HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Happy New Year everyone! Took a break through the month of December for a couple of reasons. One, to let the Jasmine donation post be at the top for any readers who might want to donate a little bit of money to help us all out. I would like to thank the people who have donated, thank you! It means a lot to me and Jasmine. Two, I've been busy with the holiday's and just taking a break from everything.

I had a wonderful Christmas, went and visited family, and finally got to meet and hold my little nephew Cai, he's such a cute little kid. I now have a telescope to view the night sky. I love it! The crappy part now is waiting for a night without clouds. I did get a good look at the moon, and Jupiter so far. Will dive deeper on the next clear night. Waiting on some new eyepieces and filter kit to come in the mail to get better views of planets and nebulae. I also got the game Red Dead Redemption for the PS3, which I will admit I have been highly addicted to. I've already put 20 hours into it, according to the in game time tracker. I think I've only completed about half of it within that 20 hours, so I'm sure there will be plenty more game for me to play. Also less time spent playing it due to going back to work next week. It's been a great week off though.

As far as New Years resolutions go, I never really have done a resolution, and if I have I never kept it longer than a month. So I don't think I'm going to do a resolution this year. I'm going to have a few drinks, watch a movie, watch the ball drop, maybe play some Rock Band, possibly. Just going to be a nice quiet relaxing evening at home.

Anyway, not much to update with just wanted to pop in and wish everyone a Happy New Year, and a belated Merry Christmas. I'll be back blogging more often again, very soon. Don't forget the Jasmine donation button will remain on the right side bar at the top, so feel free to donate as little, or as much as you want. With the donations so far it has helped quite a bit, so thanks again to you who have donated.

Me and Cai, Christmas 2010

Donations If You Can

I'm not one to post online begging and pleading for people to donate lumps of cash to me. This is a bit different. This is a donation for my dog Jasmine, which I've discussed her recent vet visits and what her situation is. She's been to the vet's a couple more times since I posted about her last, but didn't feel like clogging up my blog with minor vet updates. Just brought her in because of issues with her blood glucose being too high and then not wanting to eat, only to find out that she's just a picky eater, and we probably had a bunk bottle of insulin to boot.

Anyway, my girlfriend has posted a blog post about Jasmine also asking for donations here at her blog. Now I'm also posting her paypal donation button on my blog (on the bottom of this page, and in the side bar) in hopes of anything. Not even asking for a lot, just a few cents here and there.

The Math:
According to Google Analytics I had 742 Absolute Unique Visitors in the month of November.
I'm sure that a lot of them are repeat visits, so I'll drop it down to half; 371.
Let's say that 371 is the number of visitors I receive each month. And each one of them donated $.50cents to me, that would be $185.50 each month.
Now I don't even need THAT much, and I'm not asking for that much. I'd be happy with $.20cents per visitor which would average to be $74.20 a month.
Or even $.10cents per visitor which would average to be $37.10 a month.

Her insulin is roughly $30 a month, and her special diet food is roughly $120 a month, and the vet bill is roughly up to... well we won't go into that price, but you can take my word that it's pretty high.

I'm just trying anything I can, asking for help in places I never ask help from. Any money donated will go to Jasmine's diabetes fund, which would go towards her insulin, special diet food, and/or to pay off vet bills.

Anyone who donates will be posted under my "Links" section at the top of my blog (right below the banner). So donate to get your name and link there. Also please leave a comment with your blog address.

So please feel free to donate as much as you want, $.10cents or $1, it's up to you. I know it's the holiday season and I have bad timing for asking for such a favor, but I need to give it a shot.

60° In Winter Is Different Than 60° In Summer

Woke up this morning to a freezing cold house at 8am. Well actually it wasn't freezing cold, the thermostat said 60° although it felt about 40°. The furnace and heat were working fine before we went to bed. What the hell happened in the 6 hours I was asleep? When I got out of bed I turned up the heat to the usual 70°, I heard a click like usual but no air blowing. Scratching my head I then turn the heat down until I hear it click off. Give it a few seconds, in my mind I'm thinking "I sure am a genius this will work!" So I turn up the dial to the usual, hear the click and still nothing. Hmmmm... well then I'm no genius, but let's have a look at the furnace. I open the front door on it, and like any man that tries to fix something in their house whether they know what they're doing or not, I look in at the pilot... "Looks fine to me" I thought. So I look at the little knob that says "Pilot" push in for manual pilot and pull out for auto. It's on auto, so I decided to try manual. If one doesn't work the other should right?

