veritech-z

http://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/0684835509/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255988056&sr=8-2 Very interesting book by a guy that worked for Jet Propulsion Labs about how we could be on mars in 10 years with current era technology. He wrote another book about how to extend that philosophy to the remainder of the solar system. This is another book about a project from the 50's that used directed nuclear micro bombs as a sort of external combustion engine. It's written by the son of the scientists involved. Ever see that Star Trek: Next Generation when they find the Dyson Sphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere)? That was named for the guy that worked on Project Orion. http://www.amazon.com/Project-Orion-Story-Atomic-Spaceship/dp/0805072845/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255988126&sr=1-1

If you're looking for older games and consoles, the Play N Trade in my area (individually owned chain store, so far as i know) has a much much better selection than gamestop. I'm often able to get TurboGrafx 16 games at my local one, and I've even seen some Atari Jaguar and 3DO games. They usually have a bin of N64 titles, and many many consoles of all generations (even had a Sega 32X at one point). http://www.playntrade.com/ In reply to what Valmont said, if your goal is simply to play the games, and not collect the hardware, the Wii is most likely going to be your best bet. You can plug in some Gamecube controllers to get the classic feel, and it allows you to buy games for consoles that would be prohibitively expensive to collect in their original form (i'm looking at you, turboGrafxCD and NeoGeo games...TurboGrafx CD consoles routinely sell for $900-most of the good games were never translated to English, and Neo Geo AES games are still $199-$299, which is how much they cost new). I feel a certain pride of ownership personally when I actually have the original title and can play it on the original system, but if you intend to be more of a player than a collector, Wii is probably the way to go.

Last time I checked, I had 13 consoles connected to my tv...not one of them was an Atari. Make sure you get Goldeneye 007 while you're game shopping for that system, it's the original console shooter that was worth playing, which is amazing considering it was a licensed Intellectual Property (which are notorious for being awful). The Zelda games were also good, and if you're into strategy/RPG games, I reccomend Ogre Battle 64 (but that title can be hard to come by these days).

Looks like the text has been changed to: The car has salvaged title because the car has been sitting too long in my garage and we prefer not to pay for the registration, that's why DMV decided to put the car as salvaged title. Right now the car has a new 2010 California tag.

Back in my Saturn Dealership days, we'd send bumper fascias back to Saturn as cores when they were damaged. The reason for it was ostensibly to keep the parts out of the aftermarket and prevent them from being able to take molds of the parts. It seemed like kind of a reach to me, but that's what we were told.

How deep into Ocala are you? I'm in the downtown orlando/winter park area most of the week.

My formerly running MS-I v2.2 fuel only ecu is no longer powering up. I was wondering if there was anyone in either the Tampa or Orlando area that had a stim board I could connect it up to and see if the problem is with the unit itself or the wiring somewhere.

I really like the looks of that Mercedes valve cover. The angular lines just read as "High Tech" to me.

ftw! Steam just released all the Kings Quest games and all the Space Quest games as a bundle for $14.99 each.

those are my 17"s. That particular motegi you posted has some pretty severe looking curb rash, unless they're VERY cheap, I'd recommend you keep looking. There's a huge difference between FWD and RWD offset wheels. On an S30 you need to have pretty close to 0 offset, depending on how wide the wheels are. FWD has offset in positive numbers approaching 30-40 (typically), RWD wheels *usually* have offset numbers below 20, and if they're really wide the number often goes negative. There are plenty of wheel size threads in this section, if you search for offset and so on, you can find some good descriptions of how to find wheels that fit.

Kind of surprised NissanSportSarah hasn't chimed in on this one, isn't she an editor for Nissan Sport magazine?

A skateboarder's kid is a wheel-foot?! say it ain't so?! j/k Ron, they look like a super fun family to be a part of.

I personally I think the Paragon Paths are where the character creation process really starts to get interesting, because it's there that your backstory starts to come into play with what your character can do. At the Heroic level, I can *say* my Dwarven Rogue is a sniper, but he can't shoot any better or worse than any other race or class. But once I hit level 11 and choose the Sniper Paragon Path, it really feels like that choice has been validated by the game and has meaning now. They've gotten around that some by doing backstory bonuses since the release of Forgotten Realms and Player's Handbook 2, but it still isn't quite as good as what happens at Paragon Tier. I haven't gotten up to Epic Level at all, but the Epic Destinies are few and far between, and don't seem as well thought out as the Paragon Paths.

