Morning coffee

[hiball3985]

I totally agree. I was so happy when my grandson gave up on sports and decided cars were more fun and started learning about them.

[rmk57]

Rich, Major League Baseball has a luxury tax, (competitive balance tax) in place of a salary cap. It is tiered and the percentage goes up the more you spend. I think it goes as high as 62% of total salary at the highest point. 50%  of that gets distributed to clubs that did not exceed the Base Tax Threshold in that Contract Year, thus allowing the smaller market teams to acquire  players they may not normally be able to afford. Sadly, a lot of teams just pocket the money.

I guess if you charge $80-90 for an average seat, $6 for a hotdog, $9 for a can of beer the 60% luxury tax wouldnt have as much effect on the bottom line.

[CobraJoe]

I have to agree.? the NBA is all gang bangers and the NFL isn't far behind.... we need to stop putting them on pedestals and banish them from the game if they are thugs, political grandstanders, etc. I watch the games for enjoyment, because that is all it is, entertainment. I don't want to hear or see their political agendas. Colin Kaepernick was black balled, as he should be, there is no need for any of this BS in sports. While I'm on the subject, shame on Nike for using him in their ads; damn, like social media and the youth of our country haven't phucked things up enough already. 

[RICH MUISE]

I agree 100% on that, Joe. There is only ONE reason , imho, for the existence of any sports. Sports are a getaway and relaxation from everyday life, what other reason could there be? We tend to forget that. Remember many of our troops in past wars gathering around the radio to listen to a baseball game?! I understand the reason for Kapernick's(sp) statement and protest, but he doesn't understand he's tampering with the reason for existence of his sport as I stated. It's the wrong place to do it.
We're getting dangerously close to getting into the no-no of political discussion here.
BTW, just got back from a 2 day roadtrip in the '57 to Central City/Blackhawk in Colorado for the Hot Rod Hill Climb. 1024 mile roundtrip, no problems. Weather was perfect, fall colors especially around Breckenridge were outstanding. The Aspens were flamming yellow.

[terry_208]

Rich, What are you currently getting for mileage? IIRC you got your idle straightened out. Did that improve your mileage?

[RICH MUISE]

I have not got my idle straightened out. Runs like a champ at speed, but idle varies considerably. Something has changed though, as the surging is different than the surging I was getting a year ago. Sometimes there's no surging at all at idle. Odd, and I have no clue if it's related, I suspect not, but my check engine light does not come on at altitude. Mechanic friends look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them that, but 7 or 8 trips to Colorado in the past 2 years tells me it is consistent. My donor Mark VIII was a Texas car all it's life, so it was not a car set up for altitude.
I haven't actually calculated my mileage lately, but on my way back I drove 412 miles before gassing up in Hartley, Tx. I didn't fill it because I was getting close to home and the gas is cheaper here, so don't know how many gallons, if any, lol, I had left. assuming 17 gallons used, that's 24+mpg. I'll take it. Maybe less if my memory of our tanks being 18 gallons is incorrect.

[KYBlueOval]

I have pretty much stopped watching professional sports of any kind.  They are filled with a bunch of privileged, over paid premadonas (sp) that have no respect for themselves nor the sport they play in.  All they are interested in is the $.  We have bread them to what they are by creating to "Top Athlete in the State", "The Best Top 10 Prospect", and exceptional excuses for behavior.  This "grooming" starts at the high school level.  Academic exceptions, behavior exceptions, and sportsmanship exceptions are the rule of the day all in the name of winning.

Granted that is a blanket statement, I know there are many exceptions to that but the number that could help with many of the woo's we have today with youth is defining by their absence.  College ball is moving in that direction as well.  I do watch college ball as there are many folks that play for the love of the game knowing full and well it will be over for them at the end of their college experience.  Add to that there are many more universities that require academic achievement above the game thing then there are that are in it for the "ranking".

Sorry for the rant, just how I feel....

Bill, I'm right there with you.
I have not watched any NFL games in the last two years. This year will be no different. There is a group ( Veterans ) across the country that is strongly urging folks to not watch ANY NFL games on Veterans Weekend Nov 10-12 , and thus send a message to the NFL.
John ..... Navy Vet.

[RICH MUISE]

Did a small local car show yesterday put on by the local classic CHEVY car club. Maybe 70 cars or so. Took a TOP 3 award in the 49-64 class, lol. Best of show was a kinda weird (I thought) blown '57 T-Bird ranchero (with a model A tailgate!). It's an Amarillo car, but the first time I saw it was in Oklahoma City this past spring at the NSRA show.

[Tom S]

... blown '57 T-Bird ranchero (with a model A tailgate!). ...

I can't imagine just what that '57 T-Bird Ranchero looks like. Or why there even is such a thing.

[RICH MUISE]

I'll see if I can find a pic of it somewhere. I didn't think to take any pics Saturday at all.
Reminds me...........a while back Joe posted an image of an icon on cell phones that would let me download cell phone pics to my computer. My cellphone does not have that icon, at least that I could find.

