Posts by Gman

The lease on our second Lexus LC500 came up. Mrs Gman got herself a year old BMW X3M. She said she needed more space for her "work", which is a youtube fitness channel that's fairly popular. I asked her how much space fucking yoga pants and a rolled up mat take, and she threw shit at me. So ya, no more 2 door GT car, and now our primary daily is a fucking BMW. Gay. And not my idea.

I retaliated by getting a car she absolutely loathes. I wanted a year round car that I could stomp around in in the winter time as well, and with Nokian studded tires, this thing is close to unstoppable by all accounts, what with the full time 4 wheel drive which is always 50/50 front to rear. I got it tuned, some minor bolt on mods, about $5000 CAD to get it up to around 340BHP, not sure on what it's putting down at the wheels yet. But it's faster than I thought, the stupid nany shit can all be disabled with a single button. It's a 2024 and had about 4000 miles, under 7000km. So far so good. Just SO few manual cars like this, I could have gotten an AWD manual BMW, but having 2 of those? I'd eat my chunk first, so fuck that. Mrs Gman had a 2022 Subaru BRZ manual, and I loved that car, but it's not drivable in winter with the RWD even with winter tires I figured. Looking at an R8 or C8 2021 or 22 Corvette possibly as the "good" car.

Next is a new truck, I've looked at the Ford Rangers mostly, our ZR2 is having the dreaded transmission issues and I'm not even sure if it's worth fixing, so I might trade it off on a 2024 Ranger. I liked the Rangers more than the Chev/GMC equivalent. I don't need to tow anything heavier than a sea doo or dirt bike trailer, so another Duramax or even F150 seems overkill.

Opinions?

I dig the bike.

Gman is shopping for a new 2 wheel form of conveyance. I looked at the Honda Rebel 1100. A little small, but I did like how it rode. Don't really want to go down the Harley route again. Might look at some sport touring, found an older Honda VFR 1200 that was decent, extremely cheap and low milage. Or an adventure bike of some type. It's just great to be healthy enough to ride again.

My father was godfather to a South African girl, which means I essentially am. Her parents fled South Africa to move here (now they are looking to the USA as I am, as our MANY of the SA community here). My doctor, Jansen Von Resnburg has already moved to the USA, and is the hugest Trump admin supporter on social media circles my family are on.

After the above smackdown DJT put on the African National Congress Terrorist Leader Baboon in Chief, the SA community here is taking donations to build a 50foot tall pure gold statue of Trump. Not that much can or will change in SA short of the Rhodesian Light Infantry type deal happening again, and the whites trying to seize power through force (probably impossible now, but never say never).

South Africa is a prime example of what happens when goonish negroes are handed power.

Quote from Danneskjold

Good. The stock market should crash. It's a game played with real money that has little to no connection to the real world.

There is that too.

I only have $ in the market because I was essentially forced to. When my father died last year, I inherited his registered investment fund/pension. While there is no tax on inheritance, our government CAN take a 40 to 50% cut of pension funds in a person's final "death tax return". However because I have a recognized and 2 government's doctors proven disability condition, I was able to put a large amount of that inherited pension into a "disability savings plan" investment. There is only one company that currently does this in my Province, and you're stuck with their low-mid risk mutual fund. So, instead of taking the 50% haircut on my father's pension fund, which would have been several hundred k, and maybe as high as half a million, I rolled it into that RDSP disability fund.

So, unless the market completely collapses to the tune of a 50% loss in market cap, I'm ahead $, plus any $ I withdraw up to $50k per year is tax deferred/tax free for me. Yay. Screwing the government back a small amount for the years of ass rape.

What do you care about more, $ or fixing the USA/world? That's what it comes down to.

Am I being hurt by the market freefall? Obviously, well into 6 figures lost in the last 2 days.

I'd rather lose some money, and even security, for even a shot at fixing the fucked up system that is in place, as it's not sustainable, not for much longer. Losing some is better than losing everything, which is what WILL happen if the waste and bullshit trading policies that have been in places for decades aren't changed.

I remember when the Covid freefall happened, my father's pension funds when from something like just over 1 mil to 550,000 or 600,000. They bounced back. Same thing will happen this time.

SO, have you just been waiting for something like this to start posting again Goat? Been awfully quiet lately.

I'm a big Warhammer 40k fan, got into pretty recently, so obviously I bought the game - it's actually pretty decent, really good story.

