is happily being the wheel rather than a rusty old spoke
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If you were going to buy a new one tomorrow,
What woud you buy?
I'm actually pondering that question for real right now.
I've decided the K1200LT just isn't the right bike to be my daily ride. I find myself riding the R75 or some antique more often than the Big Beemer.
I do, however, like having a sport tourer, and my favorite of all time was the 82 Honda CBX. I've been eyeing them on eBay and if I'm willing to put up with some minor cosmetic issues, they're not terribly high (only about $1k less than they were new), but a perfect one is very expensive.
I feel like I should have a sport-tourer in the stables, but the BMW is just plain massive overkill. For my purposes. So I'm very seriously considering getting the front-end problem fixed, selling it, then getting a slightly-dinged 82 CBX.
What would really blow up my skirt in new bikes would be a crotch-rocket. Something that can do 200+ off the showroom floor. And it just happens that every Thursday at MidAmerica Motorplex is bike day and whenever I go up there for a weekend event, I arrive Thursday afternoon. Could arrive Wednesday evening, do the bike thing on Thursday, then cars Friday-Sunday.
And though they're not terribly comfy on public roads, my commute is only about 5 miles or so, so I could probably handle it.
No 750 is ever going to leave you feeling like you need more power. Can't say the same for "want", but a 750 makes all the power anyone "needs".
And keep in mind that this is coming from a guy to whom a 750 is a minibike.
Not too long ago I did some intake and exhaust upgrades to my best friend's wife's Shadow and really wish I'd taken it for a ride before the work. Little thing had some pep to it! Would've loved to have seen how much of it was new power. She said it was a lot stronger on the way home than on the way to my place.
I've been collecting older Japanese bikes for a while, mostly on eBay, but I've noticed the same thing is happening with the old ones. The prices are through the roof! And will probably keep going for a while. Might even unload a few choice specimens myself this year or next and wait for it to get a little more sane.
I know it sounds silly but I felt a lot of oversteer/understeer.
Sounds similar to what we call "bump steer" in the car world. Suspension movement causing geometry changes that literally turn/un-turn front wheels.
My BMW K1200LT is doing this. Pretty badly.
The bike doesn't have a conventional triple-tree, but what I'm feeling from the saddle is exactly like a conventional front-end without enough preload on the triple-tree bearings. The steering angle changes very abruptly mid-turn, and it doesn't always take a bump to make it happen.
It's comparatively subtle and hard to discern until it's ridden at a pretty aggressive pace, but it's definitely there, and only recently did I figure out how to convince the dealership it's there. If I back it up at a decent pace and jab the front brake pretty hard, the "clunk" sound and feel are very obvious. They tried to tell me before that it was just the pads moving in the calipers, but BMW wouldn't leave that kind of slop there (nobody would -- I actually have to do some grinding on my Mustang's front race pads before installation because they expand enough to get stuck in the caliper) and when you back it up fast enough before hitting the break, you feel the movement right in the handlebars.
So, no, doesn't sound silly at all. A bike's geometry is very important, and there are a zillion factors that can each make a bike very squirrely. Like the way too much rake makes it too reluctant to steer but too little makes it too eager.
And speaking of the Intruder, surely, somewhere in the world there's got to be a proctologist who drives a Probe and rides an Intruder.
Dang!
I'm not a huge fan of Harleys, and far less one of Japanese v-twin based bikes, so as I studied that picture, I kept hoping against hope that it wasn't Japanese, but then noticed that the nearly Italian attention to aesthetics that kept my eyes busy for several minutes, became a very Japanese precision when my eyes had taken in the big picture sufficiently to start looking at the bits and pieces. That's where I've found Ducatis to become even more beautiful. When you start looking at the pieces.
But that Suzuki there is one sexy beast!!! Kudos to the designers. They knew exactly where to stop and where not to stop with the curvy theme that starts with the tank and seat. That theme stops just short of overdone.
Nice!
Edit: Just noticed the reversed forks. Extra nice touch!
Interesting that the EV Plus cost so little, but I'm not a big fan of pure electric because it just shifts the source of pollutants, although the fuel used to make electricity isn't imported from people who hate us anyway. But the grid is way overloaded as it is without the wholesale movement of cars onto it.
