quick poll - american cars

Nothing to be sorry about even though you seem to think there is.

I most likely care as much about what you think of me as you care about what I think about you.

Jon Banquer San Diego, CA

Being a proven pathological liar, and extreme social misfit, you fit right in over there Jon:

"Qualcomm will pay Broadcom $891 million over the next four years"

"A number of the biggest names in the mobile industry have lodged a complaint with the European Commission accusing Qualcomm of anti- competitive behaviour."

Always refreshing to see that your ignorance knows no bounds. Be it CAD/CAM, machine tools, measuring equipment, business practices, or automobiles, your stupidity just oozes from every keystroke.

Like many in the repair business it's feast or famine.......and if gross income equaled net income..............

Sigh....indeed. Some years/months are Great...other years/months are not so good...some...like now...are pathetic.

Expenses add up a lot too.

Gunner

------------- It may be informative to review the history of some of the car makers that stopped production after the new car boom that followed WW2.

Of particular interest is that these defunct companies were pioneers and introduced many innovations still in use today such as air conditioning (Nash), flow through heating ventalation (Nash Weathereye) "stepdown body design" (Hudson), and unibody construction (Nash), but were still unable to remain as viable companies. This should be a special warning to those that assume Detroit can "innovate" or "engineer" their way out of their current problems.

Note the common threads in the following histories, how closely they resemble each other, and how the Detroit big three, with the possible exception of Ford, never seemed to learn anything, as the same factors are at work in the current difficulties.

Hudson

Nash Studebaker Packard and brand names that were dropped

De Soto

Oldsmobile Plymouth

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

At this point I'm not sure what's funnier:

1. Who you asked the question to.

1. The laughable answers you got.

Jon Banquer San Diego, CA

Hard to choose, it's a toss up between:

your accuracy claims & beginner questions recently about gages,

your clueless CAD/CAM rants,

your years of posing as a CAD/CAM expert on programs you obviously don't even have a basic working knowledge of

your blog's Machining tips page

your claims you once knew, owned and taught SolidWorks courses ROFLMAO

oh! maybe when you claimed to be working for/with HSM Works

claimed you once owned 100+ rental units while making $16-$21 per hour

that your company bought NX6 and you would be using it starting last January

you running a machine for months and not knowing how many pallets it had, 12 wasn't it and you kept claiming 11

OH!, operating a Hass and not knowing how to perform daily operator checks, where the oil gage ALWAYS reads zero on the automatic oiling system, where the tools bang out of the spindle, randomly shot through the carrousel and end up bouncing around in the work area

your claims there was a shortage of machinists in San Diego, where I said it is more likely a shortage of machinists willing to work for operators wages. You refused to post what you thought was a fair wage was but NOW you are calling $5.00 MORE per hour "Coolie Wages".

your opinion, claim to be or what you know, etc., etc., etc., etc.

-- Tom

I have a friend that Never, ever, changed his oil on his new camry. He was lucky because this was the model years they were sludging. Get this, 37000 MILES on original oil and then it just died, and Toyota just gave him a new motor no questions asked, free and clear, talk about dumb ass luck for someone who didnt deserve it. But he kept it washed and clean.

The "Doing Business with Jon Banquer" post was enough for me.......

I think his continual claims that he was "working with" HSMWorks were my favorite, of course that includes the letter from HSMWorks, clearing stating that Jon WAS NEVER affiliated with HSMWorks in ANY way.

You gotta give him an A for effort though!

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LOL

I worked a store which had a Drill press with a sold tag on it. A couple years later, someone really wanted to buy it, and the owner called up the previous buyer (friend of his) and said "You going to come get this, or am I going to have to sell it for the storage fees?" Guy came the next day. Then we had to move all sorts of stuff to get it out of the aisle it had become "one with the store" in. pyotr

- pyotr filipivich We will drink no whiskey before its nine. It's eight fifty eight. Close enough!

More stinky car stuff floats to the top. As most of us are aware it is likely that the PBGC will have to backstop the Chrysler and GM pension plans, at least in part. The way the law reads the retirees will lose their medical/dental coverage and be forced onto Medicare [tax payer funded]. The pension benefits are also capped, and won't pay until 65, so if you took early retirement you are screwed for a few months to a few years.