New system just mows it too, been playing on everything maxed with some of the new nVidia AI crap enabled too. Wowzers performance with the 5090, and extremely good with the new AMD 9070XT box too. Using the 49" Ultrawide for it, it may only be 2k but IMO it looks superior to my 4k 32" OLED, which is easily the best 32" OLED 4k you can buy (and you pay for that too, $500 more than the next best one).

I don't buy a lot of new AAA titles, I'm a cheap ass on those and typically wait for Steam sales, but the new Marines game is worth the $ IMO, and I did get a slight discount on it.

Bought Red Dead 2 also on a sale, but haven't gotten to it yet, after reading your post Slam I'm moving it up the list. Good times.

One home sold, cabin/lake home also sold, just one left!

I have multiple avenues of entry to the USA now. My missus has a very popular fitness channel/business and can work anywhere, plus I'm considering going in with 2 partners to open a business based in TX or Florida right now as well. I also have a couple friends that have a popular YT channel driving exotic cars around in California/the world, and are both from Kelowna/BC here in Canada, and I might end up doing something with them if I drop the $ on an exotic to join in their tomfoolery online. Looking into that it's really not that much $ in the scheme of starting a business, like a $50k downpayment and a couple k a month lease can get me into a Huracan, McLaren 600/720, Audi R8, something along those lines. I sold the last section of land as well, so $ isn't a problem so far as buying a decent home. Probably spilt me time between working in LA area and living somewhere with better gun laws, such as Texas or Florida as mentioned.

Health is an issue, as I have NO idea what kind of, if any, health insurance I'll be able to buy in the USA with pre existing conditions like I have, but I figure absolute worst case scenario, I could always zip back up to Canada and subject myself to the horribly substandard care we have here if nothing else. It'd be "no" care, but only but a little. Hopefully there is options for insurance in the USA, even if I have to pay a couple $k a month or more, it'd be SO worth it to have access to US docs/clinics/hospitals, as ours truly suck.

Toad will hopefully see this.

I was told a long time ago by an airline pilot that the aim for touchdown was between 1 and 3 feet per second which would be a max of 180 ft/min. I'm almost certain he said that 500 ft/min would be a very loud bang/crack in the cabin that would have women screaming, men yelling, and babies crying, because the sim in question we were posting about always gave you an "a ok" landing at 500 ft/min descent rate.

Slammy, I have 3 sets of CH sticks, 2 Fightersticks (1 is nib, the other barely used as it was my backup for AH), and a Combatstick which I used from the day the USB CH stuff came out (I used gameport before that). I have 3 CH Throttles and 2 sets of their peds as well. Anyhow, I could probably hook you up if you don't get yours going, heh.

I'll put up more pics of the new setup and some of the higher end HOTAS I actually use and won't just sit in my HOTAS collection. I have another Virpil and VKB order incoming as well with some more/newer stuff. I refuse to buy the ching chong Wing Wong "WinWing" shit because it's....well, Winwing, and fuck them in the eye. They do have something I greatly covet, the F18 and F16 cockpits, with repeater screens that work in DCS and other games, and it's super cool. Monstertech makes cool mounts for it all too, which would match my current Monster desk clamps. But, it's Winwing, and they suck for customer service.

Quote from hawker25

nice build there. I ended up getting a 9070 xt overclocked hellhound on drop day. Micro center here in Denver had a ton of them just had to wait in line for about an hour winding through the store. 2 guys next to me were nice and we had a good conversation so I didn't mind. Just getting everything up and running. I had to go back today and grab a few things to finish up and just asked what they think about he supply and they said they expect a lot more soon so hopefully you can grab one. Ill get some more ram, thanks for the tip. Im thinking about trying out a vr setup for dcs. As soon at the 20 tb hd is done formatting Im gonna grab the new Indiana Jones.

Let me know how your 9070xt is for you Hawker. I obviously love the one I got, and it's one of the lower tier variants, so yours will be even faster.

I frequently meet cool people in the PC store I've been a customer at since the late 90s in Calgary. I taught the owner and his brother their firearms safety courses and got them their pewpew licenses back in 2003-ish, so they have always been cool with me. So many local gamers and power users just seem to be in their physical shop whenever I'm there, and I too always have good convos with many of them.

