jmc

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

codes

Jeff, I'm blaming the spammers. If they were not pushing their garbage on us you wouldn't have to go around cleaning it up.

hairspring

locks

GilL

On my first road trip to Florida I made a gas stop in northern Kentucky -- in fact it was outside Covington. It seemed like a little back-water gas station even though it was just off I-75, and there were no card-readers on the pumps. So I had to head inside to pay and the clerk said "Thaink yeeeeuw" in what seemed like a caricature of a Southern drawl (her utterance does not readily lend itself to textual representation). I was taken aback for a moment, then I realized "they really do talk that way down here". So I gave her a smile and went on my way. I always seem to wind up crossing Kentucky in the middle of the night but it really does seem like it is a beautiful state. Too bad their governor is so backward. (Don't tell Ernie but I have crossed the state in heels. Not during the incident mentioned above but on later trips. 4 inchers, block heeled boots! :-)

13-14 is going to be a challenge because most of the heels in those sizes will be fetish shoes. (Which can be fun but not for everyday wear.) Watch eBay closely -- use a search something like this: heel (13, 14) . . . and take a chance on anything that suits your fancy. If it does not fit and/or you decide that you don't like it, you can always re-list it and sell it to somebody else. The hardest part is waiting for that parcel to arrive . . . :-)

LE -- It sounds like you were the unfortunate victim of spam cleanup gone awry. Althougn I have no involvement with actually removing spam (other than occasionally reporting it) I can say for certainty that this was no fault of your own. Your thread was interesting and it made a lot of us do some thinking -- as evidenced by the five pages worth of replies it gathered in the short time it was here. I hope your thread can be reconstructed in its entirety -- losing posts like yours is disheartening. As you have no doubt noticed, this board is under a ceaseless attack from spammers who use it to drop links to their scummy pharmaceutical, porn and other worthless sites. Their practices are expressly forbidden by the terms of service governing this board. But that doesn't stop them, they just keep posting waves of their inane drivel. The admins of the board have appointed new moderators with the power to delete this nonsense but it has got to be like trying to bail out the Titanic with a teacup! I do not know where this spam situation is leading or what effect it will have on this board in the end. I can only hope it will all work out somehow. I find a lot of material of interest here and some really interesting people -- since this is a European board it has an international flavor and I enjoy the interaction with people from all over the world. Here in the American Midwest, things are pretty generic (and for the most part I like that) but there is a great big world out there and this board gives me a glimpse of it. Since I don't travel much and will never set foot (regardless of heel height or style -- had to tie that in somewhere) on an airplane, this is probably the only way I will experience any contact with people from outside Michigan. LE -- I hope you will bear with us as our admins deal with these difficulties. The problems are not of their doing.