Darkling

This Brings back Memories, these were mine when I was growing up in Rhode Island, Poor as Dirt. quote:Originally posted by jamotto: Link quote:Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs. Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they're what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there's not an $800 car in America that's worth a damn. (Except that was a $100.00 car back in the 70's for my Mom) Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away. Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends' houses but never has friends over to yours. Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won't hear you say "I get free lunch" when you get to the cashier. Being poor is living next to the freeway. Being poor is off-brand toys. (Donated from Goodwill) Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house. Being poor is knowing you can't leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around. (Or your bike unlocked for that matter) Being poor is Goodwill underwear. Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you. (We were 5 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment) Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground. (Boy do I remember that one.. EMBARASSING) Being poor is your kid's school being the one with the 15-year-old textbooks and no air conditioning. Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal. (I remember thinking, boy If I could just get to $12 per Hr., I'd REALLY be Set!) Being poor is relying on people who don't give a damn about you. Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights. Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support. Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger's trash. (And don't forget the entire Living Room set and Bedroom set.) Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if your kid saw. Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference. Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall. Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours. Being poor is not talking to that girl because she'll probably just laugh at your clothes. Being poor is hoping you'll be invited for dinner. Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it. Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk. Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise. (Then having my Girlfriend LAUGH at me because I THOUGHT that was pretty good) Being poor is your kid's teacher assuming you don't have any books in your home. Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap. Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor. Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere. Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually stupid. Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually lazy. Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap. Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn't bought first. Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that's two extra packages for every dollar. Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old. Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful. Being poor is knowing you're being judged. Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa. Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by. Being poor is deciding that it's all right to base a relationship on shelter. Being poor is knowing you really shouldn't spend that buck on a Lotto ticket. Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime. Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won't listen to you beg them against doing so. Being poor is a cough that doesn't go away. Being poor is making sure you don't spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up. Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree. (Except I only finished half of it, when I finally realized how to make REAL money) Being poor is a lumpy futon bed. Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so. Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor. Being poor is seeing how few options you have. Being poor is running in place. All of this was me or my Mom Growing up in Rhode Island, and when I first came to Florida. It's almost amusing to me when I think about it, I now make more in 1 day than I used to make in an entire Month.

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: Well, I must say that after doing a little research into PayPal's business practices, I'm not going to venture dealing with them. I'm definitely going to be making more than $5K per month and it is highly unlikely that I'm going to let them sit on my funds as long as they bloody well feel like. Scary stuff!! Wow!, I've been doing business with them for years and never had any problems. Just goes to show, you never know.

quote:Originally posted by nomad: ... So why don't you guys simply design a bit more efficient cars ? I mean just a decrease of 10% in fuel consumption could already lower tensions on your energy market. Because we Americans want it both ways, you see we want to drive the BIGGEST, most MASSIVE Vehicles on the planet, look at the runaway success of the HUMMER, a 6 Passenger Monstrosity that gets 4 miles to the gallon. Also don't talk to us about using more fuel efficient Diesels, we Americans only tolerate those things in "Work" vehicles like pickups. We want QUIET Engines, not the clickety clack of diesels. So of course if we have to yell and scream, clamp down on those EVIL oil companies and MAKE President Bush lower gas prices, well that's just what we'll do. Please don't talk to us about these Magical "Market Forces" how all our MASSIVE consumption of this diminishing resource is the primary cause for the price increases. We know that the Oil Companies are paying off the guy who invented the Carberator that gets 100 Miles per gallon and shut down the company that was going to make a car that ran on water. Just give us what we want or we will SCREAM!

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: I am in the process of figuring out if its worth my while to setup our own downloads page. We have several servers but just need to get the shopping cart and billing system setup. Thats what I'm working on right now so that we can probably use the BMT Micro billing system but have the downloads from our servers. More on this once I get the final word sorted out this week. You might want to consider Paypal, they have come A LONG WAY since Ebay bought them out. 1st thing is they no longer require the people buying from you to register with them (as long as it's not an auction). 2nd is that as long as you're doing only $5000.00 a month in volume you merchant rates just as competetive as a lot of other services. 3rd is that your customers now also have the capability of paying with a Check, and if they pay with a check you pay no fees! I recently switched my internal Credit Card billing to Paypal and I now save about $100.00 a month in Merchant Fees, Shopping Cart Fees and Gateway Fees, and in addition I'm paying 5 cents less per transaction plus a half point less in transaction fees. Best part is, I didn't have to hire a web guy to do the Shopping Cart for me, Paypal provided me all the code, All I had to do was put in into my Intranet and later I'm going to use the same code for my website (with a few modifictions that again won't require a web guy to do).