20tb, that's HUGE. I'm in the process of setting up a better NAS, and wondering if I should go that big or just stick with the 2 8gb NAS drives I have.

Got both a 9070XT and a 5090 today.

I'm VERY impressed with the new AMD card, it's trading punches with my 5080 in some games, and it's like 6/10 the cost, just over $1000 CDN for the Asrock card I got, compared to the 1799 the 5080 card cost (I got it for 100 less on launch day before price "adjustments" happened, haha). Anyhow, 9070XT is THE card to buy right now IMO. It's not even close. Unless you're braindead like me and drop far too much $ on this hobby, one would be insane to not go the AMD GPu route right now. I'm truly, truly impressed with the rast performance so far. It's easily better than the 5070, tied or slightly better than the 5070ti, and as I said, not far off the 5080.

5090 is bananas fast. Is it worth the 4 thousand Canadian I just spent? No. But it IS fast. Not worth the wife ack, she's now demanding reciprocity which I unfortunately have to agree to.

No new AMD cards for me on launch !!

My shop couldn't spare me even one, even though they typically have always accommodated me. the owner of Memory Express and his brother are guys I trained and issued their firearms license safety courses - there is a mandatory safety course for both non restricted and restricted firearms up here, separate courses and it's often a 2 day event every 5 years for everyone. Being an accredited instructor for the course back in the day in Alberta, I'd frequently cut the BS from those courses and teach certain people all they needed in one day instead of two, and spend most of the time on the range instead of sitting in a classroom.

Plus I've spent 10s of thousands with them since 1996 when they had just one store instead of 20-ish nationwide. But, that's how few cards they received, only a very few, and those went to people up the food chain from me. Should have one or two in a week they said, so we'll see.

I just built a new system, and have a similar secondary box to what you're thinking about Hawker.

New system is an AMD 9800x3d CPU - Gscholz would jump for joy as I converted to AMD, my first AMD system since the Pentium 200s were around, and AMD came out with a "233" that was a whopping 33 mhz faster than the other IBM clones at the time. Intel/etc ever since, until December 2024.

Anyhow, it's fast, mild overclock (just the stock AI overclock with the XMP memory profile/etc), 64gb 6000 CL32 ram, I had a 5090 which was borked and had to be returned, in the meantime I'm "stuck" with a 5080, which actually isn't as awful as the reviews have made it out to be, in terms of bang/$. Seasonic 1200 PSU, 8 TB total of 4x2tb M.2 drives. Monotec case/360 cooler, new kids on the block in my local store, not a terrible case to build/work in, I'm actually impressed, as it wasn't expensive, and was...available.

I picked up a couple new monitors too, I've been primarily using the LG 4k 27" gaming units, they've been the highest rated 4k 27" gaming LCDs for a few years. However, with the advent of the new OLEDs, I got an Asus 32" PG32UCDM 4k 240hz Gsync OLED monitor (best, also the most $$$, by 33% or more, so that part sucks), and a 49" MSI OLED widescreen.

Still using the Varjo Aero for VR, also using the Quest 3, and I've found it to be surprisingly good, exceptional even, considering the cost of entry for the Oculus/Meta headset.

Still setting up all my HOTAS, I have..well, a ton of it, so I'll post pics of that once I'm satisfied with the layout. Still having unboxed the 49" either, it's going into action this weekend.

Enough of my usual BS, Hawker, very good system you've putting together. As I said, I have a similar system that I use for gaming on my office TV and as a secondary home theater/browsing unit. 14600KF (overclocks incredibly well, 14700k are usually very similar in that regard, just a bit faster), 64gb RAM (for playing multiplayer DCS you NEED 64 instead of 32 or you get frequent stutters on some maps), a 4090 GPU, and the rest is just the usual suspects. It'll get the 5080 once my 5090 returns to duty.

Considering the prices you can pick off the 14600 and 14700k(f)s up here, I recommend to almost everyone locally to go that route if they are trying to maximize their $.

I'm on the waitlist for a couple 9700xt cards myself, just to try them out in the third box (wife's/nephews/nieces), as it's still running a 3090. From all reports so far, you should be really happy with the 9700xt, if AMD is smart and prices it well, they'll seize a ton of the market IMO with that card.

Prelim pics, more coming once I get more in place. I'll deal with the wires/cables once I'm happy with placements/etc, doing that shit early means redoing it, a lot.

The Russians would be more likely than the Chinks, but both have too much retardation in their genetic code to overcome IMO.

