Ember

So, it looks like my work keyboard died. It was a Monoprice 9433 with Cherry MX blues I gave $60 for. I seriously doubt my employer would go for buying a mechanical keyboard, so I'll probably wind up replacing it out of pocket. I have a Das Keyboard Model S Ultimate at home that I can bring in for now, and I might use this as an excuse to buy a new Das 4 (yay, volume knob) for home. $170 is kind of steep for a keyboard, though.

No. My wife likes Strongbow, and I don't think of her as any less a man for it.

So, I may wind up swapping phones after all. I'm looking at the ASUS ZenFone 2 now. I have unmetered data service with MetroPCS, but they don't offer coverage everywhere I go. My employer wants to be able to contact me even when I visit the in-laws, so they're willing to cover (metered) AT&T service. The plan is to use my MetroPCS SIM as primary with my employer's AT&T SIM in the secondary slot and use a single Google Voice number. I've been doing something similar with a prepaid Verizon Moto G and my Moto G LTE on MetroPCS, but we just transferred the Verizon Moto G to my wife's contract account, so I have to activate another prepaid Verizon phone or do something with AT&T.

You think maybe you can find it in your heart to forgive them or at least forget after 4 years? Or was it that bad? Not bad at all, just a little disappointing that I didn't keep up on name changes.

I have mixed feelings about forum name changes. I can see the appeal, but I keep reading posts and thinking "hey, this person is pretty okay," only to discover that I knew them by another name before they "vanished" in 2011.

I don't understand it, but my wife goes nuts with it and gets excited to see her school's gear in stores.

Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretti nasti...

Oh, fair enough. That's pretty much why I keep it disabled on mine.

My wife was a very occasional smoker (a pack would go stale before she would finish it). A friend gave her his old vaporizer and she now hits it pretty often. She mostly uses nicotine-free liquid, but it still smells disgusting and always seems to follow me. Does disabling wifi actually have a meaningful impact on battery life? I have unmetered LTE, so I generally just use that unless I specifically want access to something on the local network.

Yeah, tell me about it. This is an otherwise reliable car, which her grandfather bought new and kept meticulous maintenance records on. Her father took over when he passed, and she's been keeping it up since then. They've gone to the extent of recording mileage and fuel efficiency every time they refuel. Scrap might get us a couple hundred bucks, but I wouldn't trust anything we could buy for the scrap price and cost of repair as much as I'd trust this car.

Wife's car (2000 LeSabre) needs ~$1300 in repairs: broken motor mount leaking rack/pinionleaking high-pressure power steering hosebad wheel bearingsloose tie rod endsThis isn't going to kill us, but it's that much less we can put toward a nicer car.

That's pretty shitty anyway. Someone just busted out the window in my sister's truck when she was visiting. They didn't take anything, just knocked out the glass. It's interesting to think of a GPS unit as a discrete device. My phone took over that role when I bought it, and I kind of assume that everyone else does what I do. I too have a love/hate relationship with my FM transmitter. Wife's car has a cassette player, so we use a 3.5mm/cassette adaptor there. I have a slight preference for bluetooth/FM, but it's kind of nice not needing to change frequencies or deal with interference. I should have an extra FM transmitter kicking around, but damned if I know where it is.

I said Americans not northerners. We all know they're just pretend Canadians anyway. Michigander here, can confirm.

Don't be ridiculous. Spiders only have eight feet. Can you imagine shopping for shoes with eleven feet?

I was kind of surprised to see this, then I realized that you meant a car.

Yeah, the ST1100/1300 were on my list of bikes to watch for. I just never saw one come up and old Goldwings are a dime a dozen here, which is great for parts availability.

We have a few bridges like that, I've mostly seen them toward Detroit. I always wonder how well they're kept cleared during Winter. I broke down and bought myself a 3DS XL (not a New 3DS XL). I also bought a SuperCard DSTwo, which allows me to play SNES, GBA, and NDS games from an sdhc card. I'm mostly using it as a Pokemon player, which is pretty much what my GBA SP was when I played that. The DSTwo doesn't seem to support 3DS games, but I have enough of the others to keep me busy for a while. It looks like it's possible to import my gamesaves from the physical GBA cartridges as well, but doing so requires a GBA slot, so I'll have to borrow Wifey's DS Lite to try it.