Just one example that I noticed is that before if I'm in my Firestorm out in space, I would cloak and they would stop firing on me. Now, they're not so stupid, they stop firing AFTER they see that their shots are no longer hitting anything. Nice touch, I need to ajust tactics:)

quote:Originally posted by Andergum: Well after running the game for a few more days and trying every audio, video and game adjustment I can think of I am finally very happy with the game stability on my system. The thing that seems to have worked for me is lowering the resolution from 1280x1024 to 1024x768. I put sound back at full acceleration, video write combining back on etc etc. At 1024x768 with 4xAA and 16Xaf and all the effects at max, the game looks and plays just great!! I found that the game seems to run it's best with all the ATI video card settins all to Highest Quality. For some reason when I try to set certiain things to Higher Performance I get random CTD's.

quote:Originally posted by Grayfox: ...All the mayor did was declare a state of emergency, order a MANDATORY evacuation, then he sat on his ass and waited for this thing to hit. when it did hit, all seemed manageable... until the levee's went... which is what was predicted to happen. the governor was no better IMHO. if they would of had a plan... ANY plan in place that dealt with the mass evacuation of the city, ... Very true, What's funny is one of the things that I saw on the News a rows and rows and rows of School Buses underwater, Hey Mr. Governor, here's and Idea, let's see, you have one of the highest poverty rates in the entire US, and you have rows and rows and rows of School Busses at your disposal, how about you use all those school Buses to get people out of there? Hmm, maybe with just a little PLANNING, it just might have worked!?

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: ALL the past administrations KNEW about this problem with the levees and didn't do anything about it. Bush DID do something about it. He cut their funding. Funding that he had authorized to begin with, the other Presidents wouldn't even authorize the initial funding to get it done, but in all fairness, it's not like Congress made a huge effort to get the Levies into any budget until just recently. Keep in mind that the average budget has tens of thousands of line items, all of which are handled by congress. Presidents can propose a general budget, but the details are handled by congress. They hash out all the details and the president can approve or disapprove. I seriously doubt that Bush personally went in there and said, "Umm these levees here, we don't need them cut that from the funding." Again, these are details that are put together by Congress and Bush either says Yes or No. Nothing else.

quote:Originally posted by Jaguar: I think that this whole situation is INSANE. New Orleans SHOULD have had a plan in place to evacuate the poor and handicapped etc. There were how many fricking school busses sitting in that lot? THe mayor and governor screwed the pooch on this one, they should have been prepared, and WEREN'T. EXACTLY my point, WTF do these people pay taxes to the city and local governments for? It's the local governments job to take care of these people when they need help, and to just say to them, Hey a Cat 5 Hurricane with no help is just ABSOLUTELY INSANE. And Lostinspace, I'm sorry but you MUST REALLY be Lost In Space to think that some of these poor destitute people with no car, carrying their young children, elderly or infirmed family members should have somehow walked out of there in the middle of a rainstorm, and you may live just above the poverty line, but I've lived both WAY BELOW the poverty line and now I live fairly comfortably in a 3000+ Sq. Ft. House with pretty much everything I need so I've seen both sides of the spectrum and I can tell you that you are WAY OFF BASE HERE. You know what, I think everyone here knows that I'm a Republican, very conservative and very much an advocate of self reliance and enterprenureship. BUT at the same time, I know that when someone needs help, TRULY needs help WE should not turn our backs on them and say, hey I can do it, so YOU can too. You sir, should be ashamed of yourself.

quote:Originally posted by Prez:

quote:Originally posted by LostInSpace: I disagree. I'm going to give you a hypothetical: Suppose it was announced on the news for everyone to evacute due to a 99% reliable probability that terrorists are going to set off a dirty bomb in New Orleans. Do you think that these same "poor" people are going to sit on their duff and stay? No, I think not. People need to treat hurricanes as a couple of nukes headed their way. I don't care how powerful it is. One just doesn't not know the outcome. Better off not to take chances and just go. The people who stayed behind have been through this before. They've lived there for generation and know the dangers that are involved especially living near the mississipi river. But then again, that's just me. You've got to be kidding me with that kind of comparison. 1st of all, New Orleans has been evacuated SEVERAL times before and nothing happened. So in people's mind this was a "Probabability" not a "Certianty" and second of all, what is New Orleans plans for getting people out? Here in South Florida, if you don't have transportation to get out, then transportation is provided to you as part of our Emergency Preparedness Program, what does New Orleans do/ If I have no money to buy a bus ticket out of town, what do I do? Walk out of town, remember the order was only given 15Hrs. before the storm hit. How far are you going to get on foot? Plus WHERE do you go if again, you have no resources? Truth is, if there was a dirty bomb about to be detonated, there WOULD be buses lined up to take people away, but because this was not a 99% thing, they left it up to the people to do what they had to (or could afford to) do. Hell I still remember when I was a kid and sometimes my Mom didn't have enough to buy a decent meal for us. I know that back then, if someone had said that we needed to evacutate the city we were living in, my mom would have probably said How? Whith what money?

