Yeah, I took it to a few local places, and none of them would do anything like that. I lived in the boonies at the time and didn’t want to tow it all around everywhere. I’d already driven it like that for 4-5 weeks, and the left spring was pressing against the underside of the bed. One good pothole and it would have likely punched through lol. Figured I’d pressed my luck long enough. I had a welder and could have probably fixed it up good enough for farm use, but no way would it have passed inspection.

Just parted it out since everything else was in great shape (especially the transmission that had been rebuilt not 4 months prior 😢)

Ended up just buying the hybrid I drive now since its main use was for my 110 mile daily commute.

Yeah, my 2004 not-quite beater truck came to its end that way. The frame rusted out where the leaf spring shackle attached, and there’s no real way to fix that. Surprised I was able to drive it as long as I did with it like that (it was my daily driver at the time lol).

For my OG beater truck, I got a lot of its body parts from a local salvage yard. Some of the parts I got were rusted in the same spots as mine, just less so (e.g. the quarter panels on S10s were notorious for rusting out).

Replacing the bed isn’t too bad if you have someone to help you lift it on/off and you can find a donor in good shape. I had to pull the bed off my old beater truck to replace the fuel pump, and did the work myself (plus an extra set of hands to lift the bed on/off, naturally) On that one, it was only like 6 bolts holding it down. Hardest part was that two were seized up and had to drill them out (and replace the bolts afterward).

Unless there’s major pushback from car buyers in the next 10 years, I’m going to be holding on to my 2017 hybrid for as long as possible. May even look into doing an EV conversion on it or possibly some aftermarket way to make it a plug-in hybrid (there is a plug-in hybrid version of my car, and I’ve been looking to trade-in for that, but I cannot find any within 250 miles of me).

Yep!

I’ve seen enough EV conversions to know it’s not rocket science. The instrument cluster just displays the values relayed to it over CAN bus, most of the sensors are the same as they are on a conventional ICE vehicle, and the only real difference is the powertrain. There’s some consideration for the battery placement and management, but that’s pretty much it. Leave the touchscreens in the backseat for the kids, and give me physical buttons to operate the vehicle.

You missed “synergize backwards overflow” but other than that, I think you hit most of the business buzzwords.

Maybe if they’d focus more on making them functional vehicles instead of smartphones on wheels, it would simplify that problem.

Just updated again. Looks like she did come back for him. At least, I’m assuming she did. They normally don’t wander off from where their mom stashes them.

Not yet.

Got about 30 minutes of shade left in that spot, and about an hour before I have to let the dogs out. I’m afraid I may have to move him.

Luckily, I think it’s the same one that I usually see in the back yard, so I can prob move him there without momma having too much trouble finding him. Gonna wear gloves and try to minimize the amount of my scent that may get transferred.

We have this problem in WV, too, but also with coal mines.

Mining companies have to put up reclamation bonds to get permits, but those bonds aren’t even close to the cost of cleanup. So companies just abandon ship, forfeit the bonds (which are far less than the cost of cleanup/remediation), and the taxpayers are left to foot the cleanup bill. In the meantime, they leach heavy metals and other toxic crap into nearby communities.

Took all of my restraint not to boop it. lol.

There are. The problem is getting them off their asses and out to vote.

Well, this American sure does and will be voting in November. Suggest everyone does the same.

Thanks for this.

FYI: The Tesseract UI puts MBFC badges on posts with their bias/credbility ratings and provides a short report and link to the full report on their site.

I wonder how hard it would be to pull this list into a JSON file to use as an additional reference?

ET, and I think someone dug those up semi-recently.

Edit: Yep: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/video-games/those-old-e-t-atari-games-dug-desert-sold-108-n418971

For a very long time, every disk in my catalog was a repurposed AOL Floppy Disk with a piece of tape over the write-protect hole and a Post-It taped over the label. I didn’t have to buy blank floppies from like 1994 to about 1999 when they switched to CDs.

Man, I kinda miss the days when junk mail was legitimately useful.

I run the same 500kb limit on my instance. It was becoming restrictive, so I added a feature to Tesseract that optionally preprocesses uploads to webp, client side, before uploading (with a user configurable quality level) which has worked well. Might be something to consider or perhaps can patch a similar preprocess step into your default UI.

One thing to remember is they didn’t have notes, earpieces or teleprompters.

Trump just straight up rambled out a stream of bullshit, lies, and projection every time he had the mic. Biden was not only answering factually, but also had to counter bullshit. They were on the same stage but playing two completely different games.

And when the debate is analyzed down to “who was more truthful?”, Biden slightly flubbing a fact/figure will be treated near equally to Trump straight up spewing out bullshit.

Trump still bragging about “acing” his cognitive test (the one he took to rule out dementia). Then had the gall to say “I’d like to see [Biden] take one”.

Really wish Dark Brandon would have come out to play. “Woman, Man, Camera, Podium. There. That’s what you keep bragging about”