They're not all bad, but they are mostly 30+ years old, and haven't always been taken care of, so there are issues that come with that. Everything but the Rebel and the V Star is parked for various reasons. It kind of feels like I'm making up for quality with quantity, since my bikes all have some issues, and I could have gotten a pretty nice modern bike for what I've put into the old rice buckets. Sometimes I almost wish I'd gone that route instead. Much of my riding is around town/commuting, and a light, agile bike with good brakes and the ability to take off quickly from a stop seems ideal for that... but we also take semi-regular trips to visit her family (60 miles), my family (160 miles), and her family's cabin (200 miles), or just spending a day riding around. Since I have issues with joint pain on a good day, comfortable seating position is a must. On the freeway, it's nice to have a little weight to avoid being blown around by trucks or stiff breezes. I keep revisiting buying a nice injected rocket, but I'm not sure that I really want to. I can service carburetors, but have no experience with EFI. Also, My Nighthawk is the closest to a sports bike I've actually ridden, so I'm not sure how comfortable I would be on one. I think I'm going to really like the Goldwing if I ever finish cleaning it up. It feels bigger than the Nighthawk (~430lbs), but it also feels much more capable than I had imagined it would. It handles remarkably well for such a big/heavy bike; better than the V Star. It might not be as zippy as the Nighthawk, but it's no slouch either.

I have a 1983 Honda Nighthawk 650, because I wanted a bike and it was $600. I bought a 1985 Yamaha Virago 700, because I was tired of riding alone, and we rode it home for $500. My dad registered it, because I was barred from Secretary of State offices at the time. I bought a 1987 Honda Rebel 250, because I wanted a forgiving trainer bike that people could drop without screwing up the Nighthawk (which I had fallen in love with), and I rode it home for $700. I bought a 1983 Honda Goldwing 1100i, because Goldwings are sexy and I could talk the previous owner down to $1k. I bought a 1984 Honda Nighthawk 650, because my cousin and I both have 1983s, and $300 for a running parts bike isn't horrible. Wife had a 1983 Honda Shadow 750, which she kept in the divorce. We also bought a 2009 Yamaha V Star 650 from my mother for $1750, because she totaled it with cosmetic damage (broken blinkers, scratched leather/chrome/windshield, etc.) and hadn't recovered enough to ride it. The Nighthawk has been my main ride for a while... absolutely wonderful bike. Unfortunately, it's started spitting oil; I think it's only coming from around the valve cover, in which case I already have a replacement gasket on hand. Dad rode the Virago for a while and then bought some CX500s; he won't sell it, and I can't while it's titled in his name. I'll probably wind up just writing it off. The Rebel is on loan to a friend, and Wife has informed me that I am no longer permitted to ride such a small bike. I'd be okay with selling it, but I'd probably find someone else to teach as soon as I did. The Goldwing needed a fair bit of work. It had stuck carb floats, so I pulled the carbs and tore them down. I was unimpressed with the carb kits I bought, and put them together with the old rubber. Next time the carbs come off, I'll order Randakk's kit and do it right. I've rebuilt 2 of 3 brake calipers, and still need to rebuild the rear master cylinder. The rear rotor should probably be replaced as soon as I can find a used one that isn't horrible. The previous owner did not understand how electricity works, but did not realize this fact. I have the electrical mostly un[bleep]ed now. My windshield is an old windshield, so it's not going back on. I might get a replacement, but that windshield is not going back on. The second Nighthawk is a parts bike. I haven't needed parts, so I haven't done anything with it. The Shadow looks like it has a plugged return hole in the clutch master cylinder, and possibly bent shift forks. She wants to sell it or give it to a friend, but I'd like to fix it first. The V Star is Wife's main ride. The Rebel strains to keep ~80mph, and she is too short for the Shadow, so it's nice for her to have something to keep up on the highway with a little more in case of emergency. I'm not sure where it tops out, but it handles normal freeway speeds just fine.

