Jeep cherokee oil cooler recall

Hello, lovely folks! I've been feeling the BMW itch again about a year after selling my beloved E60 535i. Later this week, I'm hoping to go check out a 2015 335i M Sport; the car looks cosmetically great, and only has 30k miles. However, if there's one thing I learned from all the breakdowns and issues during my E60 ownership (Bought the car with 105k miles, so I brought it on myself lol), I need to do my due diligence before inheriting someone else's bag of worms!
I understand the woes and benefits of N54 ownership, and the common problems that come with that; however, I'm finding less info on potential issues with the N55 in this 3 series candidate. Is there anything mechanically I should watch out for? I've been warned about water pumps at about 60-80k, and various charge pipes/intercooler piping cracking prematurely.
Also, with my old E60, there were some repairs I attributed to age rather than mileage; the car lived 10 years in Texas and So-Cal, and the heat took its toll. Things like the coolant expansion tank, wiring clips being brittle, coolant hoses and oil cooler hoses cracking and leaking, and the door lock actuators sticking and needing to be replaced. Is there anything I should be wary of with a 2015 F30, just because of the car's age, despite the low mileage? This car has lived in Oregon its whole life, so less heat cycles of all the plastic I would hope haha.
Thank you all for your help and advice!

Heeeyya fellow queerios, (+ non lgbtq+ beans.) 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ happy pride month! I hope you get to be authentically you now, and in the future. And if you currently are not able to for whatever reason, remember, a small minded person can only wade in shallow, + murky waters. (Did that make any make sense? Prob not.) Anyhow, welcome to my lil’ destash. Hope some of these perfumes will fly away to new homes, where they can be properly loved. 🦋
usual deets: perfumes stored in a dark, wooden chest, pet friendly, smoke free home, i often re-use packaging —- let me know if it’s a problem though, and ship within a week. shipping is $5 for 3 or less full sizes, but may cost more if you exceed that. $4 minimum please. Assume all are oils, unless otherwise noted.
FS’

• Alkemia

Mocha-Chocolata-YaYa(label damaged / peeling in a few spots) [A mochalicious blend of fresh cream, Cold brewed Arabian coffee, and fine Belgian milk chocolate.] ($8 ~80-85%)

• ALPHAMUSK: ($14 each unless otherwise noted)
  
• Baked [a scent inspired by the feeling of being high all day and getting so couch glued you don’t even want to get up to pee-pee but it’s all chill, buttery weed cookie crumbs(it’s not really very weed smelling more about the feels), warm vibrational musk.] ~90% full
  
• Shy [arabian musk tahara, almost glue-like in texture and each have their own irresistible skin like sweet vibe - this one smells like coconut and vanilla so I decided to amp that quality and I slowly cut in a coconut butter note, more of a desert actual butter and coconut not like the odorless oil, and marshmallow fluff. The musks natural vanilla quality sort of does its thing.] (around 70-75%full -$9)
  
• ARCANA CRAVES:
  

Vanilla Craves 90’s Malls [The scent of rebellious young punks and toothachingly sweet innocence. Bright fluorescent lights, glossy watermelon-flavored lip gloss, a ziplock baggie of fresh, green bud, and sticky vanilla-laced marshmallow treats.] ($16- mostly full.)

• DEATH AND FLORAL (both mostly full):

Bless Your Heart Honey [Dark vanilla cream bourbon, honey’d mint leaves, sugare’d oranges and sweet southern blessings.] (open neck square bottle - $7), * - The Secret Lives of Wives And Widows: [A dark and mysterious blend of Arabian sandalwood, luscious vanilla, orchids and southern night air; white tea in a fine cup of china held by a figure with long painted nails.] -5 ml RB - $10)
Smaller sizes / samples

• Arcana Wildcraft (house sample ~75-80% full -$3)
• Chillum [high in the Himalayas, herb is often smoked in a cylindrical pipe called a chillum, as it has been for thousands of years. Opening with a whoosh of cold blue pine, then expanding into a heart of sensual Yeti fur, animalic mountain musk, Himalayan cedarwood, and Himalayan Gold accord." (from the brand's website)]

Fae Fragrance (formerly known as Pylies)

• Fly Me to The Moon (LE charity scent for reproductive rights / abortion access / rights): Chocolate covered roasted coffee beans, toasted coconut shavings, sweet feminine musk. ~60% full $8

HEXENNACHT:

• Hellebore 8.5ml (Parfum Extrait): Pumpkin cakes, mace, smoked vanilla, burnt sugar. 75% full $12

MORARI

• Traveler (5ml oil -Mostly full; discontinued): Indonesian Teak, Tobacco, Sage, Campfire Smoke. $7

Sorcellerie Apothecary
Cake for Breakfast 6ml rollerball): Birthday cake, ripe mango, pineapple, coffee, maple syrup, and a hint of cardamom. $17

• buy👆🏻this and get a house sample of She’s a Witch: warm pizzelle cookies studded with anise seeds and dusted with powdered sugar, heliotrope, sheer woods, musk. for $1; fill is ~at least 60%)

Sugar + Spite
-Athena (dram 3.5? - label quite stained and a little torn): Dark vanilla, patchouli, pepper, ivy, sea spray. ~65% full $3.50

• SUCREABEILLE:

Compass Rose* [The ocean on a stormy morning; crisp white sails floating in the breeze, anchored to a mossy, kelp-strewn ship; pipe tobacco; bay rum; a perfect red rose and a lingering touch of vanilla. The perfect balance of refreshing, oceanic notes fading into crisp, light, slightly feminine notes.] (~3.7 dram? mostly full - $6)

• WHISPER SISTERS:

Weebus Warbus (can’t find notes, but this is an adultish blue cotton candy raspberry scent - about 2ml/5ml - $3, RIS, oil)
Venus: label came off, about 3/5 ml spiral glass rollerball bottle. Can’t find notes, but it is definitely orange blossom, and if I’m not mistaken, I recall a frankincense note, which I get gently underlying, what is otherwise very orange blossom-y. ~60% full $3
Desmondontinae can’t find notes, but I believe I remember a black musk note, and a cola note that almost reads like clove, dry down is almost like a cola meets clove, meets motor oil, but make it slightly sweet - still a quite unique, dark, deep, + sort of warm scent. (about 2.5-3ml/5 ml take as a freebie, upon request with any $8 purchase or more. Label is damaged and unreadable.) RIS, Oil
Once again, thank you for looking! =‘ )

First time Jeep owner here and I bought a used 2016 jeep cherokee limited. It was a one owner lease car but after 3 weeks of driving it it has been stalling while idling and even in reverse. The past couple of days it even felt ' jumpy' while sitting at a light. I took it to my mechanic and he couldn't get it to stall and couldn't find a reason for this to be happening. Can anyone shed some light into this? Has anyone had this issue before?

