Victoria

MILF dream comes true......I have to write Penthouse

Hello! Shes' 21 and unmarried. Your MILF standards are high!

Thinking:

*hot girl, don't fart....hot girl, don't fart* Damn

Sorry, I just love fart jokes. Should've said.

Wins what?

I'm not sure yet...but I'm workin' on it.

This is the CH black stitch I mean.

Ooh, that looks very nice. Is that from his recent new hides? I heard there might be a Crazy Horse II in the offing.

@Ravishrick (nice ID BTW): A big duh to me, and a big thank you to you. However, I just finally did get that Jules Verne Gator strap. I got it for a song -- $260. No more straps for her for a while. Miss Vicky will be eating hamburger helper in March.

Poor guy, life is so unfair...

Hey, that's Socko you're talking about. He's a nice guy!

You needn't buy an "original" PAV strap for $$$. Just $$. $219 to be precise.

http://mariopaci.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv..._Code=MPSpecial

They have the PAV 90, PAV 91, PAV 98, and PAV 99 (I'm sure you're astonished to hear this, but I have them all).

For the PVD, I like the suggestion of the Crazy Horse with black stitching and PVD buckle which I know Greg has. The problem is the CH is sold out -- unless you buy it used on Risti, forget it.

Walter (Smat) of course makes PVD special straps, with a very crazy stitch pattern. Looks awesome. But the leather is bad, I admit.

(On Strap Culture PVD buckle)

I'm actually going to suggest something very unusual but elegant for a PVD.

An OEM Bordeaux Gator glossy strap.

Either that or the Toscana Fiero, worn here by Scoobs (hope he doesn't mind!):

Couldn't you just use a pair of bolt cutters and cut the existing buckle out? Then purchase a screw in replacement?

Chainsaw massacre much?

Those buckles cost a lot of money. Well, $20-$60 for the average PAM buckle. Keep it, Sean. You'll love it!

I apologise for my tardy reply, BTW. Just busy today.

Thanks Vic.. To save you from the dilema, I don't have any more leather from this colour. It was just a small piece for max 2 straps and still don't know if I will be able to make a second one.

Something told me that was the case, since you would've put it in another area, if yes. Shame.

Save for that JV.. Nice strap but too expensive I think.

$300, brand new. Trying to bargain a guy down to $280, but that's really obscene. I hope my parents never find out.

It will be my last OEM strap.

Btw I think I will go for very dark blue (close to black) stitching on this one.. It was my first option and I think it wIll look good with jeans.

I can imagine that combo. I love your Elizabeth Taylor blue strap, and used it on the Andrew 113 often.

And I guess that means that Max was the most influential, since he said blue or black! What perfect taste that man has.

Really old watches used Radium. Reasonably old ones used Tritium. Tritium has a half-life of 12 years to Radium 226's 1,602 years.

I always wondered about the radium watches. This is an interesting read:

"Jewelry Made from Radium Dial Watches (ca. 1985-1988)

As a result of an investigation in early 1988 by the Los Angeles County Health Department, various state radiation control programs in the U.S. issued warnings concerning the manufacture and use of jewelry made from old watch parts. These parts often included radioluminescent watch faces and hands. The jewelry, which included, broaches, bracelets, earrings, etc. had become quite popular and because it was easy to produce, the typical manufacturer was a small business operating out of someone’s home or apartment. Production is known to have occurred in California, Oregon, Texas and Pennsylvania. The radiation control programs in Tennessee, Texas and possibly some other states invited the public to bring suspect jewelry to their offices to be monitored for radioactivity.

The usual mode of manufacture was to dismantle old watches, clean the parts with some sort of abrasive, polish the pieces, assemble the jewelry, and possibly coat it with an acrylic spray. It seems that there was no awareness on the part of the manufacturers of the potential hazards.

Even though some of the jewelry was worn in direct contact with the skin, and a number of premises were found to be contaminated (e.g., up to 50,000 cpm), there were no reports of injuries to individuals who wore or manufactured the jewelry. Nevertheless, one individual, who had been making such jewelry for six years, was found to have “1/30 of a body burden of radium-226.”"

http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/consume...ywatchparts.htm

Like to meet the WIS-lady who wore these. Double-watch hoop earrings. Hardcore.

