I mentioned this bit in a previous entry (see also NGALK!!) and I'm glad to see it again.
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Michael Flynn has a good post up today about how to handle exposition in fiction. I have used all of them except for the "entire chapter of stuff" method.
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This Chicago Boyz post echoes many of my own sentiments about our self-styled betters on the coasts:
...the federal government and the bi-coastal elites who appear to have pretentions of being an aristocratic and ruling class definitively do not give a rodent’s patoot about the security and well-being of ordinary American citizens. No, they don’t, and won’t – as long as the lavish parties keep happening, the juvenile spawn of the elite keep wandering into high-paying do-nothing jobs and multi-million dollar parcels of residential real estate in the fashionable sections of New York, Malibu, Georgetown, Boulder and San Francisco.They really don't care. Further, they will take whatever steps are necessary to continue in this vein regardless of how it affects the ordinary citizen. Gas costing $8 per gallon? It's not a problem for them; the little people like their trucks and dirt bikes too much anyway. Beef costing twice what it cost five years ago? Those hicks in flyover country eat too much meat as it is. Unemployment and low wages? Well, you should have picked a better career, prole. Why don't you start a business and get rich, like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk?
The coastal elites aren't feeling any pain from the depression because their politicians--bought and paid for--have insulated them from it. "Too big to fail", for example, and TARP, and whatever else.
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Speaking of YouTube, I came across a couple of videos wherein a guy bought a non-running Chinese dirt bike (actually an enduro, as it's street legal) for $25 and fixed it up. The videos aren't big on "how" but I thought it was pretty neat, regardless.
The big problem with Chinese gear like that is parts. You don't pay much for the stuff because it's only going to work as long as nothing breaks, and when something does that's when you have to get creative because there is no warranty.
In the case of this guy's $25 enduro--remarkably like this one--it needs a clutch, and so far the best suggestion he's had has been that some Chinese bikes are Honda knock-offs and he might be able to get the clutch components from a Honda dealership. Yeah.
...whoever he bought the thing from got 1,400 miles out of it before he sold it.
In the case of the linked bike above, if you can take delivery of a container's worth--32 units--you can get one for about $800. That's $25,600 for 32 motorcycles; I suppose you could sell thirty of them at $1,000 apiece and keep two for yourself (one for parts) and call it good. But if you've got 25 large laying around doing nothing, you could buy a nice Japanese bike for about six or seven grand and actually be able to fix it without cannibalizing another bike for parts.
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Got to start getting ready for work in an hour. While it's very nice not to have to get up early, going to work in the late afternoon always sucks in its own way.
On the 29th, Windows 10 is being released. I work Thu and Fri next week, and I expect that those two days are going to be full of people who tried to upgrade and failed, for one reason or another. I wonder how many of them will expect me to fix their problems for free.
Myself, I've decided that I'm going to upgrade Seiren to Win 10 and see how it works. It's already got Win 7 on it, but nothing else (other than the usual software) so it'll make a good test bed for me to tinker with. If it craps out I can reinstall Win 7 without any trouble, and have lost nothing but a little bit of time.
Further, deponent sayeth not.