Mosshead

list of productivity blogs

i’m always on the lookout for good ideas in productivity and organization. This list of 50 productivity blogs will be fun to cull through when I find the time.

Add comment July 14th, 2008

car swap-a-roo

5 years ago A and I had some conversations about whether we really needed to be a 2 car family and decided that there was no reason for us to have more than 1 car.

We live in a bicycle-friendly area where nearly anywhere we need to go is 10 miles or less away. So we envisioned what our transportation situation should be …. Does “transportation situation” sound funny? Yeah. One of the things about living on the west coast is that public transportation is limited and destinations are far away. I’d say that many west coasties feel dependent upon our transportation and our transportation is a type of self expression.

Anyway, the first part of our plan was to get better road bikes for around town. It took us a while, but after we built our kayaks, we’d built up a nice dividend from REI from the kayaking gear we’d bought. So, armed with dividend and REI gift cards, I got an awesome lightweight road bike. My Carema won’t be a classic collector’s item, but it’s fast and fun and gets me out there.

There are about 3 months of predictably inclement weather in western Washington and sometimes we need to drive a car to haul things too big for a bike. Our short term plan was to use the Jetta since that’s what we had. The long term plan though is to do an EV conversion for our around-town car. A home EV conversion will generally get about 30 mi travel distance before a recharge is needed and that’s plenty for in-town errands.

So last year, I purchased the donor car - a 1963 Ford Falcon Futura (we like the model name and it’s a cool looking car that’s light enough). We haven’t had time to do much with the Futura yet other than to kick the tires and rust spots and strategize how to deal with the rust spot/s. That’s okay, we’ll get there.

So, it’s 5 years after that original conversation and the jetta’s electrical issues have become a real problem … no horn, no high beams (yes I changed the bulbs), only the driver’s window can be rolled down.

Our lifestyle has changed in the past 5 years. 4 years ago, I was finishing my degree and had grown overweight from a sedentary lifestyle. Riding my bicycle helped me lose quite a bit of that weight. So, since then we’ve both become more active. We built kayaks a few years ago, fell in love with mountain biking last year and became obsessed with skiing this year. And we feel pretty committed to continuing with that trend

Actually, it’s probably more of a near-mid-life thing … where many women our age are having an “oops I forgot to have a baby” moment, we also had an “oops I forgot to play” moment.

So … the jetta is about to die an ugly electrical death the way that jettas do. And we really want a camper for mountain biking trips and skiing next year. We figure if we get a season’s ski pass for next year it will mostly pay off if we’re going up on weekends and staying the night in a camper.

The upshot of that is I’m about to buy my first expensive vehicle - a 2004 Nissan Titan. Big by most standards, but it’s the smallest truck that has enough payload for a small camper. It’s a scary grown-up decision - the most expensive vehicle I’ve ever bought was $3500. I’m a sucker for both older and future classics.

So, we’ll give the jetta to A’s mother who needs a new car, we’ll look for a bike trailer on freecycle or craigslist so we can haul more with our bikes instead of driving (namely we just need to be able to haul 5 gal water about 1x a week). And we’ll have this hurking truck … that gets 13mpg … with gas at $4/gal.

I have fantasies of getting the ffv option that’s available for the truck and finding an ethanol source … but those really are fantasies at the moment.

I sure hope it’s worth it.

Add comment April 23rd, 2008

volunteer travel resources online

Idealist.org
Probably the most comprehensive listing of organizations that need volunteers from 1 week to 6 months. Some organizations will pay transportation costs as well as provide housing.

Life Changing Travel 
is a  travel agency specializing in placing people with a volunteer opportunity. Not a bad idea for busy people who don’t have time to do all the research.

TripSpot
listing of organizations that offer volunteer travel

GoAbroad.com 
I think this has been around for a while. At least I seem to recall hearing about them when I was in college. I think they’re pretty oriented toward students

Add comment July 14th, 2007

get grandpa’s fbi file

interesting - you can get your grandparent’s fbi files. I imagine there  must be some fascinating stories in there from world war II, the McCarthy era, the cold war … so many periods of paranoia stacked one of top of the other.

http://getgrandpasfbifile.com

Add comment June 13th, 2007

Linux proliferation could cut e-waste in half

via eco-geek

About 3 years ago I went to a microsoft presentation about Longhorn . The crowd gasped when the presenter commented that the next version of Windows was 500% more resource intensive than XP.

It’s possible that since then they managed to wrangle in some of that 500% increase but Microsoft Vista has been heartily criticized for it’s resource-intensiveness which renders perfectly good hardware obsolete. As people upgrade to Vista, they’ll hopefully at least recycle their now-obsolete computers responsibly at a place like FreeGeek. Even so, recycling perfectly good hardware to make a software upgrade seems a bit silly and wasteful.
There are many reasons that businesses won’t upgrade to linux desktops, but there are more reasons than ever for home computer users to consider a linux desktop instead.    The community documentation has come a long way to this end.

Unfortunately, I work in a business that does require me to get a copy of Vista for testing .NET development. I wouldn’t do .NET development if the entire state of Washington wasn’t committed to it, but if I want to do any state contracts, I have to. Seems like a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars. Hopefully it’ll run in a VM environment.  We’ll see.

Add comment March 4th, 2007