I read somewhere that you could practically eat tritium and be ok, since its chemically the same as hydrogen which gets expelled from your body naturally.

Okay, who cut the Tritum?

TV Converter Box Coupon

Great tip.

Don't you find it puzzling how certain things never get media coverage or evoke outrage in activists?

I can hear it now -- "this affects poor people the most!". "Stop government and the corporations taking away our free television!" (they always assign nefarious reasons to government or business).

Maybe it's yet to come, the closer it gets to January...

Hmmmm... you're very very observant

I would use a coffee with cream color thread or possibly a black. If you have it a dark navy blue almost black would go well.

Whatever you do, don't make it orange.

God, what was I thinking.

You really should finish your sides. It would give the strap a whole new look and compliment the stitching/leather combo. Kind of like a belt does with pants.

I think V likes to evoke the roughewn quality of straps of the 1940s frogman.

Gorgeous strap colour, V. I am looking for a strap like Simona made for her 049, but I have to save for my Jules Verne first. If not, I would've ordered this one.

a good saddler can change the buckle.

That word will scare him ("you mean for horses??"). How about shoemaker instead?

Sean, when you see "screw in" that's the one which allows you to change the buckles. Most of the straps on TC.biz are sewn-ins. Heard you can request screw-ins, but I never have.

here's an interesting trivia question for you: which RWG member is that picture from?

Swdivad? Same hair and complexion.

So, you're happy that one country has a license and therefore a BBC, but you'd rather it wasn't the one you live in.

Absolutely. It would be awful if all countries were the same. That's why monochromatic, forced Communism failed, and splendiforous, messy Capitalism is alive and well.

Nature loves differences, and so do I.

You can ignore advertising? That's what they want you to think.

Sure I can. It's called a skip-button on TiVo.

(Snip stuff I totally agree with)

Yes, TV Licenses are a tax, but that's life.

Funny how life spawns two things you can't avoid. And one of them is taxes.

Interesting. And no, I'm not "flummoxed". Well, okay.. a TV tax seems weird to me, but I'm quite sure that there are taxes and other systems of revenue gathering here in the states that seem just as odd to European folks.

Yeah, I'm guessing that concealed weapons permit fee probably has a few Euros shaking their noggins.

Seriously, though, the idea of the BBC is one which would never fly in the US. A quasi-State run television station? Eek. Nono. Never mind a full State-run station like in many countries!

E.G.: The Board of Governors of the BBC were in essence appointed by the government of the day. They in turn chose the Director-General, who THEORETICALLY was supposed to be independent of politics.

Didn't work out that way, and in fact, they often tried to undermine the previous appointees or boost the government's policies in power at the time.

Can YOU IMAGINE the same thing happening in the United States; especially shall we say, given the opposition to the current administration? My God, it would be bedlam.

I grew up appreciating the BBC. I find British television the best in the world, overall. But I am so happy I am in a private-sector driven country like the USA. I can ignore advertising. I can't ignore an imposed mandatory tax.

In the end, we ALL would probably like to pay less to "the man". However, I would like to know how the detector knows whether or not you have a color tv versus a black and white? lol

Well, when you buy a set you have to pay the fee upfront. It's whatever you are on record for buying -- hmm, interesting rip-off possibilities I hadn't thought of actually. Trust an American to ask the obvious question.

TV detector vans? Can someone educate an ignorant American as to what this is all about??

SR, in Britain anyone who uses a television set needs to pay the BBC a yearly licence fee -- per household, not per set, mind. This is more or less a tax imposed on users which allow it to run their excellent programming (well, they used to have excellent programming. Now it's nearly rubbish). It's guaranteed money, like taxes tend to be, so it's a huge bureaucracy in all but name.

Hence the need for detector vans to go around, "catching" people who skip on paying the fee.

I just Wiki'ed because I had heard that the fee had been reduced recently. BLIMEY! Much more than I remember it.

"

Good luck.

Bwhite and Cornerstone -- first thanks for the help.

To recap: I have or had two problems. One was the laptop, one was on the Dell computer with new HD. I had been using the laptop with my cable modem connection (yellow cable), downloading torrents without any problems.

Then I got the desktop back, I disconnected the cable modem, and the laptop didn't "read" any Wifi connections around me (usually in my condo, there are two pages worth, some unlocked). I read that I had to "Function Key"/F2 to reactivate the Wifi, and it worked!

