Fat Guy on a Little Bike

Screw Google

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:02:00 +0000

Google has decided in their empirical wisdom that I violated the terms and agreements of the Adsense service and therefore am no longer eligible for the service.

Because they have not told me what I did wrong I'm pissed at them. (I’m saying this in very nice terms. Last night when it all came to a head I was less than g-rated.)

I’m not surprised. My recent post where I discussed the ads was probably what caused it. But they need to be man enough to tell me what caused it and not refer to the terms and conditions over and over, and send me form letter after form letter. Besides, according to their terms and conditions my post the other day did not violate a single one of them. But what can you do? They have a monopoly service and no need to give a shit about me.

I’m not going to waste my time on them anymore. I copied my blog over to Wordpress. (Surprisingly easy to do. Took about 15 minutes.)

Here is the new location.
http://fatguyonalittlebike.wordpress.com/

I just set this all up last night so it isn’t finished, but at least you’ll be able to read what I write, if you are interested in doing that. Sorry for the change up.

I also will never use their services again. I have little respect for companies that treat people like this. It seems to flash in the face of their motto about being “nice” to everyone.

Fuck you Google.

Oh yeah, hey Google! Before you spend $1.6 Billion buying a company with no profit you might want to have some attorneys review your deal. I’m sure all the companies with copyrighted material on You Tube are super happy that you and your Billions of dollars of cash just bought a company that previously was not sueable. Idiots.

FGLB

Weekend cooking

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 17:26:00 +0000

This weekend I spent some time in the kitchen and I thought I would share.

I’ve been buying butternut squash at the market to store over the winter, but last night I cut one open to try to roast it. My recipe called for me to cut the squash into chunks, remove the skin and roll it in a roasting pan with melted butter, onions, salt, pepper and dried rosemary. I decided to use a red onion wedge I had because I like red onion, a lot, and it was already mostly cut, and I smashed the dried rosemary under my meat mallet to crush it up. It was quite outstanding. Everyone loved it and I actually regretted that I had only cut up one squash. Here is the recipe in its entirety.

3 butternut squash (about 1 ¾ lbs each) 1 inch cubes with skin removed.
4 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion-diced
1 3/4 teaspoon salt
3/8 teaspoon pepper
1 ½ teaspoon crushed dried rosemary

Set oven at 400 degrees. Melt butter in pan. When butter is melted add all the ingredients and stir to coat. Bake until squash is tender. Adjust spices to your preference.

The red onion that I used made a nice sweet-salty mix on the squash. Quite tasty. I wouldn’t change anything with this recipe.

I also cooked up some soup. It was good, but I think my 2 year old liked it the most. He had 3 bowls of it. And he was so busy eating the broth from it he was actually eating the zucchini, which is the first time he’s eaten that vegetable, even after we present it over and over. It was kind of a strange soup taste. It had a Chinese/Japanese like taste that I think came from either the Zucchini or the Ginger. I’m not really sure which one. Recipe:

1 large carrot-julienned
1 medium zucchini-diced
1 can of chicken broth (13oz)
1 package frozen ravioli
2 teaspoons ginger
A bunch of watercress

Bring broth up to a boil. Add carrots and simmer 5 minutes. Add ginger and zucchini and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes or until vegetables are tender. In the meantime prepare the ravioli per the package directions. Add water cress and ravioli to bowls and ladle broth and vegetables over. Serve.

My thoughts: I think I would add more vegetables, although this number is pretty sufficient. This soup is really an appetizer. I tripled the recipe and it barely fed 5 adults and 2 kids, albeit one that was hungry. Keep that in mind. Next time I’m just going to add the ravioli to the broth mixture and perhaps increase the broth by 50% to make up for the broth the ravioli will absorb. Next time instead of water cress I’ll just use spinach or even better, arugula. I love that stuff.

Also, on Saturday night I made some chili. Well really, it was quite a long process. Everyone and their dog has a chili recipe but I figure what’s one more? I’ll discuss it here.

This is really the first time I’ve made chili for the whole family for about 4 years. I’ve been afraid my kids wouldn’t eat it because of how spicy it is, but after seeing them tear into the salsa I’ve made this summer it’s clear that my wife is the wimp in the family. I still took it easy so that no one would have any problems.

I cut up a beef roast. (No ground beef in this recipe) I estimate it was probably about 3 lbs but I’m not really sure. After these pieces were sliced I coated them with flour. In the bottom of my biggest soup pan I added some vegetable oil and put in the beef pieces to brown. To this I added 4 cloves of garlic and ½ of a medium red onion, diced.

After all this had cooked a bit and the meat was sufficiently browned I used a slotted spoon to move the beef to a bowl and left all the juice in the pot. To the pot with the browned bits I added 1 can of beer as my deglazing liquid. By the way, per Ms. Child the cook always samples any alcohol before adding it to a dish. Helps ensure that everything works OK. Then I proceeded to furiously scrape the pan to get all the yummies off the bottom.

Once this was all together I added 3 packets of chili seasonings (I know, the easy way. But I didn’t have all the spices I needed and didn’t want to make a special trip to the store.) along with some crushed red pepper, cayenne pepper and hot chili powder. I also added a little BBQ spice mixture (a sweet/salty mix for grilling) and a few quick worstershire squirts. I didn’t measure. I just dumped them in and tasted. I also added 3 8 oz cans of tomato sauce and 24 ozs of water.

After this had all blended together for a little while I resampled and adjusted the spices along with salt and pepper until I had them where I wanted them. Then I added the meat and bowl drippings back to the soup pan. Then I left it on a very small simmer for about an hour. A small simmer is a simmer that you would use to make stock. Perhaps a bubble up to the surface per minute or so. I was hoping to cook the meat as slowly as possible so that it would be pretty tender.

