Seven

Hey Poonman. The key to affording a home is "double income" or "marriage". In my case, my wife and I were lucky to buy a house before the big boom, right before prices started shooting up insanely. If we bought even as little as 6 months later I'm sure we wouldn't have been able to afford it. I'm almost certain that my daughter will have to move out of state when it comes time for her to buy a house of her own in 20 years unless the polar icecaps melt and San Diego is submerged drastically lowering property value.

My cup runneth over... :o PURE PORNOGRAPHY!!!

Myk, I'm in the same town as you, dude. I dunno about you, but I've seen plenty of my friends pulled over for a mildly modified car and the cop breaks out a ruler and measures the height of the car from the ground to the front bumper along with making them pop their hoods and inspecting any shiny thing under there. Now none of my friends are street racers and are certainly not in high school or college by now and if they get heat over their mildly modded GTI or 300ZX, you can be sure they'll be all over my ass. I myself got pulled over during rush hour traffic on the 15 and I do mean 5 mph traffic, for one brake bulb being out and the guy made me pop my hood and gave me the third degree over polished intercooler pipes. If i put a bigass shiny T04 turbo, you can be sure he's going to know that is NOT stock, cause no OEM air box is definitely going to be shoehorned onto that. Then the guy asked me where I was going and where do I work. I'm a married man out of my 20s so that kind of surprised me. Maybe I just look scummy? Its not like that consideration is the only holdback, its also funds and the smog thing.

Thanks emajnthis! I did all the reliability mods first thing when I got the car 3 years ago and pretty much do all my own maintenance on the engine. As for an intercooler, I would first have to get a reprogrammed ECU or a Apex Power FC to mix in a bit more fuel since with the engine mods I do have, one more mod would throw the fuel mix to lean, which leads to many a blown engine. The hood while not to everyone's tastes, is more there for the vents than anything as underhood temps are incredible on this car. I'd love to get a nice single turbo but the police in my town are nazis! I'd be afraid that I'd get pulled over in short time and they always ask you to pop your hood with cars like this. Theres also the smog check problem. I do plan on getting some upgraded twin turbos since those are much easier to get past smog and any visual check by a cop since they are out of view. I don't go out to street races or provoke any dumb stuff like that as I'm definitely not some kid right out of high school, its just a nice weekend car. Even so, the police will still jump all over any modded car in my town due to the damn street racers.

The problem I personally had with Graveyard, despite its dramatic direction and technical merit, was that it wasn't a history lesson at all. It never once dares to ask why the main characters were suffering. Partly because the answer, from my Western mind, is painfully obvious and potentially embarassing to a Japanese audience. In WWII, the Japanese government engaged in campaigns of conquest across Asia and ultimately attacked the United States unprovoked. That is the key historical instigator of their civilians' suffering-- simply put, the Japanese government brought war upon their own. If we're expected to sympathize with the characters, then I think it's only fair to ask what the root cause of their suffering was. I think that would be fair. Instead, the only answers we're given is a generic "because of war". And from a certain narrow viewing of the movie, "because of allied planes, and thus, allied forces. Oh, and war." So the problem I have with Graveyard is that it's a narrow view of personal suffering divorced from a greater reality, which combined with a culture that only seems to remember the atomic bomb, doesn't do much to give viewers the perspective they badly need. They learn only that "war is bad", while true, fail to understand that it's unjustified military aggression that is truly evil. In fact, war may sometimes be necessary in the face of that aggression. Anyway, I know we've covered all this before, and I don't want to get terribly political here, but as art, I think Graveyard fails to say what needs to be said and what needs to be heard. It fails even to hint at the real situation, which I think would add more to the fabric of the personal story rather than being a distraction. Without perspective, Graveyard becomes somewhat of a meaningless pity story, and to someone who does have that perspective, they can only scream incredulously at the set, "but-- but-- but-- what about the Japanese government that were every bit responsible?!" And to me, that glaring ommision almost seems to be manipulative, and even unintentionally deceptive. 372702[/snapback] Sundown, that was a great post. I can understand what you are saying. I still believe that it may be out of place if they did inject something about the government in such a personal story, but I see your point. I think the problem that you speak of where there is a lack of perspective may ultimately have to do with how the Japanese culture views and deals with WW2 and is probably not a failing inherent only in this anime. On a lighter note, I showed the movie to a friend's girlfriend while the guys played cards. She came down 2 hours later with teary eyes saying that she would never watch any movie I recommended for as long as I live.

