W2DR

I agree with that. What I still can't understand, though, is what happened with the hurdles? When we switched from 110 yards to 100 meters nothing changed, i.e., the track had the same number of hurdles spaced the same distance apart.

Before our first trip to England I'd never even thought about the "left hand" shifting problem. And I'm soooo glad I rented a car with an automatic gearbox. I can't even imagine the problems I would have had. It was hard enough just to remember which side of the road to drive on. If I would have had to also remember which hand to shift with I think my brain would have gone into overload. PS: And I'm also glad that the only time I drove the car in London proper was to get out of town for our trip through the countryside.

As a friend from The Colonies I appreciate that. Now, if you would only learn to drive on the other side of the road...(but I've learned to do fairly well on left-hand turns ).

All I know is my concealed carry companion is 9mm and I could care less how many inches that is.

While it's true that there was some effort toward metrification back in 1981-82 it was never seen as a serious attempt. As in most all things, politics ruled the day. Industrial America was the real opposition to adopting the metric system. The crying and complaining to Congress was not wholly unexpected but the voracity of the opposition, particularly from the automobile manufacturers (and especially from General Motors) was something that the politicians wanted no part of. They found it easier to just eliminate the whole plan and satisfy their major campaign contributors. We would have been wholly on a metric base here for the last 30 years had we simply the courage to do so. Now we're alone in the industrialized world as the only nation still using an insane system of measurement. I remember asking an automobile-mechanic friend how he felt about switching over to a new system. After listening to all his complaints about having to have two sets of wrenches,etc.,etc.,etc. I asked him if he ever worked on any Japanese or German cars.

...need to start teaching the metric system in our schools (I found this in a CNBC news article this morning): "The rocket will launch from Blue Origin’s private facility in West Texas, aiming to reach above 100,000 kilometers (or more than 340,000 feet altitude) before returning to Earth safely a few minutes later."

Kind of a crazy title for a post in a flight sim forum. But since we're just sitting back on the old hand-me-down-red-leather couch in the hangar enjoying a beverage I thought it would be OK. I got a real shock in the mail yesterday. A package from an old friend whom I haven't seen in almost 60 years. In the envelope the was a short note and a 45 RPM record. The note was the usual wish-you-well-sorry-I-haven't-seen-you-in-a-long-time sort of thing. Nothing special. But the record is now one of the most precious things I own. Let me explain a bit. Back in the late 1950's I played piano in a rock band out in California. We were never top-tier but considering the competition we did OK. Everything we played was original stuff, no covers. If you've ever seen the movies about Eddie And The Cruisers (and if you're over 70 you should) you'll remember Word Man. We didn't have Word Man but we had Gerry. Like Word Man, Gerry was a genius when it came to lyrics. One of his best was a song about my girl named "Sandi". In the course of the couple of years spanning 1958-1959 we played over 100 gigs and were lucky enough to cut a couple of 45 RPM records. The records didn't sell too well but what the heck, how many guys can say they played in a rock band and made a 45 RPM record in the 1950's? Over the years, and through seven moves, I somehow lost my copies of these records. I knew they were pressed by Monarch in Los Angeles. I contacted Monarch but found that the original masters were discarded after 50 years. Sigh... And then came The Envelope. Many of you well remember Ritchie Valens back in 1957-1959. And his girl Donna. Well, I had a girl back then too. Her name was Sandi. And just as Ritchie sang about a girl named Donna, I sang about a girl named Sandi. The record in the envelope was the last known copy of our song titled "Sandi". Except for my copy of "Sandi" I know of no surviving records of how our band sounded back in those days. But if you're interested you might want to listen to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPEWAEVsv78 . When I first heard this recording I could hardly sleep for days. Going through my mind was Gerry on lead, Tommy on bass, Big Arthur on tenor sax, Gary on alto sax, Vince on drums, and me banging on the piano. If I close my eyes I could swear I was listening to Tom, Gerry, and the Monarchs. One of the nice things about being an old guy are the memories of another time.

Back a bunch years ago my boss lived in a very expensive area in New Jersey. He was so proud of the area where he lived. Really exclusive. And very expensive. One day he came into the office whining and complainig about his new neighbor. He said when ever he went out on his deck at night he could hear loud music and some woman singing (these were 3-5 acre lots so how close could he be?). The b****ing went on for several months and then it suddenly stopped. We didn't understand why it stopped until we found out that he finally learned his neighbor's name........Whitney Houston.

Putting is something that should only be done by the St. Andrews Ladies' Putting Club. Putting has no part to play in the game of golf. I played to a 6 for years. Never lower, seldom higher. My putting was atrocious. Neither of my kids can putt and I'll bet if my dad had played golf he couldn't have putted well either. Maybe it's just a genetic thing...