After an hour was up I portioned off the chili mixture. A set up a smaller pan of soup for my wife and oldest child who don’t like beans. (I know, the horror) Into the biggest pot I poured one large can of chili beans and left the mixture to simmer for another 30 minutes or so. Let me tell you, this was certainly not a soupy chili. It was a thick rich chili sauce with beef in it.

Even if I was rusty at chili making I need to be rusty more often. This turned out really good. I looked over at the youngest child during dinner and he was using both a spoon and fork to eat it as fast as he could. When he noticed me looking at him he smiled and he had chili all over the lower part of his face. If the camera hadn’t been in the car you would have gotten a picture. I spooned my chili over some cooked ditaliano pasta while others made a sort of non-walking taco with theirs. And I have enough leftover to enjoy all week long. Definately good eats.

FGLB

Homecoming at Iowa

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 20:55:00 +0000

Last night was homecoming time in Iowa City. Since we have small children any chance to attend a parade is well received in our house.

The funniest thing I've noticed about Homecoming at Iowa (this is year #2) is that it pales in comparison to the Homecoming parades at the little school I attended down in Missouri. (You can see a pic of a float if you follow the link and click on the Homecoming tab)

I think this is a good thing because in college we spent way, way too much money on useless Homecoming decorations to compete between the Greek organizations. Not to mention the impact to our grades for all the work time over study time, and our wallets for all the beer. After seeing the fantastic floats and house decorations at my college it's kind of a downer though to see how it is at Iowa.

It's too bad too that it's an election year because a lot of the parade was candidates parading up and down the parade route. The even more unfortunate thing is that most of them were Republicans. HA!!

One thing that rocked about Iowa Homecoming was that they had a free concert on the Pentacrest. They had Guster and Kansas. I had never heard of Guster but I've heard of Kansas and we were both bound and determined to see them.

The concernt didn't start until 8 and we had to listen to Guster first. They were actually pretty good. The poor guys were playing on rented equipment because their intstruments didn't make it when they flew in. Gotta love those airlines!

But we were waiting for Kansas. The first rock band to incorporate a violin player. The people that invented Dust in the Wind so Will Ferrell could sing it for Blu and become the stuff of legends. Of yeah, we were excited to hear Kansas. But we had two little kids to contend with and Kansas wasn't going to be on until way, way past their bedtimes. But Mom and I were determined to hear them, even with crying kids and temperatures in the upper 40s at an outdoor concert. So we waited. Outside, in lawn chairs. With a blanket and no hottie totties in sight.

While we waited we had some time to make plenty of observations.

My assumption about the college kids would be that most of them would be two sheets to the wind after a hard day of partying, but I think most of the early ones were relatively sober. As the night progressed we watched girls in halter tops and t-shirts come out and watch the concert. Obviously they were a little sauced otherwise I don't know how they could ignore the cold. And watching them walk across the lawn to the concert was high comedy. Between the beer and heels I was sure someone would turn an ankle and there were plenty of stumbles. Oh the days of yesteryear.

We saw this lady. She was interesting. Yes, she is wearing a cape. And a pleated pink skirt. And a green t-shirt. An interesting mix. The funniest thing about her was her "dance" moves. When she danced she kind of swung around in circles letting her cape fly and billow around her. Kind of like how little kids will sometimes put their hands out to their sides and swing around in circles. It was eerily reminescent of how a superhero would fling their cape around too. If I had a cape I would do the same thing. Wouldn't you? You know you would. Come on now, don't lie to us. But I'm really questioning her thoughts of pairing a t-shirt with a pink skirt. I don't think it really matched well with the cape.

By the time Kansas came on we had finally gotten one child to sleep in a stroller (using my coat for a blanket) and the other was on my lap wrapped in a blanket and starting to fall asleep. I think the hypnotic effect of their stage lights was helping. And so we listened to Kansas with two sleeping kids and at the end when they FINALLY played the two big songs Rachael made her way up to the stage for a few pics of the band and I rocked out while holding a 2 year old, well, as much as I can anymore.

All we are is Dust in the Wind.

FGLB

Mapped history of Iraq

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 15:14:00 +0000

My friend Tom sent me this. I thought it was rather neat. Check it out.

http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/imperial-history.html

They have some other neat stuff too.

FGLB

The rest of the story

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 16:25:00 +0000

I came across two different soldier stories. I always find it interesting to hear the real deal from the people who are actually doing the hard work over there.

What I find most startling is the sharp differences between how they say things are happening and what we are told about how things are happening.

Check them out here and here.

FGLB

Odds and Ends

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 18:33:00 +0000

I needed to purchase a new back light for my bike recently and luckily I came across this review by Doug of his new rear tail light and decided I should pick one up. Unfortunately my LBS didn’t have that version in stock so I got this one instead. (I am American, I don’t wait for things you know) It’s very similar and it includes a reflector, which is required by law apparently, even with a light. Not to mention this one was $10 less than the CatEye. Let’s hope I rave about it like Doug and Pete have been about their light. All I know is that it’s as bright as a frickin’ laser beam. I swear it seared my cornea when I looked at it flashing in the display.

Along those lines, some of you may have noticed the increase in ads appearing on the blog. I just wanted to let you know the basis behind that. When I started blogging my wife and I decided that any ad revenue that I received from these ads could be put towards bike related purchases for me to feed my habit. This worked out great as it paid for my recent fixed gear project and the check I’m receiving shortly paid for the leftover fixed gear “bill” and this light. I’ve expanded the target of the revenues from the ads to also include things related to my other endeavors such as paying for gardening supplies above and beyond normal levels, home improvement projects related to “off the wall” ideas and other things that are not really things that we would both fall in line on. Really, these ideas are more like things that I don’t feel like negotiating their acceptance and this is my way around the negotiation. If you’re married you know what I mean.

