Sean Foster

If you jump straight to spankings, sure, they will learn to be forceful; however, if you set solid rules and they willingly break them repeatedly, you must elevate the punishment and eventually, that may mean spanking them. Also, I only spank if they break a rule which endangers themselves or others. Children need to realistically learn consequences for their actions. When they do good, reward them. When they save someone from a very dangerous situation, reward them in a big way! If they do bad, punish them. If they do something very dangerous, punish them in a big way! The punishment needs to fit the transgression. It is better to teach the child the consequences in a controlled environment now (spanking them) rather than letting them learn in an uncontrolled environment later (like possibly losing their life).In a similar vein, I see many people I grew up with who have absolutely no clue as to how life really works because they were not taught realistically as they were raised. When they want something, they get it because mom and dad always got it for them as kids. Eventually, they find that they are up to their eyeballs in debt (credit cards).faund, You are correct when you said that parents are the best teachers for their children. So why would you not want them to learn the realistic consequences for their actions.

Mermaid711, You are right on target with what I meant, and you said it well. I don't mean a parent can't be a friend to their children. My parents are among my best of friends. I just cringe when I see a child walk all over their parent(s) and nothing is done. I think people are afraid that they will lose the love of their child if they discipline them, but what they don't realize is that they may lose the love, and definately the respect, if they don't! It's biblical to discipline . . . just read these verses in the New International Version of the bible: The only other reason I can think of that a parent may not discipline their child is laziness, and I see that all too often: The parent is watching TV and the child does something naughty, but the parent does nothing because they are too lazy to get up and discipline the child, God forbid they should miss any part of their show! It has become a "me" generation, where people are focused on only themselves, but that is another rant.

I don't mean to complain, but in my experience, most passengers seem to "check" their common sense with their luggage. I was a ramp agent years ago for SkyWest Airlines and I've seen some pretty funny things. For example, there was only one airplane on the entire ramp in FAT (Fresno, CA) at the time and we began to board passengers. One passenger asked me, "is that my airplane?" I thought to myself, "no lady . . . your plane is the invisible one just to the North of that one!" SkyWest Airlines has contracts with United Airlines and Delta Airlines to operate as United Express and Delta Connection respectively. Many of the planes are painted in United or Delta colors/schemes, but some are actually painted in the SkyWest theme. These aircraft are said to be "cross-utilized", that is, they can be used for both Delta Connection and United Express flights. Well, we were boarding one of these cross-utilized aircraft for a United Express flight to Los Angeles, and a female passenger refused to board the aircraft because it said "SkyWest Airlines" on the side. She was adamant about the fact that she did not buy tickets to fly on SkyWest, and that her tickets were to fly on United Express. After countless attempts to explain the situation to the passenger, the gate agent finally gave up. Finally, the aircraft door closed and the aircrew started the #2 engine. When they started the #1 engine, the passenger demanded that she be allowed to board the plane. The gate agent politely refused, explaining that the flight could not be held, and tried to explain to the passenger that she had refused to board when called previously. At this point, the passenger became loud and very rude. She's lucky she was not denied boarding for the rest of the day. The gate agent would have been well within her right to do so, but if given the chance to fly on SkyWest Airlines, I think you'll find that they have exceptional service! Yep, I really miss those days as a ramp agent. I later became an aircraft mechanic for SkyWest and, thus, never experienced these ridiculous situations again. Well, sort of. I once had a pilot write up some logo lights (shine on the tail to display the company logo) that were inoperative. The signoff was, quite literally, "logo lights not installed on this aircraft." On a different occasion, a pilot called me over and said that he was performing a fire sensing system check and that he was not getting the correct indications. I asked him to perform the check again, and when he was all through, I showed him the correct switch to flip to perform the check! Of course it checked good.

1) Turbochargers aren't really limited as to which engine they can be used on. In fact, it is the other way around . . . the engine is limited as to which turbocharger you can use on it. As an example, if you used a small turbo on an engine, the turbo may be capable of producing, say, 25psi of boost. This is fine. A larger turbocharger may produce 60psi of boost on the same engine. This may be fine too, as long as the engine can handle it. On the other hand, a small stock engine may handle a tiny turbo capable of producing 7psi of boost, but as soon as you put a larger turbo on it, boom! There is a lot more that goes into deciding which turbo to use for any given engine, but this should give you a good starting point in choosing. 2) Turbochargers work fine with NOS. NOS actually makes more oxygen available in the cylinder in 2 ways: first, the chemical release of oxygen from the NOS, and second, NOS is very cold when sprayed so this cools the air charge which makes the air more dense (more oxygen per liter). 3) Scoops in hoods are used for 2 purposes with regard to the engine: (1) ram air systems, which use the incoming air to force-feed the engine (same principle as a turbo, but is only efficient within a narrow rpm range), and (2) to scoop air to force it through a top-mounted intercooler (see my post above for an explanation on what an intercooler does). One note about top-mount intercoolers: heat rises from the engine and may possibly decrease the efficiency of the top-mounted intercooler. This is why many people prefer to mount the intercooler at the front of the vehicle in front of, or below, the radiator. As far as aerodynamics, scoops add only a minute amount of drag to the vehicle, but the amount of HP you gain by cooling the air with the intercooler more than makes up for it. Still, a front-mount intercooler adds no extra drag.

