Autopian writers own a lot of cars. I have nearly two dozen vehicles on my own, then there’s the expansive fleets of David, Jason, and our wrenching hero, Stephen Walter Gossin. Collectively, we probably have more cars in our combined fleet than publications with two or three times as many people.
We might have accidentally started an amusing trend. David Tracy and I often say that we’re reducing our fleets, then we sell a car or two, before buying two more cars to replace the ones we sold. I mean, I’m importing two cars this year! David wrote a post about his discovery that selling a rusty vehicle in California is seemingly impossible, and that bringing his Michigan cars to California was a mistake. Anoos has some code here:
10: David Tracy asks advice.
20: David Tracy ignores advice.
30: David Tracy makes bad decision.
40: Goto 10.
[Editor’s Note: Okay, I need to put this into REAL BASIC. Applesoft BASIC, specifically:
10 INPUT “I’M DAVID AND I’D LIKE YOUR ADVICE”; ADVICE$
20 ADVICE$=”IGNORE”
30 IF ADVICE$=”IGNORE” THEN CALL [insert memory location for buying shitbox subroutine here]
40 GOTO 10
There. Much better. – JT]
Thankfully, I don’t have this problem. My wife supports all of my stupid car-buying choices!
Adrian Clarke:
Imagine what’s it’s like in the Slack when he finds YET ANOTHER rando FB project and asks if he should buy it.
The responsible people tell David no. I’m like that friend who is up for anything, and I automatically tell David “Do it.”
MAX FRESH OFF:
You don’t bring sand to the beach.
NC Miata NA:
“Don’t bother bringing anything,” my friend Fred Williams every reader on every article written on the subject of moving cars from Michigan to California told me.
Eggsalad started a hilarious idea:
Here’s my best stupid idea of the day. Ship all the cars back to Michigan, perhaps to a buddy, and have that person sell them as “rust-free”.
DialMforMiata made a great reference:
Rust, free!
This morning, Jason was obsessed with cars with punctuation in their names. Ninefeet blew my mind:
Fiat Punto.
Punto is Italian for “point,” or “dot.” Woah! Have a great evening, everyone!
Okay I in no way wish to disparage DT OR ELISE not her real name.
However we have seen DTs propensity towards Metal sentient lifeforms. Did DT ACTUALLY marry a wonderful human life form or did he enter into a contract with a mechanical life form? Futurama has shown us human and mechanical life forms can procreate and that wouldn’t explain the absence of names and pictures. I hope DT realizes we will accept him if he married outside the species as long as it is a vehicle.
My wife is a shopper. Whenever it’s time for another used vehicle, she’s on the case. Conversation go like this:
what about this one,
no,
oh look at this,
no,
this is cheap,
no,
what about this one,
hmmm wait this 200mi away no,
etc.
You’re halfway to having a used car lot, or a very odd rental fleet!
Asking for a friend: how much overlap is there in a Venn Diagram of collecting cars and having a hoarding disorder?
I think the key is differentiator is whether these alleged “cars” run. I haven’t heard anyone say Jay Leno is a hoarder. I’ve heard a lot of people say DT is a hoarder and he has waaaaay fewer cars.
DT is a hoarder now you have it
100%
What’s with the code speak? Ahem,
10: Philip reads Autopian posts and nods enthusiastically.
20: Philip polishes his one car… again.
30: Philip pretends he’s downsizing from a fictional fleet.
I’ll be back.
As a nerd who messed around with BASIC and QBASIC when I was younger, I appreciate this note.
Flashback to 80s High School. We had the first computer class. It was doing BASIC on Apple IIe’s. Our teacher was an English teacher. We knew more than she did. Our project was to print out a banner (on reams of greenbar, of course) with our name on it. Most used a kazillion ‘print’ statements..I have a long name. I’m lazy, so I broke it up into the 10 or so print statements needed and used a ‘data’ list to feed which statement to print next, using the 10 or so print statements.
I also started on a IIe. We didn’t actually have anyone teaching us, just a weird educational game that gave the basics of BASIC. I probably would have used a bunch of ‘print’ statements at first, too (but I have a short name). Good on you for working smarter!
Many of the best software solutions I’ve seen or authored have been from a position of laziness. It’s an underrated, misunderstood trait in software engineering.
I bet Jason actually got at least one type-in program from a computer magazine to actually work.
I love Simpsons so incredibly much, I’m just glad we recently introduced my 14- and 12-yo kids to it. I wasn’t sure how well it would age, but it’s great. The fact that my son can laugh at the chalkboard gag “12 inch pianist” while my daughter is like “huh?” is proof of the genius.
I’ve seen crazier at the late, not so great Hostess Brands- Like a tired Ford C series straight truck they drove from Los Angeles to Chicago, gas for the trip probably cost more than it was worth!