For example, I’m currently working on a design for how to use the excess heat from my corn stove to pre-heat our water for our water heater. If I can get it all worked out then I certainly will detail it here, but since it is kind of an off the wall project the revenue we receive from our ads will pay for these types of projects. I don’t expect the cost to be much, but after my last plumbing incident I’m barred from making plumbing repairs to our house, so I’ll have to hire a pro. Not to mention the solar hot water heater I want to build next spring and possibly hooking a solar panel up to our pool pump so it will run for “free”.

So, I hope you will tolerate the ads and feel that the information I share with you is valuable enough to put up with their appearance.

FGLB

Fall garden work

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 18:50:00 +0000

Yesterday was a beautiful day (today is shaping up to be just as nice) so I spent the day outside in the yard.

I had decided I wanted to make my garden space a little larger. I decided to dig out some stupid peonies (or whatever they're called) and I wanted to move a couple of raised beds over to that area along our fence line. I took this opportunity to double dig the beds too since I was digging it up pretty well to get at the peony roots. Then I backfilled the raised beds with grass/leaf clippings from my mowing and then spread on the compost mix to hold it all down. Hopefully over the winter all the clippings will decompose and add matter to the beds and next spring I'll top coat the beds with compost and plant away. These beds are right next to the tomato area from this year which you can see on the right. Miraculously when I went out to the tomatoes yesterday morning to introduce them to the reaper I found about 2 dozen cherry/grape tomatoes on them so they currently have a reprieve in their forthcoming execution date.

I also decided that while I was doing this I might as well get started on the garden expansion. I decided to make a traditional garden area for the plants I have that are larger plants and take up a lot of space. This would be tomatoes, zucchinni, broccoli, squash, melons, etc. I marked out a general area that I wanted to make into this garden area and I cut out an outline with the shovel. Now I'm focusing on rounding up all the grass clippings, leaf clippings and any other stuff I can. My plan is to fill that area up with 3-5 inches of material. Over the next few months it should breakdown and add a nice base of material to the area as well as kill all the grass in that area. (Hopefully) Then next spring I plan to mix this material into the ground along with more compost and get going. I might put a tarp over it for the winter to keep it warmer in there so all the material will break down more quickly. I'm open for comments if you want to make suggestions, well, other than using a tiller to mix it all in. I plan to do it all by hand, although the way I feel today after the digging yesterday I think I'll need to stretch it out over a few days.

In the picture you can see the clippings from one day's mowing along with some of the leftover raised bed material from the beds I moved over against the fence. And if you look closely you can see the lines I cut out in the grass to mark the general outline of the garden area.

FGLB

Watch out for the military

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 13:23:00 +0000

Update: I have some more stories for you to read if you wish.

Here is a Time blog where the terror bill has been a topic for a while. Good reading if you want to scroll through it and read all of it.

Here is a story about Bob Woodward. He wrote book (a whole book) about the military under-reporting the number of attacks in Iraq. Are we repeating what we did in Vietnam with under-reporting the death figures?

Here is a quick link to a discussion of the torture devices they wish to employ. I got this from the Time blog.

Tuco has something to say too. A Canadian perspective.
_________________________________________________________________

Well, they have approved the terror bill allowing torture and coercion and making it legal to hold "suspects" indefinately without cause or a trial. I thought we would take a look around the web to see what people are saying about this.

The general news media is here.

Here is another explanation. (HT: George)

And still another one here. And more thoughts here. (Bush interpreting anything on my behalf is scary.)

I guess Bushie doesn't believe this anymore. (HT: George)

There will be more on the blogsphere about this I'm sure. I'll update if I see something to post.

FGLB

Fun with Customer Service Reps

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:46:00 +0000

I recently had an interesting run in with a customer service rep for our primary credit card. I thought I would detail the discussion here.

We had the misfortune of running a little short last billing period to completely payoff our primary credit card. It was just a timing issue as the bill was due the day before a paycheck came in and we were a little short. I figured this is no big deal really because we could pay off about 80% of it on the due date and then I would send in the leftover amount a day later. (We pay electronically so I can't play the mail/check float game, but should have in this instance)

I figured we could handle the couple of days of interest for the 20% until it got paid off. No big deal. I should explain to you now that the way we budget our income is to put everything that we possibly can on our cashback credit card. (maximize cash back) If the card stays below our specified target balance each month we pay it off and then know that we are doing OK budget wise. This is a lot easier for us compared to tracking down every single penny like some people, and works well for us because we always pay ourselves first. Not mention that we typically use the cashback aware to pay for our Christmas presents so we automatically have a predetermined cap on that spending. Anyway, this leads to us having a large balance each month that we payoff, and have, since we got the card about 8 years ago. Except this time.

I thought that we would be charged a couple days interest on the remaining 20% balance and that would be all.

But then I got my bill. They had charged me interest on the entire balance, and on some of the balance we had racked up in the new billing period, and hadn't given me any credit for my paydown. I was less than pleased with the situation. While I accepted that I would need to pay some interest on my remaining balance I have a real problem paying interest on money that I had paid them already prior to their imposed due date. Not to mention they are charging me interest on the money I haven't even been billed for because they use the stupid average daily balance thing. So I'm being charged interest for money I have not even had a chance to pay them yet because they haven't told me how much it was.

So I pick up the phone. After about 15 minutes (pretty quick I think for these companies) this is where we start.

CSR: How can I help you?

Me: Can you explain how you calculated the interest on my card?

CSR: Sure. You see the average daily balance figure on your statement? We multiply that by the daily interest rate figure and then add up each day's interest and summarize it on the front page.

