Dave Ambrose

I first bought Windows in 1993. I'm still waiting for a credible product. Does that count?

Well, that didn't go as planned. Ran into a couple of problems that caused the update to fail, and I had to restore the site from the backup made at the beginning of this process. I know what went wrong, but it will take some time to fix. I'll let you know when our next attempt will happen. I do apologize for it taking so long. The backups are 170 GB. They take a long time to make, and a long time to restore. Please let me know if you encounter any problems. Thank you all for being patient.

I saw a super nice MG TC today at lunch. I hope they show up at British car day in October. I’d like to take a closer look at it.

I'm taking the board offline tomorrow morning. I'd feel bad about this, except that I'm very confident that most everyone on this board has something they can build. Or, maybe some family member who's feeling neglected. Whatever you decide to do tomorrow, take some pictures, and post them here.

You could probably use a scrap of Hardie board, or Hardie siding. I found a broken piece of siding at my local Home Depot, and they just gave it to me Won't be as handy as that honeycomb board, but it's certainly good in the flammability department.

We went through something similar, and bought a Nissan Frontier. It's been a solid, exceedingly useful, if somewhat boring truck. It's much narrower and lower than the larger US trucks. In the midst of truck shopping, we learned we were going to be welcoming a grandson, so we got the crew cab instead of the extended cab. Finding that combination with the 6 foot bed was challenging, but ultimately accomplished. You can get either a 5 or 6 foot bed. My wife insisted on the 6 foot bed. Have only needed to do routine maintenance in 80K miles. Plenty of HP for towing, now that we inherited a boat. The only big drawback to this truck is the turning radius. With the crew cab and long bed, it's about the same as our old suburban. If you get one of the older ones with the torsion bar front suspension, you won't have that problem. Price was reasonable too. Got the mid-range trim level. With frequent beach trips in our lifestyle, leather upholstery wasn't going to be practical. We have neoprene seat covers that work great for slightly soggy people. I also never thought I would feel the need for heated seats. Boy was I wrong. First switch I usually hit after some time in the ocean.

Thanks. It's not my favorite time slot, but I need to do this when I'm fresh, rested, and aware of my surroundings. There will be a stop at Starbucks prior to the start of the upgrade.

You don’t mess with heart issues. I’m glad you’re in capable hands. Get well soon!

Sorry about that. I think I have that fixed. One of the changes I made to prepare for the upgrade had some unforeseen side effects. I've backed that change out, which should put everything back to right. PM me if you have any problems posting pictures.

It should be fixed now. Please PM me if it isn't. Thanks, Dave Ambrose

It wasn't supposed to cause any problems, but it looks like one of the changes for the next forum software version broke something. I'll back that out tomorrow morning, which should get us back to functional. Thanks for being patient.

I will be taking the forum offline for a software upgrade on Saturday, May 25th, and starting about 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time. That's high noon for you east coasters, and other denizens of the eastern time zone. I anticipate the upgrade will take about 6 hours, but it could take longer, or if I'm really lucky, it will all go smoothly, and we're back on the air sooner. Contributions to the sysadmin coffee fund are gratefully accepted. When I am done, you can expect the appearance, and some of the functionality to change. I'll try to document the changes best I can, but it probably won't be complete. I'll start a couple of threads here for problems, hints, and hacks. I know you can all find something to do while the board is down. Take pictures of what you're doing, and we can all post them afterward. I'd like to think this will fix our 404 problem, but it may well not. It will let us work on the solution as the current software is so out of date that the vendor doesn't want to try diagnosing any problems with it. Let me know if you have any questions. -- Dave Ambrose

Yup. Was working on that today. Turns out to be more complicated than I’d like it to be.

I don’t know, but I’ll take a look at this. We just made some server changes. Can you send me screen shot(s) of the message?

Well shoot. It wasn't showing up earlier. Now it is. Back to the drawing board.

All done. Made a few improvements under the hood, and changed the oil. The site should be more responsive now. Please let me know if you spot any problems. Sadly, I don't expect this to resolve our 404 problem, but you never know.

I’ll be taking the forum and main site offline for an hour or possibly two hours; Monday, May 13 at 0900 Pacific. For you civilians, that’s 9 AM. For you sailors, that’s two bells. And, for you Marines, that’s 0900.

I'm working on it. In our case, it's more complicated than I'd like it to be. The login information is secured. The passwords are encrypted in the database, and secure connections are used for the login sequence. Some of the content isn't encrypted which, generates the Not Secure warning.

I built a couple of the double car kits when I was a kid. I liked them a lot. They're rare and crazy expensive now. I would absolutely love to see those reissued. I'd buy a couple copies of each one. Unless my memory has fallen to excessive nostalgia, the Slingster kit is basically Sizzler 2.0. It too is a nice kit, and lots of fun to build.

I think we've gotten to the end of constructive discussion here. I'll leave you all with some parting thoughts. In my discussions with Gregg, subscriptions have always been figured as number of issues. If you subscribed to 12 issues, you'll get the next 12 issues. I also think the backstory is important, and while it was out on other channels, I don't think it got a full airing here. Roughly 2 years ago, Gregg got rear-ended. He, and the car behind him pulled off, ostensibly to exchange information. After he got out of his car, the other car drove off. That collision re-injured his neck, leading to the current state of affairs. If I ever get my hands on this hit and run dude, he's going to regret the day he was born. If you have any questions, please feel free to PM me.

This is fantastic. I'm really enjoying this build.

Their TV adds always send you to their ads in the golf magazines. Yet another reason I’ll never take up golf.

I believe I can answer this. Obligations to current subscribers will be honored.

We’ve made some improvements, but many of the links in the content are not secure, so that also triggers the warning. Given the nature of the information on this site, it isn’t a serious problem unless you live someplace where building model cars is illegal.

If you need reference pictures, I have one In the driveway.