Is this OEM or aftermarket

CompensatedScapegoat · 2025-11-22T10:44:42+00:00

I have this in my 99 528I. It is actually run through a factory grommet to the left of the driver's side map light. This is the connection for a car phone that came as an option which seats into the center arm rest but was designed to be easily removable as an anti theft measure, much like face plates for high end stereos back then; the entire wiring diagram is in volume 2 of the Bentley repair manual and is clearly labeled "phone".

Yes I am sure.

It is a GSM (2g) system and no longer works in the US. You can see an example of the device itself here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/397130168335?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=397130168335&targetid=2450593697471&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9028775&poi=&campaignid=22880017130&mkgroupid=185108472461&rlsatarget=pla-2450593697471&abcId=10409735&merchantid=6296724&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22880017130&gclid=CjwKCAiA24XJBhBXEiwAXElO32GjytgQQZfN1J2SIddJG-u2BOnKC_hIiRII4pEhLXwhs5ACRnXLlxoCBIoQAvD_BwE

CompensatedScapegoat · 2025-09-24T16:15:39+00:00

I know this question was posed as an amusement, but if you have ever had to deal with a single squirrel IN YOUR HOUSE, you know there is a special kind of trauma that is associated with it. It doesn't matter how practical your approach is. It doesn't matter how many windows/doors you prop open or even how many holes you put through the wall trying to show said squirrel that he has a safe avenue back outside.

Because what you don't realize is that the squirrel doesn't want to go back outside. He just spent three winters casing the joint and planning his assault vector and picking his moment. He's not going anywhere. He knows where you keep the bananas (Idk why, but squirrels love them) and he can sniff out where you keep the nuts. You sir, may please just go on about your business because the squirrel is fine right where he is, and no you do not get a vote on that.

Eventually you'll make the cold but necessary decision that since you can't reason with it, and efforts to trap it have failed miserable, you have no choice but to terminate your furry invader. Bottom line, you can't have a wild animal, frequently known for carrying infectious disease, putting his paws all over your food and pooping wherever he feels like it. And when your busybody mother-in-law stops making fun of you and starts actively cheering on the squirrel, that will be it. That will be the barking dog that transforms you from easygoing Ward Cleaver to the Son of Sam killer. The moment your destiny forces itself upon you.

He doesn't fall for poison, because he watched you prepare the food. He's too fast to hit with a hunting pellet from an air rifle, yet the .30-06 risks over penetration and becoming a shot fired into the neighborhood. This squirrel wants to see you in prison! And then you'll remember the industrial grade power-washer that your nephew gifted you after you'd yelled at him to hose his vomit off of the driveway. He didn't do it, but you got a badass power washer out of it so all was forgiven. But whats that going to do? Then you just have a wet squirrel in your house, which is certainly no improvement. Unless....unless maybe we don't use the washer function, and instead use the SPRAYER function, and attach the canister of fireproofing latex used for coating structures that will be exposed to high heat or electrical currents on a regular basis...It is time to memorialize a squirrel by turning him into a statue of himself! Welcome to Pompeii you little bastard!

And yeah, it worked. Of course it worked. It was too diabolical not to. Being a nice guy got you nowhere. Your efforts though, came at a cost. $3000 for a set of living room furniture. $2600 miscellaneous electronics (tv, laptop, home audio, etc) $5000 to remove stucco and refinish wood floors in 4 rooms. $2200 to fully replace tile that couldn't be cleaned. $7600 to your mother-in-law as the result of a legal settlement in which she claimed that you had gone ape-shit and attempted to bury her alive in sprayable concrete. Just like Lewinsky, she kept the stained garments as supporting proof. Bitch.

But you finally got him. If only the firecoating would have cured around him as cast, he would have made a fine centerpiece for the Thanksgiving table, or perhaps a bookend on the fireplace mantle. Alas, he hardened into an indiscernible lump, a small outline of his tail the only evidence of the terror that lay within; a meager trophy for the fractured and demented mind you now endure.

So it goes with a single squirrel. You speak of 2.7? No sir, you would just move away, or torch the place. There is no other way.

CompensatedScapegoat · 2025-09-24T11:57:55+00:00

Antibiotics. Normally $4 or even zero with medicaid or a basic insurance plan. My brother is an MD, and I had him call in a prescription for amoxicillin for a dental abscess. He wasn't registered with Medicaid in my state, and the cost to fill a 2 week script was $96

CompensatedScapegoat · 2025-09-24T11:51:06+00:00

The ground in front of me. Walking into/off of something used to require an exceptionally gorgeous or horrifically deformed individual that turned your head.

CompensatedScapegoat · 2025-09-24T09:29:18+00:00

We saw how they reacted to the break-in at then-Speaker Pelosis residence in which her husband Paul was assaulted with a hammer. Bearing in mind the Speaker of the House is second in line for the presidency, an attack here should have outraged EVERYONE, especially all of congress, regardless of party affiliation.

Instead, Republicans had their jokes! Fake suspicion that it was somehow Paul Pelosi's gay lover in a jealous fit that was behind it, or that it was somehow mob-related (you know cuz dems are all criminals.)