I just wanted to clarify a couple things about turbochargers, specifically, the names and functions of their parts. A turbocharger has 5 basic parts: Housing, bearing, shaft, compressor, and turbine. The housing just houses the components. The bearing supports the shaft.The meat-and-potatoes of the system is the turbine and compressor. The exhaust gases contain energy that is normally wasted. This energy is in the form of pressure and velocity. In the turbocharged system, we extract the energy from the exhaust gases by forcing it to turn a turbine (15,000rpm is actually slow to some turbines). The gases are then expelled out of the turbocharger to be "discarded".The turbine is connected, via the shaft, to the compressor. The compressor takes in clean air that is at approximately atmospheric pressure (14.7psi at sea level) and compresses it to a certain "boost pressure". When you hear 30psi of boost, it means 30psi above atmospheric, or 44.7psi.This pressurized air charge contains more oxygen than the nonpressurized air for a given volume, and at this point, can be directed into the combustion chamber; however, it also contains more heat. We can increase the amount of oxygen by cooling the air charge, so we send this pressurized air through an intercooler to cool it. This causes the already-dense air to become more dense. This would be the best time to direct that air into the combustion chamber.The faster you spin that turbine, the faster the compressor spins. The faster you spin the compressor, the more boost you get. So how do we control the amount of boost? We use a turbo controller, which controls how much exhaust goes through the turbine and how much gets wasted, or bypassed. When RPM is low, you want it all, but as RPM increases, so does boost, and you can get to a point where there is too much for the engine. A typical stock engine can handle about 7psi of boost. As the charge pressure (AKA intake manifold pressure) reaches 7psi, the boost controller would start opening the waste gate, bypassing the turbine, but keeping it closed enough to maintain the 7psi of boost.There are a couple small problems with turbochargers. One of them is turbo lag. When you hit the gas, you need to burn the extra fuel you just put it, and then it can be used (as exhaust gases) to turn the turbine. This is usually pretty quick, but the turbine takes time to get up to speed. The smaller/lighter the turbine/compressor, the faster it gets up to speed, but it doesn't boost as much as a large turbine/compressor. We can overcome this by using a 2-stage setup, where we have a small turbocharger AND a large one. The small one is used for the initial boost, and then the large one takes over once it spins up. This is called a sequential turbo setup and is used in the 1993-1995 Mazda RX-7, for example.The other problem is that once that intake manifold is pressurized, it needs somewhere to go. Normally, this path is through the engine, but what if you need to let off the gas and go to idle (like after revving up your engine, or getting ready to stop at a red light)? You want your engine to decelerate normally, so you need to release this air, rather than make it go through the engine. That's where we use a "pop-off" valve. Whenever your throttle position goes down rapidly (from you releasing the gas pedal), the pop-off valve opens, releasing the charged air. If we didn't use one, it would actually take some time for the engine to slow down to idle, and you might be suprised how long it actually takes.Well, that's about it for me, and this, too, came straight from my understanding of how turbo systems work. To lend creed to my post, I am licensed to work on Aircraft (Airframe and Powerplant) and I am a soon-to-be race car driver (Honda Challenge) and it was for these purposes that I learned about turbochargers and turbo systems.For the record: In no way did I copy any portion of any text from any source to write this post. It was solely written by myself, Sean G. Foster, for the purpose of educating those who may be interested in learning how turbocharger systems work.

Wow! A car this fast must be tuned well, and would surely have dyno charts. Please post your dyno charts so that we may see your torque and HP curves.Anyways, what is meant by modded? Modded for road-race, straight-track (drag), etc.? My 1990 Honda Civic is in the process of being modded for track racing. First on the list is an engine swap, and then suspension work, along with body stiffening and safety equipment installation. So far, the interior is half-gutted and I've ripped out the rear drum brakes and swapped to rear disk brakes. I'll begin racing in the Honda Challenge series next year (2008 season).

