unixknight

I guess it's probably a common feature these days, my wife's car (a Focus) and mine have it as well. Useful, but it does make us lazy about checking with a gauge. Tires can be low without being low enough to trigger the switch and that leads to uneven tire wear.

Watching Joel Osteen makes me want to take a shower afterwards and cry.

Race weekend at Barber was pretty "meh." Looks like Rossi is still being Rossi. Power couldn't seem to find the gas pedal. Sato apparently has a warp drive despite a fumbly pit crew.

Yeah I know. I was talking about he Honda sensors being only switches.

In the U.S., the divider between Conservatism and Liberalism has a lot more to do with geography than with income. Go to the inner cities of Baltimore and you won't find a single declared conservative. Go to the deep Appalachians where people live as poor as any in our country and you won't find any liberals. In the U.S., urban areas are mostly liberal and rural areas are mostly conservative. And why aren't Conservatives out there making as much noise about starvation? It's because we're too busy doing something about it. Most of the private charities in the U.S. are run by churches or conservative groups. Liberals want the Government to handle it and so they're always yelling for it while signaling their virtue.

@Just_A_Guy said that, not me. I don't want to take credit for someone else's wisdom.

Sorta? In the case I'm talking about this would be a very public (and by "public" I mean "known all over the world as a celebrity") figure entering their country and not being arrested. There'd be pressure on the governments where homosexuality is illegal to arrest him just for coming to the country, even if he didn't do anything but race that car the entire time he was there. (Again, we don't know that he's gay, but it would explain why it's never mentioned if he is.)

My son works at a Honda dealer as a tech and he frequently has to deal with those sensors. (I don't think these sensors send out the specific pressure though, I think they're more like switches that let you know when the pressure crosses the threshold of being too low.) Here's the thing: They usually only need to be replaced when they get broken, which can very easily happen when a tech is changing a tire. In other words, it's possible that you got charged for 4 new tire sensors that you either didn't need, or that the tech broke but they made you pay for them. I don't know, maybe with Cadillacs you do change them regularly, but I would want to see that written in an actual Cadillac shop manual, and not hear it from someone who has a conflict of interest.

To be honest, I liked it when people cheered last time. It's great news, so it feels natural to react. That said, I do get where he's coming from and would have stayed quiet had I been there.

/threadwinner.

My wife and I watch Formula 1 racing regularly and she's convinced (and I don't say she's wrong) that Lewis Hamilton (British driver for the Mercedes team and current world champion) is gay. At first I thought that was unlikely since this is 2019, why would he need to hide it? And then I remembered... Some of the races take place in Middle Eastern countries, where being openly gay can easily be a death sentence... and foreigners ain't exempt. Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. And yet it's gotta be a balancing act. On one hand, these countries wouldn't want to have to lose Formula 1 coming to them each year... There's an immense amount of money in Formula 1 and in some cases may well represent a significant slice of the national income. On the other hand, they can't be seen to tolerate immoral behavior by such a public figure in their country. I suspect there's a "don't ask, don't tell" kind of arrangement there.

It's the dealership that sets the prices, not the tech. As long as the work was legitimately needed, he's not the one to blame. The headlight assemblies are as expensive as the manufacturer decides they are and that Caddy logo jacks the price up just like the little glowing apple does on certain laptops. The labor? Well yeah it's ridiculous to have to remove the bumper cover to get at the assembly which sounds a lot like a poor design decision that may or may not have been made as a way to wring more money out of their customers. (I don't care what the style is, I will not be convinced that it was absolutely necessary to do it that way from a design standpoint.) That said, we can certainly have a conversation about whether it's reasonable to charge such high process for a brake job on a Cadillac when it's no more difficult to do a brake job on one of them than it is to do a brake job on a Chevy. The second $2600 - 900(tires) - 150(alignment) = $1550 for brakes. That's absurd. Was it all 4 wheels? Did they replace rotors as well or just the pads? The prices of those parts would account for a lot since, again, Cadillac pricing. The price @anatess2 paid for the tires and alignment sound about right for a set of Michelins (though you can get better deals than that... I insist on Michelins on my car too but I got a full set at Sam's for $600 installed... buy 3 get one free.)

