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I think the last achievement is for playing one week so there's not much you can do other than continue to play. You're actually doing better than me now. I have over $3.6 quadrillion in cash, mostly because I stopped buying after I bought a black hole and star, but I'm stuck at only 500 million...

Yeah, you're right. It pauses in Chrome also if you switch tabs. That's OK though since I have two monitors. I'm letting it run on the second monitor in its own window. So far I made over $316 trillion.

Dr. Meth. This is a flash-based game where the goal is to make as much money as possible selling, you guessed it, meth. Very funny animations and very addictive. It runs in the background while you do other things, and also auto saves.

Try removing the hinge pins and sanding them with progressively finer sandpaper until you get something resembling a smooth, matte finish. I find a lot of hinge squeaks are caused by hinge pins rusting or corroding. When you're done sanding, put a layer of some type of grease or heavy oil to...

If I had the time and a significant other to join me, I'd like to bike across the US. I wouldn't be in any big hurry, either. If I cover 40 or 50 miles a day that's good enough. Two months to get cross country, probably a lifetime of memories.

My own personal feelings on this is that I generally don't find much interesting on any long trip which involves passing through rural or suburban areas. To me they all look pretty much the same. As such, I just want to pass through them as fast as possible. 90 mph in a car is good. 200 mph in a...

Umm, the problem here isn't that these people can't upgrade to a more modern machine. Heck, I have better machines I'm not using which I can give them. Rather, it's that they don't want to. I'm serious. In one case, I know someone still using a 386 and Windows 3.1, and struggling just to read...

It sounds like his son's tarantula would probably eat the cat if it got into its cage.

Don't feel bad. I know some people who are still on 56K. In NYC. Either they can't get anything else, or the machines they're using can't be upgraded to use anything faster than 56K (i.e. no ethernet cards which fit in ISA slots)

I'm surprised here given the size and low population density. Are the limits strictly enforced? Here in the US you can generally go 10 mph over the limit without worrying about a ticket. At least you have the good sense to have "no limit" zones out in the open country. The distances in a lot of...

There's no good analogy to Australia in terms of population density in the US other than remote midwestern states like Montana or Nebraska. You have same number of people in the entire continent of Australia as you do in the NYC metro area. It's no surprise that most forms of public transit...

That's actually part of my point. Even people who love EVs admit they aren't suitable for all trips. However, if they're suitable for the vast majority of trips, it makes more sense to just rent a gas car when you need more range. And that's the situation where much of the US population...

I just ended up losing a long post I started typing in response to Coug's rant. I'm too busy to bother retyping it, but look at this link. BTW, a lot of traffic on intercity highways is freight and business travelers, so crowded highways don't mean a lot of people are driving long distances. The...

The point of fast-charge stations is to mitigate the range issues. For what it's worth, the vast majority of car trips are well within the range of present batteries. Batteries with greater range would be a welcome development, but in the end we could use electric cars for 99% of trips right...

Electric cars are in a state of rapid flux, similar to LEDs a few years back. I suspect in a few years time when you're ready to make the purchase the options and issues you mention will be completely different. For one thing, better batteries may well increase range substantially. There will...

I also want to add that I personally think we should have a lot more stay-at-home moms (or dads). I think having one parent around, not being shuttled into day care, adds a lot to a child's development. I tend to think the reason we have so many dysfunctional, maladjusted, insecure adults these...

It depends on a lot of things, including how many children you have. My and my two siblings were close in age, my mom got pretty much zero help from my father with housework, and we didn't have a lot of modern appliances which make life easier like dishwashers. I remember my mom being busy all...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVYArjS-Ee0

She's probably used to the typical "guy" apartment with dirty laundry everywhere, a layer of grime in the kitchen, beer and spoiled food in the fridge, and several piles of dried up vomit next to the bed from the last few hangovers.

Still using the same Maytag we've had since 1973. We've had to replace the belts a few times, the timer twice, and the water pump once. I guess the Maytag repairman really is lonely. ;)

I meant Happy Birthday Mark! That's what I get for posting half asleep. :oops:

:b-day: Happy Birth Mark! :beer:

There's really no way to get around this conundrum other than to selectively breed a more intelligent populace. If you think about it, throughout history there have always been specialists. The average person went to the blacksmith when his horse needed shoes, to the candlestick maker to get...

That's exactly the problem. What you say is nice in theory if there really is a place for everyone to secure their own future. The hard fact is there won't be. Indeed, many of the jobs lost to the recession just aren't coming back. They were either outsourced or eliminated by automation. Riots...

I've written about this elsewhere. Right now, society is on the verge of facing a huge problem which hardly anyone acknowledges even exists. Automation is poised to drastically decrease the number of manhours needed for society to function. It's also poised to make many people totally...

33% seems about right because you're only eliminating some of the aerodynamic drag part of the equation here. At highway speeds aero drag is probably about 1.5 to 3 times tire drag. On the flip side, for a bicycle aero drag at high speeds is well over 90% of total drag, so it's easy to see how...

If it was a steel wheel I would say yes but with aluminum I have my doubts. Not all aluminum alloys can be hammered back into shape like steel (i.e. cold forged). It might result in loss of strength, microcracks, etc. If it were a bike wheel I might chance trying to hammer it back given the much...