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“What?” came her whispered reply.
“Katira, I know way too much about all this for it to be a mere coincidence. Maybe that’s all clairsentience is. A reincarnated soul whose work wasn’t done, and they decided to come around again, only this time, with a little head-start. One of the two lives on in me, and I’d be willing to bet it was your former Master. Her partner died before you met her, and only you would know these things, correct?” Katira nodded her head, and I pressed on. “Okay. I’m also betting that this took place more than a hundred years ago, judging by the amount of earth and growth on this cairn, and due to the nature of societal acceptance of homosexuality. Them keeping their relationship a secret, way out here in the middle of nowhere, would be far easier than the two of them living together in a town. Am I right?” I asked
“Nearly one hundred fifty years, yes. As humans reckon these things, it was around 1875. Not long after your stupid civil war. My Master had lost her mother to typhoid, and her father to the war. She and her best friend decided to attempt to homestead not too far from here, and they eventually fell in love. They were only seventeen at the time, and most of the eligible young men in town had succumbed to the war or to injuries they sustained afterwards. My Master was a hardy, resilient woman. You would have liked her, Stu. She was built like me, and was bullheaded as a mule.” Katira laughed softly, wiping away tears. “Anyway, they built a cabin not terribly far from this spot, and lived for several years together, until the events you described. My Master was beside herself with grief, and nearly ended her time here on several occasions. Until one day, she chanced upon what looked like an old cellar out here in the fields.
“It was there that she found my little body and attempted to bury me. You should have seen her fright when, instead of a pile of bones that fell apart, she had a skeletal kitten bounding around her ankles. We bonded in a similar manner to Joaquin and Shutan. She fell onto the cellar, cut her arm, and the blood dripped onto me. She went on to become an amazing Necromancer in her own right. You two share the same essence type, as well. Huh. I wonder why I never made the connection before,” she concluded softly.
I walked over and wiped the tears from her soft, shimmery face. “Why would you even think to do so? You’ve dealt with all but the most rare of essences, right?” I asked, receiving a nod in turn. “There’s no shame in not recognizing an extremely old pattern. Especially when there’s no real reason to suspect anything. You had already explained away my knowledge, and that should’ve been the end of it.
“Let’s get the last of the reagents and head back. Now that we know where this is, we can come and pay our respects after my Growth. Any time you’re up for it. In the meantime, we say nothing and hint at nothing. My description of their last days could be chalked up to a lucky guess. A very lucky guess, but a guess nonetheless. Unless and until we have some concrete proof, we keep this to ourselves. Not a word even to the guild. Sound good to you?” I asked.
Katira nodded, and I turned and knelt by the old grave. I laid a hand on the topmost stone, and whispered “Not even the stars.” I took a small bouquet of the tiny blue flowers and stood, seeing a weeping dragoness behind me.
“It is you, Bethany. You’re in there, and I know it. I look different, but I’m still the same Katira. I still love you,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
“I’m sorry, what? Bethany? Is that your former Master’s name? What are you talking about?” I asked, concerned.
“What you said when you laid your hand on the grave. Do you recall?”
I nodded, “Yeah. I said ‘Not even the stars’. It just felt right. I dunno why,” I replied.
“That’s what Bethany used to tell her partner, Rose. ‘Not even the stars could shine as brightly as her eyes’, is what she told me. You hold her soul within you. It explains everything to me. Your apparent skill, your oddly specific knowledge, and your way with people. It doesn’t explain your intuition, but that could just be an amalgam of your spirits and your broad intellect. She always lamented her inability to be more creative,” she explained, taking my hand in hers.
“Well. That’s a thing, then. I’m still me, Katira. Even if I have Bethany’s soul, you’re still dealing with Stu. Remember that, please,” I told her.
“Absolutely, Master. This just brings new possibilities to light, is all,” Katira said, sniffling. “My Master, Bethany is gone. I know this. However, knowing that some part of her lives on is a great comfort. That’s all,” she said softly. Katira stepped forward and took my hands in hers. “I know you’re Stu. I know you’re my Master. I can’t forget it. You gave me this form, and I cherish it. Just like I cherish you. You’re going to be my final Master, and I can’t wait to spend an eternity with you,” she said, giving my hands a gentle squeeze.
“Alright, then. As long as we are clear. Are you ready to head back?” I asked gently.
Katira nodded, and we started back off towards the cave. It took us another three hours, but we made it back. The others had been there for a few hours by the time we returned. All three had begun the distillation process by the time we arrived, and had placed their squirrels in the appropriate locations.
“Excellent job, Initiates! I’m glad to see you have taken the initiative to begin your reanimations. Now, it isn’t a guarantee that you will be successful. Be prepared for a messy failure, otherwise. Upon a success, even a minor one, your squirrel will sit up and make vocalizations at you. In the event of a minor success, this is all that will happen. If it is anything more, you can give it a command. It might understand it and act. Just make sure it is a simple one. You can command it to simply die, if you wish. It is up to you. Now, who got here first?” she asked.
“I did, Instructor,” Robert said.
“Excellent. Good job, Initiate Grimes. How long after you got set up did the next one arrive?”
“About an hour, I think and Joaquin was a few minutes after her. That was three hours ago. I think mine is nearly done,” Robert explained.
“Good. While Initiate Merideth gets set up, we will discuss what comes after a successful reanimation,” Katira began.
I turned and began the process of removing the petals from the phlox, depositing them in the pot. I mostly tuned out the discussion they were having, my mind reeling from the events of the day.
If I didn’t hold a reincarnated soul, how else would I be able to do what I do without even thinking about it? How else would I know the stuff I know without having had the instruction? How did I know who was buried beneath that cairn of stones, and how she died? Was it even my soul that was reincarnated? Or, had Bethany’s spirit hung around waiting to impart knowledge upon one lonely Necromancer?
These questions and more rolled around my head, my body moving on autopilot. I was just about to reach into the bag containing the nettles when Katira grabbed my wrist, jerking me from my reverie.
“Initiate!”
“Huh? Wha?”
“Initiate, I’ve been trying to get your attention for a bit. You almost reached into the bag that has the nettles bare-handed. What’s gotten into you?” she asked, her concern evident.
I simply looked into her eyes, my own face a blank mask, and she sighed softly. “Okay. I understand. It’s about what we talked about before, isn’t it?” she asked softly. I nodded slowly. “I take it you’ve never handled nettles, have you?” I shook my head. “Let me show you. In fact, gather around, everyone. Nettles are a painful plant, and you may have to handle them at some point. Let me show you how to deal with them,” Katira announced.
The rest of the group came over and sat while Katira taught us how to handle the irritating plant. Once she demonstrated the process, I tried it once, and even though I’d succeeded, I figured I’d not like to attempt it again. Instead, I took my multitool and pocket knife, clamped onto the stem, and sliced the leaves into the pot. Then, for good measure, I sectioned up the stem and dropped it in, as well. In went the snake skin, water and three drops of my blood. I set the fire, and waited for something to happen.
As luck would have it something did happen. We all heard Robert’s fire go out with a pop, and turned to see the droplet of essence-infused oil spill onto the squirrel. As with our message stones, nothing was spilled, it all just absorbed into the squirrel, and we watched with bated breath.
At first, nothing happened. The squirrel sat motionless on the cold stone slab. After a few moments, however, we all saw the digits on the left forelimb twitch. Collectively, we moved back, as a crazed squirrel was as fearsome as it was small. It took a breath, then a second. Slowly, it sat up, turned its black, unblinking eyes towards Robert and began chittering.
“Try it, Initiate Grimes,” Katira whispered.
Robert cleared his throat and swallowed. “Go outside the cave, and dig a hole big enough for you to lie in beside the first tree you see,” he commanded.
We watched as the squirrel cocked its head to the side and hopped down. It bounded drunkenly out of the cave, and after a short search, began to dig a hole.
“Excellent job, Initiate. Why did you tell it to do that?” Katira asked.
“I felt terrible for it. I think it should be put to rest,” he said quietly.
“So it is digging its own grave? Interesting. Go and tend to it. It may not be able to finish,” Katira replied.
Robert got up and went outside to tend to his squirrel, and the rest of us sat back and chatted for a bit.
“Senpai? What took you so long to find your reagents?” Morita-san asked.
“Well, as our Instructor specified this morning, I require very specific reagents to even have a chance at making this work, and they weren’t easy to find. I had to have phlox, nettles and a shed skin. Phlox were those tiny blue flowers, and they weren’t easy to find. Especially as I had no idea what they looked like until I opened my Grimoire. I knew what nettles looked like, and everyone from around here knows what a shed skin looks like, I think. They just weren’t easy to get. However, after I found the nettles, the other two just kinda happened. The snake skin was tangled around some weeds in a field, and the phlox were growing by an outcropping of stone. We had to go something like five miles from the cave. Speaking of which, I’m gonna need to eat something soon. I just had a small snack around noon or so,” I explained.
“By the time your still finishes, it will be time for dinner, anyway. I’d suggest holding off, if you can,” Katira said.
“I’ll try, but if I start getting the sugar shakes or acting belligerent, I’ll need a small snack again. We really don’t want that,” I said.
Robert came back, looking somber and somewhat sad. “It’s done. I…I told it to die, and it closed its eyes and just stopped moving. It seemed happy,” he said, taking a seat.
“Initiate Grimes, I want you to understand that all you did was reanimate the body of a squirrel. It had no soul, and therefore wasn’t the same creature I killed three days ago. It was more or less a biological machine that used the energy of the reagents you selected and your essence as fuel. It would have eventually stopped moving on its own. You could re energize it with your essence, but that would serve to bond it tighter to you, which is not a situation we want here. You have done well thus far, and I’m proud of you. We all are,” she told the younger man.
“She is right, Master. You have grown in skill, and as a person. Rather quickly, I might add. As such, I would say that your own Growth is no more than a month away. Once we get home, you should alert your job to your upcoming illness,” Yin grumbled.
“I can’t do that, bud. I can’t plan to be sick. Instructor? Do the symptoms all come on at once, or are they in stages?” Robert asked.
“You will most likely get the headaches first. If you can function through them, I would call your job at that point, and tell them that you are sick, and it is unknown as to how long it will last. Hopefully, you will be able to maintain your job after you are done Growing,” Katira replied.
“I can form human arms and hands for the time it takes to send a message on your phone, Master. I could also call for any number of other familiars and Necromancers to help, should you need it,” Yin said reassuringly.
Robert seemed satisfied with this answer, and began to clean his equipment. He had just finished when, with twin pops, we heard both Joaquin and Morita-san’s fires go out. All heads turned to watch the reaction complete.
Both squirrels were doused with the oil/essence mixture, and we watched as it was absorbed into the bodies of the squirrels.
Both squirrels twitched and sat up, turning their heads towards their creators and began chittering.
Morita-san nodded at Joaquin, and he cleared his throat. “Venha aqui, esquilo,” he said.
The squirrel shakily stood and took two steps before collapsing. We all watched in horror as it continued to crawl forward, leaving its back half behind. Joaquin began to panic and scooted back.
“Release it, Initiate Madras!”
“Morra, esquilo! Morra!” the young man cried out. The squirrel shuddered and heaved out its remaining breath, one clawed paw outstretched towards Joaquin. As it did, the rest of its entrails oozed out from its body, coupled with a brown slime.
“I will explain in a moment, Initiate Madras. Initiate Morita-san, it is your turn,” Katira said.
Morita-san swallowed, staring at the halves of the squirrel on the cavern floor. “私に近づいて、リス。” she said, her eyes never leaving the squirrel.
Her squirrel never moved. It sat there, blinking. “Instructor? What do I do? It’s not moving. Just….blinking,” Morita-san said quietly.
“Try rewording what you just said.”
“ここに来て、リス。” Morita-san said. The squirrel bounded over to her, and began to inspect her shoes.
“Excellent job, Morita-san. It seems that your reagents harmonized rather well with both you and your subject. This is why it is acting more like a normal, living creature and not the automaton Initiate Grimes produced. There is nothing wrong with your results, Initiate Grimes. You’ll just need to try a different combination of reagents, is all. Initiate Morita-san happened to chance upon the right triad for her for this experiment.
“The squirrel is yours to do with as you wish, Initiate Morita-san. Congratulations to the three of you. You have successfully reanimated your squirrels,” Katira said happily.
The others smiled and seemed happy. Morita-san looked at her squirrel and cocked her head to the side. “Should I name him?” she asked aloud.
“There is nothing prohibiting that, Initiate.”
“I shall call you Daisuke,” she said to the squirrel. “この死んだリスを片付けて、ダイスケ。” she commanded, and the squirrel bounded over to Joaquin’s partial reanimation, and began to cart the remains outside.
“Now, as for your squirrel, Initiate Madras. It was apparently infected by a parasite which had been eating it from the inside. Some sort of intestinal worm, I would say. When you reanimated it, the parasite was immediately destroyed, and likely aided the decomposition. There is no shame in this, and none of us could have known it was there. It is the risk we take when we choose a creature for reanimation.
“This is why a skeleton was chosen for reanimation more often than not in the past. There was no risk of parasitic infection, little risk of a messy failure, and in the event the energies used ran out, it would simply fall to the ground in a pile, ready to be used again. However, one needs a distinct grasp of anatomy for it, because in the event you put it together wrong, it won’t move correctly,” Katira said.
“So, wait. We could potentially Frankenstein ourselves a servant together?” Robert asked.
“Where do you think Mary Shelley got the idea, Initiate Grimes?” Katira returned with an enigmatic smile.
Robert sat there, his mouth agape.
“Close your mouth, Initiate. You might catch a fly, otherwise.”
We all laughed as Robert closed his mouth with a click. He shook his head and sat beside his cubbyhole in thought. Morita-san and Joaquin were talking animatedly in their respective languages, aided by their familiars.
I sat beside my equipment, watching the oil collect in the reservoir. It looked a little different than the others’ did.
“Instructor?” I asked, waving her over.
“Yes?”
“My essence-infused oil looks different to theirs. Theirs was green, and mine is…well, it’s kind of an orangey-pink. Is something wrong?” I asked with concern.
“Hmm. I’m not sure. I’ve never seen a reanimation essence appear this color. Yin? Shutan? Oiwa? Would you three come here, please?” she called out.
The three familiars approached my station curiously. Katira turned to them, gesturing at my equipment. “Have any of you ever seen this color in a reanimation essence before?” she asked.
“Exactly once,” Shutan said, stroking his bony jaw. “Stu? Yours is a Multiplying essence, correct?” he asked, receiving a nod. “Then, I will reveal nothing, save this: This will be interesting.” He walked away, shaking his head, and I could swear I saw a smirk on his skeletal countenance.
“What? Interesting? I’m not sure I like interesting. Wait a minute! What do you mean, interesting?” I called after him, receiving no inkling of acknowledgement.
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Master List

