They went with this probably because people are chicken - the clackety-clack of the chain, the slight jerking back and forth, the slow lift...
They want to get you up there and down before you even know what happenned. I think the lift portion is half the fun - though I can see problems:
1. People screaming "Let me off!!!" as the ride near the top... 2. Rollercoaster junkies like me falling asleep due to long lift times... 3. Lines that take a year to get through because of the wait for the lift...
So I guess this whole thing with the cable system isn't too bad.
As far as the jumps in height being small between new coasters - I wish they were larger - I would happily go on a 600 foot tall coaster right now...
When I was in seventh grade I used to draw roller coasters all over the plain dividers between the sections in my notebook. Many of them had extremely tall heights and steep downgrades (for some reason, I drew them as wooden coasters, something that wouldn't work) - I always imagined the riders heads popping off (and drew them that way!) as they went down the hill...
One of the last ones I drew that year had the track way up above the clouds, the riders all wearing oxygen masks (like jet pilots), and the last car on the train had a rocket engine firing...
Crazy - damn near seems the way things are headed...
The new logo DOES suck! The old one was way better - IMHO, more glitzy, more high tech, more in line with what SGI is - Silicon Graphics, Inc. A spinning 3D cube - I mean, this is what SGI is for - High End Graphics!
Even without the proper training - I mean, couldn't he look at his instruments, and realize that his artificial horizon was either up/down/leaning too far left/right - and also look at the altimiter, and see if he was gaining altitude or decending too rapidly?
I can understand panicking, and not realizing what is sky or ground, but I would think that you would at least know what instruments are what enough (the artificial horizon and altimeter both are pretty generic looking from plane to plane) to keep from hitting the water: go into a very gentle climb, perhaps in a circle - then radio for help (because you are stuck in the fog)...
Still, none of this excuses flying in such weather or at such time without the proper amount of experience...
Certain stores here in Phoenix - if you don't have a card - will swipe a "generic" card through. Another way around it is to shop at Albertson's (if you have those - BTW, at least here, the meat selection is excellent) - they don't use a card, discount is automatic (like you are really saving anything)...
The last thing is to obtain many different card (say 10-20) and swap them around with friends, put fake info on them as well...
Hell ya! In one of the later issues of Rainbow (just before they went down the tubes!) there was a speed up hack that RECODED the entire keyboard scan system - and sped the computer up like double (add the high speed poke, and get 4x speed!).
I had one of the video digitizer carts, as well as the speech synth cart. I remember spending a week typing in a basic/hex code loader program, the upshot of which gave you a modifiable font and text+graphics onscreen at once - on a CoCo 2!
My favorite thing was CBASIC (don't remember the company) - a great BASIC compiler for the CoCo. This thing had my BASIC code running so fast that I had to SLOW IT DOWN! I remember coding my own windowing system, then later getting one from the same company that did CBASIC, that added commands to BASIC to do the same thing.
My favorite? Had to be Gates of Delerium - it was by this company in Canada - I remember waiting for months for that game to arrive (around the time of a mailworkers strike in Canada), then playing it (was a Ultima clone). I still have Rainbow magazines showing one kind of screen, but when they actually shipped it, it had a different one (more advanced). From what I understand, they were announcing games before they were finished, and advertising them for sale - talk about Vaporware!
I don't remember it, but I did come across one not too long ago (maybe 5-6 years ago) at an electronics junk yard here in Phoenix (Apache Reclamation, if anyone cares). It even had a tape in it! At first, I could see what it was supposed to be, and how old it was - but I had never come across it before (when I was a kid I had TRS-80 CoCos, both 2 and 3) in any magazine. After I saw it, I went through a bunch of old Byte magazines I had gotten, and found it.
You haven't lived until you've used Gopher at 1200 baud.
Well, I can't say that I have done that - but I have done it at 2400 baud! It was on an Amiga 2000 at the time. But that isn't all.
Before I go on the Internet, I was BBSing all the way - I started out with 300 baud (and it grates on me about that one commercial for a 56K modem where one kid tell another that 28.8 is tooo slooow...) on my CoCo, then moved to a 1200 baud on a Tandy 1100HD laptop, then to my Amiga 2000 at 2400 baud...