Surprised the CNG vehicle was so inexpensive, too. Perhaps it makes just enough power to pull itself up hills at highway speed so not much is wasted feeding the horses in the stable, as it were?
Did you see the episode of Monster Garage where they converted an old 63 or 64 Impala into an electric-only dragster using the same batteries you use for cordless drills?
Big problem I had with that is they used a PowerGlide tranny. I know the torque multiplication effect of the two-speed and the torque converter will put more power to the wheels, but at a very large cost. Would love to see them go direct drive and see how little or much is lost in performance. There's simply no need for a torque converter when you're using a motor that makes 100% of its maximum torque at zero rpm when you feed it juice.
Would've loved if that site gotmilk posted a link to earlier gave a little more technical explanation of what they were doing. And it was interesting that rocket scientists (literally) couldn't handle some simple HTML. The navigation's a mess. And I'm more than a little skeptical of the 330 mpg estimate. By the looks of it, 100 mpg would be an absolute no-brainer, even if they just used the diesel engine.
What I found especially fascinating was the mention of capacitors instead of batteries. I'd never thought of capacitors as a possibility for this application since they're all about sudden (and total) discharge of big power. But a big bunch of capacitors discharging and being recharged in sequence? Hmmmm... Intriguing. I've no idea regarding the math to compare capacitors with batteries on an output/weight basis. But I'm thinking that you lose a little bit of power when charging/discharging a battery, along with their huge weight and short lives, but that a capacitor gives you back every watt you put into it and can last forever if built well and treated right.
Reminds me of the discussions Darth and I used to have many years ago about how one would go about storing the energy from a bolt of lightning, since it's not terribly difficult to at least get a hit. One of the ideas I threw out there was an extremely massive electric motor attached to a similarly massive flywheel. Or, more easily done, but probably with a lot of waste; using the lightning hit to heat water for a steam engine. Attached to a genny, of course.
Is there anything in existence that's basically the reverse of a capacitor? Big, sudden input and allowing slow, small drawdowns?
Or maybe it's something that's not even a problem from an engineering standpoint, but there's no (other) need for that ability?
Yep. It's a game to me. I've heard the same from a lot of folks who drive hybrids and try to milk every last mile from each gallon of fuel. And there have been some amazing results with the Prius, which I think is a far superior use of the hybrid concept, but I can't get around the fact that I think a Prius is butt-ugly and Darth's car is gorgeous when clean.
A new personal best yesterday. 56.9 mpg. And that was on a round trip of about 100 miles, 2 passengers besides myself, AC on part of the time, and nearly all highway miles, which is not where a hybrid shines. The electric motor very rarely was a contributor.
Drafting contributed maybe 1/4 of the time.
I remember some years ago that a company put a Yanmar 25-horse diesel in a Geo Metro and some supposedly super-efficient proprietary intake and attempted to get 100 mpg out of it at 60 mph on a racetrack, but they didn't hit the mark.
I can't imagine why they didn't. Would think an unmodified 25-horse Yanmar (like is in my riding mower) could come pretty close.
Although turning is an expensive proposition from an economy standpoint. Increased rolling resistance and if you've got any kind of limited-slip, the friction losses in the drivetrain go way up. Maybe they could've hit their 100 mpg target if they'd just driven it on a highway. Especially with generous yet gentle hills. I've found I always do better with hills than I do on level ground.
The CPU histogram right now is absolutely beautiful. Very steady 20-25% with no dips or spikes.
I think I've heard/read more than once that the average competition-level cyclist produces 1/3rd horsepower. I don't remember how many watts that converts to, but am inclined to guess it's in the 400 watt neighborhood.
Through careful selection of lights and pump, the koi pond in my front yard uses just over 200 watts at night when both the pump and lights are running.
So another way to look at it is that if I pedaled a bicycle/generator for 8 hours, I might just make enough juice to handle 24 hours of power requirement for the koi pond.
