Today marks the 80th birthday of Fred “Mister” Rogers. Since this was one of my favorite shows growing up, you know I’m rocking my “new to me” sweater for Sweater Day.
So let’s all just sit back, put on our sweaters and remember the old faithful third verse.
So, let’s make the most of this beautiful day
Since we’re together we might as well say
Would you be mine, could you be mine
Won’t you be my neighbor
Won’t you please, won’t you please
Please won’t you be my neighbor
Sure, I’m the one with a barcode on my neck. Sure, I’m the one who uses a different password for every possible login on the internet. Even so, that much security can be a real pain in the ass. I have two double encrypted key fobs just to keep my passwords straight, and that does not even include all of them for work! As I have been blogging more lately, I have been commenting on other blogs as well. I’m realized that I was at the point where I didn’t want to leave a comment if I had to register again. (Listen up cooperate sites). And since I’m exhausted, both mentally and physically I’m only doing a quick upgrade/update tonight. You can now login to this blog using OpenID. Or in other words the same login you use at wordpress, or Yahoo. With Google running OpenID testing on Blogger, I just wonder what Microsoft will come out with next…
Also, if all goes well I’m now sending out proper pings to the update services.. .We shall see.
Old news? Sure, I’m a little slow. So it looks like Discovery Home is now going to become Planet Green. Which I think is kinda cool, they already have a pretty neat site. Although, it is currently broken, and I am unable to leave comments on the articles.
First-ever 24-hour television network in the United States: Beginning in 2008, Discovery Home Channel will re-brand as the first 24-hour green channel in the United States. The network, expected to debut in over 50 million U.S. homes, will be dedicated to the highest quality programming for a green lifestyle. The network’s content will provide entertaining, authentic and quality information for such categories as eco-design, organic food and green architecture.
$50 million Original Programming Investment: Discovery is investing $50 million to create the highest quality content focused on sustainable development, conservation, organic lifestyles and healthy living across the company’s portfolio of 14 U.S. television networks. The priority will be on core genres such as science and technology, transportation and ecotourism, engineering, home greening and organic living. The first major content initiative will be Discovery Channel’s new special series, TEN WAYS TO SAVE THE PLANET. This ambitious series, premiering 3Q08, will be a global effort to find solutions to the planet’s most serious environmental threats, and will work with the world’s leading eco-scientists to test innovative and ground-breaking ideas, including wrapping glaciers in thermal blankets to stop their melting, dropping thousands of saplings from planes to provide mass reforestation, and painting entire towns white to reflect the sun.
$50 million in original programming? I an full of ideas, and I know the people to get it done. Anyone want to be in a show? JR?
And to celebrate post 100, as you may notice, that I now have a list of people to smack, no longer a list of people to kill. I think as I’m getting older and (cough) wiser, I think it better to smack them instead. Hey, it’s progress.
A few weeks ago Starbucks closed all of their stores for 3 hours so that they could “retrain” all of their employees. Well that opened the flood gates for plenty of free or steeply discounted coffee for the same 3 hour period. Which, fueled the hell out of the bloggers, and there was plenty of free publicity. So that’s about all I’m going to say on that one. But I will get on a bit of a rant here. Now I love Starbucks, not as much as I love Dunkin’ Donuts, but I do love them. I just hate that I can’t order a “large coffee”, actually I can because I kinda want “iIl Will” style one day at my local Starbucks and now I don’t get any shit about my coffee. As I digress, I have to be honest I can’t stand the pretentious coffee experience at Starbucks. As far as the coffee is concerned, I like Dunkin’ Donuts better, even if it is in a crappy styrofoam cup.
Dunkin’ Donuts does have some big balls though, just look at one of their commercials from 2006 (this is still one of the funniest ones). How could you hate anyone that has John Goodman doing a voice over? Then again, Dunkin’ Donuts is a private company, and let’s be honest it is not an American company any longer. So once again, our dollars are leaving as fast as we plunk them down on the counter.
Although it may seem like I’m bashing Starbucks, well I guess I sorta am, I still like them. They give me free coffee! Well free coffee grinds that they have used and would otherwise toss out because no one in Medford would even think of reusing something. But again, I digress. Starbucks has a really nifty program called “Grounds for Growers“. Which is exactly what it sounds like, they give you the used coffee grounds and you can use them to compost.
Coffee grounds make a great “green” to mix with your “browns” aka leaves. So I now have two hot compost piles which I’m experimenting with. The first is a BioStack system that I purchased for $20 from Lowes because it was dirty and they were willing to play “Let’s make a deal”. The second, is a trashcan which I have drilled holes along the sides for aeration. I was originally going to try running this as a closed system, but discovered that even the expensive commercial tumblers have a lot of air flo.
My garden is going to kick even more ass this year than it did last year. If all goes well, I’m going to be up to my ears in fresh salads and veggies all while paying nearly nothing for maintenance. I also have another idea for the grounds which I plan to enact before the winter months, but I’ll explain that when I get more details worked out.
Well here we go again, and I’m excited! It is SJ Hot Chefs :: Restaurant Week! Tonight we will be running out to one of the places on the list with the family crew for Jane’s birthday. This should be exciting as I love the menu, and I think I’ve needed another good night out. :) Check out “the other site” for a review in a few hours/days.