“What?” came her whispered reply.
“Katira, I know way too much about all this for it to be a mere coincidence. Maybe that’s all clairsentience is. A reincarnated soul whose work wasn’t done, and they decided to come around again, only this time, with a little head-start. One of the two lives on in me, and I’d be willing to bet it was your former Master. Her partner died before you met her, and only you would know these things, correct?” Katira nodded her head, and I pressed on. “Okay. I’m also betting that this took place more than a hundred years ago, judging by the amount of earth and growth on this cairn, and due to the nature of societal acceptance of homosexuality. Them keeping their relationship a secret, way out here in the middle of nowhere, would be far easier than the two of them living together in a town. Am I right?” I asked
“Nearly one hundred fifty years, yes. As humans reckon these things, it was around 1875. Not long after your stupid civil war. My Master had lost her mother to typhoid, and her father to the war. She and her best friend decided to attempt to homestead not too far from here, and they eventually fell in love. They were only seventeen at the time, and most of the eligible young men in town had succumbed to the war or to injuries they sustained afterwards. My Master was a hardy, resilient woman. You would have liked her, Stu. She was built like me, and was bullheaded as a mule.” Katira laughed softly, wiping away tears. “Anyway, they built a cabin not terribly far from this spot, and lived for several years together, until the events you described. My Master was beside herself with grief, and nearly ended her time here on several occasions. Until one day, she chanced upon what looked like an old cellar out here in the fields.
“It was there that she found my little body and attempted to bury me. You should have seen her fright when, instead of a pile of bones that fell apart, she had a skeletal kitten bounding around her ankles. We bonded in a similar manner to Joaquin and Shutan. She fell onto the cellar, cut her arm, and the blood dripped onto me. She went on to become an amazing Necromancer in her own right. You two share the same essence type, as well. Huh. I wonder why I never made the connection before,” she concluded softly.
I walked over and wiped the tears from her soft, shimmery face. “Why would you even think to do so? You’ve dealt with all but the most rare of essences, right?” I asked, receiving a nod in turn. “There’s no shame in not recognizing an extremely old pattern. Especially when there’s no real reason to suspect anything. You had already explained away my knowledge, and that should’ve been the end of it.
“Let’s get the last of the reagents and head back. Now that we know where this is, we can come and pay our respects after my Growth. Any time you’re up for it. In the meantime, we say nothing and hint at nothing. My description of their last days could be chalked up to a lucky guess. A very lucky guess, but a guess nonetheless. Unless and until we have some concrete proof, we keep this to ourselves. Not a word even to the guild. Sound good to you?” I asked.
Katira nodded, and I turned and knelt by the old grave. I laid a hand on the topmost stone, and whispered “Not even the stars.” I took a small bouquet of the tiny blue flowers and stood, seeing a weeping dragoness behind me.
“It is you, Bethany. You’re in there, and I know it. I look different, but I’m still the same Katira. I still love you,” she said, tears streaming down her face.
“I’m sorry, what? Bethany? Is that your former Master’s name? What are you talking about?” I asked, concerned.
“What you said when you laid your hand on the grave. Do you recall?”
I nodded, “Yeah. I said ‘Not even the stars’. It just felt right. I dunno why,” I replied.
“That’s what Bethany used to tell her partner, Rose. ‘Not even the stars could shine as brightly as her eyes’, is what she told me. You hold her soul within you. It explains everything to me. Your apparent skill, your oddly specific knowledge, and your way with people. It doesn’t explain your intuition, but that could just be an amalgam of your spirits and your broad intellect. She always lamented her inability to be more creative,” she explained, taking my hand in hers.
“Well. That’s a thing, then. I’m still me, Katira. Even if I have Bethany’s soul, you’re still dealing with Stu. Remember that, please,” I told her.
“Absolutely, Master. This just brings new possibilities to light, is all,” Katira said, sniffling. “My Master, Bethany is gone. I know this. However, knowing that some part of her lives on is a great comfort. That’s all,” she said softly. Katira stepped forward and took my hands in hers. “I know you’re Stu. I know you’re my Master. I can’t forget it. You gave me this form, and I cherish it. Just like I cherish you. You’re going to be my final Master, and I can’t wait to spend an eternity with you,” she said, giving my hands a gentle squeeze.
“Alright, then. As long as we are clear. Are you ready to head back?” I asked gently.
Katira nodded, and we started back off towards the cave. It took us another three hours, but we made it back. The others had been there for a few hours by the time we returned. All three had begun the distillation process by the time we arrived, and had placed their squirrels in the appropriate locations.
“Excellent job, Initiates! I’m glad to see you have taken the initiative to begin your reanimations. Now, it isn’t a guarantee that you will be successful. Be prepared for a messy failure, otherwise. Upon a success, even a minor one, your squirrel will sit up and make vocalizations at you. In the event of a minor success, this is all that will happen. If it is anything more, you can give it a command. It might understand it and act. Just make sure it is a simple one. You can command it to simply die, if you wish. It is up to you. Now, who got here first?” she asked.
“I did, Instructor,” Robert said.
“Excellent. Good job, Initiate Grimes. How long after you got set up did the next one arrive?”
“About an hour, I think and Joaquin was a few minutes after her. That was three hours ago. I think mine is nearly done,” Robert explained.
“Good. While Initiate Merideth gets set up, we will discuss what comes after a successful reanimation,” Katira began.
I turned and began the process of removing the petals from the phlox, depositing them in the pot. I mostly tuned out the discussion they were having, my mind reeling from the events of the day.
If I didn’t hold a reincarnated soul, how else would I be able to do what I do without even thinking about it? How else would I know the stuff I know without having had the instruction? How did I know who was buried beneath that cairn of stones, and how she died? Was it even my soul that was reincarnated? Or, had Bethany’s spirit hung around waiting to impart knowledge upon one lonely Necromancer?
These questions and more rolled around my head, my body moving on autopilot. I was just about to reach into the bag containing the nettles when Katira grabbed my wrist, jerking me from my reverie.
“Initiate!”
“Huh? Wha?”
“Initiate, I’ve been trying to get your attention for a bit. You almost reached into the bag that has the nettles bare-handed. What’s gotten into you?” she asked, her concern evident.
I simply looked into her eyes, my own face a blank mask, and she sighed softly. “Okay. I understand. It’s about what we talked about before, isn’t it?” she asked softly. I nodded slowly. “I take it you’ve never handled nettles, have you?” I shook my head. “Let me show you. In fact, gather around, everyone. Nettles are a painful plant, and you may have to handle them at some point. Let me show you how to deal with them,” Katira announced.
The rest of the group came over and sat while Katira taught us how to handle the irritating plant. Once she demonstrated the process, I tried it once, and even though I’d succeeded, I figured I’d not like to attempt it again. Instead, I took my multitool and pocket knife, clamped onto the stem, and sliced the leaves into the pot. Then, for good measure, I sectioned up the stem and dropped it in, as well. In went the snake skin, water and three drops of my blood. I set the fire, and waited for something to happen.
As luck would have it something did happen. We all heard Robert’s fire go out with a pop, and turned to see the droplet of essence-infused oil spill onto the squirrel. As with our message stones, nothing was spilled, it all just absorbed into the squirrel, and we watched with bated breath.
At first, nothing happened. The squirrel sat motionless on the cold stone slab. After a few moments, however, we all saw the digits on the left forelimb twitch. Collectively, we moved back, as a crazed squirrel was as fearsome as it was small. It took a breath, then a second. Slowly, it sat up, turned its black, unblinking eyes towards Robert and began chittering.
“Try it, Initiate Grimes,” Katira whispered.
Robert cleared his throat and swallowed. “Go outside the cave, and dig a hole big enough for you to lie in beside the first tree you see,” he commanded.
We watched as the squirrel cocked its head to the side and hopped down. It bounded drunkenly out of the cave, and after a short search, began to dig a hole.
“Excellent job, Initiate. Why did you tell it to do that?” Katira asked.
“I felt terrible for it. I think it should be put to rest,” he said quietly.
“So it is digging its own grave? Interesting. Go and tend to it. It may not be able to finish,” Katira replied.
Robert got up and went outside to tend to his squirrel, and the rest of us sat back and chatted for a bit.
“Senpai? What took you so long to find your reagents?” Morita-san asked.
“Well, as our Instructor specified this morning, I require very specific reagents to even have a chance at making this work, and they weren’t easy to find. I had to have phlox, nettles and a shed skin. Phlox were those tiny blue flowers, and they weren’t easy to find. Especially as I had no idea what they looked like until I opened my Grimoire. I knew what nettles looked like, and everyone from around here knows what a shed skin looks like, I think. They just weren’t easy to get. However, after I found the nettles, the other two just kinda happened. The snake skin was tangled around some weeds in a field, and the phlox were growing by an outcropping of stone. We had to go something like five miles from the cave. Speaking of which, I’m gonna need to eat something soon. I just had a small snack around noon or so,” I explained.
“By the time your still finishes, it will be time for dinner, anyway. I’d suggest holding off, if you can,” Katira said.
“I’ll try, but if I start getting the sugar shakes or acting belligerent, I’ll need a small snack again. We really don’t want that,” I said.
Robert came back, looking somber and somewhat sad. “It’s done. I…I told it to die, and it closed its eyes and just stopped moving. It seemed happy,” he said, taking a seat.
“Initiate Grimes, I want you to understand that all you did was reanimate the body of a squirrel. It had no soul, and therefore wasn’t the same creature I killed three days ago. It was more or less a biological machine that used the energy of the reagents you selected and your essence as fuel. It would have eventually stopped moving on its own. You could re energize it with your essence, but that would serve to bond it tighter to you, which is not a situation we want here. You have done well thus far, and I’m proud of you. We all are,” she told the younger man.
“She is right, Master. You have grown in skill, and as a person. Rather quickly, I might add. As such, I would say that your own Growth is no more than a month away. Once we get home, you should alert your job to your upcoming illness,” Yin grumbled.
“I can’t do that, bud. I can’t plan to be sick. Instructor? Do the symptoms all come on at once, or are they in stages?” Robert asked.
“You will most likely get the headaches first. If you can function through them, I would call your job at that point, and tell them that you are sick, and it is unknown as to how long it will last. Hopefully, you will be able to maintain your job after you are done Growing,” Katira replied.
“I can form human arms and hands for the time it takes to send a message on your phone, Master. I could also call for any number of other familiars and Necromancers to help, should you need it,” Yin said reassuringly.
Robert seemed satisfied with this answer, and began to clean his equipment. He had just finished when, with twin pops, we heard both Joaquin and Morita-san’s fires go out. All heads turned to watch the reaction complete.
Both squirrels were doused with the oil/essence mixture, and we watched as it was absorbed into the bodies of the squirrels.
Both squirrels twitched and sat up, turning their heads towards their creators and began chittering.
Morita-san nodded at Joaquin, and he cleared his throat. “Venha aqui, esquilo,” he said.
The squirrel shakily stood and took two steps before collapsing. We all watched in horror as it continued to crawl forward, leaving its back half behind. Joaquin began to panic and scooted back.
“Release it, Initiate Madras!”
“Morra, esquilo! Morra!” the young man cried out. The squirrel shuddered and heaved out its remaining breath, one clawed paw outstretched towards Joaquin. As it did, the rest of its entrails oozed out from its body, coupled with a brown slime.
“I will explain in a moment, Initiate Madras. Initiate Morita-san, it is your turn,” Katira said.
Morita-san swallowed, staring at the halves of the squirrel on the cavern floor. “私に近づいて、リス。” she said, her eyes never leaving the squirrel.
Her squirrel never moved. It sat there, blinking. “Instructor? What do I do? It’s not moving. Just….blinking,” Morita-san said quietly.
“Try rewording what you just said.”
“ここに来て、リス。” Morita-san said. The squirrel bounded over to her, and began to inspect her shoes.
“Excellent job, Morita-san. It seems that your reagents harmonized rather well with both you and your subject. This is why it is acting more like a normal, living creature and not the automaton Initiate Grimes produced. There is nothing wrong with your results, Initiate Grimes. You’ll just need to try a different combination of reagents, is all. Initiate Morita-san happened to chance upon the right triad for her for this experiment.
“The squirrel is yours to do with as you wish, Initiate Morita-san. Congratulations to the three of you. You have successfully reanimated your squirrels,” Katira said happily.
The others smiled and seemed happy. Morita-san looked at her squirrel and cocked her head to the side. “Should I name him?” she asked aloud.
“There is nothing prohibiting that, Initiate.”
“I shall call you Daisuke,” she said to the squirrel. “この死んだリスを片付けて、ダイスケ。” she commanded, and the squirrel bounded over to Joaquin’s partial reanimation, and began to cart the remains outside.
“Now, as for your squirrel, Initiate Madras. It was apparently infected by a parasite which had been eating it from the inside. Some sort of intestinal worm, I would say. When you reanimated it, the parasite was immediately destroyed, and likely aided the decomposition. There is no shame in this, and none of us could have known it was there. It is the risk we take when we choose a creature for reanimation.
“This is why a skeleton was chosen for reanimation more often than not in the past. There was no risk of parasitic infection, little risk of a messy failure, and in the event the energies used ran out, it would simply fall to the ground in a pile, ready to be used again. However, one needs a distinct grasp of anatomy for it, because in the event you put it together wrong, it won’t move correctly,” Katira said.
“So, wait. We could potentially Frankenstein ourselves a servant together?” Robert asked.
“Where do you think Mary Shelley got the idea, Initiate Grimes?” Katira returned with an enigmatic smile.
Robert sat there, his mouth agape.
“Close your mouth, Initiate. You might catch a fly, otherwise.”
We all laughed as Robert closed his mouth with a click. He shook his head and sat beside his cubbyhole in thought. Morita-san and Joaquin were talking animatedly in their respective languages, aided by their familiars.
I sat beside my equipment, watching the oil collect in the reservoir. It looked a little different than the others’ did.
“Instructor?” I asked, waving her over.
“Yes?”
“My essence-infused oil looks different to theirs. Theirs was green, and mine is…well, it’s kind of an orangey-pink. Is something wrong?” I asked with concern.
“Hmm. I’m not sure. I’ve never seen a reanimation essence appear this color. Yin? Shutan? Oiwa? Would you three come here, please?” she called out.
The three familiars approached my station curiously. Katira turned to them, gesturing at my equipment. “Have any of you ever seen this color in a reanimation essence before?” she asked.
“Exactly once,” Shutan said, stroking his bony jaw. “Stu? Yours is a Multiplying essence, correct?” he asked, receiving a nod. “Then, I will reveal nothing, save this: This will be interesting.” He walked away, shaking his head, and I could swear I saw a smirk on his skeletal countenance.
“What? Interesting? I’m not sure I like interesting. Wait a minute! What do you mean, interesting?” I called after him, receiving no inkling of acknowledgement.

