NightSG

Forget tradition. It's flattering to me when a woman asks me out, and pretty much makes my day even if I'm not the least bit interested in her. Even with no interest, I'll go and give her a chance to change my mind. One that I am interested in is absolutely guaranteed my full attention and best effort on the first date if she did the asking. As for active/passive gender roles, it's called asking someone out for a reason. For that matter, it was even flattering when a gay man I worked with asked me out, though I feel no guilt about making an exception to my rule by not giving him a one-date chance even though he went about it quite tactfully. I did thank him for the compliment, and he turned out to be a really handy resource later. (He was the one gay man I've ever met who fit the stereotype of being a really sharp dresser, and could bargain hunt like you wouldn't believe. I saved a fortune on very nice outfits with his advice. We're talking Pierre Cardin and Ralph Lauren for maybe 10% more than I'd spend on WalMart casual clothes.)

For that matter, there are at least two antidotes for ethylene glycol poisoning, (same as for methanol poisoning, FWIW) but one can be bought rather cheaply over the counter and kept around in case of emergency, and is rather hard to fatally overdose on if the patient still has taste buds. I doubt the WoW really means it's better to keep getting sicker than slam some cheap booze while waiting for the ambulance. (Ethanol is more readily metabolized by the same process as ethylene glycol, so it "cuts in line" and delays further absorption of the poison. In theory, it might be plausible to combine strong liquor and strong laxatives to block absorption and rush the glycol through if medical care isn't available. Too much to risk if there's any way to get proper treatment, though, and the hangover would still suck.) IMO, non-recreational (or at least mostly so; presumably I wouldn't have any more to answer for if I used good Scotch and enjoyed it, as long as the glycol poisoning wasn't intentional) use of the substances isn't the same as just having an Irish coffee and a cigar because you want to.

Every ABS equipped car I've driven could also be easily overridden simply by pressing the pedal even harder. Handy to know on certain surfaces like sand, where the fastest way to stop can simply be to lock 'em hard and let them plow up a nice speed bump. As for radar/IR/whatever based automatic braking, wait until an empty box blows across the road in heavy high-speed traffic. Lead car panic brakes automatically to avoid an obstacle that wouldn't even really scuff the paint, next 2-3 cars have slower reactions, more mass, more worn brakes, etc. End result is turning a non-event into a serious pileup.

And they do need to be rebooted from time to time. The only reason we don't see a lot more trouble from them is that they don't tend to run for more than a few hours at a time between reboots. Frankly, the best $15 I've spent on car tools was the Bluetooth OBD2 interface and an app for my phone to work with it. As any Autozone employee can tell you, (they do free reads and resets) a lot of the check engine lights out there are triggered by a momentary sensor glitch.

"Why, which ones do you discriminate against?"

Well, if you knew the kids weren't really going to kill or permanently maim each other, (and had the ability to fix any damage they did) standing back and letting them fight it out wouldn't always be such a bad solution.

All of them. I've got forever, don't I?

I agree; I suspect most of us will be killed by it before it makes its way out of beta testing. Yet another reason to like my 1997 Saturn. Last weekend, on the way home from a Church dance that ended at midnight, I was 30 miles from home, 10 miles from the nearest town (of about 200 people) at 1AM on a Sunday morning, when the "coolant level/overheat" light came on. I pulled over and checked the coolant. It was fine. The float in the balance tank was stuck. (Fairly common when people mix up coolant using hard water over the course of a decade or more.) I drove on home, noting that it was nearly 7 miles before I got a steady cell signal. Would the "robocar" allow me to override a sensor giving a serious but incorrect fault indication and get home, or would I be stuck in the middle of nowhere, having to walk several miles to call for help and then pay for a tow truck because the car thinks it knows better than I do? Just glancing at a couple of rate cards, it looks like the tow would have been $150-200, and having a mechanic replace the tank would be at least another $150. As it is, I kept an eye on the level until yesterday, then pulled the tank, cleaned it with muriatic acid then dish soap, and put it back on. The float moves freely now, it took less than an hour, and it cost me maybe $1 in fresh coolant, acid (I keep a gallon around for household cleaning) and soap.

You're still mostly water. Fully underwater, you weigh almost nothing. The more of you that is submerged, the less you weigh. I dated a girl once who was about 120 pounds and could easily heave 200 pounds of me most of the way out of the pool like the emergency surfacing scene in Hunt for Red October. I once had to do a water rescue during a Boy Scout trip, and had no problem keeping the ~250 pound guy's head well above the water with one hand while pulling us along a rope with the other. Just remember to stay calm and not thrash if you do lose your footing; fortunately, that kid had the same lifesaving class I'd had, and remembered to stop trying to swim when I got to him.