They are HID projectors so there is a true cutoff. As for your xenon kit, you should take a look at these forums: http://www.hidplanet.com/forums/viewforum....2bc142f489447e4 The members there perform some really nice retrofitting of true HID projectors and light shrouds into older cars with incredible results. For example, they'll take the HID projector system from a TSX including the shroud and retrofit it into an older A4 and the cutoff is really sharp while the light pattern is very wide and bright. I've been impressed with some of the member's work.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just pull the calipers off rather than paint them on the car? 372611[/snapback] Not really. All I had to do is mask off everything and get spraying. It took all of 30 minutes.

I'm pretty surprised about Graveyard being named in a worst thread as well. I don't think its fair to say that it is light on plot when it is supposed to be a very personal story told from the point of view of children. Given that it is told from that point of view you cannot expect there to be an epic story that deals with machinations and grand armies clashing with a lot of fanfare. It is a simple story of two starving children abandoned by society in the midst of an awful war where humanity is sacrificed. The strongest and most impactful stories are often the most personal ones since the average person can identify more readily with them and put themselves in the shoes of the main characters for a short time. As for it being gutsy in portraying the war like that, hey, its easy to dehumanize people on the opposite side of the war lines, but in the end, they are just people. What did you expect a story about Japanese children in WW2 told from their simple point of view would entail, them decrying that their society is evil and in the wrong? Its not likely they would have been thinking that. Heck, the whole movie was more about them trying to find enough food to stay alive while grieving the loss of their parents. So Graveyard of the Fireflies isn't something that you watch on a Sunday afternoon for entertainment, its more of a history lesson and parable about the horrors of war for the civilians. It should be judged by that and not by the "popcorn" value.

Street Fighter IIV has been out for a while but I only recently watched it on Encore, and MAN, that is one painful anime to watch. Within the 2nd episode, you have Ken and Ryu skinny dipping together ALONE in their penthouse apartment. Coupled with redesigning the characters, the piss poor animation was just cataract inducing.

Thanks, I'm kinda forced to actually. Mazda dealerships are notorious for being incompetent when working on this car. I remember when I brought it in for them to fix a radiator leak and I was standing next to the engineer while he ran my engine. I noticed the temps were climbing fast on my water temp gauge and pointed out so to him. He points at the gauge and says, its fine as long as we stay under the red mark on your gauge. I said, "You mean THIS red mark?" and then rotated the gauge bezel so that the red arrow was all the way up to 300 degrees F (it was a removeable bezel for looks only). The engineer just said, "Oh" and then turned my car off.

I thought I would share some pictures of my project car. The car is currently up on jackstands while I fix a coolant leak in the lower radiator hose and do a little maintenance. While I had it up, I decided to paint my brake calipers to give it a bit more polished look. I know I know, if I had money I'd rather buy a big brake system, but I am satisfied with the OEM brakes for now and I can't afford $2000 on such a system. I also installed some HID projectors since the stock popups are reknowned for putting out shitty lighting.

I can imagine what a rich car collector would say in his place, "Because I can." We could set up a groupbuy and all chip in and send the bottle around between us indefinitely with free refills! With only 20 people, it would only come out to 92 bucks each for lifetime wax! Or we could do the Royale with 100 people at 60 bucks each!

Anyone need to wax their car? Try this: Zymol Vintage wax is only $1852 a bottle, but hey, it's refillable for life! Oh, and you apply this onto your car by hand, not by a rag. http://www.emmonscoachworks.com/ecommerce/...logo.html?cat=4 Not to be outdone, they also have the Royale, made specifically for the Bugatti Royale (a rare vintage car) that goes for a cool 6 grand: http://store.miataparts.org/zyrogl.html

Nukes aren't nearly as scary in space - no shock wave. 371927[/snapback] Not to go OT, but out of curiousity, really? I never really thought about that, but what about when a star goes nova, isn't there some sort of shock wave that drives all the star's outer layers out into space? Essentially, its the same thing I would think. Possibly detonating a nuke in a nebula would be much worse, like if the Cylons fired a few nukes while Galactica was in the nebula while camped at Ragnar station.

