Nope, that was me, sorry. 
I think just about all the nits here have been picked, and that we are all giving way too much attention to what some teenage jackass (possibly a lying teenage jackass) in a fast car thinks about minivans.
I stand corrected on who was accusing me of nitpicking. The thing about these long threads is that it’s a PITA to review, so sometimes I go on memory, which is admittedly occasionally faulty. Sorry, mouthbreather.
As for the rest, whatever. I’ll never convince you, and you’ll never convince me. Fair enough? Nothing personal – I have a dear friend with whom I must often implement this policy.
I say let’s find something we can all agree on. How about this: Civil Defense is a twit.
As much fun as this has all been, I really must get back to proofing this algebra book. Oh the joy!
Demise, I’ll give that an Amen.
And Scarlet, rereading this thread, I need to apologize for calling you dense. That was inappropriate for this discussion. I hope there are no bad feelings between us as a result of this thread.
Not at all, mouthbreather. I know I’m not dense (usually), and you calling me so ain’t gonna change that. My general attitude about interactions with online folk (and some folks IRL as well) can be summed up in a line from The Goodbye Girl, on of my favorite movies: “I don’t know you well enough to truly dislike you . . .” 
Thanks for the lively debate.
My god! Are you me? This sounds very much like the post I was writing last night before IE crashed on me and I decided to go to bed instead of re-writing it.(hey, it was almost 1AM!)
FWIW I am also the father of three young children, two in booster seats and one in a full car seat. Anyone who thinks it is practical to have all three of these in a sedan has a different definition of “pratical” than I do.
I can put a jogging stroller(and if you have small children you probably also know how much of a piece of crap regular/umbrella strollers are) in the back of my 2001 Honda Odyssey(no slouch as far as minivans are concerned, in the power, versatility or maneuverability dept) and still have room for, gasp, groceries!
I found Civil Defense’s suggestion that we don’t really need a minivan because we could go to the store one at a time offensive. In todays world we don’t have nearly enough time to spend together, so we do things like going shopping together. The kids help pick out what they would like and push little baskets around the store with a few “special” items we have let them have as treats. Beyond that, our store has a supervised playland(yep, I live in a yuppie area) for the kids where they can watch movies, play with toys, video games, draw/paint, etc. We believe everyday activities can also be family activities. A minivan is an excellent choice of vehicle for us, and we can’t afford two car payments at the moment.
Civil Defense gets no sympathy from me for his plight on the roads. If you don’t like the way someone is driving, then either get far enough behind them to be able to react if they cause an accident or get ahead of them and forget about it. Any time you are behind ANY vehicle you can’t see around/through well enough to have a good comfort level for your own personal safety, take action. Pass, change lanes, drop back, whatever you have to do.
I hope you learn some tolerance for other people’s situations/choices before you post again. We’re fairly intolerant of intolerant people here.
Oh, and when my wife doesn’t need the van for activities for herself or the children, I drive it to work and back. By myself. You’ll excuse me if I don’t shoot myself for behaving so selfishly.
Steven
I wondered about that myself, as my evil stepmother (age 70+ years) drives a minivan.
They’re the preferred vehicle for a lot of the older set because you can climb directly in and out of a van, rather than having to lift yourself out of the seats of a lower vehicle. Also, it is much easier to load/unload things into the open hatch at the rear of the van than into a trunk or back seat. All in all, minivans are much easier on folks with bad backs and knees.
Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have to go load the kids into the Honda Odyssey and take them to soccer practice.
Hmmm. I’m not sure. I could be.
Are you a charming and charismatic 34 year old midwesterner whose rugged good looks and powerful build mask a quiet and intense intelligence, keen wit, and mysterious yet undeniable appeal to the ladies?
[sub]Cuz if that’s what you were thinking, then I’m not.[/sub]
Hey, I do this too! God forbid I should upset Civil by driving to work in the only vehicle I own.
But his posts have shown me the error of my ways. Tomorrow I’m gonna crack open the ol’ 401k, deplete the kids’ meager college fund, and take out enough to buy me a Camaro so I can commute to work.
I believe you’re lying. Either that or you suck so much at driving that you shouldn’t be on the road, especially not in a vehicle with 325 Hp.
My reasoning is as follows: If I’m three seconds behind someone, the person tailgating me is very likely to pass me because there is plenty of space between me and the “large vehicle” in front of me for him to slip into.(45mph * 5280ft/mi / 60min/hour / 60sec/min * 3sec lead time) 198 ft by my calculations. Let’s discount that for a second, because the actions of the “tailgater” are not in the direct control of the OP.
