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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace (INSP): Where GNET went! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (26829)	2/18/2002 9:34:48 PM
From: (Bob) Zumbrunnen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28311

4 ponds, 1 lake. And if we get the kind of rain tonight they're calling for, the lake should be really impressive tomorrow. If you ask me, it sounds like a little boy playing in the dirt with big equipment. I'm told (frequently) that I'm making up for being deprived of Hot Wheels and Tonka Toys as a kid. I don't disagree. Did ya ever stop and think that maybe your son is a better driver than you? Guaranteed he's not. Even at his current age, he does some incredibly stupid stuff in/on machines. And a backhoe just waits for a chance to kill you when you goof off like that. He uses it, but only under my close supervision. Seems to still have zero appreciation for the effect on your center of gravity when you lift a cubic yard of wet clay about 10 feet into the air. Or for another example, he's seen me do a maneuver I learned from a friend (it's probably very common) that I call a "wheelie pivot". Say I've just dropped off a load of dirt and am returning to the area where I'm digging it from. I back up, turn the wheel just a bit to my right, stab the right brake, shift into forward, gun the throttle, straighten the wheel, stab the left brake, and in what appears to be one smooth motion, I've turned the machine 180 degrees. Quickly and with a lot less effort than it takes to put a car through the same maneuver. I call it a wheelie because an integral part of this is getting the front tires off the ground. Well, it took me a while to get that maneuver down, and I worked up to it slowly. However, he saw it from outside the machine and had the same reaction I did when I first saw it. To wit, "Cool!!!". Wheelies are cool. It's a guy thing. Well, while he barely knew that the shift lever is on the left and the turn signal is on the right, he figured he was adept enough to try this maneuver. The only thing that saved him was the dipper acting as a wheelie bar. Were it not for that, it would've rolled. And he didn't learn. I've seen him do it multiple times and I'm sure that if he's ever in it without my supervision, he'll try it again. Not only does a 19-year old lack the ability to realistically judge their own abilities, they also seem to be extremely lacking when taking into account what the machine they're trying to ruin might've cost the owner. Not that I was any different at that age. <g> I should ask, how old is your son? 19. Can you imagine much that's more terrifying than a 19-year old barreling down the road in a 25-ton dumptruck? One who's likely to forget to disengage the PTO and at best, dump 10 yards of dirt into the middle of the road or at worst kill others and himself when that forgotten little mundane detail causes the truck to take out power lines as it flips? <g> I imagine your wife is thrilled to death to have all this dust stirred up outside, pouring into the house. Not even noticeable. We live on a gravel road, so the dust I stir up in the dirt is trivial compared to what comes off the road.