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

On another note, me and the cousin who’s a park ranger consider ourselves to be aquarium connoisseurs...

We went to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden the same day we went to see the Battleship New Jersey, because they are directly next to each other. Take it from both of us; The Adventure Aquarium is not that impressive! We last went in 2012, almost eight years ago, and the most impressive part was the hippos; That’s the only part I truly remember...

My cousin and I both agree that the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta is our absolute favorite, with the Monterey Bay Aquarium coming in at a close second. Unfortunately, I have not been to the Georgia Aquarium since August 2011. My aunt was living in Decatur at the time, and my parents surprised me with a round trip ticket to Atlanta to visit her. The Georgia Aquarium was literally the first stop after she picked me up at the airport (actually, it was either the aquarium or CNN HQ; The aquarium may have been the second day).

Anyway, the Georgia Aquarium is most noteworthy for its whale sharks, at least in my opinion.

My aunt works for the CDC and was living in Kenya from 2016 to 2019, and she just recently moved back to Atlanta so I will have to make arrangements to visit her again.

The Virginia Aquarium is good, but it’s overpriced for how small it is and what it has to offer. I believe it’s $25 admission, while by comparison it costs $30 per person to get into the vastly superior Georgia Aquarium.

Aquariums I’ve never been to but what would love to visit include:

• Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans
• Ripley’s Believe It Or Not in Myrtle Beach
• Those are the only two I can think of right now

I went to the Baltimore Aquarium in like 1993 or 1994 and remember having a great time.

 

I’m happy living right where I am...

Plan on seeing the world before I turn 70 though!

 

Pictures from the visit to the Georgia Aquarium during the August 2011 Atlanta trip...

 

2011 will forever be one of the happiest years of my life for numerous reasons...

• On May 19th, 2011 I finally got my driver’s license!
• For Memorial Day Weekend, my dad took me to Key West for a few days of jet skiing (technically Wave Runners), snorkeling, and bar hopping to celebrate getting my driver’s license.
• I met Sam, the then-new GM of Puck who go down in history as one of my best friends and mentors.
• We went to Maine like we usually did, but I got to drive on Maine roads for the first time as a licensed driver.
• My parents flew me out to Atlanta for a weekend as seen in these pictures.
• I got to ride in the Doylestown Fire Company’s $1 million ladder truck!

FUN TIMES!

 

The hood ornament that came off my Grandpa’s 1993 Lincoln Continental and currently hangs from my Taco’s rear view mirror used to be a necklace. I figured it was a bit juvenile to be wearing a car hood ornament as a necklace when I was in my early 20s and gave it a new place of honor in my truck...

I accidentally found out that the penguins at the Georgia Aquarium were interested in my then-necklace and proceeded to tease them with it; I handed my aunt the Nikon D3000 SLR to take still photos and used my Fujifilm point-and-shoot to film the penguin encounter...

 

@shakerhood

I typically write off pre-2006 Goodman HVAC products as being junk, but there are exceptions to every rule; My aunt’s house was built in the late 1950s and I do not know if it originally had central air. By the time she bought it in 2006 or so, it had this 1996 Goodman builder-grade unit matched up with a natural gas furnace.

Many houses in Atlanta have gas heat, but a good number also have heat pumps...

It all depends on where you are; My aunt’s new place in Atlanta has a heat pump.

 

@shakerhood

So my aunt’s old place had a 1996 Goodman (may have been a Janitrol; Emblem was long gone), and it was a 4-ton (48,000 BTU) unit. The house was built in the 1950s, so this unit was obviously not original.

Even in the suburbs of a city nicknamed Hotlanta for its infamously brutal summer heat, this Goodman was oversized for my aunt’s modest 2-bedroom rancher!

What happens when a central A/C unit is oversized for a home or building is that it will cool the place down too quickly for the system to properly condition the air, leaving the house feeling cold but clammy, which was the case at my aunt’s house sometimes...

 

The reason for the damaged coils on the unit is that previous owner’s dog apparently peed on it numerous time, and the urine dissolved portions of the condenser fins over time.



Despite being (A) one of the worst quality air-conditioners ever to come out of the nineties, (B) being slightly oversized for the house, and (C) being damaged by dog urine, this thing actually worked great!

Maybe five years ago, the air-conditioner inexplicably quit working and a local contractor was ready to sell my aunt a new Trane system for like six or seven grand. My aunt described the symptoms to me over the phone and I told her to have them check the run capacitor. The tech replaced the run cap, and go figure, the old Goodman fired right up!

My aunt sold the house in 2016 when she moved to Africa, and the Goodman was still there and fully operational when the new owners moved in!

 

In August 2011, I’d had my license for all of three months, and I was ecstatic when my aunt tossed me the keys to her 2007 Subaru Impreza one day...

 

My aunt knows how to drive a stick shift, but she was like 45 when she bought the Subie and didn’t feel like dealing with a clutch in Atlanta traffic..

I can tell you from experience that merging onto an Atlanta freeway in a nonturbo automatic Impreza with the A/C going full throttle feels like this...

 

Here is my aunt’s ‘07 Impreza, four years old at the time the pictures were taken...

 

@shakerhood

I know you love cats...

My aunt has had at least three since the mid-1990s, and I think this ones’s name was Callaway; He was probably well into his 90s in cat years by the time this photo was taken, but he was still friendly and playful...

 

You can tell that cat still had some energy.

 

Wow, that's amazing!

 

Is that a Lincoln emblem on a chain?

 

She had a Maine Coon named Angus that ran away in the 1997 or so and was never seen again; She had a black cat named Carson that was mauled and mortally injured by a friend’s dogs while she was living in Zimbabwe in 2004 or 2005...