Tuesday, 27th of November, 2007
"Last summer, one pickup driver in the Stedwick neighborhood won a limited right to park his Ford F-150 in his driveway when a county Circuit Court judge ruled that his truck was nearly identical to a neighbor's Chevrolet Avalanche, an SUV allowed under the rules. In 2002, a court forced the Eastgate community to allow the parking of pickups overnight as long as they have permanent, matching caps over their cargo beds that give them the appearance of SUVs."
Nice. This person's quote demonstrates the irrationality:
"'Tell me how it makes sense that this one is okay and mine is not,' Lanahan said, pointing to a worn, rusted Chevrolet Suburban parked near his house. Sport-utility vehicles and passenger vans, even beat-up ones, are allowed under rules that exclude his $30,000 late-model pickup."
Sunday, 25th of November, 2007
The twist on a subway map makes this the most clever way of representing such complicated material I've seen in a very long time. So complicated, in fact, that some of it is already outdated - as Lynn points out on solo2.org - "Mercedes ditched Mitsubishi several years ago. And recently got divorced from Chrysler. Ford no longer owns Astin Martin. I don't think GM is affiliated with FIAT anymore, either."
Saturday, 24th of November, 2007
Thursday, 15th of November, 2007
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety - 2008 winners of Top Safety Pick - the results are out. What I would like to note that nobody has mentioned so far is that there is exactly one car manufacturer where the entire lineup made it onto the list of 34 vehicles that earned "Top Pick". It's not Volvo - try Subaru: Impreza, Legacy/Outback, Forester, and Tribeca.
The Detroit Red Wings' charter DC-9 got a little stuck at the downtown St. Louis Airport yesterday. "The pilot cut a runway turn a little short... and put one of the main gears in the mud." It's nice to have your own jet when all you're doing is playing at a stadium downtown and avoid Lambert commercial flight traffic - but I guess it is a smaller airport.
Wednesday, 7th of November, 2007
But ok, let's go with their test, acknowledging it's obscure and a way to test who the most competent people are, and see which techs in St. Louis are honest and which rip you off. I used to do this for a living, so let me give my own professional opinion and a letter grade for each shop:
The main point where I disagree with KSDK's analysis is that when a shop doesn't charge a penny and advises the customer to contact Dell, they are giving an honest, helpful assessment. Getting to a laptop's hard drive is not always intuitive - ask me about replacing the hard drive on that Powerbook G4 some time. On a desktop, sure, if there's a hard drive error I instantly go into the motherboard settings and if that looks right the cover comes off to look at the cables/jumpers and the hard drive comes out.
But on a laptop, I will not criticize a shop that simply acknowledges it is something they don't want to deal with so they don't spent a lot of time and the customer's money to give them an inadequate diagnosis. Again, back to the car analogy, there are times that a place like Dobbs should say - "take the car to the dealer" because they don't have the knowledge to discover the problem. But now we're getting to my opinion of Dobbs, and let's not even start with that.
Friday, 2nd of November, 2007
"The two episodes involved motorcyclists who surrounded vehicles on well-known thoroughfares in St. Louis and St. Louis County. The cyclists in both cases drove Japanese-model motorcycles. Both motorists said that they were almost forced to stop on the roadway because the cyclists were throwing things at their vehicles or kicking them..."
While I never had an encounter with the street bike gang, such things don't really surprise me about that worthless part of town.