Somewhat related reading, since the fuel the students are producing
emits less CO2 than either gasoline or diesel fuel yet it still works
in diesel vehicles ->
Students Cook Up Recipe To Nix Pain At Pump - Automotive News Story - WESH Orlando
Home brew fuel, an emerging market?
Do you take a vacation when a project you're assigned to is in trouble at work? ...when a family member is sick and in the hospital? ...when money is tight and you are having trouble paying your bills?
N-O!
Then why the hell should the United States go on a gas tax holiday for the summer months?
McCain & HRC support a gas tax holiday. Obama says a gas tax holiday would do more harm than good. I agree with Obama. The gas tax is meant to support "constructing, repairing or improving general purpose roads," as well as funding mass transit. Yes, there are porkbarrel projects that don't seem to meet this purpose, including a $20 million one here in my home state of Texas. That speaks to a problem with our national budget and our legislative process, however, not the gas tax.
If we suspend the tax for the summer months, while we are on the verge of recession and, when all signs point to needing to be more fuel- and fiscally-conscious, we are nuts!
Pain is the body's sign that something is wrong, and this holds true for the US economy as well as our individual family economies. Would you go to the doctor and ask for a sugar pill if you or a loved one were sick? That is all a gas tax holiday is... a big fat sugar pill so HRC & McCain can get votes.
Americans should feel pain at the fuel pumps. Yes, dammit, fuel should be priced what it's worth. The United States has enjoyed gas prices far below the rest of the world. The insanity isn't that prices are so high and rising higher; the insanity is that it's taken us this long to realize that might happen to *US*. No wonder we are top oil consumer in the world... and now we want to reduce the gas tax to offer a false, temporary "relief" that will only serve to con consumers into a false sense of security for that much longer? Sell more H2s and Escalades and Suburbans?
Let me put my British cap on for a moment... /dons cap ... COME THE FUCK ON, PEOPLE! /doffs cap
We have a bunch of problems here and a gax tax holiday solves NONE of them except for one -- garnering some more votes of HRC & McCain in the general election.
Do you want a President that baits and switches, makes decisions based on popularity instead of responsibility (how is that any better than Bush's decision-making based on personal ideology & a misplaced moral imperative?) Or do you want someone who understands that being President means not settling for the Band-Aid cure and the political rhetoric and actually buckling down and working on long-term solutions. Hint: Long-term solutions don't stay long-term forever, UNLESS you never start working on them.
/sigh
Go ahead and whine about the rising price of gasoline. Hell, go ahead and vote for McCain or HRC because "they care about me and my family, giving us a break on the gas tax so I can take a vacation." Just don't be surprised when the bridge you travel to work on collapses, the pot holes you're used to dodging become giant sinkholes, the bike lanes your kids use on weekends or after work become impassable due to debris, the roads in the parks you go to "get away" fall to ruin, and the car dealerships actually start charging what gas guzzling, fuel inefficient vehicles are actually worth (wait, they already do--look at all the incentives they throw at them so people will buy them w/o thinking about the cost to feed them every 1-2 weeks.)
Pain is the body's sign something is wrong. If you are feeling pain at the pump, that is your sign. Take your sugar pill, offered in a sterile white cup by McCain & HRC, or actually think about what might be ailing *US*.
Sadly, the average American isn't going to truly DEMAND higher fuel economy vehicles until the cost of feeding their inefficient vehicles becomes so painful as to change their driving habits. Some people are reaching that point already. Offering a gas tax holiday now? Just pour a barrel of oil per American down the drain a day... same effect.
As a people, we are wasteful, but we have the capacity to be less so. The Great War and the Great Depression forced Americans to recycle and to make do with less. Of course, they didn't call it recycling back then, but that's exactly what they did--they saved and repurposed everything they could because waste could not be tolerated. We live a time a great plenty, and yet the one resource we need to use more responsibly than all the rest--OIL--we collectively seem to want a quick fix on. Personal sacrifice, either by taking public transit, carpooling or, yes, "settling for" a smaller, more fuel efficient vehicle or spending a little more on a gas-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle? Nonsense, that's beneath *US* in America.
We say this is the Information Age, but I'm wondering when we will actually learn to process and act on that information--now, that would be something to be proud of. Information without critical thought, understanding and responsible action is just static.
Ok, so I have been know to be oversensitive when it comes to animals. And, if it weren't for this particular problem of mine, I would probably have dedicated my life to caring for them (and, who knows, perhaps when I grow up, I still will)!!
I was watching Animal Planet today and a commercial for the ASPCA came on, and it reduced me to tears. I can't stand to see animals that have been abused and neglected by people that promised to take care of them. So with that said, I am not on a new crusade to help the best that I can.
The above link is to the ASPCA website with a donation form. Anything will make a difference for the lives of these animals....will you please help!
