Random Thoughts....

Spectre said:
And here we go: AP is reporting that the Japanese utility has stated that there is a fire in the Miyagi prefecture reactor complex; the turbine building is spewing smoke. The turbine building is separate from the reactor itself and containment is still being maintained. News choppers are on the way, no injuries reported.
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They're probably referring to this report from Japan.
 
The big news media are finally start to spool up and get their reporting staff together, so I am going to stop my news aggregation efforts here as the media is now doing it by itself. Enough live news feeds and primary sources have been posted for any interested party to follow the progress of this on their own as they wish. Anyone wishing to take over is welcome to do so.

It's looking like the parents in CA will probably be safe, and all of my .jp friends and acquaintances are safe, so I can relax back into the role of a spectator. It's a royal bitch to monitor several text and video feeds simultaneously. :p
 
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calvinhobbes said:
He has already apologised. :)
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Yeah. Sorry. Kind of stressed, worrying about my friends. Apparently Indonesia shouldn't be so badly hit. I haven't heard from my friend in Japan yet though (and wouldn't expect to, I'm sure he's got more important things on his mind). All I can do is keep crossing my fingers for him and his family.
 
What's with the weather recently? Floods in Australia and Earthquakes in Japan. To say it's getting ridiculous is an understatement.
 
Earthquakes aren't weather.
 
Natural Disasters will always be an occurrance to the earth, no matter where and when they will be. It just happens to be more publicised and also more awareness than those that happened centuries ago.
 
MWF said:
Earthquakes aren't weather.
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You've been viewing this thread for some time now and you're viewing it as I type this. It's obviously a sensitive issue, some people have already been more than a little touchy about it and you're probably waiting to make just the right contribution at just the right time and in just the right way. And this is your contribution? Picking on a fifteen year old over a simple mistake in his wording?



I must spread some rep around before neg repping MWF again.

EDIT: lol, He's already given me negative rep for this.
 
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nsx_23 said:
Thanks to the long weekend coming up the roads are, once again, clogged with idiots in the fast lane doing 20km/hr below the speed limit whilst towing their big-ass caravn with a pathetic 4-cylinder hatchback.
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I've never really understood why it's such a problem for you guys.

Out here, people who pull caravans (we call them campers or RV's) use vehicles actually designed to pull them properly, ie.: big V8 or V10 diesel pickup trucks specifically designed for towing, not pathetic little hatchbacks with four-pots. They can go the normal speed limit (100 kph / 60 mph) and they keep up with traffic just fine.

Someone I know actually owns a semi (lorry) truck for hauling a massive fifth-wheel RV (Three slide-outs, on-board laundry facilities ... the works. Think, that massive RV Top Gear had on their home-made camper-van episode, only it needs to be towed instead of driving itself). The owner is actually a chemist, so she runs it on used cooking oil; I hear it costs about $50 in fuel to drive ~400 miles in that thing.
 
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Austere said:
I must spread some rep around before neg repping MWF again.

EDIT: lol, He's already given me negative rep for this.
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Both of you could avoid this problem by each putting the other onto your ignore list.
 
I have a canker sore on my tongue. It's Man In the Iron Mask-levels of dull, perpetual pain here.
 
Hawaii is expecting the first wave anytime now according to the BBC.

Indonesia have just down graded their Tsuami warning - the waves hitting there are down to 0.5 Mtrs. Still this is serious for some of the lower level Islands.

UN offers assistance to any applicable country.

It looks like there has been a significant loss of life.
 
epp_b said:
I've never really understood why it's such a problem for you guys.

Out here, people who pull caravans (we call them campers or RV's) use vehicles actually designed to pull them properly, ie.: big V8 or V10 diesel pickup trucks, not pathetic little hatchbacks with four-pots, specifically designed for towing. They can go the normal speed limit (100 kph / 60 mph) and they keep up with traffic just fine.

Someone I know actually owns a semi (lorry) truck for hauling a massive fifth-wheel RV (Three slide-outs, on-board laundry facilities ... the works. Think, that massive RV Top Gear had on their home-made camper-van episode, only it needs to be towed instead of driving itself). The owner is actually a chemist, so she runs it on used cooking oil; I hear it costs about $50 in fuel to drive ~400 miles in that thing.
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Basically because people are idiots. Majority of people here buy cars because they need something for their daily commute. Something that's cheap and can fit the kids in for the school run. It's why Hyundai do so well here. And of course they then hook up their decrepit old caravans which havent seen a road in 20 years, to rumble down the Hume hwy at 80 in a car that is plainly not up to the job. To add to that misery, they're usually driven by old people (grey nomads) who rarely drive to the speed limit anyway.