I live in the mountains where Pickups and SUV's are the norm and it really makes me laugh when I go down to the city for groceries and see big trucks/SUV's with 28" spinners and lowered with no practical suspension. What's the point?! I use my truck for what it was intended, and when I don't need it, I use my 1990 Honda Civic (36MPG). I guess some people have money burning a hole in their pockets!

I have many for many different tasks and reasons so I'll list my top 3 cars in no particular order and why I chose them:1) 1992-1995 Honda Civic - So many mods on the market . . . you have a light-weight car with the potential for a very powerful engine. If you were to take the B18C engine (200HP) from an Acura Integra Type-R and put it in any Civic, it's gonna be fast, but even take the B16A (170HP) from a JDM Civic SiRII and turbocharge it and you'll have 345HP with no other mods.2) 1993-1995 Mazda RX-7 - The rotary car matured to perfection . . . If you look closely, the front half of the car looks like the 2000 Corvette . . . even Chevy copied this car's looks (in my opinion) but I don't blame them. This generation RX-7 is beautiful, and it's pretty light (less than 3000 lbs.). Darned good for a twin-turbo, 255HP car.3) 2005 Acura NSX - What more could you want than a street-legal racecar, and that is exactly what the NSX is! Honda engines have more in common with those of an Indy Car than they do your typical car and the NSX is no exception, what with it's 290HP 3.2L DOHC VTEC engine, and that's not even mentioning the racecar-like handling.

Here is a twist on this tutorial that will give your lightning a specific direction, rather than filling the screen. You can start with a transparent/no background. Select the gradient tool and make your gradient fade from black to white. Next, create a gradient with a pretty narrow fade region so that your picture is now a gradient from left to right that almost looks like left-half-black and right-half-white. Next, render difference clouds, invert, and adjust level. You can also adjust color balance to change the color of the lightning. I'm at work right now without Photoshop, but I'll edit this post when I get home and add pictures.

I am in no way racist or prejudiced toward any type of group, but there are certain things that I wonder about such as: why is it okay to have NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) but it is considered "racist" if we had the NAAWP (National Association for the Advancement of White People)? Why is there the United Negro College Fund but it would be racist to create the United Caucasion College Fund? Why is it okay to have "Gay Pride" marches but not "Straight Pride" marches? Why is it that a top candidate can be turned down for a job and a "lesser" candidate hired to comply with racial quotas?I mean no disrespect by these questions and I hold nothing against anyone for these situations. If I offend anyone, please know that it was not my intent. These are just questions that I have and I thought they could be the topic of a good discussion.

I have 5 kids and I spank. My parents spaked, my grandparents spanked, etc and we all turned out okay. We all have good jobs, friends, and no criminal records. Take a look out there at adults who were never spanked (if you are wondering where to find them, they are usually found in prisons). They are the opposite. The problems are that there are few "parents" nowadays. They choose to be friends instead. Children need parental figures in their lives. They will have plenty of friends. They need to feel disappointment and how to cope with boundaries and friends cannot teach these things like parents can. . . . just my 2 cents.

I would disagree. I've yet to see Final Cut Pro for Windows. This is just the first example to come to mind. There are many other programs that were built for Linux only, but even those that are available for both Linux and Windows usually work much faster/better on Linux. I have experience with Linux, Windows, and Mac and I would have to say that it is a tough choice between a Mac and Linux box, but the only real reason I still have Windows is because my wife is not interested in learning a new OS. Something interesting to note: Linux can run Windows programs by using an emulator called "Wine" (I've used it and it works great). It is also about as fast as using a Windows program on a Windows box! I've heard that you can use an emulator to be able to run a Linux program on a Windows box, but that it is painstakingly slow, and so I opted to not even try it.

I have had Vista since a couple months after it's debut (Vista Home Premium) and I haven't had many problems, but I always recommend Linux. In particular, Ubuntu is a very good distro to get. You can run it right from the CD to see if you like it and if you do, there is an "install" icon on the desktop. You can then easily set it up on a partition and even dual-boot (have both Windows and Linux installed and choose which to run).

One thing I highly recommend is to see the site as a whole, rather than just little individual parts. When I first started, I made a cool banner. Then I made cool-looking buttons. I came up with a cool background and all. When I finally put it all together, it looked like crap! Now, I mostly use Photoshop to design a whole layout, including graphics for buttons . . . all in one big picture. Then, I slice it up into individual images and use HTML to "sew" it back together. I might save the individual button images and then alter them a little and save it under the original name plus "-over" for use later as an image-rollover.The point here is to come up with a theme that flows together and is pleasing to the eyes, which brings me to another important feature: make things easy to find and don't assume your visitor knows where everything is.I hope this helps!