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Hit The Road
Mar. 9th, 2020 07:59 pmSeveral of these models have already ended their production runs.
News Of The Whirled
May. 20th, 2019 02:02 pmhttps://www.facebook.com/SurugayaJP/photos/a.612221602143502/2452832728082371/
My favorite shop in Japan now can sell and ship direct to U.S. customers without needing a middleman!
Rumination commencing...
Research Addiction Hopscotch
Mar. 28th, 2017 07:16 pmA research thread that started with a fellow on Facebook posting the pictures of an old Doyusha car model he'd just bought last week has led me in a bunch of directions that appealed to my weirdness.
One such place was the particulars of my sister's first car, a Datsun 1200 (a.k.a. Nissan Sunny). At the time it was built it was the cheapest new car available in the States...and I sort of wonder what manufacturer and model has that title now.
After that, it led me to the story of Isuzu cars in America--which ended (among other places) with the Impulse and the Geo Storm. For years I saw Storms parked in the backs of people's yards and was weirdly attracted. Now I know why--they're four-fifths of the way to being LOTUSES. I wonder now how much work it would entail to fit a Storm with the same kind of Lotus suspension that was optional on Impulses--and what modern Lotus powerplant would work in the engine bay.
Project Research Shopping Madness
Mar. 23rd, 2016 03:12 pm
In my travels today: an action-figure scale pickup truck and an action-figure scale police cruiser in the toy aisles of two different shops.
I'm stepping back from the brink. The money I have in pocket might need to last for a while.
FreeWill Is Digging For Filthy Lucre
Jan. 13th, 2016 08:01 pmDo you want more money, Sagittarius? Are there treasures you wish you could have, but you can't afford them? Do any exciting experiences and life-enhancing adventures remain off-limits because of limited resources? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, now would be an excellent time to formulate plans and take action to gather increased wealth. I don't guarantee total success if you do, but I promise that your chance to make progress will be higher than usual. Cosmic tendencies are leaning in the direction of you getting richer quicker, and if you collaborate with those tendencies, financial magic could materialize.
Oddly enough I'm not playing Powerball. Not because of any moral issue, just that I'm even more broke than usual and can think of many better ways of spending mad money if I had it.
Finally saw the movie Rollover after almost thirty-five years of wanting to; it was on Escape Network overnight. And it has officially become a part of the Hackett Continuum.
I'm sure you won't mind me spoiling it: at a World Trade Center investment bank, an heiress and her banker partner are eyewitnesses (and unwilling catalysts) to a diabolical scheme by a faction of the Saudi government, who (with help from inside men) engineer a massive panic on Wall Street, causing an existing recession to snowball into an all-out Great Depression.
So, this would go a long way to explaining the Hackett world--global economies often determine cycles of war and peace. Wealth breeds corruption; poverty breeds brutality.
As I climb the first hill along my regular hike, both sides of the path are dominated by a plant with glossy, three-lobed leaves. They're so exuberant and cheerful, I'm tempted to caress them, even rub my face in their bright greenery. But I refrain, because they are poison oak. One touch would cause my skin to break out in an inflamed rash that would last for days. I encourage you, too, to forgo contact with any influence in your own sphere that is metaphorically equivalent to the alluring leaves of the poison oak.
I am now in possession of a gift card for my favorite hobby store. But I'm in perhaps the roughest stages of rumination as to whether I should buy something off the shelves now or wait for a bargain to come along. It is wonderful and horrible all at once.
It's about time I did something like this, if only for my own notes. I found This Inflation Calculator today while referencing something on Tumblr, so I'll play with it and show how a Dollar isn't a Dollar over a lifetime. Hmm...backwards or forwards?
* 2010: I go to Tech school after a Spring Break trip to Florida.
What would cost $1 (2010) ~ $1.07 (2015)
* 2006: I attend GenCon Indy with my buddies.
What would cost $1 (2006) ~ $1.16 (2015)
* 1999: I'm working in Gatlinburg for $10/hour as a Night Auditor.
What would cost $1 (1999) ~ $1.40 (2015)
* 1995: I move to Tennessee.
What would cost $1 (1995) ~ $1.53 (2015)
* 1992: I get my A.S. degree from Saint Petersburg College.
What would cost $1 (1992) ~ $1.67 (2015)
* 1988: My sister gets married to her first husband and my brother graduates High School.
What would cost $1 (1988) ~ $2.00 (2015)
* 1985: I leave High School with a G.E.D.
What would cost $1 (1985) ~ $2.17 (2015)
* 1982: My frosh/sophomore year in High School.
What would cost $1 (1982) ~ $2.50 (2015)
* 1979: My family moves from Pennsylvania to Florida.
What would cost $1 (1979) ~ $3.22 (2015)
* 1976: My family moves from Waterford to Gibsonia. Hurray for the Bicentennial!
What would cost $1 (1976) ~ $4.11 (2015)
* 1974: Is there LIFE ON MARS? My family moves to Waterford, PA from Chilicothe, OH.
What would cost $1 (1974) ~ $4.75 (2015)
* 1971: My brother is an infant; my family moves from Erie, PA to Chilicothe.
What would cost $1 (1971) ~ $5.77 (2015)
* 1969: If you believe, they put a Man On The Moon.
