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Joe Handley

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Everything posted by Joe Handley

  1. Well, so long as they aren't shooting each other like is going on in Chicago.
  2. Dad has this fire extinguisher left over from his railroad days that you can pressurize and fill with what ever liquid you want, if you can find one, it might be very usable for such purposes, and wouldn't quite draw the kind of Police Intervention that could be detrimental to you as well.
  3. Eh, I'd just get a garden hose for that last part, if it don't work on the hipsters, it'll at least work in the vomit!
  4. That was one big question I've yet to see an answer to, how fast was that car moving at the time of impact! That could determine if the truck driver knowingly pulled out infront of the Tesla, how the car (which blew the safety bypass on the NHTSA roof crush test equipment) managed to lose the roof, then continue down the road through 2 fences, and then hit a power pole all 900' emerging from the wrong side of the trailer!
  5. I think Tesla provides another Tesla as loaner, so that shouldn't be an issue, and if they are like me and have one "modern" car and one "dinosaur", it shouldn't take much to readapt to the older car.......unless it's a column shift auto, that always catches me out in my Parent's Town and Country..........too many years of driving console shift cars and Jeeps.
  6. I believe that Teslas with the Autopilot systems will already have many of those features Tom, they've even been using info learned by the individual Teslas to teach each other how to do things better, this issue could cause Tesla to swap the optical sensors for more or a radar type system that the newer cars have. Still won't fix the whole "Watch the freakin' road, ya dummy!!!!!" Problem though.
  7. Welp, Mom is back in thd hospital as of today, although atleast it's been 7 months since her last visit...........hope it's nothing worse than dehydration, again.
  8. I'll bet that if everything gets straightened out tech wise, they'll prever autonomous over human driven, since humans will make more mistakes and will probably either lobby the government to make only self driving cars legal and/or crank the insurance through the roof on the stuff that isn't. That said, I can see an advantage to having some mix of self driving and enthusiast driven cars sharing the roads. Put those who would rather have a rolling living room, drunks, and those that consider driving a wasteful chore in the self drivers that will stay in the outer lanes then allow those of us who actually prefer driving to have the open lanes without tue sudden surprise of somebody randomly changing lanes in front of you, deciding that they want to run 10 below the limit on a day like we're having today, ect. Uhg, I hate people like that, although at least he stuck around after the impact, mine usually up and take off.
  9. From what I understand, the "quicker" come from a motor doing the work for the computer instead of the loose screw behind the wheel that may be about as competent at shifting an automatic as someone who has never driven before
  10. I won't disagree with you there, I don't even like the electric throttle body on my 200, but have to deal with it until I can afford a programmer for the car to get rid of the throttle lag built into it. With the traction control turned on and the factory hockey puck tires, it took no effort to try and lay rubber by accident with the car...........then the traction control kicks in and the car suddenly develops torque steer it doesn't have with the system off?! When I bought my Jeep, I even made an efford to find one that wasn't built with the optional ($500 at that) ABS so I wouldn't have issues with that going sideways like the earlier system in Dad's would do (sometimes all but disabling the entire braking system!) Right now I'm just happy that, so far as we know, none of our vehicles are on the Takata airbag list, although my Jeep does have the older, made to stop the unbelted 250lb idiot, airbags that can also kill kids, old people, and those of smaller stature.
  11. I believe that they still have a mechanical link to the steering, however, that would still come down to the person behind the wheel actually looking to see where they're going and taking over when needed, Harry Potter be danged.
  12. Just pulled into the local Walmart parking lot to see a really nice, clean, red and white, '57 Hardtop with Baby Moons and wide whites.
  13. Last 4th, Mom was in a nursing home a ways from home and when we went to leave and head for home and as I was heading towards street, I noticed Dad was out and checking tires, turns out one of them was having difficulties holding air (turns out it was a magically loosened schreider valve) and we had to stop and swap it out for the spare in a gas station parking lot maybe about a 1/4 of the way home. The whole time we were working on changing that tire out, there were people setting off small bombs......err, fireworks for almost the whole time in the neighborhood right behind the station. Fortunately, neither one of up have issues with war induced PTSD because it sounded like a freakin' war zone! I feel bad for any Vets that live in that area, as it was really starting to piss me the heck off!
