If you get in, you can make some cash and Apple pays on-time.

oh, I see, the Mayan calender is really the due dates on some reports to the galactic overlords - great 2012 will be fun.

I get the feeling your comment is more "Insightful" then "Funny".

You must be in management :)

"The corn used for fuel was grown specifically for fuel, on fields that had been put-aside (pay to not grow type)."

I would love to see your source on this statement, because I believe it to be false.

Also, there is plenty of diesel being run in the winter in places like ND, you just use the winter formulation and don't use pure bio-diesel. It does take more battery to start then a regular gas engine. On the other hand, hydrogen has serious problems with cold weather (Honda's engineers pointed this out on one of the weekly news programs).

Here is the part I never got. Ok, two people both subscribe to the monthly service. They meet and pass songs back an fourth. Why in the heck did Microsoft / Record Companies limit the number of plays? What is the purpose? If it is tracking, then count the new songs at sync. It just seems like a really stupid way of doing things that misses the possibilities and actually saves Microsoft money on the download.

Well, it did last 10 years with ~267,000 miles. It wasn't a great car, but it did ok. I learned to hate the dealership enough that I wouldn't buy another car from them, and the four recalls were a little much. Some of the recalls where kinda scary (brake recall - damn anti-locks sounded like a jackhammer).

I gave it to my uncle who is a good mechanic, so he will probably fix it up and give it to someone to drive another 100,000.

I am saying most people in the area most likely to be affected will deal with the roof ok, I would be more worried about the other effects of the ash.

The basic problem is that a lot of people will take a hard hit at that inspection and it will a financial disaster. Oregon is trying to complicate one of the easiest taxes most people pay with a scheme that will be most painful to the low-income person.

Look at it this way, suppose no employer took withholding taxes and on April 15, you had to come up with the whole amount. The likely outcome is most people will not have saved enough during the year and cannot make the huge payment. It is much easier for everyone concerned to pay in incremental chunks.

As a side note, the states that I have lived in (ND, SD, MN) have never had a vehicle inspection on a yearly basis. I would guess that is limited to the coasts.

Also, the thought that all these people with lower income that would have the biggest problem with a yearly payment should take mass transit, assumes a community has mass transit. This is generally not true of rural areas.

The other problem with this whole thing is to assume that my small car causes the same wear and tear on the roads as an SUV and should pay the same per-mile tax. The reason a per-gallon gas tax works is that the SUV will be paying more taxes due to worse fuel economy. Making me pay the same as a SUV owner is a joke,

Wouldn't it be a great feature if you could ask the moderator wtf? Even if it was anonymous, it would be a great insight into how some of this stuff happens. Then again, it might just be like starring into the abyss Cthulhu-style.