FukDatShhh.CoM

Rachel Veitch, who’s 90 years old, bought her last car in 1964. Forty-five years and 558,000 miles later, the Mercury Comet Caliente she calls “Chariot” is still on the road. So what’s the secret for keeping a car running for more than a half-million miles? Just taking care of it.

“I was never a destructive child,” said Veitch, a retired nurse from east Orlando who works as an office volunteer for the Orlando Police Department several days a week. “I still have the first doll I was ever given. I’ve taken care of most everything I’ve ever had, except for husbands.”

How many husbands? She holds up three fingers. “I’ll tell you something: This little Chariot has never lied to me, never cheated on me, and I can always depend on it.”

These days, she and Chariot are working toward 600,000 miles, “and I’ll make that,” she says, “if I live long enough. I tell people, ‘Except for the congestive heart failure, a stroke and a double mastectomy, I’m in great shape!’”

Veitch, who has a complete set of the car’s maintenance records, has the oil changed every 3,000 miles. She buys her own oil and filters because she doesn’t trust the products sold by the oil-change places.

Her longtime mechanic retired, and now her son takes care of Chariot. And when something comes up he can’t handle, they find a professional.

Lifetime warranties

Veitch is big on buying replacement parts that have lifetime guarantees.

“It’s had seven mufflers, and it’s about time for a new one,” she says. “I’ve had 17 lifetime J.C. Penney batteries [and] three lifetime sets of shock absorbers from Sears.”

She and Chariot have become an Internet sensation, thanks to several videos of her and her car posted on GrowingBolder.com, an Orlando-based site targeted at people older than 50. The original video of Veitch and Chariot on GrowingBolder.com has been viewed more than 1.7million times.

Veitch bought Chariot new from a dealer in Sanford for $3,289, which wasn’t cheap in 1964.

“It’s a deluxe model,” she says, “with an automatic transmission, power steering, the premium interior, wheel covers,” and air conditioning that still blows cold air.

Well, cool air.

Veitch drives carefully, confidently.

“It still drives the way it did when it was new,” she says. One feature she added to Chariot was cruise control — after the police caught her going 92 mph.

“The speed just creeps up,” she says, “and you don’t even notice it.”

Chariot has been through a lot, including a collision on a highway where it was rear-ended by another car. Her insurance company told her it was totaled.

“No, it isn’t,” she told them, and proceeded to find parts to fix it.

Chariot’s latest woes

More recently, Chariot’s engine began sputtering and backfiring, and no one could find the problem. Veitch was a wreck: It was possible, she thought, that Chariot’s days were over.

Enter a repair facility in DeLand called Dyno-Tune, and George Lyons, one of the owners. It has an in-house dynamometer — a device that let Lyons strap down the car, put the rear wheels on huge rollers and “drive” it in the shop.

“I was able to get the car up to 60 mph,” Lyons said, and he diagnosed an unusual ignition problem. He fixed it, and Chariot again purrs.

Lyons said a car with mileage as high as Chariot is rare, but “if you take care of your vehicle, get it serviced, don’t abuse it, it can last a very long time.”

Veitch, who has taken Chariot to car shows for decades, has a dozen trophies and plaques from car clubs.

She has had multiple offers for her car but has no interest in selling it.

“One man got quite ugly about it — he said, ‘Everything has a price!’ So I told him, ‘$43,000! That’s my price!’ He went away.

“My little car is so faithful,” she adds. “And I enjoy it so much. And, my gosh, look at the cars on the road now — I don’t think any of them are as pretty as my little Chariot.”

INDIANAPOLIS (UPI) – A teenage girl unable to attend her school’s prom due to illness enjoyed a makeshift prom thanks to the staff of an Indianapolis hospital, an official said.

Community Health Network Foundation spokesman Ryan Chelli said his group and Community Hospital North staff members worked together to offer ailing prom queen Leah Westrick a taste of the Fishers High School prom, The Indianapolis Star reported.

Chelli said the Fishers senior, along with her boyfriend and several other friends, enjoyed a pre-prom dinner Saturday night at a hospital atrium transformed into a temporary restaurant.

Fishers Principal Jason Urban also attended the makeshift prom event to present Westrick and her boyfriend, senior Gabe Hulecki, with their honorary crowns as prom queen and king.

Chelli told the Star Westrick has been at the hospital since April 18 after contracting an E. coli infection during spring break a visit to Mexico. Her condition was not considered life-threatening and she should be discharged within two weeks, Chelli said.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

If you are interested in how long it takes the items we toss into our landfills to decompose, I found the following illuminating.

• Paper ………………. 2 to 5 months
• Orange peels ………… 6 months
• Milk cartons ………… 5 years
• Filter-tip cigarettes … 10 to 12 years
• Plastic bags ………… 10 to 20 years
• Leather shoes ……….. 24 to 40 years
• Plastic containers …… 50 to 80 years
• Disposable diapers …… 75 years
• Tin cans ……………. 100 years
• Aluminum cans ……….. 200 to 500 years
• Styrofoam …………… Never

JOYS GREEN, England (UPI) — A British store owner said litter in her village is down by 40 percent since she started marking candy wrappers with the names of the children who bought them.

Yvonne Froud, 52, said she uses a black permanent marker to write the names of buyers on candy wrappers, bags of chips and beverage containers to identify the litterbugs of Joys Green, England, The Daily Mirror reported.

Froud said children whose names are found on wrappers left on the street face penalties including temporary bans from her shop and periods of litter-picking duty.

“I was so disgusted by the litter I had to do something about it,” the shopkeeper told The Daily Mail. “Now if we find packets around the village we know who they belong to. I will do it with adults if they start littering, too.”

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

Note: Click any picture to view full size.

Note: Click any picture to view full size.

Downloading music is illegal, right? That’s what the Music Industry
is telling us all the time. They sue people who download music and do
everything in their might to keep up the image that music downloading
is a major crime.This is however apparently not true in China where
Google struck a deal with major players in the Music Industry – to be
precise Universal, EMI, Warner and Sony – to provide free full songs in
their search engine. About 350K songs are offered in the beginning.
That number is said to rise to 1.1 million songs in the next months
alone. The songs will feature both local Chinese artists but also
international acts.

The reason for Google is that they are only number two in the search
engine market in China. Baidu is first there and offering music
downloads as well albeit without a similar deal. The reason why the
Music Industry agreed to the deal is simple: Money. The majority of
Chinese do not pay for music but download it from the Internet. And so
it was decided that sharing some advertising revenue with Google is
better than fighting illegal music downloads.

Google is restricting file downloads to Chinese users according to Mashable who were the first to publish the story. The search interface on the other hand is available for everyone.

Definitely an interesting progression especially for Chinese users
who can now download music legally while everyone else in the world
cannot.

Source: gHacks

SUCCESS
by Martin Buxbaum

You can use most any measure

When you’re speaking of success.

You can measure it in fancy home,

Expensive car or dress.

But the measure of your real success

Is the one you cannot spend.

It’s the way your kids describe you

When they’re talking to a friend.

Read The Caption on the first photo then look at the second photo.

Look at the picture above and you can see where this driver broke through the guardrail, on the right side of the culvert, where the people are standing on the road, pointing. The pick-up was traveling about 75 mph from right to left when it crashed through the guardrail. It flipped end-over-end, bounced off and across the culvert outlet and landed right side up on the left side of the culvert, facing the opposite direction from which the driver was traveling. The 22-year-old driver and his 18-year-old passenger were unhurt except for minor cuts and bruises. Just outside Flagstaff , AZ on U.S. Hwy 100.

Now look at the second picture below…