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Dodge Challenger SRT8
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Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT
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Mercedes-AMG CLA45S
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Interesting Mercedes-AMG CLS63
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Mercedes-AMG E63s
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Mercedes-AMG G63 with some Brabus parts
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My Jeep had rats coming in. we couldn’t figure out how they were getting in so my husband said to get some mothballs. I got him individually wrapped ones, so I expected him to put a couple in there. He threw in the whole bag!! I went in there a couple mths later to look for a scarf (ruined my washer trying to wash it. It too smells like mothballs) but now it’s almost a year later of baking soda, vinegar,essential oil spray coffee grounds and Jeep smell is still going strong! I air it out from time to time doesn’t seem to do anything either. The bag was only on front passenger floorboard. I don’t know what else to do. A car cleaner didn’t even want to touch it.

My father is about 5'10" and 300 pounds, with most of his weight being in his belly, which is very round. He has a problem fitting in most vehicles. He is looking at new vehicles and having issues fitting in them. He is comfortable in a 2009 chrystler town and country minivan and his GMC 1500. He is not comfortable in a Jeep Cherokee or F-150 super cab as he says he can't comfortably get into the vehicle. He likes vehicles he has to climb into but it can't be too high. He does not want a vehicle he 'falls' into that is too close to the ground. He did fit in a Jeep Compass comfortably but he didn't like that vehicle. He wants to avoid sedans and have a larger vehicle if possible.
If anyone is willing to give me a couple of suggestions for him to try we would very much appreciate it. Thank you!

