The coldest winter I ever spent
Archive for the ‘General’ Category.
I got a flu immunization yesterday.
Last night I threw up three times.
This morning I couldn’t get out of bed. I have many of my normal symptoms of a cold: fuzzy thinking, slow reaction times, light sensitivity, exhaustion, poor appetite. But no respiratory issues and only minimal body aches,
This is dumb. I got immunized so I wouldn’t miss time out of my life due to illness.
From M:
‎”Upon graduation from Hogwarts, I invented the Self-Writing Cover Letter, an example of which you are reading now, streamlining the job-hunting process for employment seekers the world over. Thanks to this invention, every cover letter now quickly and accurately sums up the applicant’s relevant experience and qualifications, eliminating hours and hours of toil and anguish.”
A flick of the wrist, a “Curriculus Vitamos” and it’s done! Brilliant!
I sold my car 5 1/2 months ago and got a bike. Did it pay for itself? Jump to the last paragraph for the money shot.
One Time Bike Expenses:
——————-
$1300 Total One Time Bike Capital Expenses
Ongoing Bike Expenses
Clipper Card
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$517 total Clipper Card train & bus fares in 4 months
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4 Month (May 1-Oct 1) expenses while on a bike from above
$1300 + $517 + $30 + $400 = $2,247 / 4 months = $560/month.
Until I sold it, my car cost $610/month. Amortizing my capital expenses over 4 the last months, the bike cost about the same ($560/month) as a car.
I haven’t figured in the bother of not having a car at the ready, having to occasionally rely on Megan to pick me up at the BART station, or the freedom of not worrying about maintenance.
In future months, the bike should cost:
$100/month transit expenses, or less as I slowly become able to ride longer distances.
$100/month extra food, I am eating a lot more while biking more!
$20/month misc expenses, a wild guess.
Curiously, I haven’t found good occasion to use my Zipcar membership at all in the year I’ve had it. I’m going to cancel my membership. Granted, I’ve gotten help from Megan and others with the occasional grocery store run.
Conclusion:
Going forward, it looks like the bike will cost $220/month ($2640/year) where the car used to cost me $610/month. ($7,320/month), a savings of 64%, $390/month ($4680/year). Hmm! That’s not as much savings as I thought, but it’s good. Or I can think about it another way… I now have a $390/month travel slush fund to do with what I please!
This has been in progress for almost 2 years but I just noticed it on the Golden Gate Bridge website.
Some excerpts:
December 2012: Functionality Testing
- Toll collectors will continue to staff the FasTrak/Cash toll lanes and cash will still be accepted.
…
February 2013: Full Conversion to All Electronic Tolling
Toll collectors will no longer staff the tollbooths and cash will no longer be collected at the toll plaza. Instead, customers will have their choice of using FasTrak or the new Pay-By-Plate choices (License Plate Account or One-Time Payment.) Customers will still be able to pay their toll using cash in person at the Bay Area FasTrak Customer Service Center in San Francisco or at a number of new cash payment locations established throughout the Bay Area.
…
When the decision was made in January 2011 to convert to All Electronic Tolling, the GGBHTD had 32 full time Toll Collectors.
As of September 18:
9 have retired or departed the position for various reasons
3 transitioned to other positions within the GGBHTD
12 total have transitioned out of the toll lanesThe GGBHTD is continuing to work with the remaining 20 full time Toll Collectors to identify other positions within the GGBHTD that come open that the Toll Collectors may be qualified for.
…
Additional Stats on All Electronic Tolling
20 million southbound vehicles annually pay the Golden Gate Bridge toll
70% (14 million) of the 20 million use FasTrak today
30% (6 million) of the 20 million use Cash today
2.5% (500,000) of the 20 million that cross are from Outside of California…
Cost Per Transaction
- Cash $0.83 per transaction
- Invoice $0.67 per transaction
- Pay-By-Plate (tied to License Plate) $0.39 per transaction
- FasTrak $0.25 per transaction
(Image some rights reserved 24thCentury)
(Originally posted May 26, reposted because it’s annoyingly relevant)
In the last 6 months, 12 18 22 25 of my friends have had their email accounts hacked. Either that, or all my friends are jumping on the Make.Money.Fast bandwagon by sending me junk email. If someone hacked your email account, what evil could they wrack upon you and your friends?
Here is a little article showing how you can make an easy-to-remember and (hopefully!) impossible-to-hack password. Please use this advice: Click me! Click! Clickie-poo! Clickie-kins!! Click-er-doodle!
Almost all of my hacked friends are on Yahoo. If you use Yahoo mail, please change your password to be secure!
After 6+ years of riding BART, I still can’t tell when I’m at 16th Street Station or 24th Street Station. Can you? Go ahead and click on the images to look closer.
How long did it take you to tell the two stations apart? Just so you know, those are the best photos I could get of the stations from inside the train after several attempts. Most of my photos look more like this. I’ve got a lot of these shots on my camera:
Can you tell which shots are of 16th Street Station and which are of 24th Street Station? No, I can’t either. And yes, every photo has the sign pretty much in the middle of the shot; I really tried to get good photos.
For comparison, here are some shots of other stations. Same camera, same angles.
The other stations are all much easier to identify. Different architecture, different color schemes, and visible signs.
Fixing this isn’t hard. The signs at 16th and 24th just need to have some light cast on them.
A couple of friends have asked about health insurance they might get. Here is my current solution. Feel free to write me if you have a better solution!
I have ClearProtection Plus 5000 from Anthem Blue Cross http://anthem.com/ca
$190/month for “very good insurance after a $5k deductable” for this 42 year old man living in California.
ehealthinsurance.com is a good site to price out plans. It gets confusing and frustrating quickly thought because well, insurance is confusing and frustrating. It’s likely that my plan will come out the least expensive of the plans that actually cover anything. Cheaper plans are available but I noticed that they always only cover something like 50% after the deductible. So your $100k heart attack might cost you $50k :-(
Megan and I went to the last concert of the summer at Stern Grove. OK Go headlined and The Family Crest opened. It was totally fun and picnicy!
Ok, I guess we couldn’t see the stage very well, but that wasn’t the important part!
Oh and did I mention that our parking karma was amazing? We showed up at like 2:20 and drove around to the “back” of the park just in time for them to open up the parking spaces at the entrance to the park :-)
From an article in Via, the Magazine of the American Automobile Association (AAA).
Short form: No, traditional blaring car alarms do not work. They are just a PITA for you and piss off your neighbors.
(via)
Research suggests that an audible alarm is less effective than car recovery devices, such as OnStar, and immobilizers when protecting your vehicle against robbery.
The quick answer: no. After surveying insurance claims for 73 million vehicles in 1997, the nonprofit Highway Loss Data Institute found “no overall reduction in theft losses” for cars with traditional audible alarms. That’s because blaring alarms rarely indicate theft. So frequent are false alarms that people are conditioned to ignore them.…Many cars come with an immobilizer, a device that prevents the engine from starting unless it detects a computer chip in your key fob. It isn’t foolproof and it won’t get you a discount, but it’s harder to crack than a standard alarm–and it won’t wake the neighbors every time a garbage truck rumbles past.
Here I quickly show you how to unlock and lock a Kiddee AccessPoint Portable Keysafe Original. This is the same mechanism as the GE Supra C3 Keysafe. This is a lockbox often used by a realtor to lock a key to a door in real-estate.