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Pontiac of the Month

FBIRD69's 1969 Firebird

2024 March
of the Month

ponta2147

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Everything posted by ponta2147

  1. I've illegally downloaded music, but usually just until I've decided that I like enough of the band's songs to buy the album, in which case I'll just rip that to my computer and replace the old songs. If I only like one or two of their songs, they wouldn't have gotten any money from me anyway. Generally I don't download too much anymore, 'cause I usually listen to Pandora online radio.
  2. Good weather out here in Chicago too, low 70s at least. Hope to take advantage of it before all the rain comes in next week.
  3. Good book about this: The Wal-Mart Effect. It neither praises nor condemns Wal-Mart, it's just a really objective look and the benefits and downfalls of the way this company operates. Very enlightening.
  4. ponta2147

    Logo design.

    That's when you turn around and ask if they give their surgeon advice on how to perform open heart surgery on them... lol! Most people think designers are "code monkeys" or "program monkeys" that happen to know how to operate a bit of hardware/software to do whatever you want. And I think unfortunately we keep letting them think that by saying yes... I know I do. It's hard to be like "Um, no, you have no training/schooling in this, I don't tell you how to do your job so plz don't tell me how to do mine" when people ask for a Bright Yellow Background With Purple Comic Sans Text and Make It Web 2.0. Anyway I liked that your logo worked in one-color and in full-color, I just wonder how the logo would look in small sizes, like on a business card, because you have so much detail in there.
  5. ponta2147