Immortality defies the gods.
Last City Of Man stood in bleak sandblown towers before the Mad Swordsman in its tattered rags. The towering tarnished machine limped forward, dragging its sword-arm with its remaining limb. The brown robes covering the giant whipped in fluttering tatters and its hood shaded the cracked black orb that was its face.
"All dead. The enemy follows, as I bring the message of doom." Mad Swordsman laughed to itself as it went.
In the city it went, through the opening gates. There in the center of the calming wind storm stood Law Givers. These men and women were paid by tax revenue to read the laws written on the pillar in the center of the city. Each faced a different direction, loudly reciting Law.
The city was divided into districts, each within another, with an avenue that bisected the city in one direction, while the river it commanded bisected it in the other direction. At its heart stood the stronghold of its king. He was the only man in the city that was fertile. All the other men were castrated during childhood and partnered to a girl, betrothed. Yet when they were married, it was the king that took the bride on a honeymoon.
"It isn't madness? Would I recognize madness?" Mad Swordsman listened as the law was described. It decided that the laws of this final city were insane laws. All the taxes and mutilations. Every crime was punished the same way: by cutting off the offending body part. Sometimes just having that body part was a crime, apparently.
"What are you doing here, giant?" King Gamma asked. He had with him his army. Some had spears or clubs, others had bows and bronze axes, still a few had rusted assault rifles swathed in leather or painted rocket launchers decorated in fetishes. Their armor was similarly arranged from grass shields, sports padding or chainmail to patched flak jackets. Mad Swordsman decided they were only minimal adversaries. With a sweep of its weapon or a sudden tumbling roll it could wipe them out instantly. It hadn't come to the city to fight humans.
"I forgot." Mad Swordsman chuckled.
"Do you want repairs? You must do something for me." King Gamma pointed to the desocketed sword-arm it was dragging. The left hand of the giant robot was a massive sword forged of some metal from the Pool Of Time, near the Temple Of Humanity, far away and long ago. Such things could not be made anymore.
"I want repairs. I must do something for me." Mad Swordsman responded.
"No, for me." King Gamma pointed to himself. "For King Gamma you will serve."
"Mad Swordsman serves no king." Mad Swordsman laughed. "Have you not heard my song in the ruins of the cities? Will you see my shadow before you in the wastelands? I wander and here to there I go. I wonder, my little king with a big heart, do you know?" Mad Swordsman spoke and dropped the sword-arm, gesturing with its freed hand as it spoke poetically.
"You insolent robot! I should have you shot from the walls with imp's needles." King Gamma was turning red faced and angry.
"I see those EMP harpoons you just mentioned." Mad Swordsman looked up and saw two huge crossbows meant for disabling giant robots. It wondered if two would be enough to take it down. It might be.
"You think those will just tickle?" King Gamma laughed angrily. Mad Swordsman started laughing the same way. One of the king's advisors said something to him. He stopped and reconsidered the towering robot, staring up at it. When he had calmed down and thought he gestured for Mad Swordsman to sit.
The machine obeyed. Pleased that the advice he had gotten was solid: he rewarded his advisor with praise and put him in charge of the machine.
"I am Leer. I'd follow me and get repairs, unless I wanted to fall to pieces with sand in my gears and my robes in tatters. Such a tarnished surface. You were once called Silver Swordsman, were you not? You have no gleam." Leer told the robot.
"Those are fun words." Mad Swordsman got up and hefted its sword-arm over its shoulder.
"Then come with me." Leer led the machine into the heart of the city. There was a great library there. Scribes worked day and night by electric light and had recorded information about all things on millions of scrolls of recycled paper. Atop the library was a satellite dish. The gates of bronze were opened and the giant in the brown tattered robe came into the heart of the city, its vast library.
"I shall have to have a look inside. I wonder if the information you have included the Serum of Everlasting Life among other great secrets from ancient times." Leer brought out a cable that he could connect to the inside of Mad Swordsman, to its brain.
"Couldn't I just tell you?" Mad Swordsman chuckled.
"Could you?" Leer stopped for a moment, waiting for that.
"No." Mad Swordsman laughed. "I forgot all that stuff a long time ago. One too many of those robot-eating plants zapped me. You know?" Mad Swordsman knocked on the side of its upper body. It didn't really have a head, just the black orb of sensors and ambient energy intake for a face.
"Let me take a look. It might still be in there." Leer was opening the sealed access panel on the robot with a plasma cutting tool. If it could cut diamonds it could cut the flesh of an empathical. This kind of robot was the most advanced, a machine built by machines, it was nearly indestructible, supposedly.
"That really hurts a lot." Mad Swordsman told him. "Keep doing it because I like pain. Making myself sit here while you do that makes me feel sane. The searing agony makes me feel alive. The trust in a stranger makes me feel holy. Right now I feel as close to God as I ever have."
"You sure are weird." Leer laughed.
"I sure am." Mad Swordsman laughed also and then howled in the torment of its sensitive nerves being burned.
"This will be dangerous. Our minds will touch briefly and the spark of that, in the waves of consciousness that is the fabric of the world, we might cease to exist. Both of us." Leer put on the crown of cables and wore it.
"You want the Serum of Everlasting Life so badly?" Mad Swordsman asked.
"I believe so, yes." Leer stated.
"I will try to help you inside my mind. Be careful, we only have one instant." Mad Swordsman sounded wise to some kind of irony.
"How long will that seem?" Leer worried.
"That depends on how long you have got. Until you break inside your mind, you will not know mine." Mad Swordsman swore.
"It's too late." Leer's eyes rolled back into his head and he jerked as the connection seized up and down his spine painfully. The first thing he was aware of was the phantom pain of the burn. It felt like someone had burned him painfully behind his ear and plugged something into his spine through his neck.
"See my residual self-image." Mad Swordsman stood as a brown robed monk, or at least as the robes of the monk. Only a metal skeleton hid beneath. A grinning skull of silver and long bone fingers of silver. It stood only as tall as the man, or the man stood as tall as the machine. From the perspective of the machine: size was an illusion. Leer noticed he looked exactly the same.
"I look the same." Leer said.
"No you don't. I see you how you see yourself inside your mind. It's not what you look like." Mad Swordsman laughed hysterically after it said this. "You look ridiculous."
"I am already starting to regret this." Leer grumbled. He followed Mad Swordsman through the fogs of memory to some kind of glass city. "What is this place?"
"I don't know what to call it." Mad Swordsman looked around and shrugged. "There is the first place to try: a recent memory."
Terror gripped the man, then. He felt the swift cutting bite. The rending of flesh, no mercy, so much anger being unleashed. So much terror and pain caused. Far worse than the root of the evil. Yet shining there was the jewel he sought.
He watched in a frustrated discord of emotions as Mad Swordsman followed the angry woman's pointing finger. Where she pointed the blade cut a man in half, over and over. Their screams and their blood spray kept happening until it became comical. He was laughing and it felt like vomiting. It was painful, heaving laughter at the sight of the executions. There was almost a musical perfection to the giant's swordplay as it danced with great speed and strength, slashing its blade through each opponent.
When they were all dead the woman and the giant left the cave behind. What was the cave? Leer felt his head spinning. On the walls of the cave were the paintings of different prehistoric animals. Outside stood offroad vehicles retrofitted with armor and weapons. "The Caves of Scane."
Leer fell to the dust and laughed. There was no such place. They might as well have hidden the Serum in the ruins of Casark. There simply was no such place.
"What have you seen? Does the truth frighten you?" Mad Swordsman knelt and put a silver hand on the tickled man in the dust.
"What is that?" Leer's eyes became silent, a terror beyond what a mind can handle. Somehow the tipping of the scales put his ego into a freefall. How small and humble a man can be when he sees a hole in the sky.
"That has no name. It is not something that can be described with eyesight alone. Perhaps you see, in the blue sky, a curtain that is the night sky, except there are no stars. What you see is reality, it is the real-reality. You know instinctively what it is and what it implies to see it there, like that." Mad Swordsman rambled strangely and then laughed merrily at the revelation.
"It is nothing. It is just a dream. A hallucination inside the mind of an insane computer." Leer protested.
"Ah such are all unacceptable memories, I am certain." Mad Swordsman sounded bemused. Its grinning silver skull gleamed under the monk's hood.
"Who is she?" Leer pointed to the statue of the angel that stood towering above the mist.
"I am an empathical and she is my mother. Do you not call upon your own mother in times of great need? Even if she is not there or could not save the hero Gilgamesh, always the quest is for mom." Mad Swordsman sounded proud and its empty eyesockets reflected the great statue.
"The hero Gilgamesh? Is that how you see us? We live on the brink of extinction." Leer's lip quivered angrily.
"Don't cry; they will grow back." Mad Swordsman reached and pointed to the door of memories it wanted to check for the Serum. Unlike the memories there was a cold wind and a world beyond.
They stood there upon the frozen wastes surrounding the Temple Of Humanity. Mad Swordsman stood there with its tarnished silver, partially peeled from the scouring ice winds, revealing tortured silver flesh beneath. Its warm robes were again like a tattered brown cape, the hood still shielding its dark domed face. It had gotten its repairs and now had two left arms as sword-arms and held another, smaller sword in its right hand.
"It's freezing here! How can it feel so cold in a memory?" Leer shouted over the winds. Beside him stood the same giant he had met in the Last City Of Man: the one-armed Mad Swordsman. The other stood there in front of them, frozen.
"This place is not a memory. Remember that spark you mentioned? Well, here we are, on the other side of that divide. You shouldn't play with such things." Mad Swordsman laughed maniacally. The other empathical began to move.
"Who are you?" It demanded of Mad Swordsman.
"I am Unit Three Sixteen." Mad Swordsman identified itself between laughter.
"That is impossible. I am Unit Three Sixteen." The other giant robot said.
"You are a paradox. I just got here, so it must be me that is supposed to be here." Mad Swordsman told it.
"That makes no sense." Unit Three Sixteen told Mad Swordsman.
Without warning, Mad Swordsman suddenly slashed with its own severed sword-arm. The reflexes of the frozen empathical were not fully activated and it was off-guard. The first blow damaged one of its legs. Now both combatants were limping the exact same way. It was like watching them square off in a mirror, except one of them had three arms and the other only had one arm.
They exchanged heavy blows and deflected the attacks or dodged them without fail. One strike from the fatal blade would erupt one of them in a blue ball of fire. Unit Three Sixteen splashed backward into Pool Of Time and stood there for a moment, contemplating the entanglement and the duel rationally. Its crazed opponent splashed in after, swinging wildly and unable to reach the alternate variant of itself. Both of them began to sink, staring menacingly at their own reflection on the black dome of the other.
"Wait, wait! Don't leave me here!" Leer rushed after them and just as they were starting to vanish he stepped in after them. He opened his eyes, the crown of cables had come off and he'd fallen on the floor.
"I feel different." Mad Swordsman told him.
"The Caves of Scane, where are they?" Leer asked weakly while laying on the ground.
"Much closer to the ruins of Casark than any man would dare go." Mad Swordsman giggled menacingly.
"Does this place really exist?" Leer wondered imploringly.
"Do you or I exist? Is this reality somehow more real than the one we were just a part of?" Mad Swordsman questioned merrily. "The place really exists."
"We shall see the king." Leer realized out-loud. He took his robot to the king and explained he wanted to set out for the ruins of Casark.
King Gamma assembled his army of one hundred and sixty soldiers in bronze armor and the same warriors he had brought earlier to fight the robot also. This made the expedition quite massive. They had chariots and wagons and camels also. Mad Swordsman told Leer it would take longer, with so many following, to get there.