Wrong.

Nothing but cool air started blowing out of the vents. Set it back to auto. "Hey look at this little trip switch, this must be the issue" I thought again. So I flick the little switch and close the door. AHA! There's the noise I was waiting for. Few seconds later it stops, still no heat.

Again like any man trying to fix something I feel I must get this. Who needs a professional when I'm a pretty smart guy? So I flick the trip switch again and hear the noise, then I push in the pilot button and still no heat.

I start getting frustrated as my girlfriend says "Someone will be here in 30 minutes to help us out." The guy gets here and tries the trip switch and that wasn't it. So he goes out to the fuel tank only to find out that the line has been frozen... or has it? After some tinkering around outside he lets us know that it was debris from when the gas truck came and filled up our tank. The sediment on the bottom was stirred up and must have clogged the tubes and made it so no fuel was able to get to the furnace. After which he gives us a tip, which we should have thought of; After a refill of gas turn off the heat for about an hour to let the sediment settle.

Now the heats back and working and my fingers and toes are melting and warming up. Which brings me to the statement that 60° temperature in the house in the winter time is much much MUCH colder than 60° in the summer.

Happy Thanksgiving <--- Felt I should put that in here due to the holiday. Stay full, and don't drink and drive.

Survival Part 1

Let me start this off by saying I'm not crazy and I'm not out of my mind. I guess I've read up on too many conspiracy theories that leave us fending for ourselves, or fighting to survive. Maybe I've watched too many survival shows and think it looks easy, which I highly doubt any of it's easy. Maybe it's all just a fantasy I have that I wont ever examine any further than just a thought.... Don't get me wrong, I love all the creature comforts we all enjoy such as electricity, simplicity of going to the store for food, computers (I love computers), cars for transportation, etc. But I feel I need this experience, like it will help me somehow, some way.

I have started doing a bit of research on finding a survival expert near me that I could learn from. Apparently there are quite a few all over, did a quick search for "learn from a survival expert" and I came up with this link. So I read what was on the page, and on the page was a link to a huge list of survival experts and schools all over the place. Found two places pretty close to me, one of which the website is under construction so I can't get a hold of them, and the other only had 2 classes in 2010 and they sound like they do a bunch of stuff in Michigan and North Carolina, so hopefully in 2011 there is some openings. Unfortunately it's almost $900 for a weeks worth of classes/lessons. I don't have the money at the moment but I will definitely be looking further in to this as time goes on.

I've watched "Into The Wild" where the guy gives up everything, travels to different places to learn essential knowledge before he makes his venture to live alone in Alaska. My girlfriend feared that I would do that if I watched the movie when she first saw it. For one, I would never leave on a venture like that without telling anyone. It would put too much worry on family and loved ones. For two, I sure as hell would not try to do it in Alaska, especially without any prior experience. I want to start small. I'm not even saying I want to live this way, I mainly just want the experience in case it's ever needed, when the shit hit's the fan. I guess you could call it "extreme camping" if you must give it a title. I just want to be prepared for the worst beyond just stocking cupboards full of non-perishables that will only last so long until you need to start surviving without any of the prepackaged goodies...

Fall Back

Good ol' fall back is taking it's effect tonight. I've always enjoyed when we put the clocks back ever since I was a kid. Extra hour of sleep, and.... ok so there is only one plus and it's only for one night instead of every night, get's lighter a earlier and of course it gets darker earlier.

So what is the point of this? Daylight Saving Time (not Savings time like commonly said by numerous people) was brought into effect during World War I to help save energy for war production in the later evening hours of summer, April - October. Then again during World War II the government requested we observe the time changes again. Between the wars each state and community chose whether or not they would continue doing this, until 1966 when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized the legth of which Dalight Saving Time would happen.

In 2005 the Energy Policy Act was passed which would increase the legth of DST by four weeks, from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November, with hopes that it would save 10,000 barrels of oil each day by companies during daylight hours. In 2007 is when this act took effect on the country.

So what do you think. Is a 1% increase in energy savings during DST worth it? Not every business experiences a saving from DST.