After another monumental effort of reading online for tips, I placed back the cable modem connector into the laptop -- it worked too. I can download torrents again! Yeehaw! That's two problems solved in one fell swoop.

However, and this is the weird part. I put in the self-same yellow ethernet cable into the "new" Dell, and it just will not allow me to download anything. I tried BitComet, Azureus, and Deluge as well. Nada.

I slavishly copied all the settings from Windows Firewall and McAfee into the desktop from the laptop, including opening the required ports. Nothing.

I tried rebooting a dozen times, and unplugging the cable into the NIC to get another dynamically assigned IP. Again, nothing.

Clearly this cannot be an ISP throttle, though every sign points to it on the desktop. But then why would the laptop which used the cable, be able to download torrents and not the desktop?

Well, this is beyond boring for the poor souls reading this. I'll stop now. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

I can hardly call my ISP geeks, and ask, "Hey I'm trying to download Top Gear on Bittorent, but you guys are preventing me. Any workarounds?".

UPDATE in case anyone cares : Basically, the torrent trackers are blocking my IP address on the desktop. I'll have to unplug it for 24hrs to get a new one. I noticed the difference in the IP addies when I checked the Advanced options in the Network Connections.

It starts 2xx.something when plugged into the desktop. But it's 7x.something when it's on the laptop. I don't know how IPs are assigned, but that seems queer to me.

And yes, Andrew, I said queer just for you.

When you install Azureus, get it to run the tests. That'll tell you the problem.

Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't see your reply before removing it. I installed BitComet immediately, and though it gives me the green light, it launches a BitCome tip bubble.

"Bitcomet detect that your current setting of Half-Open TCP connection limitation is too small. Click here to patch it."

It suggested 10. That didn't work after a while. Then I patched it to 20, rebooted, and it still won't allow the torrents to download. On the plus side, one of the trackers is now connected.

This is for sure some kind of throttling from my ISP -- not only does PeerGuardian not update, but the d/ls reverse (they go from 3k of info, back to 0k). I've disabled the Firewalls (temporarily, I'm not insane...). Sucks. I might have to go back to Blockbuster.

PS: As of now, sound with DTS HD or Dolby HD on these rips are pretty rare.

Guys, I'm desperate enough to hijack a thread to post this. Please forgive me.

I just received my Dell back with a minty HD and Windows XP Pro installed by techies. I have tried for the past two days to get my uTorrent to download torrents, without luck.

I have McAfee and Windows Firewall. I have tried EVERYTHING. I've forwarded ports, I've changed ports, I've made "exceptions" in TCP/UDP. I've tried uninstalling McAfee and disabling Windows Firewall. I have used and disabled PeerGuardian2, both.

Nothing works. It still gives me the dread "red" button next to the torrent. And "connection closed by peer/host machine", no matter the tracker.

My bf says if my ISP were throttling my connectivity, or I had reached my limit, I couldn't download or view anything. What is weird, is that the laptop I used during this time, now has the same red button next to the torrent (I am leeching someone else's Wifi -- I told you I like to beat the system!), since I don't have a router. Just a cable modem from the cable company.

Can some techie please help?

The only thing I haven't tried is to use Bitcomet or Azureus instead. I'll do that now.

Your socio-economic class wasn't the kind they targeted. I'm not surprised you've never seen one, to be honest.

Oh pish posh.

Thank God these accents are obsolete.

Yes, I remember, but again, it's the THREAT of them rather than the actuality of them that worked. Did anyone actually ever see one (other than you)? I never did.

And if I had, I likely would've gone up and asked for a doner kebab.

TV detector vans aren't urban legends ... they work very well.

Blimey.

And how would you know, hmmmmmmm?

@Pug reply:

"http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressrele...ctor_vans.shtml"

Puggy, I'm talking about when I was growing up -- around the same time as you. 80s-1990s! The Beeb didn't have GPS then, surely!

@Pug photo: Yes, I've seen a similar photo, but as you say, 25 for the whole albeit small island. Come now! Good job the British are an honest lot, overall, because if that were in South America, they'd have folded years ago.

Licence fees are uninintelligible to Americans. They even get downright stroppy when PBS have their donation telethons. Ironically, PBS show almost wall-to-wall BBC programming -- especially "Britcoms". Oh, there is a God.