here’s life

Today I went to work, and scheduled the same meeting as my boss—a week earlier.
Today I ate my lunch with a laminated card because I didn’t have a spoon.
Today I went to walmart and bought shoes I have needed for months.
Today I bought a toilet brush and have a sparkling toilet bowl.
Today I cleaned up my living room for a bible study that only the leader showed up to.
Today I drank a Jones Soda for the first time.
Today I watched the Blues Brothers behind a coffee shop.
Today I drove home in 13 minutes.

This morning I went over to my small group leader’s house, and after breakfast, we started making a garden in their backyard. We didn’t have a tiller, so we used shovels to turn in the grass. A couple robins stopped by to find the bugs that we uncovered, and we would toss them grubs, which they would carry away in their beaks. By noon we had a three-cornered lot about fifteen feet by ten feet. It is going to take some work to get the grass dead—especially the wiregrass (thankfully, there isn’t much of that). Next step is to chop up the grass as it continues to grow, and once it is sufficiently dead, and the clods broken up, we will plant some stuff. Not sure what to plant yet, probably some pepper plants and tomato plants. Some beans would be good. I’d like to dig up some small spots elsewhere in the yard and put in some winter squash. Probably put down gobs of grass clippings. We do need to gather grass clippings, but that doesn’t seem to hard. This afternoon I got about a dozen bags—they are in my car, waiting to be transfered to the backyard. I hope they don’t permanently make my car smell…

This afternoon, after a nap, I went and played volleyball with some people from work. We had a good time.
I’m thinking that gardening is going to help fill my need to dig things and do things, and I may not have to build a house. Like it would be possible.

Thursday I drove south instead of home after work. I followed this aproximate route. Mulvane is on the line between Sedgwick and Sumner Counties, and Udall is in Cowley. Udall is about 30 minutes from work, while Mulvane is only about 17. But, driving around down there, I began to question if I actually wanted to live out in the rural areas, so far from my (few) friends and other things of interest that cities provide. The significance of the counties is that Sumner and Cowley do not appear (at first glance) to have building codes, so I would have more freedom to experiment with unconventional building methods. It would mean a lot more digging than I did today—my hands are sore, and almost blistered in some places. It seems like a cool idea, but then I realize that I can’t seem to find the motivation to wash my dishes or clean up my house, or even finish building a piece of furniture—what makes me think I could keep at something like building a house, and then living with the results?
Meanwhile, here is a cool modular home company.

So, I’m getting ready for bed, and I look out my window, and see a reflection of flames in the windows of the building across from me. Orange flickering light. Yes, it’s a reflection of my building. Third floor. Something is burning. The lightning flashes in the gathering storm clouds. Well, I’d better figure out what it is. I walk outside an look up. Flames alright. From the Tiki torches on the third floor balcony. Intentional. Another boring night. That’s good.

I have been driving my 1990 Mazda Protege for over 3 years. Every time I filled it with gas, I would write down the information—I wouldn’t have, except my sister had a notebook of the information, so I just continued. I’m glad I did, now I have a record of every (almost) tank of gas this beater has drunk. Below is the last year of data.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pX6diIF07I8p4Z_yl_V4fZw
As you can see, I’ve done a good many miles—about 1000 per month, and that costs me about $100. How could I reduce this? I could buy a car that gets better than 26 mpg. I could not drive so much. If I cut out my ~monthly multi-hundred-mile trips (seen by dates near each other), I could reduce how much I spend—but at what cost? Not seeing friends and family? I could also buy a car that uses diesel, and get used cooking oil for free, and turn it to biodiesel for about 80 cent/gallon. At the same mileage, that’s about a third the price.
But, for that, I really should have a garage to store/process the oil. So, I should buy a house with a garage. And instead of renting at $460 per month, I could buy a house with a (460+70)/month mortgage. At 30 years and 6.5%, that means I could buy an $84,000 house (with garage) and I’d only end up paying 190,800 dollars by the time I was done (if I didn’t refinance). So, when I was 56, I would have a house, free and clear! And if apprieciation was 3%, I could sell it for a good 127,440! That could buy my RV so I could retire and travel around the country. Only RV’s will cost alot more then, so maybe it would buy my 4th car, and a tent, and I could travel in style.
If there were other options for Americans, maybe I could make it work out better.

Jess and Robert have updated their blog! Pictures of Moravia, with hints of more posting in the future: http://wesatterinafield.blogspot.com/

net business opportunity: an add-on for myspace, facebook, blogger, del.icio.us, youtube, etc that pulls them all together into a common interface that is better and allows you to add content to any of them, and it self populates over them all. That way, you don’t stick with something that is mediocre because of a lock-in and all your friends are there—all your friends are everywhere. And it’s all connected. It’s Web 2.0^2. Who wants to help me?

Here’s the thing. Capitalism works, and it works well. But, companies have realized that they don’t have to be the best, or even very good, all they go to do is use advertizing to hook customers, and then set things up so they are stuck. Or, be big enough that customers really have no other choice. (how many cable providers can you access?) What lets this work is the sad truth: People put up with it! People don’t demand, or even ask for the option to easily move on to something different if something better comes along. They put their lives into myspace, knowing that if virb.com comes along, they can’t move—their information, their cool profile setup, their global network, it’s all stuck in myspace. And they don’t tell Tom “I’d like to have export options. And if you could make friend requests, bullitin board posts, and messages all RSS so I can just plug them into my new blog, that would be great. I’m not going to sign up for your 24/7 ad machine until I know I can leave when I want to.” If the companies had that kind of customers, the customers would be better served, because the companies would have to actually compete on quality of service. Not just compete on the ability to get that initial sign up.

So, your mission, is to become a customer that cares about quality, that cares about choice. Also, if you want to, let’s build a system that short circuits the corporate lock-in strategy. At least for online social networking. We’ll work on telcom’s later.

Today I went to my Tuesday evening Bible study. We hold it in a side room at a coffee shop in the River Side area of town. It’s a somewhat up-scale part of town, lots of single family dwellings lining the river and the parks folded into the bends of the river. As I approached the coffee shop, I noticed, that although I was only 5 minutes early, there was nobody at our usual glass table. Then I realized that it was Monday. So, I figured I’d do something with my life other than go home and scroll through webcomics. I went to a nearby park, and looked at the native animals (mostly birds, a few turtles, a bobcat even!). They keep them in this big cage box near the edge of the park. There were kids playing in the water-fountain-and-sprayer section of the park. I didn’t join them, but set off in search of the local library. I found it, near the Convention Center and some lots that are being torn up (either to put in some parking, or an arena the local government’s good ol’ boys have been itching for—a smaller-than promised arena for a sales tax that has gone on longer-than-promised,,anyway…) I found the library and go myself a library card. It seemed like a good place—the central branch among many all over town. Too bad it’s on the short-list for being replaced with a casino. Will someone please think of the children? ….who’s schools will get all this money from the casino so they can, say, learn math better.
They said that the first time, I could only check out two books, and once I returned them, I could check out more. So, I chose C.S. Lewis’s Boxen, and a guide for homeowners who wanted energy independance.
I was almost home when I remembered I had wanted to check the local grocery store’s dumpster, since I am trying to move toward anti-establishmentism. But alas, they had a stupid compactor bin. So I drove home without. I’m kinda hungry.

Here is a place by my apartment that could really use a rain garden

Should I ask permission, or just do it?