If there is a large speed differential between the lane you’re in(assuming the right-hand lane) and the other lane, a three-second follow time is plenty of room for YOU to accelerate to a speed very close to the speed of the other lane. Once this speed is achieved, you should not have a problem merging into the other traffic lane. I can do it, not spill my drink or upset the kids or freak out the driver I’m coming up on or my wife(who startles easily actually). Oh, and I drive a minivan.
So, either you don’t know how to pass, or you don’t follow the three-second rule, and you’re lying to make us think the bad experiences you’ve had on the road are the fault of incompetent drivers around you. Quite possibly a bit of everything. You won’t get much arguement out of us that there are plenty of crappy drivers on the road, but you’ve not given evidence that you have a leg to stand on when pretending you’re so much better than they are. You’ve now been called on pretty much every point you’ve made. You may now shift your OP from “Mini-Vans SUCK” to “I can’t drive worth a damn so I’ll blame it on other drivers.”
Steven
Ya know, I wan’t gonna respond to this thread any more, but, the blathering going on just begs for more…
So then, as a “physically incapacitated” person, you drive this here speed demon? AND bitch about not being able to see through the windows of people 200+ feet in front of you?
I get it. Your “physically incapacitation” means that you’re blind. Glad to know that I won’t be driving in your neck of the woods any time soon.
oh yeah…and btw…cough, cough…liar…
One last note…as the husband of a real “physically incapacitated” person, your explanation smokes skunk cocks.
Thank you for your time.
No, actually I’m a scruffy looking 25 year old. The powerful build and intense intelligence are fairly accurate, but my wit is more like a ginsu knife, looks good on paper, but in reality it’s kind of useless. I am remarkable in my lack of appeal to the ladies.
I have a wide variety of interests, and I’m also fixing up a run-down house. Last night it was a leak in the pipe from the garbage disposal to the drain trap and it has ruined most of the flooring in the cabinet under the sink. I am working on replacing a couple of the outer doors and re-building a rotten section of fence as well. And now the garage door opener is going flaky(damn previous tenants backed into it and it’s warped, so it doesn’t raise easily and it’s giving the garage door opener fits).
Yea! Me too! I’m headed down to get myself a Saturn, or hell, better yet, I’ll just walk to and from work. Since I’m pretty sure Civil Defense doesn’t drive on the sidewalk(him being such a great driver and all), so I should be ok then, right?
Steven
And this will be my last post in this thread, as well.
Boy, we’ve gone from a simple question (“what do you drive?”) to “no, he’s just a 17 year old who has flunked his driving test for 2 years in a row”. Anyway, the fact of the matter is, it’s not my position to explain myself to anyone here. Believe what you like; I couldn’t care any less if I have “lost credibility”. Cyberspace. The simple logic is, none of you know me and none of you have any place to denounce anything I have said, but feel free to continue doing so.
Oh, and from those of us who are physically disabled to those of you who feel some sort of supremacy: fuck you.
And as an aside, to the ones of you who haven’t jumped to your own conclusions and now consider them fact, thanks. I’ll make sure not to tailgate you. :rolleyes:
That’s all
If you don’t want credibility in cyberspace, why bother posting to it at all? If you want your ego fed - which is, in my opinion, one of the main purposes of message boards as a whole - perhaps you shouldn’t have tried to gratify it in the Pit. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have posted; I’m just saying your approach makes you look just a little bit like an utter dipshit.
I thought a couple of folks who were close to disabled people were really the only ones who found your comments utterly moronic. The rest of us merely found them curious. Don’t give yourself too much credit.
The only things anyone has ACTUALLY judged you on (for other than comedic effect, anyhow) has been what you have given them to chew on. None of us can know anything else about your life, because we know only what you have posted here. You can’t give us this little to judge you on, and then heap us with derision because we judge you by this little.
I mean, I know this whole thing was a troll anyhow…I understand the mind of the troll, even the merely occasional troll (some people here are “all or nothing” sorts, but I understand that that’s not always the case). However, your coup de grace was weak and without style. If you’re going to leave the thread in a self-righteous (yet utterly uninterested, I’m sure :rolleyes: ) huff, you need to craft a response more wittily scathing, but with much more of an “I don’t need you people” air. You’re going to have to actually not care to achieve the verisimilitude necessary, and it may take a couple of years of hard work, but I have faith in you.
Fight the power, yo.
I know your approach. I have used your approach.
Now get your ass back in English class and figure out what you did wrong.
