Archive for the ‘Other Schtuff’ Category

One of the guys I do some work for has been in the market for a couple new commercial vehicles. He has been looking at getting a couple new vans to help him while moving equipment from one location to another, as well as transporting more stuff while he is at it.

Right now, all he has is a small pickup truck, and well, needless to say, that is not too efficient, especially on days when it’s raining. He has his eye on a couple vans for sale and plans to buy one in the near future.

I guess it’s better to check out the deals on a new van than to continue moving his band’s equipment in a truckbed that is not secure, not protected from the weather, and most importantly, seems to be falling apart more and more each time I talk to him on the phone.

He doesn’t seem to have a problem when he knows where his band will be playing well in advance, maybe he strategically locates the vehicle beforehand, I don’t know, but I do know that when they have three or four dates right in a row, he ends up running into some kind of trouble and wishes that he had a van. I bet he looks at van deals before the weekend, and ends up driving home in one.

As long as he doesn’t call me for help in the middle of the race, I don’t care.

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I spent last weekend cleaning up the yard with the family. It is amazing how much stuff gets shoved into the garage, and how much crap builds up in the backyard over the winter months. It took a lot of work, but I must say, when all was said and done, the place looks great again.

I took the old mountain bike out of the garage and cleaned it up, checked the tires and the brakes, and went for a spin around the neighborhood. It was foggy while I was riding and I was immediately taken back to my college days in Hawaii.

Soon after I arrived in Hawaii, I purchased a bicycle to ride back and forth from the University. I saw others riding and thought it would be a cool way to fit in. Little did I know that most of those people were using motorized bicycles to get up and down the hills around the college.

After the first day I knew that I had to get a motorized bicycle or stop riding my bike to school. You see, the ride to the school was great, I could get there in about 15 minutes, it was all downhill. The ride home however took 2 hours and was uphill the whole way.

I had a great time living in Hawaii, but I never did find any bicycle engines while I was there. So where did everyone else get them?

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Maybe this is what NASCAR is aiming for with their “Car Of Tomorrow”.

Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say.

GM, parts suppliers, university engineers and other automakers all are working on vehicles that could revolutionize short- and long-distance travel. And Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas GM (GM, Fortune 500) Chief Executive Rick Wagoner will devote part of his speech to the driverless vehicles.

“This is not science fiction,” Larry Burns, GM’s vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview.

I have a gut feeling that this season will not be quite as exciting as the past several seasons, strictly because of the Car of Tomorrow. But that’s just my opinion.

On this second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, please take a moment to remember the victims. More than 1.1 million volunteers have responded to help but more are still needed, and many homes have still not been rebuilt.

Oh sure, everyone knows about the “refugees” of Hurricane Katrina, and many of us, myself included, have our own horror stories about “non-victims” who attempted to take advantage of the system or even demanded that people “take care of them”. But I am not concerned with those people now, as they have disappeared back into the slimy little holes they crawled out of. The people I am concerned about are the real victims of Katrina. The people who took all the proper precautions and fled when they knew the storm was bearing down on them.

Since the day of the disaster, Americans have donated over 14 million hours of volunteer service to help rebuild New Orleans and the other affected areas. This has been the single biggest volunteer response to a disaster in our nation’s history, but there are still many jobs to be done, lots of work to be completed, and many people who still cannot return to their homes.

Several people I know had homes in the affected areas, and luckily most of them have been able to return or have settled elsewhere around the country, but let’s take a moment out of our day and do what we can to help. Heck, I’m not asking you to volunteer, or even donate money, I’m simply asking you to help raise awareness so others will remember as well.

Earlier today my wife discovered talkr.com.

Talkr.com is a free service which takes your text based blog and creates an audio podcast feed so visitors can listen to your posts rather than read them.

Each post on this site will have a link to listen to the post, and I will be adding a subscribe button in the sidebar as I get time.

For now, you can subscribe to the audio feed with this link (subscribe)

Pretty cool stuff if you ask me.

 
There are an estimated 170,000 people in the United States and Europe who are in need of organs. Many of them face a very dark future and may die if they don’t receive the organs they so desperately need. Over 70,000 people in the United States alone are waiting for kidneys and deceased organ donations are not keeping pace with the demand.

There is a growing need for live donations, and Matching Donors is working to fulfill that need. Matching Donors helps match those willing to donate an organ with those who are so desperately waiting to receive one.

Living donors can safely donate a single kidney, part of their liver, a single lung lobe (out of the five they have), and portions of their pancreas, bone marrow and instestines.

Take a moment out of your day to visit Matching Donors and learn about live organ donation.