While on the subject of alternative energy (a HUGE passion of mine), I'm in the beginning throes of enlarging the lake behind the house so it can produce enough power to run the lights (about 4-5KwH of them) in my workshop. By my calculations, I can run a lot more than the lights. Perhaps all the 120-volt outlets as well. Don't want to buy a big enough inverter to run things like the lift and welder. The conservative estimate is that I'll be able to make 2KwH nearly year-round from the lake while also having the benefit of preventing the occasional flooding that's happening downstream from me. Keeping in mind that I might run my lights for about 20 hours per week, at most, there's a lot of excess juice available if I'm making the 2KwH I expect. The plan is to have enough batteries to store about 10KwH (4 hours of lighting, keeping in mind the genny would still be contributing while I'm draining the batteries) then shunt any excess capacity off to other loads like pumping from the lake to the ponds, running a water heater, etc.
Right now the weather isn't cooperating. Two times this week I've spent about 15 minutes digging the creek deeper to help it drain better to help dry out the surround soil/clay mix I'll use to raise the dam while also deeping the lake, and each time I've spent 1-3 hours getting the backhoe unstuck. I've searched, in vain, for an upstream area for a temporary dam to get the rest of the lake to dry out more quickly, but there's nowhere I can make one that'll contain even a moderate rain.
In most areas, it looks like I can dig out a good 8 extra feet of depth, and we've carefully measured and found that we can raise the dam an additional 8 feet and still leave the water level a relatively safe 5 feet below bottom of the bridge over the creek feeding it.
We should be able to keep a good 16-20 feet of head at the generator and flow as much as we want. And will make the flow very adjustable, with a very generous top end since we'll want to drain the lake down quite a bit in advance of the occasional gulley-washers we get.
On another alt-energy note, in addition to the work on the lake, which may take a year or more with my limited time and windows of opportunity, if I ever have funds and time, I've got a huge pet project that I think could really be interesting.
My car hauler has 48x8.5 feet of roof on it. You can get a lot of solar panels on that kind of roof.
What I'd like to do is cover the roof with solar panels, put plenty of batteries in the belly of the trailer, and at least a 20-horse electric motor under it, replacing the front axle with a truck rear-end, which would be driven by the electric motor.
My son will have to help me with this design and the calculations involved, but my goal is to build a system that'll have the trailer doing 20 horses worth of its own pushing on the 3 1/2 hour trip to and from Omaha. It'll be a challenge to come up with an idea of how much battery storage will be needed to have it and the panels (and possible regen braking) do that kind of output for 3 1/2 hours under a noon sun and 20 horses may be unrealistic. Might have to start with more like 5 horses and work our way up if we've got the juice for it.
It'll cost a lot more than it'll be worth, but that's beside the point. The initial goal will be (assuming I don't trade in on a semi by then) to achieve 20 mpg (best so far is 8.5) on that trip and once we've got the electric side of the equation nailed down so that we're storing and using as much electric power as possible and getting all the fuel economy boost we're ever going to get from the setup, then explore other options. Streamlining. A super-efficient helper engine (Yanmar turbo-diesel -- perhaps to power a genny rather than spin tires). Things like that.
Truck, trailer, and load come in right at 25k lbs. And batteries will likely add 1-2k lbs to it.
If solar panels ever get reasonably priced (they might, with Honda entering the market), and the setup proves effective, the same design would be a no-brainer to apply to semis.
All I need is available time and money. No telling when I'll have either. But, aside from the very high cost of these kinds of electric motors, the rest of the money can be spent a little at a time. Just a couple of solar panels and a few biggie batteries, and see how long the batteries hold up on the KC/Omaha run.
I'm hoping my retirement comes while I'm still young enough to devote the rest of my life to playing around with alternative energy.
I had a page-load problem and Matt called to say he'd rebooted the webserver and we were still having problems, but right now everything looks fine to me.
How's it doing for everyone else?
We've got a direct-sale campaign for that, which means it pays well, but it's frequency capped at something like 4 impressions per visitor. I was on SI yesterday and saw it more like 10 times.
I know that blocking cookies destroys frequency-capping. Advertisers use cookies to track how many times in a 24-hour period you've seen an ad because they have no more desire to show it to you dozens of times than you do to see it that many times.