The stinky part is that the PBGC funds have been "reinvested" from those nasty old Treasury notes that didn't pay much to stocks and bonds, with plans for investment in commercial and residential real estate. Always looking out for the little people....

The article does not indicate how much PBGC trust-fund money has been lost.

----- Former Pension Agency Chief Under Investigation

By ERIC LIPTON Published: May 14, 2009

The former Bush administration official in charge of the federal agency that guarantees pensions for 44 million Americans is under investigation for inappropriate contacts with Wall Street firms seeking to obtain lucrative contracts to manage part of the agency?s portfolio. The former official, Charles E.F. Millard, is also being investigated for soliciting help from one of the winning firms in his search for a new job once he left office.

The allegations against Mr. Millard, the former director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, appear in a draft report by the agency?s inspector general. Agency officials are now considering canceling contracts that Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock won late last year ? worth up to $100 million in fees over a decade ? to collectively manage $2.5 billion worth of the agency?s $49 billion portfolio.

The contracts were part of a broad effort Mr. Millard began shortly after he arrived at the agency in 2007 to put more of its portfolio into higher yielding stocks and alternative investments like private equity and real estate. For years, the agency had been relying on Treasury bonds that offered more predictable, but lower, returns than stocks and alternative investments.

Mr. Millard championed the new strategy as a way to reduce an $11 billion shortfall between the agency?s obligations to make payments to retirees and the agency?s total assets. The agency serves as a guarantee for 29,000 employer-sponsored pension plans, obligations it assumes after a company goes bankrupt, like TransWorld Airlines or Bethlehem Steel.

Even before the contest over who would manage the $2.5 billion formally began, executives at JPMorgan Chase offered Mr. Millard advice on how he should craft the government document requesting bids, sketching out possible questions that the bidders would be asked ?perhaps giving JPMorgan an advantage as the firm prepared its proposal, the inspector general?s report says.

Within two weeks of the award, Mr. Millard, who stepped down from his job in January at the end of the Bush administration, also turned to one senior Goldman Sachs executive involved in the bidding for help in finding a new job.

?Ur grt. Tx,? Mr. Millard wrote back to the Goldman executive, after she told him that several Wall Street executives she had contacted were interested in meeting with him. ?Will send info soon.?

The investigators also found that Mr. Millard, who at the time was also a volunteer on the presidential campaign of John McCain, used his work e-mail and government telephones to repeatedly communicate with Rick Lazio, a senior executive at JPMorgan Chase and former Republican congressman from New York.

In those exchanges, they switched at times between discussing the contract bid to whether Mr. Lazio might be interested in a job in a possible McCain administration.

The report says that Mr. Millard, against the recommendation of agency staff, insisted that he be included on a three-member select committee that would vet the companies bidding to manage a piece of the pension funds.

When he first arrived in Washington in 2007, Mr. Millard began an effort to modify the agency?s investment strategy. He convinced the P.B.G.C.that it was stuck in the past, afraid to venture into the stock market and other alternative investment approaches like private equity and real estate that potentially paid higher returns.

?Our investment policy currently is conservative in the extreme,? he told a Senate committee during his 2007 confirmation hearing. ?I want to make sure that we are being good stewards and recognizing that the dynamism of the American economy could help increase those assets, within reason.?

The change in the investment strategy, which would put 45 percent of the agency?s funds into stocks, 45 percent into bonds, and 10 percent into private equities and real estate, is just getting started, with the portfolio now about 30 percent in equity, and none so far in real estate or private equities.

-----

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

The key to a successful business is often controlling your costs more than anything else. Once you have that done you can pass on some of the savings to grateful customers. The biggest are are the fixed costs. Given that those are kept low slow periods can be managed.

I had a late model V6 Ranger at work, and it only got about 16-17 mpg unloaded, which is not enough for a tiny truck, IMO. It did have plenty of power and was reliable, unlike some of our larger Ford vehicles.

We've been over this with Gunner. Only misguided liberals care about fuel efficiency. Gunner needs a big engine to cart his ass around, because he is a Good American.

I'm not one to preach on that subject, the family fleet is not exactly the most fuel efficient. It will be a big factor to consider when I choose my next vehicle.

Automatic eh? Mine gets around 19

Gunner