LDO

Customers (I'm a plumber). Too many think that because they NEED a plumber, I should work for less than peanuts. One guy cried about the prices, then complained about me. After it was all said and done, we realized he had misrepresented the problem all along and just wanted to blame us for the junk plumbing in his fallin' apart, 50 year old POS house, and of course get it fixed for free, since "we caused it". Another guy, who wanted a call before doing any work on his rental property, complained about the price and service charge, but agreed to pay. After the work was done, he started crying again. Dispatch said just waive the service charge and move on. I got another complaint from a woman who was furious that I wouldn't repair her 13 year old water heater. I've read Yelp reviews for several local plumbing companies. Many of the complaints are "he charged X dollars for the repair. When he was done, I saw that the part is only 32 dollars on Amazon". Well, why didn't you buy it and install it? Oh, you didn't know how to diagnose the problem? Didn't know what part to buy? Didn't have the tools to do the job? Don't make a living doing this? Don't pay for a work van, insurance, 40 bucks a day in gas, rent on a commercial building, office personnel who get a paycheck but don't bring money in? (I could go on). Yes, we get paid to do this and yes, we have overhead. Don't like it? Have bubba joe from down the street replace your water heater. When the gas company red tags it and shuts off your gas because it has every code violation known to man, don't cry to me about the price to make it right. My best friend likes to remind of the days when I first got into plumbing and believed most customers were good people, and I cared about them. Not any more. Here's the price. Don't like it? Adios. Yeah, I'm also the guy who reports handyman water heater installations to the city, so they can slap that clown with a minimum $2000 fine. It goes up from there. The state can then slap him with the same fines again. That's right. A guy practicing plumbing without a license in Texas can get fined twice for the same offense and it's all legal. Boo hoo hoo. I don't undercut barbers by cutting hair without a license. I'll take his last can of handyman hash.

It's a '56 Continental MkII...I hope.

Oh yeah- I also have one of these:

'tis better to give than to receive. What are you giving? This is my one big gift. It's for Mom. It's a sous vide cooker. Mom watches Iron Chef and lots of other cooking shows. She would love to try this cooking method. I have seen temp controllers for slow cookers, but they only work for slow cookers with manual controls, and hers is digital. I splurged and got her this. There's a sale; it comes with a vacuum bagger. If you have not heard of these, they are also referred to as immersion heaters. Food gets sealed in a vacuum bag and cooked slowly, at low temps, in water held at a precise temp.

If you want to try RenShape, let me know. I have some scraps. I could send you a little...but just a little. I'm stingy. :-) Also- a way to avoid having to smooth out a somewhat porous material is to make your buck just a little bit more undersize, then vacuum some .010" or .015" over it, then polish up the plastic copy. A lot easier than getting a glass-smooth finish on putty or RenShape.

I'd buy that as a poster for the garage!

Another vote for no formal review format.

Same here. Thread speculating about a McLaren F1 kit is what I had in mind.

Mom was a tomboy as a kid. She didn't have Sassy the Kitten, but she did have Perry the Squirrel. It would be cool if I could find a Perry kit and give her a model she built more than 50 years ago.

I have one of these. I picked it up thinking my mom might remember it. Revell Sassy the kitten, if the image disappears.

If the LHS has it, I get it there. It may cost a little more, but having a LHS is worth it. Not that I have money to burn, but after nearly 40 years of building models, I have lots of tools, supplies, and kits. Anything old/out of production, I get from eBay.

I'm having trouble posting a photo from my phone, but I have a figure called "need for speed". She's wearing a revealing one-piece outfit, and designed to sit on Tamiya's 1/12 scale YZF-R1 motorcycle.

Cable TV is a huge bummer. Stupid "reality" shows on all the channels. I hate all of them. The cable companies have packages of channels that include one decent channel with several that are garbage, so you can't just get rid of the garbage. I may just pull the plug on it anyway.

I can't get to the site right now on my phone, but I remember seeing that guy on TV years ago, maybe 25 years or more, talking about a wild idea he had; a car that could take off vertically like a Harrier. He talked about it as a way to beat traffic. Hard to imagine a car that could carry an engine big enough to lift it vertically and still be useful as a car, but a cool idea to daydream about.

Boy I wish that the Piaggio-Pegna PC.7 had gotten the chance to fly "in anger". That was a wild design. Have you the bulges on the nose of Miss Ashley II? Beautiful plane. R.I.P., Gary Levitz.

I got your PM, but it says it's deleted, so I can't respond. I'll look into what you mentioned.

The old skin. It looks like he replaced 2 missing legs. Not sure about that, and don't want to disturb him right now. Definitely interesting.

One of the crayfish moulted. I walked in the door and saw this from across the living room. Part of me thought one of them was dead, but hoped it was moulting. I think it's interesting that he's not blue while waiting for his exoskeleton to harden. His antennae were very short, but now they are full size. Interesting.

Yeah. I was thinking single cab short bed (short wheelbase and lighter weight) with an aluminum block engine, C5 Corvette transaxle, and a chassis built for handling would be a wild ride...but that's not this truck.

Yes. I have an '89 Mustang 5.0 donor car. It's an unfinished project with no title. I would love to have a 4.6 4-cam engine, but they are just so wide. There are a few 4.6 Rangers out there, but none have retained accesories. I'd like to figure out a way to make that happen. Possibly a Toyota or fabricated front frame clip, with a couple of other space-saving ideas.

"Yeah, it's real". A guy answering questions about his Lamborghini Countach. I couldn't resist. I asked why his Lamborghini has a Fiero engine. Another guy was trying to sell his Scarab (I think that's what he called it) to my younger brother for $8500. "They only made 200 of them". Uhhh...more like only added fiberglass parts to about 200 early Datsun Z cars. Oh-wrt to the good looking real estate agent; Austin has a former Playmate who sells houses. Echo Johnson.

Still at the same shop. I know it took forever. What really drove me nuts was the fact that the guy does such good work. I called every street rod shop in central Texas and nobody wanted to touch a 1986 pickup. I guess it just didn't fit their image. (Business must be great if they can turn away money). I had seen a few trucks modified by individuals, but they looked like garbage.

Dang. I posted a reply from my phone and it didn't show up. Anyway- the aquarium has been up and running, but got cloudy. it was the gravel. I used enough to almost bury 3" PVC with fittings, so 4 inches or so. It was just too deep to keep clean, so I redid the whole thing, using smaller gravel that's only about an inch deep. Here's one of the crayfish, remodeling his home to suit his tastes. He's bringing rocks to the entrance to make it smaller. It makes him feel more secure. They really like their homes. They're inside almost all the time. I don't see them very much, but that's OK. They will be more healthy if they are not constantly stressed out, looking for shelter. I think it's kind of cruel to put a creature like that in an environment that is so stressful. Oh yeah- he's also dragging a snail into his home, I think they get frustrated with the snails. I see them drag them into their homes and pushing them out. Maybe they try to eat them, but can't get into the shell.

Somewhere on this site is a picture of a distorted pink and purple Packard boattail speedster that I left in the back seat of my car for a week. This was in February. In Texas, of course. It was after the San Antonio IPMS contest. I accidentally broke off the hood ornament the night before, and it was my only Packard model. Eh, it's IPMS. They're all about tanks and planes. No one will notice a Duesenberg ornament. Uhhh...they did.

It has been in a shop for ages, but now it's "under the knife". It's a Supercab, which was only offered with a short bed. I found a donor first generation long bed, and the the frames both got cut and are being grafted together. The first step in a long journey. It won't be anything crazy, just a really nice street machine that has a 7ft bed.