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Ren
ParticipantIt’s all about the math. This would be a terrible investment. The positive cash flow (if any) will definitely be eaten up by maintenance and vacancies, meanwhile that $76k will get you two properties (30% down) in another area that together will give you ~$1,000/month positive cash flow. Rent in the area where you work.
ParticipantObviously the future belongs to the Chinese/Black mix, with high intelligence, athletic prowess, and an average-sized penis.
February 9, 2012 at 9:05 AM in reply to: OT: To Piggs who want to live super CHEAP, here’s your chance! #737616ParticipantI went to slab city recently as part of a road trip. It’s basically a garbage dump with bad weather. There are MUCH better places to park a solar powered RV.
Participant[quote=AN]Ren, talking about the new 328i. I actually like it better than both the G37 and the past 328i. I guess that turbo I4 push me over the top. I hope Infiniti will follow suite and use I4 turbo for the G25 and turbo V6 for the high end G. If not, BMW will have my full vote.[/quote]
I just wish it was a little bigger than 2 liters. Definitely better than the previous, but for someone like me who would modify it, the cost to match the 335 performance might be close to the cost of a 335 anyway.
Participant[quote=AN]
I can see low 300WHP being reliable, but I’m very skeptical of a stock 4 banger being able to push over 500WHP on stock block & head. Even EVOs have to start getting head work to breath better and sleeves to strengthen the combustion chamber when you start to push around 400WHP.[/quote]
You are absolutely right, the 500whp was the beer talking. There are a lot over 400 with stock internals, but the 500+ need a little more to be safe and are probably on an ethanol mix. Also probably a lot more of those out of state than here in car enthusiast hell.Participant[quote=AN]
I agree with you it’s not always about the number. But numbers are not irrelevant either. A G37 is hardly like a Camaro and a 328i is hardly a Mini. The Camaro is ~500lb heavier than the G37 and the Mini is ~500lb lighter than the 328. Weight, like all other metrics is one of a factor. But if it’s as important as you suggested, then the 328i should be more fun than the M3, since the M3 is heavier. The 328i is 200 lb lighter than the G37 but it’s 100 HP less. 200lb is much harder to notice than the 1400lb example you just gave.[/quote]You won’t find an argument here. Like I said, it’s subjective, and you have to weigh every factor, not just weight. All else being equal, if one car is 50 pounds lighter than another, I’ll take it even if my butt dyno can’t tell the difference, but I CAN tell a 200 pound difference. One of the most fun cars I’ve ever owned was an ’87 924S, which didn’t make enough power to get out of its own way, but it excelled everywhere else. The example I gave with the Mini was just an exaggeration to show WHY I like certain cars more than others. Some people prefer a boat with gobs of torque – more power to them.
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Would you take a Miata over a S2000 or Z4M because it’s lighter? It also make significantly less power.[/quote]I would take a used Mazdaspeed Miata over an S2000, certainly. If I could manage to get over the looks. Given those choices, the Z4M wins.
[quote]Since you open the can of worms wrt modding… I’m not too sure you can say slapping $2k in mods in a new Turbo I4 328i will allow it to “embarrass” a G37 or the 335.[/quote]
You’re right – the BMW will cost more to mod, because that’s how the BMW aftermarket is. (I am VERY impressed with the low-end torque of the new BMW turbo 4, btw.)
By “embarrass” I was actually aiming pretty cheap, as it wouldn’t be embarrassing to be beaten by another bimmer 🙂 … as in Cobalt SS or SRT-4. Those two by themselves make ridiculous amounts of power for very little. To give an example of a car that I am more familiar with (my wrong wheel drive daily driver):
’10-’12 Mazdaspeed 3 – $25k off the lot
$350 – Autotech high pressure fuel pump internals
$340 – Cobb intake/turbo inlet pipe
$500 – downpipe
$520 – Cobb Accessport (for tuning)
$120 – stiffer rear motor mount (to dampen the horrific torque steer and wheel hop)That $1,800 results in somewhere just north of 300hp/350tq (up from 240/260) to the wheels and will easily stomp a 335 or G37. In fact, when you see a lowered MS3, it most likely has all that under the hood.
[quote]A street legal Vortech system in an older G35 makes close to 400WHP. There’s no way you can mod an I4 to get that kind of power.[/quote]
There are several MS3s with big turbos at over 500hp at the wheels. That’s a $1,500 kit plus the above bolt-ons, with completely stock block/pistons/cam/rods/etc. That’s a reliable (as long as you keep an eye on things), 2.3 liter 4-banger. Granted they’re useless in the rain 🙂
Visit the SRT-4 and Cobalt forums for other examples of even easier and more ridiculous power. Not that I would ever buy either one.Regardless, it’s a pointless argument, because my tastes are different than yours. My dream car is a Cayman R with a GT3 swap, not a Ferrari or Lambo. If I had a more understanding wife, I’d be driving a Dinan 335 right now, but until then, I keep up with a stock 335 (and G37, and 996) just fine.
ParticipantSome of you will probably appreciate this. It’s the reason internal combustion engines will never go away even when gas is $20/gallon:
ParticipantCongrats on the 5. That would have been my pick for you, because you’re more into “pimpin'” than performance, and BMWs hold onto the pimpin’ factor far longer than most cars.
As for the 328/G argument – for many car enthusiasts, it isn’t always about test results. It’s about steering ratio and turn-in, road feel, weight, driver position, etc. Some of those qualities are subjective, but they’re the reason that a Mini is far more fun to drive than a 400hp Camaro, and why I’d take a 328 over a G37. The G does have a great exhaust note, though.
Besides, performance is easy. Slap $2k in mods on just about any factory turboed 4-banger, and it will embarrass a G37 or 335. A stock 335, anyway.
Props to BMW for making the new 3-series lighter than the outgoing model – a step in the right direction after the last decade of bloat.
Participant[quote=CA renter]1. IMHO, this is an argument for a LARGER government, not a smaller one.[/quote]
Actually it would most definitely end up being smaller, as I’m only referring to the most powerful positions. The rest would remain “regular” employees. Using the federal government as an example, once you replace 1,000 (or whatever) major decision makers with 10,000 private citizens, making choices based on logic rather than vested interests (what a concept!), the other 1.8m government employees would immediately begin getting trimmed. No more squirrel research, although programs with incredibly obvious benefits (such as stem cell research) would receive funding because it makes sense.
[quote]2. I have far less faith in “academics” regarding war (or just about anything else) than I do with highly competent, **experienced** people who have proven themselves in their respective fields over a long period of time.
“Academics” brought us the financial crisis and all the failed (and extremely expensive!) bailouts. The corruption was there, to be sure, but the academics failed to sound the alarm. It was bloggers and a handful of more intelligent professionals who were trying to warn about the credit/housing bubble when it was still growing. The “experts” failed to see it (at least, that’s what they claim), and they failed to stop it when it was perfectly clear what the outcome was going to be.[/quote]
Ah, but the academics you speak of had ulterior motives. They were primarily interested in the success of themselves or their company (“it’s a great time to buy/invest!”). The bloggers and professionals that you also mention are the academics I speak of. Self-taught or college educated, it’s the private citizens that I trust, the ones who would not benefit from the decisions they made in government service. I know there would be exceptions and some individuals would still make biased decisions, but that’s where the sheer numbers come in. A large group of knowledgable, mostly unbiased people would make better decisions than the people currently “serving” us. The corporations that now benefit from political corruption will be policed by the new service employees and the regulations they put in place.
I don’t doubt there are problems with this idea, but I’m confident it would work better than the joke of a system we have now.
ParticipantI agree that the problem is concentration of power, and I’ll add that having long-term employment positions available in that power center (the Career Politician) makes corruption inevitable. The size of the government doesn’t matter, although it should be sized to be as efficient as possible for the population it serves.
Although more transparency can only help, the people involved will still find a way to hide their corruption, so it isn’t a complete solution. What is needed is to change the very structure of all government (city, state, and federal) so that there are no corruption beneficiaries. Much larger groups should make the decisions, not individuals or small groups, but also not the uneducated public, unless voting is by 2/3 majority (the bullet train bond measure passing is a perfect example of public ignorance resulting in bad decisions). I have no idea how this would be accomplished, but it’s obvious to me that it’s necessary. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that anyone (liberal or conservative) who thinks concentration of power is a good thing has, by definition, a god complex – i.e., their party should be the ones defining behavior and morality.
The ideal government would be self-correcting and free of individual human weakness. Maybe all citizens would be required to serve in the government for a few years, like jury duty but only once. Their position would be determined by aptitude and education. If politicians existed at all, their job would be to propose measures and help the mandatory service employees understand the issues they’re voting on. They would have zero real power. The job of regular government employees would be to perform the work of running a society and military, while very large groups of appropriately educated service employees would make decisions regarding corporate regulation, taxes, foreign policy, and defense. The “common” would be back in common sense – imagine 10,000 randomly chosen academics with graduate work in political science, history, and international relations voting on whether to go to war, instead of one man making that decision, or (chuckle) a congress full of lawyers and the wealthy, the majority of them (on both sides) bought and paid for. Iraq would never have happened. Government pay and benefits would be in line with the private sector. The bullet train proposal would have been instantly squashed (amid much incredulous laughter that it was proposed in the first place). My tax dollars wouldn’t be spent studying the mating habits of squirrels because some congressman’s donor’s daughter is a zoologist.