    My Portfolio

    Nice. Seems like you've got a distinct "style" you like working with, but obviously are capable of a lot of different things. I take it Illustrator is your specialty? Or at least the program they let you use the most... lol. Have you built an online portfolio for this stuff yet?
  6. Yeah, is this on schedule or reschedule or what?
  7. In terms of concept cars, there's probably a pretty good overlap with Industrial Design, which is something you do go to art school for. (Industrial design is the design of 3-D things, anywhere from products to furniture to vehicles). An industrial designer has to work with all the technical-types to make sure the thing would actually be feasible, but there is some "art" involved. I too went to "art school" technically (or at least an art major at a state school) but I majored in the "sellout" field of Graphic Design (as opposed to Fine Art or Art History or something)... hey, sellout=money!
  8. I was thinking about it and realized... my real problem with the article isn't that more and more people are going on food stamps (economy bad, jobs tanking yadda yadda) but this "being on food stamps is nothing to be ashamed of" attitude that they were talking about. I mean... it kind of is. At least you should feel a bit guilty, or anxious to pull yourself out of it and not be on them anymore. There should be a stigma. As soon as it goes from feeling like something shameful to feeling like something necessary, it's not a far leap to feeling entitled to it.
  9. I'd get an iPhone, because it really *does* have a superior touch interface to anything I have seen (on AT&T at least, which is what I have, don't get me started on how most of the cool phones are with other companies) BUT: 1) I hate iTunes. A lot. And would prefer to avoid it for the rest of my life. 2) Lack of multitasking... what if I want to play Pandora and look up the bus schedule at the same time like on any other smartphone??? 3) I am physically incapable of using an on-screen keyboard for some reason. Evry tgung. I tyype liooks. Likew trhis. Don't really like the Blackberry experience either... my husband has a Bold, which he loves, but I can't stand using it.
  10. Agreed. A friend of mine from high school is doing AmeriCorps in New York right now, and she is on food stamps. I don't begrudge her too horribly for it, because she is working for next to nothing for a good cause, but when she posted a blog article talking about how being on food stamps is not a horrible thing and you can buy some fancy food with it, it made me a little uncomfortable. And as for jobs... as part of my freelance work I work for CareerBuilder.com doing the banner ads and fancy webpages for companies that want to spend extra money attracting people. I have not been lacking in any of that work for the last two years. There are lots of jobs out there, I get to see a lot of them. They may not be the job you *want* but there are hundreds and hundreds out there, enough that companies still want to spend the big bucks making the fancy custom CareerBuilder sites (thus keeping me employed as well).
  11. Weather isn't supposed to play nice... hopefully it changes its mind, otherwise all the nice weather this week is just a tease.
  12. Actually it looks like the generator does not recharge the battery, just generates electricity to power the motors. Still more efficient than a normal engine but more expensive than just plugging in would be. The battery needs to be recharged by being plugged in, like an all-electric car would. IF you never plugged in your car ever, it would still work by refueling the gas tank, you just wouldn't get the "40 miles gas free" bonus. From the Volt website.
  13. As far as I know it functions much differently than the Prius. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but this is how I understand it: Both cars have a battery, an electric motor, and a gasoline engine. BUT this is where the similarities stop. I believe the Prius is what is known as a Parallel Hybrid. This means that both the engine and the electric motor have direct access to powering the wheels. At some speeds/distances, the electric motor powers the wheels, and at higher speeds/distances, it switches to the engine powering the wheels (using gas). This engine is usually small and underpowered because it needs to be "eco-whatever" since that's the whole point of buying the hybrid. This is also why people complain about the "low mpgs" of the larger vehicle hybrids... the hybrid part doesn't really make that much of a difference if you need to use a bigger engine... The Volt is the (IMO significantly more awesome) Series Hybrid. This means that only the battery has direct access to powering the wheels via the electric motor, and the gasoline engine merely acts as a generator to recharge the battery or send electricity to the electric motors. This means that for a certain distance, it can run on the battery alone, then switches to drawing a current from the engine-generator (using gas) while the battery recharges. Why is this more awesome? Think about it... an engine that's a generator only needs one "speed" or gear... just the one gear that is the most fuel efficient to generate the most electricity with the fewest resources. The only thing that actually changes the speed of the car are the electric motors. The gasoline-engine-as-generator is optimized for its one singular duty! Compare this with a traditional engine that has to work in multiple gears to make a car work (which all of you people know way more about than me). Here is a link to how the Volt works: http://www.chevrolet.com/pages/open/default/future/volt.do And here's the neat article I read about series and parallel hybrids: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-car2.htm So, in short, Volt > Prius.
  14. I happened to catch the Toyota press conference involving this case while out to lunch (at one of those fancy establishments that has fried food and large tvs, lol). Toyota made a very good case for themselves as to how they don't believe the car is at fault in this particular instance. I have to say I do think that this specific guy is probably making it up, BUT as with anything made up of so many electronic parts, weird glitches can happen, so there is always a chance for a problem. Toyota said that they tested it extensively and could not replicate the situation, apparently the Prius is equipped with one of those sensors that detects when the brake and accelerator pedals are both pressed, the engine cuts off. They said it did exactly that in all of their tests. They also said that the brake wear was more consistent with rapid, lighter application of the brake, rather than a prolonged forceful brake. My husband argues that it could have been ABS. There is also the chance that, if it is an electronics problem, it would mean that the brake override wouldn't work. I don't know how the brakes on the Prius work, except that they use regenerative braking, so I don't know how much of that is controlled by electronics rather than mechanical means. They had some good points about how claims of acceleration have skyrocketed since the media reports. Sensationalization always makes problems like this worse. Anyway... like I said, I personally think this guy faked it. And it's really unfortunate too, it's a lot like crying "rape" when there is none, degrading a serious issue. If there is a deeper problem with the vehicles, it will cause the public and the company to take it less seriously and possibly lead to unnecessary injuries or deaths from accidents. And if there aren't any deeper problems, it unfairly demonizes the company and might lead to a loss of sales and jobs, plus causes a lot of people's car values to plummet for no reason. So... I don't know. Just wanted to post an update after watching that.
  15. Well, that explains why only the middle was painted blue... Clever idea and the lines are very clean.
  16. The media always hypes things up for the ratings. I'm not a Toyota sympathizer any more than I'm a Toyota hater (I'm pretty neutral) I just have a general distaste for the media. I think it's mostly because, after the story initially broke, none of the stories are reporting anything new, it's just rehashing the same stuff day after day and it gets old. The only new information is on dedicated car blogs, nothing anywhere in the MSM. That's why I think this (and 90% of any other news you read/watch) is mostly just for hype. Now if there was some actual investigative journalism going on to try to get to the bottom of this, that would be cool and respectable. But meh, my husband used to work in news and told me about what goes on even on a local level, so I take everything from the MSM with a grain of salt. My car's made it from Atlanta to Chicago and back without any problems. Doesn't meant there couldn't be problems, or maybe my car is fine and other cars have problems. And I hope if the problem is more serious than they thought, that it gets revealed to the general public, and if it turns out it was being covered up I hope they get what they deserve. So in summary... not freaking out about it, just keeping an eye on things.
  17. No problems yet with my '09 Vibe. I did get the recall done just because... I dunno. I don't really feel that their proposed solution (mechanical) was the right solution if it turns out the problems are more severe (electronic). But I'm not really following most of the news on this... after they first broke the story, it's all about hyping it up for the ratings. I love my car and I pay attention to what it's doing and I know how to disable it if there is a problem... so... whatever. What I'm more interested in is the power steering issues that the Corolla was being investigated for... since a Vibe is a Matrix is a 5-door Corolla. Haven't heard much about that lately.
  18. Sounds good... me and my husband will go.
  19. This is me: I've had pink hair since Sept. and plan to keep it that way for a long time.
  20. Well, wherever, it's still only 10 min away from me!
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