Mat Allin

Papa John's Giving Away Blackberries

2005-07-19T06:37:00.000-04:00

I would really like to know what is going on with RIM (Research in Motion). I was browsing around today and came acrosss a free offer for a Blackberry 7100G wireless handheld when you order a pizza, 2 drinks and a side item from Papa Johns. You will get a $150 mail in rebate and also can't get the deal unless you sign up for a 2 year voice and data service place. Still though, even after that, I never though I'd see the day when you order dinner for the night and get a free Blackberry. Here is a quote from the article I read from MSN Money's Bill Fleckenstein.

So, let me see if I get this: If you buy a couple of Cokes and some chicken strips or bread sticks, that is considered to be fair trade for a BlackBerry. You don't have to be too close to the technology business to understand that this is an act of desperation. There are too many BlackBerrys out there, and Research in Motion needs to move them.

I'll let you guys decide for youself what you think about this offer. I couldn't agree more, I think RIM just has way to much money tied up in the units that are out there and they need to move them quickly. I bet you all know as much as I do that probably 60% of people don't file for rebate on products, so I guess in a way, it's a good plan for RIM, but still silly.

PT Cruiser and Rain

2005-07-17T16:32:00.000-04:00

I decided to give my mother a call today just to see how things were going. Her and my father had gone to a friends place yesterday for the afternoon and for dinner. It was horrible weather, raining very hard at times. So, they said they were sitting around talking inside the house and the neighbor came to the door and said that anyone parked on the street better move their car since the water was backing up and the drains couldn't handle it all. My mother went out to move the car as she waded through water up to her knees, soon as she opened the door to the car, water came gushing out. She said that there was probably about 4 inches of water in the car. She didn't want to move the car for some reason, so her friend got in and moved the car to higher ground and as he was doing that, it apparently looked like he was plowing snow going down the road, the water was coming up almost to the middle of the front grille. So, they got all the water out and have been vacuuming the car out ever since, still trying to get the remaining water out. Thank god nothing electrical was damaged or anything else was damaged. As you can imagine, it probably really stinks in the car with the water getting into the carpet. Nothing a bottole of febreeze can't fix :P

Why do you use car blueprints?

2005-07-17T16:23:00.000-04:00

I have been asked this so many times, "why do you use car blueprints?" or also "why do you have a website dedicated to car blueprints?" So, here goes, I am going to explain the answers to both these questions.
1) The reason why we use car blueprints is to accurately design a vehicle in a 3D modelling program like 3D Studio Max or Lightwave. I can't stress enough how easy it is to design a vehicle once you have the blueprints for it. You can picture the car in your head, but half the time you have no idea how to start modelling the car. In simple terms, with blueprints, you just set them as the background image in the modeeling program of your choice, and start tracing them, most of the time, starting with the side of the vehicle. If you want me to go into details about this, then leave some comments and I will post a tutorial for a few programs on how to set up blueprints to use.

Now,
2) My blueprints site started as a place just to download cars for Need for Speed and someone mentioned to me "why don't you post blueprints up on the site?" I thought to myself, hmm why would I do that? I figured since someone had mentioned it, I would go ahead and add them to my site and see where it goes. Long story short, I went from about 100 members on my site to the 24,000 I have to this day. It was a great idea and I don't regret it one bit. If you want to take a look at my site, then go to www.smcars.net

That's enough of that for now, I will update later on my other sites I have started lately.