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

Probably in the 1970's.

 

I was Gene Simmons that year.

 

... But also...

 

Honestly it depends on your grandmother...

 

I am just realizing now that I don't think I ever introduced myself in the New Members thread (I've been here since 2014)!

 

I am just realizing now that I don't think I ever introduced myself in the New Members thread (I've been here since 2014)!

 

The mods (I forget who specifically; I'd like to say @98tacoma27 played a role in it...?) created this thread just for me so I could BS and talk about whatever I wanted, as long as I followed the rules and obeyed the code of conduct. I believe my informal "introduction" was this thread...

 

@El Duderino
@Mitch76
@Running Man
@shakerhood
@Taco critter

You know what I'm noticing in the earlier pages of this thread?!?! A lot of posts from members who have been perma-banned! Perhaps a piece of TW history?

 

@shakerhood

Do you think it's worth it to ask the mods to delete some of the posts in here that are either (A) insulting to me, or (B) just cluttering up the thread?

 

I wouldn't really bother with it unless something in particular is upsetting to you.

 

Insulting my driving skills, saying I talk too much, shit like that...

 

If it really bothers you then there is no harm in asking for those items to be removed.

 

It bothers me about 50/50, the other 50% it doesn't bother me. The other half of it is the clutter factor. One person even specifically called out the way my parents raised me, but I chose not to have that deleted because another member who I did not know swooped right in and defended me. Also, there was the time a moderator publicly called someone a dickhead for being rude to me.

 

Here's something I remember from when I was little. My uncle used to have a 1997 Ford Expedition. He originally had a 1997 Ford Explorer, and the Expedition was originally his younger sister's. Both vehicles were leased. In 1997, my aunt had nasty fall in the cafeteria at work and messed up her back. She could no longer get in and out of the Expedition. My aunt and uncle talked to their respective leasing agencies and got the okay to switch vehicles. My aunt lived in Colorado at the time, so the Expedition was a 4x4. My uncle has lived in Florida since the early 1980s and had never in his life owned a 4x4, so the Explorer was 2WD. I guarantee you that was the only 2WD Explorer in the Denver area!

My aunt got rid of the Explorer when the lease was up, and bought a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder. My uncle ended up loving the Expedition so much that he leased another one in 2000 when the lease was up on the first one. However, the '97 was 4WD and he neither wanted nor needed that; Also, the Expedition was backed into by a garbage truck shortly after he bought it, so it had an accident on its record.

My uncle drove up from Florida to visit us at our house in Virginia Beach in about October 1998 (I actually first saw it when he drove it up to my grandma's house in Maine in 1997). I was immediately enthralled with the Expedition, and he gave me the grand tour. One feature this Expedition had that I had never seen before was the factory 6-disc CD changer in the center console. The Expedition also had a tape deck. As of 1998, we'd had plenty of cars and truck with cassette players, only one with a CD player, and none with both a CD and cassette (You can thank Toyota dealers, for refusing to go below sticker on 1996 T4Rs, for the fact that we didn't didn't get a vehicle with a CD and cassette until 2000). My uncle had me sit in the shotgun seat while he got behind the wheel and started the engine (My uncle's Expedition had the 4.6L, which I'm told is the better of the two engine choices, and not the 5.4L). He had Springsteen in the CD changer (my dad actually introduced me to Springsteen; It was Uncle Kenny who introduced me to ZZ Top in about 1999), knew exactly which slot it was in, and told me to listen to the CD changer shuffling. He then put on Born to Run and cranked it up. I was absolutely amazed by the fact that one could have six CDs at their fingertips in their vehicle!

 

FYI, the novelty of a multi-CD changer in a vehicle wore off more over a decade ago. The first vehicle with a CD changer that my dad ever owned was a 2008 Acura TL. He bought it brand new and owned it for six years. That was also the first vehicle my family ever owned that had a backup camera. The CD changer in my dad's Acura had a 6-disc capacity, but unlike the one in Uncle Kenny's Expedition, it was in the dash. The Acura was the third family vehicle to have a cassette and compact disc capability, and the only one to have an auxiliary jack in addition to the other two media sources. The Acura was the first vehicle we had that had auxiliary jack; I'd played my iPod in my mom's Honda Odyssey through the use of those car kit adapters, and the Pathfinder NEVER had an aux input (The factory radio died so we put an aftermarket Sony head unit in; My dad did not like the Sony due to it's small buttons and replaced it with an Alpine in 2005; This head unit was still there when we traded it). I wanted a new stereo with an AUX input, but my dad bought me a new Tacoma instead...

