Rally Videos

Posted on May 20, 2007 in Stuff | Leave a Comment

I took a few rally videos with my digital camera when I was at the rally with Hydro on Saturday. They’re pretty low quality, and my stability in taking them is a bit poor. What do you expect when using a super-tiny digital camera though? I’m impressed that they’re as decent as they are, using my Nikon S1

Beef or Crab?

Posted on May 16, 2007 in Life | Leave a Comment

On Mothers’ day I grilled up some awful tasty steaks for the fam, and like almost every other American family (Pops isn’t gonna like hearing me say that!) we like to grill things up. My folks’ yard is perfect, and they’ve got a nice, albeit huge stainless gas grill that’s worlds ahead of my pales-by-comparison Weber.

Anyway, so these steaks were AWESOME, and I just can’t stop thinking about them. They’re Angus prime grade beef tenderloins that are about 2.5″ thick an around 8oz each. I cooked them to somewhere just between medium and medium-rare, and you could cut them with a butter knife they’re so tender. Corn fed, all that jazz, but it actually makes a difference. They’re the best steak I’ve ever eaten plain. Just add a little salt and pepper while grilling, and that’s all you need. Downside: they’re expensive, even wholesale.

Now, I start thinking about eating too much red meat and all that stuff, and my other favorite food (also conveniently available from my family’s Alaska Seafood business) is Alaskan King Crab. With the pre-split ones, you barely even have to work to get the crab meat out. That and a melted bowl of butter is almost heavenly. Kind of defeats the healthy aspect to seafood though…

I Ran 5 Stoplights on Friday

Posted on May 13, 2007 in Save the World, That Pisses Me Off | Leave a Comment

I rambled earlier about how I can’t stand inefficiently timed traffic lights and how we could reduce idling emissions put out by cars just by having the lights timed better.

Sure, that would help a little, but I think what might help even more is to have them on sensors. It wouldn’t be too hard to retrofit radar sensors onto lights, although sure it might be a little costly. But what’s more costly - radar sensors or those under ground wires they bury?

Here’s the deal on Friday. I woke up at 4:45am, wide awake. After about 20 minutes tossing around, I decided to go to work early and off I go. While on the way, I came to 5 different traffic lights that allow side-street traffic to flow onto more major roads. Every single one turned red right as I got there, with NO ONE coming from the sidestreets. So instead of just sitting there waiting, I decided to go through after stopping.

It’s a known fact that cars pollute more during “cold start” conditions that can last for a varying amount of time depending on the vehicle, your driving habits, speed, etc, so I’ll use the “environmentally unfriendly” concept as an excuse, but it’s also super irritating to have a timed light turn red for NO REASON at all. Especially at 5am when the roads are empty. Here’s a quick solution - make these types of lights so the minor road is blinking red, and the major road is blinking yellow during certain hours of the day. Say like, 11pm to 6am, or whatever traffic surveys show as the low hours of driving.

I know, this is probably really nit-picky (I’ve been called that recently) but it seems like such a waste. And since Americans can’t figure out the “yield to the right” concept, this could be a good 2nd choice. Along with that, make it so the left turns are allowed without a separate signal during these times too. The more you safety-net everyone, the less likely they’ll live up to higher expectations - so give us a chance, the dumb ones will die, but that’s just part of nature.

Now, I’m not like a complete red-light-running fool. The lights that actually had a reason to change because of traffic or pedestrians, I stopped at. There were 2 of those. So on my commute 71% of the red lights I encountered were there to do nothing other than cause irritation, take me longer to get where I was going, and cause my car to pollute more and get worse gas mileage.

Plastic Bottles, Coconut Fuel & Solar Golf Carts

Posted on May 8, 2007 in Save the World | Leave a Comment

Check out this picture of plastic bottles, courtesy of Hydro. The one in the background is 3 Football fields worth (roughly 2.5 million) which is apparently the amount of plastic bottles used in the US every hour. At least according to this guy. Who knows if it’s completely accurate, but even at 50% that’s a huge amount of bottles. Why did we ever switch away from reusing glass for soda bottles - just because of the cost?

On a related “save the earth” note, Hayden sent an email about how a small island in Papua New Guinea is using coconut oil to power vehicles and generators. I think this is super cool, but it’s still not all that great. Isn’t the whole global warming problem because we’re putting off gases? Burning vegetables doesn’t cause gas? I really don’t know, but it seems like it would still. Sure, it’s a BIG step forward, and absolutely worth pursuing, but I think there could be better alternatives.

For example, while I was in Belize on Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye checking out real estate in Belize and other stuff like that, I noticed that these islands had almost NO cars. Most were used for construction with a special permit. The modes of transport were walking, biking or golf carts. Keener and I talked about how cool it would be if one of these smaller islands were able to go 100% self sustaining from solar and wind power. Golf cart roofs would make an awesome spot for a solar panel to continually charge their batteries, and there is plenty of wind and solar to power houses too. I’d love to be involved in making something like that happen, just for the cool factor. So, when are we moving?

Find It