GeekGal's Blog

Adversity Spurs Innovation & Adaptation

nobody@vox.com(geekgal) — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:48:22 -0500

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?

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Gas Tax Holiday?

nobody@vox.com(geekgal) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:50:50 -0500

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.

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Bye -- Back to GeekHabitat.com

nobody@vox.com(geekgal) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:13:58 -0500

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.

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I Am Woman, Hear Me...

nobody@vox.com(geekgal) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 20:33:23 -0500

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!)

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Celebrate What's Right in the World

nobody@vox.com(geekgal) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:40:25 -0500

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/

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Inner Geek = Happy

nobody@vox.com(geekgal) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:27:37 -0500

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.

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Twitter’s Offline?

nobody@vox.com(geekgal) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:15:51 -0500

If a bird chirps in the forest and no one’s around to hear it, is it really chirping at all? Sorry, just bastardizing a quote since it appears Twitter.com is borked/totally offline. I can’t access it by HTTP or Twhirl (a Twitter desktop client). I guess it’s a testament to how much I’ve been using it [...]

:: 500 character article excerpt; visit GeekHabitat.com for more. ::

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Dammit!

nobody@vox.com(geekgal) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:16:07 -0500

Reposted from Twitter because I’m too pissed off to want to blog it – * Sigh. The tire we had patched last saturday (and left a camping trip early TO patch)? It’s FLAT. * There’s a RAZOR BLADE in my tire. I am beginning to think I need to check behind and under my car anytime [...]

:: 500 character article excerpt; visit GeekHabitat.com for more. ::

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The "Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch

nobody@vox.com(geekgal) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:56:12 -0500

The "Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch

At the time he gave this lecture (August 2007), he was only expected to live less than 6 mos. The lecture is about childhood dreams and/or helping others achieve their dreams.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5700431505846055184

I am glad to say he is also still alive, although he was recently hospitalized. But he spoke to the U.S. Congress on March 18, 2008 -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch

Anyway, worth watching if you have any time to watch it in its entirety at some point.

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Vox Needs to Support Flickr Videos

nobody@vox.com(geekgal) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:22:33 -0500

Walking & Talking

Cuz this is not as compelling as this --> http://flickr.com/photos/wildtexas/2401682334/

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