elmarco

Never done an eastern european winter - but have some time in central (Czech Rep) and northern (Finland) europe during winter (oh and one weekend we got to -15C when I lived in Paris). Yes, layering is the key as the buildings are normally kept at around 20 - 25 C in winter. I would suggest that Vienna will be one of the most expensive places to buy a jacket... You might pick something up cheaper locally as we are moving into summer. Anywhere around freezing can be quite pleasant if it is snowing (and no wind), but watch the temperature drop once blue sky breaks. I went from wearing jeans and a business shirt walking around town in light snow quite happily, to freezing my balls off under 4 layers (incl. ski jacket) within 8 hours when the clouds pissed off and we hit -16C. Cold that intense is remarkable as you get weird sh*t like ice on the inside of the windscreen. In Finland they actually plugged their cars into the mains to stop them freezing solid... So yes, you could potentially freeze your balls off! Got your geiger counter packed??

Haha - precisely what I have been doing for the last 2 hours! Go grab a big helping of fail...

After the Lotto win maybe? You can never have enough superchargers...

Who you gonna call.

I'd rather eat my own liver....

I thought about putting a Hoosier sticker on mine. Does that count?

Damn - where was that when I was after one....

I'm totally down with the garage / living room concept. A 9 year old E46 coupe just isn't going to cut it though....

I would suggest that taking a gap year will make it extremely hard to go back to studying. I have seen plenty of mates do it, and only one of them actually went back and finished up. They all got used to the work routine and the money - which was pretty short sighted in my opinion. What does your career counsellor at school have to say? I only went to uni because I had nothing else to do after 7th form - I work in a completely different field to what I studied. One thing I can say is that having a degree doesn't open any more doors, but does stop a lot being closed on you. +1. The longer you can study at the moment, I think the better it will be. Joining the military could be an idea. They do give you all the training you could ever need and they do get to play with some seriously cool sh*t (thinking Air Force and Navy here). The guys that I know that have come out of the RNZAF are pretty damn clued up and have some awesome work stories (tactical approaches to an airport in the herc, balancing huey rotors etc)! The A/F service has served them well and they now work in private industry in top end positions. I think the first thing you need to do is sit down with a career coach and work out what you really want to do with yourself. It may even help to do a Morrisby assessment to show you where your natural strengths and abilities lie, and what careers other people with similar strengths do. No good will come from doing a BA in French if you really want to be a forensic psychologist....

WTF?? I obviously don't get out enough.

Australia is sounding more redneck by the day...

LMAO! "Put the hairdryer down"

The Crown Victoria is being phased out of production in the very near future and not being replaced by Ford - which has created a opportunity for Holden. From reports I've read, Holden have actually listened to what the customers were asking for and the Caprice based vehicle hits the sweet spot. Guess they need the full 3 whore trunk for all the armourment.... http://www.goauto.com.au/mellor/mellor.nsf...A257647002685A6 http://www.goauto.com.au/mellor/mellor.nsf...A25764600253D2B

Now that's thinking for you. And the smart money is on selling them as firewood after the fact!

Depends on the agreement you come to with the organisation.... I wouldn't think The Warehouse or any of the supermarkets would give you much interest unless you could supply in bulk and sign contracts etc (not exactly a job on the side at that level). I reckon your best bet would be to sell them door to door at local businesses (back of a truck), with an optional delivery service (or something else to differentiate you from the others). But you would have a very limited window of opportunity (not too early, not too late).

I didn't know that. The board must have been thrilled about losing their high volume factory to the Soviets.

Wow - I must have found the same teleporter as you then! Those canals with no fences are a bit sketchy when looking for the teleporter though.

Start by obtaining some land, and growing the trees. Unlikely you will get a return on investment for the first few years though. Would be an ideal thing to do if you had a 10 acre block spare. I see most of them for sale on the side of the road - no idea of the asking $. Do yourself a business plan and make sure you will get some $ out of it!

Never done the Contiki thing, but some suggestions (might be stating the bleeding obvious): London - London Dungeon, Tower of London (very good), Natural History Museum, Circle Line pub crawl Paris - Versailles, Fontainebleau, fresh baguette, croissants & pain au chocolat (they are not the same anywhere else in the world), Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coeur (better than Notre Dame) Venice - nothing to write home about unless you manage to get laid on a gondola Vienna - schnitzel, schnitzel, schnitzel (http://www.figlmueller.at/) Prague - Charles bridge, the castle, wenceslas square etc. More importantly quality beer on the cheap (seen locals having a pint with breakfast), ordering a vodka coke and getting a half pint of straight vodka and a small coke (don't ask...), smoking hot looking women & bars that turn into strip clubs after midnight. Munich - HB tent obviously (and half a chicken and tennis racquet sized pretzels). Oh the sights I saw in that place! Heidelberg - big beer barrel up in the monastery, roasted pork knuckle & sauerkraut with a local pilsner Amsterdam - well you could see the sights like Ann Franks house, or you could end up ripped off your tits in the red light district watching a "show" in the Banana Bar. Just saying.... Hmmm, I never did make it to the Heineken museum or the flower markets in 4 trips. Wow now that's a misspent youth for you.

ShadowProtect. It installs all the correct drivers for the new hardware while keeping the current data, license keys, passwords, setups..... IT consultants swear by it.

Well a top fuel dragster also floats my boat.

I vote motherboard. Had a Toshiba notebook with similar symptoms last week - wouldn't do anything and appeared to be HDD. Turned out to be a cooked motherboard. As a side note, to reinstate your entire system (all data, O/S, passwords, settings etc) easily to another machine you can use ShadowProtect to take an image and then roll it back onto the new machine. We use it at work on mission critical servers and can literally rebuild a server on new hardware in minutes (basically as fast as the network or USB caddy can transfer data)... Think you can download a trial version for a month. Edit: Course, the HDD has to be operable for it to work.... And you can do it on secondary, primary, and USB connected disks.

f**k me! The matt black one is what Mad Max would be driving in 2020 (just add guns, flame thrower, and studded leather). And that is cool.

I always loved the 5 cyl Audi

Last time I was in Tahoe was in July/August and it was still pretty cool once you were out of the direct sun (try swimming in the lake!). Sadly never made it to Yosemite - those pictures really are spectacular. A lot of people say they don't want to see the US because they think it is all going to be LA, but the place changes so much in such a small distance (scenery wise) and is normally absolutely spectacular (like this). More pics please (especially the Arizona desert around Sedona if you can spare the time)!