[Tom S]

Rich, did you get your camera fixed so that you can find your pix on it without looking thru 100s of 'em?
I don't even own a cell phone but I always carry one of my little cameras. I have two of these Panasonic Lumix cameras. A ZS3 & a newer model, a ZS9.  Both have a lot of zoom & that's important to me.  These are both older models.
I ended up with the ZS9 after I cracked the screen on the ZS3.  Ordered a screen of ebay for about 20 bucks & fixed it myself.  Before I found the replacement screen I ran across the ZS9 on Amazon for $150.  Less than 1/2 of what I had paid new at Costco for the ZS3.
I think I like the ZS3 better since it has a setting that I think is called notebook.  Good place to put a few pix on the camera that you would often want to show to others. 
So If you want a new camera ... ZS3s for 95 - 99 bucks here.  I have no complaints.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B001QFZMCO/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all
Be sure to get one that comes with the software disk, charger etc.

I've also used this free photo program for decades.
https://www.irfanview.com/
If you download it & all the plugins you can manipulate the pix in many ways. One of which is the ability to reduce the file size.  That pretty handy here since if you get the file size down far enough you can post many pix into one post.  If you look at some of my more recent pix I think you can see that many are around 70 to 100kb.  Those started out at a big 4320 x 3240 sized pic at about a 4mb file size before changing them to a standard size of 1024 X 768 size & then changing the file size.
If anyone does newly download the Irfanview I can give some, hopefully useful, tips. 
https://www.google.com/search?q=irfanview&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

[djfordmanjack]

Rich, can you tell us more about the Hot Rod Hillclimb and how about some pics, please. Would love to see your impressions. Past editions seemed to have a neverending array of mostly Ford based period correct Hotrods and modifieds.  Surprised that you attended the HRHC, but it must have been spectacular.

[RICH MUISE]

Still having a problem with pics. Mainly because I haven't spent any time sorting it out. I did figure out apparently my computer pics are stored in two different areas, because when I click on the windows "pictures", that's when I have trouble finding stuff. However, when I'm posting something on this forum and go thru the normal attachments, browse,etc., it brings me to an all together different picture storage area where everything is organized by dated files as before. I think I need to tell the computer to use a different program to download. Not sure when it changed, but it did.
Hot Rod Hill Climb........yeah, definetly an unusual and unexpected choice of events for me! Some explainin'..........I had planned all summer to do a cruise that weekend. The Crossmembers car club/Dallas chapter, and the Oklahoma City chapter were doing their annual 100 mile reliability run on the same day, meeting in the middle in the Lake Texoma area. Also there was a big swap meet in Fort Worth that weekend. I had planned on driving the '57 down Thursday, doing the swap meet, and meeting up with the Dallas chapter Saturday morning for the cruise. I had planned on following the OKC members back to their area. About 900-1000 mile trip probably. Well, they were forcasting rain for all of the cruise areas all week, so at the last moment, I decided to forgo that one and do the HRHC. Guys had been reporting all week that the weather was perfect up in the mountains, aspens were glowing gold. Besides, I hadn't been to Black Hawk/Central City for 20 years or so. It's an old gold mining area now converted to gambling towns with much of the historic landmarks preserved.
Was a great weekend, I did not however participate in even the show because I felt my car was just not what everybody there was in to. They are getting a little lax on the actual hill climb restrictions. Rules state NO overhead valve engines, but there were actually a number of them in the pits that ran the hill climb. Mostly bangers and flatheads as the rules state. I did not participate in the reliability run or the cruise, for me it was mainly about a road trip in the mountains.
Several hundred cars there, mostly 20's and 30's old time hot rods. Guys from all over the country. A must do if you're into that stuff. For me, about 3 hours of watching bangers chugging up the hill, and I was ready to hit the road again!
Gunther...tons of pics and videos on the web. Just google Hot Rod Hill Climb, and it'll show links You Tube and their website. If your on the Hamb, there's lots of stuff posted there as well.
BTW, my decision not to do the Texas/Oklahoma cruise was a bad one. Talking to one of the members this morning, I found out they only had a light rain in the morning, the rest of the day was perfect, and they had over 300 cars at the meeting point! I told him they had me to thank for that, if I had gone, we all would have been up to our ankles in water.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hot+rod+hill+climb+2018

[CobraJoe]

Rich, if you are using an I-Phone; click on the pic you want to send and press this symbol:



Then press this symbol to E-mail to your computer:



Enter your e-mail address and press send.

Open your E-mail on your PC and download the picture to either your Downloads folder, your Picture Folder or even to your desktop.

If you have an Android based phone; click on the pic you want to send and press this symbol:



then the E-mail or compose E-mail and send it to your E-mail address on your PC

[djfordmanjack]

I told him they had me to thank for that, if I had gone, we all would have been up to our ankles in water.

Haha Rich... so you did a good thing that day
Well I guess we somtimes have to make decisions where to go on a trip, that doesn't work out as well as expected.

I don't know how competitive the race is, but this video pretty much sums it up for Hotrod guys that are interested especially in early cars. Wow...what a line up !!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJOUCmtsPwI

I wonder if any attendants have to readjust their carbs and change jets at 8000+. that is quite some elevation!