Earth Hour

Can you find the chipmunk in this photo? It's not too hard if you click on the thumbnail. This is a photo from last year, but I am posting it to say that we can finally see some of our lawn after an unusually long winter. The snow is melting ever so slowly.

I was bewildered when I went to Google's web site today and found it all black. I thought something was wrong with my computer, but it turned out that Google was marking Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife fund. I don't usually pay much attention to the activities of environmental groups, but this event seems to be getting global interest. Last week I wrote about those compact fluorescent bulbs, but I use them only to save money. It would be nice to see more of these events so more people would take saving energy more seriously. Then maybe someday, I could afford to fill my gas tank again.

This week I finished working on a memorial dvd for my girlfriend's stepfather who passed away last year. I found a free program called MemoriesOnWeb for making Ken Burns style slide shows. They also have a program called MemoriesOnTV which will allow you to generate higher resolution slide shows for DVD. The Pro version costs about 90 bucks. But with it, you can place multiple photos on a single slide, which looks quite impressive.

Early Easter

We received another blast of snow this week in Wisconsin. I was hoping to go out of town for Easter but the weather didn't cooperate. This year I noticed that Easter seemed to fall a few weeks earlier than normal. I didn't know this but there is actually a formula that is used to calculate Easter each year. It is a floating holiday that falls on the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon. Easter Sunday can fall on one of 35 dates between March 22 to April 25.

This week I heard a story on the news about those new compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs and what can happen if you improperly dispose of them or accidentally break one. Apparently all fluorescent bulbs contain a small amount of mercury. Experts describe mercury as a potent neurotoxin which could be extremely harmful to your health and the environment.

I'm sure you can see the irony here; they save energy, but they also have the potential to ruin the environment, which is what we are trying to protect by reducing our energy usage. I have a few in my home and now that I know about this I will be more careful when I handle them. I'm sure better warning labels and consumer training material will follow. But congress should have thought about that before they passed a law phasing out inefficient incandescent bulbs by 2012.

Stratus Time

My 1999 Dodge Stratus has been sitting in the garage since early December. But the snow is finally starting to melt, so I think it's time to take it out again. Plus it gets a lot better gas mileage than my truck. I can't understand why the Stratus has such a poor reputation. The one I have has a V6, a sun roof, and full power. I haven't had any mechanical problems in the two years since I got it. I wanted something bigger than a Neon and the Stratus was the most reasonably priced used model I could find. It may not have the perceived quality of a Camry or Accord, but as long as it keeps running I'll be happy.

Speaking of perceptions, what is up with the economy? If you watch the nightly news, you would get the impression that everything was in a tail spin. Most of the experts can't even decide if we are in a recession or not. Making everyone afraid to use their money is not going to help. Of course if you just lost your house or job, that's a different story. I wrote an article a while back about how I survived 15 years of layoffs. After recently reading it again, I decided to post it on my web site. I'm not sure if it can help anyone, but with times the way they are, I thought it was an article that needed to be shared.

Wood Work

This past week I built a book shelf for my living room. I find that working with wood is a nice change from working with computers all day. I think I would have done well as a carpenter, although I prefer working on smaller projects, like furniture. My wood working tools are quite limited at this time, but someday I hope to have a larger assortment.

Much has been said about the retirement of Brett Farve this week. I'm glad that he decided to leave football before he was forced out by injury or diminished performance. I'm sure it won't be long before we see of him again in TV commercials. Maybe he will have time to appear in more movies. True fans will remember his cameo appearance in "There's something about Mary" (1998).

With spring almost upon us, I want to highlight the web site of Ever-Green Services. They provide lawn care, landscaping, and irrigation service to Eau Claire, Wisconsin and surrounding areas. Checkout their web site and give them a call or use their online contact form.

Cable vs. DSL

It's hard to think about spring when this is the view from your front window on the 1st day of March. But, I have fully recovered from the flu that I had last week, so that's a good thing. I suspect that the snow will eventually melt and we will get to spend some time outdoors again. When that day comes, it will be hard to justify my cable bill. When I received my bill this week it had gone up by $16. It looks like the 6 month discount rate on the expanded basic has elapsed.

So this week I was looking at ways to reduce my expenses to cover the cable price increase. I have three options in my area for Internet service. Cable (which I have now), wireless service, or DSL from AT&T. The best deal looks like DSL. But you need to have local phone service, which I don't have. They have a deal where you can get local phone and 1.5 DSL for $65 per month. But I would have to drop my cell phone and cable Internet before my monthly bill will go down. It looks like cable is still the best value. But a lot of people, like me, are starting to look very had for ways to stretch their communication and entertainment dollars. This is going to be a challenging year for those of us who are trying to maintain a budget.