For my CoCo I made a light gun! Interfaced it to the joystick port - had a CDS cell down at the end of a toilet paper tube, focused a lens from a cheesy pair of binoculars on it - wired that up to one of the potentiometer inputs on the joystick port, and made a trigger with a spring from a ball point pen (I am not making this up, I swear!), and wired that up to the button input.
After all this, I made a "grip" out of cardboard and styrofoam, and masking taped the whole thing together! Wrote some code to bounce a bright white square on a black background, turned off the lights, and had target practice!
I remember a similar program somebody did - and published it in Rainbow or some such place (maybe Hot CoCo, dunno).
Anyhow, after typing it in, and seeing what it made - I decided to take it one step farther: I wanted a poster of it for my door! I had a CGP-220 printer from RatShack (it was a rebranded Canon printer - one of the first consumer ink jets, IIRC) - and was printing on leftover 8.5 x 11 copier paper my dad brought home. So I had to write this program to spit the screen up and the send the codes to the printer to basically enlarge the various "sectors" of screen - after it was done, I taped all the pieces up on the wall for all to admire!
It is a shame that kids nowadays can't get that kind of a thrill from coding on a machine - heck, it seems like only until recently that they didn't even have anything to code with on their machines (maybe QBASIC). Some kids today seem like they wouldn't have the patience to code anyhow.
One of these days I am going to drag that CoCo back from my parents house and all of my Rainbows, and set me up a similar shrine...
The way these things work, obviously, is by polarization - IIRC, the LCD elements are sandwiched between two polarizing sheets - the first sheet gives the light (from the backlight) a twist 90 degrees, and the second gives another 90 degree twist. What an LCD element does is give a third (actually, a second) 90 degree twist to allow the light to be seen...
Now, if the polarizer on the front and back of the LCD could be positioned at a different angle (and at very minute steps), the 90 degree twisty thingy would still work (since the LCD is probably standard), but you would need the glasses to be at the same angle in order to view the image. These glasses, of course, would be matching glasses to the LCD (order many pairs!), and if the manufacturer varied the angle at small angles (and even possibly a different random angle on each LCD made in sequence), then each monitor would be unique (sorta like Master Lock Combo Locks are unique). However, I doubt any manufacturer would do this...
There are, of course, problems with such a system - mainly, you need to hold you head level - any deviation and the screen goes blank (of course, this affects the current set up). You would also have co-workers running around the office with polarizing sunglasses on waggling thier heads crazily (Ow! My neck! Workman's comp!) - I don't know which would be funnier; guessing who is looking at pr0n or watching the head wagglers!
Anyhow - no matter what - this is security by obscurity at best. But how about this...
What if the glasses were active - say high speed shutter glasses timed to the refresh rate of the monitor. Now, if the monitor refresh rate could be changed on the fly, using some kind of method whereby it could read some code from the glasses being used to view the monitor, and it would lock onto a sync generated by the glasses or something to change the refresh and the flicker speed of the glasses to match. Then, only the first person viewing the monitor would see what he should see! Does this sound feasible?
I think about the best that can be done (cheaply) is a plain ol' TV card - then running the coax out from the VCR to the card's coax input.
Now, for more money, you can probably get composite inputs (perhaps outputs as well, for recording the screen, or for a projector). Just get a deck without a tuner...
The problem with having a "drive" is that the mechanical components won't fit in a normal size bay (open up you VCR to see what I mean). Now, what they might be able to do is an 8mm or VHS-C drive, but you can't get any movies in those formats (that I know of)...
For the record, I know how to program in C, C++ and Visual Basic (in addition to a number of other varients - MFC, other BASICs, various assemblers, Java), so I know what that other guy says is damn near true.
The thing that VB has going for it that no other language (with the exception of possibly Delphi, maybe JBuilder) is that of rapid application development. VB is probably the fastest way to bang out code for a prototype (or even a full application) for nearly anything (provided it is for Windows)!
Would I use it for a console only application? No - though it can be done. Would I use it to write for a device driver? No - I personally don't think it could handle the processing needs (but hey, feel free to prove me wrong). However...
I would use it for a nifty front end client for damn near anything. Nice games can be written in it. If I need even more power, I can call out to a DLL written in C++ for that extra boost (useful for intense calcs, or for those inner pixel rasterizing ops).