Me: Ok. But how did you get the average daily balance figure? It's way higher than the amount I was billed for.

CSR: Well sir we keep a running tab of your balance each day and then multipy it by the daily interest figure and summarize it for the front page.

Me: I understand how you figured the interest. I have a Finance degree. I can do simple math. But how can you charge me interest off a balance that I haven't even been billed for? Your average daily balance figure is a lot more than what you requested I pay you. How can I be charged interest on that balance when I haven't been billed for it yet? On top of that, I was charged interest on a chunk of the balance that I paid you before the due date. Shouldn't I only have to pay interest on the leftover amount from the previous month?

CSR: Well sir, we charge interest from the beginning of the month and waive it when you make your full payment.

Me: How can it even be legal to charge me for money I haven't been billed for and on top of that give me no credit on my balance when I make a payment?

CSR: It's in your cardmember agreement sir. That's how we calculate the interest.

Me: Oh, that packet of legal mumbo jumbo you send me occassionally that no one but attorneys can understand?

CSR: Yes sir.

Me: Well that sucks. I've had this card for 8 years and this is the first time I didn't pay it in full and you totally took me to the cleaners.

CSR: Sir, I would be happy to waive that interest for you if that would make you happy to be a cardmember.

Me: (Good answer) Yes, that would make me very happy.

CSR: OK. Hang on. (Pause) Sir, I waived that interest and also the residual interest that would have appeared next month.

Me: Great. Thanks. Have a nice night.

Ha! Take that credit card company! You'll get no interest money from me! I know why they did it. The percentage kickback they get from each retailer we use our card at equals more than this amount of interest in about 4 months. They just want me to keep using the card so they can get their 2.5% of each dollar I spend, or whatever the amount is.

I just found it humorous that they caved on the interest so quickly. I mean, they are in business to make money right?

FGLB

Eco-bucks?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 03:06:00 +0000

I was reading through my recent Fortune magazine and they had a little blurb about the social responsibility of Starbucks and how they have finally developed a cup with FDA approval that has recycled paper in it. (This bodes well for other companies to use the cup going forward) The article peaked my interest to go out and hit the Starbucks site to see what else they were doing. We can debate the merits of Starbucks for a long time, but I found it interesting that such a large company had such an intense social responsibility part of it's being.

To read more click here.

Burley?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 20:45:00 +0000

I didn't even know Burley was having trouble.

FGLB

Scary shopping

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:27:00 +0000

My wife sent me to Target last night to get some jeans for the boys.

I don't want to do that anymore. It's scary. They have racks and racks of clothing. All poorly labeled. There isn't anyone around to help you find what you are looking for. You have to dig it up yourself. Very scary. I'll take cooking and yard duty anyday.

I would much rather go to Old Navy where someone will walk me to the section I need and pull out what I need. That is much safer. At least once I looked through the section I was able to slink over to the food section where I feel more comfortable.

She gave me a pair of jeans as an example. I came back empty handed. Turns out I was searching for jeans for the wrong boy.

As I was checking out at the register a couple of teenage boys were behind me with 4 18 packs of eggs. Me thinks they weren't making a big omelet.

FGLB

A big question finally answered

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 19:07:00 +0000

This past weekend we took a little road trip down south to visit my parents. Although they give lip service to their excitement to see us we know it's really all about the grand kids. And who can blame them. With kids this cute you have to be excited to see them, right?

Anyway, because the Arkansas Razorbacks were playing Alabama in nearby Fayetteville every hotel room in the 4 state area was full. This doesn't impact me as I wouldn't pay for them anyway when I can stay for free at my parents, but my grandparents were there too (for reason see grand kids above but insert great grand kids) and they weren't able to get a hotel room like usual. So they stayed at my parents. This necessitated that I sleep in my sister's room with my wife. (she was relegated to sofa city) No big deal. I can handle this. Sleeping in an almost out of teenage years sister's room can't be that bad. Besides, she's away at college so she can't have much there anyway.

But when I walked in I was unprepared for what I saw.

I saw something that I had only heard about. Something I thought existed only in fairy tales. Something I never thought I would see with my own two eyes.

Staring back at me from the top of the TV was a real life copy of the movie Crossroads. One that someone actually bought. One that my sister apparantly had decided was worth her hard earned money.

The disbelief I felt was intolerable. I couldn't believe someone in my own family would do something like this. How could she? How could she support these spawns of Satan? I would have felt less contempt if she had told me she thought Dumbya was the best President we had ever had. At least then I would be able to look her in the face for having an opinion. But how can you defend this? You just can't.

At least I finally know who the person was that bought the one copy that was sold. You know, just in case it comes up in Final Jeopardy or something.

FGLB

New posting

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 00:25:00 +0000

My first feature article is up over at Groovy Green.

Check it out here.

FGLB

Plant update

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 19:39:00 +0000

Well it looks like they survived the frost last night. I was up this morning to take off the towels and the towels were crunchy with the frost, but I was hoping that the plants would come back with the sunny day we were going to have. They appear to have pulled through. At least most of them.

I'm heading out of town tomorrow for the next few days so you won't hear much from me until the middle part of next week. I'm sure you will enjoy the chance to catch your breath after the crazy amount of postings I've been doing for the summer. I've been so busy I haven't been riding my bike much but I'm hoping that things will slow down soon. I am closing on the delayed sale of an investment property on Friday so my workload should be reduced after work and that should help too.

If I could just get the sun to stay out longer I would be able to do something outside. By the time I eat supper now it's almost setting and I can't get anything done out there. Grrrr.

FGLB

Frost warning

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:55:00 +0000

I went out to cover up the peppers and tomatoes because it's going to get cold soon....

