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[quote=scaredyclassic]men are risky. I agree. i would never trust anyone who likes kids. better to go with a kid hater, if push comes to shove.

best day care workers for me are female atheists who despise children. biased, yeah, but that’s my opinion.

that said, we had a male day care guy for years and I trusted him 100%.

personally, I can be trusted 100 %, but its never an issue because I’m wayyyyy too paranoid to be alone with anyone else’s kids[/quote]

I never wanted kids, until I had one, and then I wanted another. I still can’t get past my dislike of other people’s kids, though. I know it’s irrational, and I can see the flaws in my own kids, but the flaws in others just seem magnified and irritate the hell out of me. I suppose I would be an ideal caregiver for that reason, except I get the paranoia thing, and refuse to be in a room alone with someone else’s kid even for a moment. Even if it’s a relative.

I still occasionally find myself being the one watching several kids while the moms go out for pedis or whatever. “Watching” the kids consists of me drinking beer in the garage. They’re 7-10, and can police themselves for the most part. They know not to push each other into the 60 degree pool. And if they do, they can swim.

To zk’s point, my 7-year-old (beautiful and shy) is seriously involved in competitive dance, and has an opportunity for one private lesson with a particular male instructor, which is apparently considered an honor. I’m cringing at the thought of it and not looking forward to the discussion with her mommy where I have to refuse to allow it. She’ll get my reasoning, but she’s more trusting than I am.

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[quote=ucodegen]Lets see – shooting lasted about 6 minutes, armed security stood outside for about 4 minutes, knowing that there was a shooting inside – what, to prevent anyone from going inside and stopping it? Oh – thats right, they are from Broward County. Sorry, but I feel particularly snarky on this one.

PS: Now Broward County deputies will now carry rifles on school grounds — are you sure a bigger gun will make them feel man enough to take on one shooter with 4 officers? Maybe a rifle is not big enough.[/quote]

Body armor would help more than bigger guns. AR-15s make a unique sound, so they knew what they were up against, which is terrifying. A 9mm round hitting a non-vital area won’t kill you. An AR-15 round can have an exit wound several inches across – so the kid doesn’t need to hit a vital area to damage it. Get shot in the arm and you might lose the arm. They are also bizarrely light and have almost no recoil, which makes them easy to wield by my 7-year-old daughter, let alone an angry teenager.

Not making excuses for them. Multiple officers should have had the collective balls to go in there.

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Traffic would be a lot smoother. I don’t think I’d be entirely comfortable riding in a self-driving car unless all the other cars were self-driving, too. No computer will be able to anticipate the stupidity of some human drivers, and that starts with understanding unwritten rules of the road, like staying away from beaters. If someone is middle-aged and spent their whole life making choices that resulted in them driving a 30-year-old dented Cavalier, they’re more likely to be dangerous. The same goes for monster trucks – many of those drivers seem to be blissfully unaware that their vehicles take much longer to stop and they tailgate anyway. Would the software know to move over a lane? Maybe that will be a patch.

Haha – “Dad, can you pick me up?”
“Sorry sweetie, maybe later. My car is updating.”

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[quote=spdrun]Electric cars are great.
Autonomous cars phoning home, spying on people, recording, logging, data-mining, slicing, and dicing their trips are a fucking awful idea.[/quote]I think it’s inevitable. There are too many drivers in the U.S. who aren’t smart enough or skilled enough to be in control of a two-ton vehicle. The number of lives saved will be staggering – and that statistic will be far more visible than the sinister side, which will be downplayed by both politicians and manufacturers. California will be on the forefront, and I’ll have long since left for Idaho.

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I think Shoveler might be right, and here’s why – a very common scenario in the future will be privately-owned autonomous electric vehicles that stay busy giving rides while the owners aren’t using them. The income that it would take to cover the car payment and electricity would be ridiculously low – at a wild guess, a handful of rides/day at 25-50 cents/mile. That’s bus pass territory for the lowest income brackets. There would need to be some regulation, because there may be far more cars available than customers. I can see a market for small vans with routes decided by computer, though – a few people from my Temecula neighborhood going to the same area in San Diego, for example.

I would personally prefer a ride to the bay area in an autonomous car (mine or someone else’s) over flying or high-speed rail (and I mean actual high-speed rail, not the joke currently under construction).

