Kwisatz

Drive Wildfire X3 Picked this up for my first guitar about a week ago, plays like a dream once you set it up a bit. Buzzed a bit, but by tightening the truss rod and messing with the bridge a bit plays great now. Got that and a Marshall distortion pedal, plus an el cheapo 10W amp. If you wanna play metal then buy some cheap Metal Pedal, tune to drop D and shred away. Seriously, my FIRST DAY of having my guitar I played ]this. One-finger power chords and palm muting isn't difficult at all. That's assuming you mean Nu-Metal though - classic and trash take a bit more skill. And for Jesus' sake learn some theory - as in, what goes where on the neck. Everything always makes so much more sense when you know basic stuff like that rather than just reading tabs and practicing for hours on end.

My high school seems to have brainwashed so many kids like that. "I will not drink a drink of anything with alcohol at all ever because I'll die." You can't have a glass of red wine rich in antioxidants? You can't have a beer now and then? You can't have a rum and coke? That's a load. As for weed, it should be legalized, but only in one's home and smoking lounges, and vaporizers should be the preferred mode of smokin' it, since that actually produces only vapor and lowers the risk of lung cancer.

I dunno. I associate words with the darn strangest things. Like "share" with a fistful of french fries, or hungry with a gravel road. Does that count?

Blue Oyster Cult's apex came with two albums: On Your Feet or On Your Knees (their live magnum-opus of 1975) and Secret Treaties (1974), their third studio effort. Both albums are probably the best ones I've EVER listened to. On Your Feet has a rather raw audio mix, but that's part of what makes it so great - it's so concert-like, you can practically smell the beer, and the solos are great. Secret Treaties has not a single weak song on it. Fire was probably their last truly great album, not counting Imaginos which really wasn't BOC anyway. So sad that Agents of Fortune is easily their worst, barring Mirrors (Revolution by Night and Club Ninja had their moments). Speaking of which, pick up their newest album - it's pretty good actually. And Van Halen's 1984 is probably the best of their career. They made it so far and decided to die off when they got Sammy Hagar, who was absolutely awesome with Montrose and by himself but utterly sucked when he was in Van Halen. And now that's why kids today hate Van Halen, because "he" sings softy songs. Agh. Off my soapbox now.

It doesn't require teaching but I think without it you don't progress anywhere near as fast as you could. Also, a good teacher will iron out any bad habits that would later become a problem. I've received absolutely no formal training whatsoever. I got my guitar this past Thursday. I can play just as well as a friend I have who has been playing for upwards of a year with a a teacher, sometimes a bit better. The way I look at it, you need to be in to play guitar, not to sheerly emulate your favorite Metallica solo. So many people I know at school have been playing for YEARS and they haven't learned ANY theory at all and just read tabs, making them useless for writing their own solos or songs in general. You can't spend money on a guitar, tune to drop D, strum a bunch of muted power chords and expect musicianship to flow from your fingers. My advice to anybody is to get one of your friends that can play to check you for the first few days on your technique (alternate picking, not fretting sloppily, picking from the wrist, etc) and then work from there on mastering songs, scales, and learning modes and chords.

Mind telling me how I don't make "sence?" That's another good point - tactile feedback. Many people prefer the intuitiveness and definite feel of a mechanical button, and I imagine that using such a surface to try and dial or type while driving or something of that nature would be rather hard. Pressing three things on a satellite navigation system is one thing, typing ten numbers accurately on a 3.5" screen and hitting Send would probably be a bit harder. You seem to know so much about how well a device functions that was only announced 2 days ago. The door swings both ways, buddy. How does he know so well that it will perform as good as they say it will? And yeah, the no third party applications kills it. If it had OSX and it could scale all existing OSX applications, it would be a veritably awesome smartphone for some people, but since it can't even do that I see even less reason to buy it now. But, once again... prepare for nuclear revolution as Apple takes over the world.

Mind telling me how I don't make "sence?" That's another good point - tactile feedback. Many people prefer the intuitiveness and definite feel of a mechanical button, and I imagine that using such a surface to try and dial or type while driving or something of that nature would be rather hard. Pressing three things on a satellite navigation system is one thing, typing ten numbers accurately on a 3.5" screen and hitting Send would probably be a bit harder.

How about doing your research before you post? 1. The iPhone is an ENTIRE screen - Smart Phones currently don't offer that. If you actually read about why it's considered "revolutionary" you would know it's not just a touch screen. The ENTIRE phone is a touch screen. There are no buttons. The buttons change on the screen depending on the application, for starters. As well, the screen is a new patented technology called "multi-touch" which is a "smart" type of touch screen. It's not just a normal touch screen on a smart phone like you try to suggest. 2. Smartphones cost upwards of $350, most of them costing more around $400-600. Combing that technology WITH an iPod that has 4gigs of built in memory (that would be more than $100 to get via an SD card or something for another smart phone) and its not more than a smart phone plus an MP3 player. You're wrong about that. 3. How can you even determine that things do "better jobs than the iPhone" when it hasn't even been introduced but for a day? Take your anti-Apple fanboyism somewhere else. I can't really judge this product because I haven't used it. I think its expensive for regular users. But I like what I've seen so far and I'm sure as not going to try and flaunt its greatness yet, nor am I going to try and ridicule it like you did (well, at least if I did I would have the proper knowledge about it to do so). And indy... I use my phone to send text messages WAY more than I do to call people so I'm not with you on this one. :P You see, they release these things, they're called SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURE LISTS. If the product performs anywhere near as well as they make it out to do, you can make a comparison of features with other products. Even the iPod itself will do a better job as an MP3 player than the iPhone - better battery life, abundant accessories, etc. As for the smartphone sentiment, you can pick up a Motorola Q for $150 with contract. Granted it's not a fancy "multi-touch" screen but it still works does it not? With a QWERTY nevertheless. Speaking of which, what use is a multi-point touchscreen going to do? Did a regular touch-screen ever not work? The only time I could see it doing something useful is in a drawing application or a very large touchscreen for conference rooms, a far throw from anything on a 3.5" screen. And about the "whole phone is a touch screen" thing - there are numerous devices which are the same that have buttons. What makes them any better or worse, are extra buttons detracting from it's awesome factor or something? Now, case in point. There are BETTER DEVICES that can be purchased for THE SAME PRICE. But this won't stop people such as yourself that decide to read into the actual usefulness of things from buying one. I would like a VERY small cell phone that just makes calls personally - that would be great. I just got an enV because I saw that it had good battery life, and it's a far throw from what Verizon makes it out to be.

"Revolutionary User Interfaces" Yes, a touch screen is so incredibly revolutionary. And what's more, for the same amount of money, if not less, you could have an MP3 play AND a cell phone that both do better jobs than the iPhone does alone. Never mind this, corporate pandering and smart marketing will inevitably cause an uber[bleep]e in popularity. I'll be sitting in my bomb shelter while a self-aware Google fires ICBMs at Steve Jobs in a bid for world domination and machine takeover a la the Terminator.

He's going to travel back in time and attempt to stop Moldywort.

IT WAS SO FUNNY! [spoilers] The s*xual tension between the kid and the princess was so apparent, and so hilarious. Like when they were dressing in armor: "You look... ready for battle!" The son of the evil dead dragon rider dude looked emo. The plot was a rip-off of Star Wars, much how Pirates of the Carribbean was from Big Trouble in Little China. Think about it - Luke (Eragon), the Lightsaber (the dragon), Obi-Wan (Old guy), Han Solo (emo kid), Princess Leia (hot chick)... Shouting random elfish words kills your foes? "TREE BRANCH!" The evil wizard guy - give him a black BC Rich guitar and put him on stage with Metallica or Ozzy Osbourne, and get him to headbang. Would he look so out of place? --- Seriously, I laughed through the entire film. It sucked, and my brother said they butchered it from the book, but he too thought it was hilarious.

I would like to go back to one week before Woodstock, meet up with some relatives and prove to them I'm related and a time traveler, and then go see the concert, which took place like 10 minutes from where my parents lived anyway. I'd then live on to see the emergence and steady decline of heavy metal.

You know, I don't like private schools. Maybe it's because my mother went to one and she's the most judgemental, illogical person I know. Maybe it's because all of the private schools around here breed a false sense of superiority, in a social, economic, and educational sense. Maybe it's because everybody I know except for maybe two people who go to private school are intolerant, spoiled, delusioned idiots. Maybe it's because there are four times (this is statistically accurate) more drug users in the private schools around here that can afford weed they buy with daddy's money than in my school. I don't know what it is. Personally, with all of the AP programs and such available at my school, I like it the way it is. I only with it was a bit more diverse, ethnically and socially, rather than being 50% white prep, 30% scene, and 20% everything else. On another note, I think that if you apply yourself and play your cards right you can get just as good an education in a public school as in a private one. You have a terrible teacher? Take initiative and find a tutor, or teach yourself what you don't understand. Not challenging enough? Then find something that is on your own time. To me, I can either go somewhere with elitists and have my parents pay thousands of dollars in tuition, or I could go somewhere a bit more representative of the real world and not have all of my academic needs spoon-fed to me. Which would you choose? **EDIT: Keep in mind also that just because you pay for a private education doesn't mean you don't pay for a public one as well. If you pay taxes, you are paying for a public education. Why would you want to pay for two educations and receive one? Analagously, the argument that "you pay for it so they do what you want" no longer holds true for private institutions - you can get lots of reasonable stuff done that wouldn't normally be allowed in a public school if you are a) nice or B) politely mention that your tax dollars pay the counselor's salary, and it'd be nice if they could transfer their child into another class because the Chemistry teacher is inept. On a separate note, it angers me when inept people fail tests, study by rote memorization, kiss the teacher's butt until they get to retake it, and then get commended for being such a good student. To me, a good student is somebody that teaches themselves how to figure things out. Somebody that cross-references questions on a test when they don't know the answer or knows how to use their resources quickly and effeciently is a better student than somebody with a 4.0 that needs to tape record the study material and sleep with it. You shouldn't need an acronym to remember stuff; 75% of the time, there's some kind of common convention to the material that you're learning, and you should be able to learn one thing and apply it to many things, like word prefixes and suffixes. I think I could get a 4.0 if I wanted to, but that would take up even more of my time. 3.7 unweighted is good enough for me.

Swedish through a Teach Yourself book. And Spanish through a similar book, and classes next year. When Hillary Clinton becomes President of the US, I'm moving to Sweden, or Finland. Better start studying up :D.

True that. "Oh, let's move something that's spinning a $60 game disc a few millimeters above an abrasive plastic surface and pray that nothing happens!" Then again, there are people that use lighters to check a gas can for petrol...

FORD - Found on Road Dead. And to the rap thing: shut the f*ck up, it's old. It isn't funny. Just like any genre it has its ups and downs. Stop being so damn ignorant.

That's the other thing - the lack of HD content. It'd be one thing if there was oodles of HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray, but right now I don't feel like buying into a possibly failing format that has little retail presence and a high price tag in addition to by multi-thousand dollar television, all to enjoy, what, more pixels? Fuzzy analog broadcast on my 32" Westinghouse tube is good enough for me :D

Park what, where? :D

I have an Artisan DVD edition of Terminator 2 with 1080p WMV encoded video of the movie, and I watched it at 1280x1024 on a 19" monitor. Looks good enough for me :D. What most people don't realize is that if you're the only person watching something, then a small(er) LCD with equivalent resolution is cheaper and does the same job that a huge HDTV does. A cheapo CRT does 720p even, if you consider that HD. Just sit a bit closer. In short, until prices are lower and I live by myself, HD means nothing to me. Television is fine the way it is, and my movies look just fine with upsampling too.