I had to use towels because I don't have any old sheets. This winter I'll sick my bargin hunter (aka mother in law) on it so I'll be ready next year.

I started digging through the pepper plants pulling off peppers, just in case they were ruined, and look what I found. An actual red one!

One of the peppers on my plants actually made it all the way to the red stage!!!!

Holy freaking cow.

It was buried inside the plants. You couldn't see it from the outside, but I found it, and seeing one that actually made it to be red affirms for me that my peppers were a success. I'll plant them again next year, just not 6 plants. 2 should be plenty.

Ethan looks kinda surprised that it's red. Yeah, me too.

FGLB

Book Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:22:00 +0000

I recently finished reading a few books that I thought I would mention and share a few thoughts on them.

Preserving the Harvest
I’m not even going to attempt to describe this book, I wouldn’t do it justice. Just know that if you have any interest in preserving garden goodies from the summer to eat in the winter you need to own this book. It’s going on my Christmas List so I can use it for the next 50 years.

Cutting into the meat packing line
This was an interesting sociological experiment written about a writer’s experiences when she became employed at a meat packing plant near her home to gather experience for this book. The focus on this book is Iowa centric as the writer is an Iowan who lives in Iowa and worked at a plant in Iowa. It was an interesting read as she gave history about how meat packing plants came to be, how they ended up like they are and she revealed a lot of information about how they treat their employees. She worked there for 4 months and she was one of the last few who remained in her job from her orientation group when she quit. It was sad to read how the companies treat their employees and how they abuse any system they can to make a few extra bucks. If you read this book don’t expect any big revelations about how they handle their product, because there weren’t any, but you can expect some revelations about how these companies run their businesses.

Better Off
This was a great book. I really enjoyed it. It was one of those books that I had a hard time putting down. The basic premise is that an MIT graduate student studying engineering moves to an Amish like community with his wife to experience and understand how life works without all the technologies we take for granted. He also has a goal of learning how to live a life that is low tech, so to speak. It was really just a great book to read about his thoughts on how the technology that is making our lives better is actually making them harder. He compares his previous life to his life on the farm and how he and his wife both thought they had more time now than they had before. He explores how time in the Amish like groups isn’t so rigidly divided as we consider our time now, and his experience helps him redefine what is and isn’t critical in his life, as far as technology goes. I had hoped the book would have more information about his experiences and learning steps as he learned the older methods. Even the mundane details of our lives where we are hungry and we open the fridge to get something to eat are a lot different in this world where a ready supply of food isn’t sitting around. And how do you deal with leftovers or when you have an abundance of items? He addresses those things a little but leaves them short as well. Overall I think it was a interesting read but it fell short for me from what I was hoping he would talk about, and that is how do you live in a world like that with no refrigeration or easily tapped energy source to do things when you need them done?

FGLB

Local summer meal--the last one :-(

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 00:57:00 +0000

Well, my meal this week looks oddly like the meal last week.

We had mashed potatoes, carrots, broccoli and round steak.

Round steak isn't something that I ever really cooked before we purchased this quarter of a cow and I'm having a hard time learning how to cook with it. It's a tough cut so it likes to be cooked slow. The crock pot is all that I've found so far that makes it turn out good. I'm open to ideas if you want to submit them.

I made homemade biscuits to go with our meal. I have never made them from scratch before. The closest I've come is a Bisquick box. But I used whole grain organic flour and kneading the dough and everything. I think I kneading it too much as they turned out like hockey pucks, but you could slather a real hockey puck with rhubarb/strawberry preserves and I would wolf it down. As a biscuit they were edible. As a preserve delivery device they worked great. And the leftovers will be great tomorrow as biscuits and gravy after the gravy soaks into them and softens them up. MMMMM

This is the last local meal of the contest so you won't see pics of the meals up anymore. Well, maybe you will once in a while, but not every week. Thanks for putting this together Liz. It was fun and I am definately not going back to the way things were.

FGLB

Apple Orchard visit

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 18:36:00 +0000

We visited an apple orchard last night. We had to hustle so we weren’t able to take any pictures, but it was great! My wife and kids had gone before with some of her girlfriends, but this was my first time. I wanted to share my thoughts about it.

1.) Buying apples at an orchard is not more expensive than the store.
I had always thought this to be the case, but in reality this place was less expensive per pound than the big grocery store chain around here. Granted you have to pick them yourself but that’s more fun than choosing between 5 kinds at the store that are from Washington or New Zealand anyway. (They had them picked too if you didn’t want to do the work) I’ve been buying them at the farmers markets, but going into the orchard is a lot more fun. And they have free samples. I think I ate 3 or 4 whole apples sampling different flavors. The Song of September flavor was our favorite. If you were willing to buy them off the ground (and I was but we didn’t have enough hands to carry all the necessary buckets) you can get them for just under half what they cost from the tree. Now that’s a good deal!

2.) Kids will surprise you.
My wife said the first time out there the kids whined a lot about all the walking, but this time (I think it was a shorter amount of time though) they had a good time running around the trees and picking the apples. Until the baskets got too heavy they carried them and they took great pleasure in closely inspecting all the smushed apples and looking at the sweat bees. And they ate plenty of apples. It was honestly one of the more enjoyable experiences that I remember having with the boys. Give it a try with your kids. They may not think it is that cool at first but you can make it cool for them, well, unless they are teenagers and then you are just out of luck. You’ll never be cool to them.

