My dad has a '93 ranger, 4 cylinder engine, long (7ft) bed, single cab, RWD.

It is the yardstick I measure all trucks against, and damn near all of them come up short.

It gets pretty damn close to 20mpg, which isn’t half bad compared to a lot of trucks 30 years newer.

I’ve never felt like I needed more bed, there’s been the odd occasion where an 8ft bed would’ve been nice, but not totally necessary, but I’ve absolutely never felt any desire for a shorter bed. What good is a pickup truck you can’t use to move a couch?

It doesn’t get used for any towing, or serious hauling heavy shit, but it’s carried plenty of loads of camping gear for a few dozen boy scouts, the occasional small load of firewood, etc. I wouldn’t want to load it up with a bed full of gravel, but for the kind of thing the average homeowner/outdoorsman does, it’s plenty of truck.

An extended cab would be nice sometimes, but realistically 90% of the time it’s just me, and most of the rest of the time it’s me and 1 other person or a dog. When the situation really calls for it though, it’s got a bench seat, and you can squeeze a 3rd person in there (I don’t recommend 2 people and a dog though)

The only 2 things I can really knock it for are

That little engine does not go fast. It’s 0-60 time is probably best expressed as “eventually.” Although once with a long stretch of empty highway I did manage to nudge it up a bit past the 85mph that the speedometer goes up to, it was a little terrifying, everything shook and rattled, but it made it out in one piece.

It is terrible in any kind of bad weather or loose gravel/dirt. There is no weight over those rear wheels if you’re not carrying anything, 4wd would not be unwelcome sometimes.

If some company would come out with basically that exact truck with just a few modern upgrades, I’d buy one in a heartbeat. The new rangers and such are practically the same size as the f150s of this truck’s era, and most perplexingly to me, I don’t think anyone makes them with a 7ft bed. With modern engines, I’m sure they could cram an engine in there that gets better MPG and even a bit of a performance increase to do a little bit of light towing and so the truck can get out of its own way. Single cabs are kind of a rarity these days, and even the extended cabs seem like they’re being phased out for a full crew cab. For the like 3 times a year I have more than 1 other person in my car, they can suck it up and sit in the middle of a bench or in a jump seat in the back.

I got my fingers crossed that in a few years maybe we’ll see some more variations fson the maverick. That truck is about the right size for me if they would give me a little more bed space, and I’m really hoping for an AWD plug in hybrid version at some point.

So your current voting options are

1. The guy who is currently allowing a genocide to occur or even helping to perpetuate it, but could potentially be persuaded to take steps against it

2. Vote for 3rd party candidates or abstain from voting so that you can pat yourself on the back and say “I didn’t vote for genocide” even though that option doesn’t have a snowballs chance in hell of winning (no matter how much we wish that were the case)

3. The guy who is fully in support of the genocide and would very much like to support more genocides given the chance

And that’s not even touching on basically every other issue where candidate 1 is also far better (or at least much less bad) than candidate 3.

Voting for 2 takes votes primarily from candidate 1, candidate 3’s supporters by and large have no intention of jumping ship no matter what. So you’re effectively taking votes away from the one candidate who has any chance of winning that we might be able to talk out of genocide, and allowing candidate 3 to win so he can do even more genocide.

I’ve voted 3rd party nearly every opportunity I’ve had for most of my adult life, and I hope at some point we return to some level of sanity and I can feel safe resuming that. Right now, we are faced with 2 possible outcomes, bad and cartoonishly evil, whatever thoughts you have about this being the year of the 3rd party candidate are delusional, the movement just isn’t there right now, and while normally I’d be all about the idea of a protest vote, you only get the one vote, and would you rather use it to send a message, or to actually avoid the worst outcome?

Perfect, as they say, is the enemy of good.

My preference is sort of a modified & extended machete order, though be warned that this is probably going to be a months-long undertaking so you have to be in for the long haul, and may involve searching out some fan edits

For the OT, there are some fan edits that use ports of the special editions and such where they’re appropriate for better effects and such, but use the original versions where the changes made are stupid (so han shoots first) I’d use those if possible.

IV
V

You get the “I am your father” reveal then it’s flashback time

I, some say it’s optional, but the duel of the fates is badass, and you need to introduce Maul somehow
II

Squeeze in at least a “best of” selection of The Clone wars here, I won’t blame you for not doing the whole series.

