PennSilverTaco's "Perfect 5-Lug Regular Cab" Build, Aspergers, and General BS MegaThread!

I was just out and about all day, and right now I'm binge-watching American Dad! on Hulu...

 

Would you ever buy a 2nd Gen or 3rd Gen?

 

No third?

 

I like the look of 1st Gens better than 2nd Gens, but my truck was a gift and has the same reliability and general build quality as a 1st Gen; I would love a 1st Gen, but I doubt I could ever find a lower-mileage 1st Gen that isn't exorbitantly overpriced!

 

The nicest one I've seen recently is the red '04 my friend got from her late husband...

 

I actually think that putting one's money in 1st Gen Tacomas is a smart investment!

 

Is this one a 4x4?

 

Stick shift?

 

High miles?

 

In the late 1990s, either my parents or one of my relatives bought me this really fun computer game for Christmas; You were a mechanic with your own garage, and you worked on a few dozen customer vehicles, doing everything from engine repairs and replacements to bodywork. On the side, you could buy vehicles at auction, repair and restore them, and resell them at auction...

I have no idea what the game was called, and the graphics were incredibly crude by today's standards, but I could spend hours playing it! The vehicles were based on older Ford designs, though no actual vehicle names were given to avoid copyright issues; The vehicles I remember include...

• 1978-1979 Ford Bronco
  
• 1978-1983 Ford Fairmont wagon
• 1981-1990 Ford Escort hatchback
• 1992-1996 Ford E-series van

I know there were a couple more vehicles, but I forget what they were; The Bronco-based SUV could also be turned into a pickup truck resembling a 1978-1979 Ford F-series...

The van was highly interchangeable, with the ability to convert it from cargo van to passenger van (and vice versa). Despite being a newer model, it also had a carburetor, with the ability to convert to fuel injection. One of the jobs you got during the course of the game involving a van was converting it from a cargo van into a passenger van, and another job involving a van required the replacement of an entire engine block. You had the option of buying new parts, or going to the junkyard and buying used parts.

The Bronco-based SUV could be turned into a monster truck, the hatchback could be turned into a cabriolet/convertible resembling a VW Rabbit, and the station wagon could be fitted with jet engines!

The final job/level involved fitting a man's station wagon with the aforementioned jet packs, at which point you completed the game and were free to exclusively focusing on buying, restoring, and selling vehicles. I played this game over and over again, probably hundreds of times, between 1998-1999 and 2002. In 2002, my parents bought a brand new Dell desktop and the old 1990s desktop was relegated to "spare computer" status in the basement. The very last time I played the aforementioned garage game was 2002 at the very latest, and boy do I ever miss that game! So simplistic, yet so much fun!

 

I did not get my first game console (a Sony PlayStation) until Christmas 1999, so I exclusively played computer games from 1995 to 1999; My favorite PC game in the late 1990s was Monster Truck Madness 2, a gift from my parents for Christmas in 1998. I played that game regularly from 1998 to at least 2002, and I may have even gotten it working as late as 2003-2004.

From 2002-2005, my favorite computer game was the original The Sims. For Christmas in 2007, my aunt bought me The Sims 2, which I spent pretty much all of 2008 playing on my laptop (What I'm most amazed about is that a game intended for desktops worked as well as it did on a laptop). My dad bought me The Sims 3 in 2009, but I didn't like it as much as The Sims 2 and lost interest after about a month...

 

My parents have bought me so much stuff over the last thirty years, and I would never be able to repay them for it; The best thing my parents ever bought me weighs about 3,000 pounds and is currently parked in the driveway...

That Tacoma has been my ticket to freedom for the last decade!

 

Going back to the discussion of computer games, one of my favorites ever was Oregon Trail! I never actually owned Oregon Trail, but my friend Kyle did in about 1995 and I can remember playing it at his house; When we lived in California from 1996 to 1998, I played it a lot in school!

Oregon Trail was actually used as an educational tool when I was in 2nd and 3rd grade! On another note, when I went to school in a California, 1980s Macintosh computers were still in use for keyboarding class! In 1997, I was playing a typing game called Talking Fingers on a Mac that had to be at least a decade old! The computers in my regular classroom, used for things like Oregon Trail, were modern (for the time) Windows computers no older than 1995 or so.

 

I know I've said this before, but my parents didn't get a computer with Windows until 1996; Before we had AOL, we used something called Prodigy...

We did not have high-speed internet until we moved back to Pennsylvania in 2005; We used dial-up until the first half of 2005 not because we couldn't afford high-speed/DSL, but because our neighborhood had not yet been fitted with the fiber optic cables necessary to have high-speed internet! From the time I was born until 2005, we always ran a second phone line to power the computer so talking on the phone wouldn't make it impossible to go online.

 

Another game I had was Car Tycoon, which allowed you to run your own car company...

My dad bought the game for me in 2003 or 2004, and it was fun until I realized that I could never save my progress (This was not just an issue with my game; Apparently the game was plagued with bugs from the very beginning); The game had numerous glitches, and I believe I stopped playing it in 2006.

 

Yes!

 

Well, you've owned two 2nd Gens and currently own a 3rd Gen...

 

Ex GF's son had his Dakota break down again, when he bought it I asked him to please buy a AAA Membership cause I knew it would be getting towed frequently. He wont listen and still hasn't bought a membership and has to keep paying theses crazy tow truck fees!

 

That would be correct!

 

What happened exactly?