Giving China Taiwan in order to avoid a war with China isn't something I care about much one way or the other, but it'd mean the USA having to go full isolationist as abandoning an ally to which promises were made would mean few if any countries in the future would trust America. Might be for the best anyway. China really has always wanted the Eastern parts of Siberia/etc. They've long considered it a resource area that they can take not just for both the minerals/oil/gold/etc, but for more space, something at a premium in a country with 1.6 Billion chinks, even if they are tiny people mostly. So a war between Russia and China is as much or even more likely than one between China and the USA, unless Taiwan is invaded.

Doug Ford (Premier of Ontario) is threatening to shut off the electricity to the entire state of New York (they got most of their electric power from Canada) along with several other states in the area. I'm praying he does, not because I want New York to freeze (I'm sure Storch wouldn't mind some cold Yankees), but because it's an overt act of war. I'd be one of the ones waving the US flag as the invasion forces entered Canada, welcoming them at the border.

Canada can also fuck the USA over, big time, in the short/mid term, by shutting down the pipelines shipping the Western Canadian Select heavy crude oil that America needs to function, as it represents 60% of the US energy imports. The US strategic stockpile/reserves would be enough to optimistically function for a year without those imports, but the use of them and market disruption would be...catastrophic to say the least. Drill baby drill will take 10 years by the most optimistic estimates, more likely 20, to even begin to replace that oil, plus a large percentage of US refineries are built to refine that Canadian heavy crude, and changing that to finer grade refining isn't a fast or cheap process. Venezuela does produce a lot of heavy crude, but they are far away, no pipeline distribution, and moving that much oil by tanker - again, not simple or cheap. Not to mention giving that $ to Venezuela isn't exactly a popular idea considering their government is about as stupid as Canada's.

So, I'm hoping the retards running the show up here shut down both the oil and electricity. Not because I want America hurt, but because it would be a legitimate reason for the USA to seize Canada, and force at least the good parts of it (West) to become a state, or at least a protectorate or whatever like Puerto Rico is. Yay!

I've always found Slug's fascination of Vanilla Sky interesting. It's probably the only Cruise film I've never seen.

In your honor Sluggo, I'm going to watch it this week and see what the fuss is all about.

Quote from Bronk

Ahhhhhahahahaa

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/poli…rder-security/ar-AA1ykXKl

I know right! Fucking awesome, Trump make that fuckhead bend the knee. Trudeau is getting what he deserves, and Trump is literally saving Canadians, not harming them. Hearing some fuckhead leftist Canadians cry in the last few days, as well as booo the US anthem at events - angers me that there are so many short sighted foolish people in my country. Luckily my Provinces are sane, mostly. Can't wait to join the USA. Or move there.

When Pierre Poilievre takes the PM office, you'll see a FAIR deal worked out with the USA, and we'll fucking NUKE China and their cartel in Vancouver, which is poisoning our citizens on top of all the other BS China does with their asymmetric warfare they've engaged us all in.

Trump is stomping on every leftist fuckhead in the world. EU is next, South Africa too. My GP doctor is a South African as was the one before him, my father had a ton of South African friends, and Trump called out the fucking terrorist ANC Nigger government in South Africa for attacking white people in every way they can. Just WAIT until this develops more, you'll see the commie news networks lose their fucking minds when Trump outright calls the ANC black people racist. He came so close today to saying it, but it's going to be uttered by him soon. That'll be a funny day. You can only hide the truth so long...

Well Well Well. This journo has begun exposing Trudeau and the Liberal - Chinese- Crime connections for the public to see. I've heard bits of this from friends and a couple relatives in the RCMP still, but nothing like what this video just dropped.

TLDR is that Trump has a valid point about Fentanyl, turns out Canada, out on the West coast, has been a base for the CCP to manufacture Fent and then distribute it into the USA. Mexico too. They import the legal precursors and then go about it here in Canada, and launder the money through our real estate market and casinos. 10 minutes is enough to get the gist of it, even 2 or 3, but this video pretty much makes the case for the tariffs, as well as a case for treason against Trudeau, the liberals in Ottawa, and the British Columbia government too. Incredible the amount of corruption at the highest level.

Storch is right.