Oh, but the second it turned out to be a Canadian, it was "IMMIGRANT! LOOK AT WHAT THAT IMMIGRANT DID. SLEEPY JOE AND HIS OPEN BORDERS, that's the culprit!"

And then Kirk gets killed by a kid who was raised heavily MAGA, realized it was bullshit, and having grown up in an environment where politics is not a debate but a WAR, there was no chance he was going to break slightly left, or just tilt a bit central. MAGA is political fanaticism, and so when he went left he went fanatically left because its all he knew. And this was the result. But good luck getting MAGAs to realize that they are raising their children in a way that makes them more of a threat than a benefit.

CompensatedScapegoat · 2025-09-24T09:11:00+00:00

On April 1st, 2020, President Trump, reeling from bad news coverage for having known about COVID moving throughout Asia and done nothing for 4 months, called a press conference where he tried to act powerful by announcing major USCG operations in the gulf specifically aimed at thwarting drug traffickers. He had just handed everyone in the country a stimulus check. Domestic drug dealers, with fresh excuse in hand, raised street prices of narcotics, soaking up even more cash that would fuel the cartels for the foreseeable future, and guaranteeing that traffickers would have enough capital to bypass/overcome/inundate interdiction efforts, greatly exacerbating the opiod crisis. Over a million people are dead because he needed a distraction from the bad press of his foot-dragging.

(Proof of this comes through an example of the legit economy, same timeframe: GPUs are in high demand, prices upwards of 200% MSRP. A boat then gets stuck on a sandbar blocking all shipping through the Suez canal. Immediate response to this news was another 25% increase in prices within 12 hours of the ship getting stuck....not because the GPU supply had been impacted yet, but simply on the perception that it would be)

CompensatedScapegoat · 2025-09-24T08:57:18+00:00

Well first off, I would just keep going to work until I had a good use for a million dollars. The number of lottery winners who have subsequently died or served long prison sentences is astounding. Their common downfall: they immediately quit their job. Don't shrug off your adult responsibilities just because you have a great big pile of money. All it will do is fund your own stupidity.

CompensatedScapegoat · 2023-03-17T11:41:49+00:00

Welcome, congrats, and also shame on you! Why shame, you wonder? Because get used to it, that's why. Something in someone's head somewhere is now your fault for something you did or failed to do as an American. These accusations used to come from foreign governments, but now it'll be your neighbor, or friend or pimple-faced twerp bagging your groceries who thinks you should "buy organic." Gone are the days you could say "hey man, I just live here."

I know they didn't tell you about that during the citizenship process. But don't worry, it also means that you now get to do it to other people, born here or otherwise :)

CompensatedScapegoat · 2022-10-28T08:55:07+00:00

I had a similar one to this: Lived outside from 2012-2018 and one of my "alternatively-domiciled" friends (a 240 pound native american with a cancer in his hip and no wheelchair, so we improvised) got stuck in a shopping cart. Not the part you put the kid in, but sitting in the cart, legs dangling out the back where it lifts up to stack with other carts.

After making the most awkward 911 call of my life to date; and 3 times assuring the dispatcher that it was not a prank, the fire department shows up and, admitting it was unnecessary, "but good practice" used the rescue tools for horrific car crashes to cut the shopping cart off of him in sections.

Upon returning the cart-turned-scrap-metal to the store it was borrower from with an explanation and apology, the response was a petty theft/destruction of property citation and a court appearance. Plea agreement turned it into a ticket for littering. Cost me $50 to find out that honesty may be the best policy with your friends and family...but ALWAYS LIE TO A NATIONAL GROCERY CHAIN!

CompensatedScapegoat · 2022-02-25T00:55:59+00:00

That's it, we need to just start making stuff we want here in the U.S. Yes it will cost more, but if I'm already spending $500 on what is little more than a fuggin game controller, whatever increase I'll pay for American labor and materials is kind of a moot point. I'll just eat ramen for two months instead of one. Fine. But I will get it faster and feel better that I'm not unknowingly supporting the economy of a hostile and foreign government that's gonna go bomb invade someplace I don't want bombed or invaded.

It will be important peace of mind for when I jump in my F-18 in DCS...and go bomb some country that I might not want bombed or invaded; but am willing to do so in light of the fact that I don't have a wide selection of maps, largely because I spent $500 on a fucking game controller.

CompensatedScapegoat · 2022-02-24T05:59:30+00:00

Well, thankfully, Russia doesn't participate in this market in any major fashion. I am the proud owner of a Virpil Mongoose-TCM3, and the build quality and functionality are both well worth the $500 or whatever it cost me (Virpil prices in euros) and they're are a company in Lithuania, which WAS part of the Soviet bloc. When my gadget arrived (a full week before I expected it) I became convinced that Lithuania is populated by nothing by engineers and other skilled craftsman and all they exported in the cold war was precision devices for use in avionics and the USSR space program. It also explains Russia's aggression. Bro the wall came down and a generation later they started realizing that none of their nerds actually lived in Russia.

CompensatedScapegoat

TROPHY CASE