Work on Jeep
Today I took the day off to have a new muffler put on my jeep, the tires rotated, and an oil change. Basic maintenance that should be done regularly. The muffler looks good, and the oil change is nothing special. On the other hand, the tires could not be rotated because the tread was too worn, so I bought 4 new ones for $99 each (installed price). The only thing is, I don’t think they did the balance right. I’m getting vibration between about 55 and 65 mph, and 70 – 75 mph. I’ll be back down that way this weekend and get that taken care of, or go to the Kost in N. Syracuse to get that taken care of. Other than that, most of the work looks satisfactory.
Conficker
I have been hearing a lot about Conficker (or confucker … configuration fucker), and how it is supposed to take the world by storm on April 1st. (coincidentally when NY says I’ll have my taxes back)
I have to say that it is interesting to see so many organizations working together to prevent it from bing a huge problem. I am doing my part by switching to OpenDNS (myself, and work) and spreading the word. So…. if you don’t already have a plan in place, here is your chance to start one. (no, I don’t work for them, but their service has been a life saver frequently) OpenDNS is a free service that provides Domain Resolution (makes www.wherever.com point to 123.45.678.243 or whatever the IP address is) and content moderation. In a business network, it can be used to block certain types of websites, chat services and other unacceptable Internet related activities. At home, it’s useful for keeping phishing sites from loading before they even get to your computer.
To learn more about OpenDNS, go to their site. To start using OpenDNS, follow these instructions. To learn about how they are blocking conficker, read this blog entry. If you have a prent, grandparent, less savvy family member you know of, setup OpenDNS for them too. They’ll thank you on April 1st if you do.
That being said, good luck with your own vehicle repairs, and keep up the battle against malware!
Wouldn’t it be nice to not pay your electric bill? How about grocery shopping?
Imagine not having to buy electricity, food or any of the bare necessities. You could buy a farm, but that’s pretty expensive. It would take care of food, but how about energy? Maybe you’re not into “roughing it”…
If any of these questions got you thinking… “wow, that would be nice” or “Don’t I wish?” then this post is for you.
I’m looking for people to help build a non-profit cooperative community. Not strictly like the old Hippie Communes or an Amish settlement or anything… well, similar to both in some ways.
What we would do is start off by buying some acreage with a few important features. A running stream of some sort, some cleared land for gardning, and some space for building the “village”
Ideally, the community would have it’s own utility services for water, sewage, electricity and communications. The goal is to have a collective income for everyone. Everyone works either a regular job, or one of the community-owned businesses to earn their keep. There will be a weekly fee that everyone must pay to be part of the community, which covers the costs of operation. Mortgage, taxes, Internet/Telephone uplink, maintenance of the roads and utilities, upkeep of the community businesses, gardens and other necessities. After this is all taken care of, the remainder is divided up evenly to all residents to do with as they wish.
This all a non-profit organization, we could offer things that most businesses offer their employees, benefits such as health insurance, retirement savings, and so on. Ideally, we would also have medical specialists in the community to operate a basic health center.
If it seems like I’m moving from tangent to tangent, it’s because I’m still brainstorming and coming up with things that would help a cooperative community work. The main idea is to combine the buying power of a whole community to increase the standard of living for everyone. The community could have businesses run by residents that are open to the public. The business would be owned by the whole community, and any income from it would go towards the community. Residents could also choose to have outside jobs and contribute back to the community.
Make no mistakes, it won’t be easy. Everyone would have to provide some of the pie. We would need people who are employed by the community to take care of the farm, and utilities even though such things as food, electricity, housing, and such are free to community members.
I’m not sure of all the details, or if anyone else would even be interested, but I know a lot of people who are struggling on their own who would be able to benefit from cooperating together to build a better life for everyone overall.
Things get cheaper when bought in bulk…especially land… For example, it might be pretty expensive for someone making $30,000 a year to buy an acre of land and put a house on it, but with 10 people making that, it wouldn’t be a problem to buy 30 acres of land and put medium-sized dwellings on it. Once the land is purchased, and everyone is paying for it, one could start out living in a meager dwelling (second hand mobile home? campling trailer? etc) and build a larger dewlling little by little without having to worry about coming up with more loans and money right away.
Maybe others have ideas or thoughts on this… chime in please!
With the weather getting nicer and the snow gone comes another blog…
First, about the last post…. that is a Microformat for a CushyCMS clone I plan to do in the near future. I want to make it so just the content of a website can be edited via a web interface, while not disrupting the main template, and my solution will be able to be installed on my own web server(s).
Second, I now have a Facebook account. Some of you might be reading this blog on it because I added my RSS feed in so it will show up. Anyway, while profile building, I was adding my Picasa Web albums in, and found out that Google does profiles now too. It’s a bit more boring than others, and it is mostly links to other Google services that you have….not really an integrated social networking site.
Some of the projects that I am working on this spring are…. a planter box in the front yard. I got most of it built last week, and plan to finish it up on the warmer days of this week. The seeds for this year are started, (in green houses in my kitchen) and should be interesting to say the least. I’m also working on my body…. I doubt I’ll ever have the “chiseled” look, but I can at least work off ome of the gut….not doing too bad so far. This spring should kick it into high gear, because I’ll get outside more and do less sitting around the house.
It’s been awhile since I blogged much so… let’s see what happened over the winter. I upgraded all of my computers, I now have an Athlon64 X2 5600+ with 4GB of memory, a 500GB Hard Drive and a 512Mb NVidia video card for my windows box, which I am squashing with Vista… And the Linux box is a Sempron 3400+ with 2GB of memory and an 80GB Hard Drive (it still runs faster than the windows box cause Vista is such a hog). I moved the 250GB drive out to network storage that all of my systems can access. Away from computers, I bought some paintball gear (which I can’t link to because I don’t see it on the Sports Authority website anymore), and a Jakks Sports Motion video game system (“poor man’s wii”). I thought it would really be crap, but it’s not that bad at all…. I love the bowling… and the only other game I have tried so far is golf…. which isn’t bad either. On the other hand, I still need to try out the Paintball Gear. It should be fun!
I have to go to work now….if I don’t blog more in a few days, give me a holler and remind me to.
Behold! The future…. more soon
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