PayPal is the weapon of choice for sellers on eBay, because it's specifically geared toward protecting buyers and sellers. If I were you, I'd go ahead and do it, with these caveats: The seller (you) will pay a small fee to PayPal. Make sure to ship it to the address given by PayPal Get delivery confirmation (with signature) when you ship the laptop.

Niiiiice @mirkwood I like the purple worm best too, but if I were judging a painting competition I'd pick the golem as the best done. Did you use a wash to get the darker recesses, or was that a basecoat with the lighter coat(s) on top?

Sure. I'll fix your brakes for a case of Pepsi.

Nah, he was surprised and outraged to be there, and unceremoniously sent back. If he really had the power to avoid a memory wipe, he would have.

Well, Guinan wasn't exactly friendly when it came to the Q, so she would have absolutely no motive whatsoever to keep quiet. And as for Amanda... Nah she didn't suddenly have that level of intelligence. She botched Dr. Crusher's experiment because she didn't understand the goal of the experiment. At no time in the episode did she appear to suddenly become smarter than she had been before. She was already exceptionally smart, yes... but not beyond what a human could have. It was a Season 2 episode, so they couldn't have Riker going back to the Alpha Quadrant with knowledge of Voyager. When Janeway and Riker first meet, she explicitly tells him and the other 2 characters Q brought in that their memories will be wiped. This was something Q agreed to so he could being these witnesses in.

7 seasons +3 movies...

I felt... the presence of a Star Trek thread... Must... respond... Interesting theory, and it is a fun way to explain the way the Enterprise keeps beating the odds. That said... If I were looking to poke holes in the theory, I'd point out that: Riker is made to fall in love with Amanda, a young woman who turns out to be a Q later in the series. That wouldn't be possible if Riker were still a Q. For that matter, Guinan would certainly recognize the Q power in him, as she has the ability to sense the presence of the Q. Finally, in Voyager, Riker is brought to the Delta quadrant and aboard Voyager to help arbitrate the matter of the Q who wanted to be allowed to die. Afterward, he was returned to the Enterprise and his memory erased. So it is a fun theory, but it doesn't really hold up long... I have a Star Trek theory of my own... Ever notice how Data's cat Spot keeps changing species and sex? (He's usually male, but in one 7th season episode, she had kittens.) Sometimes he's an orange tabby, and in at least one episode he was an angora. Why? Because it isn't the same cat. Data's cat Spot dies occasionally because of the dangers and events the Enterprise encounters, and each time it happens Data just gets a replacement cat and keeps the same name. This is my own personal head canon.

Uh... yah...

In b4 @Vort rants. (Which I really am looking forward to, by the way. He has an eloquence when expressing his disgust that is just sublime.)

True, but I suspect the majority of people who think CNN is reliable and honest either don't care about the Church either way, or have an axe to grind against it anyway.

Well *my* Ford has traction control and anti-lock brakes.

Oh look. The most busted name in news wrote an article with a bunch of factual errors, distortions and a negative spin. How shall I ever contain my shock?

Even after 2+ years of having this car I'm still reeling form the fact that with the car's built-in voice commands, I've literally had a conversation with my car... and it can (and has), on its own initiative, used my phone to place a phonecall that I wasn't involved in. (It can call a phone number and upload a vehicle health report which can be accessed online.) Yeah. My car placed a phonecall, I've had conversations with it (and I'm not even crazy.) And there's nothing particularly special about it. We're living in the future. And then... It hits me... OMG I LITERALLY OWN A TALKING CAR. You can call me Michael Knight. My family has been bugging me to give my car a name... and now I have it... My car's name is K.I.T.T. What do you think? Not the same but... not too different: (Not my actual car, but this is pretty close to what it looks like.)