Date: Tue, 06 Jan 1998 17:41:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
To: Homebrew-Autos@bolis.com

-> Though the worse case I've heard, is a co-worker at my last job was
-> pulled over by an unmarked car with a red-dash light - and it was a
-> SATURN!
-> Almost too funny :)

I used to have a great-uncle in Georgia.  He was pulled over by an
unmarked "police car" one night and severely beaten.  He died in the
hospital a few weeks later.

Anyone can buy a blue flasher from JC Whitney for $49.95.  I'll stop
for a car with a recognizeable police paint job or door decals,
otherwise I'm not slowing down until I get to a well-lit area with other
people around.  Yes, this has caused some strain in late-night
encounters of the police kind.  Better than being killed, I figure.



Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 09:36:19 +0000
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Sender: detomaso@realbig.com

-> Now on the race track, that's a different story, if your out there
-> with open-exhaust and no ear protection, your just asking for
-> trouble!

I have fairly substantial hearing loss due to childhood illness - >30%
left ear, >60% right, with an aggravated 'cookie bite' sonogram pattern
with a big flat spot in normal voice ranges.  Add tinnitus.  *Plus* I'm
apparently tone deaf to boot.

The hearing deficiency has been a problem all my life; asking people to
speak up doesn't help, as they seem to automatically assume you're some
kind of fucking retard and then they'll staaarrrttt ttaaaalllkkiinnggg
reeeaaalll ssslllooowww and exaggerating things until you can't make it
out anyway.  Very much hearing loss will make you an outsider; it sucks
big time.

So I try to avoid extended noisy environments to try to retain useful
conversational hearing as long as I can.  Hearing aids are not very
useful - people still sound like they're trying to talk through a
mouthful of cold grits, only louder.

So I use muffs when shooting, running various power tools, etc.  And I
use the little foamy ear plugs when on long motorcycle trips, and
sometimes in the car.  *And* sometimes at the track, if I'm not having
to haul an instructor around.  Lots of people are surprised at how noisy
it can get out on the track.

Interestingly, after you get used to the plugs, you don't really notice
them.  And with the wind and engine noise muted you can hear a lot of
things you wouldn't have noticed before.

Dean Grennell used to tell a story about two old shooters.  One was
telling the other about his wonderful new hearing aid.  "It's great," he
says.  "I can hear everything perfectly clearly now."

"Great!" says his buddy.  "What kind is it?"

The first looks at his watch.  "Oh, about four thirty..."



Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 09:36:37 +0000
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re:  DeRyke's hearing loss article
To: Multiple recipients of list 

-> I use them whenever I'm riding my motorcycle, and whenever I'm
-> driving the Cobra for any distance on a freeway.  Wind noise is worse
-> than the exhaust

You can buy Tylenol and some other over-the-counter meds in little
plastic tubes about 5/8x2-1/2".  They have a push-down-and-turn top,
designed so it won't come open in your pocket.  I have a pair in each of
my jackets' pockets, one with my allergy meds, the other with a pair of
the yellow foam earplugs.  The paper package of the earplugs will
disintegrate after being in your pocket long, and the paper isn't
particularly proof against pocket grunge, which I'd prefer stayed out og
my ear canals.

I also keep a couple pair in a Ziploc in the tail section of the bike,
and each car has a pair or two just in case.

Tip:  the foam expands in the ear canal, which limits how much it can
expand.  Ear canals vary widely in size - for some people, the foam
plugs exert a very uncomfortable amount of pressure.  You can trim the
plugs lengthwise with sharp scissors.  They'll be "D" shaped instead of
round then, but it won't hurt a thing.


-> They are actually very recycleable.  When new, they're extremely
-> effective, and with repeated use they start to get gunked up and lose
-> some of the ability to reduce noise.  What I do is take a half-dozen
-> or so, drop them into one of my socks, tie a knot on the end and toss
-> it into the wash.

I re-use mine until they show signs of grime, then chuck them.  I worry
mostly about germs and the like, as I'm prone to ear infections, which
is one reason I don't hear so well to start with...

Again for those people who don't wear the plugs much, if you have them
in and out a lot, they will make your ears sore.  They have a fairly
coarse texture and the ear canal is very sensitive.  The custom molded
plugs are smoother and aren't supposed to have that problem.

If you feel stupid with a big yellow wad sticking out of your ear, the
plugs are available in "flesh tone", assuming you're a Caucasian in an
advanced stage of decomposition

Variants are also available with the two plugs connected by a string,
so you can let them dangle around your neck when not in use, or
connected by a plastic headband, like a Walkman headset.  The headset
types aren't nearly as effective; you don't roll the plugs and insert
them into the ear canal.  Instead, they're smaller and pointy and just
block the entrance.  Their advantage is that you can pop them in and out
using the plastic band instead of touching the plugs, which is nice if
your hands are grungy, and they won't make your ears sore from continual
insertion if you're continually having to remove them to talk to people.

Some gun muffs have an intercom setup with a noise limiter.  You put
them on, a mike outside picks up sound and there are earphones inside
the muffs.  The trick is, a volume limiter prevents sound spikes, so you
can carry on a relatively normal conversation at the range.  Fancier
ones even have amplifiers as well as limiters.  I dunno how they work in
a continuous noise environment like a race car, though.



Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 09:36:55 +0000
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: DeRyke's hearing loss article
To: Multiple recipients of list 

-> maybe the traffic cops can help out here but I thought it was
-> like...a no-no to drive with headphones or earplugs on...something
-> about not hearing horns or the screams of the peasantry or something
-> like that.-Ted

That's common lots of places.  Here in Arkansas it's okay to be
completely deaf, or to drive a new Mercedes with double pane soundproof
glass, or have your stereo cranked up until all the body panels
resonate.  No sweat.  But wearing a Walkman or headphones is a
misdemeanor and a $100 fine.  Driving without a license is a lesser
offense and a $50 fine.  And they enforce the hell out of the headphone
thing, while probably one out of ten cars on the road has no plates.
Why do they have no plates?  Because they have no insurance...

Why?  I dunno; my theory is they make traffic laws by rolling dice.



Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 15:18:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: Mufflers
To: Wheeltowheel@abingdon.Eng.Sun.COM

-> OK, I'll bite... can you explain this principle?  Based on a very
-> limited knowledge of fluid mechanics, I have trouble understanding
-> how a muffler can produce more power than a straight pipe, but I know
-> it is the case.

It doesn't, and won't.

What happens is, few people have properly optimized setups to start
with, and some percentage of the time the added restriction of the
muffler will shuffle things around to where a little more power is made.
But that and more would have been available with proper tuning.

However, now that muffler makers are heavily sponsoring NHRA and moving
in on NASCAR, this type of disinformation is becoming more common.  The
best thing to do is to suggest to any fellow competitors that if a
little flow restriction is good, a lot might be better...

As anyone who has been through the process knows, dialing in an engine
or chassis is boring, tedious work.  The trick-of-the-week crowd prefer
to simply bolt things on, which is analogous to the famed quote about
monkeys and typewriters.



Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 23:44:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: Bo's Money (was RE: Bo's garage)
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

-> Bo's collection isn't to hoard expensive cars to rub in peoples
-> faces. Bo does it for the enjoyment of others as much as for himself.

Usually Reliable Sources tell me Bo drives the *snot* out of them at
various track events, with attendant rock chips, breakage, and the
occasional "oops!"  Cars are meant to be driven; zero mile, mirror waxed
concours garage queens mean nothing to me.

The city of Memphis has a Flying Fortress on display - the Memphis
Belle, one of the first American bombers to survive a hundred missions
over Germany in WWII.  The city purchased the aircraft from a government
scrapyard in Oklahoma in the 1960s, flew it to Memphis, and proceeded to
ignore it.  After several decades of vandalism and half-ass restoration
they rounded up a few million dollars for a complete rebuild.  But after
30 years the FAA got a wild hair and wanted the aircraft crippled where
it would never fly again.  Not that it was likely to after thirty years
anyway.  The city *owned* the aircraft and would have been quite
justified to tell the FAA to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
Instead they chopped up sections of the main airframe during the
"restoration", then hauled it out to a fancy display area on the
Mississippi River.  The Confederate Air Force did a flyby with half a
dozen of the remaining Fortresses; but the hulk Memphis has on display
isn't an airplane, it's a pile of corroding aluminum covered with pigeon
shit.  It was a damned fine machine that brought its crew home safe a
hundred times, and then back to the United States.  It was a sorry thing
to do to a piece of history; better to just push it out into the river
and have done with it, or melt it down into beer cans.



Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 08:43:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: F1
To: wheeltowheel@abingdon.Eng.Sun.COM

-> Flame away, I am curious about your thoughts.

Formula 1 has about the same relation to automobiles as karts, except
karts are cheaper and more fun.



Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 12:42:20 +0000
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: Bench racing computers!!!
Sender: detomaso@realbig.com

-> You and Curt are PUNKS. I've got the High performance computer with
-> the ZXT 844mhz nny chip, 48X CD ROM and 64 Meg.
-> SIZE DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

Bah.  Cram an IP stack and a mailreader on a Timex-Sinclair 1000 with
2K of RAM and *then* you'll get respect!


Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 08:33:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: RE: PC's and EFI
To: diy_efi@efi332.eng.ohio-state.edu

-> Man... I want to see this!  I've always wondered what the "Ideal"
-> user interface was for extreme hobbyists ;)

Charles Moore, astronomer and developer of the Forth programming
language, used to use a five button 'puck' to chord 5-bit alphanumeric
input to a portable computer while driving to work.  Of course, he had
to write his own 5-bit character code, memorize it, and learn to chord
the characters by pressing the proper buttons, but what else is there to
do while parked in traffic on the Santa Monica freeway?

I don't think that I could drive and program at the same time; I tend
to get tranced out when programming.  Of course, the average cellphone
user can't talk and drive at the same time either...


Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 23:31:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: *@&&! studs
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

Working on chucko's 351W heads this evening.  Managed to get the studs
out of one head successfully.  Second head, broke one off, stripped the
threads off another.

Some days things simply don't go my way...  looks like the next step
for the ruined studs is to cut them off with the angle grinder, center
punch, and see about drilling them out on the drill press.

I should have suspected the day was going to hell when I spent two
hours looking for a pair of heads that were only three feet away from
where I started...


Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 20:16:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: RE: helmets
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

-> For me, the overwhelming urge to look like Dale Earnhardt everywhere
-> I go *far* outweighs any *supposed* benefit of a full-face helmet.

I always wanted a full-face helmet that looked like Darth Vader's.


"Commence primary ignition!"


"Stage!"


"Launch!"



In lieu of that, and having seen Kemper's flamed welding helmet, I'm
giving serious thought to sticking some bulbous veined eyeballs, some
nice mandibles, and perhaps a pair of rakish antennae on my new black
electronic-dimming helmet.

"Are we men?  No, we are Devo!  We are Neanderthal!"



Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 09:14:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: CART from Japan:  Where did they learn how to cover a race?
To: wheeltowheel@abingdon.Eng.Sun.COM

-> Did y'all find the coverage as frustrating as I did?  While all sorts
-> of dicing for position is going on, the cameras just routinely
-> followed the leader, lap after lap.

Doesn't sound any worse than the usual American coverage.  Airborne
telephoto view of the whole pack; zoom crazily in until you're looking
at an eyeball and part of an upper lip; bounce the camera like a
basketball to keep the attention of the MTV generation, stutter-cut
between a dozen different cameras without mentioning where they are so
everyone gets thoroughly lost, spend 80% of the time interviewing the
drivers' mothers, girlfriends, or pit crew, show driver's baby pictures,
make sure all the sponsors' names are used in every sentence.  Use at
least two commentators, one of which must have a thick accent.  Have
them turn the gain on the mikes down, hold them at arms' length, and
shout at each other, even when inside the soundproofed media booth.
Have them babble inanely about nothing in particular and repeat their
own and each other's comments just to keep the patter going.  Flip to an
in-car video shot every now and then so we still know there's a race on.
Any time anything remotely interesting might be displayed, hide it
behind an on-screen display showing the race stats, driver's yearly
finishes, or other data.  Keep the taped "engine roar" sound track
turned way up so you have to keep the volume high to hear any
commentary, and of course so the blast from the sponsors' ads will make
the speakers walk on the shelf while you frantically stab at the MUTE
button on the remote.

Frankly, the Japanese coverage sounds like an improvement, at least
from your description.


-> After about forty laps of listening to reports about racing taking
-> place other than on MY screen, I gave up, turned it off.

*Watching* most forms of motorsport is pretty boring anyway.  I'd
rather be out on the track myself.


"Uh, uh, hey man, like, who's your favorite driver, uh, man?"

"Me."




Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1998 19:43:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: stroker Ford/Chev - Long Rods/More Torque
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

-> Here we go again!

You want butter on your popcorn?  Beer and Cokes in the 'fridge...


Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 19:30:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
To: gunsmith-list@swcp.com

-> Did you ever wonder that maybe the _FUN_ for these guys _IS_ the
-> sitting at home dreaming up the perfect equipment _NOT_ the going to
-> the range? Heck,  a few years back, I sat down and looked at my
-> hobbies, and came to the realization that the purpose for all of them
-> is to work with my hands, and make the best mechanical _Stuff_ for
-> all of them.  Not to win, not even necessarily to shoot better.
-> Heck, that's where _I_ have my fun.

Um.  I resemble that remark!  And to add insult to injury, it applies
to most of my activities...



Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 21:02:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

-> 11.5 to 12.0 range on my first Windsor.  Applicatin is a oval track

With unleaded premium it will depend on the brand of fuel.  I used to
run 12.5:1 with 93 octane regular, but CFR octane ratings don't mean
much when comparing fuels in real motors.


-> how do I check for detonation?  I'm not gonna be able to hear
-> "pinging" over 3" pipes

Watch for flecks of aluminum on the plugs.  That's bits of piston going
out the tailpipe.

If possible get a set of *quiet* mufflers and enough pipe to dump the
exhaust out the back, then see if one of the local tracks will rent an
afternoon to you during the week.  Some will.  This will let you build
the basic advance curve by ear.  You can still have pinging and not hear
it, and it can be damaging, but you can still curve around the kind of
detonation that has people tossing bits of your motor into the infield
as they clear the track.  Remember the engine will probably lean out a
bit when you go back to straight pipes; don't push the spark to the
ragged edge.

To curve the distributor requires a selection of springs and weights,
and the Ford distributors suck for calibration since they hide
everything under the breaker plate.  If you have an extra distributor a
buddy can swap bits in one while you're running the other.  If you're
running an aftermarket distributor you'll have to find out what kind of
bits it needs.

While you're out on the track it would be a fine time to set up the
carb, too.  Maximum power is important, but you need to make sure part
throttle and transition work properly for coming out of the turns.

And if you get bored, there's always chassis setup to play with.

If you don't have a logbook, start one.  An 8-1/2x11 binder with a
bunch of those clear plastic page protectors works fine.  Print out all
the data you have, add plenty of blank paper for writing at the track.
Bring a grease pencil too - good for annotating or correcting printouts
in page protectors.  Log everything you have time for; during the week
you can devise a word processor template and key the data in, print it
out, and slide it into a page protector so you can see the previous
setups at a glance.  The logbook will get greasy and slimy over the
season; if you keep everything keyed into the computer you can just
print a new copy out when necessary.

If you can't get an oval, even a drag strip can be useful.

There's no joy and no glory in dialing the car in, but that's the part
that separates the serious racers from the wannabees.  *Not* the budget.
I'm sure you can think of any number of examples of people with fat
credit card limits and all the latest toys who don't seem to be able to
get all the pieces to work together in harmony...



Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 19:19:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
To: mc-chassis-design@list.sirius.com

-> ANYWAY....The newest item is a small vacuum driven compressor.  I
-> would say it is 2x4x4" and weighs about 1 lb.  I've never seen one of
-> these before.  There are no names or #'s anywhere on the unit.  I
-> have not tested it for the max. output pressure.

These were common in the 1950s, used to drive add-on air horns on
automobiles.  Vacuum horns, vacuum wipers, vacuum power locks, vacuum
*shifters* on some GMs!  Slow as Christmas too.



Date: Sat, 06 Jun 1998 09:56:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

-> What's the heck smedley mean? :)  I follow the HTML reference (
-> & ), but smedley?  Just curious.  Guess I'm too young :)

Back in the '70s there used to be a Saturday morning cartoon called
something like "The Adventures of Penelope Pitstop."  One character had
a dog named Smedley, who had this weird laugh.  Imagine someone going
"heh, heh, heh..." while having someone administer the Heimlich
Maneuver.  Therefore:     heh, heh, heh... 



Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 15:37:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
To: wheeltowheel@abingdon.Ebay.Sun.COM

-> I think that there's an unresolvable schizophrenia inherent in
-> vintage racing- is it about racing, or is it about having fun in
-> great old cars? That's probably also true of PCA club racing.

Some years ago I read an interview of a guy who'd stuffed a very
expensive vintage car into the wall.  His comment was, "it doesn't cost
any more to fix a $500,000 car than a $50,000 car."  When it's something
exotic enough you have to call in the panelbeaters to custom make
replacement parts, "parts is parts."



Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 12:37:23 +0000
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Sender: detomaso@realbig.com

-> wimping out.  So, if we want to be noticed, TPR is going to have to
-> go above being fair and meet the only competition out there, ZR1.  So
-> does TPR take its vintage ball and go home?  Does TPR fear the mighty
-> ZR-1?  Do you want to broadcast that?  What downside is there?  On
-> the outside chance that the Mad one comes up with ascoring scheme
-> that TPR can't win, what is lost?