Business likes VB - it is easy to learn, and can be used to develop applications quickly and painlessly. C/C++ can be a pain to create an app - in any environment (esp. a windowing environment, where it is useful to be able to see how your app looks before you compile and run it) - show me a beginner who can pick up C in a day and code a Windows app, and I will show you a bridge I have for sale.
That is not to say that VB should be the only thing - and that C should go away. There are many things in C/C++ that I wish I had access to in VB (the mention of getting at the base objects to build your own objects is one). Speed issues are almost irrelevant, since in VB now, the code is converted to C, then ran through the Visual C compiler (though in a few instances, it is still better to code those intense portions in a Visual C DLL, or a COM object, and use them that way).
I do have a gripe about beginning coders - because Visual Basic allows you to get habits that are bad (like not defining types at the start of the program, etc) - but this is more of a design issue (which many programmers who claim to be C/C++ programmers lack - I hate seeing code that isn't indented well nor commented properly).
As far as your comment on the apps/utilities by M$ being written in VB? I would suspect that many may actually be written in part in VB. Probably more than you would suspect. If they are not - I can't see any reason why they couldn't be.
Lastly - don't dismiss me as a M$ zealot - that I am not. In fact, I hate M$ and its business practices - and am currently playing around with Linux (and Legos! - Mindstorms, actually), and seeing what the best way to do development for it is (either Java or gcc/Allegro - I like doing game development, and would like to still support other platforms). I like VB - I just don't like the company that spawned it.
Yes, the 8-ball is a great thing! I discovered it several months ago while looking into Legos for robotics design purposes (and having since then purchased close to $400 worth - $300 of which is Mindstorms).
I wish there was more info on the mechanism on the site. I am also curious how the ball is triggered - is it done via a sensor input on the RCX, or via IR to the RCX - or some other method?
On top of this - I love the 8-Ball's surroundings! Makes me wonder what other wierd machinations are going on at that desk!
that my friend's truck is way better than an SUV - ok, so it's a 1975 Ford dump truck - has some kind of 6 cylinder inline diesel engine, and is a 10 wheeler. Dirty as all hell, smokes like a sonuvabitch, and is loud. Damn near need a ladder to get in the cab - and once inside, you find the cab has more dirt in it than the outside has on it!
My friend hates bicyclists - so he gets in front of them, then guns the engine - smooooost! and dumps a big boatload of diesel smoke in thier face (generally causing them to veer and crash). EVERYONE gets out of the way (ok, we give 18 wheelers and trains the due right of way), and when you are high up in that cab, you feel like a king! No one will cut you off, not even a fucking SUV, because you CAN'T STOP ON A DIME! Especially not if you are hauling a full load of chipped granite!
I can't understand those who buys SUVs (some of which look like they could be serious off road vehicles) and simply use them to commute or drive to the mall! As far as a Hummer is concerned, well, let's just say I have only seen one off- road ONCE. I take my truck off-roading quite a bit, even though it isn't 4WD (it's a 2WD Ranger). I enjoy it - and once I get it paid off, I am looking to either make it 4WD, or trade it in for one.
As far as a geek vehicle? give me one that DOESN'T have the fancy gizmos - especially all the shit in the engine compartment (take a look at just about any vehicle that is pre-70's - you damn near can sleep in the engine compartment, it will be so roomy) - hoses, electronics, etc. Don't get me wrong - the computer in a car has plenty of potential for hacking - but if you screw up (very easy since it is damn near impossible to get the specs to do I/O), you will blow it - and set yourself back anywhere from $200-1000!
Old cars and trucks - all the parts are there, if you want to modify something, it is all mostly mechanical, and easy to do - remember, the assholes in HS could work on a car - why can't you? Many involved in computers aren't gearheads, and aren't inclined toward the heat, sweat, grease and blood that comes when working on a car, but I am sure some are.
Anymore, nowadays, it seems to take damn near a rocket scientist to simply change the oil on your car without fucking something up (not really, but certain things, like timing adjustment, or fuel flow rate adjustment, etc - this requires some work with the fucking computer - which almost always is encased in epoxy)...
are a joke! The scheduling sucks, the routes are crappy, and you can ride on a bike faster than taking the bus (though you will sweat your ass off in the summer). All this, plus they don't run late at night or on Sundays!
