I just love to put up countdown timers. Since Conan is coming back to TV soon, I thought I’d share this with you all! I’m also hoping that Bathesda makes a Fallout New Vegas countdown like they did with Fallout 3, but so far there isn’t an official timer.

His show is going to be called: “Conan.” I’ve got my new TiVo ready to go!

About a week and a half ago I finally had my home assessment for the charging station for the Nissan Leaf. It was quick, the guy was here for about twenty minutes. The good news is that the installation shouldn’t take more then a day. All they had to do is add a breaker and install the charge station. So, I’d guess it would take a couple of hours give or take. I finally got the quote it it comes in just under $2500. Which isn’t too suprising since most people seem to be getting a similar quote. The government will pay for half the cost of the installation, so that’s about $1200 off. It will be a while before I can schedule the installation, probably in October.

On another note, I’m back from Hawaii, obviously! I also won my unemployment case against Blockbuster Video! So, it can be assumed I’ve get some needed stress relief. It’s nice to get a vacation, but I am really glad to be home again!

I’m officially announcing my trip to Hawaii! For this occasion I have created a special website: Hawaii Trip. The site is still in a basic form, but I will be updating it regularly once my vacation starts. I’m planning on doing some light updates to the site this coming week to get it ready for the trip. I’ll be leaving this  Saturday and will becoming home on the following Saturday.

This will be my first time flying. I’m not really nervous about it right now, I’m just not looking forward to the long wait due to the security process. Oh well, that’s just how it is. It should be fun, even though I will be spending some of my time in Hawaii doing school work! And of course, you all will be able to follow along with my adventure in Hawaii if you choose to!

I probably wont make another blog post on this site until after the trip so this post should stay up top on this site. Just remember, the link is at the top of this post so you can easily access the new site. After the trip, I’ll probably not update my Hawaii site, but I’ll leave it up for fun.

That’s all for now boys and girls! I’ll see you in Hawaii! (Well figuratively speaking)

Happy Independence Day from GoDaddy.com!

Just in case I forget to post this tomorrow I’m doing this now. I know that often there are a lot of issues that polarize us in politics and sometimes we even feel frustrated with the government. But, I hope we can all still show a little bit of patriotism tomorrow. There is a lot of good still going on in this country and even if we have disagreements we are all Citizens of this nation. We have the same goals, to live the life that we see fit to live. Regardless of our political afflictions or lack there of we want the best for this nation. We have a rich history and yes as a country we have made mistakes. Though we are not perfect, we have an honest desire to help make the world a better place. We have had hard lessons to learn. We ended slavery, ushered in the civil rights movement, and gave women the right to vote. We have also done great things too. We helped our allies during the first and second World Wars, we have given aid to nations that need food, we have sent help to Haiti after the earthquake that struck there.

This coming Independence Day, July 4th, let us remember the sacrifices that were made to give us the freedoms we have and let us not take for granted what we have. Let us continue to be the proud and humble nation that I believe us to be! For liberty and justice for all!

“Scott, thank you again for your continued commitment to driving a Nissan LEAF™. you have reserved your place in history and will be one of the first in your area to own one.we are still finalizing some details of the order process, and we will be in touch later this summer with additional information on your order timing. rest assured, this will not impact your reservation status. we will continue to keep you updated with all developments as they occur.”

This was in my e-mail and yes it has my hopes extremely high. Especially adding to that is that my home assessment for the charging station states that I’m number 13271. There are 15,000 cars reserved for the U.S. in the first batch which leads me to believe that since I’m the 13,271 person to schedule the assessment (which is part of the process to reserve the car) I think I’m in a good position to be one of the first to own this car!

I know it’s not official, but it’s looking good. It’s practical to not get too excited until I hear more, but that’s not going to happen. I can’t help it.

You might be asking why go electric? I think for me the main reason is no more oil changes, no more oil filters, and no more gasoline. That’s big savings in the long run. It’s also to make an environmental statement too. I think in the wake of the BP oil disaster in the gulf, now is a good time for Nissan to release it’s electric car. So far public interest has been good and it seems the Leaf is off to a good start. There are limits to what an electric car can do, even the Leaf isn’t for everyone. A 100 mile range it’s going to be good enough for vacation trips or driving too far. Even with charging infrastructure the fastest re-charge time is just under 30 minutes and that’s with the level 3 charging station which is the most expensive to install. Most people who end up driving the Leaf or other electric cars as they come on the market will have level 2 charging stations installed. They are slower but still within an acceptable rate of charge. We’re talking around 8 hours to charge up from a low state of charge, basically on empty. However, most charging will probably be done from around half empty on up so that will shrink the re-charging time. Level one charging is your typical 120v outlet and from low charge to full would take about 20 hours to charge the batteries on the Leaf! Still, with public charging stations, people can drive around and charge while they go shopping or are dinning out.

If you can’t get your hands on the Leaf or you need better range then you might want to take a look at the Chevy Volt. It is technically a hybrid, but it acts more like a pure electric car for about 40miles, no gas is needed. Once you run out of battery power, a gasoline engine kicks in and keeps you going while charging the battery (as I understand it). You can plug the car in at home and charge the battery which would probably charge fairly well on 120v and probably only in a few hours on the level two charging station (240v). The system is what I was hoping to do with my Prius by having it converted into a plugin but I was never fully satisfied with the systems that are available. Still, you will see a plugin version of the Prius from Toyota in a couple of years. Toyota is also working with Tesla Motors so we may see some interesting electric cars from Toyota soon too.