Paul is exactly correct.  Hell, let's assume the ZR1s simply select
sixth gear (fifth is overdrive, sixth is overdrive-overdrive) and walk
away from the entire Pantera cotingent.

Big deal.  Everyone knows what a Corvette looks like, and the ZR1 is
such a minor variation only the Corvette fans can tell one from a
standard vette at a glance.  Nobody is going to pay the least bit of
attention to them.

You know what the spectators will be doing?  They'll be doing the same
thing most other people do when confronted with a Pantera -

"What kind of car is that?"

"You mean it's a FORD?"

"It's TWENTY-FIVE years old?!"

"Wow, the engine is in the middle?"

Meanwhile, the "victorious" ZR-1 owners will be standing off to the
side, jangling their gold chains, desperately trying to attract
attention.


You also have to realize that the ZR1s have an advantage in
aerodynamics and in factory horsepower, but there's damned near nothing
they can do to improve their aerodynamics, and bits for that Mercury
Marine built motor are about as hard to get and expensive as Ferrari
parts.  Whereas the Panteras respond well to various slicking-up tricks,
and the 351C is about as cheap as dirt to build up.  The ZR1s are,
effectively, sitting ducks.  They're not going to get any faster without
a *lot* of money; the Panteras, on the other hand...



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 17:20:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

Some years ago I razored out the interesting sections of a wall full of
car magazines and put them into a couple of shelves of notebooks.  I
never got around to indexing the notebooks.  Looking for anything in the
magazine piles was a waste of time.  The notebooks are almost as bad; I
find so much stuff in there...

from Motor Trend, January 1985:

Carroll Shelby's chili recipe

1 pound   round steak, ground or cubed
1 pound   chuck steak, ground or cubed
1/2 cup   oil
8 oz      tomato juice
1 can     beer
1 pinch   cayenne
1/4 cup   ground #6 chili pepper  (#6?  they rate these things?  Bob?)
1-1/2 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp     chopped onion
1/2 tsp   paprika
1-1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp     cumin powder
3/4 pound grated goat cheese
1/2 tsp   cumin seed
1-1/4 tsp dried oregano

Sear meat in oil until brown.  Place in 2-qt pot.  Add tomato sauce,
beer, chili pepper, garlic, onion, paprika, oregano, salt, cumin powder.
Simmer.  Add cayenne, simmer 2 hr, stir often.  Add goat cheese and
cumin seed, cook 30 min.  Serve pinto beans separately.

=======================================================================

CHEESE as a major ingredient in chili?  BLETCH! GAG! RALF!  And he
doesn't even specify what kind of beer...  I think I'd prefer my chili a
little spicier; I usually measure garlic by the clove, not teaspoon.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 17:09:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> oh yea, the 4 wheelers (cars) need education in a big way.  but to
-> this day i still hear (usually a harley guy too.) people say they
-> never use a front brake - like how the hell to you stop?  shit!  the
-> rear brake is the closest thing to excess weight on a bike!  or, i
-> hear "countersteering?"

I call it the "poser effect."  Someone with more credit than sense
walks into the store and buys a Sukakawazaki ZZZZR600ZXRRR or Hogley-
Davidson 80 and all the requisite garb, in "neon" or black, as the
case might be.  The bike usually either winds up a twisted wad in short
order, or shows up in the paper years later with only 800 miles on the
clock.

Like Larry Niven said, "Think of it as evolution in action."

I have noticed, having attending both two and four wheel driving
schools, that most people go back on the street and do exactly as they
did before the school.  In one ear and out the other.


-> and while i'm bitching, why to the stock truck pullers need helmets,
-> but the more dangerous tractors do not in my local pulling classes?

Because, like, trucks run on the *street*, and are therefore inherently
dangerous.  Tractors are just farm equipment and are perfectly safe.
This should be apparent to anyone.  [closed captioned for the humor
impaired]

I admit I was impressed the first time I went to a tractor pull and saw
the driver, nattily dressed in worn blue jeans and a T-shirt, resting
his feet on the valve covers of the rearmost Arias Hemi while staging.
We don't need no steenkeeng firewalls!  And the sound of a six-engined
Unlimited doing its thing *indoors*, blowing the flourescent tubes out
of the ceiling, was impressive.  And I got to say hello to Art Arfons
and talk to him briefly between rounds.  The guy I was wish asked who
that old guy was.  "You're a cretin, Tommy, is what you are..."



Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 12:04:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
To: largo@chambana.com

-> Last night my band played under the name "The Impeachables"
-> B-)

Arkansas' new governor, Mike Huckaby (Republican, btw) plays in a band
called "Capitol Offense."  They opened for Riverfest '98, among other
things.

It's about time we had a governor with a sense of humor...



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 20:25:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> 1986.  It was fast, but problem with the disc drive, It wiped out a
-> friends career as a biologist when he typed in a huge term paper and
-> forgot to save, I never so such a face, something like B.
-> Clinton.

I used to be on Byte Magazine's BIX information service.  Buncha old
timers hung out there, including G. Harry Stine, who like to talk about
his IH Scout and his 273 Barracuda a lot.    Stine wrote "The
Handbook of Model Rocketry" before I was born, and some SF under his own
name and the pseudonym of 'Lee Correy'.

gharry had switched from a typewriter to a computer when he bought one
of the first Apple Is.  Michael Crichton claimed he was the first writer
to ever do a manuscript on a PC, which always threw gharry into a rage.
gharry got bit by the "forgot to save" thing sometime in the late 1970s,
and after that he developed the habit of saving at the end of each
paragraph, and kept each chapter on separate floppies, with multiple
backups of each floppy.  When he got a hard drive, his word processor
went up there (he liked a weird package called XyWrite) and he still
worked off floppies.  He liked to brag he hadn't lost a single byte
since 1979.

gharry and I locked antlers many-a-time, all in good fun.  I was
talking to someone the other day who knew gharry a lot better; gharry
had died a few months before.  Mike said his wife had entered the room
to find gharry collapsed over the keyboard; a heart attack had taken him
some hours before.  And both swear the dialog box on the monitor said it
had successfully saved his file to drive A:.

Good work habits will help you all your life, and maybe even slightly
beyond...



Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 08:07:43 +0000
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
To: Multiple recipients of list 

-> Now, *technically*, I think money which goes right to the state
-> caufiers is a TAX, not a FEE.  And since it's not a sales
-> tax, it *might* actually be deductible from your state income

It is de facto a tax, no matter what they call it, and it violates the
prohibitions laid down in the Consitution of the United States of
America, just like their nice little 'fruit check' border control
stations.  But until someone or some group decides to pay what it will
cost to take it to Federal court, the state can play its little games.

Good ol' Dollar Billy Klinton used to damned near squat a hemorrhoid
over "lost sales taxes" when he was governor of Arkansas.  All that
potential tax money bleeding out of the state, and his spending programs
leaving the treasury bare...  some of his tame legislators got a bill
through the state legislature approving the creation of import
checkpoints, where all incoming packages would be inspected to see if
they contained potentially taxable merchandise.  Billy got a little
notice from Marvin Runyon, a little-known bureaucrat in DC with the
title of 'Postmaster'.  Ol' Marvin let Billy know that the US Mail
would not be interfered with, and any attempt thereof would be met with
whatever force it took to see the mail got through.  Most people don't
think a lot of the Post Office, and have no idea they have the power to
use anything it takes, up to and including 'lethal force', to move the
mail.  Dollar Billy's little plan sort of faded away, though he's
mumbled about trying something similar on a national scale since he got
exiled to DC.  Fortunately he's no more effective as a president than he
was as a governor.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 09:45:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

Some years ago Cycle Magazine did an interesting article.  They sent
three top-ranked racers to a sports optometrist.  Testing showed all
three had significantly better than normal vision - 10/10 or better, and
better spatial perception than normal.  And the ranking was clear - the
fastest riders had the best vision.  The sample size was too small for
real analysis, of course, and that magazine never did a follow-up.  But
it was very interesting.

Smurfing around a few minutes ago, I found a series of articles from
New Scientist Magazine concerning unconscious perception-

http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980905/intro.html

If you're a motorcyclist or trackie, it has some more interesting
stuff concerning perception of visual data.  An excerpt:

In classic experiments from the 1970s, Benjamin Libet of the University of 
California at San Francisco provided direct evidence that conscious perception 
is slow. Libet found that an electrode had to stimulate the sensory cortex for 
at least half a second before the patient became aware of any sensation, 
suggesting that conscious experiences take that long to develop. The delay, 
Libet thinks, may allow time for the conscious mind to edit and interpret the 
raw data. The various sensations that arise from a single event, for example, 
are likely to arrive at the brain at slightly different times, since touch 
sensations must travel all the way from the fingertips, while sight and sound 
have shorter paths. The curing time for conscious perception would allow the 
brain to gather up these disparate sensations and bind them into one 
perception. "But during that half-second, all sorts of unconscious things can 
go on," says Libet. "You see your car's going to hit something and you stamp 
on the brake within 100 to 150 milliseconds, well before you're consciously 
aware of what's going on." 

