What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[Luke]

What's so bad about driving around with snow still on your car?

Common sense should answer that.

It falls off, blinds other drivers, and leads to accidents ranging from fender benders to casualties. It's like someone throwing snowballs at your windshield.

The DMV should have FAA-like Visibility rules.

[Luke]

Popo has the right idea, you just need a snow thrower.

Or have a neighbor that you are friends with who owns one. Offer to blow his yard (no jokes please) if you can borrow the blower for a few hours.

Growing up in Chicago my Father would always snowblow the block, including both the alley and sidewalk. You blow a few sidewalks and driveways you have nice neighbors for life.

[dsheinem]

What's so bad about driving around with snow still on your car?

Common sense should answer that.

It falls off, blinds other drivers, and leads to accidents ranging from fender benders to casualties. It's like someone throwing snowballs at your windshield.

The DMV should have FAA-like Visibility rules.

Ah - generally the snow falls off well before I see other drivers as the first couple roads by my house are pretty rural. I've not ever had an incident of snow falling off my car and hitting someone (that I know) or, for that matter, snow falling off another car and hitting me. Maybe this is more of a problem in urban areas where people drive bumper to bumper a lot more.

[Ziggy]

What's so bad about driving around with snow still on your car?

Common sense should answer that.

It falls off, blinds other drivers, and leads to accidents ranging from fender benders to casualties. It's like someone throwing snowballs at your windshield.

The DMV should have FAA-like Visibility rules.

My favorite is driving behind a person who didn't clear the snow off their back window. "Yeah, you weren't gonna look out that thing anyway, were you?"

Driving behind a person who didn't clear off the roof of their car sucks. It could be NOT snowing, but it's pretty much snowing to you because of them. Also, yeah, chunks of snow can break off and cause an accident. I generally don't like when chunks of ice are flying at me.

Or, you can have the snow on your roof slide down onto your windshield when you stop for a light or stop sign or whatever, and then blind yourself.

Snow covered break lights and turning signals... nuff said.

I try and clear ALL the snow off my car before driving. The only exception is when parts are frozen to the car. But even then, I'll make sure most of my hood, roof and turnk is clear. And definitely all my lights and tags.

[flex wood]

Actually it's illegal here and a lot of places to drive without clearing snow off your car due to the reasons Luke and Ziggy pointed out. It's really hard to get the snow off my roof since I drive a Nissan Xterra there is a roof rack that prevents me from getting a good bit of snow off. The stuff I can't get off doesn't fly off though since there's a fender like thing that swoops to the roof at the front of the rack.

Which leads me to my first frown of the new year. I need to get my car washed today before it starts getting cold tonight. We are supposed to have lows of negative 25(!) this week.

Inb4 Mike says negative 25 is the high for him.

[Luke]

Or, you can have the snow on your roof slide down onto your windshield when you stop for a light or stop sign or whatever, and then blind yourself.

And oh when people try to use their windshield wipers to clean it off. Priceless.

Either a broken fuse or motor usually becomes from their folly.

[CRTGAMER]

My car has a funny problem. Long story short, I had to replace my motor mounts last year and when the cheap route. My new mounts cause massive vibrations when the car is at idle, and it's pretty annoying. Today, I guess because it was so cold, when I (remotely) started my car, the arm went off. So I press the lock button to shut the alarm off but still have it set. But my car was grumbling so bad that it kept tripping the warning beeps, so I had to just deactivate the alarm.

I hate the rubber mounts, the driver's side would rip from the engine torque. Replaced both fronts and tranny mount with all steel the first time I built the motor on the 62. I like the shake, part of the fun with the 308 duration cam loping. Weird that your alarm would go off with the ignition on.

[Ziggy]

Weird that your alarm would go off with the ignition on.

It's because I have Viper alarm and auto start. When I start the car remotely, the alarm is still set.

I really wanna replace all the mounts, which sucks because I just dropped like $200 or $300 on them last year. And at this point, I'm not sure if I would even wanna bother trying another third party and just go straight for genuine Toyota replacements, which would be an arm and a leg I'm sure.

[MrPopo]

Smile: Apparently Stardock acquired the rights to the Star Control IP and they plan to make a new game in the style of Star Control 2, and from the interview it sounds like they're going to treat it really well:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/s ... velopment/

[Forlorn Drifter]

So, the midwest is actually a shithole, states that were part of the Confederacy shouldn't be considered southern, and its a sin to have snow on your car. Got it.