I will say though that Poilievre is about the best we can hope for in a Canadian Conservative politician, especially now, these days. I do wish Alberta and Saskatchewan would just say "fuck off" to Canada, now as much as ever. Also, Alberta's Premier Danielle Smith is labelled a Nazi 1000000 times over by our media, which means Storch would really like her. She's absolutely center-right, or even right-right. She's not the most..."nuanced" person, which is a fucking good thing IMO. I like her, a lot, and again, so far as a Politician goes, we could do a lot worse.

She's the ONLY one also who has decided to go to Mar-a-Lago on her own hook so far as t he Premiers go (IIRC) and forge a personal relationship with the new President of the USA, and also is the only one who has said that retaliatory tariffs are just counterproductive. I mean, she COULD, literally FUCK the USA, right up the ass, by switching off the 5 or so million barrels a day flowing South through the pipelines in her Province, which would cause an immediate crisis in the USA, spiking gas prices immeasurably, and causing shortages like nobody in this world and society has EVER seen, making the OPEC thing 40 or 50 years ago or whatever look like a day in the park. Of course IMO Trump would take military actions then I think, as it would cause the rapid destruction of the USA's economy/markets (Canada's too of course). I mean there is really NO other place the USA could buy and ship in that much oil that it needs, its entire infrastructure is set up to receive WCS Canadian oil, refine it, and then distribute throughout the USA as well as selling bits of it back to Canada (crazy, I know, but that's what happens) and other countries. There isn't enough free tanker ships in the world to replace even a percent of that. The largest supertankers in the world, of which there are few, can only carry 1/2 to one day of what the pipelines move to the USA. Most tankers of typical size would mean the USA would need dozens+ a day, and that would also put the refineries and all their businesses out of work, and the downstream stuff they do, etc etc and etc. Then figuring out how to move all the petro from ports to where it needs to go. What I'm saying is that if Trudeau ran Alberta he would absolutely threaten, and likely execute, and switching off of the flow of oil/gas from Canada to the USA.

Sadly, you're correct. It's depressing AF losing your country.

Americans take note - don't let this happen to you.

DON'T.

edit - you Ninja'd me. I agree and have thought the same thing, that this is a calculated strategy by the Trump admin to attempt to MAGA other countries in the world, and Canada being the closest, and not just in distance, is naturally the best place to begin. Hope it works...

Quote from Username

Tar sands oil is shit and nasty stuff, and is more than a bit more expensive to extract and refine.

That is why it is cheaper.

It's really not "that" much more to refine into finer grade fuels and products, and a ton of US refineries are set up to do so, and have been for decades, what with getting 50% of their oil from Canada's tarsands. It's also EASIER to refine into diesel, you know, that kinda important fuel that sort of powers...the entire USA. Extraction - that depends, directional drilling in Texas for sweeter grades isn't exactly cheap, plus the exploratory costs involved are orders of magnitude higher than the tarsands mines.

Also, the trade imbalance between the USA and Canada - if you remove the oil from the equation, something the USA again gets a massive, massive discount on, the USA has a trade surplus, not deficit, with Canada, so the whole thing is sort of a false equivalency. The USA needs to buy (for now, until the drill baby drill thing starts paying, and that'll be a decade before it can even come close to replacing the tarsands, if ever) over 1/2 of its oil from Canada, and uses that in the equation for the trade deficit. Yes, the deficit is higher than its been in a LONG time, but it isn't a quarter of a trillion like Trump said, it's averaged about 70$B for the last few years. Also after the C-o-hink V-id-irus, the USA turned to Canada for a HUGE amount of more material, energy, and even labor shortages, which pumped the trade imbalance up, a huge factor in the imbalance.

As I said though, Canada has screwed the USA on other commodities and resources through past deals, and I don't blame Trump one bit for trying to balance that out.

Also, even if you take the worst case for Canada's "numbers/data" on the trade deficit, it's nothing compared to the ones the USA has with China, the EU, and Mexico. Like not even close.l

The reason this is happening is PERSONAL though IMO. Trump hates Trudeau, and he can get in line. This IMO is the best "fuck you" he can give Trudeau, since Trump was instrumental in his fall from power, I think he wants to give him the death blow, and then kick his ass right off the map. I just hope it doesn't spiral into a nasty trade war, if Canada retaliates tomorrow on oil exports to the USA with tariffs of Canada's own, your gas prices are going to double or more in the next week in the USA. Not to mention any $$ you have in the market is going to take a shit kicking.