However, my computer isn't set up to be restrictive about cookies.
It took about an hour of digging, but I did find that one of our lower-tier networks was also delivering the same ad. I took them out of the loop at about 4 or 5 PM Central time yesterday, so all that's left (that I know of) is the direct-sold one, which, if memory serves, is capped at 4 views per day.
I also sent an angry email to the culprit ad network. Not only was I a bit put out that because of them, the ad was overdisplaying, but they were paying us roughly 1/5th what we're making from the same ad as a direct sale. And our agreement with that network was for 728x90 leaderboards; not leaderboards that start out at 728x300 for 3 seconds and expand to that size again on mouseovers.
In any event, the campaign ends at the end of this month. I won't promise it won't show back up. If the money's right (better than this initial test-run, and they were happy enough with the results to ask for more inventory) and we can use a lower frequency cap, I might run it again.
But I'm trying to make sure that none of the networks are running it at the same time. Not only because it would increase the number of views (which is bad for both us and the advertiser -- there's a very clear point of diminishing returns) but because the networks pay us a fraction of what we make on direct sales.
The ad is frequency-capped at 4/24, meaning you shouldn't see it more than 4 times in a 24-hour period. And because it's a direct sale, it'll show up relatively early in your ad-viewing site usage.
I can leave the cap at 4 because it looks like we'll fulfill the inventory obligation at that rate, allowing us to end it on schedule a week from today.
If anyone's seeing it more than 4 times per day, they should first check to make sure they're not over-aggressively blocking cookies, and if they're not, then they should reply to me here, preferably with as much detail as possible. Basically, watch the status bar (especially easy on dialup) to see where the ad is coming from and, if possible, get me a screenshot that shows the URL in the status bar *while* the ad is loading.
"Feedback".
As for a hybrid auto of gas+electric motors, I don't get it since you will
pay a premium price for them now, and the environmental cost to make electric
from fossil fuel equals just using oil to gasoline.
Not anymore. It's true of pure electrics, which have to be plugged in to be recharged, but with hybrids, some of the charging comes from the IC engine, but a lot (in my daughter's Civic's case, most of it) comes from coasting and braking, when the motor turns into a generator.
Which is a beautiful thing. It's always bugged me that we spend all that money on fuel to get nearly 2 tons of metal up to 70 mph, then when we need to get rid of all that energy (bring the car to a stop), we use friction to convert it to heat, which is just dissipated into the atmosphere.
One of the reasons I get 52.x mpg out her car consistently but she only gets 38.x lately is that I'm keenly aware of this one aspect of its operation, and time/control my braking to keep it "off the pads". You can bring that car to a complete stop using only the generator to slow you down. It has a neat charge/discharge display for the electric motor's batteries, so you just watch it while braking and stay out of the real brakes more easily.
I like that gauge and the realtime mpg bar graph. By watching both, it's very much like a video game where the average mpg displayed is my score. And you watch the bar graph showing total charge of the electric motor's batteries. Getting all the bars filled in is a good thing because it seems like it might be putting more emphasis on the electric motor for acceleration if there's more juice with which to do so.
Playing that game teaches and reinforces good habits that apply to non-hybrids. I learned long ago, contrary to conventional wisdom, that getting all the way out of the throttle while going downhill isn't the best practice. You get most of the way out of it and let the car inexpensively add speed (momentum) that can be used to get up the next hill less expensively. Getting all the way out of the throttle turns your engine into a huge air compressor that takes a lot of energy to spin over. Giving it just a little throttle makes it an engine under extremely light load. And if you let the car come down to your normal speed (I usually let it go lower if I don't have traffic behind me), you go up the next hill with a LOT less throttle.
Something that's always cracked me up about those lyrics (the original; not your entertaining remake) was "our great computers fill the hallowed halls".
Complete unawareness of Moore's law (which is dead now anyway), although I guess the existing lyric sounds better than "Our great computer is a Mac on a coffee table".
Have the "Feedback" CD by any chance? For years (well, decades, actually), I've wanted them to do just one album where they get less complicated, forget the weird time signatures, and just plain rock out. That's exactly what they did on Feedback. A real eye-opener when the epitome of "long-hair" bands really does let down their hair.