Uh, hello - but you are describing MESA and TEMPE, not Phoenix!
For those who care, Mesa and Tempe do not represent Phoenix or the surrounding area very well - for one, in Mesa, you damn near can't smoke ANYWHERE - not even at the park! So if you smoke, avoid that place like the plague. Tempe is a "college" town (ASU), though it does (or did?) have the Valley Arts Theater - and it has a pretty good weekend scene (down Mill Ave).
Phoenix, OTOH, if you dare venture into the inner city, you can find cool architecture (including one impressive burned out church they are restoring) downtown. Cost of living isn't high - my apartment is a two bedroom with washer/dryer, all appliences, basic cable included, hot/cold water included, $150 electric allowance (crank the air down and enjoy!), and a nice large (about 300 sq. feet) patio, with plants everywhere. Unfortunately, all you can get here is @Home service from Cox, DSL from US Worst doesn't reach yet. For all of this, I pay $800.
In other areas of the Phoenix Metro Area (and I am including Mesa and Tempe in this), you can pay anywhere from $400 to close to $2000 for an apartment. After you get close to $900, though - it is time to look into buying a home (which, in areas, can be cheap - in fact, my girlfriend's former drug-addicted sister and her boyfriend are going to buy a house out in Sunrise - even though he makes only $6.00 an hour, and she can't declare her income), which I am looking into doing.
If you are willing to commute, Payson is only 1.5 hours away, and you can live like a king there with a salary of only $30,000 (though the commute will beat the shit out of your vehicle)...
Wasn't part of the reason also because of the stubby wings (real short compared to body length), which couldn't develop enough lift except at high velocities (much too high at ground level)?
Slashdot Mirror
They went with this probably because people are chicken - the clackety-clack of the chain, the slight jerking back and forth, the slow lift...
They want to get you up there and down before you even know what happenned. I think the lift portion is half the fun - though I can see problems:
1. People screaming "Let me off!!!" as the ride near the top...
2. Rollercoaster junkies like me falling asleep due to long lift times...
3. Lines that take a year to get through because of the wait for the lift...
So I guess this whole thing with the cable system isn't too bad.
As far as the jumps in height being small between new coasters - I wish they were larger - I would happily go on a 600 foot tall coaster right now...
Fuck that - I wanna see it modelled in Disney's Coaster! The data file will have to be tweaked by hand, however...
When I was in seventh grade I used to draw roller coasters all over the plain dividers between the sections in my notebook. Many of them had extremely tall heights and steep downgrades (for some reason, I drew them as wooden coasters, something that wouldn't work) - I always imagined the riders heads popping off (and drew them that way!) as they went down the hill...
One of the last ones I drew that year had the track way up above the clouds, the riders all wearing oxygen masks (like jet pilots), and the last car on the train had a rocket engine firing...
Crazy - damn near seems the way things are headed...
The new logo DOES suck! The old one was way better - IMHO, more glitzy, more high tech, more in line with what SGI is - Silicon Graphics, Inc. A spinning 3D cube - I mean, this is what SGI is for - High End Graphics!
Too bad they themselves don't get it...
Even without the proper training - I mean, couldn't he look at his instruments, and realize that his artificial horizon was either up/down/leaning too far left/right - and also look at the altimiter, and see if he was gaining altitude or decending too rapidly?
I can understand panicking, and not realizing what is sky or ground, but I would think that you would at least know what instruments are what enough (the artificial horizon and altimeter both are pretty generic looking from plane to plane) to keep from hitting the water: go into a very gentle climb, perhaps in a circle - then radio for help (because you are stuck in the fog)...
Still, none of this excuses flying in such weather or at such time without the proper amount of experience...
Certain stores here in Phoenix - if you don't have a card - will swipe a "generic" card through. Another way around it is to shop at Albertson's (if you have those - BTW, at least here, the meat selection is excellent) - they don't use a card, discount is automatic (like you are really saving anything)...
The last thing is to obtain many different card (say 10-20) and swap them around with friends, put fake info on them as well...
I cannot trust my government - how can I when the President (the President!!!) LIES!?
Hell ya! In one of the later issues of Rainbow (just before they went down the tubes!) there was a speed up hack that RECODED the entire keyboard scan system - and sped the computer up like double (add the high speed poke, and get 4x speed!).