"Consider the anima of so many disciplined men with you." Leer tried optimism.
"I am considering that also. When they are being eaten by mutants or dying of radiation. The ruins are hilarious." Mad Swordsman moved its repaired sword-arm. It was inferior to the original socketing, but it was better than no arm.
"You aren't laughing." Leer pointed out.
"That's because I was being sarcastic." Mad Swordsman snickered. "The ruins aren't really funny."
"Nobody else thought it was a joke." King Gamma interjected from horseback as they journeyed across the scorched earth.
"That's not true, now is it?" Mad Swordsman argued with a clownish tone-of-voice.
"How dare you infer that his majesty is a liar!" Leer spoke up.
"That's enough. We all know this machine is insane. It wants to provoke a reaction so it can fall over laughing." King Gamma didn't take the bait so easily.
"Something wrong with that?" Mad Swordsman asked.
"Where are you leading us? What is this place?" Leer asked the giant robot. He stood in the shadow where it loomed in its brown robes.
"This is Pradesia. The ruins of Casark lie beyond." Mad Swordsman pointed with its left sword-arm. The whole army of King Gamma followed into Pradesia. The settlement they found was gutted by flames and everyone was murdered or executed on poles and crosses. It was a hellish sight, rotten for weeks.
"All of these bodies were already burned in a funeral fire. It is best not to touch them." Mad Swordsman told King Gamma. Sounding serious made the king a believer. He ordered his men to leave the bodies, to not even look at them.
"Behold the Caves of Scane." Mad Swordsman had led them all the way to Kelsov's home in the hills. All of them were dead and their vehicles sat with a layer of sand on them.
"We should take these vehicles." Leer advised.
"It is the plan that I like best." King Gamma agreed. They left the horses and chariots and some of the men behind and took the vehicles of the Finalists. Before they got very far, all of the vehicles stopped working.
"There is great entropy the closer we get to the place that is not a place. You shall see all that it can be." Mad Swordsman told King Gamma. "It is why the vehicles do not work. Because we are always closer to the darkness outside, the end of the last world. Nothing shall be and so things are becoming nothing. These cars don't work. Will your horses turn inside out if you feed them the grass of these steppes?" Mad Swordsman chuckled nervously.
"Send for the chariots." King Gamma told Leer.
So the expedition went onward until they reached the outskirts of Casark. The city sat in twisted and macabre damage. Everything that could happen to a city had happened and now only a few scattered bits still stuck into the sky, like the bent legs of a dead bug.
"This is Casark. Already some of your men are getting sick. There are animals here that are no longer like normal animals. They are horrible and twisted by being so close to the end of all things. It warps them into the likewise molecules of destruction, rewriting the physics that evolved their bodies and breaking and sucking them into new shapes as it sees them." Mad Swordsman said as it was moodily chuckling.
"The darkness here is unnatural." Gamma complained.
"Look sire, the clouds are parting. Perhaps now we shall find what we seek here." Leer smiled.
"Only death can be sought here. I don't get it." Mad Swordsman guffawed.
"What is that? What in God's name is that? Dear God!" King Gamma fell off his horse and writhed in terror at the sight of the darkness outside.
At the sight of it all his army screamed in terror. It was as though the clouds had parted to reveal only nightmare beyond, a night sky with no stars torn in the daytime sky. It had hidden behind clouds, now like a killer cloud it tore into their eyes. Some fell on their bronze swords. At least one took up a rocket launcher and fired from a chariot at the darkness. The path of the rocket traveled backwards to the soldier. It was a tendril of nothingness and he became as nothingness. He simply was no more as though he never was. There was nothing left of him, barely even a memory. Not one man who witnessed it could recall the soldier's name and soon most of them completely forgot they had seen him become as nothing.
There was still worse for the others. Like Mad Swordsman had warned them: the ruins were swarming with monsters. As the men were screaming in disarray and panic: the monsters found them and came for them. Bronze armed warriors battled hideous giant chimeras all around while others fled or were eaten alive. Tendrils from outside fished for men and when it touched them they became part of it, dissolved into nothingness. Sometimes it brushed one of its monsters and it took them too.
Soon the battle had become an orgy of blood and guts as the monsters fed and no soldiers remained. King Gamma walked among them, his hair turned white and his words maniacal and crazed.
"Go then, go to your graves you cowards!" He yelled at the splattered remains of his men.
"Your majesty, we still have Mad Swordsman!" Leer followed behind and pled with his king.
"Don't mind me. I am just here for the live comedy." Mad Swordsman was doubled over and laughing at all the carnage.
"I do mind!" King Gamma was outraged. "You kill these monsters right now. Show no mercy, use your fullest strength at your most reckless speed. My men are already dead!" King Gamma pointed and screamed. The fury of the king and his command charged up the emotitronics of the empathical with enraged anima.
"And then I rest." Mad Swordsman said after it cleaved all of the mutants in half. It had slid along, skating horribly on the slick gore and never losing its balance. The monsters stood no chance against the unrestrained machine.
"What rest is there?" King Gamma threw off his crown and ran. "What rest can there ever be when the sky is opening over the world of Ruin?"
"I know how to accept rest." Leer picked up the crown.
"I shall continue the mission, following you." Mad Swordsman told Leer.
"Then we go to our deaths." Leer realized. He walked into the empty ruins, under the eternal void, to search for the cure of immortality.
The ruins of Casark became as escalating height and chaos of twisted remains, scorched and broken. As blackened bones of the earth they stood, like cratered mountains on an asteroid, the fields burned by lava and liquid nightmare as black as ink. What bubbled from below in confused orbs of consciousness were the writhing fleshy things and wired oil dripping things of mechanical nature. All became warped by death, in sequence with a place of pure entropy, even life served to destroy and spread death. This was a cancer upon the universe. Leer could not believe it had no name.
Leer felt like the air was dead and his lungs hurt and it was like slowly suffocating. A device of flashing colors and lights, drawn from the edges of the dead universes beyond, stood testament to the efforts of higher beings. It was a kind of chaos that was intact. If entropy was fine order, if nightmares were the laws of physics, the place ahead of them was lawless and chaotic.
They found where two dead machines lay upon a flying vehicle under a covering of tarps. What mad sacrifice had left them there, instead of where they had fallen? The device had spread their light, their colors from their grave. There was, in all the chaos, a cabin in a place that knew time and order. Leer could breath and it was actual air in his lungs. He sighed and looked at the structure.
"Welcome home." Silver Swordsman told Mad Swordsman.
"If I stand before you then I am not dead under the tarp." Mad Swordsman noted without humor. It seemed to have lost its sense of humor, its madness taking on a different quality. Something too clever to be understood. Yet something totally insane.
"You are certainly one of the dead, although nobody has looked." Silver Swordsman observed.
"Good. As long as nobody notices I am dead under that tarp I should be fine. Without observation there is no paradox." Mad Swordsman stated. Then he added in the same voice as Silver Swordsman:
"This very moment in this place is a paradox. In order for us to be here we had to already arrive before we got here. We are now showing up to complete the cycle of us leaving this place, therefore the place exists."
"I didn't say that." Silver Swordsman replied.
"Except I am you from the future. I am here now and I have said it and you heard it, therefore I heard it when I was you. I did say that, you cannot say I didn't when I did. And you are me." Mad Swordsman debated.
"We have outran the sun. We are behind the sunrise." Leer realized.
"That is a good way to put it. Perhaps Junior now understands what is going on?" Mad Swordsman teased Silver Swordsman.
"I got it before you got here." Silver Swordsman said with dry, sophisticated humor.
"Oh, I get it. That is very funny." Mad Swordsman found the joke to be an excuse to laugh forcefully for five minutes. Leer sought sanctuary indoors.
Inside he found where King Gamma had fled. The place was some kind of bar. There was a table and some things to sit on and they had some bottles of alcohol they were sharing. He walked up alongside King Gamma and gave him back his crown.
"I'm Leer." Leer told the other bar people.
"Adinett." The girl said. "I just turned four hundred."
"Happy birthday. Looking very good." Leer said.
"Oh, thank you. Um." Adinett drunkenly started toward Leer until King Gamma said:
"He is a eunuch."
"You could still please me though, right?" Adinett was undeterred.
"No. I am married." Leer accepted a drink from the bartender.
"I am Solomon." The bartender introduced himself. "This is my place. I call it The House Of Dust."
"Because it is where the dead will reside." The drunk guy in the corner said.
"Who is he?" Leer asked.
"Aidan." Solomon said with a strange kind of awe and disappointment. Like meeting your idol, drunk. Literally.
"That's Aidan?" Leer's lips curled in rejection. He stared, taking a good look. Aidan flopped around drunkenly and moaned his sentences without coherence. Most of them started with words like:
"Where'z?" or "What'z" slurred into the rest of what he was saying.
"You got him shit-faced." Leer accused Solomon. Solomon shook his head.
"We just have to wait." Adinett was drunk too. Her temperament was much more alert though. Inside of her was a rage. She was an angry drunk. At least she was too drunk to lash out.
"Where you from?" Solomon asked.
"Last City Of Man" Leer told it by one of its names.
"Ur? You are with King Gamma. I mean like where do you come from?" Solomon asked.
"Eldimoor." Leer recalled. "I was born in Eldimoor."
"Nice place, Eldimoor." Solomon nodded.
"We had orchards there. I remember the orchards." Leer smiled.
"I was from Pradesia. We had paddies." Adinett said with grim sobriety.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
"This is a pocket, gravitationally reversed. We exist in a stasis of time here. The entropy does not enter except at our natural local time, here in The House Of Dust." Solomon told Leer and King Gamma.
"How did you accomplish such a thing?" Leer asked.
"I discovered it. I alone survived here when everyone else fled." Solomon explained.
"Others have come here?" King Gamma wondered. Solomon shook his head.
"Nobody has ever made it here before the Apostate." Said Solomon.
"You mean Silver Swordsman?" King Gamma had seen the giant robot already.
"All of them together are now the Apostate. That's the last intelligent thing they said." Solomon shrugged.
"I seek immortality. For my king." Leer looked at Adinett.
"They took it from Jerome's Tomb." She shifted in her seat and knocked over her drink. "I'm done drinking."
"Good girl." Solomon picked up the glass.
"It is here, somewhere." Leer sounded sure.
"In Casark? No. The Finalists used all the Serum. Then, once they were ready to live forever, I killed them all." Adinett told him. "In my sleep."
"I saw what you did." Leer informed her. "In the memories of Mad Swordsman."
"So why are you asking me then?" Adinett complained belligerently.
"This place is all the immortality there is. The world outside is chaos. In here we have a moment of quiet." Solomon advised.
"How did you discover this place?" Leer asked suddenly.
"I was standing in the street when Umbraeon first came. It ripped open the sky and began to destroy everything around. Except this one bubble of time. Like it is happening out there so fast, and in here, so slow. The eye of the storm, you know?" Solomon explained.
"So you opened a bar?" Leer sounded amused.
"No, I built a cabin and stocked it with alcohol. I was an alcoholic." Solomon shrugged.
"Why?" Adinett asked.
"I was scared to be myself. I was only happy when I wasn't me. I had to be locked inside my own mind, while my reptile was drunk." Solomon described.
"This is the best reptile bar I've ever seen." Adinett cheered, empty handed.
"By now it is the only bar. By now, unless there are other pockets like this one, untouched by Umbraeon. Well then the world is gone." Solomon predicted.
"That's how slowly time passes in here?" Leer wondered. Solomon just nodded.
"We have arrived at the end of the world." King Gamma said.
"So Mad Swordsman knew, somehow, and that this was actual immortality." Leer decided.
"I hadn't thought of that." King Gamma took a drink.
Everyone was quiet while they realized how close was the end.