Now that I got that fix, I eagerly await the next album with songs about space, cars, the human condition, etc, with about 10 different time signatures per song, humanly-impossible riffs, and the kind of voicing that makes it hard to believe there are only 3 guys making all that sound!
One of my favorite songs of theirs is "Driven", and most of the song is a 4-bar pattern that uses 3 different time signatures.
Really made me mad when I put so much time into learning to play that song on bass, got most of it down but found the rest impossible, then read in an interview that it's actually 3 different bass lines mixed in together. Neatly answered the question "How's he playing so high and so low on the neck at the same time?!?"
They're still alive and kicking butt. Last year they released a CD of nothing but cover songs. My favorites on it are "Summertime Blues" and "Heart Full of Soul". In the latter, Geddy sounds amazingly like George Harrison. Though he's lost a lot of range, his voice has really sweetened with age.
That's where Hybrids will really take off. When they start taking advantage of the monster torque of electric motors.
My wife is wanting to trade in her Suburban soon and is leaning toward the Toyota hybrid SUV, but I've talked her into looking at sedans like the hybrid versions of the Camry, Accord, and I've got a recent car mag sitting on the kitchen counter with an article about the new Lexus hybrid luxury car. Circled the "h" in the model name and wrote "Hybrid" below it. It's a premium-priced car, and the "h" is more biased toward performance, but it still seems it'd get halfway decent economy.
But I still eagerly await any diesel/electric hybrid. The VW Jetta and Passat seem like naturals to me since their diesels already have stunning fuel economy.
Without looking any further into the Hummer, it's ruled out by its inability to pull a gooseneck or 5th-wheel trailer.
That's why I'm looking for a semi. I found one I really liked (500-horse Volvo with tall gearing and a really sweet sleeper) at a GMC dealership, but they were offering me way too little for my very low-mileage truck as a trade-in.
I suspect I'll end up biting the bullet eventually and buying a semi then putting my truck up on eBay. I usually don't have enough of a gap between track weekends that I can sell the truck first, then get the semi.
Although I sure not having much luck right now selling the old racecar on eBay. Someone emailed me asking if I'd take $2500 for it, to which I responded in the negative. For that kind of money, I'd just mothball it then wait until Tom needs himself another motor for his FFR Cobra.<g>
Haven't heard of Tom Rush.
The Rush I refer to (often in hushed, reverent voice) is the rock group comprised of 3 of the greatest individual instrumentalists of the genre.
LOL!
Thanks.
I do have to admit that my daughter says all of her friends think she's got one of the coolest Dads around. And when I was leaving one of her softball practices to go motorcycling with friends of mine, she told me later that one of her team-mates told her "Your dad is such a bad-ass!" I think it had to do with me doing a burn-out on the Gold Wing before getting on the highway.
LOL. A bad-ass is one thing I'm most certainly not, though. I'm just fairly easy-going and self-indulgent. :) It's only in business that I'm ruthless, but even that is an easy-going kind of ruthlessness.
If money were no object, my stable would still look largely the same.
But....
I'd really like an optioned-out Buick LaCrosse with the Caddy Northstar engine.
Already planning on trading in the WRX on the STI, so I'll have the performance side covered. I don't want TOO good of a track car, as it'd get rid of excuses for my performance.
I'm also extremely disappointed in my 05 Chevy K3500 tow vehicle. It's nowhere near up to the workload assigned to it, so I continue to shop for a semi to replace it. Even a 500-horse Freightliner would get better fuel economy (given the proper gearing) pulling this particular load (about 18k lbs of trailer and cars) and wouldn't tick me off at every hill by dropping to 50 mph despite the throttle being mashed halfway into the engine compartment.
I'm glad I didn't commit to the new Mustang GT500. From what I'm reading, I would've been terribly disappointed. Sounds like I would've been happier with a Z06 (which I do love instructing in) but I'm trying to back off to just one track car because I'm hobbling myself by having to learn to drive all over again when I just use a different car for a session.
Overall, with the exception of the LaCrosse, what I want, I've already got or am working on.