(sorry about the formatting problem)



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 12:44:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> I had read that the Indians who sold Manhattan Island actually didn't
-> own it - they were just ripping off the pale-skinned visitors who
-> were so willing to give to the Indians some valuable and mysterious
-> goods.

Despite generations of apologists trying to guilt people, I doubt the
coastal Indians had a grasp of "property" one couldn't pick up and carry.

The most advanced of the Amerinds weren't quite up to the level of the
Neanderthal, much less Cro-Magnon.  When you get that far behind on the
upgrade cycle, your "civilization" is just marking time until someone
plows you under.  The Europeans had mastered that "metal" stuff, and
were able to work in large groups without killing each other, at least
for long enough to do something useful every now and then.

Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 16:36:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> My view on 95 is this - store nothing on the hard drive other than
-> win 95. Everything else goes on the server somehow, someway, etc.

 Server!  Backup!  

Place where I used to work, 550 LAN'd Win3.1 and Win95 machines,
everything locked out by the admins so they were basically no more than
terminals.  Every app came off the Novell or NT servers.  Took minutes
to load even the simplest application.  Six (count 'em!, SIX!) Novell
and NT admins, Novell and Microsoft certified too.

One day the main Novell server went down.  Like, smoke coming out of
the vents.  Took them a full day to build a new system.  Tried to
restore.  ARCserve  couldn't read its own backup tapes.  They
had four months of backups, including off-site, but they had never
tested to see if they could actually get data back off of them.  I'd
warned them before, but they got all haughty.  "Of COURSE it works!  We
can see the files on the directory listing!"  Every now and then I'd
wander over to the PC server area and just look.  Made them mad as hell.

Three weeks later, the NT system went down, with all the accounting
data.  ARCserve!  Want to make a guess as to what happened?  Huh?  Huh?
Anybody?  And the dumb shits were putting out more effort defending
Cheyenne Software than they were their own incompetence.  And they
upgraded to the newest version of ARCserve, which used all 16 million
colors simultaneously, was incredibly fast, ran under Windows, and
probably showed them backup progress with animated MPEGs, for all I
know.  But I doubt they ever tried a restore...

My SCO and Linux boxes had verified, restored backups.  Tar and cpio
weren't the hottest software around, but they worked.  And instead of
cramming everything on one or two heavily-loaded high end servers, I was
using multiple medium-range machines only lightly loaded, so the load
could be redistributed between running systems should one fail.  I used
to keep an uptime chart posted until the NT guys complained and word
came down to take it off the wall.

In time, the bureaucracy groaned and shat out guidelines for proper
backup procedures.  ARCserve for Unix, they wanted.  I made a paper
airplane out of that page and lofted it over the cubicles, never to be
seen again.

And people wonder why Unix admins tend to be hard-asses...



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 00:28:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> Sounds like a bad network infrastructure to begin with...but I am a
-> net engineer, w/ degrees in CS/EE (don't ask)...and I know how tight

It was a control issue.  They had licenses for all the software, but
MIS higher-ups wouldn't allow it to be loaded on the local machines.
And with too few servers and too few subnets serving too many machines,
the LAN was flooded.  Some of the LAN guys knew what they were doing,
but they were hamstrung by the "all the eggs in one basket" policy
handed down from above.


-> responsibility of the IT department to people only concerned with
-> saving money and lining their pockets with the bonus policy.

That particular corporation still viewed IT as a "cost center", which
it was, but a cost center that was of less importance than, say,
Accounting or Personnel.  Hell, they'd sprung for a mainframe in 1973,
why couldn't we still use that?


-> funny think about them was, when you took them out of their little
-> standardized perfect UNIX world, everything you talked about with
-> them gave them the "deer in headlights" stare.  :)

Yeah, we get that look when the NTdroids start telling us how Microsoft
invented TCP/IP...



Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 17:33:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

-> The window is rapidly closing for the public to vote for "Car of the
-> Century" which will be announced from Amsterdam in December

The century.  For almost 30 years, the #1 drop-em-dead head-turner has
been the Lamborghini LP400 Countach.

For importance... the Ford 'deuce and a half' truck.  The Jeep gets all
the credit, but the deuce and a half gave mobility to Allied troops and
their supply lines that the Germans couldn't match.  All through the
ETO, including the Eastern Front, Ford trucks allowed Allied troops to
literally run rings around their opposition.  Ford trucks were a major
portion of US aid to the Soviet Union, allowing them to move men and
materiel that could not otherwise be transported after the destruction
of their rail system by the Nazis.  Later the Soviets built Ford trucks
under license.  Some of them are probably still running today.

Not fast.  Not pretty.  Not famous.  But logistics are the key to war,
and when supplies moved on land in WWII, chances are they went at least
part of the way in a Ford truck.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 06:42:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> that makes me wonder...just how much of our oil coes from Alaska and
-> how much from the middle east?  I'm thinking the bulk of it still
-> comes from the mid east or we wouldn't be so worried about it.  So
-> what's the deal?

I don't know the current proportions, but the Fed makes it more
attractive for the oil companies to use foreign oil than domestic oil
for the same reason it nationalized some of the best domestic oil fields
in the 1920s - military reserves.  Chances are the next major conflict
will be in the Middle East; makes sense to use up *their* oil first.
Some amount of domestic production is maintained so the equipment would
be available and in place immediately should it be needed.


-> And doesn't Mexico have alot of oil?

Yes.  This caused a lot of grief back in the '80s, when Ford and Carter
were OPEC puppets.  The Mexicans are sitting on a shitload of the stuff,
and it's a hell of a lot closer than the Middle East.  But we won't buy
more than token amounts from Mexico, *and* we give the hairy eyeball to
anyone else who tries.  My impression is the State Department considers
that oil to be an American reserve as well.  The Mexicans needed the
money badly then; they need it even worse now.  But buying oil from them
apparently violates the US policy of sticking them right up the ass
whenever the opportunity arises.  The Mexicans have good cause not to
like gringos.


-> That'd make an even better 51st state!!

Maybe a 52nd.  Canada is already for all practical purposes the 51st
state.  It is strangled by its own government and economically dependent
on the USA; for all practical purposes it's the world's largest banana
republic.  Fortunately the American government has a big blind spot with
regard to Canada; like a counter-person at MacDonald's carefully
ignoring a customer, the Fed pretends Canada doesn't exist.  Probably
still sulking because we lost the last Canadian-American conflict.

I got a lot of fun razzing people about NAFTA a few years ago.  They
were screaming about "their jobs were going to Mexico", but they seemed
unable to understand that the Canadians had already sucked up a big
chunk of the automotive industry already, and Canadian dollars, like
Mexican pesos, don't show up on the US budget.  Some of them were in
mortal terror of Mexican wetbacks sneaking across the Rio Grande, but
totally unconcerned about Canadians simply driving over the border by
the carload.  I pointed this out to one of my legislooters who was
trying to drum up support to control the Brown Menace; he flat couldn't
understand there was no difference.  I think he wanted to build
something like the Great Wall of China crossed with the Berlin Wall.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 19:45:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> The phrase "quantum leap" has fallen into the vortex of 'stolen',
-> meaningless wording.  Consider "unique", "budget", "gay", etc.

Or my favorite example - "accessible."  The ADA crips have seized the
word and will damned near stone anyone who doesn't go along with their
new politically-correct definition, which is "wheelchair ramps."

I read Clive Cussler's 'Sahara' the other day.  His standards of
writing, or maybe his editors and proofreaders, have degenerated
tremendously since the old days.  The usual misuse of "to/"too" and
"their/they're" which has afflicted even commercial publications in
recent years, apostrophes stuck on every plural, posessive, and damned
near every word that ended in 's', and frequent use of wrong or
nonsensical words.  A good example "he hauled himself out of the water,
his body decimated with fatigue."  And there were *lots* of examples of
that sort of thing.

It's bad enough to have to look at that crap on the net, but publishers
ought to know better.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Tue, 01 Dec 1998 15:51:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> I am getting surgery to repair a ruptured disc next week, so I'll not
-> be attending. Do I need a note excusing me? :-)

My wife had the same surgery two years ago.  Went in on Dec 3, my birthday. 

I adjusted the height of the bed where she could sit directly down on
it without having to hop up into the air, and since I never quite
finished putting all the ceiling tile in, I attached a 3/4" knotted rope
to some ceiling beams, somewhere around mid-ribcage when she was laying
down.  She could grab the rope and pull herself up.  She got a big laugh
out of it at first, but after they reduced the painkiller dosage she
changed her mind...

