Hobbes

Yeah, it's rare. But this one doesn't even come with a box, and stickers are applied already: Special offer or what?!?! 8-

If you're up in the 80's temperature wise you have a problem anyways ;-) A standard PC ("office-like" work, no powerful gfx cards or CPUs or HDs) shouldn't produce too much heat...

Hmm... maybe we have a different notion of cartoonish. It looks "just" like a very nice LEGO creation to me... Probably some nordic god... or some poor viking who stood too close to the sewerage outlet, got drained in mud/dirt/cr@p/whatnot, and "petrified" over time...

No wonder you're here even more often... I think it deserved its prize.

And that from a modem user...

Forget all your modded PCs at home - that's how it's supposed to look like: (Thumb clickable)

Here it is: (Thumb clickable)

Since there were many discussions in lots of message boards going on about the future of the 9V system, LEGO Ambassadors were authorized to inform the online community. Here's a post from 1000steine from the German ambassador. The discussion is in German but he left the original english lines (in italic) in his post to avoid translation errors: What LEGO Ambassadors can tell us about the 9V system A few rough translations of what's going on in that discussion: Jan Beyer (Jake's counterpart in Europe) says: He's working on making clear how important the 9V system is. He can't decide, though. It's in the hands of the AFOL community to show how important it is to them. There were/would be major investments to keep the system going. Not everybody liked what he said. Here's roughly what the community said: It sounds like LEGO's clearing out their stock. It sounds like LEGO wants AFOLs to hoard 9V stuff. Some complain about how they're supposed to show their interest if it's so hard to get. There's almost only S@H (in 2007 only), some TRUs, almost no local store, no new sets since 2004/early 2005, and almost everything sold out on S@H. And if they can't get "enough" sales won't look that good although interest is there. Some don't believe that major investments are necessary to keep a theme going but rather to push something new: the new train system. And that was LEGO's "decision" not the AFOLs', so it's unfair to "put it on their shoulders". Everybody's more or less annoyed by this non-information that LEGO sells as information all the time. I think that was all...

"The Web site cannot be found" :'-( :-P ;-)

Sounds like Monty Python's...

SOLD! PM following...

We'll be touring south England that week and will go directly to the B&B. Is there a time frame when we meet there?

A lot of the Playmobil City designs look like the LEGO designs - or vice versa... Problem is: Playmobil was on the market first. And you know what ppl tend to think when shortly after something's in the shelves someone else comes out with similar looking stuff...

If olde Howard knew how expensive his coffee creations would become? It's Frappuccino

Happy birthday! :-)

One of your knights is lefthanded... cool...

The rolling stock of the cargo train looks nice. There's something about the croco that I don't like, though. Just can't put my finger on it. And I agree, there's more in it, but it still doesn't justify the price. The passenger train is a bit of a disappointment. I like the color scheme since I'm familiar with the ICE trains here in Europe, but it could have been a lot better. And with only one waggon in the middle it looks weird. At least one more is necessary to make it look good, better two. The accessories (the platform in the ICE set, and the truck, forklift etc. in the cargo set) are very nice, though. Should be city sets... And I'm still not happy about the RC being infrared. The signal might have wide distribution or something but it's still infrared and if there's something "in the way" you might have trouble running your train(s) smoothly. It'll be interesting to hear/read the first experience reviews. Until then I'll modify my 4511 to look better...

:'-( :'-( :'-( :'-( And I don't mean the spelling (no offense)...

Last Saturday, when strolling through a Karstadt shopping center on my weekend trip to Hamburg, I saw a 8455 Backhoe Loader, most likely some remaining stock (it was MISB). Since it was on sale for 56 Euro I had to take it :-) Oh, yeah, I visited the Lego store, too, and bought some spare parts.

Did you order some sort of "bulk set"? Sometimes when they offer a "set special" at a reduced price or something they list the sets contained in that special seperately. I had this once with a 4511 set. It was a "bulk set" with several single train sets at a reduced price and on the order they listed all the sets that were included at USD 0.00. GK7782 could only be 7782...

I am fortunate to have a sister-in-law who lives in the States. I usually order stuff on S@H and have it shipped to her. Then I have 4 possibilities to get it: 1. I visit and bring my stuff with me (happens once a year) 2. My parents-in-law visit and bring my stuff with them (happens once a year) 3. My "cousin-in-law" visits and brings my stuff with him (happens once a year) 4. My sister-in-law visits us and brings my stuff with her (happens once to twice a year; that's how my girlfriend got some of the new city sets for christmas for me *wub*) Even with shipping and at regular price it's a whole lot cheaper than European S@H. And the next shipment (although very small, just one Maersk Sealand) will arrive at March 31 *sweet* Guess I can call myself lucky :-$ ... until my sister-in-law moves back to Europe... 8-|

I met a guy the other day who's selling off his old stuff (private only, though, no ebay or anything) and he might have one or two. He definitely has pneumatic stuff. I'll let you know once he checks back with me. Depending on how many he can find we can trade cos I don't need that many ;-)

That train got me out of my dark ages almost 2 years ago. I modified it for 9V and made a forth waggon, though, so it's not that "original" anymore. I like 12V, too, but 9V is easier to set up, so I decided to switch a year ago. And with modded switches you can make decent layouts :-)

What kind of weird codec do you need to play that?! ... I hate Quicktime... I hate multi media... |-/ Edit: Found a player that plays it... I still hate multi media since it obviously means "many players"...

Happy birthday! I'll catch up next year... ;-)