III (there’s a fan edit that mixes in the parts of the last season of clone wars and Bad Batch that happen concurrently with the movie, use that if possible, if not, save the last season for after this)

Bad Batch
Solo (optional, I enjoyed it for what it was, but it’s optional)
Kenobi
Andor
Rebels (probably do another “best of”) Rogue one (I suppose you could also do rogue one first, but I’d let episode IV stand on its own, so maybe immediately after IV)

VI

Mando
Boba Fett (very optional)
Ahsoka

Then I guess the sequel trilogy if you really want to

If they’re not in it for the long haul, and just want to do the movies

If you just want to do the main series movies

IV
(After considering my above advice, I’d probably slot R1 in here if you want to include it even though it’s not main series)
V
I (more optional here, I’d still do it for completions sake and to lay the groundwork if you think they may want to do TCW and/or Rebels later)
II
III
VI
Sequels if you want to

Just to be clear, you’re not getting downvoted because people disagree with the idea that the oil industry is a problem that’s holding back greener energy sources.

And most probably aren’t down voting because the guillotine remark being a call to violence or anything like that.

The downvotes are purely because that was a very cringy comment to read, it wasn’t funny, and it didn’t really add anything useful to the conversation.

Yeah, in English soldering and welding are different processes, there’s also brazing, which really kind of mucks the terminology up.

I’m sure you’re probably pretty familiar with the actual processes (probably moreso than me, most of my knowledge is second-hand from growing up with my pipefitter dad and hanging out with a few welders,) but just so you know how we use the terms in English (and for anyone else who’s reading this who might be curious)

What we call soldering is a relatively low temperature process, the filler metal gets melted but not the base metal, it’s often done with a soldering iron, or regular butane, propane, or mapp gas torches, usually with no need for an oxygen torch.

Brazing is basically just hotter soldering, the base metals still aren’t getting melted, it may involve an oxygen torch, there’s also some brazing processes that use arc welders, like TIG brazing with silicon bronze filler.

For the non-welder types, you can kind of think of soldering and brazing as metal hot glue. There’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s kind of the general idea.

And welding is when the base metals are getting melted together, and it’s pretty much always going to involve either an arc-welder or oxy-acetylene torch.

Most hardware stores probably stock about a shade 10 lens, which is adequate for most common welding processes. You really only need to go higher for a handful of processes, like carbon arc welding (darker lenses may be recommended in a lot of other cases, but 10 will meet or exceed the minimum requirement in most cases)

I’ve seen some mixed information about exactly what shade is safe for viewing the sun, but they all agree that 10 isn’t adequate, I’ve seen some sources that say anything darker than 10 is ok, others say darker than 12, and still others insist on 14. It’s probably one of those things that depends a lot of factors, how long you look, how sensitive your eyes are, the weather, viewing angle, etc. I’m no expert and certainly don’t take this as legit safety advice, but I’d imagine you could probably steal some quick looks at the sun with shade 10 or so lenses without causing significant damage, but you probably don’t want to stare at the sun for a few hours for the whole duration of the eclipse.

I have seen a lot of auto darkening helmets that go up to a shade 13. So if you have one, think that’s an acceptable level of risk, and can either set it to 13 or trust it to do it automatically (I kind of suspect, though I don’t know for certain, that looking at the sun may not trigger it as reliably as looking at a weld that’s right in front of you) you can certainly try that.

I suppose there’s also the possibility that the equivalents of ANSI or OSHA or whoever sets the standards for welding lenses in your country, may use a different system or terminology than we do here in the states, which could make most of what I’m saying here largely irrelevant.

Personally I have a pair of glasses made by Phillips safety with shade 14 glass that I used for the last eclipse and will use again for this one. I certainly felt well-protected, the sun was just a dim circle in the sky. Of course the apparent brightness is only part of the issue since UV light is invisible and that’s where a lot of the real danger comes from, but a shade or two lower probably would have still made the sun comfortable to look at, though I can’t comment on the actual safety.

