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More waste of taxpayer money and complete injustice
Well, today, Justice Anthony Kennedy granted a stay allowing the cross on Mt. Soledad to stay in place at least temporarily. Both sides of the issue are interpreting it in different ways. If the supreme court accepts the case, I think it will be a bad precedent as the law (in my eyes) is quite clear that the cross doesn't belong there and courts for the last 15 years or so seem to agree with me. It will be even worse if the supreme court sides with the city of San Diego and allows the cross to remain in place. In any case, this is a complete waste of taxpayer money, both city and federal government.
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What's up with baseline energy usage?
I received my gas and electric bill today and have always been curious what baseline energy usage means because I always exceed it by at least 2 times and usually more than that. For energy usage > 100% of baseline, the rate increases and then increases more as the usage goes up. Turns out, the baseline is based on a) location (there are 4 zones, coastal, inland, mountain, and desert), season (summer or winter), if all electric or gas and electric applications, and number of days in the month. For the summer, where I live (inland), the baseline is 11.8 kilowatt hours per day. The big problem with this is that the size of the house nor the number of family members is taken into account. So a person with a 1000 square foot house has the same baseline as someone with a 2500 square foot house or a house with 2 people and a house with 4 people have the same baseline. Unless I'm missing something, this is completely ridiculous. I do what I can to conserve energy (I still haven't turned on the A/C despite the 90+ degree weather outside), but my bill doesn't reflect it. Granted, I do have to run computers all the time for my business.
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New office floor
After living in our house for almost two years, I came to the realization that my office was one of the high traffic areas in the house. Most of our downstairs is tile, so high traffic doesn't really show. The carpet in my office looked awful and I decided to get hardwood in it. I chose bamboo as I wanted a light color for the long run and it was priced better than some of the other woods. This morning, the floor was finished and I moved my office back in.
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Disappointment with Garmin
This week, Garmin announced that they would have their Training Center software available by the end of the year (2006) instead of by the spring of 2006 like they said way back in January. I can understand software delays, but it should have been quite predictable from January. However, I'm pleased that MotionBased has a beta of their Mac plugin that works quite well and the interface is easy to use. In addition, they are quickly rolling out new features and might even bring a feature or two to us Mac users before the Windows users.