@Long_Voyager94 It's like they knew you were coming, and tried to prepare for it.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/39150/meet-the-90s-dodge-caravan-off-road-minivan-that-almost-made-it-to-production

They should be.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

@essextee Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day; sell a man a fishing pole, he may never learn to fish and then come back to buy a fish.

Starting tomorrow morning, my @KITT222 bedazzled Clubman and I will be heading from Houston to the SF Bay Area. First stop, Albuquerque...? Google says it'd be 13+ hours. Might be a bit ambitious. Which is fine; I have no reservations or scheduled meetup, so stopping a bit short upsets nothing.

Primary objective is offloading a car and a storage unit as mentioned in my recent Swappo post.

I shall be preaching the good word of Oppo all along the way. Which is to mean I'll be playing my music loudly with the windows down.

Feel free to make offerings to the mechanical gods for my safe journey.

Not a bad shot, though, yeah?

@Snakesm13 continued saga for his 997 CS reminded me of when I bought my 987 Cayman:

I was an off-site contract employee based out of Texas which was then asked to do a rotation at the client office in California to learn more of the extent and inner workings of the project. That stint was supposed to be 1-month long; I stayed on project and in California for 2.5 years.

This was fine for me as I had only just returned to Texas and hadn't gotten my own place to stay, and the car I had bought for myself there my parents graciously stored in their garage until about 9 months later when we sold it (back to the dealer I had bought it from, and for the same price; that kinda being its own story).

So. I'm in California, living out of a hotel, getting per diem, and working 65+ hour weeks. I was making really good money and it was becoming apparent I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Then I started car shopping.

My Cayman was offered as a CPO out of Porsche Livermore. Long story short, I test drove it, I loved it, the price was very fair, and I began the process to buy it. Then came the snag: I could not claim residence in California.

So what did I do? I did a tour of, and signed the lease on, an apartment during my lunch break the following day. That evening, I brought the lease package with me to Porsche Livermore as proof of residence. And I bought my Cayman.

So, what have you done to buy a car?

@nauraushaun You don't. The intensity of the dumb just settles down over time, but every now and again you really think back to that moment and remind yourself how dumb you once had been. And you subconsciously remain forever grateful that you don't actually forget, and are forever better for it.

GIB.

GIB.

GIB.

GIB.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

@taylor-martin

Me watching this thread:

@wrong-wheel-drive My absolute favorite of his is the one where he pointedly addresses how horrible Houston is, and how it was a big inspiration for him paying more attention to city planning.

Sincerely,
A Houstonian.

@roadkilled God, I love McSweeney's...

@carsoffortlangley When working for a used car dealership, I couriered a '50's Chevy-somethingorother from an owner's house back to the dealership across the city. Can't recall the exacts, but it works out to be a 30'ish year delta.

Change, and yet stay exactly the same...

@hammerheadfistpunch I feel a little gross after reading that...

@tripper How much do you think impostor syndrome is a facet of one's personality (basically any non-Type-A person) and has little to nothing to do with a person's qualifications or learned competence?

And then how do you square that with the Peter Principle, in which most people are promoted to the point of incompetence?

Contestant Number 1, you have 5 minutes: go.

@whoistheleader @Chariotoflove Love me some garfield minus garfield.

@whoistheleader The QX80 has an MSRP $20,000 greater than the Sequoia. And it's hideous. Give me the Sequoia.

@rusty-vandura That is one of the ugliest 2008 cars for sale right now...