Re: 1/2 & 1/2 (content)

[Regan Dale Copple <copple@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

First the Alfa content:
David,

>Should I just identify this son of a bitch before you buy a car from him
>or have work done by him or what?  I want to.  We are not wealthy folks
>who can kind of write this project off.

	I too have an old Alfa-Romeo, a 79 spider, that I hope to one day
restore to a little of its earlier condition and I would surely let
everyone know if some disreputable dealer had screwed me over.  Word of
mouth is one of the most powerful tools in business and no one should be
above it.  If you feel wronged by this guy ask yourself this question,
would I want anyone else to go through what I went through.  I think that
the answer will come readily, and from that you should warn your fellow
Alfisti, especially those of us living in California since we may have
occasion to come into contact with this person.  Barring that, at least
warn me, because I live out here and I don't need to be screwed over by
another selfish bastard.

>PS  Has anyone EVER met ANYONE in the auto business who was not a liar
>and a thief, who actually had integrity and self respect?  We have not,
>and now, finally, we will give up looking and hoping that there is such a
>person.

	It's too bad that you have had that many bad experiences because I
have met quite a few good mechanics who were honest to a fault, and quite
reputable when I entrusted them with my various automobiles, both foreign
and domestic, over the years.

Now for the Non-Alfa content:
Will,

>The item about the iMac, I think, falls pretty much into that
>category. The only thing that makes it iffy is the fact that it's
>obviously a corporate press release, which is and ought to be a no-no
>in these pages. Still, I'm ready to pardon the guy, if only because
>I'm at least as excited about that box as he seems to be. The only
>thing more stunning to me would be if Alfa announced it was bringing
>in the 156 next week, starting at 318ti prices.

	I will never buy an iMac for the simple reason that those
boneheads in design didn't want to include a damn disk drive into the
stupid thing.  This computer was merely meant to be a dumb terminal,
something strictly for cruising the internet.  For folks like me who can't
even afford to buy a regular computer, it will be a long time before I
ever consider buying something that is lacking a basic feature of all
computers previous to this.  When the time comes for me to graduate and go
find a job, I will go to a store and buy a computer that fulfills all of
my requirements.  Now don't think that I'm a PC lover, fact is I like
Apples, I think they're much easier to use than PCs, they have an easier
GUI (Graphical User Interface) than PCs, they are my computer of choice.
But it seems to me that the powers that be at Apple have made yet another
tactical error in not including a disk drive with the integrated unit.  If
I am cruising the internet, how am I supposed to download and save
anything, short of FTP'ing it to another computer and saving it from
there?  Draw your own conclusions alfisti, but take it from an electrical
engineering/computer science student at Berkeley who tends to see the
cutting edge stuff most of the time, I'd take a pass on this one.

					Regards,
					Regan Copple
					79 Spider (Off to Berkeley) =^>
					73 Montreal (Into storage) =^<

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