3.) Sometimes strange things happen
When we were walking out to leave we were leaving one section of trees and crossing a bridge over a creek. We stopped to watch the water as boys like to do and I had noticed a guy walking around out there without a basket and eating an apple. He walked by the bridge so I waved to him. He waved back and came over. He turned out to be part of the family that owned the orchard. He was doing his final walk through inspection and he spent a ton of time standing there talking to us. We talked about apples for storage (Gala and Honeycrisp and to buy them now at their freshest and they will last 10-12 months in the fridge) and our favorite (Song of September, his too) and how he liked working with the trees. He said he spent a lot of time walking around the orchard looking at the trees, determining what’s ripe and eating apples to “try them” (he eats up to 20-30 a day. I feel bad enough with the 6-8 I had yesterday). It was great talking to the person responsible for growing the trees you were eating apples from and he showed such great pride in them. You know what else was great? He walked the orchard instead of riding a 4 wheeler around (it was so quiet and tranquil) and he readily plucked apples from the trees and ate them while he was walking. It shows me that he is concerned about what is put on the trees and he must be comfortable with what is put on them or he wouldn’t just pick them and eat them. We learned a lot about his orchard and apples in general just from a 5 minute walk back to the office area. Neat experience. They even use soy bio-diesel in all their farm equipment and the house that his parents live in above the office is a passive solar designed house. Good to be around people with similar ideals.

4.) Cars can’t ruin every experience
Even in the middle of the orchard there were people who chose to drive around the orchard to pick their apples. This disturbs me. Have we gotten this lazy in America that we can’t even walk around an orchard? You drive up to the tree, get out, pick a few apples and then get back in the car? I did see one family that had two little babies in car seats, and I’ll give them a pass because that would be hard, but the rest should be ashamed of their behavior. I can’t believe the orchard people even let people drive back there, but of course they don’t want to turn away customers. But even cars back there couldn’t ruin the experience. Of all the places I expected to have to deal with cars the middle of an orchard is pretty far down the list.

Have you thought about going to a local orchard? Check out your local paper for classified ads about orchards; usually in the “good things to eat” section or they may run a special ad in the paper. It’s the perfect time as the weather starts to cool down again. I know we are going back at least one more time.

FGLB

Investing Summary

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 15:26:00 +0000

To read parts 1, 2 and 3 of my investing series click on the respective number.

At the end of the part 3 I mentioned that I was going to follow up the first 3 posts with a follow up summary post to detail what I see the future like and what my personal plans for the future are. After completing those three brain dumps onto you all I think I’ve formulated a decent (or descent, to play on a common Peak Oil term. HA!) strategy for the future.

Objective #1
My first objective is to pay down our family’s debt as rapidly as possible. I’ve already taken the first steps in this direction by selling my entire real estate portfolio, save for one. I have lowered our 401K contributions to the minimum percent necessary to receive the maximized company match and the excess funds will be directed toward debt repayment. I have a debt waterfall structure in place to allow us to focus on the debt most easily paid off first, than it will go in order of highest interest rate until they are paid in full. I imagine this will take a number of years unless I get lucky and win the lottery or something. (Hey, I play occasionally, “You can’t win if you don’t play!”)

Objective #2
Increase immediate savings to the point that we have 6-12 months of immediate living expenses saved. This is a lower priority than debt repayment because the interest earned is less than the interest paid on the debt. I’ll need to ensure that this savings is in a reputable bank that I have a good comfort level will still be operating in the long term. I’ll set these up in a laddered system of 6 month CDs so that each month a CD will expire and can be reinvested at the current interest rates. This will allow me to take advantage of interest rates as they rise. It also ensures that once each month my cash becomes available if I did need quick access to it.

Objective #3
When I’m making a decision about investment positions to hold or purchase the importance of Peak Oil will be prevalent in my decision. I’m going to allocate a larger percentage of our portfolio to international stocks and international mutual funds (401K included) than is normally recommended by most “experts”. I’m also going to maintain our domestic positions in companies with large international exposure. That means mostly large cap stocks will be our domestic holdings. I’m also going to start exploring some emerging market funds for opportunities.

Additionally, some recent information I have gathered has helped me realize that nuclear power and solar power might be able to hold their own in the period just after peak while energy is still readily available, only more expensive than it is now. I’m going to explore utility companies with a large amount of nuclear generation capabilities and also start to delve into solar companies for investment opportunities. My plan is to focus on solar companies that make solar products that are smart products and have more potential for mass productions. Examples of these would be solar ovens and solar water heaters over solar panels, because of the cost to benefit differential for the average consumer.

Objective #4
If I’m so convinced that upon Peak Oil the market will decline than I should just short the market. This is easy to do by purchasing some ETFs and selling them short. (When you short sell something in the market you are betting it will decline rather than “going long” and betting it will rise over time) There are a couple problems with shorting stocks though; 1) If it continues to rise you may have a call by your brokerage to add cash to your account and 2.) We keep our portfolios in Roth IRAs which I’ve been told can’t be used to short sell stocks. On the other hand, some places say that it can be used that way.

I’m going to need to think more about how best to handle the drop I forsee so we can maintain our asset positions without us losing a corresponding amount of worth.

To summarize:

Maintain asset positions in companies with substantial international operations and in internationally focused mutual funds.
Increase cash position to 6-12 months of expenses and then ladder CDs of 6 month terms to increase yields on cash and have cash available.
Apply excess cash to debt repayment to facilitate the removal of monthly obligations and to lower future cash flow needs. Pay back debt in a waterfall scheme starting with the debt with the most easily paid off balance and then proceeding down in order of interest rate.
Determine effective strategies for capturing returns when market descends after Peak Oil is a proven fact. These strategies could be short selling stocks, ETFs or buying puts, or something else I dream up.

I hope this series helped. It might not have been the best investment advice the world has ever seen, but I do hope that it made you think about the future and how something like Peak Oil can affect your current situation in ways you may not have imagined. I hope that you took at least something away from this as you make decisions for the future.