They're cheap to buy. The Mirage starts at about $13k new, and Dad drove away with his (then new) Aveo for something like $11k. The Fiesta ST is a little more, ~$21k... $24k with the options I want. They're cheap enough to run. My current vehicle is a 1997 Mercury Mountaineer that looks like it's been through Hell. It's rated at 14MPG city/18MPG highway, but it actually gets closer to 8/14. The Mirage is rated at 37/44, and even the Fiesta ST is rated at 26/33. I don't drive much, but we're looking to move further from my workplace and closer to Wifey's. If we get something with better fuel efficiency than her LeSabre (rated at 20/29, actually gets 22-24 mixed), trips to visit family can cost a little less. (We're ~60 miles from her family and ~160 from mine) They're adequate for (most of) my needs. I ran Dad's Aveo while he was out of the country, and it did pretty well. In 8 years, Dad got the Aveo stuck once (took a corner too fast, slid into a snowbank) and I've gotten it stuck once (tried leaving without clearing the drive after 8" of snow fell overnight, got stuck on the ridge left at the edge of the plow). The Aveo doesn't start getting shaky on the highway until around 90mph, which is faster than I usually drive. The Firebird was gorgeous up to the limiter at 115mph, but I really don't need even that. They're fun to drive. That is, the Aveo is fun, and I won't spend that much on something that I dislike driving. I don't usually like driving my truck (snowy, icy conditions are an exception), but I only paid $800 for it. Space is limited. I have three or four motorcycles, depending on whether I can get my dad to sign off the one I bought so he could ride with me. Wifey has three more. She has a car, and I have a truck. I'd like to keep the truck (or a truck) in addition to any new car. At present, two of those motorcycles are in the backyard, and the rest are in the basement. (Her V Star and my Goldwing don't fit through the door) We are planning to put them into a garage after we move, and having a small car gives me more room for other things, although I suppose that's negated by having a car and a truck unless the truck lives outside. Riding a bike most of the year, I've gotten used to a fair bit more maneuverability than my truck offers. A small car won't match a bike, but it won't do any worse than a truck. Velosters are sexy, but my better half disagrees.

Speaking of buying cars, I've been talking about wanting a little hatchback for a while, so Wifey and I went to a Chevy (her preference) dealer. We thought we were interested in a Spark, but the dealer kept trying to upsell us to the Sonic. Having absolutely none of that, we tried out a Spark on the lot. Even after adjusting the seat, I kept smacking my head on the ceiling, and had some trouble getting under the hatch. Wifey said we needed to look at the Sonic instead. The Sonic we looked at had an adjustable seat, which I put all the way down. That cut down on some headache, although getting under the hatch wasn't much better than with the Spark. We took it out for a test drive, and were thoroughly underwhelmed. My dad has a 2008 Aveo5, and I was expecting something similar. Maybe it was the CVT(Aveo is a 5-speed manual), or maybe it was the 1.4L engine(Aveo is 1.6L), but it feels like my truck has quicker pick-up than that car did. It makes the Aveo feel like a real performer. The Sonic might be a perfectly functional vehicle if I tone down my expectations, Wifey likes the Mitsubishi Mirage, which was very comfortable to sit in and access the cargo area. (I couldn't smack my head without trying, so it isn't likely to happen as often as with the Chevrolets) I'm hoping the Ford Fiesta ST lives up to the hype. I'm not in a rush, so we probably won't buy anything without it seeming like a very good fit. I had really liked the idea of getting another Firebird, but it's just not practical. I commute via motorcycle whenever the weather allows(snow and ice are things here), and we're pretty much inseparable outside of work, so we take her car to go shopping or make long trips. Realistically, I might just replace my truck with another old truck when repairing/maintaining it costs more than I want to spend; it is kind of nice to have a truck around when you need one.

It seems like people who are nervous about the idea of guns usually don't have much actual experience with them. I apologize if I've missed my mark, but my wife and I would love to give you a chance at some basic firearms training and first-hand shooting experience. If that's something you might be interested in, let me know. We're about a 3.5-hour drive from London, ON, and our usual range is about a half-hour on the other side of us... but there's a place near Lapeer, MI which is about two hours from either of us. Guns aren't particularly complicated machines. Most people I know could probably start manufacturing them at home if they cared to.

I just changed the timing belts on my Goldwing. They're due every 46k, and I was a little North of 80k with no idea when they were done last.

Snails have their homes on their backs! I took a class, then pretty much took over driving for my mother. Her vision was bad, and she had other issues that made her uncomfortable driving. My younger brother never got that opportunity, and he's struggling with it now. He has trouble holding a consistent speed (on a highway with a 70mph limit, he bounces between 50mph and 90mph), making turns in town without over-correcting, seeing/stopping for stop signs/red lights, and not slowing down or stopping at green lights. It seems like all those years of Vigilante 8 have done little to prepare him for actual driving. I've made my truck available to my brother and to my cousin when they needed driving practice.

One that you can afford and can get you to places reliably. Was thinking of getting one through family so it's cheaper. I'm sort of in that awkward place where public transportation really blows and it's almost mandatory to have a car. Make sure that you consider the cost of fuel, insurance, registration, and maintenance. It might seem obvious, but a surprising number of people seem to overlook one or more of them.