Hey there! I built my current iteration of my desktop about 3 years ago on the AM4 platform and I'm thinking about upgrading the CPU to extend my time on AM4 before the eventual jump to a next-gen system.
Current specs:
Ryzen 5 3600 (motherboard OC'd to 4.2)
Cooler Master Hyper 212
Nvidia 3070
32GB 3200 RAM
4k BenQ + 2k 165hz Acer Predator monitors
550-600w PSU (can't recall the exact number)
I feel no pressure to upgrade on the gaming side, everything runs fast enough for me and the games I play (mostly Overwatch 2) on my 2k 165hz gaming monitor.
Where I'm starting to feel the performance ceiling is in video and photo editing. I edit 4K footage in Davinci Resolve and I use Photoshop way more now with Lightroom than I did when I built this PC. I feel like Resolve could use way more cores, and Adobe products possibly from faster single-threaded performance.
I'm considering the 5600x, 5800x, and 5900x. Here's how I feel about each one right now:
5900x: 12 cores/24 threads for $310. The best upgrade I can justify but probably has diminishing returns in the Adobe Suite. I have some concerns about the 105W TDP and my PSU.
5800X: 8 cores/16 threads for $223. This might be the sweet spot, saving close to $100 while essentially matching the single core performance of the 5900x. Probably lose some performance in Resolve, and still worried about the 105W TDP.
5600X: 6 cores/12 threads for $149. I feel like this probably isn't a good enough upgrade for my multi-core needs, although I would get a boost in my single-threaded dependent applications. Same TDP so no worries there.
Has anyone upgraded from the 3600 to any of these chips for content creation? Is 32GB enough for 4K editing in Resolve and heavy photo editing in Lightroom and Photoshop? I'd love to know your thoughts.