My last move was 35 years ago. I hated it and I had 1/10th the stuff I had now (not surprising because I was 15 at the time). Honestly, if I have any choice in the matter the next move will be to the grave. Moving is a major PITA any way you slice it. Unless the neighborhood changes for the...

I'm going to hazard a guess here based on my knowledge of vehicle physics that fuel economy drafting a semi will be roughly inversely proportional to the weight. All you have is tire drag, and that's directly proportional to weight to a first approximation. Of course, gearing can make a...

:beer: Happy 33rd birthday, Dave! :beer:

Yep. I can draft behind a semi on my bike at 70 mph if I have a high enough gear to keep my cadence reasonable. This video shows how little power is needed (he's only going about 55 mph but he could go faster with a higher gear). Right behind a semi it's pretty much all rolling resistance and...

Thankfully the electorate is gradually shifting away from that perspective. My guess is once gas goes over $5 per gallon and stays there support for public transit will be a winning platform. Also, a fair number of younger people see driving as wasted time. They would rather take public transit...

I was going to suggest that also but I figured it might go over like a lead balloon. But yes, in places like Manhattan, perhaps even the entirety of NYC, you can make a great case for banning personal motorized transportation on the grounds that we have great public transit. I also feel bikes...

I just wanted to add something here about this. In practical terms, it wouldn't matter whether or not you hacked such a system because most people won't. The practical effect if even 25% of vehicles have GPS speed limiters will be that the rest won't be able to exceed the speed limit except at...

That's interesting. I'm glad to see automakers think of these things. My only concern is why shouldn't we be designing all vehicles in such a manner? Here is the US urban populations are rising, so vehicles should be designed to cope with such environments. I don't know if it would be possible...

How about if you just disabled the devices on urban streets then? That's a fair compromise in my book. Here's the issue-if you either ride or drive in an auto, you've entered into a implicit contract where you're accepting some risk in exchange for some perceived benefit, same as people who fly...

Merc, the key is context. On the highway, talking on a phone doesn't seem as dangerous. In fact, it might even help you stay more alert on long, boring stretches of road. On urban streets, where often the situation already demands your full attention and then some, using a phone can have deadly...

Agreed on the device which blocks cell phone signals. If you read what I wrote, I said 3 mph/sec on urban streets. In other places, the acceleration rates would be whatever the vehicle was capable of. There's a time and place for everything. IMO, high speeds and high acceleration rates are...

I'm curious here about what type of emergencies you're referring to. Most of the "emergencies" in driving situations which require other drivers to react are exactly the result of people driving too fast for conditions. I tend to think if you limit speeds and acceleration rates you won't end up...

I know you didn't imply that. ESC is very useful, little doubt about it. My entire rant was that the best way to prevent collisions due to drunk driving is to ensure that vehicles won't operate if the driver is drunk (or unlicensed, or tired or on the phone). Not drunk driving related, but I'm...

My take on this is without mandatory safety devices cars still wouldn't even have brakes, never mind all the other stuff. That said, I question whether things like ABS actually make things safer. People compensate when they know they can stop faster by cutting things closer. End result is no...

Strangle the bean counters instead. The engineers I'm sure want the best thermal interface. It's the accountants who tell them otherwise. I can't say how many otherwise great products have been ruined by planned obsolescence and/or intentionally designing in failure points, all in the name of...

It's actually even worse that. It's more like an intelligent comment on Yahoo is like royalty visiting a trailer park. I read through the comments there, especially anything having to do with politics or global warming, and find myself wondering if it's possible to have a negative IQ, meaning...

I personally think comment rating is one of the dumbest recent trends. I also consistently find on Yahoo news that the most intelligent comments get the most down votes. It's almost as if people don't want to think, and don't want to be shown that their opinions are wrong because they're based...

My sincerest condolences. Having gone through the loss of my father in 2006, I know how difficult times like this are, and also how unfair life seems when loved ones who led a good life are suddenly taken from us. If it's any consolation, eventually life will seem normal again, but it will take...

Get a few cans of spray paint, some masking tape, and do it yourself. The idea of paint is to keep the body from rusting. A DIY paint job will accomplish that just as well as an expensive one. It's true that eventually it's not worth putting money into a car any more, but if you do things...

The most I ever rode in one day was 70.2 miles (113.0 km). That was in two separate rides. The most I did in one ride was 60.2 miles (96.9 km). That was almost 31 years ago. It took 3 hours, 20 minutes but it didn't involve as much climbing as your 87 km ride. There was no GPS in those days but...

Don't some SSDs deal with the leakage issue by "refreshing" charge levels when they're active? I'm guessing it works as follows: the entire drive is read maybe once daily during periods in between reads/writes. Any cells where the measured voltage is trending towards marginal levels are...

That's what I'm thinking as well. I read too much stuff saying you should aim for 90 to 100 RPM, but that might apply mostly to pros trying to develop their maximum power for extended periods. I'll try to aim for 70 or 75 from now on, and see if the numbness subsides. I couldn't tell on last...

I adjusted the bike myself after reading a number of guides online. It's adjusted to me about as well as it can be, although I realize there's nothing like getting a new bike properly fitted to you. Anyway, I'm 100% sure cadence is making the difference here. Towards the end of the ride, I...