FGLB

The stronger species

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:27:00 +0000

“I'm a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am. You're just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It's science.”
(Don’t know the movie? Click here.)

It’s official, men are smarter than women.

It’s true. Click here for the story.

Everything on the internet is true so it has to be true. Right?

Even if it is true (and really how much is 4 IQ points anyway?) I’m not so sure that men really are smarter than women.
Example 1) White House
Example 2) Congress.
And men seem to have a general lack of common sense when compared to women, myself included. I’m just saying…

But, I guess it’s a proven fact now that men are technically smarter than women.

FGLB

Train ad

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 15:05:00 +0000

You remember in my post a while back that I stated that trains can pull more freight for their fuel load than trucks?

Well in my recent Fortune magazine there was an ad from Norfolk Southern railway that stated that their engines get 410 MPG. Now this caught my attention, so I read the ad. (I have tried all over the place to find the ad or get it scanned onto here but haven’t been able to make it work) Basically they are stating their trains can pull one ton of freight 410 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel. I’m curious what trucks can do.

I tried to find the mileage on trucks but it doesn’t seem they really put that information out there, so I’ll be very nice to semi trucks and say they get 10 mpg. That seems fair don’t you think?

How much weight can a truck carry? I really have no idea. Perhaps 5 tons on average? Maybe more? What constitutes a “heavy load”? Let’s just assume they haul 5 tons. Some probably carry less. I imagine a truck full of Fritos weighs very little while a truck load of cars or Pepsi’s would be very heavy.

But if a truck holds 5 tons and it gets 10 MPG then wouldn’t it be able to go 50 miles on one gallon of fuel if it only had 1 ton?

So, a train is 8 times more efficient per ton of freight in its use of diesel fuel.

Now, I know that this is a seriously simple exercise and there are plenty of variables here and we don’t even know how accurate the train company’s number is, but it still bears weight about showing how much more efficient trains are than trucks.

You know what else is cool about trains? They pay for their transportation needs as part of their business. Yeah trucks pay use taxes and tolls, etc, but that doesn’t come anywhere close to covering the cost of the roads they travel on. But trains bear the cost of their rail system completely. They might get some tax breaks here and there on it (and I bet trucks do too) but that is a huge difference to our society from trucks. One maintains its own system for its use and the other acts like a parasite on a system funded by tax dollars.

FGLB

Groovy Green

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 02:24:00 +0000

I was recently asked to become a contributor at Groovy Green, a website about living a more green lifestyle. I'm pleased to be joining their group and I'm looking forward to contributing to the website. Make sure to check out the site frequently as it is undergoing some changes and will be bringing forward a lot of great diverse information.

My first posting is up at their site. It's a rehash of my green links post from here, but as a teaser, it does include some revealing information about me that you may not know...

FGLB

Review of the energy expo

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:33:00 +0000

I showed up at the IRenew Energy Expo 2006 at around 8:45 or so. The main reason I came to this was to hear Steve Andrews speak about Peak Oil as the keynote speaker at 1:00 on Saturday, but there were some other workshops that interested me as well.

I attended 3 workshops that I’m going to just mention I attended them so I can save space for the 2 that held some merit. I attended Me and Mother Earth, Energy Efficient Strategies and Financing your RE investment.

I went to a solar hot water heating workshop next. This workshop at least mildly covered its intended topic. (I won’t address whether or not the speaker did a very good job of conducting the workshop) The speaker started with some discussion about how much money he had saved using solar hot water heating since 1977. It has been quite substantial and was enough to pay for his system 4 times over. He explained that he now has expanded his system so that he also heats up his domestic hot water for his hot water heating (a darn good idea) so that he barely uses any natural gas in the winter to heat his house or to heat up his water.
He then went on to explain how the solar water heater works and how it would be schematically laid out in a house. I thought this was great because while I had a picture in my mind I wasn’t sure if it was completely accurate or not. At this point our hour was up. I had a few problems with his presentation though.

He basically poo poo’d anyone doing anything other than a complete hot water system that relied on antifreeze to heat up water in a completely separate water heater from the main water heater. These are commonly referred to as “Drain down” systems. These systems range from $3,000 to $5,000. He wasn’t interested in Thermosyphic s ystems or batch systems, both of which are considerably cheaper and still pretty darn efficient. He didn’t think that they were good options as they were mostly warm weather choices. I figure, who cares? If they work most of the time and your cost invested it less than you can still get an acceptable payback. If you are trying this for the first time and just want to test it before you really sink a bunch of capital into it I think these options are perfectly acceptable. Besides, some people use these as their only systems and are quite pleased with them. Why is the most technological way always the preferred way in America? Well, that doesn’t work for me. I don’t just go along with what people tell me. I have to understand all the other options before I’ll make a decision about what other things to do. That kind of turned me off to this guy and I wasn’t sad when the workshop was over.

During lunch I walked around and looked at a few things. They had a lot of biodiesel exhibits set up, along with some information about other local places you can work with for your renewable energy needs. I was interested in the solar oven so I spent some time talk to the gentleman about that. I’ve spent a lot of time researching these ovens online so it was nice to see them up close and personal. Good use of technology to free people from the demands and expense of fossil fuel based cooking. I’ll probably get one of these someday.

The real reason I was there was for the key note speaker, Steve Andrews from ASPO-USA. Unfortunately they only gave him an hour to talk because he could have held the floor for at least 3 or 4 in my book. I’m just going to give a few highlights that I scribbled down from his speech.

He started off discussing Natural Gas and the peak in Natural Gas. He mentioned that it experienced its first peak in 1973 and its second peak in 2000 and has been declining since, even though there are 3X as many NG wells now as there were in 1973. He talked about how the government put out statistics in the early 90s about how NG production was going to steadily increase by about 15% from then to now, when in actuality it was decreased by 4%, even accounting for the run up to 2000 for the peak. (This is why all the utilities built NG plants. They had bad data from our own government.)

