Even without the stick, it’s worth it.

I’ve owned three Volvos and an e39. When it comes to maintenance costs, there’s simply no comparison.

If I had to drive one car for the next ten years to do everything well...

Really? Every single one I’ve ever seen has been yellow.

Why? It’s got one job to do. Would a missile silo be improved if it could run Angry Birds and apply Snapchat filters?

Somewhat. There’s obviously a bunch of FAA regs and certifications we deal with, but the biggest obstacle is cost of replacement. Ripping an avionics suite out of a 20-30 year old bizjet and retrofitting in a new system is pricey and time consuming, and there’s an STC (Supplemental Type Certificate) process to go…

...and finding an Apple IIe or DOS machine on eBay is still cheaper than a contractor.

Heh. I wrote a couple of answers to AMC questions this year- one of them specifically around obsolescence and CRTs.

This doesn’t surprise me at all. I work at an avionics company and we support stuff that was designed 30+ years ago (if it’s still flying we’re still supporting it, even if we haven’t built it for years.) We’ve got a lab for our first CRT-based display/integrated avionics system that runs on an Apple IIe. Our IT…

Named after Athol, Massachuetts? I really thought that was the only one.

Everyone knows that Idaho is a cartographic rounding error, anyway.

I’m willing to bet this guy has never been to Starbucks.

I was thinking of renovating a decommissioned phone booth.

What about the occasional short fiction piece, on a strictly per-piece basis?

If I were 23 and single, $50k in New York would be awesome.

“Can a rotary last 200,000 miles and still maintain reasonable power output without a rebuild?”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAno.

Are you referring to radial engines, like on old airplanes? They’re a whole other ball of wax.

I’m not going to lie- this is by far your best work, Tavarish, both in content and in form. Bravo.

“I am writing from the toilet.”

I want to NP this SOOO badly- but I dunno. What would I DO with it? I couldn’t actually use it as a truck- it’s too nice for that- and the upper midwest isn’t kind to Toyota steel.

As an aside, my local Toyota joint had an immaculate, 33k mile, 2wd ‘86 model in their showroom a while back. What surprised me is that I’d…