Intrepidation

My trip was a road trip, I didn't realize you were a druggy.

<3

Looks like I came back from the trip just in time.

That's what gets me, if they were really serious about restructuring, everyone would have taken cuts, not just the low paid workers who need money more than the CEOs.

(Reuters) - Hostess Brands Inc, the bankrupt maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, has sought a U.S. court's permission to go out of business after failing to get wage and benefit cuts from thousands of its striking bakery workers. Hostess, which has about $2.5 billion in sales from a long list of snack cakes and breads, filed the request with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York early Friday morning. The Irving, Texas-based company said the liquidation would mean that most of its 18,500 employees would lose their jobs. Hostess immediately suspended operations at all of its 33 plants across the United States as it moves to start liquidating assets, it said. "We'll be selling the brands and as much of the infrastructure as we can," said company spokesman Lance Ignon. "There is value in the brands. But some bakeries will never open again as bakeries." Ignon said the company was making final deliveries on Friday of products made Thursday night. Hostess's top-selling products are its chocolate cupcakes, cream-filled Twinkies cakes and its powdered sugar and frosted "Donettes." Entrepreneurs on auction site eBay are asking as much as $100 for a box of 10 Twinkies - plus $5 shipping - according to one listing that went up shortly after the company's liquidation filing. "Soon To Be Gone Forever," the listing reads. Hostess blamed burdensome wage and pension obligations for its financial woes. It said a strike by members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, which began last week, was the latest of a series of labor troubles that had crippled the company's ability to produce and deliver products at several facilities. A few workers were still walking picket lines early Friday morning, many expressing hope that some of the Hostess operations might survive. They blamed what they characterized as "Wall Street" management for the company's demise. "The people who are running this company are not interested in making bread," said Roger Harrison, 56, who bags buns at the Hostess plant in Lenexa, Kansas, and has been with the company for 35 years. "They are not in the baking industry; they are just interested in the money," said Harrison, 56. "This company is so unstable that once they close, maybe someone can take over and buy it and give us more stability." Union President Frank Hurt said management was trying to make union workers the scapegoats for a long-held plan by Wall Street investors to break up Hostess. Hostess had given employees a deadline to return to work on Thursday, but the union held firm, saying it had already given far more in concessions than workers could bear and that it would not bend further. The company was asking workers to agree to an 8 percent pay cut, a 20 percent increase in healthcare costs, closure of 10 to 12 plants and changes to pension and workday provisions. Hostess managers have complained that terms of many of the 300 labor contracts that the company has in place have bogged down its ability to be both nimble and cost-competitive. "The union has been the death of this company," said a human resources manager who recently left Hostess. WIND-DOWN PLAN The company, which filed for bankruptcy in January for the second time since 2004, filed its liquidation motion with U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York, seeking permission to shut down and sell assets. Hostess has 565 distribution centers and 570 bakery outlet stores, as well as the 33 bakeries. Besides Twinkies and Wonder Bread, its brands include Nature's Pride, Dolly Madison, Drake's, Butternut, Home Pride and Merita. The company said in Friday's court filing that it would probably take about a year to wind down. It will need about 3,200 employees to start that process, but only about 200 after the first few months. Hostess said it had been gauging acquisition interest for certain brands for months and in late September received "a number of potentially viable proposals" to purchase certain assets. No investor was willing to acquire the entire company with the existing collective bargaining agreements in place, according to Hostess officials. SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst William Chappell Jr. said Flowers Foods Inc could be among the potential buyers for some Hostess assets. And he said the company's liquidation was a "positive step" for the sector as it will shrink the number of major vendors. "The consolidation should lead to a more normalized competitive environment," he said. Hostess said its debtor-in-possession lenders had agreed to allow it to retain access to $75 million to fund the wind-down process. The company has canceled all orders with its suppliers and said any product in transit would be returned to the shipper. In its January bankruptcy filing, Hostess listed assets of $981.6 million. In a February filing, it assessed the value of its patents, copyrights and other intellectual property at some $134.6 million, although it did not break down the value by brands. The company's last operating report, filed with the bankruptcy court in late October, listed a net loss of $15.1 million for the four weeks that ended in late September, mostly due to restructuring charges and other expenses. http://news.yahoo.co...Y3Rpb25z;_ylv=3

I haven't ordered from them yet, but my neighbor does pretty regularly, he likes them. I've used RockAuto once and liked it, and I use Amazon a lot.