And if you can’t pry yourself away from the ICE car then there is still some good news for you. Advancements in MPG continues and we may see some improved ICEs coming in the next couple of years that will help save on gas. Imagine your typical gasoline non-hybrid car getting 50MPG! It’s not just a dream anymore, but a possibility! Don’t forget that bio-fuel isn’t out of the picture or even hydrogen (though I don’t see that happening for a while).

I hope to see more and more electric cars out on the road in the next few years and here’s hoping the Leaf does well. Oh, and don’t forget about Ford, they have an electric focus on the way too!

Scott, thank you again for your continued commitment to driving a Nissan LEAF™. you have reserved your place in history and will be one of the first in your area to own one. we are still finalizing some details of the order process, and we will be in touch later this summer with additional information on your order timing. rest assured, this will not impact your reservation status. we will continue to keep you updated with all developments as they occur.

I was playing The Sims 3 today and I could not help but post this photo. My character is teaching his son to talk and well you can’t imagine what they are talking about!

I thought we decided that nuking the oil well was a bad idea!

Anyway, this is a lesson to all you new fathers out there. Leave that talk about atomic weapons till they get older…

I was on the Starcraft 2 beta site as I am a beta tester for the game and yes I think it’s coming along steadily. There often are off topic posts on web forums and found one about a guy who was spouting off some sexist comments. There was a debate about the psychological differences between men and women and I wanted to get in my take. Of course before I could get my say in Blizzard or the original poster deleted the topic. Which, in my view was the right thing to do as it seemed inappropriate for that forum anyway. Here is my post, that didn’t get published:

“I have to disagree with the statement that men and women are very different. I believe there are more similarities then differences. Both men and women share skills, abilities, and qualities. Both fall in love, can be kind, compassionate, angry, violent, etc…

You may not agree, but as I see it, men and women are not much different.

As far as talking about psychology goes, it is important to point out that most of this science is theoretical. Meaning, that there are very few proven facts in psychology. Yes it is based on research, experimentation, and other scientific processes. But, the human mind is not as simple as say mathematics. There are so many different views in psychology and some are more supported then others. Just remember that even theories like evolution, though I do believe in its validity, is just a theory. It’s not proven science but well supported science theory. That is not to say that evolution is not true, it’s just not 100% verified.

If you focus on what makes women and men different you may over-look the similarities and naturally you would believe there are more differences then similarities.”

I do love to talk philosophy and science so I am a bit disappointed that the topic was deleted. I will say as a disclaimer that the author of the deleted topic was probably doing it as a joke. I doubt his authenticity. I mean, who uses a video game forum to spout options about non-video game subjects?

Where’s Mario Mario when you need him? (Yes I’m talking about Super Mario Bros and yes his last name is Mario. What kind of parents name their kid Mario Mario? I mean Luigi Mario sounds ok, but seriously the poor guy has lived in the shadows of his brother and he has to share the same last name Mario?)

Opps, went off on a tangent there. Anyway, it seems that my family has had to hire a plumber because my brother forgot he wasn’t one! Well, ok that’s harsh. Anyway, we knew we were going to have to replace two faucets in the garage that connect to the water heater and the washing machine. They are very rusty. And my brother was trying to take one off so we new what size to get to replace the rusty faucets and in the process broke it so we are sitting right now with no water. On top of that I was waiting to go pick up something for my air filter. Now I have to wait for the plumber to get here.

I’m hungry, yes, I would like to eat something but I want water. I might have some apple juice still somewhere, now that I think of it. Maybe I should go look. If the water is off though, I can’t cook anything having to do with water obviously. Maybe there’s still some frozen food in the freezer that I could have. Hold on a moment I’m going to check.

Isn’t this just a fantastic rambling post! Yes I do apologize that I don’t post enough on this here blog, but I have not really thought of anything interesting to say on any one subject for a while. In fact, I get so busy with other activities that I forget my website exists! So, here is a fun random post and I’ll work on posting more stuff.

I thought it was time for a good old fashion silly post, or perhaps not so silly? In this world, there was a type of meat that was not quite meat. It kept well and was quite salty. This was called SPAM and is famous or infamous depending on who you talk to. Anyway, one day someone decided to use the word SPAM to mean unwanted e-mail. And then it basically became associated with anything that was either too much, overflowing, or possibly computer generated and sent right into your inbox. And then one day my website had a face lift and became a blog. Comments came and didn’t stop. So much that some were labeled SPAM and then deleted. To make things worse, I occasionally I have to decide what is SPAM and what isn’t! I’m not always confident in my ability to tell the difference.

So, for all of you who are real, exist, and are not computers or advertising something completely unrelated to my website, I do apologize if your comment has gotten deleted. And, yes I did use the word SPAM a lot in this post about SPAM. I guess I just like saying the world SPAM even though technically I’m typing the word SPAM and not actually saying it out loud. There, I think that’s enough about SPAM for one day.

It’s probably been quite a while since I did anything to further my writing career, but I got an e-mail from amazon.com that made me do something about it. Right now there is a contest for fiction authors to get a manuscript or self-published book marketed and sold by Penguin publishing. Not a bad deal if you can get it. So, i decided to go ahead and submit Fallen Raven into the fray. It’s my only somewhat finished manuscript and I didn’t want to chose my self-published work.

This is just for fun as I don’t expect to make it to the next phase. Still, it is nice to feel like I’m doing something other then writing term papers for a change!