Of course this is a change which won’t occur without a real revolution taking place (probably after economic collapse), because it would require politicians to work to eliminate their own jobs.
ParticipantWe bought a suicide house, which was spooky at first, but even now that we know it’s mildly haunted (both of us and three different nannies have independently had experiences), there’s no more fear. Maybe that’s because we no longer feel like it’s “her” house and we’re intruding – she’s now the visitor and we’re allowing her to hang around (pun intended). No regrets.
Would I buy that house? Probably not. One thing I’ve noticed is that regardless of belief in ghosts and regardless of whether a house appears to be haunted or not, you still spend time thinking about the death itself, which I can do without. Almost every time I go in the master closet (where it happened), it crosses my mind. I don’t want that spectre in my “forever” house.
ParticipantWe had a similar experience last year. We were trying to refi, and the closest comp was a trashed foreclosure down the street (same floor plan) that sold for $15k less than we paid for ours. Because of that, the appraisal came in low, which meant we would have to bring a little cash to the table. It wasn’t much, but it was money we’d rather spend on something else.
We had made the mistake of going with the same lender who held our current loan.
I wrote a letter that took apart the appraisal bit by bit and made the appraiser look incompetent. I used five comps instead of three, formatted the same way they did, careful to use actual appraisal rules (some of which they ignored) taken from my recent real estate class textbooks. For example, I pointed out that one of the three comps they used backed to a street, while our house backs to a private park. They had made no adjustment for the location. I also contacted the buyer’s agent of the foreclosure and found out how much the buyer had to invest to get it into livable condition ($20k, doing most of the labor themselves). The lender dismissed the letter without a good reason.
We were kind of stuck, as it wasn’t worth it to us to lose the money and time invested so far, and the extra money we would have to come up with would just lower the loan amount (and therefore the payment) anyway.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but everything pointed to them going out of their way to deny us the refi. Even the customer service, waiting periods, red tape, etc. were a much worse experience than they were when getting the original loan, when they bent over backwards to make us happy. There is no doubt in my mind that an appraiser hired by another lender would have come up with a different number, or at least would have taken my contrary evidence into consideration.
I wouldn’t follow the guy around or be otherwise annoying. I had talked to our appraiser before he wrote his report, and he knew that the foreclosure was trashed – but they (or at least this particular one) do not take that into account. If it turns out to be inaccurate, just contest it, and maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.
ParticipantMy wife and I live near Redhawk, but will be moving back to the coast in 2013. Still, we like to tour new construction. The Estates seemed a little gaudy to us, maze-like inside, a waste of square footage. A good deal compared to SD, but expensive for Temecula. You might want to check out the Hemmingway development in Redhawk, also by Standard Pacific, where new homes are being built on the golf course. Smallish lots and the houses aren’t as big as the Estates (something like 2600sf+ I think), but the first model you walk into has an awesome Great Room, more appealing to us than those in the Estates. We’re professional house hunters, so we’ve seen a lot of them, and we loved it. If we end up building a custom, we’ll be copying that room.
But those California rooms are pretty cool…
As for rednecks, there are certainly more of the breed (Cali’s version of them, anyway) in Temecula than in SD – more lifted trucks, tattoos, bikers, etc., but in general, those rednecks are also FAR more friendly than people (hick OR white collar professional) in SD. This is what I will miss most when we move.
Participant[quote=sdduuuude]Bo Jackson would disagree. He rarely lifted weights. His training focused on isometrics and exercises like pushups, pullups and dips.
Being the first athlete voted to all-star teams in two major american sports, I think it prepared him for a bit more than … just doing pushups.[/quote]
There are pro athletes, many of whom are physically gifted beyond mortal man, and above them are the Bo Jacksons and Mike Tysons, who are genetic freaks. Your average untrained middle-aged male who can’t bench 150 can do 100 pushups a day for a year and still not come close to benching 200. Unless you’re a freak, muscle doesn’t work that way.
I know an amateur MMA fighter who does 100 pushups/pullups etc. a day, but endurance is useful in his line of work (160 lb class). However, a life or death situation or fight with an angry drunk isn’t going to be 3 rounds of 3 minutes, it’s going to be 30-60 seconds, and for that, weight and strength trump all else. It’s the reason there are weight classes in MMA and boxing, and for most people the only way to get there is to lift and eat. I’d much rather have 30 more pounds of muscle than a black belt. Of course a little jujitsu training and cardio isn’t a bad idea.
Everybody is different, and a great way to test its effect is to lift and eat for 6 months (an untrained person will gain a decent amount), then stop and do 100 pushups a day for a couple weeks, then lift again. Most people will see their strength drop significantly.
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