Am very seriously considering selling the 05 BMW K1200LT, too, and getting an 82 Honda CBX. Much more my style. Unfortunately, some of the bikes I collect and/or have been looking to add to the collection have recently appreciated very dramatically. Fortunate for the bikes I already have (my son says I'm up to 17), but unfortunate for a lot of the ones I still want. A lot of my favorites (Yamaha Daytona RD400, Honda CB400F -- preferably yellow, Kawasaki H2, Suzuki GT750, Suzuki RE5, etc) are selling for large multiples of what they sold for new.
Actually, any member can leave themselves logged in permanently, but free members would still see ads.
And yet he was able to log in to post that.
I won't disagree that I personally find the ad annoying and would pony up for a subscription in a heartbeat to get rid of it.
However, the ad is apparently working very well for them, as they wanted more inventory.
I bumped it up quite a bit today but then backed it down and the campaign will be ending at the end of this month. I won't promise I won't renew it. But if I do renew it, it'll be for a lot less inventory and a lot more money. Takes money to keep the lights on. Although there has to be a line (no pops, for example) and the delivery rate when I bumped it up earlier went over the line so I dropped it back down.
You're a subscriber. Subscribers don't get the 728x90 ad units. The only ads you get, that I'm aware of, are the ones on the homepage and quotes page.
I've backed off the number of impressions the AmEx ad is getting as of about an hour or so ago.
That link you sent me finally convinced me it's time to sell the old racecar.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4651789694
I will. Did you check out some of the other options you can get? There's a cockpit mounted switch you can get that'll open a line that's plumbed to the back of the car. Perfect for giving your pursuer a bigger challenge.
Dang! Okay, count me in! I'm selling my beloved one-owner, low-mileage 16 year old Mustang to help finance my doing that!
Investing is a minor sideline to me that I largely ignore. My "trading account" now has just two stocks in it. ELN and CIEN. And I've had those positions for well over a month.
Once I quit thinking of investing as a hobby and treated it like a part-time job (including making real money -- not the "virtual money" of stock appreciation), I started doing better.
Nowadays I'm just too darned busy to pay much attention, so I keep my money parked where I don't feel compelled to pay much attention to it.
We've got a lot of your work on the walls at the office, and that one's a favorite among visitors.
A couple of years ago, I ran that for about half a day just before Christmas on SI's homepage instead of an ad.
Uh-oh. Are you one of those "high on life" folks?
Actually, so am I. Doing what I do for a living is definitely a love of my life, but it's comparatively low on the list compared to time spent with family or down in the workshop either rocking out on the bass or working on cars/motorcycles, riding motorcycles and, most of all, going very fast on racetracks. Spent about 45 days doing that last year, though I'll probably only do about 20 this year. Darned expensive hobby in terms of dollars and time. I think I'm only up to 8 days this year so far, although it's very early in the season.
I was pretty grossed out until I started laughing my butt off when I finally noticed the cow!
Where'd you get that picture of me looking over the top of my glasses like that? Don't recall that pic.
LOL!
On the flip side of that, I do all my work on a 4 year old 1.9Ghz beige box with something like a 20 gig hard drive. But a monster video card driving 4 flat-panel monitors.
But for 90% of what I do (either web-based or using Terminal Services or Remote Desktop), it's more than enough computer. I just get really annoyed 10% of the time.
Oh, back in "the day", I used to burn one every morning about the way I have to start drinking coffee now as soon as my eyes open.
Probably why I went through so many different "careers" in my youth.
<Whiiiiifffff> "I don't wanna be a dishwasher/cabbie/CNA/data-entry operator/temp/mechanic/whatever anymore."
Wouldn't have ended up a (formerly) well-paid programmer, college professor, etc had I not quit smoking that stuff nearly 20 years ago.
Although, paradoxically, I often think I'd probably accomplish some brilliant programming stoned. If I didn't end up fixated from midnight to 5 in the morning on making 10 lines of normal code into 2 unreadable lines and making it run 1% faster. Or taking off on some tangent that's cool but doesn't have anything to do with making the site more useful.