I had one of the video digitizer carts, as well as the speech synth cart. I remember spending a week typing in a basic/hex code loader program, the upshot of which gave you a modifiable font and text+graphics onscreen at once - on a CoCo 2!
My favorite thing was CBASIC (don't remember the company) - a great BASIC compiler for the CoCo. This thing had my BASIC code running so fast that I had to SLOW IT DOWN! I remember coding my own windowing system, then later getting one from the same company that did CBASIC, that added commands to BASIC to do the same thing.
My favorite? Had to be Gates of Delerium - it was by this company in Canada - I remember waiting for months for that game to arrive (around the time of a mailworkers strike in Canada), then playing it (was a Ultima clone). I still have Rainbow magazines showing one kind of screen, but when they actually shipped it, it had a different one (more advanced). From what I understand, they were announcing games before they were finished, and advertising them for sale - talk about Vaporware!
anyone remember the Exatron Stringy-floppy
I don't remember it, but I did come across one not too long ago (maybe 5-6 years ago) at an electronics junk yard here in Phoenix (Apache Reclamation, if anyone cares). It even had a tape in it! At first, I could see what it was supposed to be, and how old it was - but I had never come across it before (when I was a kid I had TRS-80 CoCos, both 2 and 3) in any magazine. After I saw it, I went through a bunch of old Byte magazines I had gotten, and found it.
Damn interesting piece of hardware!
For CoCo 2: POKE 65495,0 to speed up, POKE 65494,0 to slow down.
For CoCo 3: POKE 65497,0 to speed up, POKE 65496,0 to slow down.
Remember, slow down before disk or tape access, don't want to mess up your data!
It is damn crazy that I remember these!
You haven't lived until you've used Gopher at 1200 baud.
Well, I can't say that I have done that - but I have done it at 2400 baud! It was on an Amiga 2000 at the time. But that isn't all.
Before I go on the Internet, I was BBSing all the way - I started out with 300 baud (and it grates on me about that one commercial for a 56K modem where one kid tell another that 28.8 is tooo slooow...) on my CoCo, then moved to a 1200 baud on a Tandy 1100HD laptop, then to my Amiga 2000 at 2400 baud...
For my CoCo I made a light gun! Interfaced it to the joystick port - had a CDS cell down at the end of a toilet paper tube, focused a lens from a cheesy pair of binoculars on it - wired that up to one of the potentiometer inputs on the joystick port, and made a trigger with a spring from a ball point pen (I am not making this up, I swear!), and wired that up to the button input.
After all this, I made a "grip" out of cardboard and styrofoam, and masking taped the whole thing together! Wrote some code to bounce a bright white square on a black background, turned off the lights, and had target practice!
Damn those were good days!
I remember a similar program somebody did - and published it in Rainbow or some such place (maybe Hot CoCo, dunno).
Anyhow, after typing it in, and seeing what it made - I decided to take it one step farther: I wanted a poster of it for my door! I had a CGP-220 printer from RatShack (it was a rebranded Canon printer - one of the first consumer ink jets, IIRC) - and was printing on leftover 8.5 x 11 copier paper my dad brought home. So I had to write this program to spit the screen up and the send the codes to the printer to basically enlarge the various "sectors" of screen - after it was done, I taped all the pieces up on the wall for all to admire!
It is a shame that kids nowadays can't get that kind of a thrill from coding on a machine - heck, it seems like only until recently that they didn't even have anything to code with on their machines (maybe QBASIC). Some kids today seem like they wouldn't have the patience to code anyhow.
One of these days I am going to drag that CoCo back from my parents house and all of my Rainbows, and set me up a similar shrine...
[sniff]
The way these things work, obviously, is by polarization - IIRC, the LCD elements are sandwiched between two polarizing sheets - the first sheet gives the light (from the backlight) a twist 90 degrees, and the second gives another 90 degree twist. What an LCD element does is give a third (actually, a second) 90 degree twist to allow the light to be seen...
Now, if the polarizer on the front and back of the LCD could be positioned at a different angle (and at very minute steps), the 90 degree twisty thingy would still work (since the LCD is probably standard), but you would need the glasses to be at the same angle in order to view the image. These glasses, of course, would be matching glasses to the LCD (order many pairs!), and if the manufacturer varied the angle at small angles (and even possibly a different random angle on each LCD made in sequence), then each monitor would be unique (sorta like Master Lock Combo Locks are unique). However, I doubt any manufacturer would do this...