When I got mangled by a DWI some years ago a buddy brought a typewriter
stand over and put my computer on it so I could use it from the bed.  A
typewriter stand is sort of peculiar; this one was heavy steel, had an
adjustable copy holder, and a top big enough for a typewriter.  Felix
stuck the system unit and modem underneath and put the monitor on
top; I used the copy holder to hold a notebook for doodling.  I don't
know where you'd find such a thing other than a flea market or yard
sale, but you could improvise something similar from a two drawer filing
cabinet and some casters on the bottom.

AB was able to walk out of the hospital and into the house under her
own power, and wasn't bedridden like I was.  Of course, I had the
disadvantage of about a hundred pounds of plaster cast...

The only other thing you're likely to run into, depending on how
awesome your drugs are, is getting on and off the crapper.  When your
back is fucked up it's a long way up and down.  Having considered the
problem from the perspective of experience, I think an ordinary walking
cane would be helpful.  Even better, a 5 foot piece of 2x2 lumber, no
more than $3 at any lumberyard.  If you have a sturdy cabinet or
something nearby it can be helpful, otherwise the staff will help a
whole hell of a lot.  I know it sounds silly, but I've been there.

You'll spend a lot of time laying down; your spine wants to curve
differently when sitting, and it will hurt.  Talk to your surgeon or
therapist *before* you go in the hospital; they will probably have
specific recommendations for back supports and the like.

If reading is among your pastimes, cruise the bookstores *now*.  And
now's a good time to see that you have a decently placed reading light,
and maybe a table lamp or two for visitors, otherwise you'll wind up
staring at the light in the ceiling when people keep flipping it on.

The surgery isn't really all that major, but the enforced inactivity is
debilitating.  After a couple of weeks of laying around you'll find that
even short journeys can be exhausting.

AB says she still has some residual pain every now and then, but it's a
hell of a lot better than before they went in there.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Fri, 04 Dec 1998 06:14:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> under Denis Wood, John Reuer, Wayne Taylor, et.al, so I dig the
-> viewpoint that cars aren't utterly necessary. I agree; it'd be
-> *great* if cars weren't mandatory. They are screwing up the
-> landscape, killing people, sickening and crippling others. I know
-> this.

What's your point?

Mobility is *power*.  Power gets misused; most people would consider
that gridlock sucks.  But I can turn the key and my world expands;
time/speed.  How far could my great grandfather go in a day?  A few
hundred miles if he caught a train, but he'd be limited to where the
train went.  *His* grandfather would be limited to walking, riding, or
sailing.  I can go anywhere I want, whenever I want.

Maybe mobile civilization is a historical freak; maybe the ban-the-cars
whackos will win.  The Politically Correct cultures of the future will
damn us for paving over the land and using the fossil fuels.  The
commissars will still have their chauffeur-driven limos, and the poor
bastards who have to get about by using their electronic travel permits
in the State-controlled mass transit system will go to a museum and look
at a rusty four-door Maverick sealed behind glass while kiosks show
bloody bodies extracted from car crashes and the tour guide lectures on
the evil of personal transportation.  But the poor bastard is going to
just stand there, staring at that car, realizing that even the poor of
the latter 20th century had a kind of freedom and power he can never
have, ever.  And he'll clench his fists and realize the Golden Age is
gone, and he missed out.  And he'll wait for his State-operated bus, and
wedge in, and try to find a seat that nobody has pissed in or thrown up
in front of, and he'll make his way back home...

==dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us======================================
I've got a secret / I've been hiding / under my skin / | Who are you?
my heart is human / my blood is boiling / my brain IBM |   who, who?
=================================== http://home1.gte.net/42/index.htm



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Fri, 04 Dec 1998 14:52:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> Damn, sounds exactly like any multitude of old Rush songs, or Ayn
-> Rand fiction stories, or  remember who always writes about a truly fucked future vision> book,
-> or...

It was a popular theme in the '60s and '70s.  It's coming, I've seen
major progress (?) toward it in my adult life.  Societies seem to trend
toward police states as they age.  Modern technology accelerates the
trend.  Norman Spinrad envisioned cameras monitoring the populace in the
early 1950s; it's a reality in LA, Detroit, Chicago, and most major
airports now.  Most people don't realize the extent to which this sort
of thing has taken place; among the youngest adults, the school systems
have preconditioned them to not only accept it as normal, but desirable.
Meanwhile, new 'hate crime' legislation not only want to control what
you *do*, but what you *think*.  Had any deviant thoughts today, comrade?

Nothing I can do, and I'm not going to get ulcers over it.  So I'll do
as I damned well please for as long as I can, and then I'll knuckle
under and kiss ass, move to another country, or take one of the rifles
and a sackful of ammunition and express my displeasure with society
until they take me down.  I expect something like that would be so
commonplace as not to even be newsworthy by then.


-> FWIW, I agree.  I like old Rush.

"We are the Priests
of the Temples
of Syrinx..."

I liked them too, but they needed to mix the vocals up higher.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 14:27:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> So, if you have a lot of hatred for environmentalist thinking (and
-> there seems to be a lot of it on this list) then fire away at me, if
-> you must. I'll be laughing about the absurdity of it all, from here
-> on out, I think.

It's not so much hatred of the environmentalists as a serious problem
with their methodology.  As a group, they're typified by wanting
problems that have been ongoing for decades or centuries suddenly
cleaned up RIGHT NOW regardless of cost, injustice, or inconvenience -
mine, not necessarily theirs.  Then they get off on what *might* be a
problem, based on cooked or no evidence, and want to do the same.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 14:33:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> abd what is your take on the non-plant life that is killed of from
-> rainforest degradation?

It really doesn't matter unless the US or UN is planning a military
action against several South American countries, does it?  It's their
country, their land, and their forest.  I bet they have the idea they
can do whatever they want with it, up to and including burning it all
off and turning it into weekly parking.

If the situation is that dire, once-heavily-forested areas in the USA
might be returned to the trees.  The entire states of New York and New
Jersey would be a good start.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 14:39:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> I'm currently watching Memphis. Memphis put in a commuter tourist
-> rail that circles downtown.

Memphis also has sections of Interstate 40 marked as "HOV-Only".  I
don't understand how they can do that with a Federal highway.  Hell, I
don't understand why Oklahoma and Kansas get away with tollbooths on
Interstates too.  They used to maintain the fiction that the tollroads
were privately owned roads and there were two disjoint sections of
Interstate connected by it, but last time I was through they had the
Federal signs up in the tollroads too.  I'm already PAYING for those
roads, in income tax and fuel tax, dammit!

Misuse of road tax money was one of the less-publicized, but important,
factors that led to the Civil War.  The legislooters in DC would be wise
to remember that.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 19:54:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> > some developer's whim, Public Transportation can be predicted.
-> Shopping > can survive close to the housing.

> One of the *key* reasons I want to move there.

One of the things that made Colorado Springs unique in my experience was that 
it apparently had nothing like a Zoning Commission - houses, businesses, and 
what-all were jumbled together wherever someone felt like building something.  
During the years my buddy Doug lived there it was a standing joke that he 
could find anything he needed within walking, or at most easy bicycling, 
distance.  And it was damned near true. 

However, the city government has 'modernized' and now all new houses
have to be built in their own areas, and businesses can only be built
somewhere else, so people's "property values" won't be "degraded" by the
nasty industrial stuff - call it 'place to work' nearby.  So Springs is
rapidly becoming an ordinary urban gridlock.

The problem as I see it isn't so much cars, as that the damned zoning bullshit 
forces people to live in one place and work somewhere else. I've read several 
papers on mass transit, traffic grids, and the like, but most of them go off 
into 'fixes' for the transport problems rather than addressing why there are 
transport problems in the first place. Don't make it a hassle for someone to 
go across town - reduce the NEED for them to go across town! 

We have a very efficient zoning board in my area.  Everything is nicely 
segregated, so the narrow traffic arteries are jammed almost all the time. 



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 20:08:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> You're likely right about the road apples, but 135 people killed in
-> this country per diem is like a medium sized airliner crashing and
-> burning every *day*. Half of those are DWI related, but half aren't.

Let's repeat that:  HALF of all highway fatalities are alcohol-related.
So what's done about it?  Air bags, which cause more problems than they
solve.  Breakaway hood ornaments to protect pedestrians.  Dorkwad brake
lights in the rear window.  But nothing is done to get DWIs off the
road, because it's socially acceptable to get drunk and drive around as
you please.  Compare to the pogrom mounted against smokers lately.
Smokers smell bad and leave a stink behind whenever they stop very long,
but they're hardly a menace to society.  Drunk drivers ARE a menace to
society.  Specifically, they're a menace to *me*.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Tue, 08 Dec 1998 10:07:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> This thread really doesn't need it, but just because I have nothing
-> better to do I guess I'll weigh in:

This *is* the 'off-topic' list, after all...