Tired of maintaining duplicate blogs. Back to using my GeekHabitat.com domain exclusively. Vox seemed to be real active among my social circle for awhile but has been dead quiet lately. I'll still read but don't see the point to duplicate effort here. Plus no way to run my own AdSense, not that there was much traffic here anyway (duplicate content no good for SERP placement, either.)
I thought this place would be great to hook up with other cyclists, moms, geeks, outdoors enthusiasts but even adding posts to groups results in no connection w/people. It's not social networking if people aren't social, getit?
Seeya!
GeekHabitat.com
deleting this acct in 1 week. Don't like leaving flotsam and jetsam all over the Internet, when I can help it anyway.
Whimper after too long out of the saddle of my road bike?
I am sore, but I am so glad I got off my fat arse and rode with Justin and brother-in-law, David, today.
GPS track, and my heartrate & cadence data for today's ride
According to MotionBased.com, where I log all my outdoor rides, it has been two MONTHS since my last ride--how in the hell did that happen? I did some indoor training rides since then, but they don't show up on MotionBased.com to help my "motivation through publication" since their site is a little crippled in that it won't log rides that lack a GPS track, even if they have cadence (and thus speed + distance) and heart rate data.
Anyhow, the ripe whipped my overly ample arse but in a good way and I am starting a new week feeling energized and ready to try, again, to lose all this excess "baby weight".
Justin's heartrate and cadence data shows his fitness level & my lack thereof -- his heartrate zone was 2.6 avg on the same ride that kept me at 4.4 (of 5 zones!)
Both of these are from Twitter, with thanks to soultravelers3:
Dewitt Jones, a former National Geographic photographer, on why we should "celebrate what's right in the world."
And an inspiring travelblogue (travelogue + blog; did that as a typo but leaving it because it fits!) from a couple who retired early and are now traveling the world with their young daughter. They're presently in Spain on their 20th month of a multi-year trip -- http://www.soultravelers3.com/
I haven't had anything to say so I haven't been blogging much, and I haven't missed it. I've been posting new stuff to Flickr, but even that's been a little slow going (some videos & more pics in queue to go up), and Twitter's received most of my (limited) attention lately. Twitter's forced 140 characters seem right up my alley lately, even if it does result in some hideous abbreviations (my apologies to ALL of my English teachers and professors over the course of my formal education!)
Anyway, my inner geek has been spoiled lately and that's the reason for this blog post. Despite our house apparently entering its midlife crisis, forcing the repair or replacement of some very expensive items, Justin and I both almost wordlessly agreed we need to enjoy some of our money before we go absolutely insane. Justin ordered a new computer (saving about $500 thanks to his brother's employee discount & no tax) and a little while back, a new camera lens. I bought my first Chumby a couple months ago, and a mate for it this past week. The Chumby couple won't technically be within "arm's reach" of one another--one will live in the kitchen/downstairs and the other lives on my bedside table, soon to be mounted on the wall, in direct line of site from the bed. A couple days ago, while surfing Amazon, I noticed the Kindle is finally back in stock and shipping immediately; that got me vacillating between techno-lust and "Shit, $399 is insane..." When Justin gave the nod that it was mine if I wanted it, that opened the gates and I placed my order while visiting my folks today (Saturday).
So, my inner geek is dancing and squeaking with delight, and we're enjoying some hard earned income and "helping the American economy." Yeah, that's the ticket...just doing our part for America!
My Kindle arrives on Wednesday (or Tuesday, but I'm guessing Wednesday) so I'm in the information sponge stage re-reading everything I'd read about it when it came out, and discovering the user-submitted pics on Amazon for it contain a wealth of good little nuggets and tips (bought the book light since it doesn't have a backlit screen and I want to read it, like now, when Justin & Sara are asleep beside me.)
Hope all's well in your neck of the woods. S'all good here, at least 'til something else in the house fails. I don't have the energy to describe the crazy pipe clanging noise that's mysteriously started up in our kitchen. We thought we'd fixed that simply by replacing the water filter in our refrigerator, but no dice.