There are, of course, problems with such a system - mainly, you need to hold you head level - any deviation and the screen goes blank (of course, this affects the current set up). You would also have co-workers running around the office with polarizing sunglasses on waggling thier heads crazily (Ow! My neck! Workman's comp!) - I don't know which would be funnier; guessing who is looking at pr0n or watching the head wagglers!
Anyhow - no matter what - this is security by obscurity at best. But how about this...
What if the glasses were active - say high speed shutter glasses timed to the refresh rate of the monitor. Now, if the monitor refresh rate could be changed on the fly, using some kind of method whereby it could read some code from the glasses being used to view the monitor, and it would lock onto a sync generated by the glasses or something to change the refresh and the flicker speed of the glasses to match. Then, only the first person viewing the monitor would see what he should see! Does this sound feasible?
I think about the best that can be done (cheaply) is a plain ol' TV card - then running the coax out from the VCR to the card's coax input.
Now, for more money, you can probably get composite inputs (perhaps outputs as well, for recording the screen, or for a projector). Just get a deck without a tuner...
The problem with having a "drive" is that the mechanical components won't fit in a normal size bay (open up you VCR to see what I mean). Now, what they might be able to do is an 8mm or VHS-C drive, but you can't get any movies in those formats (that I know of)...
Read: OJ Trial...
If you got the money, then go here:
Flogiston
or, if you don't, go here:
Omniscience Futureneering Flight Sim Chair
Either way, these are much better devices...
Hey! Don't dis what you don't know!
For the record, I know how to program in C, C++ and Visual Basic (in addition to a number of other varients - MFC, other BASICs, various assemblers, Java), so I know what that other guy says is damn near true.
The thing that VB has going for it that no other language (with the exception of possibly Delphi, maybe JBuilder) is that of rapid application development. VB is probably the fastest way to bang out code for a prototype (or even a full application) for nearly anything (provided it is for Windows)!
Would I use it for a console only application? No - though it can be done. Would I use it to write for a device driver? No - I personally don't think it could handle the processing needs (but hey, feel free to prove me wrong). However...
I would use it for a nifty front end client for damn near anything. Nice games can be written in it. If I need even more power, I can call out to a DLL written in C++ for that extra boost (useful for intense calcs, or for those inner pixel rasterizing ops).
Business likes VB - it is easy to learn, and can be used to develop applications quickly and painlessly. C/C++ can be a pain to create an app - in any environment (esp. a windowing environment, where it is useful to be able to see how your app looks before you compile and run it) - show me a beginner who can pick up C in a day and code a Windows app, and I will show you a bridge I have for sale.
That is not to say that VB should be the only thing - and that C should go away. There are many things in C/C++ that I wish I had access to in VB (the mention of getting at the base objects to build your own objects is one). Speed issues are almost irrelevant, since in VB now, the code is converted to C, then ran through the Visual C compiler (though in a few instances, it is still better to code those intense portions in a Visual C DLL, or a COM object, and use them that way).
I do have a gripe about beginning coders - because Visual Basic allows you to get habits that are bad (like not defining types at the start of the program, etc) - but this is more of a design issue (which many programmers who claim to be C/C++ programmers lack - I hate seeing code that isn't indented well nor commented properly).
As far as your comment on the apps/utilities by M$ being written in VB? I would suspect that many may actually be written in part in VB. Probably more than you would suspect. If they are not - I can't see any reason why they couldn't be.
Lastly - don't dismiss me as a M$ zealot - that I am not. In fact, I hate M$ and its business practices - and am currently playing around with Linux (and Legos! - Mindstorms, actually), and seeing what the best way to do development for it is (either Java or gcc/Allegro - I like doing game development, and would like to still support other platforms). I like VB - I just don't like the company that spawned it.
Yes, the 8-ball is a great thing! I discovered it several months ago while looking into Legos for robotics design purposes (and having since then purchased close to $400 worth - $300 of which is Mindstorms).
I wish there was more info on the mechanism on the site. I am also curious how the ball is triggered - is it done via a sensor input on the RCX, or via IR to the RCX - or some other method?
