When I first started my small business twenty years ago, I opened a commercial bank account at the bank that's located just a half-block away from my building. No particular reason to go to that bank other than it was the closest one to me.

About five years later they were charging me about $50 per month in various service charges, and they sent me a notice of service charge increases that would have raised that to nearly $75!

I then opened an account at the local Credit Union and moved all of my business there. I paid $12 per month to them for their services at that time. It's $15 per month today.

I can't recommend this more strongly: If you're not doing your banking at your local Credit Union, you're getting ripped off.

If it's "not too intrusive" they won't care if I cover my face, right??

No, no, no.

"Proud would I be!" -- Yoda

And leaving the DEA and the companies that make and promote the scanners sadly destitute.

Phone companies have been doing that for a long time. They're required to collect a certain amount of gov't-imposed fees, but anything they can collect over and above that amount, they get to keep. Last I heard, the phone companies were thus keeping about 80% of the charged amounts... that $4 fee on your bill being only a buck or so when it came from the gov't.

There was a study done some years back (which I can't find again offhand) which concluded that "redevelopment" and expansion actually are a net loss to cities over time, since it's not just the upfront infrastructure investment, it's the maintenance and more the replacement costs on down the line that will eat you alive. Property tax increases can't make up the difference, unless you're willing to tax everyone out of house and home.

As to the deals being made, if such deals went down anywhere else they'd be called kickbacks and corruption. Here again -- why is gov't immune to what the citizens are not? If we made such deals (or cooked our books to make such deals look good) we'd wind up in jail!

It's kinda like how hosting the Olympics sounds great until you actually run the numbers not only for now but ALSO for the lifetime of the investment, and discover the lurking bankruptcy in your future.

After 1997 (mid-1997 for the F250s) Ford did so many changes to the body dimensions that I can't use 'em anymore. So I haven't been looking at anything more recent. Worse, the newer body styles look like a Dodge, they're embarrassing. :P~

Also, I've noticed there's a "dead" period in the used F-series market from 1998 thru the end of the 6.0 engine... usually such a dead spot means they died young (not many still alive to be available), and I've heard no good of that 6.0 from anyone. Conversely there seem to be a LOT of pre-1998s out there, most with over 200k miles on 'em, so the survival rate is overall good.

What would you call "high mileage"? (saw one listed with 800k on it and all original, not rebuilt!)

The Powerstroke rates at about 25% more torque than the IDI but in actual practice, folks say it'll do about the same work. I'm not gonna be racing it anyway, just hauling heavy loads cross-country.

I don't suppose we'll see Butanol in the U.S. any time soon, but it would be interesting to try it in the old truck and see how it performs... it's quite sensitive to fuel quality (tho not so much as when it was young).

Yeah, planning on around $5000 -- 95/96/97 models are my target for various reasons (tho so far the best prospect is a rather ugly but mechanically sound '94 F350 with 235k miles on it ... has the turbo, still slow to get going, tho will pull a house. Good thing I'm not usually in a rush. :) Looked at some duds tho... I gotta wonder how someone wears out that Ford front end without actually hitting something. Mine isn't near as heavy duty, has worked its poor little ass off for 34 years, and it's still good!

Good info about the injector pump, thanks.

My old truck isn't notably worse on the gas on hills; headwind is what really sucks down its MPG, to the point that when I can, I contrive to avoid bucking it.

Someone gift me three (three??!) really old Mercury wheels that are 17" and about 3" wide, and as it happens fit the F100. Not sure what I'm gonna do with 'em but the price was right. -- I run all-weather tires myself, prefer how they handle -- the F100 is very surefooted under all conditions.

To the nominal topic... I'm wondering what kind of future-fuel could be used in these older gas engines -- does Butenol really work? (F100 doesn't like ethanol at all. Runs hot, no power.)

And it won't be remotely chemically consistent, so what you can do with it is limited... maybe compress it into bricks, coat the bricks with sealant, and use 'em to resurface aging roads.

Can't the usual UNIX permissions do something about that, like make an upload write-only and proof against deletion or overwrite? If not, clearly we need an app that can be set/passworded to perform that way.