Nothing. No, seriously, everything I would like I either buy myself or is too expensive for any person to buy me. I get, like, $200 in stuff for Christmas, nothing too extravagant. I guess I could ask for music and DVDs, but at this point I buy those on a regular basis anyway. It's real sad anyway. I would love a guitar, and my parents always badgered me to take up music. I figured out a bunch of theory stuff and how to read music, tabs, etc. from my friends and online, and I can transcribe music to an extent and between tabulature and sheet music, but for whatever reason I still have to get guitar lessons rather than having any of my ten friends, one of which can shred 15 notes per second and has been playing for 9 years, just check me on my technique periodically. And, unfortunately, it's either lessons or my job. And without a job I have no money with which to buy anything. Guess which :roll: . I really hate how my dad thinks that I automatically am the same as he was at his age, and how anything that I don't go the whole nine yards from a "professional" that he knows is no more than a wasted purchase, regardless of how much enthusiasm or prior knowledge I have of something. Oh well. After that little tangent, in short: about nothing. I'll be buying crap galore for people, since I'm expected to because I work my arse off, but I can't think of a single thing that anybody will be willing to buy me besides stuff I have or can get.

What's most ironic is that all the teenybopper "upper-class" prep kids who all follow that kind of crap say I have no life. What I always reply is "I have enough of a life to not shamelessly follow the relatively uninteresting happenings of a nobody." Needless to say, not much saves them then from pure humiliation. In my opinion, if your life isn't interesting enough so that it warrants putting somebody else's under a microscope, then you need to find something to do. So many housewives and such where I live do nothing but gossip about people like my friends and family, whom all have jobs and find constructive things to do with their time rather than spread false "truths," or follow the ultimately meaningless lives of "celebrities," many of whom have done nothing to warrant celebration.

I didn't read the post of his that you quoted. You did say proof that they can roll on the road though... His post stated they roll easier than anything else. Turning sharply in any vehicle is going to roll your car. *shrug* To be fair, the higher center of gravity does make them less stable and they would roll before many cars... but like you said you would need to be driving like a idiot to do it. It was on a car show that they did the aforementioned test regarding this. They stuck a driver in a rollcage inside a Ford Expedition and blew out the tire on it artificially. The driver just eased off the gas and took his hands totally off the wheel and the car just slowed to a halt in a straight line. No worries. He also controlled the car into the shoulder one time with no ill consequences. That stuff about SUVs rolling is partially true, but in most cases not probable.

80% of all vehicles in the US are not SUV's...that's way off. Wish I had a time to find a real number. There is a majority of sedans and compacts. And since i have actually been in a sedan that has been hit by a Suburban, let me say this: My car had the front end completely blown off. I was trapped in the car for 25 minutes (with no injuries, thank God). The woman was yelling at me, because she had bought the SUV 1 hour earlier for the looks, and I had apparently dented the fender by being in the path of her illegal turn. Not necessarily my country. Where I live. That's like someone from Arizona saying "man it's hot where I live" and then saying "No, it's cold in Alaska, which is part of the US!" Where I live, it's pretty suburban to rural. We have LOTS of blue collar employment - fishing, farming, construction, contracting, etc. It's harder to pick out a car than a truck where I live.

With regards to the safety and receiving end deal, like I said, where I live larger vehicles outnumber compacts at least two to one, no lie. Out of the 11 vehicles on my street with regards to residences, one is a station wagon and the other a convertible Mustang. The rest are SUVs or trucks. It would be another story if the ratio was remotely balanced, but it isn't. It's the standard. Having anything else would be substandard, and given the option between being on a level playing field with 80% of people on the road and being at the behest of those 80%, I'd say screw the 20% and be safe, as cruel as it is.

You large vehicle haters need to shut the hell up with your sweeping assumptions. My mother drives an SUV, my father a truck. Know why? My dad hauls two catering grills plus tents, event stuff, etc. around EVERY DAY in the bed and brings along either a 15' trailer or a pair of generators. My mom does the same thing to a lesser extent with an SUV - ever try hitching something up to a sedan? Remember, there are people that actually legitimately need large vehicles for business, and I think my family would most definently fall under that category. Additionally, it's been proven time and time again that large vehicles are safer than small ones. When I start driving I don't want to be stuck in a unibody, 10-year-old used piece of garbage. I want something big, so that WHEN, not IF I crash, I'm alright. Not to mention the fact that SUVs and trucks outnumber cars about two to one around here. I guess you could try and make a statement about how you contribute to the problem, but the bottom line is that since where I live has a lot of construction, fishing, and blue-collar employment, these kinds of vehicles aren't going away anytime soon, and you trying to persuade anybody otherwise is an exercise in futility. But I do also hate tailgating soccer moms.