Harry P.

You're right. They originally were farther east and moved west. Had my east and west reversed...

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2014/04/18/holy-grail-muscle-cars-found-in-old-barn/?intcmp=features

It looks like he's not actually manipulating the photo (like Photoshopping it)... it's the way he sets up and shoots the photo that's the trick part.

Only as much needs to go in as you're willing to put in. Enjoy the hobby at your own level of comfort. After all, it's your hobby to enjoy as you see fit.

I tend to put my makeup on before I hit the road...

Thanks, Lee.

Pakardniev?

Interesting stuff, Tom! Very cool.

Waa waa.... I want my MTV.... Be careful... someone might write a song about that...

I have a few small dings I need to touch up on the car... the best price I could find online for touchup paint (Mustang "Vista Blue") is 1/2 ounce... for $10! I don't even want to know what that works out to per gallon...

Beautiful!

Thank you. I'm here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress, folks. Good night, everybody!

But that's assuming that you have a Soto...

I'm old enough to remember when they still pumped your gas and cleaned your windshield and gave you free glasses or dishes or whatever... and gas was less than a buck a gallon, and yet they still made a profit! I lived in the city when I was younger, and I used to buy my gas at one of those "mega" stations with about 30 pumps. It was amazing to watch the attendant run from one customer to another, filling them up (or "five bucks worth" or whatever the customer wanted)... collecting the customers' money, making change with that little change machine they wore on their belt... the guys would be literally serving 5-6 different customers at a time! They were like those old-time plate spinners on the Ed Sullivan Show that kept a whole bunch of dinner plates spinning on vertical rods, running from one plate to another to keep them all spinning at the same time without any plate falling off its shaft. Those attendants really earned their pay. Especially on those cold, windy Chicago winter days.

Look at it from the business owner's perspective: either constantly pay salary and benefits to human cashiers... or buy a few self-checkout machines, and pay for them once. You may not like the DIY checkout idea, but it's a smart business move. I think if you were the guy in charge of making that decision, you'd agree. Let's face it, these days the cashier does nothing more than scan your items. They don't have to key in the prices like in the old days, and change is made automatically if you're paying in cash. If you pay by card, you have to do all the "work" yourself anyway (swipe the card, enter PIN or sign, etc.)... so why pay humans to stand there and scan items when the customer can just as well scan their own items? It's a no-brainer as far as the business bottom line goes, and that's the point of every business... to maximize the bottom line. I see more of these self-checkout lanes coming and fewer "live" checkout aisles. You may have been joking, but the gas station analogy is the perfect example. Why pay people to pump the customers' gas when the customers can just as well pump their own?

With the price of gas where it is these days, we might start seeing gas stations staffed with loan officers...

Venture Hobbies died a long, slow death. They used to be a bustling place, especially on a Saturday. The original location was farther west on Dundee in Wheeling, later they moved to that little strip mall much farther east on Dundee. Then the owner sold the place, and things went downhill. Shelves were more than half empty, as the new owners were apparently not reordering stock. Then the owner who had sold the place mysteriously reappeared (not sure if he was now an employee or if he had bought back the shop)... and they renamed the place AdVenture Hobbies. Get it? "Adventure." But it was too late, and eventually they closed up shop.

De Soto. De...space...Soto. I know this because just today I was flipping through my April issue of Hemmings Classic Car and read the article called "De Soto or DeSoto? 13 most-common mistakes people make about De Sotos."

I love that Pocher RR radiator and "flying lady" ornament. The nicest parts of the whole kit, IMO.

Don't assume that because a kit is shrinkwrapped that it's the original factory wrap. Any kit can be re-wrapped; hobby shops do it all the time.

I didn't think there were any AC/DC fans who actually cared about the quality of the singing!

Just the opposite for me, especially if I have only a few items. It's always way faster to check out yourself than stand in the "express lane" behind people who don't understand (or don't care) what "15 items or less" means, and cashiers who don't have the guts to tell people they're in the wrong lane and need to move to one of the "regular" checkout lanes. At Walmart in particular, the cashier checkout lines are always a mile long, but at the self-checkout area (they have about 10 separate stations) there's usually no waiting at all. I don't know how many times I've waited behind one of those "Express lane rule doesn't apply to me" types and told the checker that if they don't enforce the rule, there's no point in having an "express lane." As far as I'm concerned, the self-checkout thing couldn't have come sooner! I love it!

Ok, Nick. As long as you say so...

That's the first time I've ever heard of trying to convert a right-handed person to left-handed.

Yes, exactly! A 1/25 scale model is one twenty-fifth the size of the real car. The real car is 25 times larger than the model. One inch on the model equals 25 inches on the real car. Twenty-five inches on the real car equals one inch on the model. It's all the same fraction... 1/25. The "scale" of a model is simply the fractional size of the real car that the model is.