not a car but I am getting there) and the decals are just crazy complex with all kinds of pencil thin lines that have to meet at certain points and decals that are in multiple part(because they go over a compound curve) and have to join precisely and a point. One screw up and I am! So, the decal sheet, in the numbers that they produce can't cost a whole lot of money. They know how difficult these decals are, why couldn't they put in an extra sheet or make the sheet a little larger and put in extras of the ones that are going to be hard to get down? A couple of bucks extra for a kit with extra decals? Yea, I would pay that in a heartbeat!
  24. Very very nicely done. If I may pick one nit, and this is almost always overlooked by builders of "junked" cars. Too much tread left on the tires. A car is this shape would almost always have bald or near bald tires. It is a very small detail but as a contest judge I don't know how many "weathered" car I have seen and when you look at the tires, they are either bright and shiny(which you did not leave that way) or fully inflated(which you also did not do). Looks very realistic. Great job.
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