Uncrustables - For when you're too lazy or incompetent to even make your kid a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Proof that motherhood is a dying art.

My youngest was 9 pounds 6 ounces. The doc swore if he'd known she was that big, he'd have done a C-section. Nothing fit her right, and it didn't look like we were going to get to use hand me downs from her 45th-percentile-weight 88th-percentile-height older sister until she was about a year old. Even finding creepers to fit her was a bit challenging at times. The trick with dresses was finding short dresses for older babies, which would then be past her knees and a pretty good fit in the torso.

Do you have any idea how many of the broken things I've worked on were the product of decades or even centuries of research, development, trial and error, and innovation? Yet they all still broke. The solution to those people who have no business being behind the wheel is not any high tech electronic gadget, it's a simple innovation carried over from the earliest wagons; the passenger seat.

The one in Carlsbad NM is worth going to for the snack bar. Those nachos ROCK! At least one jalapeno slice per chip, and the double order was enough to be a full dinner, even for me.

Minus the helmet used when smashing a bottle of champagne on the child, of course.

I live in a small town in Texas. Nearly every non-church meeting begins with two prayers; the official one, and just before it, everyone's silent prayer that the official one won't be so long that the main talk has to be cut by 15 minutes or the food gets cold.

That slide assembly doesn't look all that tough, especially with only a couple of attachment points to a typical wall. (Which is also rarely bulletproof.) Remember that a steel gong target can easily stop bullets even though it can be pushed aside with one hand. I'd hate to put too much faith in a barrier that would probably be defeated by a good solid kick.

Actually, that would work, but I was thinking mid 70s Connery as Captain Moroni. Would certainly have done a lot more good for his career than Zardoz, and he really had the ideal presence for it then. Now for the real question; where do you cast Johnny Depp?

"Too many people brought deviled eggs." Probably the only thing you'll ever hear at a Mormon potluck that would get you lynched at a Methodist one. Of course, once they realize that I apparently have no limit when it comes to deviled eggs, the Mormons stop saying it too. (Seriously. Grandma made a platter of 3 dozen one time, then found out it was the wrong weekend for the potluck. Granddad and I ate them *all* for lunch, with no ill effects.)

We would get random chunks of pipe, figure out what fit in them with just enough room for a fuse, bury them most of the way in the ground, then with a good bit of black powder and a long fuse, make a mortar. The guy two farms over never did figure out why D batteries kept turning up in his field when he plowed.

Once again, Art Of Manliness has advice that's just as good for women as men; 30 Days to a Better Man Day 18: Find Your N.U.T.s | The Art of Manliness Think of these as being like the guidance that we won't receive genuine promptings that conflict with Scripture; when an earthly influence conflicts with a well thought out N.U.T. there is a problem, and you need to think hard about continued submission to that influence.

Keep it simple: "your beauty is so distracting I've forgotten my pickup line."

I think so. Before I talked to the missionaries, I was at a female friend's house doing some laundry and helping her with some yard work. My shirt was pretty sweaty, and since I was just about to start another load of laundry, I took it off and tossed it in, not really thinking much about it. (I don't care for going out in public shirtless, but around the house and/or among people I know in an appropriate setting it's never been a big deal. Doing laundry and yard work in Texas heat would normally qualify as appropriate in my book; no point in going home with a bag of clean laundry and one smelly shirt.) I think that was the first time any sober woman has ever looked at me shirtless with that particular expression. (Well, shirtless in long pants; I usually have great calves from cycling and hiking. For the record, my arms and pecs aren't bad, but nothing to write home about, and I've got a mini keg where a six pack ought to be.) It took a while before it occurred to me that, even as a mother of 5 boys, she wasn't used to sweaty guys casually wandering around her yard in just jeans and work boots. Then again, she also thinks I look like Cary Grant. I think she needs an eye exam.

Someone once told me that if you pick any one of the Synoptic Gospels and any one other book of the New Testament, study them, know them and live them fully, you'll be a better Christian than 99% of the people who claim that title. You can't really do that with the OT, nor the Pearl of Great Price, but there's plenty of the Book of Mormon that would work for a "two book summary" like that. So what it boils down to is that the New Testament and much of the Book of Mormon are the "how to manuals" while the Old Testament and Pearl of Great Price (and the first part of the BoM) are more background information explaining why.

This is the one that bugs me. It pretty much guarantees that I don't need whatever they're selling. Right up there with anyone who insists on being addressed by a title but uses others' first names. (Outside of very limited circumstances.)

That is yet another of those terms that, unfortunately, has been necessary enough to find its way into fairly common usage. I was going to link to an article, but couldn't find one without a prominent picture of hairy moobs. Apparently SafeSearch doesn't mind showing those.