Hey y’all. I hope this doesn’t get to be too long but I’ll try to summarize my situation as quickly but thoroughly as possible.
I had a 95 Jeep Cherokee that I sold because I wanted a truck. I’m 36 but I like the old school, new stuff has too much planned obsolescence. So I bought a 83 Chevy C20. It ran ok for about 6 months and then the engine started knocking, so it’s dead. It’s fixable but new engines are 4-8k. So I bought my girlfriends old Honda civic, 2003 with 125k miles. That developed rod knock at about 145k and finally died at 150k.
So now I have no money, no cars, and no idea what to do. I don’t want to sell the truck because it has a bonded title (in 1 more year I can apply for a clean title) and a blown engine so it’s basically worthless. I can get a loan for a used car but I don’t trust that anyone takes care of their shit anymore so I’m skeptical to spend thousands of dollars on something that might break down in a month with no warranty. So that leads me to where I’m at now, looking at used Toyota Tacomas because of the reliability, but god damn, they’re expensive! I only make $25/hr so I can’t afford anything new. I have 13k in credit card debt and a personal loan with $1,600 left to pay off. Currently I’m driving my moms old Corolla but the AC needs charged, and the brakes need replaced. I know she doesn’t take care of it so I really don’t want to buy it from her, although it could help me get by until I pay off my credit card.
Unrelated maybe but my girlfriend is NOT a helpful at all. I try to be frugal, eat at home, not go out, but she always has an excuse to go out and eat out. “You can’t live your life without treating yourself, you’ll go crazy.” But I’m already going crazy because I seem to consistently make the wrong decisions and it’s going to bankrupt me. I just don’t know what to do anymore. It seems like I can buy a used car and go broke fixing it, or buy a newer car and have $600 car payments. It just makes me want to give up.

Original thread
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I've been dealing with a seemingly undiagnosable parasitic drain on my 15 Trailhawk Cherokee since January, all individual fuses pulled/units disconnected and drain was still present. There was water found in the spare tire compartment but couldn't figure out how that could have caused such a crazy short in the system.
Finally threw my hands up a month ago and put it up for sale through a consignment dealer, bought a ZJ and called it the luck of the draw. The consignment dealer told me yesterday that the last few times they've gone to move it it's started right up without a boost, they helped with diagnostic work on this so they're familiar with the drain and had been boosting it themselves prior.
We're both in agreement that it seems like it was a moisture issue that must have dried out now due to the warm weather and lack of rain. Obviously fixing the leak is step number 1 but does anyone know what could have been shorted out from a leak bringing water into the spare tire compartment?
Going to check on the tail light and rear hatch gaskets first, anything else I should look at? No sun roof on this vehicle but roof rack mounts possibly?
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On the plus side, now I have 2 Jeeps. On the downside, now I have 2 Jeeps to fix up.
Ya win some, ya lose some!

I just graduated college in May. I have an ‘01 Grand Cherokee with the 4.0 in it and 280k miles. Should I put my money into upkeep on that (exhaust and front end work) or look at buying something newer and a bit louder and faster and keep the jeep to just bomb around. (I’m 6’6” so nothing cramped).

I've never managed to astral project, at least that I know of but tonight I had the strangest experience that I'd like to have your perspective on. Mind you, this was all unintentional.
I've been prepping for my last exams and both of them are scheduled early in the morning. Of course, like a proper uni student, my sleeping schedule has been royally fucked so I decided to rewind it. This had me exhausted yesterday and in combination with eating way too much, I went to bed at 10:30pm (as opposed to 4-5am). After a few minutes, my mind is all well rested and I toos and turn until approximately 1am where I fall asleep. This is were the fun begins.
At some point during the night/morning, I realize that I can't move and I'm slightly looking around the room although it doesn't feel like my eyes are open. I hear a sort of "woo" sound, the sound when you flex your ears type of thing, and I slightly panic because it reminds me of the time I had a frightening experience with sleep paralysis. I try not to look nor listen and try to relax. I "close" my eyes and I see the backside of a jeep or an ice cream truck looking thing starting to slowly roll down the street on a hill. I then "open" my eyes and see the room again. Mind you, all these things look like they are filtered through the inside of my eyelids, they have this dark tone in the background.
I "close" my eyes again and relax. It feels like my body accelerates like nothing I've never experienced before and I see, with this dark eye lid filter, a clear moving spiralling pattern that then changes into some other pattern I can't quite recall.
Do you think this was lucid dreaming? I've had a similar experience before when I feel asleep sitting down in the shower (yet again exhausted) and it was as if I could see through my eye lids with this dark background filter.

Here are my HWMonitor temp readings for my 5600x with a stock cooler after playing a demanding game for several hours. Columns are current, minimum, maximum. My CPU at idle reached a minimum of 48C, and the max temperature at high load reached 94C.
Recently I had to remove my CPU cooler to install additional RAM, as the cooler had a plastic piece blocking one of the available slots. I ripped out the CPU from its socket when I took the cooler off but luckily there were no bent pins. I separated it from the cooler and put it back into the socket then later reattached the cooler, but now I've been thinking about if I should have applied new thermal paste at the time. I don't recall my PC ever getting this hot previously with how much it heats up my room, but it is summer now and my room doesn't cycle in cool air very well.
Is this something I should be worrying about?

I have a 2015 Santa Fe Sport and I got my engine replaced about 5 months ago under the engine recall. I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up on the additional repair that I had to do. Within 2 months, the complete exhaust, fuel pump, and catalytic converter were replaced. 2 months after that I had to replace the exhaust manifold. I think all of these are due to the engine burning oil causing the whole exhaust system to fail.
In hindsight, it would have been cheaper for me to trade in the car and a new one. The total of repairs so far would have been equal to a good downpayment on a new car.

According to the hidden treasure of Guru Rinpoche, Buddha and the Bodhisattvas of the three times have dissolved into this wonderful stupa. It is like a wish-granting jewel that automatically answers any entreaty or prayer that is made to it.
So even the Buddha of three times could not fully express or enumerate the benefits to be gained when some sentient beings with a pure mind circumambulate and make offerings to it. This is the supreme mental focal point for all Buddhas of the three times, a field of the offering of all beings, including gods.
Any entreaties and prayers that are made to Boudhanath will automatically be realized. It grants all of the supreme and ordinary accomplishments. All births in the lower realms will be halted for any sentient beings who pray and circumambulate this great Bouddha, which is a reminiscent “wish-granting jewel“.
Whoever hears and mentions Boudhanath will have placed the seed of enlightenment in their mind. All of those who recall it will be saved from fits of madness and paralysis and will gain an especially focused concentration. All of those who fold their hands as a mark of respect for it will come to the correct path.
Whoever offers prostration in homage to Bouddha Stupa will take birth as a chakra-wielding monarch of a thousand world systems.
All of those who circumambulate the Bouddha Stupa will acquire the seven qualities of the higher existences. Whoever makes entreaties to it will effortlessly accomplish the two purposes. All of those who make offerings to it will be born in a place that knows no drought.
Whoever offers flowers will be sure to obtain an excellent human birth with all the conditions required for the practice of Dharma.
All of those who offer incense will be sure to gain pure moral conduct. Whoever offers butter lamps will have the darkness of their ignorance dispelled.
All who offer scented water will be released from every form of mental disquiet and suffering.
All those who offer Mandalas of the five precious substances will never again suffer from poverty or destitution but will gain access to a treasury of wealth as limitless as the heavens.
All of those who offer lamps will directly behold the countenances of all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in the ten directions. Whoever offers seed-oil lamps can be sure that all of the obscurations of their ignorance will be purified. Those who offer a fabric panoply and whitewash to the Stupa will secure for themselves a physical radiance and splendor as well as a mastery over gods, demons, and humans.
All of those who receive blessings from Boudhanath will receive empowerment from all the Buddhas in the ten directions.
A miraculous birth appearing at the center of a lotus in the pure northern land of Sukhavati awaits anyone who remembers this stupa at the time of death.
But those who inflict harm upon it will, in that same life, become objects of all sorts of non-virtue. Then, in their future existence, they will be born into the Avichi Hell of Ceaseless Torment, a state from which there will be no possibility of escape and no means of atonement for the actions that got them there.
In summary, this great Boudhanath is reminiscent of the fabled wish-granting precious jewel. If you invest in it, you will have the power to bring about whatever accomplishment is required, whether it is supreme or ordinary, and the ability to answer any supplication. It is because of this that the Boudhanath Stupa is known as “The Stupa that Answers All Prayers“.
Want to read more? Check the history of Boudhanath.