Unlike Boston’s famous World of Wheels auto show that allows car owners and aftermarket suppliers to showcase their own fire breathing, custom painted, tricked out rides, The New England International Auto Show is more focused on the world’s major automakers and their new vehicle lineups for the upcoming year. This year, 30 manufacturers were represented from December 2-6 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Just about every major production vehicle for the 2010 model year rolled its way onto the carpeted floor of the massive convention center. With the Ferrari booth sandwiched between those of Acura and Hyundai, the collection of vehicles spanned a wide array of price brackets and purposes. In typical fashion, the exotics dropped jaws of all passers by, but the showstopper was undoubtedly Chevrolet’s engine testing exhibit. Every half hour, a GM engineer (clad in a full-length lab coat) ran a small block Chevy V8 through it’s paces on an industrial dynamometer. Large monitors displayed the engines horsepower, torque, and RPM’s while the non-existent muffler system drew everyone away from the subcompacts and hybrids that suddenly seemed a lot less cool.

After being so tactfully lured to the Chevrolet section of the exhibition floor, the emphasis on horsepower translated throughout the show. Camaros, Challengers, V10 powered Audi R8′s, and the new Corvette ZR1 — capable of speeds over 200 MPH — set a tone of raw, unadulterated speed. Despite high fuel prices and an ozone layer with the structural makeup of Swiss cheese, there is no denying that the muscle car is bigger than ever for 2010.

Electricity, though, was not to be outdone. The Tesla booth garnered more oohs and ahhs than the massage parlor your “friend” “read about” on Craigslist. Despite having to (ironically) shout over spine tingling V8 wales, the brand’s representative made a good case for the battery operated 2-seater, which is capable of out-accelerating most of its petrol-powered competitors. Show-goers were pleased to hear Tesla’s plans for a new dealership in the Boston area.

Hybrids, too, were well represented, with models like the new Escalade proving that there is a low(er) emissions vehicle for everyone.

The show was not limited to the observation of still-life. High-tech driving simulations gave even young enthusiasts the chance to get behind the wheel of a racing machine. Beyond simulations, Cadillac offered test drives on four of its new models: the CTS, CTS wagon, SRX and new Escalade Hybrid. I had the chance to pilot all four on the closed track set up around the convention center. While it is always fun strapping into a brand new drivers seat, I was a bit disappointed by the suggested speed limit of 20 MPH and confined testing area. While I am convinced that the new Cadillacs would do a fantastic job negotiating my driveway, it was hard to get a feel for how the cars performed in real world conditions. When GM decides to host a test drive at an airstrip, call me, but this didn’t really do it for me.

But overall, the 2009 New England International Auto Show was a huge success. It is an event that thousands of fellow enthusiasts mark on their calendars each winter, and now it’s just a matter of waiting 364 days until the next time the world’s leading auto manufacturers ride into Boston.

Like many others, Kelly MacDonald, 27, a Saugus stay-at-home motherof two boys has shopped on eBay for years. But shopping online for an evening gown has never been this complicated for her.

Though she wasn’t planning on buying a dress online, she saw one on eBay that she simply deemed “breathtaking.” She took note that the international seller had 100 percent positive feedback on this custom made, $175 dollar gowns that could be finished in 6 weeks. Under the assumption of PayPal buyer protection, Kelly placed an order and sent payment for the dress, which arrived two months later. Much to MacDonald’s surprise, the dress was not what she was expecting. The photograph of the dress Kelly would receive was opposite of the dress she did receive.

“It was just huge,” MacDonald said. “The waistline was too high — way above my belly button, so I looked like a dumpling in that dress. The color was different and so were the beads (colorful instead of silver ones). The craftsmanship was so poor; the beads were falling off before I even put it on."

After emailing the seller immediately, her negative comments were well received and the seller requested that she send the dress back, and he would make her a new one. He was only willing to comply if she did not give him negative feedback. After one week passed, the seller notified Kelly of the receipt of the dress and that his dressmaker would make her a new one.

But the buyer seems to have found a “feedback loophole.” The window of opportunity to write feedback is only two months after the purchase of your product. Coincidentally for the seller, Kelly had passed this two month mark. After the seller ignored three messages from Kelly, she finally filed a dispute with PayPal.

According to PayPal, disputes are an opportunity for "resolution of any transaction problems promptly and easily." While in retrospect, such simplicity would be nice, yet for most customers, and especially Kelly, the resolution process was the furthest from easy.