Like I tell my daughter, I have ZERO problem with marijuana and really think the fact that it was ever made illegal in the first place (to get Mexicans out of Colorado and other states once their industriousness was perceived as no longer necessary) is one of the biggest crocks ever foisted upon the American public, and the huge amounts of time and money spent "doing war" on it is time and money wasted.
She knows that if she were ever so inclined (she's not), she could fire one up in front of me and as long as she didn't bogart it, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
She knows VERY well that I consider it far less evil than alcohol, except that if it's taken beyond occasional recreational use, it does have an insidious evil side in that a stoner may have aspirations (often coming about while stoned), but no ambition.
And she's keenly aware that she wouldn't be as great a musician as she is if she didn't have ambition, and that she wouldn't have the comfortable standard of living she enjoys if her old man didn't have the same ambition. Or, as a friend of mine put it "the desire to dance around on the ends of branches combined with an uncanny knack for picking stout limbs on which to do so."
I think the horror story she's heard about my performing my State solo one year (trumpet) with an aggressive case of cotton-mouth has also helped keep her away from the stuff.
Oh, I think about that all the time. Having a gathering of members of both sites at my place. Bela Fleck and the Flecktones performing outdoors the way bluegrass (even their flavor of it) should be performed. Too bad I wouldn't be able to afford to hire Rush. But since I'm a bassist who can play any Rush song, maybe a guitarist and drummer and vocalist can be found to put together an impromptu "tribute" band. There was an excellent guitarist (many who are really into guitar would know his name for his studio work and live work with several bands) who used to participate on SI, but he hasn't been there for ages.
Since I live in the KC area, getting here would be equally inconvenient for nearly everyone, and with 40 acres, including about 10 acres that's relatively flat, there'd be plenty of room. And there are probably a couple hundred hotel rooms within 15 minutes of my place and thousands of rooms within 30 minutes.
Can I at least chug the beer in it before doing so?
Mmmmmm.... Bong beer.... <unggggghhhhhh>
I don't know how you can put up with such jerks in the process, but you do.
Yes, that I put up with Matt and Dave so well really does surprise me.
I bet Dave saw that one coming a mile away. :)
Bob, how about a three steak dinner as a buy-out?
If, by "three steak dinner", you mean "three very large herds of cattle and enough land for them to graze", let's talk.
I think I could pretty happily retire watching my meals out munching grass. Wouldn't brand them either. That's called "over-cooked".
Heck I know it takes time and effort to do what you guys do.
True, but we're sooooo lucky! There are many thousands of people who do this as a hobby, some who are dealing with a hobby that's run amok and just drains their time and bank accounts. I spoke on the phone with a guy last year who runs an automotive site that does about half of SI's daily traffic, but because he's using off-the-shelf software, he was talking to me on his cellphone while installing a 3rd webserver. SI runs on a single, relatively underpowered webserver and could take about 10 times as much traffic before another server would be needed.
Where we're lucky is we're involved in a really fun hobby and because I deal with the yucky part (making it a viable business) and we use comparatively super-efficient in-house software to do it, we're some of the VERY few on the planet who can make their living doing this.
C'mon, don't you remember this game? The jinx is on whoever didn't say "Jinx" first, and if you both say it at the same time (as happens sometimes with me and my daughter - at 17, she still plays this game with me -- that's an apple that fell really close to the "I don't wanna grow up" tree), it's on whoever didn't have the presence of mind to keep saying it repeatedly and quickly so that they were the last to say it.
Now you can't type until I say your name. At least twice now, since you've typed while under Jinx.
Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil, etc.
Jinx.
or
GMTA
From your IE menu, select "View", then "Text Size". Select a bigger one. Personally, I use "Medium".
We do very little hard-coding of sizes here and on SI so each user can have some flexibility.
It crosses our minds occasionally. To either go public or find an extremely synergistic acquirer. Some of our numbers, like gross and even net margins, would be very envied by most companies. But in terms of revenues, we're minnows.
And the cost of being a public company is a huge mental hurdle to me. I'm accustomed to nearly every dollar I spend going to where the rubber meets the road (me, Dave, Matt, and the machines) and have a huge hangup about the idea of writing lots of big checks to fill the "that's what it costs to be public" chasm.