The Burning Questions

Well, first of all let me apologize for the lack of updated material here as of late.  I am always in the wind with whatever I do.  I simply do with whatever I am given at the given moment.  I am currently trying to track down a strange mechanical problem that has plagued our most recently purchased vehicle.  I am sore that I have not been able to narrow down the problem to certainty as of yet.  Here are eight tips for those of you who know little about the car that you own.

1:  If something changes about the way your vehicle runs all of a sudden…There could be something going wrong even if it seems only a minor difference.  There could also be gremlins living in your breather box.  Who knows?

2:  Check your fluids regularly.  That means every week.  Every fill up.  Something more than waiting for the check engine light to finally come on…OKAY?

3:  If a fluid is low, it could mean something is wrong.  Now, if you have ran your vehicle three thousand miles past the oil change deadline and you are a couple of quarts low on oil, well… GO GET IT CHANGED!

4:  If your car changes color on its own…Sorry ’bout your luck…you have probably just been punked!

5:  Have you checked your muffler bearings?  Just thought I ‘d ask.

6:  If your car makes a terrible squeal when you push on the brakes…Well, you probably need new brake pads…or tires!  You should probably buy quality in either or both of these categories.  They are technically the two most important parts of going and stopping on your four wheels.

7:  That grinding noise that you hear… the one that goes away when you turn up the radio… probably IS something to look into!

8:  When you look under your car or where you generally park your vehicle, is there are large dark spot of nasty yuck pooling up?  That would lead me to believe something is leaking out of my vehicle.  Might even get out of the car and look for a wet spot somewhere on the undercarriage.  Might even think about getting that leak taken care of.  But that’s just me…you do what you want.

  Lately, there has been many references to countries defying the United Nations and its nuclear armament policies.  Iran, Syria, and North Korea are at the top of the list.  Reports that undeclared nuclear material surfaced in the Syria yesterday.  North Korea has reportedly tested nuclear devices recently, although there has been no findings of radiation to my knowledge.  Iran has, of course, been a nuclear thorn in the world’s side for a while now.  Is there cause for alarm?

Intelligence officials state that Iran has possibly a few years to go before being able to overcome technical issues having to do with the assembly of an atomic bomb.  It does not seem that the U.N. is very concerned with North Korea’s latest attempts at disturbing the world with their antics.  Many believe that they are really just trying to extort money from the world’s leading nations.  Syria has had two instances in the past couple of years (including the most recent) where minute amounts of nuclear material have been discovered, but no real evidence of anything more than traces of undeclared material.  Does this mean there is no real threat?

There are many countries with nuclear capabilities other than these three examples.  Fact is: we really don’t know how many.  After the Soviet Union fell, there were many sites with nuclear devices that were unknown, possibly even unmanned.  How are we to tell who has what any more?  It is possible that many countries have “nukes” that we have no idea about…Even the ones that we think we know about may have far more or less capabilities than we believe.  Is this cause for concern?  Absolutely.  Is there much we can do about it?  Not without having the entire U.N. at our disposal.  There is no way we as a nation will get much support for searching out nuclear issues any time soon.

So what do we do?  Sit on our heels and wait to see what happens?  At this time, I would say yes.  It is impossible for us to do much more than wait and see.  If we spent as much time and money on developing our own new technologies, though, as we do waiting to see what the other guys does next, we may not need to worry as much about the other guy.  This is one instance where I would have to say that Ronald Reagan was on the right track back in the 80’s.  SDI was a great idea and we could use that kind of thinking in today’s world once again.

  Sounds like something a single guy gets when on vacation in Asia rather than the truth of today’s possibilities.  GM is rumored to be pondering selling their Hummer division to a Chinese buyer.  This just doesn’t seem to be a reasonable thing to do at all.  Maybe its a forecast of the American future.

The news has taken to the rumor mill that General Motors will sell their gas guzzling Hummer brand to a Chinese company and I am wondering if this is a national security issue? Hasn’t our military has become accustomed to driving the rough terrain in a Hummer?  These radical automobiles have been outfitted with armor and weapons in order to protect and defend our troops.  What vehicle will take this “tough trucks” place?

I never even liked the gargantuan gas guzzling machine, but with the way vehicles are made nowadays, the monster of the auto industry, HUMMER, will be sorely missed.  Saturn is on the chopping block as well, but I don’t think that the plastic car will be as much of a loss to the American way as the Hummer.  The only way that this could be a good thing for America is if some homegrown company begins to make some sort of vehicle to replace this unique staple.  Leave a comment tell us what you think.

In an update I received, I found out that Hummer is merely a name bought by GM.  AM General is the actual producer of the military version of the Hummer.  Still, I like to think of the machine as an American machine and it is a thorn in my side that the Chinese could take yet another pride from us.  Thanks to HatedNation for lookin’ out!

  I searched last night for the official New Moon Trailer and found that there were a ton of sites out there that claimed to have the trailer before its release.  The problem was that none of them actually had it.  There were some that had teasers and/or unofficial content that was related to the subject, but none had it before the release on MTV music awards.  My wife wanted to see Edward and Bella so bad I had to keep trying, only to find the one kiss scene that she had already viewed.

So should I be abusing the search engines to get my views as others are doing?  Is this the way of the future Internet?  Claiming to have something that one does not have?  I know, I know…My title is misleading as well.  However, I do not claim to have something I do not have.  I am simply trying to deal with a question that could make the Internet a place that consists solely of spam and useless content.  For example, I peered at least twenty sites that came up in the first pages of my search for the New Moon Official Trailer and found not one trailer.  I did find one teaser in that twenty and close to ten widgets that claimed to be a countdown widget that would allow me to view the trailer as it was released.  A bunch of possibly illegitimate poster pictures and several pictures that were claimed to be extracts from the movie also appeared with those sights.  There was absolutely no official trailer.

I wonder how many sights there were out there that used this bait to lure in viewers to a sight with claims that were basically false altogether.  Most had some sort of way to avoid being called a flat out lie, but few actually told the truth.  If I searched only a tiny portion of the possibilities but came up empty-handed with the top results, how many were actually out there claiming the same thing?  The numbers had to be staggering if it were crammed into the category of a statistical poll.  People sure are hard up to get clicks these days.

What would happen to the search engines if people stopped viewing the first page of results, instead linking to the last page and checking out the sites there?  It would probably cause some sort of search engine mass hysteria!  Google and Yahoo would terribly confused by that, now wouldn’t they?