-> 3) When science and politics mix, it's almost always to the detriment
-> of science. Members of the climatology community have been quoted

Two words:  cold fusion.  A whole lot of people lost their credibility
over some simple experiments that could be duplicated in any decent
college lab.  Why?  To jump on the bandwagon with everyone else.  Hell,
read Feynman's commentary on "figure creep" on physical constants
sometime.


-> This stuff has caused me outrage for far too many years, and I'm
-> starting to get philosophical about it.

Global warming, ozone layer, and the rest of that crap is taught as
FACT in elementary and high school textbooks now.  We now have a
generation of voters coming online who have been programmed to respond
in predictable ways on the subject.

Lenin's purges of Russian schoolteachers was a pretty good idea; if you
program the rugrats while they're young, you have them forever.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Tue, 08 Dec 1998 19:33:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> I think, that in spite of the various perspectives being related on
-> this list, we can all agree that we are being screwed.  It's just a
-> matter of placing blame at this point.

I'm not sure the blame is easy to fix.  I'd love to find a nice simple
conspiracy, or even a dozen Robert Anton Wilson style interlocked
conspiracies, but plain old ignorance and stupidity seem sufficient to
account for the generally muddled state of affairs.

A favorite example is the focus problem with the Hubble Space
Telescope.  It was a whole chain of people who didn't do their jobs.
Another example is the incident at the Three Mile Island reactor, which
was not only people who weren't doing their jobs, but people who were
actively fucking up too.  A space telescope and a power reactor are
trivially simple compared to the sociopolitical mess of a couple hundred
interlocking and competing governmental structures in the US Federal and
state governments.  And in those cases, there is seldom a clear chain of
responsibility either, making it that much easier for screw-ups to
snowball into disasters.



Date: Wed, 09 Dec 1998 01:00:40 -0500
From: Paul Foster 
email

> -> The threat of nuclear annihalation was no biggie? The commie threat
> -> that turned out to be nothing but a hoax so the military-industrial
> -> complex could keep in full production after WWII was no biggie?
>
>  Oh, it was a big deal - I remember Civil Defense courses and playing
> "hide under the desk" in school - but nothing actually happened.  Best
> as I can figure, after the sword-rattling between the Western Allies and
> the USSR in Germany in the late '40s, nothing was really close to
> happening.  Psycho Kennedy taunting Khruschev to push the button in the
> early '60s was bad, but it turned out the Soviets didn't have anywhere
> near the capability they were reputed to.
>
>  Meanwhile, the military-industrial complex was going full bore.  The
> USAF sponsored the development of the integrated circuit, jointly
> patented by Carl Killibrew of TI and Bob Noyce, who founded Intel with
> his profits.  The US Army paid for the development of the internet.
> Practically the whole modern aviation industry rides the coattails of
> the military.  Both the US and Soviet space programs were artifacts of
> the Cold War.
>
>  The fear, uncertainty, and doubt were very real.  But I'm beginning to
> believe it was more hype than reality.  Meanwhile, there was measurable
> good from the Cold War.  I'm not saying it was necessarily worth it, or
> that it was an intended effect, which I'm pretty sure it wasn't, but it
> seems to me it worked out well in the end.

I couldn't agree with you more. It was totally hype but we were pushing
a real foe to the brink of annihalation. It could have ended right
there. Did you know the Russian civil defense was very strong up until
the end? They religiously (heh) practiced evacuation drills. They
thought we were going to first strike them!



Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 20:03:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

-> Comes back to my previous point - with very few exceptions the
-> 'sport' in sport utility vehicle at best refers to what it can carry,
-> it certainly has no relationship to what the vehicle (whether truck
-> or RAV4-ish tall station wagon) is.

My idea of a "sport utility vehicle" is what a friend's Dad had back
when we were in high school.  A '68 El Camino SS with the 427 big block.
It would haul a washing machine home from Sears faster than hell...

Ford never really had a Ranchero that was comparable.  Not many people
liked the Ranchero/El Camino vehicles, which I always found strange.  If
anything fatal ever happens to my B2000, I'll be in the market for an
early Ranchero.  A few suspension upgrades, a big stroker, and I'd be
able to haul lumber, motors, or ass, as the case might be.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 09:52:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)

-> Trash 80s) around 1982, in the days before DOS running UCSD P-system
-> on the 16K IBM PC.  It was a blast not having to maintain stacks of

Am I the only one who sees Java as merely a highly-touted reincarnation
of the P-system?  "Let's do portable code using tokens..."  There was
something that was supposed to run p-code at the processor instruction
level, the Lilith, something like that.  Now we hear about the
forthcoming Java-optimized processors...



Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 11:22:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: helmet...you laugh...
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

-> > Anybody know where I can find a Pot helmet?

> Yeah; you can pick up clay ones fairly inexpensively at Kmart,
> Walmart, etc.  They even come with a vent hole in the top for
> vegetation.

Best to stay with ferns or cacti; leafy plants tend to defoliate at
speed.



Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 20:01:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Ranger Oxymoron?
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

-> What the heck is a "long short arm front suspension"?

Perhaps, instead of Pierre Cardin Thunderbirds, Ford is considering a
John Holmes Ranger?


Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 08:13:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: had enought of crap
Sender: owner-diy_efi@efi332.eng.ohio-state.edu
To: garfield@pilgrimhouse.com

-> Look, I'll tell ya what, I feel so bad about your feeling so bad,
-> that, well, lemme just slit my wrists while I'm typing here,

Would you mind posting a JPEG of that to the DIY web site?


Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 09:21:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: Vizard - Summary
Sender: fordnatics-errors@lists.best.com
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com


-> Being an engineer by inclination and some training, I find the
-> current excess of huge vehicles extremely wasteful, especially when
-> all they do most of the time is haul one occupant to work and back.

So?  Nobody's twisting your arm to buy a hogmobile.

You know why over 50% of Ford's sales are trucks?  Because over 50% of
Ford's buyers think Ford's carline sucks.  The trucks are the least bad
of a poor lot.

I'll buy what I like, feed it as much as I can afford, and to hell with
anyone who doesn't like it.  It's not a free country, but it's still a
relatively free market.

I don't have to justify myself, my vehicles, or my purchases of fuel to
anyone.  And I'll burn that fuel as I damned well please, and take up
the whole lane doing it, too.  In fact, comrade, my wife and I live in a
four bedroom house, own five cars, three motorcycles, two trailers, six
computers, and various other items which could be classified as
"wasteful."  Because it's our money, and we wanted it.

Whether it's "waste" is none of your concern; that's someone else's
money, someone else's decision.


Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 10:57:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: [capri-list] SpeedVision
Sender: owner-capri-list@autox.team.net
To: capri-list@autox.team.net


-> yes, I have seen "The Legends of Motorsport". I really get a kick out
-> of the lack for safety in the old days, and I'm not talking all that
-> long ago. No pit walls, people wandering out in "pit row", no proper
-> attire,

Not too long ago it was assumed you were smart enough to look out for
yourself.  If you didn't... "think of it as evolution in action."

Now a typical lower-classed SCCA entrant will have as much invested in
"safety" equipment as he does the rest of the car; oh boy.

That's why I get such a big kick out of the tractor pulls.  A guy in
jeans and a T-shirt, feet propped on the valve covers of the rear pair
of Arias 8.3 hemis, we don' need no steekeeng firewall...

But you can always run SCCA or NHRA, where Big Brother will coddle you
all you need.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
---------------------
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 20:02:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: laser drill

I just hit Yahoo and did a search for 'laser drill'.  About 30% of the
hits were ST:TNG episodes, about 30% for laser dentistry, and the rest
came up for Quake II, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a bunch of Journal
Wired stuff... then a whole bunch of bestiality sites.

Search engines always remind me of the old "Eliza" pseudo-AI program.

Fascinating...





Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 08:39:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: LARGO: BBQ
Sender: owner-largo@chambana.com
To: largo@chambana.com


-> nothing else was available.  Anything called BBQ outside of Texas is
-> simply broiled meat with some sort of meat sauce poured over it.

Real barbecue is *cooked* in the sauce, and the flavor goes all the
way through.  I've seen people cook a piece of meat, swab some sauce on
with a brush, and serve.  They might as well serve a cantaloupe with
some sauce on it; it would have about as much relation to real barbecue
as that kind of swill.




Low Fangled Auto Tech
---------------------
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 15:10:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: RE: Tool theft prevention bainstorm

-> Yankee gangrene. Florida? Wack! Texas? Chop! not south anymore.

Texas got lumped in with the South, but they were never more than
wishy-washy wannabees anyway.  As for Florida... before the Yankees
turned Tampa into a clone of Newark it was a mosquito hell.  The Yankees
can *have* the whole peninsula on a silver platter for all I care.

Now all they have to do is build a big island-hopping bridge along the
Atlantic coast so they don't contaminate good Southern roads on their
endless ant-like march back and forth.


-> that way"). The whole civil war can be viewed as a war of Yankee
-> exploitation anyway. There were economic reasons to keep the South
-> down.