What would cost $1 (1969) ~ $6.37 (2015)
* 1967: I'm an infant, my sister is a terrible Two.
What would cost $1 (1967) ~ $7.00 (2015)
"The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison." That quote is attributed to both Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky and Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Regardless of who said it, I urge you to keep it in mind throughout 2015. Like all of us, you are trapped in an invisible prison: a set of beliefs or conditioned responses or bad habits that limit your freedom to act. That's the bad news. The good news is that in the coming months, you are poised to discover the exact nature of your invisible prison, and then escape it.
I'm sure it's work-related or monetary in nature.
Knock Knock On The Door/Who's It For?
Jun. 23rd, 2014 08:14 pmMoney That Isn't, Quite
May. 27th, 2014 06:11 pmI won a $50 gift card for Amazon.com in a sweepstakes over the weekend, and I'm looking forward to spending it.
Because of the event, I decided to look at a bunch of quasi-gift cards I received from car dealerships for GoShoppingMall.com and selectyourgifts.com (which are one and the same company!) that I've had for years. They're still "good" because I hadn't "spent" them.
The business model of American Sales Industries is kind of hard to grasp. You can't exactly buy direct from them like a normal retailer...you have to have been issued a prize card, usually from a car dealership sales event or some other such promotion. The dollar amount shown on the card doesn't mean an actual cash value: it's quasi-credit for inflated prices on the catalog of items, whose actual retail value matches the "shipping and handling" fees, which the consumer has to pay out of pocket (the prize amount then only sets a limit on what you can buy, but doesn't go towards buying anything!). So to actually get "$500" of use out of a prize card, you'd have to spend probably $50 to $100 of real money yourself.
So what's in the catalog? Basically the same kind of stuff you find in the tourist-trap stores like Golden Eagle and Lily's...but not as many of them. Steak knives. Travel mugs. Little tool sets you can keep in your car. Chintzy jewelery and cheap watches. Tote bags and gunny sacks. Obsolete electronics and software.
In theory, my "$1550" in collected quasi-credit would get me 38 of their RC model cars. But I'd have to spend about $645 in real money for the shipping and handling. That's why I haven't used the cards yet.
Randomnity, Again
Mar. 6th, 2014 11:00 pm*) Zvezda in Russia promises that there will be new kits in their Art of Tactic series that will be scale compatible with Wings of Glory WW2...and I'm particularly interested in the Bristol Blenheim bombers. Well, with the politics between Stateside and Moscow being what they are, I shouldn't expect to get these very quickly.
*) REIGN on CW is a mess. It's supposed to be historical but their visual RNA for scenery, props, costuming and casting is jarringly off-the-mark. Or, at least, I THINK it's supposed to be historical.
The standard dictionary says that "righteous" is a word that means virtuous and highly moral. The slang dictionary says that "righteous" describes someone or something that's absolutely genuine and wonderful. Urbandictionary.com suggests that "righteous" refers to the ultimate version of any type of experience, especially "sins of pleasure" like lust and greed. According to my analysis, the coming week will be jampacked with righteousness for you. Which of the three definitions will predominate? It's possible you will embody and attract all three types.
I've entered probably twenty Sweepstakes drawings so far this week, as a reaction to me giving up Publishers Clearinghouse till August. Will it be greed or justice if I win something?
Whose Sign Of The Times?
Nov. 29th, 2013 09:36 pmA couple weeks ago, on my way to the scale model club meeting in Knoxville, I stopped at a BP station for a fill-up and noticed that there was a crew at work painting the pump barriers and the streetlight posts. They were cutting down the plastic temporary signs these places always have ("Play The Lottery Here" or "Special On Pepsi") and throwing them in the dumpster in the back corner of the property.
I'd seriously thought to go retrieve the signage, as the plastic material is good for scratchbuilding scale models. But I had a meeting to go to, and the night was cold, and even on my way back to the house I mulled it over more and came to the same conclusions. It would probably be easier for me just to look up a signmaker and either ask for surplus pieces or buy the raw material through that channel.
I went past the place today. It's no longer a BP. I couldn't take their plastic then; now they can't take MY plastic.
Plastic isn't the future anymore. It's the now.
FP
Expenses Continue
Nov. 25th, 2013 06:14 pmCan't bundle the plans we have left tho'. AT&T stopped doing that, for some reason.
FP
Expensive Autumn
Nov. 24th, 2013 02:56 pmAs said, I'm in the process of a switchover from one form of Internet connectivity to another, and that means a lot of bureaucratic finagling with our service provider...plus some financial outlays.
Got my first bill from the new service today. Tomorrow I'll have to go to the office to link the accounts. The amount of the bill is over $200 but that included hardware and installation and we're promised a $35/month rate.
Meanwhile, in the past weeks I've had to get tires on Moonshine fixed, a traffic citation paid, and several other unforseen expenses dealt with. I'm not so much complaining about that, just frustrated that a time of year that I should be carefree about money and I just feel dread and worthlessness.
FP
Upgradation
Nov. 19th, 2013 11:22 pmHello Motorola NVG510 Wi-Fi DSL Gateway. Rather Manor now is U-Versatile.
Which means that I will be using this computer a lot more and maybe even posting actual posts on this blog more as well.
It took a lot of effort and money to get us here, and I'm very grateful for it, even if it means we have to scale back other plans we'd had this season.