I honestly think that a separate CD changer is a waste of space!

 

I am still blown away by the fact that there are numerous posts from at least three perma-banned members in here!

 

It is about 1am here in Pennsylvania as I type this. I miss my supervisors and coworkers from the detail shop dearly (I actually dropped by for a visit earlier this week), but I do not miss waking up at 6:30am every Saturday to work a nine hour shift! I'm going to bed minutes from now, and I will wake up at around 8am to go to a car show in Perkasie (Vargo Dragway Reunion). I now work Tuesday through Thursday, eight hours a day. Sometimes I work on Fridays. I also do Doordash to make extra money.

Like I said before, I worked Saturdays at Puck all the time, but I pretty much never had to be up at the crack of dawn, and when I did work more than five hours I didn't mind it because I was getting paid by the hour and often got a cut of the tips in addition to that. My boss at Puck was always willing to give me Saturdays and Sundays (and in the case of Carlisle the whole weekend). Granted, my boss at the detail shop was too, but the shop was always understaffed and he did not like giving Saturdays off.

I am saying this not to badmouth my former employer, but to talk about the negative effects it had on my health and personal life. While working at the detail shop, my hours were so odd that I was almost totally beat at the end of the day. I would lash out at my parents and friends as a result of being overworked and overtired; I was quite aggressive at times. Doing manual labor in a detail shop with no air-conditioning did result in me losing weight, but that was about the only positive effect it had on my health. After only doing DoorDash to earn a living (during which I spent almost all my time in the truck and, thus, largely sedentary) and regularly drinking with friends for about two months, I regained that weight; I am currently working to lose it again...

 

There are a lot of articles floating around on the internet about the work/life balance. My job at the detail shop was a prime example of poor work/life balance. There was also the dreaded "Clopening" shift. This is something retail workers know all too well; You close at night, only to have to come in the next morning less than ten hours later to open...

During my first month or so at the detail shop, I was working Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 3:30pm to 9pm. My shift on Saturdays was 7:50am to 5pm. It didn't take long for this schedule to wear me out, and it eventually got so bad that I claimed I was sick in order to stay home one Friday in October 2018. The next week, I talked to my boss and told him that working until 9pm on Friday and then having to come back in before 8am on Saturday was too much. I asked if I could work Monday through Wednesday instead, and he said yes. A short time later, they decided to close the dealership at 8pm on weekdays. As such, the weekday shift for part-timers was now 2:30pm-8:00pm. Much better, but in my opinion still not enough time for relaxing and sleeping on Friday nights.

The detailing job taught me two things:

• Yes, I am capable of going out and getting a real job on my own without knowing somebody.
• I love detailing my own truck, but just because somebody enjoys doing something in their spare time doesn't mean they'll enjoy doing it professionally.

 

And yes, for the record, I did get my job at Puck because I was friends with the owners and, more importantly, the general manager. The owners owned the property and paid for everything, but all of the decisions related to running the bar were handled by the GM (including hiring employees; she conducted all the interviews, handled the payroll, etc).

I'd been having a lot of trouble finding a job and had NEVER been steadily employed outside of a program for special ed kids run by school. My friend gave me and chance and started out by paying me under the table to be her personal assistant. It was only supposed to last a year, but within a year I was on the books as a barback.

I never had a formal interview (What's the point? I'd known the GM since 2011, and I started working for her in 2014, so that's three years), never had to take a drug test, and never had to do anything beyond giving my social security number when she put on the payroll. We had plenty of arguments and disagreements over the years, but we're pretty much friends for life. She and her fiancé just bought a house together and I'm going to be helping out by moving furniture from their old place. I've been invited to the wedding. We used to go out drinking together all the time, but we've both gotten older, more mature, and busier, so we don't really do that as often. We've gone bowling together as well. She still pays me to walk the dogs as well!

 

Sometime in the 90’s during high school. We were less into candy and more into scaring other kids, including setting up a themed walk through at a buddies house. Kids had to walk through it to get to the front door. Lots of fun, including chainsaws (no chains), smoke machines, music, etc. to really make it fun.