On top of this - I love the 8-Ball's surroundings! Makes me wonder what other wierd machinations are going on at that desk!
Go here...
that my friend's truck is way better than an SUV - ok, so it's a 1975 Ford dump truck - has some kind of 6 cylinder inline diesel engine, and is a 10 wheeler. Dirty as all hell, smokes like a sonuvabitch, and is loud. Damn near need a ladder to get in the cab - and once inside, you find the cab has more dirt in it than the outside has on it!
My friend hates bicyclists - so he gets in front of them, then guns the engine - smooooost! and dumps a big boatload of diesel smoke in thier face (generally causing them to veer and crash). EVERYONE gets out of the way (ok, we give 18 wheelers and trains the due right of way), and when you are high up in that cab, you feel like a king! No one will cut you off, not even a fucking SUV, because you CAN'T STOP ON A DIME! Especially not if you are hauling a full load of chipped granite!
So outta our way, SUV muthafuckas! Or be cr0shed!
Right on to this!
I can't understand those who buys SUVs (some of which look like they could be serious off road vehicles) and simply use them to commute or drive to the mall! As far as a Hummer is concerned, well, let's just say I have only seen one off- road ONCE. I take my truck off-roading quite a bit, even though it isn't 4WD (it's a 2WD Ranger). I enjoy it - and once I get it paid off, I am looking to either make it 4WD, or trade it in for one.
As far as a geek vehicle? give me one that DOESN'T have the fancy gizmos - especially all the shit in the engine compartment (take a look at just about any vehicle that is pre-70's - you damn near can sleep in the engine compartment, it will be so roomy) - hoses, electronics, etc. Don't get me wrong - the computer in a car has plenty of potential for hacking - but if you screw up (very easy since it is damn near impossible to get the specs to do I/O), you will blow it - and set yourself back anywhere from $200-1000!
Old cars and trucks - all the parts are there, if you want to modify something, it is all mostly mechanical, and easy to do - remember, the assholes in HS could work on a car - why can't you? Many involved in computers aren't gearheads, and aren't inclined toward the heat, sweat, grease and blood that comes when working on a car, but I am sure some are.
Anymore, nowadays, it seems to take damn near a rocket scientist to simply change the oil on your car without fucking something up (not really, but certain things, like timing adjustment, or fuel flow rate adjustment, etc - this requires some work with the fucking computer - which almost always is encased in epoxy)...
Ahh - rant off...
are a joke! The scheduling sucks, the routes are crappy, and you can ride on a bike faster than taking the bus (though you will sweat your ass off in the summer). All this, plus they don't run late at night or on Sundays!
Uh, hello - but you are describing MESA and TEMPE, not Phoenix!
For those who care, Mesa and Tempe do not represent Phoenix or the surrounding area very well - for one, in Mesa, you damn near can't smoke ANYWHERE - not even at the park! So if you smoke, avoid that place like the plague. Tempe is a "college" town (ASU), though it does (or did?) have the Valley Arts Theater - and it has a pretty good weekend scene (down Mill Ave).
Phoenix, OTOH, if you dare venture into the inner city, you can find cool architecture (including one impressive burned out church they are restoring) downtown. Cost of living isn't high - my apartment is a two bedroom with washer/dryer, all appliences, basic cable included, hot/cold water included, $150 electric allowance (crank the air down and enjoy!), and a nice large (about 300 sq. feet) patio, with plants everywhere. Unfortunately, all you can get here is @Home service from Cox, DSL from US Worst doesn't reach yet. For all of this, I pay $800.
In other areas of the Phoenix Metro Area (and I am including Mesa and Tempe in this), you can pay anywhere from $400 to close to $2000 for an apartment. After you get close to $900, though - it is time to look into buying a home (which, in areas, can be cheap - in fact, my girlfriend's former drug-addicted sister and her boyfriend are going to buy a house out in Sunrise - even though he makes only $6.00 an hour, and she can't declare her income), which I am looking into doing.
If you are willing to commute, Payson is only 1.5 hours away, and you can live like a king there with a salary of only $30,000 (though the commute will beat the shit out of your vehicle)...
Wasn't part of the reason also because of the stubby wings (real short compared to body length), which couldn't develop enough lift except at high velocities (much too high at ground level)?