More predictions: California will raise gas taxes so high that most people start buying electric, but the roads will continue going to shit, so they’ll need to enact a mileage tax on everyone, which of course they will promptly spend on something other than roads. Even some gearheads will realize that many all-electric cars are so fast they don’t need that flat-plane crank V8 anymore, and go to the dark side of silent running. They will be mocked by the rest of us even as we lose to them in drag races. Uber and Lyft drivers will be out of a job. Internal combustion engines will be outlawed in LA and SF first, maybe shortly before (20 years?) human drivers are outlawed in the entire state – which will also reduce that bay area trip time to 3-4 hours at the speeds allowed when there are no distracted monkeys at the controls. First responders will have the only vehicles with steering wheels. Many traffic lights and stop signs will be removed, as they aren’t needed with a linked network of autonomous vehicles. It will be interesting to see how they handle pedestrians in those situations – the cars would stop for them, but that would mess with the efficiency of traffic. Maybe foot bridges/elevators in the metros. Gas stations will be converted to charging stations, with the only functional gas pumps found near race tracks, which will eventually be the only places a real, breathing motor is allowed to run. Towed there by a self-driving electric truck, of course.

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We have one of those, but it isn’t nearly so dramatic. It’s actually made our new development far more social (in real life) than our previous neighborhood. There’s a block party for every holiday.

Complaints about drones, minor mud slides, and that one guy who insists on walking his big dogs off leash is about as bad as it gets.

Maybe it will get worse as more people discover it.

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[quote=FlyerInHi]You can find something that cash flows nicely in riverside county. High demand for rentals right now.[/quote]I’ve considered buying a couple rolling acres in Temecula, nicely landscape it, put in two restroom/dressing room buildings (bride and groom), and then undercut the wineries for weddings by half. Maybe wifey could become a photographer.

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[quote=flu]there is a sense of relief not have a large debt load hanging over your head.[/quote]Agreed. If I had the wherewithal to pay off my primary, in this market, I would do that before buying a rental in the inland empire (buying a rental in flyover country is another story). Yes, you have the property tax responsibility, but you’ll have that anyway. If you had to, you could rent out a room to cover it. Or rent the whole house out and get an apartment. We specifically bought our house because of the separate casita, currently rented to the inlaws.

In case I suddenly kick the bucket, I made my wife promise she will use the life insurance money to pay off the mortgage.

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[quote=barnaby33]To me anyone who says audiophile and 5.1 in the same paragraph you suspect. Surround sound is for movies not music.[/quote]I’m beginning to lean the same way. For my garage man cave, I have an 8 watt tube amp w/upgraded tubes hooked up to two Klipsch RP series floor standers and a powered 10″ (I refuse to call it a sub). For music it is sublime, works well for movies, too. I think adding more channels would ruin it.

It’s a bit jury rigged:
TV > optical to RCA converter > switch box > amp < switch box < bluetooth receiver < Spotify

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[quote=newdad]It seemed like a straightforward thing. Just unhook the existing one, attach a new flex pipe to regulator/cooktop , use detergent to check for leaks and then turn it on.[/quote]
In my experience, hooking up a gas line is actually easier than water plumbing. As long as you know he did it right (I’ve had movers forget to use sealant), there will be no issues.

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[quote=flu]The ND Miata are actually pretty good stock form. The only complaint people have were the stock suspension we’re a little soft. I bought coilovers two weeks into ownership. For like $980.[/quote]
If I end up with an ND, that would be first on my list. I’ve also been thinking of doing something crazy like replacing the steering with a quicker ratio hydraulic setup. I have no idea what would be involved with that.

[quote]I think I am #3 in line for the install on October, so I’ll let you know how it goes.[/quote]
Thanks, I appreciate the thought.

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I’ve heard good things about Goodwin. I’m a big fan of turbos, but I think I’d prefer a supercharger for a canyon carver.

Is it just me or is CARB being slightly less evil lately? It used to take years to get even an intake certified.

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[quote=flu]…when Edelbrock releases the CARB legal supercharger.[/quote]
Oooh, really? That might be the trigger for me.

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Not to come down on your car, but…

Wifey runs a European auto repair place. They work on everything from Boxsters to Lamborghinis. She always wanted a Mini. The grumpy old mechanics (20-30 years experience each) told her “never buy a mini.” She was then offered a crazy good deal on one, through a connection at the shop, which had just had its motor replaced (at about 50k miles), and the mechanics still said “do not do this.”

They’re most definitely fun, though.

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Elsinore is fairly nasty in many parts, would definitely prefer Menifee (about the same distance north but off the 215). Temecula is far nicer than either, lower crime, much better schools, and better weather. Murrieta is Temecula Junior and pretty nice as well, slighter cheaper and slightly hotter.

Corona is more “grown up” than Temecula, nicer nice areas and worse bad areas, higher median income.

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