JsARCLIGHT

Also not to discourage you or anything but being the owner of a graphic media design firm I have to sadly admit that every one of the new hires I just picked up last year are all college grads. Not to sound too negative but comparing the portfolios and work experiences of grads versus really tallented non-grads for some reason to me the grads seem to possess more rounded skills and are usually open to the structure and demands of a professional art job. I used to think that talent alone would swing you in the art field when I was coming up in the ranks but when I turned more management than artist you could see the benefits of that very expensive piece of paper. Also not to discourage you but most if not all mainline pro shops and houses really want to see a degree. They make exceptions for really, really talented people who do not have a degree but most of the time they favor the "college kids" over the "free range artists". The first "real job" I got out of college was in Texas and I was up against three other people for it... sadly the deal-maker for me getting hired was that I was a CAI grad and the owner of the shop was also a CAI grad. That piece of paper can open more doors than it seems in the modern world and at times the new saying of "you need a college degree to bus tables these days" is seemingly sad but true. Edit: and this next part is going to totally negate my earlier advice but I also found out that art shops sometimes look down on military service on your resume. The second job I had after Texas I almost had to keep my military service a secret as the other folks who worked there had, let's say a somewhat "anti-military" slant. Then again you take one look at me today and compare me to a photo from 89 of me sitting in on a jeep with a rifle and the two of us could not be further apart.

If you are hard up for college money joining the military for a hitch in exchange for uncle sucker footing a few of the larger bills really does help. Just make sure you suck at weapon marksmanship and navigation/orienteering otherwise you'll end up riding shotgun in a humvee out front of an armored division (like someone who shall remain nameless). Also if you (or mainly your parent/s) have good credit you can get nice student loans that come due like a bear sitting on your head when you graduate! ... just in case people wonder I myself did a 4 year hitch with the ol' Ironsides right out of high school and the big green money tank paid for a very hefty chunk of my college bills... my wife also did the GI Bill trip and she got to go to medical school. Except she had much better grades than I and a few grants when she went to college. I went to Chicago Art Institute on the other hand and sadly the other half of the bills became student loan payments.

Well, for starters those Thompsons would technically be pre 1986 Class III weapons and subject to civilian purchase... IF they where in the United States that is. The trick here is that they would have to be imported and according to the BATF and the 1986 National Firearms Act in reguard to machine guns, no Class III weapon may be imported for sale to the general public after 1986... only weapons that were already Class III and already inside the continental US and on the books in US hands on or before 1986 are legally ownable by common citizens. Everything that has come after is what is known as either a Post-Sample or a LEO Sample, both of which are only legally "ownable" by either a Law Enforcement Entity (such as a sherriff's department) or a Class II dealer/manufacturer who technically does not "own" the weapon but is building it and holding it in trust for one of the aforementioned Law Enforcement Entities. Sucks, don't it?

I myself have never been to anything but tourist traps in Maryland but if you need help filling out or submitting your BATF Form 4, or need any advice on getting the CLEO signature I have helped several local LEOs get their Class III weapons. I myself don't own a Class III yet mainly because the guns I want cost as much as a car... cough cough M16costs10grand cough cough wheeze cough MP5costsasmuchasaboat... cough... If money is a hard item to come by you might want to look into registered DIAS weapons or perhaps one of the lesser Submachine guns like the Cobray M10/45 or Ingram M11A1. Yes they are cracker-jack weapons but they tend to be less than two grand in like new shape, can mount a suppressor (for when the next form 4 comes a' calling) and they are a blast to shoot.

Kind of a side topic to this but I was wondering what the thoughts of MW compu-folks are: Here in Saint Louis there is a computer helper firm in town who run radio ads on the station I listen to in the car on the way to work and back. They seem to have a sales pitch for their debugging and de-spyware service in which they claim that things like viruses and spyware are "computer terrorism" and they really fixate on that. I and some of the techies at work got into a discussion a few days ago about whether or not things like viruses and spybots and the like should be considered "terrorism" or if the guys that run the marketing campaign for this local compushack are just trying to put the frighteners on sheeple (read = people sort of like me who know next to nothing about computers) to get them into their shop for quick and easy cleanout work then charge them beucoup bucks. They way they make it sound there is a huge market for the cleaning of "less inclined" people's machines. And sort of also on topic: does anyone know why Sidesearch keeps coming up as a hazzardous item when my spyware program does it's sweeps? I know it is hotmail that keeps putting it there no matter how much I try to block it... is Sidesearch really a harmful thing?