The South as portrayed at the time of the Civil War was a dead husk.
Eli Whitney doesn't get the kind of treatment in history books that
Edison or even Tesla get, but Whitney almost singlehandedly brought the
Industrial Revolution to the United States.  His farming equipment
ripped the guts out of the whole Southern economy while his
manufacturing equipment gave the North an unbeatable edge in production.
The South went down in battle, but it would have lost no matter which
side "won".

Whitney isn't known as a gunsmith either, but he was the one Samuel
Colt hired to perfect his "revolving pistol", which Colt had designed
specifically for maintaining order on Southern plantations.  And when
the war came, the majority of the weapons on both sides were built
Whitney made or designed machinery.  Few men have had such an impact on
history, yet schoolbooks cast him as the inventor of the cotton gin,
then cast him into oblivion.


Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 06:40:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: LARGO: NRA life member
Sender: owner-largo@chambana.com
To: largo@chambana.com

-> So how come onlly 49% of us are NRA life members?  Considering the
-> threat to our rights, nearly all should be life members.

The NRA sure didn't support *my* interests when they bought into the
"Gangster and Terrorist Weapon Act" back in '86.  They're terrorists
themselves, using tactics even TV evangelists would squeam at to scare
people into donating money to their "cause".  If the NRA spent 5% of the
effort they put into fund collecting into actual work, they might
actually accomplish something useful.  I need the NRA like I need a dose
of the clap.


-> I don't always agree with the NRA, but they are a powerful force and
-> we should participate.

HCI is a powerful force too,  but I'm not joining up with them either.


-> NRA life member and proud of it.

George Bush is an NRA life member, and look what he did for gun owners
- start with the import bans and fill a page.

To tweak one of Bush's propaganda sayings, "The NRA - just say no!"




Low Fangled Auto Tech
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 06:55:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: RE: linux

-> Debian wins for
-> upgrades as it goes to check that you are running the latest version
-> of software

Something that periodically comes up in the PC world is "automatic
software updates."  Microsoft is promoting this as a "feature" of
Windows 2000, where it'll slither around behind your back and jam up
your bandwidth sucking down all the latest multimegabyte patches without
you even being aware of what's going on.

Never, *ever* on any machine I own, will *any* software do that.
Period.  That's playing Russian roulette with five chambers loaded.

Updates of OS *or* application software is something you learn to
approach with caution.  Too many times, I've had to insert a boot floppy
and restore from tape...

In the case of Unix, where it's very likely I might be running
customized utilities of some sort, I'd be *very* angry if my software
got replaced by something else behind my back.


Low Fangled Auto Tech
---------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 08:48:39 -0500 (EST)
From: jdmyrick@unity.ncsu.edu
Subject: Re: In love again

> The phrase "quantum leap" has fallen into the vortex of 'stolen',
> meaningless wording.  Consider "unique", "budget", "gay", etc.

I always liked "quality."

"We serve you a *quality* product."

Okay...is that a *high* or *low* quality product?

I usually get a blank look.



Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 10:53:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: Gas Cylinders (was: Shop Equipment for sale)
To: shop-talk@Autox.Team.Net

-> Compare that with other product areas where technology or
-> styling make things obsolete so quickly.

Most of the equipment in my machine shop is older than I am; a 1954
lathe, a 1950 mill, a 1941 mill (with a War Department plate!), another
lathe of uncertain vintage, probably around 1915.  Most of the engines I
work on are 20 years old or more.

It is nice to work with stuff that, if I simply locked the door and
didn't get back to it for a year or two, it would still all work and be
useful.  In the fast-forward world of a WAN manager and application
programmer, even a one-week vacation would make me feel like Rip Van
Winkle.

Right now I'm supporting myself building racing engines and just
keeping a toe in the computer world.  I hate Microsoft Windows.  I hate
Windows programs.  But that's okay; I was a computer geek before there
was Windows, and if I wait a few years, it'll go away.  Meanwhile I'll
fiddle with microcontroller stuff for the car.

As the infamous Dilbert cartoon put it:

Wally: "The beard, the suspenders, the superior expression... you must
be one of those Unix guys."

Old Guy: "Here's a nickel, kid.  Buy yourself a real operating system."



Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 21:40:19 -0400
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Online peoples
To: Low Fanglers Auto Tech 

-> ...and?? I write this and many more messages from a Mac, dearest
-> Davey. :-)

Here's a nickel, buy a real operating system... come to think of it,
Apple *paid* some of the Linux geeks to do a Linux port to the PowerMac.

Over a five or six year period I've reached an accomodation with
Windows - I take a couple of Advil and deal with it as little as
possible.  Macs, on the other hand, are like Windows on Quaaludes -
everything I try to do, it's "You can't do that, Dave."  About ten
minutes of that and my blood pressure goes through the roof as I have to
be restrained from picking the thing up and slamming it against the wall
a few times like Koko the gorilla.

A real GUI lets you pick your own window manager, and if you don't like
how it works, you just edit the configuration file with vi...



Low Fangled Auto Tech
---------------------
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 1998 13:06:27 +1200
From: Simon Quested 
Subject: RE: Mothballs and sugar

Hi Dave and all

>  Ah, reminds me of the story one of the Wild Bunch told about going to the
> drugstore to buy rubbers.  The checker asked him if he wanted small,
> medium, or large.  With a dozen other people in the line staring at him,
> his only possible reply was "large".  Whereupon the checker fished under
> the counter a moment, then thunked down a box containing a gross (144) of
> rubbers...

A female friend of mine managed to get the owner of the local drug
store to blush she asked in a loud voice "I want some
condoms....you know the ones with the mud grips!" (I think she
meant ribbed =-) The poor guy turned bright red.



Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 17:21:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: LARGO: BBQ now chili
Sender: owner-largo@chambana.com
To: largo@chambana.com

-> Now, is chili properly prepared with beans or without?

*Serious* chili is served with beans on the side.  Only parvenus would
mix the beans right into the chili.  Probably wouldn't know which was
the drinking water and which was the finger bowl either...

Texas etiquette question:  When is it acceptable to eat your food with
your hands?

Answer:  it is always acceptable to eat with your hands as long as you
can consume at least half of it before the rest runs between your
fingers.



Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 09:14:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: CART from Japan:  Where did they learn how to cover a race?
Sender: wheeltowheel-request@abingdon.Eng.Sun.COM
To: wheeltowheel@abingdon.Eng.Sun.COM

-> Did y'all find the coverage as frustrating as I did?  While all sorts
-> of dicing for position is going on, the cameras just routinely
-> followed the leader, lap after lap.

Doesn't sound any worse than the usual American coverage.  Airborne
telephoto view of the whole pack; zoom crazily in until you're looking
at an eyeball and part of an upper lip; bounce the camera like a
basketball to keep the attention of the MTV generation, stutter-cut
between a dozen different cameras without mentioning where they are so
everyone gets thoroughly lost, spend 80% of the time interviewing the
drivers' mothers, girlfriends, or pit crew, show driver's baby pictures,
make sure all the sponsors' names are used in every sentence.  Use at
least two commentators, one of which must have a thick accent.  Have
them turn the gain on the mikes down, hold them at arms' length, and
shout at each other, even when inside the soundproofed media booth.
Have them babble inanely about nothing in particular and repeat their
own and each other's comments just to keep the patter going.  Flip to an
in-car video shot every now and then so we still know there's a race on.
Any time anything remotely interesting might be displayed, hide it
behind an on-screen display showing the race stats, driver's yearly
finishes, or other data.  Keep the taped "engine roar" sound track
turned way up so you have to keep the volume high to hear any
commentary, and of course so the blast from the sponsors' ads will make
the speakers walk on the shelf while you frantically stab at the MUTE
button on the remote.

Frankly, the Japanese coverage sounds like an improvement, at least
from your description.


-> After about forty laps of listening to reports about racing taking
-> place other than on MY screen, I gave up, turned it off.

*Watching* most forms of motorsport is pretty boring anyway.  I'd
rather be out on the track myself.


"Uh, uh, hey man, like, who's your favorite driver, uh, man?"

"Me."



Low Fangled Auto Tech
---------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 10:29:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: Alternative transportation (was RE: Electric Drag

-> house, 1.5 miles from where I work, and she drops me off via 45 mpg
-> CRX. I walk home in the afternoons. I was *real* green when I lived

"Beyond the Palace
Hemi-powered drones
scream down the boulevard..."

"I need a car that does at least 180 miles per hour, so I can get to
work!"


-> boxes separating everyone. Hitler didn't like to see his people on
-> motorcycles, so it's said, hence the VW. Mind you, it was wintertime
-> and said 'cyclers were freezing in Der Black Forest. SoCal would be

One of the first major advances through the French defensive line in
1940 was Rommel's motorcycle corps, which ran over footbridges and other
light structures the French had failed to secure, as they were expecting
tanks.  Rommel's bikers were severely outnumbered, but within a few days
the French forces were prone to break and run when they heard them
coming.  "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee," or something like
that.  That seems to be a little-written-about subject in WWII.