quote:Originally posted by $iLk: http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/51075.pdf Food for thought... I haven't quite comprehended all of the data, but it seems to suggest that the oil industry has been reaping profits of 20% or more greater every year since 2002. You really should read what it is that you are quoting. Net income has increased by 20% but the profit margins are only 9% in this industry. As a matter of fact, in the refining industry, net operating margins were -2% in 2002, why? Because adjusted for inflation, Gas is selling for the same price it did in the early 80's, that's right 20 years ago! yet today we live in a MUCH higher level of regulations and red tape then we had back then. So you tell me, if it looked like you were going to be losing 2% on every dollar put into a business, would you expand capacity? Heck NO. Let's face the truth, once all this blows over, Gas will be back to selling for around 2 bucks a gallon, which is about 30% less (adjusted for inflation) than what it was selling for 20 years ago, I know that's not an industry that I want to be in. Wow you go though a ton of red tape, beurocrats, bullshit, environmentalists, and once you get to the level where you're makeing a 9% Operating Margin, Woohooo!!! WINDFALL profits, let's go back to killing the industry! And by the way, just to drive home the difference between a 20% net operating margin, which is what you're making it sound like the Oil companies are making and a 20% rise in profitabliity, let me make this comparison. If I was making 4% but now I'm making 5%, that's a 20% rise in profitability. Just because now, I'm making a 5% profit margin, doesn't mean I'm making a ton of money, I could put it in the bank and make more than that.

quote:Originally posted by LostInSpace: ... Fats told him he would be okay and ride the storm out. I think this pretty much tipifies the attitudes of the people that stayed behind. Was it ignorance? I don't know. But again, I say the people were warned and were told specifically that there will be no help to anyone that stays behind. End of Story. This crying over lack of rescue is getting tiresome ... While someone like Fats was pretty stupid for staying behind, you have to understand that most of the people that stayed behind did so because of financial reasons. If you're living paycheck to paycheck and all of a sudden someone said, "Hey everyone needs to evaucuate". You look at the situation and think, "OK. We've evacuated before and nothing happened. I don't have a car, I don't have money for a hotel for the night, I don't have any friends or relatives that I could go to. What Options do I really have?". While it's very easy for people like us with the means to evacuate, now say hey you should have left like me, many times it's easier said than done.

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: The manuals were produced AFTER the CD-ROM and are two COMPLETELY SEPARATE orders and items. sheesh I was just a bit confused becuase he said that he got his Manual WITH his UCAWA order.

quote:Originally posted by Cruis.In: i got it finnaly, with manual as well, means i ordered it as well as the manual, if you read the whole thread this may have been clear, or maybe i am confused because i could swear he mentioned here you could be the manual as well if you wanted as a limited version would be available. I did order it with the Manual, but when it came with the Manual for BCM, I thought there was an error, so I called BMT Micro and they said that it would be shipping separately, so now I'm a bit worried.

quote:Originally posted by Cruis.In: ok i got it finally, with manual as well. Hey how come I didn't get my Manual.. I just got a Manual for BC Millenium?

What!? Haven't they heard that Millenium is Freeware now too?

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war. While that may be true, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and now Bush Jr. have all ignored the gloom and doom warnings that something needs to be done about that area. Bush just happens to be the unlucky guy at the helm when all hell finally broke loose.

Now that Millenium is Freeware, why even bother? Though I did REALLY like the Cockpits in BC3K, especially the Damage effects and stuff like that.

Vegitation DEFINITELY adds a level of realism to the game that it did not have before and anyone advocating the removal of it should be SHOT!

It's only $1.00! Here's the problem with this type of Levy, once the systems are in place to collect it, the operational overhead will start to eat into the cash, usually from 20 to 50%, and also the other problem is that once things like this are in place, they tend to GROW. I remember reading about how some senators argued about the impending 1% Income tax on the rich back in the 1800's. One of them sat up and said, "Gentlemen, One of these days the Rich will pay 10% of their income to the Government" Everyone found that to be funny, but it's not funny anymore. Today POOR people pay 16% (via SS & Medicare taxes) and the rich pay close to 40%!

Here we go again with this Border Crap, this issue has you really riled up. I don't suppose you're Indian American are you? You know what the funny part is, EVERY state that has a large Immigrant Populations, Illegal or otherwise, also has a booming economy. Follow the money boys, this ones a dead end street.

quote:Originally posted by Cmdr Chavik: She jumped the peninsula, supercharged in the Gulf, and is now a Category 4 storm headed toward New Orleans and tracking suggests she will go up through Mississippi. One of the "Perks" of living in South Florida, is that even though we have a lot of Hurricanes, we have the strictest building code on the East Coast and quite possibly the entire country, so even though we get pounded every once in a while, we're pretty much prepared for it. So I really feel sorry for the people in Luisianna, Texas and Alabama, because when they get hit, there is SERIOUS destruction.

quote:Originally posted by Darkling: Stalin: dont be an arss Churchill: dont be a commie. oops too late Eisenhower: LOL All these smack talkers in this game

This one's my favorite line, had me ROLLING! quote:Originally posted by Darkling: Hitler[AoE]: wtf Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker