wilky9

Oh good lord no! There is no way I'd ever get her to do that. I know it's a pretty safe activity, but I can't risk breaking a bone again this summer. That sucked enough for one year. It looks exciting though. Have you done it?

New Xbox 360 Elite. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/xbox360elite/default.htm

Thanks for the offer Tom! Next time I'm in Chicago, we'll go to Goose Island Brewery

Well, I don't know. I was hoping to get some inspiration from the ideas of others. I like seeing what other people are in to, outside of arch-viz. My wife and I inherited some money, enough to payoff the credit cards and invest a little, and decided to split $1000 to have fun with. So, I am trying to think of something fun, but not wasteful to do with it. I'd like to put it towards a new bike, but I don't have room for another one. I'm thinking an xbox360; I always enjoy having friends come over and drink beer and play. Just have to see if the price is going to drop when the new one comes out.

If you had $500 (no more) to spend on something for your self, what would you buy? For fun, no "I'd save it" or "Invest it in ..." What would you purchase?

I don't have MAX so I can't help you on that end, but I have been using SketchUp for a while. What version are you using? 6? Pro or free? Have you posted this at the Sketchup forums? They are pretty good, but don't stray too far from home. Have you tried exporting a very simple object? If the object is grouped (or a component) in Sketchup, you could explode it before exporting? If you want, I could export a model and send it to you to see if the problem is on your end.

Rumor has it that Vista will in-validate your XP registration number if you upgrade your license. No information on what happens if you have a full (not upgrade from XP) version of Vista.

My dad makes wine at home and it always tastes great! You have to buy the kits to do it though. He made something like 8 cases for my sisters wedding. Not a bottle left! My favorite recipies (which I'm looking for) are a clone of Boulevard Brewing's Unfiltered Wheat, and a clone of Boulder Brewery's Never Summer Ale. Goose Island IPA is probably my favorite beer, and by far the best IPA I've had. Unfortunately, like Boulevard Brewing, they don't distribute west of Kansas.

My wife got me the keg setup for christmas of '05 from Northern Brewer. I think it ran about $250 or so. It came with a new 5 gal. keg, at tap, handle, empty CO2 tank, hoses, connections, etc. I've since added an additional tap and bought a used keg from a local guy for $40. We bought a used fridge for $30 at a garage sale. It is fun to have this setup, especially at parties. Cleaning 2 kegs and the lines is still much faster than cleaning all of those bottles! I'm sure you could do it cheaper than this if you could find a used CO2 tank and keg. I was going to give you a link, but their site is either down, or I'm blocked from it.

Assuming "Outside of Sacto, CA" means Sacramento, I found a Brew-On-Premise shop that will let you use all of their equipment to make an all-grain. It's pretty expensive at close to $150, but you get about 132 bottles of beer, and you'll get to experience/learn all-grain without a big investment in equipment. It's how I did it the first few times (my guy is cheap in comparison at $50), and it's nice to have someone else clean up after you! http://www.brewitup.com/personal_brewery.htm

Hey Sawyer, Nice to know I'm not the only one here that makes his own beer. Are you using kits, or all-grain? I've recently moved to all-grain, with mixed results. Also, if you have a keg system, you can force carbonate your beer and knock a couple of weeks off of the wait time.

They should call it iTubes; piss off Apple & Google/YouTube all at once!

CloneDVDMobile and AnyDVD is my lethal combination. Not free, but easy to use and fast with fantastic results.

I love the camera angle in the last render!

Nutcracker on Bike Parts