'course, during Desert Storm US advance forces left their HMMVs and the
like at the depot.  Dune buggies with machine guns and CHENOWTH logos on
the sides, eat your heart out, Rat Patrol fans...

"Mobility... is the key to survival."

Viktor Suvorov's "Spetsnaz" talked about development of motorcycles for
Soviet Special Forces troops.  Unfortunately, though the Soviet Union
managed to handle atomic bombs and spacecraft, the motorcycle still
seems to be beyond their technical abilities.  Same as France.  The
Swedes are the only nation I know of with dedicated motorcycle troops.

[flash of Swedish Army troops dressed in Thunderdome-style post-
Apocalypse Hollywood biker garb, waving Husqvarna chainsaws and
submachine guns as they charge into battle]

My mind... it's going, Dave.  I can feel it.
Dave's not here.

Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 10:19:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: tickets
Low Fangled Auto Tech

>I all ways plead not guilty, and you also get one postponement,
>thus i have extended paying for over a year and a half.
>by that time the officer will not show up and charges dropped.

There was a guy on the Compuserve autos forum who gave an interesting
account of his method of fighting tickets.  Rob is a paraplegic and only
has really good use of one hand, partial use of the other, no use of his
legs, and can speak only with difficulty.  Like some people in his
position he has a warped sense of humor; his account of changing a flat
tire on his XJ-S was hysterical.  And no, it wasn't possible to do it
from the wheelchair...

Anyway, when he'd get nailed for "enthusiastic" driving he'd always
show up in court.  Wheelchair-bound defendants apparently unsettle the
court to start with; if things weren't going Rob's way, he'd
"accidentally" spring a leak in his urine collector or discover his
colostomy bag needed changing.  This tactic often netted him a mere
talking-to instead of a fine as they hurried to get him out of the
courtroom...

It's not a tactic everyone can use, but hey, you gotta do the best you
can with what you have...

[back in the BBS days, one of the local sysops was blind.  We had a sort
of sysop club, we'd all show up for dinner somewhere and raise hell.
I'd been by the office supply store just before one meeting and had
spotted something interesting - boxes of blank business cards.  I don't
know what they were for, but they were only a buck or two a box.  I got
a couple and took them to the meeting and gave them to Paul, the blind
sysop.  When I told him the cards were blank on both sides he got this
truly evil expression and immediately had to try them out.  We had a
couple of new people at the meeting, so I took him over and introduced
him.  A lot of people are uncomfortable around the handicapped anyway,
which works considerably in favor of those who have a sensor of humor.
Paul would hand them one of his new business cards and stare fixedly
about two feet to their right, with his "expectant nice guy" expression
(201-C).  The unlucky victims would turn the blank cards over and over,
perhaps expecting text to magically appear, then mumble something polite
before taking themselves away as fast as possible.  Sometime later, Paul
told me *not one* of the people he'd pulled the routine on had ever said
anything about the cards being blank!]



Low Fangled Auto Tech
---------------------
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 09:14:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: Drum brake wheel cyl

-> The consensus around the USAF R&D establishment in the late 50's was
-> that Col. Paul Stapp had not survived his experiments totally
-> unscathed. But then you might need to be a little whacko to have done
-> them in the first place!

Hey, chimpanzees cost over $500 each!  Colonels are almost free.



Low Fangled Auto Tech
---------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 23:18:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: weird stuff

Sometimes *strange* things happen to me.

I ripped chucko's stroker motor apart again this morning to do one
final adjustment on the crank.  Loaded it into Thunder along with the
nifty-neato checking tool I'd made.  A 351 Cleveland crank is longer
from the thrust main to the timing sprocket than a 302 crank, by about
.090".  I found out the hard way.  Most people simply trim the back of
the sprocket, but chucko wanted me to pull the engine back down and
recut the crank.  No problem.

I went over to Kenney's to use his crank grinder.  He's an hour away
from me, way out in the country, but at least it's all paved roads now
that he's moved.  Kenney dropped what he was doing to deal with chucko's
crank while I took over the process of resizing a set of rods for a 5.0
he was rebuilding.  Took him fifteen minutes to fix the crank, took me
two hours to build the rods.    But what the heck.

Coming back from Kenney's.  Winding, 1-1/2 lane wide country roads.
Thunder is a '68 F100 that stands almost seven feet tall at the roof,
has a small block Oldsmobile for power with about four feet of 2-1/2"
pipe (with H crossover) exiting under the passenger side; no mufflers.
It has a psychotic Safety Orange and blue spackle paint job.  I am
easily amused; I have been known to cruise the parking lot at the mall
while friends bet on how many car alarms I can set off.

Dogs usually don't chase it.

But this time... there was a whole pack of the damned things.  Fur all
ruffed up around their necks, lips pulled back from needle-like fangs,
legs blurring as they're running alongside and darting at the front
tires, eyes glazed in psychopathic canine viciousness, too intent even
to bark.

As God is my witness, I never knew Chihuahuas ran in packs.

==dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us======================================
I've got a secret / I've been hiding / under my skin / | Who are you?
my heart is human / my blood is boiling / my brain IBM |   who, who?
=================================== http://home1.gte.net/42/index.htm



Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 23:44:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: Re: Bo's Money (was RE: Bo's garage)
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

-> Bo's collection isn't to hoard expensive cars to rub in peoples
-> faces. Bo does it for the enjoyment of others as much as for himself.

Usually Reliable Sources tell me Bo drives the *snot* out of them at
various track events, with attendant rock chips, breakage, and the
occasional "oops!"  Cars are meant to be driven; zero mile, mirror waxed
concours garage queens mean nothing to me.

The city of Memphis has a Flying Fortress on display - the Memphis
Belle, one of the first American bombers to survive a hundred missions
over Germany in WWII.  The city purchased the aircraft from a government
scrapyard in Oklahoma in the 1960s, flew it to Memphis, and proceeded to
ignore it.  After several decades of vandalism and half-ass restoration
they rounded up a few million dollars for a complete rebuild.  But after
30 years the FAA got a wild hair and wanted the aircraft crippled where
it would never fly again.  Not that it was likely to after thirty years
anyway.  The city *owned* the aircraft and would have been quite
justified to tell the FAA to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
Instead they chopped up sections of the main airframe during the
"restoration", then hauled it out to a fancy display area on the
Mississippi River.  The Confederate Air Force did a flyby with half a
dozen of the remaining Fortresses; but the hulk Memphis has on display
isn't an airplane, it's a pile of corroding aluminum covered with pigeon
shit.  It was a damned fine machine that brought its crew home safe a
hundred times, and then back to the United States.  It was a sorry thing
to do to a piece of history; better to just push it out into the river
and have done with it, or melt it down into beer cans.


Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 15:46:00 -0500
From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams)
Subject: new toy
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

>look

You are in your study.  Mountains of books, computer equipment, and
unidentifiable oddments surround you.

>e

You are at the front door of the house.

>look out window

The lock button of the truck is down.  A large white box is resting on
the driver's seat.

>open door

You are not wearing any pants.

>w

You are in your study.  Mountains of books, computer equipment, and
unidentifiable oddments surround you.

>get pants

Taken.  You are wearing a pair of blue denim pants.

>e

You are at the front door of the house.

>open door

You are standing by the truck.  A large white box rests on the driver's
seat.

>get box

The door is locked.

>unlock door

The door is unlocked.

>get box

Taken.

>w

You are at the front door of the house.

>w

You are in your study.  Mountains of books, computer equipment, and
unidentifiable oddments surround you.

>open box

You can't do that here.

>get knife

Taken.

>open box

You cut the box open with the knife.

>inventory

You have:
A pair of pants.
A knife.
An empty cardboard box.
3,201 foamed plastic peanuts.
A complete Hilborn fuel injection system for a 302 Ford.

>Mine!  MINE!  ALL MINE!

You can't do that here.

>go away, kid, you bother me

I can't do that, Dave...



Yep, it's here.  One (1) each Hilborn fuel injection for Tyrannosaurus
RX.  Now to do the active bypass control to convert it to the Williams/
Harris 'de-jection' system...  Gonna have PIPES!  Chrome PIPES sticking
up out of the hood, oh wow...


Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 20:02:38 -0500
From: Alan Ernest 
Subject: Re: new toy
To: fordnatics@lists.best.com

Dave Williams wrote:
>
> >look

>
>  Yep, it's here.  One (1) each Hilborn fuel injection for Tyrannosaurus
> RX.  Now to do the active bypass control to convert it to the Williams/
> Harris 'de-jection' system...  Gonna have PIPES!  Chrome PIPES sticking
> up out of the hood, oh wow...

You dog!  You realize, of course, that we all hate you!  Oh, man - I be
dreaming about velocity stacks...