I think we hit enter at the same time.

If it makes any difference here I myself am also a vet and am also active in veterains' affairs in my area (albeit not to your level). I myself took no offence or political slant to your sig but I think the issue we stumbled upon is that some people do. To me, this is the same issue MW has every five weeks or so in that one member posts or types something seemingly innocent that some other member just blows waaaaaay out of proportion followed by the typical debaters of policy and law (such as myself) who step in and muse the grey areas of a topic that may or may not have any signifigance any longer. In this world we live in I could say "I likes me some black jellybeans" and someone out there will think to themselves "Ronald Regan also professed such love for black jellybeans ergo this man must be pro-Regan and forcing his views on me!". It just so happens that the mass media got ahold of that particular group you had and turned them into a political football... the same thing could happen to anything in this day and age. Tomorrow one of the cannidates could come out and say something crass like "I likes me some Peach Pie" and some group will rise up called "Moms who make Peach Pie against -blank-" and BAM you have a political hotbutton topic about even the remote mention of peach pie. But it does not stop at politics, it happens all the time with other such "he said, she saids" that arise. The more I think about it the more I'm inclined to believe that the membership in general just needs to "keep it under out hat" rather than step out into the ledge all the time. My usualy rule of thumb when posting on the internet is to only post what I'm thinking about at the time and nothing more... try to keep it on topic and away from societal landmines. UNLESS someone or something just gets my goat. The problem is that everyone has that goat that eventually gets gotten (bad english, I know). After the mods come back with their ruling (peeks into jury room) perhaps we should all just double think before posting or inserting things that could be taken very very badly by others. After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I think I used too obvious of political groups in my second post but Ewilen illustrated it much better with his use of the ASPCA. There are tons of relatively nice and philanthropic groups out there that do a lot of good but also carry a very heavy "political" stigma about them. To quote Hicks from Aliens: Nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure. Or in backwards speak: allow no links to any "groups" at all in sigs. It is being far too politically correct but that is all some people understand sometimes. Eliminate everyone's speach in order to protect someone else's. One man's "fun and games" is always another man's political or socio hotbutton. This thread (and the scores like it in the past) have shown me time and again that lots of MW members very staunchly disagree with many of my own personal views, even to the point of attack... and if I were to put links or slogans from what I consider to be "potentially political" things in my sig then who is to say they will not be insulted or feel the need to attack me and my views? And on the flip side who is to say someone else will not put in something I really, really get set off by and that I will want to confront? Hell, this extends to all the "assualt" sigs I see and many of the other insult and ridicule sigs there are. The main question still remains: at what point is the line drawn? Seeing as no mods or admins have posted here I can assume they are summing the argument and will post a response. We can only hope it is a judicious one that does not curtail the style of sigs we can have too drastically. Because I really want to post an anti-dogs, pro-cats sig but someone will be insulted by it.

I still think there should be a hard and fast ruling by the mods on this soon, after all the political climate in america is coming to a head and this situation could snowball into unwanted political posturing. But another question remains... at what point do politics end and apolitical issues begin? What if someone like me were to put an NRA link and slogan in my sig or a Pro-Life link and slogan, a Move-on.org thing or some other non party non cannidate item? To me that is unpolitical but to others it is a very staunch political slap in their face. It all comes down to perceptions of the reader. Overt politics like links to candidates or political parties or doctrines are easy to see, but the outer rim groups and issues can be sort of a grey area. Some see them as political while others do not. Without a wide spanning ruling in the court of MW there is room to abuse, and at what point is the line drawn? Is a item like the NRA too political to be not political? Edit: And just for the record I neither believe in nor endorse the groups mentioned in this post... I just used them as examples.