As stated by PayPal, when a customer opens a dispute with them, it is the customer’s chance to: "1. Communicate directly with the buyer to resolve the issue amicably, 2. provide prompt customer service that can gain you repeat business, and 3. avoid the possibility of a dispute escalating to a claim or chargeback."

None of these promises are fulfilled, she said. PayPal tracked the package online, and there was only a note about the package arriving to China. No notification of delivery. When PayPal contacted the seller on the issue, he stated that he never received the package in the first place. When MacDonald realized that the seller had been lying to PayPal, she called USPS and filled a claim with them as well. A long 7 weeks later, she received a letter confirming that the Chinese postal service delivered the package.

Feeling confident that she would finally get her money back, Kelly faxed the letter from USPS over to PayPal. PayPal replied stating that they are unable to track the package online and therefore they do not have clarification on whether or not the package was actually delivered. No proof, no refund. According to PayPal, their policy states that they can only accept online delivery statements, which means that if the statement does not show up on USPS.com, then as far as PayPal is concerned, the package was not delivered.

According to the USPS International Inquiry Department, foreign countries are not required to scan registered mail packages at the delivery and most countries, including China, don’t do so.

Do ample research before sending your money over the wire, and especially be cautious when dealing with other countries and their shipping policies that are most likely to be different than those of the US.

Manning the post as the only on-screen female MythBuster, Kari Byron is doing more than just solving burning questions of curious viewers around the world. A newly wed wife and mother of a newborn baby, Byron has traveled near and far solving the most controversial myths and loving every minute of it.

A San Francisco native, Byron, 34, ended up on the show as somewhat of an accident. Interning for M5 Industries, Kari was first utilized for her "behind” for an early episode about a woman getting stuck on an airplane toilet. Since then, she has shown off more than just her romper with risqu© photos in FHM Magazine, becoming one of the most fantasized about engineers of all time.

BLAST: Can you describe your first TV show experience?

KARI BYRON: I was in kindergarten, I Was on the news. In kindergarten I had this crazy teacher, Mrs. Peck. Crazy and most amazing classroom she got to play Mother Nature in our school play. Other than that, pretty much “Mythbusters” is it.

BLAST: How long have you been on the “Mythbusters?”

KB: Pretty much since it started. I wanted to try to get into special effects and I love sculpture, so I wanted to apply it and actually make some money out of it other than in the arts. And so I came to Jamie in the shop, M5 Industries and asked for an internship. Got an internship with Jamie, and it turns out my first day as an intern was the first day Mythbusters started filming there. They had a little project that they needed a girl for. He did this story called airplane toilet where a larger woman was using an airplane toilet and flushed before standing up and got sucked into it. That’s the myth at least. They needed to make a mold of a behind for the experiment and I just happened to let them volunteer mine. It was sort of a trade off. They did a 3D scan of mine and I was able to work on it on a computer sculpturing software so I could learn the program. I thought no one would see this because it was just a silly little cable show. Didn’t know it would end up being the first thing you see when you Google my name six years later.

BLAST: “Mythbusters” is really growing. It’s everywhere.

KB: I know. It is in almost every country and everywhere we go. My uncle has said it’s been translated in Spanish, Chinese and seen as far as Costa Rica. I get emails from everywhere from Prague to Botswana.

BLAST: Do people come up to you randomly on the street and ask you ridiculous questions expecting you to know the answer?

KB: Absolutely, every single time. They come up to all of us. The cool thing about this job is we get to take on these little strange questions and investigate them to the fullest extent. We have 4-5 researchers who work around the clock on these weird stories. You should really hear some of their phone calls. They get to call people and ask, “So where can I find a full size engine we can throw a hand into,” or “where can I find a stomach with all the acids still in it.” I got lucky, I get to be on the end with all the hands on fun stuff.

BLAST Who’s idea was it to build a cannon out of duct tape?

KB: That one we actually found through the viewers website. We have discovery.com/mythbusters, where we have a message board where you can send in your ideas, or if you’ve read something in a history book that sounds totally absurd, and you want to see if its true. You give us the myth ideas, and then they might just make it on the show. So since we had so many people send us myths about duct tape, we decided to just got for it. We just picked out a few that we liked. It was so popular, that that’s one that people keep stopping me on the street to tell me new ideas about. And in fact, it was so popular that we might be doing a Duct Tape 2 episode in the future. We were so excited to do these, they were so great.