1. Welding mask, soldering doesn’t usually require any special eye protection

2. As others have said, only the darkest shades of welding glass provide adequate protection, and the ones that do are fairly uncommon, most hardware stores and even many welding supply places won’t won’t have dark enough masks or glasses on-hand normally. They may be able to order them, but don’t expect to pick them up off the shelf at your local store.

My family’s first computer baxk in the 90s was a hand-me-down power Mac from a relative. Between whatever they had done with it before we got it, and what we managed to screw up as inexperienced computer users playing around with it, it had it’s share of little quirks.

At some point we managed to turn on some screen reading function, and set the voice profile to something singsongy. It also had an error that popped up every time you started it up. The result of this is that almost 3 decades later I still have this ridiculous little tune seared into my brain after hearing my computer literally sing it who knows how many hundreds, maybe thousands of times

The globalfax software has successfully installed, however, since no fax device control panels were loaded, faxing has been disabled

Put up with it for several years, none of us knew or really cared enough to figure out how to get rid of that error or turn off the text-to-speech.

Probably my biggest wish for Google maps is an option for me to turn off any suggestions to make a u turn.

Maybe it’s different in other parts of the world, but around me 90% of the time it’s not even legal to make a u turn where it wants me to, most of the rest of the time it’s legal but kind of a bad, dangerous idea to try to do one there.

If I’m not at an actual dead-end I’m not making a u turn. Just reroute me around the block, have me do a lap around a parking lot, take me to the next-closest gas station, whatever you need to do, but a u-turn ain’t happening on my watch.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the lighter gas we get here in the states is also a mix of gases, I’d be lying if I said I ever read the whole can so maybe it even says so somewhere in the fine print, but I’ve only ever seen it marked as butane here, so I figured I’d throw it out there in case someone reading it tried to refill their lighter from their grill tank

Your answer is probably going to depend on the language and your learning style and preferences.

Personally I’ve found Duolingo to work pretty well as an English speaker learning esperanto, I can also recommend Lernu if you happen to be interested in esperanto. I’ve personally never had much luck learning other languages no matter how I try so I can’t really offer any recommendations for other languages, but it’s probably worth to keep in mind that what does or doesn’t work for others may be different for you, so don’t be afraid to try out some different programs to see what works best for you

Usually problems with refillable butane lighters are because they have air trapped in them, and they need to be bled, lots of guides with pictures and such for that online but basically just take a small screwdriver and press the little fill valve until it stops hissing then refill it, do it in a well ventilated place away from sparks and open flames of course

Sometimes that valve is also slotted to make some adjustments and you can try fiddling with that

Yes, they use the same butane as other lighters, it’s not the same thing as lighter fluid in case that’s what you have in mind, it comes in sort of a little aerosol can with a skinny tube sticking out the top instead of a spray nozzle. I’m not aware of any propane lighters out there

Also, in my personal experience, torch lighters just tend to go bad after a while and no amount of fiddling with them will make them reliable again. To be fair I’ve always had cheap torch lighters so maybe that’s just a case of getting what you pay for, maybe nicer lighters are more reliable.

The name comes from the casaba melon, a variety of honeydew, because the lab was “on a melon kick that year,” naming various projects after melons and having already used up all the good ones.

I can appreciate that sort of naming convention.

The organs that aquatic creatures use to breathe

Edit: I see now that autocorrect did me dirty

Shrimp vs prawn is colloquial, not a scientific classification, so it varies from place to place and person to person, and depending on the specific animal we’re talking about, but in general

The ones we call shrimp tend to:

• Live in salt water
• Be smaller
• Have curled bodies
• Belong to the sub-order pleocytema
• Have plate-like girls * gills*

And the ones we call prawns tend to:

• Live in fresh water
• Be larger
• Have straight bodies
• Helong to the sub-order dendrobranghiata
• Have branching hills gills

Customer is who purchase the product, consumer is the end-user, the actual person or entity that will use it.

If you buy, for example, a Samsung TV from Walmart. Walmart is Samsung’s customer, but they are not the consumer. Walmart, in some fashion, is paying Samsung for that TV and reselling it to you. You are the consumer of that TV and a customer of both Samsung and Walmart.

Hypothetically if you’re gifted a Samsung TV and spent no money on it yourself, you are technically a samsung consumer, but not a customer.