Pole Position was my favorite cartoon show back then... even though I was 13 or so when it came out I still watched cartoons like that back then. And for those who just want to rock out: Really crappy mpeg of the POLE POSITION theme song

I think the content of people's sigs is their own business... as long as it does not have a pic or is combative or directed at other members in a hostile way. I agree that a few folks here and there have rather combative and insulting sigs directed at other members or at groups in general and they might be pushing it a bit. As for the whole "politics" issue in sigs I'd think that a simple non-hostile, non-political statement and a link to some group or person the member likes or believes in is not "political" at all. Politics becomes an issue for me like religion when someone is shoving their views in my face and going out of their way to draw attention to themselves. In the case of ChristopherB's sig it does not bother me at all... it is unassuming, low profile and not that noticeable. Now if he had it up in giant font with a deep red color screaming bloody murder some radical policial tripe along with that link then I'd say we have an issue. But in the end it is the Mods place to decide these things and us to follow the rules they set forth. If the mods decide that a new law to be placed in the Rules of MW stating no politics of any sort mentioned in sigs will be tollerated then that will be the law of the land.

They most likely received mine because I shipped it before you, I was barking down their door a few short days after getting mine. I also shipped it priority and they had it in <3 days. Mine might be receiving "special attention" (read = extra delay) because I went from nice to very angry in my tone with them. My guess is they are holding off on the "very angry people's" orders so they can either A) pen a sweetly worded corporate letter with a rubber stamp signature from the president to be enclosed with my replacement telling me how this is not their fault and they strive to ensure high quality or B) just just want to piss us off even more. It has been my experience with several other companies and stores that the more mad a customer is the slower it seems to get their issue resolved. The typical "well you walked in here with an attitude" excuse comes into play. My guess is when this is all said and done I will either have to return my return due to more crap or I will just give up and say "fook it" and throw the thing in the bottom of the closet like I was planning from the beginning. The driving force that keeps the anger running through me with this issue is that toynami has had several chances to either make good on their mistakes or comb my raised fur back into place with a gesture and they have done neither. My ranking for them as a company are Product: crap Customer Service: crap. Man... if I was Donald Trump or some other richer bastard than I am now I'd do all in my power to buy out this company and burn it to the ground just to watch the flames.

Just do like I did. Opus kinda sorta let on that the only reason he got a response was because he kept emailing them about the issue so I just sent them an email a day until they got back to me. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Just an update for those who care: I started hounding Toynami (per Opus) to get some info on when my replacement will be sent and I finally got a response from them this friday. Their response pretty much says "we have received your exchange item and it is in the process of being fullfilled, it will be processed in the order in which it was received. Expect your replacement to be mailed in approximately 5 to 7 business days." So if I miss my mark they are telling me, in not so many words, that their exchange department is potentially flooded with people returning their toys for exchanges... either that or they only have one guy working on this and he has to share that time with his other duties of answering calls and emails. So hopefully I will get a less flawed toy back sometime next week or sooner.

I did not take anything negatively it's just that despite my initial and ongoing violent displeasure at this toy my seething feelings on this matter for some reason keep flaring up every time I read another "accept the bad, forgive the mistakes and buy the next one because it will be better (cross fingers)" on here and on a lot of other boards. To me, the majority consensus on this toy seems to be a little too forgiving rather than feeling the righteous indignation of let-downedness and rip-offity that some of us very vocal minority feel. But as with all things this issue is just like any other issue in the world, there are the two verbal minorities on the far ends of the poles and the silent majority who seems to all agree this toy is very flawed yet they for some reason are content with that. You'd think I'd have a problem with the people that just gushingly love this toy but instead I just can't understand how others see all the bad issues and yet somehow still smile. Some of these toys must have been laced with liquid zoloft as the final paint coat and prolonged handling of the toy makes it enter your bloodstream and soon you find youself spouting things like "The toy is kinda crappy... but... maaaaaaaaaan... it's like... duuuuuuuuude... wicked awesome..."

Did they send you an email notifying you of the shipment? If they did then it makes me wonder where my email and shipment are because I have not heard dick from them since the original return request was answered.