In the battle for our declining NG supplies the fertilizer companies have lost out and they’ve bad to shift production overseas to be closer to the supplies. Right now we have enough NG to feed our power plants and fuel our needs for home heating. As it continues to decline which one will start to be used less?

After that he talked about the new Jack 2 well that was found in the Gulf and how it would only supply America for 21 months if it really did have 15Billion barrels in it and they were able to extract every single ounce of it. If you have read any Peak Oil information you already knew this information. These new discoveries aren’t the answer folks.

After these two topics he spent his time discussing Peak Oil. He had a ton of great graphs; I wish I could have captured some for here.

Did you know that Exxon Mobile is the 11th largest oil company in the world? Yes, 11th. The Saudi company (nationalized) is the largest at 11.0 million barrels per day, followed by the Iranian Company at 6.0 million barrels per day. Exxon Mobile pumps 2.5 million barrels per day. Yes, Exxon Mobil is basically 25% as large as the Saudi company.

Can you figure out now why those people in the Middle East have so much money now?

He stated that the US uses 21 mmb of oil per day, 14 mmb of that in transportation and 9.5mmb of that makes gasoline.

The last chart he gave us that I wanted to share was his projections of where we will get our “oil” from in 2015. By this I mean all the means other than actually buying barrels of oil. So if you think some of these great technologies will be our savior, here are the hard numbers.

Efficiency increases: 1.5-3.0 mmb
Oil Sands: 1.0-2.0 mmb
Gas to liquids .5-.75 mmb
Ethanol <.5 mmb
Coal to liquids .2-.5 mmb
Biodiesel .1 mmb (maybe)
Plug in hybrids 0-.2 mmb
Oil from shale 0-.1 mmb
Hydrogen 0 mmb (yes, zero)
Mode shifting 1.0-3.0 mmb

So basically he assumes that we will be able to garner, at most, 4.1 mmb (mmb is million barrels per day) from our fabulous technology and we could garner at most 6 mmb if we choose smarter cars (efficiency gains) or changed our method of transportation (mode shifting—moving to bikes, mass transit, walking, etc).

It seems like the easiest answer is to be smarter with your transportation needs. Buy a car that makes sense and use it only when you really have to. If we started doing that we could cut our daily oil usage by over 60% (6.0 mmb/9.5 mmb). (Alert, serious math numbers coming up) On top of that, we currently produce 40% of our oil needs (8.4 mmb—21 mmb *.40) so if we were smarter with our transportation uses we would have excess oil resources of 4.9 mmb (8.4 – 3.5 (reduced fuel use)) for other uses so we would only need to import 2.1 mmb instead of our current amount of 13.1 mmb.

Now that’s smart thinking. What kind of impact would that have on the world and our economy? I’m glad you asked. At our current rate of consumption and with the current price for a barrel of oil we are sending $851 million (13.1 mmb * $65) per day out of our country to buy oil. If we reduced our daily need to 2.1 mmb of imported oil it would be $136.5 million. A difference of $714.5 million PER DAY!!!!! Over a year that amounts to $257,220 million ($714.5 million * 360) or $227 BILLION per year. If would be nice to have that kind of pocket change back for our schools or for companies and people to have here in the country instead of being used for who knows what around the world.

It’s time for us to put on our smart caps instead of our dunce caps people.

FGLB

Garden blues

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 14:49:00 +0000

I've got a case of the garden blues.

I can't believe garden season is already over. I know some of you who have large gardens are probably excited and happy that things are winding down, but for some reason I'm not. I feel like I was just ramping up. I'm starting to learn more about things and I actually finally have things ready to pull up and eat. I actually kind of understand how things are working too. It's kind of sad that I have to stop soon and wait for the cold weather to go away and for the snow to melt before I can really even start thinking about the garden again. Combine that with a Monday and here I am.

I’m waiting for the spinach and arugala to come up for some tasty dishes. Those are great with eggs and I think I’ll freeze some up to add to soups this winter. I’ll be planting the garlic this week if it ever stops raining. I’ll keep harvesting whatever I can get off the plants but I’m not expecting a lot as the temperatures wind down.

If I can come up with the resources I’m hoping to double the size of the garden next summer. That will take a lot of work so we’ll see if I can get it all together or not. It’ll involve ripping out some existing plants and digging them up and building some new raised beds over the tops of those spots.

We had a busy weekend. I attended a renewable energy expo in nearby Solon, IA. I took copious amounts of notes and I’ll write those up shortly. I was both happy and disappointed with the expo, which I’ll discuss in more detail in my post.

We also put up even more food. What space I had in the freezer is now gone. I was only able to get 5 lbs of green beans, all my carrots, a dozen ears of corn and 9 zucchini fruits (is that the right term??) put up this weekend. I still have 3 lbs of green beans to do but I think we might just eat those this week. I hope more peas come in. When they were plentiful this spring we were eating them faster than I bought them so not very many were put away for the winter. I was also planning to do up some applesauce but time constraints kept me from even picking up enough apples. Perhaps this week I’ll get that done. I used the Food Saver this time around when I bagged them so they would stay fresh until they are needed in the late winter. It was nice to use it again since the first month I got it about 5 years ago. I hope the pears at the neighbors are ready soon. I definitely want to make up some pear sauce for this winter.

In other news, my most recent Adventure Cycling magazine has a review of the Surly Long Haul trucker touring rig. I’ve been salivating over this bike for the better part of 2 years. They gave it a glowing review as a touring or all around bike. I expected as much from what I had heard from people who had them. Perhaps someday I’ll get one.

FGLB