In common usage, the terms are often going to be used as synonyms, if you have a problem with your TV you’re going to call Samsung customer service, whether or not you actually are technically a customer.

I can confirm that such a thing exists, because I once owned such a book, though I can’t give you any specific detail about it because it was probably 20 years ago and I have no idea where it has ended up since then and my memory is a bit fuzzy.

I was in probably about 5th or 6th grade, but a pretty advanced reader, and I don’t remember where I picked it up, but maybe that might give you some idea where I might have looked for books. The majority of books I had back then either came from Barnes and Noble or scholastic book fairs. It was definitely a softcover book, and I’m fairly certain the cover was black with one of the usual portraits of Shakespeare you’ve probably seen in 1000 different places. I am far from certain but if I had to guess it may have been published by penguin.

I believe more or less all of the dialogue from the plays was there and mostly intact, but padded out with extra descriptions and such so that it read like a regular story and not a play.

I want to say it had a couple of the better known plays, but there’s a chance it only had Romeo and Juliet, my memory is very fuzzy on this.

Dialogue was still very Shakespearean, so you do have to be willing to wade through that a bit, but it was definitely still far more approachable than as a play.

Yeah, the handful of chapters I read were amazing, McCarthy’s writing style really sells the post-apocalyptic vibe, so very blunt and to-the-point, almost like it’s the writer saying “we’re all fucked and I’m not going to sugar-coat it because there’s no point anyway”

I didn’t even have a bad case of pandemic depression, I’ve been lucky and these last few years have actually been really good to me, the pandemic and everything since have probably been the best years of my life, but I don’t live in a bubble and The Road was not the right vibe to go with all of the bullshit in the world.

Just around the time COVID hit I had started reading The Road. Man is it a bleak book, which isn’t something I normally have a problem with, but it hit way too close to home at a time when grocery store shelves were looking pretty picked-over and people were getting into fights over toilet paper.

I put it down and haven’t gotten around to picking it back up yet.

Possibly the worst part is that I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump for the last few years, and I was just really starting to work my way out of it and had read a few books but that kind of hit my reset button and I haven’t been able to really get restarted again.

I do intend to go back and restart it at some point though, I really enjoyed it, just really unfortunate timing.

Ours was a hand-me-down power Mac, I believe a 6100, I don’t remember the exact year but would have been no earlier than '95 or '96, making me about 5, maybe a couple years older.

Didn’t have the internet on it at the time but did eventually get it after a couple years.

At some point we managed to turn on a screen reading function and never figured out how to turn it off, and it was on some sort of singsongy voice setting, there was an error that would come up every time we turned on the computer that is still sealed into my brain from hearing the computer sing it who knows how many times

The globalfax software has successfully installed, however, since no fax device control panels were loaded faxing has been disabled

We had a bunch of CDs with demos of various games, I’m pretty sure they were freebies from some magazine we acquired somewhere. In particular I remember having a demo for Bolo, a tank game, a warcraft -like game (maybe actually warcraft, I can’t remember) and some sort of point-and click adventure game.

Other than that, we had mostly educational games, a lot of jumpstart type games, widget workshop, adventures with oslo

Around 2001 we eventually got a PC, a Compaq Presario, never really went back to Mac after that, but I do remember that old Mac fondly

I’m admittedly not a huge audiophile, and these days I don’t have many uses for earbuds or headphones in my daily life, but while $40 or so earbuds used to serve me just fine sound-wise, but I went through a lot of them. My earbuds lived a rough life, getting mangled up in my pockets, bags, the occasional trip through the washing machine, etc.

Then I got a pair of Shure earbuds after doing a bit of searching around for the most indestructible ones. I didn’t get their highest -end model, I think they ran me about $100, but they’ve held up for like a decade at this point. Part of it is probably that I’m a bit more careful with them than I was with cheaper buds, but they’ve still seen plenty of abuse and neglect.

They don’t get much use anymore since my phone doesn’t have a headphone jack, but I’m pretty sure I can buy a Bluetooth adapter or USB cable and slap it on them if I felt the need because the cable is replaceable, which is nice.

I haven’t gone earbud shopping in a decade so I can’t really say if their quality has held up, or if there are better options today. I haven’t quite gotten onboard with Bluetooth buds yet, so I can’t really comment on them.