BLAST: What is the step by step process of a myth getting onto the show?

KB: Well, you know its kind of a random mix of when we can do these, how easily we can do them and even the weather. We find different myths from us scouring the internet, people submitting ideas on the message boards, talking to us on the street, and viewers sending in stuff. We also have a master list we have been building since Mythbusters inception in 2003. We have a lot to pick from. If it just so happens that we have access to a huge wind machine, we might just do something with hurricanes. It’s really just depends on what were interested in and how easy it is to do. We also look at what is going on in the media at that time, for instance, balloon boy. If we decided to do that, we might do it sooner than later. Then we break it apart to see what the process is to do it. Then we have a story meeting that breaks it down and we figure out the process using the scientific method as our outline: how we will go through the process itself. Then we break up the projects, film it, and then it goes into editing. It usually takes between 3 and 6 months before the show goes to air.

BLAST: Is there a lot of editing that goes into it?

KB: Oh yea. Well, we can’t fake anything. We don’t have a huge staff of people that come in and do all the work for us. We are basically doing it with minimal help. We aren’t faking the science. If it takes three days to come up with a number to calibrate a cannon; it takes three days. You guys get to see the ten-seconds it gets edited down to when it might have taken 100 hours to film.

Its funny, I almost feel stronger, more organized. I sweat the small stuff less. You don’t have time for wasting time. It’s a full day. You wake up in the morning, take care of baby, go to work, take care of Mythbusters, go home, take care of baby. Every minute is accounted for. It’s so much more fun and fulfilling and I just don’t waste time anymore. Going back to work, is kind of fun. At home I am taking care of baby and of mom, but at work, I am taking care of Kari. It is really fulfilling to be a mom. It is hard work but it is so worth it. I have the support of my husband and my girlfriend who takes care of my baby when I am at work.

BLAST: How is married life?

KB: Oh rad. I have the most adorable husband ever.

BLAST: Does he watch you on TV and is just shocked that you get to do what most boys would love to do?

KB: I don’t know, half the stuff I do, he’s like “I cant believe you even wanted to do that stuff, that’s nuts! He is a little bit of an adventurer himself. He does all sorts of things that boys want to do as well. He races motorcycles and is a tattoo artist and is just generally a bad-ass.

BLAST: Are there any myths you really want to bust that haven’t been on the show?

KB: Upside down race cars. That is something we would all just love to do. It is basically that the race car can move so fast and have so much downwind force that it can drive upside down on the track. All we need is a track and a Formula 1 race car, which you know, we can’t find anyone who wants to lend us one. So unless we can find the budget of $1 million dollars to pay for one, we have to wait to do that one. It’s not impossible its just expensive.

BLAST: Are most things really expensive?

KB: The amazing part of our support structure here at “Mythbusters” is they can get so much stuff for free, or for trade or for the most minute amount of money. They are wheelers and dealers. Since the show is getting more popular, people have been offering us stuff more and more. We work with bomb squads, police and fire companies. They always help us out a little bit. People call and say, “Hey do you want to blow up our car?” We keep it at a pretty low cost. We have the lowest possible cost because the people we work with are doing a little bit of the hustle for us.

BLAST: What does it feel like being the only girl on the show?

KB: You know I am only the only girl on camera, but off camera we have female researchers, producers and coordinators. There are tons of women. You only see me on screen, but it’s a huge team effort behind the camera, so it doesn’t feel like I am the only girl in any way.

BLAST: What was it like to pose for FHM Magazine?

KB: Now that I had a kid, I am really glad I did it back then. It was really fun and funny because we don’t have makeup and hair on the show, so getting prettied up and getting all that attention was really great. And the pictures weren’t that racy. In fact I think I am wearing less on the shark special.

BLAST: There has been some speculation surrounding your relationship with one of your co-build team members Tory Belleci. Is there any relationship other than strictly a professional one?

KB: No. My husband was my boyfriend starting on the show. Tory and I never had any relationship other than a friendship. It’s more of a sibling relationship, we pick on each other a lot. I think the reason the show has been so successful is that we all have a natural chemistry. We weren’t cast, we are all just real people who have worked on screen before. All the boys worked either at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) or at Jamie’s shop and they all knew each other previous to this. It makes the day better.

BLAST: Do you have any parting words of wisdom?

KB: Don’t have time to waste time.

Kari has solved myths from duct tape cannons to a shark’s sense of smell. You can catch her on “Mythbusters” every Wednesday at 9 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.