[Monty Python] And there was much rejoicing. [sub]yea[/sub][/Monty Python]
**
This is pathetic, let’s recap shall we?
You said
**
When asked how people were supposed to transport multiple children you dismissed this concern saying
**
The only thing missing from that passage is the substitution of “the woman” for “one” in the first sentence. This is so narrow-minded, bigoted(look the word up if you think I’m using it incorrectly, you’ll find you’re wrong), and naieve it’s hardly worth rebutting, but we did. In fact racinchikki and heraldgwena provided excellents example of everyday uses of a minivan which fit the criteria of
**
Since it never occurs to you that other people might have been aware of these “alternatives” you speak of and rejected them for reasons which they need not justify to you. At this point the thread started off on a tangent about your driving skills, which, given the OP, might not be such a big tangent. You said
**
This is blatantly untrue, if it were true minivans would not be street legal. Bigfoot is a “wide-ass vehicle” which would prevent other drivers from navigating traffic safely. Since the average minivan is shorter, narrower, and not as long as Bigfoot, the conclusion is that the legal bodies which determine which vehicles are allowed on the road and which ones are not have expectations of the driving skill level of the average driver. If you don’t feel you can safely operate a vehicle among other vehicles which are also considered safe to drive on common highways, then you should adjust your driving style, go back to drivers ed, or get off the road. When Scarlett67 observed
**
At this point people were beginning to suspect you of trolling, but continued to attempt conversation with you. You protested that you didn’t tailgate, and gave what we can only believe to be a lie when you said
**
Which was immediately debunked by several people, including the very convincing passage also by Scarlett67(unfortunately this was also the time when the other participants patience was pretty much worn thin with the blatant and obvious misrepresentations of your situation regarding your vehicle/experience/finances. All of these were irrelevant to the OP, but there is no “on topic” rule for the pit that I am aware of, so those lies were fair game too)**
I’m going to give you a piece of advice. I am a computer programmer. I write software for a living, and it’s not easy, especially right now. If you misrepresent yourself to an employer the way you have done to us on these boards, and if you carry such a narrow world-view into the cyberspace where many programmers spend so much of their time, you’re going to have a very rough career. In cyberspace, no one knows you, and few trust you. They have facts at their fingertips and can verify/disprove almost any assertions you make. Don’t start out like this. You owe several people in this thread an apology. No one will demand it, but you misrepresented yourself to them and they tore your lies apart. Moreover, one or two of them actually took your side when one of the items people were beginning to believe were also lies were questioned and defended you admirably. Far more than you deserved in my opinion, but they didn’t do it for you, they did it because they believe truth should prevail.
**
Let us hope so.
Steven
Were you born stupid, or were you just raised that way? No one said that about you, it was a hypothetical situation proposed in the course of the discussion.
Demise - there were two implications: [list=1]
[li]The car is entirely his.[/li][li]he pays entirely for his insurance.[/list=1]Point 1 implies that his father has little or no need to ever drive the car. This means that if his father is paying 80% of the total insurance cost, he is doing so without particular benefit to himself. This means that Civil Wotsits is being subsidised for the insurance to this extent.[/li]
Truly paying the insurance himself would involve him paying the primary cost. His father could then pay any excess required to have himself as a named driver if he so wished.
I find it truly unpleasant (although not just a little amusing) for some child to come here, set himself up as a big man and tell those people with more responsibilities than he can even conceive of that they are idiots for making the most practical choices available to them.
I do, however, believe that CD has simply never been forced to confront reality and has convinced himself that what he says is true (I can afford a 325hp car! If I can then anyone can!) as opposed to him purposely misrepresenting himself. If this is the case then I have the vain hope that being called on his little disingenuities will start the long slow cold-shower process.
We can but dream.
pan
You know, the funny thing is…I drive a Saturn wagon 
. But I have 3 kids, and we have been thinking of getting a bigger vehicle for me to drive. We’ve been looking at…MINI-VANS!!!
I really like the Toyota Sienna and the Honda Odyssey.
What color should I get?
A Camaro? Dammit, I hate Camaros. They’re so freaking low, and the hood is so freaking long, that you could easily drive under other cars, and even if you’re driving 50 KM behind another car (from the driver’s seat’s point of view - assuming it has one), you’re still RIGHT behind them.
Besides, they’re tacky.
They should just ban all Camaros, and force the owners to buy minivans.
Yes, that was sarcasm. I still hate Camaros, but people are free to drive whatever the fuck they want.
man, that was fun!