For those who say some of us are being "overly critical" (some of us read = me) I would have to say that yes I am being overly critical... but it is because A) I had such high hopes for this toy, B) I only like high quality toys (and yes I dislike the 1/60 Yamatos, all the 1/72 yamatos and a slew of other toys) and finally C) some people are more forgiving of crap. I'm getting older and let's face it, I've seen a lot in my life so far. My time and tollerance of shoddy toys with lots of issues and generally crap assembly quality is very low and I have no quams voicing my opinion of it. I also have no quams against shoving that in Toynami's face. What is this crap about "they are a small company and we have to give them slack?" I own a small business and from my experience we small businesses need to be one step ahead of the big boys just to stay in business. If I told my design teams to just phone it in and we'd "fix it in post" (the battle cry of the big houses) then no one would use us because we would constantly be over time, over budget and have terrible quality. The way my company gets work is by being faster, cheaper and better than the lumbering giants of the industry. Our clients come back to us time and time again because we bend over backward, even sometimes to the point of losing money to keep that one great client, to please them and make darn sure they are happy with our services. It seems to me that the business practices of "small toy companies" nowadays have become "well, let's just release the toy fast and dirty and fix the problems in the following releases". Well that is the way American auto makers played the game back in the '70s and '80s and look what happened to them, the small upstart import companies blew their asses out of the water and they are still playing catch-up to this day. "Accepting mistakes with the expectation of future improvement" is a cop out, pure and simple. I expect excellence up front. This toy was a far cry from excellent to me and I sure as sheep wanted this thing to be great... but the darn thing is just a mess. Gaps, poor paint, loose parts. The more you forgive the lower your expectations become and the worse the products you buy degrade to. Always have high expectations of things, especially of things carrying unneccessarily high price tags. We have a saying in the GD industry: Doctors bury their mistakes, Bad product designers just put it in a flashy box.

If what people are assuming about toynami's staff and operation is correct (small staff, low profit margin to begin with, barely paying the bills... single crocodile tear) then this whole debacle may kneecap them to a good degree. I can't recall if people made mass returns of the first MPC... from all I heard they just bitched about it. This time around this whole "tons of returns" thing might just kick them were they feel it: the wallet. You can bitch and moan about a company and it's business practices all you want on the internet but only when they start to feel that dissapointment and anger in their financial statements will they possibly try to make some adjustments. Of course I would just love for them to send out a press release with some statement like "we would love to bring robotech fans everywhere more high quality alpha toys and even the promised beta fighter but due to large numbers of exchanges of our wonderful products we lack the funds to finish the line. Please address all complaints and hate mail to the people who were not satisfied with our high quality and well assembled products."

Did they at least say "send a copy of this email"? The reply message they sent to me was only two sentances long which consisted of "please send all exchanges to this address (address). Please reference (number) and include a printout of this email." Edit: perhaps it was because I did not have a "receipt" that they gave me a reference number. Maybee the nice friendly person had to clear it with their supervisor or something.

That's odd, their customer service was pretty polite and communicative to me. I sent a very kindly worded request for an exchange to them via email with no anger or hostility whatsoever (that was reserved for this board here) and quite a while later all I got back from them was tantamount to a simple "Yeah, return it" with an address to ship it to and a reference number. No apologies, no sympathies, no excuses, no nothing. Very rude and blunt, not what you would expect from a company that "cares" about their customer base. I sent my busted ass toy to them last week along with a nice hostile letter (their almost "automated reply" brevity and tone just broke the f'ing dam for me) and USPS says they delivered it last week and still no word from them as to the status of my return. Either I got the crappiest toy of the line and then dealt with the crappiest online customer service person they employ and now my toy sits in limbo due to some internal organizational error... or they have more issues with their company than just their toys. As I said a looooooong time ago in this thread, I've had other bad toys but this entire experience is just a beast from hell to me. Never, never, never will I buy another one of their products as long as I live. And if they are reading my responses to this torked toy of mine get off your ass and process my exchange!

Nah. toynami is basically doing the same thing for me. Same here... however Toynami has been very rude and not too talkative in their communications with me and I still have no idea when my replacement will come.

Having never read the book I only know what others tell me... and everyone that has talked with me about BR in the past has said Deckard was a replicant in the book. I guess they didn't know either... ... and if I would read something other than a TV manual or Handgun Magazine I might know that wouldn't I?

Ridles says yes because the original book said yes... Any wonders as to how he will "drive the nail" in his new edit? Will he be very loose and vague about it like the DC and leave it up to the audience or will he just drop the package in front of you and smirk?

Just so my crazed boy Tony Montana makes the list you need to add Al Pachino. He's more of a s#!t talking tough guy than an actual knock down drag out tough guy so he'd be low in the rankings...

Here is an interesting issue we can bat around like my cat with a yamato missle rack: Was Deckard a replicant? If you watch the original 1982 edit you can almost assuredly say "No". If you watch the directors cut you have to say a solid "Maybee". What of the new unreleased Ridley Scott edit? Will Decard turn out to be Mr. Robotto or will he remain a confused human?