93 posts from 2008

From Justin: —- Took the plunge and traded a 1/2-ton pickup truck for a 30lb mountain bike for the commute to work this morning. It was quite the experience, here’s my blog post: Bike Geek: A carbon-free day… When it was all said and done, with 26 miles or so of riding, I saved two gallons of gas and burned [...]

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I wrote an entry on Monday, but with too many browser windows open I managed to nuke it before it could be saved to drafts. It’s 1:30 AM and I am exhausted, but not enough to preclude me from posting a quick stream of consciousness recap: * Sammy is doing very well. You can follow his [...]

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Sammy is doing well and his folks are hanging in there. There are some post-op pics of Sammy up on Erika’s Flickr stream, all with him sitting up and noshing on goodies like juice and a popsicle. For the latest, as always, check Sammy’s HLHS blog and Erika’s Twitter feed. Keep up the good [...]

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Folks, please keep the good thoughts and prayers going. Eka posted this on Twitter but had no time and energy to post it here — [From http://www.twitter.com/erikarenee] “Exhausted. VERY hard seeing Sammy post-op. Harder than making it through surgery. Jay staying at hospital w/Sammy, I’m @ hotel for night.” So we need to keep the vibe [...]

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I do this occasionally so this shouldn’t come as any surprise. I’ve been a long-time reader of Eka’s (Erika’s) blog since even long before Samson (Sammy) was born in late February 2006; she, Sammy and Jay are my “virtual family” insofar as my family and close friends know them through my conversations. Anyway, Sammy’s heart [...]

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Sorry for the absence of posts. I’ve been busy, sick (since Friday) and just generally predisposed to do “micro-blogging” via my Twitter account lately. There you can find me chatting about motherhood, geekery, cycling, hybrid vehicles and who knows what else. Don’t forget my Flickr feed, as well; I generally send at least a [...]

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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.

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!)