  14. From what I saw on Gizmodo, he had rigged a DVD player into it somehow. Kinda curious to see how they have the web and other non car related functions of that center screen done. On the head unit of my 200, it doesn't allow the video from DVD's to be played when in gear, only audio. That said, I have heard that the wiring that controls that runs down to the shifter so that it grounds in a certain in park and neutral and that if that wire is rerouted to someplace that is always grounded, that will bypass that block and allow video to played in gear, never looked into it in my car, as I'm usually the only one in it and tend not to do what this guy may have done.
  15. Thanks Harry, something I forgot to mention is that she spent about half of last yearbin a couple different hospitals as well as a couple different nursing homes, with January 1st being when she got out of CDH most recently, so she hasn't had to go back as of yet!
  16. It seems like it should pick up road debris and critter ok, the problem here was that the car doesn't have sensors mounted closer to the roof that would be able to sense high sitting objects like trailers, shelves, lifted trucks, ect.........which should have been seen by the person in the driver's seat, but if he wasn't really paying attention to what was going on infront of the car...............
  17. Other than somewhat worried about the door to door nature of this new job and still has some problems that keep her from being able to do much more that walk around the house in a big circle, pretty good! This trip to Iowa we took was so she could attend her 54th high school reunion (which was school wide, so there were some graduates from the mid-30's there too!), which at the time was looking to possibly be the last one, since after her class graduated (all 19 of them!), they moved all the town's HS students into a bigger county school that her little sister and at least half of my cousins from her side graduated from. Since the young'uns are all in their 70's now, there was the possibility that this was going to be the last reunion, but they decided to try for one more in 2018. We also had a bunch of family at the hotel we stayed at on Sunday, which turned into an early 40th birthday party for me.......and here I thought it was for her 72nd a couple weeks back! She didn't exactly enjoy the car rides (their '06 T&C is a bit tight in the front passenger seat, especially compared to the new Pacifica) but did enjoy the reunion and the family get together the next day.
  18. A buddy of mine picked up a warmed over Cobalt SS Supercharged from the Chevy Dealership he turns wrenches for, drives the little car all the time. Kinda had to laugh at him when he first bought it, he's mainly been driving lowered 4.8l Silverados (one also 5 speed and supercharged!) for the last decade, so the little gas tank and big mileage numbers were a pleasant shock to him once he started to daily it .
  19. Lololol, no I won't Harry, but I am kinda interested to see how much of their customer list lines up with what I remember of the HobbyTown system. The pay shpuld be good enough that I'll.be able to pay off my 200 quicker and get rid of my C.C. debt fairly quick, once those are done and since this job would require driving, I'd probably want to consider a different car for a work beater so I'm not racking up miles on the 200 like mad (it's now over 50k). Been thinking a new Dart or a second hand Volt might be good to look at, especially if I can get extended warranties for either one and they seem to be around the same price.
  20. Lol, after that trip to Iowa this past weekend, I'd have been in trouble, between the Coca~Cola, Dr. Pepper, and Mountain Dew while on the road No HTU or hopefully brick and mortar retail, it's a sales job that will require both outdoor, house to house work as well as phone work, pay would be better than I could get in retail too. Funny thing is, much of their territory is in the same areas that the customers that the HTU I worked for live in, which should be including Harry's neigborhood too! One of the things that got me the job is that I'd been with that store for 15 years, under two owners, during a recession, plus have no problems working 2nd shift and on Saturday mornings. It'll be nice to be at a job where I've got holidays off, only one I've been guarantee that was when I was still a student employee at the West Chicago High School 20+ years ago!
  21. Thanks! If all goes well, I'll be working there by this time next week!
  22. WOOHOO!!!!!! Drug test is taken, now I just have to wait for the confirmation.
  23. The Daytona Beach part is what's throwing me
  24. I figured that I should be ok with the caffeine, but I have been drinking tons of water, even what is in my system would be pretty well flushed.
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