Stepan, if you're going to be DMing, I'd recommend making sure you explore the new minion mechanics. Our DM is all about the single large boss in a room, and it makes for really boring combat. Nothing sucks like having everyone be out of daily and encounter powers, and be forced to just whittle away at a damage sink with 1[W]+mod damage at will powers. Actually, I'd also suggest you try starting a Paragon level campaign (11th level to 20th). For me, the various Paragon Paths are what really make the characters interesting. The heroic level build options are really boring, and our DM doesn't give out as much XP as we would like (after a year in this campaign, some of us are at level 8...)

I think there's a misconception that you had to be one or the other. I didn't really claim a set in high school. I got down with the nerds, but I got my skate on too. I don't get to get out as much as I used to, these are from last year: While I'm definitely atypical in the specific "other hobbies" I have (skateboarding, dj-ing, z-rodding)in my office, I'm not that atypical in that i have "other hobbies." One guy is really into mountain biking and improv comedy, another guy is in a band, one of our artists is in a softball league...I think one of the good things about being an adult (as opposed to high school) is that you no longer have as much pressure to identify yourself with a particular lifestyle in order to determine your social value.

I feel like I was the target audience for 4th ed, since I never played any previous editions of the game and was able to pick it up really quickly. The new power system really feels like magic the gathering, but with a spacial orientation element that matters. Most of my group pines for the "old days" of v3.5, so much so that our DM purchased the Pathfinder rule system which is sort of a community continuation of D&D v3.5 to see if it was something we'd be interested in trying out. The way Wizards consolidated the non-combat skills into a smaller list means that Endurance is a thoroughly useless skill to train-it never comes into play ever in our campaign, at least.. It also means characters that use Constitution to attack get hosed when it comes time to tally up your skill numbers since that's the only skill determined by your Constitution score. I like playing Rogues because a)they're the only class that gets to do big damage regularly and because Dexterity and Charisma factor into almost all the skills worth having (the exception being Perception) in addition to being your big combat modifiers. I feel like Rogues are a little broken in that way compared to some of the other classes. I went for the Gnome because they get a racial power that lets you turn invisible when you take damage until the end of your next turn. I have to say that perhaps it's an artifact of our DM's dungeon layout style, but it feels like being locked into specific powers and not being able to "call shots" (I target the troll's eye with this arrow!) really discourages any of us from trying to do flamboyant things with the environment like swinging from chandeliers or pushing over statues onto enemies during combat. It makes it feel like a seperat game to be fighting stuff, or exploring/talking to people.

Being a video game developer, I work with a lot of people that are proud of their nerd-status. We often talk about the nerd-line in the sand that we won't lower ourselves to cross. For me, it stops with tabletop RPGs. I consider LARPing to be below that on the nerd totem pole...tabletops are still just like advanced board games, but dressing up in costumes and yelling "MAGIC MISSILE!" is past my nerd-threshold.

Very true. All of us at work play Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead during lunch breaks (both of these games are total fail-status when it comes to indoctrinating new players, and I was very resistant to start playing TF2 at all). I won't play those games any other time because in general I absolutely can't stand your average faceless internet person. So abrasive and rude, the idea of being in a mmorp makes me shudder...I feel about multi-player online games the way I feel about Hondas and Mustangs: there may be nothing inherently wrong with them (in fact, they may be above average in many ways), but the culture that surrounds them is so obnoxious I won't have any part of it.

Made that for a member of http://www.japanesenostalgiccar.com the other day, figured I'd share it over here too. Though not technically a drawing in my estimation(i used a lot of photoshop tracing tools for the outline just so it would go quickly), I did modify it quite a bit from the source photo.

I can already hear the crickets chirping on this one...I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition with some fellow game developers for about a year now. Got the sourcebook for Rifts and Dead Reign, but nobody wants to learn a new system for some reason. I tend to roll up Rogues and Barbarians. Right now i'm playing a level 7 Gnome Rogue with a Bard multi-class that used to be a pirate, so he's got a pegleg and is missing an eye. Also, through an odd series of events, he has acquired a tentacle arm. My backup characters are either this Warforged Barbarian: Or this Dragonborn Fighter: I mostly got into it as an excuse to draw characters, but i stay for the novelty dice rolling and copious amounts of mental arithmatic...

I will NOT be defeated by the smartest woman in California! I outsourced the watching of the video to made in China, and they watched it for me.

Well, if it had ALLIGATOR leather, I guess I can see how...no. No I can't see it. I guess it's just a square peg/round hole issue with that show you're at, I think you're car is pretty sweet.

So there's an entire class just for sport compact nissans? Who came in first?

possibly?

i was with him until he ran over the baby...that was a bit much for me.