Because I had already removed the front windows when I ran out of daylight and the following day it was supposed to rain, I didn't feel like working inside a damp car after the rain stopped. It's already out and sitting in the garage.

So the Grand Marquis' transmission has started being temperamental about whether or not it wants to go into 1st gear. As it so happens my neighbor has a regular customer who has several Crown Vics, including a `93 Interceptor he was planning to scrap. It sat for 10 years and the engine seized, but its only got 83k and the transmission is good. So he bought it off the guy for scrap value, took out the transmission and fuel sender, and told me to have at it and take whatever else I wanted, then it would be loaded full of scrap and sent on its way. We briefly contemplated putting the GM's engine in it, but it really isn't in any better shape, and a car sitting for 10 years is a can of worms waiting to be opened, so this route seemed the best way. So over the course of two days I set to work getting all kinds of good stuff off of it. Out came the four window regulators and glass (these cars are notorious for regulator problems), HVAC controls, ignition coils, MAF sensor, some pigtails known to corrode, window/door lock switches, and the alternator. Those regulators are all riveted in, hence my frustration towards rivets. The biggest takes were the lovely blue seats, which are in really good shape. Should be fun to see what dark blue seats look like in a tan interior, but if Bentley can get away with it, so can this...right? The other nifty thing I grabbed was the police scanner/CB radio/siren control box. It worked when I connected power to the car, pretty cool. I figure it might fetch a decent price on ebay or something. Oh, and I took the little timer that logs the hours the vehicle has on it. Poor thing. Oh well, at least some of it will live on.

Look at you, with your fancy borders and up-close detail shots Mine were taken at the Philadelphia Zoo on Saturday. We came out of the Lion's area and I looked up and thought that with the sun shining through made the leaves look "on fire" or lit up. I wanted to capture that look versus the detail like yours (which are great, btw). The last one is a tree in my backyard that I've been meaning to photograph - looked better about a week or so ago. I'm going to try it again, this time in the morning sunlight (different angle). Thanks dfelt! Fall is by far my favorite season (if we got more snow maybe winter would be my fav). I love the cold, crisp mornings, the warm afternoons, and the cooler evenings. Thsi year we're being treated to a nice fall season in NJ, the too-cold and the too-hot (aka Indian summer) have not been as prevailant as in the past. Yeah not bad for an SX10 IS, that 20x zoom really comes in handy sometimes.

The vehicle in question is a `94 Crown Victoria, same applies for our `93 Grand Marquis, probably all Panther cars. IIRC the Intrepid's are bolted in, and the Prizm's are. Changing the Prizm's regulator only took me 15 minutes the first time.

Passed first time on both. Driver's Ed no doubt helped. I'm quite good at parallel parking.

It took nearly 4 hours to remove 4 window regulators using 2 drills and 4 batteries. And many bits. Hate them so much.

A letter to the engineer who thought to use pop rivets to secure window regulators instead of bolts. Dear engineer, If I ever meet you, I will put a rivet through your balls. Sincerely, Anyone who has ever had to drill those f@#kers out.

Is adorable. I could watch the snowfall one for hours.

I once saw but for can do I don't even.

Toolbox is removable should you want to, you know, use the bed, one of the other important purposes of a pickup.

Which makes it pretty much useless as a pick`em up.

Its nice for what it is, Holy Christwagons those are some hideous color schemes.

One day that even though we were but because of the it also was when.

Happy belated Birthday!

I like the not acres of chrome look.

I guess Reg didn't sell enough Kizashis. Would have though Mitsubishi would have beat them to the punch though.

Does it only have 2 hinges to support the entire gate? If so that seems like a flimsy design.