I have been doing a lot of analysis over the past few weeks on my life. Perhaps it is because I have quit smoking, or I’ve been trying to live a bit greener, or who knows. One of my life goals however, is to get my finances in order. I figured now is as good of a time to start as any. Most recently I’ve been really checking over all of my investments, and I started to think about forming a good budget plan. Not something that is set in stone, but something that I can adapt as needed. For instance, restaurant week is coming up here in South Jersey and I really want to play. Going out a few nights a week is something that would be out of my normal realm unless I’m doing reviews. So a workable budget plan needs to be formed. Since I’ve become pretty much addicted to twitter, and to “life on the web” in comes buxfer. What is buxfer? Well from their first tour page they claim to help you :
How much money (or debt!) you have in your accounts
The breakdown of your recent expenses
Who owes you money and who you owe money to
I’ve gone ahead and imported my credit cards, my bank account, and via twitter, I’m now keeping track of the amount of money in my pocket down to the penny. Why would I want to do this? I’m now accountable, for everything I spend. With the tagging feature (which I find is a lot easier to use than Quickbooks or Quicken) I can look back and wonder what possessed me to spend $150 at Starbucks instead of packing my lunch. So far, I have about 6 months of solid data. Unfortunately most of those six months were right smack in the middle of my bad habits and bad spending. So I’m going to really start to use this month as a reference point. Just doing a quick review though, I spent too much money on interest and late fees (sadly not Blockbuster), so I know where I need to improve.
I can also see this being useful for doing the household finances. This way household bills can be split in a variety of ways, and everyone in the house can pay their fair share. Wish me luck, here we go.
Well as you may or (probably) not have noticed, I’ve been updating my status via Twitter. What does this meant to you? Well not much unless you want to follow my every move… Well not my every move, just the ones I want you to know about. So what did I do today? The short version is we got up, nursed our hangover’s a little with some coffee and got our day moving. Then after some relaxation and much needed hydration, it was on to a few different tasks. First up, the daily check of the wormies. Who, are doing much better it seems. Since I’ve added the cardboard and some extra paper they are not crawling up the walls nearly as much as they were the first day. I’m pretty excited about them actually. I’ve started to green up my life a bit, and hopefully make few steps at living better overall. I fully intend to write a little about them very shortly, hopefully tomorrow. It was then time to go out and stir up my compost pile a bit. Since the wormies didn’t arrive as quickly as I had planned for them (3 weeks late) I had way too many coffee grinds stocked up. I decided to go out into the compost pile and go for broke and just dump everything I had into it. Hopefully there are some solid results and I didn’t just totally screw my green/brown ratio. I now have two experiments in composting running, the objectives are to have a “hot pile” with the least amount of work. And of course, on the cheap as I think that is the only way that most people will pay attention. I’ll be reporting more on those as soon as I have more solid info.
Next up, we went searching for two places to put a GeoCache, I think we may have found a few potential candidates but we need a bit more time. Then it was off to the store for a few sweet desert items, then we hit a geocache on the way to MayMay’s. Sadly I didn’t find it first, this is quite rare as in my head i think I find them all first. Even still, it was a fantastic day to be out and about and getting some fresh air. The wine started flowing, and a great time was had by all. I of course had one of my favorite food’s MayMay’s Lasagna.. mmmm…. Sadly we never made it Kristen’s game, but there is always next time.
After messing around for nearly a week on my test site, I give up. I finally decided it would be easier to just give up and start with a new, fresh widget ready theme for wordpress. What are widgets? Well that allows me to be a bit more lazy, and allows me to be a bit more compliant with some web standards. In other words, the previous theme was bugging me and that’s about it.
So what’s new so far, as of right now I have added twitter to the right sidebar. I’m going to do my best to update it as often as possible. Why you ask? Well that’s a great question if I do say so myself. One of the things that I have been devoting a lot of thought to recently is how much time I’m putting into different projects and or tasks. For instance, I currently spend an entire work day a week in my car just commuting from work. That works out to be just over 21 days a year of my life wasted in my car. So what am I going to do? I’m not quite sure. Part of me has considered going back to audio books, perhaps it’s time to pick Spanish back up. That does seem to be a direction we are heading after all. But I digress, I breathe deep, and I don’t really want to go smoke.. No really, I don’t.
Speaking of cigarette smoking.
51 days, 41 minutes and 46 seconds smoke free.
1531 cigarettes not smoked.
$459.00 and 11 days, 16 hours of your life saved.
I’m not really sure where the $459 is hanging out at, my guess it took a dump along with GM this week.
My immediate plans for this site are to either update the categories, and add tags to the site, or ditch them both. Who knows, it could be some variation of the same, or totally different. This site has had so many changes since 2003, so many posts/changes and improvements. I do promise not to sound like a self help book though. I’m going to be adding openID to the login’s, as well as some other cool “web 2.0″ and buzzword friendly items. In other words, it’s about damn time I updated.
Castro has stepped down as the Cuban president! Could this be the end of the embargo? Will I finally be able to get my cigars and rum legally? Just think, in the next few years we could be heading to Cuba for a nice little vacation. It is only 90 miles south of Key West after all. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the only think that has kept Cuba afloat is their tourist economy. Why not look at this as a growth possibility, anyone want to open a hotel/bed and breakfast? News article here, Castro resigns
