jmc

blather

pellet

haul

I'm not a moderator but I can tell you what happened:

Le752's thread was accidentally deleted during an aggressive spam cleanup session. This is unfortunate because her thread generated a lot of interest.

Luckily I had saved off a local copy of the thread on my system for offline perusal and I have forwarded this copy to one of the moderators. I am hopeful that the first four pages of Le752's thread can be re-constructed from my copy. The fifth page is probably lost because I saved off my copy on April 2 and the fifth page had not been posted yet. At present the text of the thread has been posted as a link from http://www.hhplace.org/hhboard/viewtopic.php?t=6271. (Thank you to Nigel for restoring this thread.)

going

racetrack

askew

I guess that clears things up. . .not. Although the "clamping precedes a tow" part does make sense.

OOOH, ya hit a nerve here! This is a personal pet peeve of mine, people who leave shopping carts out in the lot. I've seen the wind kick up and really get carts going too -- they make a nasty dent if they happen to encounter a car along their way. I have also seen shopping carts overturn and crash if the wind blows them into a curb -- they can hit so hard that they sustain damage. And guess who pays to replace the damaged carts in the end -- WE DO as customers of that store! Now I can understand not wanting to take the time to return the cart to the storefront. We are all busy. So I have a different solution -- if my load is four bags or less I CARRY THEM OUT OF THE STORE. What a concept! It's almost as if they put the handles on the bags for just that purpose! If I need the cart to transport an extra-large haul out to my vehicle then I also take the cart back -- probably along with another one I will likely encounter along the way. The Wal-Marts around here not only hire "cart cowboys" to round up the orphaned carts, they also use a little powered pusher vehicle to run long strings of carts back to the store. I'm sure that Wal-Mart could find more productive things for the cart cowboys to do (Wal-Mart seems to know a few things about efficiency) and I'm positive nobody gives away the cart-pushers either. Another ding on all our pocketbooks.

According to posts elsewhere on this board, Jenny's site has shut down. (Which is a shame.) To add to the confusion -- computer-related stuff is good for that -- I just successfully called up her site. But I may be seeing a cached copy of it from somewhere and the chat room link led nowhere. So it doesn't look good. Sorry.

concrete (Hey, I'm just looking out my window!)

NikE (As in the shoes in which a triathlon participant might compete.)

loaded

I like the logic -- If it's a man's feet in 'em then they're mens shoes. I don't care if they are 5.5" stiletto pumps! If only the rest of society were that open-minded!

Nigel, I am not entirely certain how to re-contstruct le752's thread -- I'm not a moderator, just a regular user. I could re-post each entry as a quote but each entry would appear under my username and that would destroy the interaction between members. I believe this interaction is an essential part of any thread. (I am not even sure a moderator can re-construct a thread -- maybe it takes an admin to do that.) What I have is this -- four HTML files with four support directories generated by "File --> Save Page As. . ." in Mozilla FireFox. They were saved on April 2. I can zip up what I have and e-mail it if that would be of any help. You can "PM" me with an e-mail address if you do not want to post it. I agree, it was an interesting thread. Judging by the five pages of replies it gathered, there is a lot of agreement on that point.

I think he's lost interest because I haven't seen him post in over a month.

Being from over here on this side of the "big puddle" I guess I really don't understand this "Wheel Clamping" thing, although it does sound despicable.

Let's say you run a small business and you use part of your property as a parking lot for your customers. You post a sign making a statement to this effect but some schlub parks his jalopy in your lot and then takes off for parts unknown.

I have no difficulty seeing the problem this presents. The aforementioned schlub is occupying space that was reserved for paying customers to your establishment. He is stealing from you. You have this immobile piece of metal displacing your customers.

Now if I read this thread correctly you can call a clamper who will attach a locking device to the wheel of the jalopy. The owner of said jalopy will have to pay a fine to the clamper to regain control of his vehicle. Supposedly this should deter the jalopy owner from parking illegally again as he will risk having to pay yet another fine. Am I correct so far?

Here's my problem (assuming my understanding is correct so far) -- after the clamper comes and does his dirty work you as the business owner still have an immobile piece of metal in your parking lot -- in fact it is even more immobile now than before. You might just as well have a great big boat anchor sitting there! Or maybe a huge concrete block! True, the jalopy owner should eventually perceive a need to have his "wheels" back and pay the fine but until that time your situation has not improved.

Over here we do things differently. (I had never heard of a wheel-clamper until I saw this thread. I had to look it up on the Internet.) Over here, you as the shop owner, would call a local wrecker service and that company would tow the jalopy out of your way. Said jalopy would wind up in an impound yard and the owner would have to pay the wrecker service towing expenses plus impound fees and would have to pay a fine to the local constabulary to get his jalopy back. This method may be just as despicable but as long as parking laws are clear there seems to be a lot less strife. And when the parking laws are not clear, well that's why we have a court system.

Now I will admit I live out in "the sticks", where space -- even parking space -- is plentiful. But in our big cities where parking space is at a premium, it is common to have an illegally parked vehicle towed away at the owner's expense, thereby freeing up the space it was occupying.

I put my marker on the map in northern Michigan.

BTW, if anybody has spam concerns on a site that wants an e-mail address, take a look at www.spamhole.com. You can create a temporary e-mail address at this site, an address that will last for anywhere between 1 and 72 hours (you specify the length of time). This temporary address is linked to your real e-mail address, anything that comes to the temporary address will be forwarded to you. But the link goes away when the temporary address expires, from that point on anything that comes into the temporary address goes to the bit-bucket.

Jo-- Looks like your re-construction of azbus' thread is quite accurate. I checked it against my saved copy and everything is there. There are a few formatting differences (your re-construction has more paragraph breaks) but the wording is accurate. I only have a copy of the thread through fogborkenvv's post on Apr 01, 2006 (double post) so my check ended there. I still have le752's thread up through Apr 02 (4 pages).

exquisite

daffodil

tiny

If it helps, I have the first four pages of le752's thread "just discovered my boyfriend wears women's shoes..." and the first page of azbus's thread "Help my husband wants to wear womans boots." in HTML format on my system. I had saved them off to read them offline so my copies are verbatim as of 04/02/2006. I can make these available to a moderator who wishes to re-construct these threads.

globule

IchthuS