They hook up their Kia Optima, stumble out of the driveway, knock over their neighbours bins and terrorise the kids on their skateboards. After two hours getting lost in surburbia, they wander onto a nearby motorway doing 50kph where the speed limit is 110kph and proceed to hang their oversized noses over their steering wheels completely oblivious to the chaos in their wake.

There isn't really that 'bigger is better' mentality so prevalent in the States. Majority of Australians live in suburbs surrounding their capital city where such a vehicle is largely not needed anyway.
 
epp_b said:
I've never really understood why it's such a problem for you guys.

Out here, people who pull caravans (we call them campers or RV's) use vehicles actually designed to pull them properly, ie.: big V8 or V10 diesel pickup trucks specifically designed for towing, not pathetic little hatchbacks with four-pots. They can go the normal speed limit (100 kph / 60 mph) and they keep up with traffic just fine.

Someone I know actually owns a semi (lorry) truck for hauling a massive fifth-wheel RV (Three slide-outs, on-board laundry facilities ... the works. Think, that massive RV Top Gear had on their home-made camper-van episode, only it needs to be towed instead of driving itself). The owner is actually a chemist, so she runs it on used cooking oil; I hear it costs about $50 in fuel to drive ~400 miles in that thing.
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This is what I am trying to explain to people for a few decades now.....but here they will keep insisting its fine to tow a 2 ton caravan with a 80hp berlingo, "loadrating? towrating? towing licence? never heard of such things, my licence allows me to drive a 3.5T vehicle, the car weighs 1200kg's, so I can two 2300 kg's with it", wich is so wrong, people should be shot for saying it.....and then they wonder why they end up in a ditch after they get a gust of wind.
 
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Jay said:
Both of you could avoid this problem by each putting the other onto your ignore list.
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I respect you and your opinion and I just wanted to say that I did have him on my ignore list and I was doing a pretty good job of avoiding him, even if i do say so myself. But he responded to a few posts I'd made in a games thread and I kept having to reveal the posts to see if he'd given the correct answers to the questions I was asking.
After doing that a few times I decided I might as well abandon the whole ignore list thing and just ignore him the good old fashioned way. But he has a way of getting under my skin. He's neg repped me three times in less than a week now... i've barely even posted that many times.... and the rep comments can sometimes be annoying to me but I think that's what's he's aiming for to be honest.

I really, truly, honestly would love to ignore him and just forget he even exists but I do admit that he would need to ignore me too for it to work.... and so far he hasn't.

EDIT: whaaat? How did I mange that? That was meant to be a private message to you. Sigh. Too many tabs open and I entered it in the wrong one. I might as well leave it here tho, maybe he'll see it and get the messge.

DOUBLE EDIT: I'm just going to cut my losses and go to bed.
 
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There isn't really that 'bigger is better' mentality so prevalent in the States. Majority of Australians live in suburbs surrounding their capital city where such a vehicle is largely not needed anyway.
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I don't think it exists to the same degree in Canada either. We just know that when you need a proper tool for the job, you get the proper tool ;)
 
Gotta love the Internet for making enemies of people who live on opposite ends of the planet.

Also, I've been looking for this ever since the episode aired:

Doombringer-logo.jpg


Scooty-Puff Junior suuuuuuucccks!
 
Austere said:
I respect you and your opinion and I just wanted to say that I did have him on my ignore list and I was doing a pretty good job of avoiding him, even if i do say so myself. But he responded to a few posts I'd made in a games thread and I kept having to reveal the posts to see if he'd given the correct answers to the questions I was asking.
After doing that a few times I decided I might as well abandon the whole ignore list thing and just ignore him the good old fashioned way. But he has a way of getting under my skin. He's neg repped me three times in less than a week now... i've barely even posted that many times.... and the rep comments can sometimes be annoying to me but I think that's what's he's aiming for to be honest.

I really, truly, honestly would love to ignore him and just forget he even exists but I do admit that he would need to ignore me too for it to work.... and so far he hasn't.
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You could always accept the sincere offer I made you some time ago to bury the hatchet. I have no wish to wage war with you or anyone else here. We disagreed over something some while back, but as far as I am concerned it's water under the bridge. And any neg rep I gave you wasn't personal, but genuinely because I thought you were being unnecessarily inflammatory as I would with anyone else.

Anyway, once again here is an olive branch. It's up to you whether or not to accept it. Either way if you have any ongoing issues with me that you want to discuss then there is always PMs.
 
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