DetroitNut90

All the cool kids vote.

Traffic around here is terrible. We have consistently fallen behind only Los Angeles and San Francisco (I think we're actually only second to LA now) in terms of traffic congestion. So if you're gonna be working in DC or the surrounding suburbs (especially Virginia), don't move to Baltimore. You will hate yourself everyday you're sitting on 95, 295, 29 or 1. That said, I like Baltimore. It has its bad parts, but so does every other city on the east coast. The Inner Harbor and Downtown are very nice. I've lived here all my life and I never get tired of going to the National Aquarium and the Maryland Science Center always has interesting exhibits. BWI is the only airport you'll ever need, and you can catch a Metrobus from there that will take you to Greenbelt and you can take Metro into DC from there. Some of the best hospitals around are here, as well as urban campuses of the University System of Maryland. The public primary schools aren't the best, though. The better neighborhoods are around the Inner Harbor and Downtown, but there are enclaves in other parts of the city, like Patterson Park in the east, Homeland, Roland Park, Cold Spring and Pimlico in the north. The better neighborhoods are cheaper than their equivalents in DC. That said, I highly recommend moving closer to DC if that's where you'll be spending the workday.

A white 350Z from Guam. Also, an early-90s Accord and a more-recent Corolla with carriage tops, back-to-back.

I guess when I bought it with 112,000 on the clock, I assumed the plugs were either new(er) or they'd be changed soon. Soon turned into 25,000 miles later...

Way for me to make a mountain out of a molehill...I took it to our mechanic yesterday, and a set of bad spark plugs and even worse plug wires later, the car's running better than the day I bought it. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

It's a '98 with the L36 3800 Series II and 4T65-E. The fluid was a little low; once my dad got home, we put some in. It didn't seem to work, because the problem was still there. And now it's doing something else: when idling in park, the engine will run fine for a couple seconds and then start to sputter for a bit, then catch itself just before it stalls. Dad says if it were a bad plug or plug wire, it wouldn't be so intermittent; he thinks it might be something with a vacuum hose. No codes came up when I plugged in the scanner and none of the gauge lights have come on.

Today, I fixed the a/c in my Intrigue. One of the gears in the passenger-side blend door actuator got a huge crack in it, rendering the whole thing useless. Two trips to AutoZone later (the first time I ordered the part, it didn’t make it onto the delivery truck ) and I’ve got cool air blowing out of the passenger-side vents for the first time in about a year. Today, I also noticed that something else is wrong with the car, and I’m worried that it’s the transmission. Back in July, I went to look at a 2002 Taurus SEL, because my local Chevy-BPG dealer quoted me $1167 to fix the blend door problem (thank God for the internet, I fixed it myself for $140). I was hesitant to sink that amount of money into the Intrigue, so I started looking around to see if I could find something newer. Long story short, while I was on the dealership’s lot, one of their detailers backed a Beetle into my Intrigue. I wasn’t in the car, nor was my friend who came with me, so no injuries or anything, and it wasn’t that fast of a crash to begin with. The only obvious effect was a slightly bent front plate and bracket and some scuffs to the paint, but I did see how much the car got rocked back-and-forth. On the way home, I noticed that the car would make something like a bucking motion when I was in 4th and lightly accelerating between 40 and 50. I had it taken the next day to our mechanic and they said that there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. It’s been doing that ever since, but they told me it might need a tune-up or the fluid flushed and replaced. Fast forward to today, the car made the same bucking motion, but this time, it happened right after I backed out of the parking space at the AutoZone. It did it when I accelerated out of the parking lot and a few more times at low speeds as I was driving home. I took it around the block after I installed the new blend door actuator and it seems to do it every time I put it in gear and drive off, accelerate from a stop, and then at a few other random spots. The tach goes a little crazy when this happens, jumping along with the rest of the car from 2000 up to 3000 and then back down again, which seems to me like it is something with the transmission. I remember something like this happening to my mom’s Venture before we got rid of it; we took it to the mechanic and IIRC, he said it was a band that needed tightening. I’m really hoping this isn’t anything sinister…any thoughts?

I went with some friends to a drive-in in Baltimore on Friday to see some movies; The Last Airbender was one of them. We paid attention for five minutes and then talked through the rest of it. When the guy on the broadcast asked everyone who liked the movie to flash their high-beams if they liked it, only three cars did out of at least 200.

I had just finished second grade.

Were they even worth that much new?

I never understood why my friend's mom took 17 North out of Norfolk instead of going west on 64 to Richmond and then getting on 95 until I made the drive myself. 64 around and out of Hampton Roads is horrendous. Longest I've gone was...actually, that drive. Corolla, NC to Laurel, MD. Nine hours behind the wheel of what should've been no more than 4.

41/42 in 1:59.

It all depends on how 95 is. With no delays either way (something that is becoming increasingly rarer), my 12 mile drive takes 20 minutes. When 95 is backed-up, it can take an hour to make the same trip.

My last name is similar-enough to be (erroneously) pronounced as such. It's something I've gotten used to; she'll learn quick if it wasn't her maiden name.

Well, I do have my high school diploma. Right now, I'm working on my BA in German and a minor in Spanish at the University of Maryland. I'll graduate just as the world begins to end! Oh yeah, I'm doing the commuter thing too. It's a little annoying when most of the professors/TAs just assume that everyone lives on-campus or in immediately-surrounding College Park.

Not a day in high school went by without playing spades at lunch. We'd play hearts on the bus, occasionally capitalism (president to some). When my friends and I spend a week at my grandparents' during the summer, we play poker at night. It's just for chips and I'm terrible at it, but it's fun.

What I took to be the crack-boom of thunder was actually one of our neighbor's trees falling right where I normally park my car. I'm so glad I decided to park on our other driveway. *wipes brow* It's still windy and snowing (another 7.5" today), and tomorrow will make it a full week since I've been to class. Hooray for early spring break?

Yup, the weather dudes say we're due for 1-3" at some point tomorrow afternoon and then another 6-10" tomorrow night. This is on top of the 25" already sitting on the ground and it's been enough so that my classes have been canceled since Thursday and at least through tomorrow. Some highlights of our dig-out efforts. Aside from the cars being cleared off, the scenery it basically still the same:

(25" of) snow.

mode

I have to say, I like it. Two things: the greenhouse is a little odd, especially as it stretches over the back door and the center stack reminds me ever-so-slightly of the Lexus LS. It's nothing groundbreaking nor envelope-pushing (like what Cadillac should be showcasing), but it's nice enough for what it is, IMO.

I like the general idea here. Two things I'd change: 1) Move the headlights down to where the vent-things are rather than sitting on top of them 2) Split the exhaust pipes, one on each side instead of a central unit. I also kind of think that saddle and dark grey is an unattractive color combination, but it's refreshing to see something other than solid tan, black, or grey.

RX-8 meets Insight. The interior's not very nice-looking either, IMO, but I kinda like the setup of the speedo and tach.

Today started out seeing a black '46 Cadillac sedan followed by a silver '67 Sedan de Ville. On the way home, I was side-by-side with a red Solstice GXP coupe for a while. When it turned off of US-1 in College Park, a black G8 GXP pulled into traffic to replace it.