Here's the answer to the question(attribution unknown): Think of Yoda's speech about the dark side. I know you might think it's only Star Wars related, but it is truth. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. We see other people enjoying their lives and we get jealous. Which makes us angry. And in our anger we tend to become hateful. Which makes us suffer until we recognize ourselves and what we are doing. And the dark side of ourselves is something that can drive us to madness and cause us so much misery we seek out help, becoming loved and learning love, and then we attract. So yeah, only fools fall in love

I could never find a way to change it. I finally installed FRAPS. It's yellow and can be placed on the screen in various positions. I've never seen any situation in which it was hard to read. You can always turn it off or uninstall it if it's not to your liking. And, best of all, it's free. http://www.fraps.com/download.php .

A long vacation in Fiji. A few years back we were there for 5 weeks in Oct.-Nov. and enjoyed every day of our stay. We might have stayed longer but we decided to leave when we finally realized that, no matter how long we waited, the palm trees weren't going to change color.

And for us old folks......

Here's another one. She's 20 now but I don't know how old she was when this video was made.

Right on John. As I said in another post, this is (IMNSHO) probably one of the most useless add-ons ever conceived. Does anybody ever fly the airplane anymore? Or is all we're supposed to do these days is look at the eye-candy. End of rant.....

Thanks guys. But I am a little disappointed. I really hoped this would be a chance for me to recover some of the money I lost to the Bank of Nigeria in Lagos a couple of years ago. I guess I'll just have to wait for a better deal to come along.

if I gave this guy my bank account information? (I found this in today's e-mail): "My name is Mr,William Kofi manager International Commercial Bank Limited. I have packaged a financial transaction that will benefit both of us, It is my duty to a financial report to our head office at the end of each annual general meeting.On the course of Last general meeting which just ended lest two days,I discovered that my branch in which I am the manager made an excess profit of One million Five hundred Thousand United States Dollars [USA$1.500,00] which my head office are not Aware of and will never be Aware. I have since placed this funds on what we call SUSPENSE ACCOUNT without any beneficiary.As manager of the bank, I can not be directly connected to the funds,That is why I'm contacting you for us to work together you can assist me and receive this money into your bank account for us to share. I have generally agreed on this sharing ration of good percentage % of the total sum for your assistance upon the receipt of the funds in your account. Note Is bank to bank transfer, all I need from you is to stand claim as the original depositor of this funds who made the deposit with Spintex branch.Our bank head office can order the transfer to your designated bank account. Such transfer from our head office takes not more than 72hrs and the kind of transfers is just like someone who banks in a particular bank and at a point in time wishes to close his or her account and transfer the funds to a different bank. I assure you we can achieve it successfully if you can follow my instruction and direction, hence I am here to make sure that everything works out." Best Regard Mr,William Kofi

What John said.

It looks like your paint job came out better that mine Nick. When I decided to sell the old '52 I thought some fresh paint would get a higher price and make for a quicker sale. Back then there was a chain of paint shops owned by a guy name Earl Scheib. One of the crazy things he did (there were several of them) that made him a legend in California in the 1960's was his TV ad which proclaimed "...I'll paint any car any color for $99". So...I dropped my car off on my way to work one Wednesday morning and went back to pick it up in the afternoon. I told them to paint it white. And they did. The whole car. Including the tires, bumpers, and windows. When I expressed a bit of shock they told me that if I wanted the car to masked-off so as to only paint the body parts I should have told them as it costs extra to cover up the "other stuff". I got them to scrape the paint off the windows (sort of) so I could drive it home and then spent a week in my spare time cleaning up the mess. Lesson learned.

Welcome to the forum(s). As you can see, we're not the only ones who think there is a problem. Hopefully a fix will be found. - Doug

I wish I had a picture. When we were first married both my wife and I worked. On the opposite sides of town. It soon became obvious that a second car was going to be needed. We didn't have much money so I went looking for something I could get on the cheap. And I found it the first day. A 1952 split-window Volkswagen Beetle. What a car. No gas gauge, 25 H.P., headlights that let you see at least 50 feet down the road, and a gearbox that you could, with a little practice, shift without the clutch. I loved that car. It served me well for a little over three years before I traded it in for a brand-spanking new 1967 Bug. And as I look back now, I liked the old one better.

Coming nose-to-nose with a very big ray while snorkeling off the Kona coast.

Unless there is a another reason to do so, there is no real advantage to de-partitioning the drives. Windows can handle up to 26 physical drives. I have 4 optical and 19 data drives (5 internal and 14 external) on this system and Windows handles it fine 99.5% of the time. If I have everything active at the same time Windows will occasionally mess up a drive letter or two on a reboot but that's easily fixed with Disk Management...no big deal. I usually run with as few of the external drives active as I can but that's just for my convenience...Windows doesn't care one way or the other. I's rather have several small drives rather than just a couple of big ones because, as you say, it solves some of the "clutter" problems.

It's also a good idea not to work on it when you're old.