OK, so I know that the heat today was a little unbearable...but only because it has been so cold this past winter (and especially this past week), but what it is about the heat that makes people so cranky? This particular blog comes from the most ridiculous customer that walked into the restaurant. It was 2, and this older woman (and I believe her mother) came into the restaurant to eat, we were closing, and had either the front section (near the door with a pleasant breeze) or the patio open. The rest of the restaurant was already set up for dinner, and I gave the woman the option where she would like to sit. She chose the patio, and then her mother suddenly perked up and said, she didn't want to sit outside if it was hot...and it was, and I told her so. I wasn't going to lie to get them to come in, be uncomfortable and complain the entire time about it. I suggested the table right in the front by the door, and like I said, there was a nice breeze coming in. The mother scampered out the door before I could finish suggesting it, and her daughter snarled at me and as she was walking out the door, she turned and said to me, 'with a attitude like that, you'll never get customers in here' and, then she was gone. Now, after an EXTREMELY busy brunch, I was tired and did all that I could to bite my tongue...because what I really wanted to say to her was that with an attitude like hers, I felt sorry for whoever did end up serving them their meal. But, I didn't. That's not my style. However, one of the customers that was sitting up front overheard the entire conversation and was baffled at the whole thing. She told me that it was probably best that they didn't come in for brunch, as there would probably have been nothing that could have been done to please them. Odds are that she was right about that. Unfortunately, in our society today, there are people out there are are just permanently unhappy and feel the need to share it with the entire world....it's a shame too, life is too short!
So, about a month ago, our brand new car got hit right out in front of the restaurant. And not just a little ding, I'm talking ripped the license plate right off kind of hit. And, with that came all the pretty little scratches. That being said, the hit was actually witnessed by one of our regular customers...who was kind enough to come over and tell Deano where the car came from (and bring the license plate). It happened to be a friend of one of our neighbors...what floored me was the fact that she didn't even stop to leave a note on the car. Apparently she was under the impression that no one saw her, or she didn't care. I'm guessing that she didn't care. There was a police officer that was just coming back to his car when Deano was going out to look at it and he came over and Deano told him what happened. It was dark, so you really couldn't see much damage...but he did confirm that we were NOT parked anywhere near the driveway itself, we were far enough away that she had to have jumped the curb and hit it.
Now, we have had this car for about 6 months and it's been the victim of a hit and run twice! The first one went unseen, and certainly there was no note put on the car to even say sorry....I am just grateful that this time, there was someone to see it, and was kind enough to give us the information we needed. My parents gave me (us) the car for my birthday last year (it was my dad's and it did not have ONE scratch on it when we got it). Of course, our old truck (the jeep) was never hit once in the two years that we drove it to the city, this is probably due to the fact that it had a steel bumper and anyone in their right mind would be less than smart to tangle with it!
Well, the next day after brunch, Deano and I went over to the neighbors house to talk to them about it. Norman was very nice about it and told us that he would contact the lady that hit us and have her call. Several days later Maureen finally called us, and was not very remorseful about what she did. I believe that her exact words to Deano were 'it happens in San Francisco all the time'...like that is supposed to mean it's ok to hit someone else car. Then she proceeded to go on about how we 'should see the damage to her car.' Huh? I really don't care about the damage to her car, I'm not the one that hit her car! She was so nonchalant about it, like we were imposing on her for something that she did. She told Deano that she would be in at the end of the week to take care of it. I wasn't too surprised when she didn't show up, and Mr. Nice Nice didn't even bother to get her phone number to be able to call her. So, off I go back over to Norman and Rachel's and ask him to have her contact us. She didn't. She did, however tell Norman that she would be in sometime next week to take care of it. Again, no show. Norman came in for brunch that weekend and asked if she showed up, Deano talked to him and told him no. He was so embarassed. He told Deano that if she didn't show up the following week to let him know and he would personally bring her in and get it resolved. About another week or so went by and still nothing, so this past Tuesday before work I went over and Rachel answered the door. I explained to her that Maureen still had not come over and that I had no way of getting ahold of her. She was speechless, apparently Maureen had given them the impression that she had taken care of it, and she turned red with embarasment. I told her that this has been something that happened almost a month ago and that I wanted it taken care of, now. I told her that I would give Maureen until Wednesday to get us her insurance information or I would be going to the police and file a hit and run report (which, in San Francisco, is punishable by up to 6 months in jail and $2500 in fines ~ all on top of the cost to fix the property that was damaged). Now, I am not a vengeful person, but I am a responsible person and had I hit someone else's car and did damage, it would keep me awake at night if I just walked away from it. However, this was something that I obviously needed to threaten to even get a reaction from this woman. And, it worked. Suddenly the very next day she was on the phone with Deano, scheduling a time with him to come over and get it taken care of...and has since called him twice to give him status on her insurance.
Now, as I sat yesterday out front talking to my mom on the phone, I see a gentleman get into his old beat up Honda and while trying to get out of his parking spot, hit the brand spanking new Infinity in front of him; not once, but twice. The first hit left a nasty crack in the new bumper and the second hit left a really nice paint scratch...and he just drove off. Good thing for me sitting there and writing down his license plate number and make of car. I left a note on the car that was damaged, along with my name and told them I saw what happened and to contact me if they needed a statement. What is it about our society today that people feel that it's okay to do something like that and just walk away? It's sad that it has come to this....
I could go on forever about this, but it's late and I need my princess sleep!
What have you lost that you wish you still had?
Submitted by gunderson bee.
My sanity.