So I was watching "Tigh me up, Tigh me down" and was cracking up at the part where Adama says, "Besides, I need her near me (referring to Ellen Tigh)", only to have Tigh and his wife walk in at that moment. Ellen says, "SEE!! He's been after me all these years!!!" while Apollo, Baltar, and Roslin all roll their eyes. There hasn't been a light hearted moment like that in a loooooooong time in the 2nd season. Stuff like Cally and the other flight techs making a still and getting caught by the Chief... I think its nice to have moments like that mixed up in all the relative darkness of the series.

Yeah, it's not like Apollo hasn't betrayed his father's trust before.... OH WAIT, he has. Dont be so sure that any character in this series isn't above betraying trust to serve their own convictions or desires. That much is certain out of what we've seen from most of the characters.

Except that Tigh is useless as anything except Adama's XO and everybody knows it, including Tigh. 371592[/snapback] Exactly my point. Hey, if you got to have a screw up in command, why not put the screw up that doesn't get ALL the limelight all the time? It'd be a waste of story to have the guy actually succeed in the command chair, so why not have him supply us with a few alcohol-induced Ellen-manipulated great mistakes that we all love to watch... its like a trainwreck, you just have to watch. Besides, Adama has kicked him in the ass before when Tigh became reluctant at taking charge. I remember he said, "You're either the XO or you're not." I'm sure he can do it again.

It was a mistake to make Apollo the commander of Pegasus. They already put way too much focus on him at the expense of perfectly great supporting characters that need just as much attention, namely Tigh. Putting Tigh as commander would have given the show a bit more room to expand on, and frankly, I think Michael Hogan is the better actor between the two. You can't have a strong ensemble show if its "The Apollo and Starbuck Show".

Have Elisha Cuthbert show up as the president's long lost daughter?

I think I mentioned this before, SNME's key ingrediant was showing matches between marquee stars, unlike their house show broadcasts from the 80's you'd tune in to see your favorites actually fight. With Raw and Smackdown! all you get are marquee matches, no jobbers. BRING BACK THE JOBBERS! 370229[/snapback] Yeah, bring back The Boston Brawler and Iron Mike Sharpe! I used to get a kick out of Iron Mike Sharpe, he'd be yelling and screaming like he was dying whenever he was selling a hit.

And here we are in sunny San Diego where it was like 80 degrees outside and the roads are hot enough to grill bacon. Whats funny or sad is that people here are still moronic when on the road. You have a little sprinkle of rain and people start hitting thier brakes like its a damn monsoon. Or you have the same people tear down a downhill S during heavy rain and end up in someone's front yard. Bar none stupidest I've seen is where a guy with a brand new STI managed to take out a fire hydrant sliding into it sideways in the middle of a block on a straight 4 lane boulevard!!! How do you do that on a straight wide dry road with an AWD car?! There weren't even any turnoffs in the middle of the block!

I started thinking about all the secondary characters and almost all of them have gotten at least some development except for one person... Gaeta. He's like the Uhura of the Galactica, where he does nothing but confirm orders, check the radar, and call people. Even Cally and Dualla were given something to do, but poor Gaeta has been just sitting there after his singular moment of finding the fleet after screwing up a jump waaaay back at the start of season 2. Its really starting to bug me how Sharon just sits in the jail every episode and gets visits from people like she's Hannibal Lecter. Wow, its taken me this long to start to find things about BSG to bug me, but all in all, its the only show I'll even spend time watching every week.

The whole Engrish song with the lyrics "Protect my balls" is the highlight of that episode.

For all the build up they did with Billy in the early episodes with Dualla, it all seems a waste given how this episode ended. To me it looks like they really didn't have an arc planned out for that character after the first few episodes and then basically got lazy and just decided to off him when it was easiest. I mean, how much buildup did they have with Billy and Dualla? Now how much buildup was there with Apollo and Dualla? It doesn't make for a very satisfying character arc IMO. I wonder if Dualla knows about having to compete with a hooker? The one thing thats starting to bug me is that all the normal likeable characters seem to be pushed off to the sides and forgotten or given nothing to do like Gaeta, Cally, Helo, or Billy, and the neurotic ones constantly get all the limelight? Man, people in real life aren't THAT screwed up on average. It was good seeing good ol Ellen again though... always a kick to have her around.

Sorry, but nothing - and absolutely nothing - tops the Pontiac Aztek in terms of ugliness. As far as BMWs go, the ugliest is the current-generation 7-series. 366818[/snapback] Ok so maybe not THE ugliest, but still pretty ugly. Remember the Toyota Echo? Blech!