Skype and Ubuntu

I finally got skype fully functional in Ubuntu. I am happy about that. I am also happy that I successfully worked command line in the terminal window. This was the first time I needed to go command line instead of using GUIs. I love the ease of using GUIs but using command line is just something I wanted to start doing command and this was a simple and good place to start.

Adam West

I am a fan of the old 1960s Batman TV series. I just recently found a website about Adam West who played Batman/ Bruce Wayne. His site is here.

Wunderground.com

One of the websites I use to get the weather is wunderground.com. Not always perfect but what weather service is.

The Economy is Freakin' Scary

With unemployment up around 10%, the price of homes being low, lines of credit drying up as well as uncertainty on Wall Street, it is scary out there. The answer is not going to come from Washington or Corporate America but from the American people getting their financial house put into order both as individuals as well as the national level. I do not think Washington is going to help because it is the private sector and not government that creates wealth. Government can only redistribute wealth. I am not saying that governments categorically do not work but there is a lot of things that the private sector does better. I don't think the private sector is totally clean is the recent problems. The sub prime lending bubble burst is proof of that. Business made the loans, the government did not govern the banks better and too many people were relying on easy credit. There is enough blame to go around.

The big thing now is learning to do more with less. That goes for government, businesses and individuals. It is not going to be a quick fix. I think it might be another year or two before things get better. I hope I am wrong and things improve faster than that. there are some major fundamental things wrong with the economy and I don't think there is a quick fix. I also don't think much of the bail outs that have come out of Washington done by either the Bush or Obama Administrations.
I do beleive in a Do It Yourself Attitude. There are things that you are better off paying someone else to do but there are many things that you are miles ahead doing yourself. One thing I am going to do is try as many things as possible to either save money or getting addditional benefits without spending more money or at least in a cost effective manner. I might blog them here. I don't promise anything earth shattering or anything new, but things that may or may not be helpful but it will serve as one persons coping with the way that things are.

Biophilia

The biophilia hypothesis suggests that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems. Edward O. Wilson introduced and popularized the hypothesis in his book entitled Biophilia. I think I can relate to this. There are times when I really, really need to get not only outdoors but go out in the woods. I saw this in the wikipedia article here.

One Toke Over the Line

A modern spiritual or about scoring some weed?



It is all about the boo! And here is the original.

Weather

It is the middle of November and still pretty mild. I am really enjoying it. i don't intend on sounding like a doom and gloomer but I am kinda waiting for the shoe to drop while enjoying the good weather. If this proves to be a mild winter, I would not complain in the least. Last winter was harsh enough and getting a break on heating bills is a welcomed thing in a good economy or bad. We shall see and will enjoy this mild weather as long as it lasts.

Geotalk Podcast

I enjoy waymarking and one of the categories I like doing is the blogs category. They are a coach potato way of waymarking which is both a plus and a minus. the plus is that I generally get to see interesting things online: the negative is that they are not getting me out to see something new. However, I found one neat blog from this category. It is here. It is for this podcast. Even though it is made in Australia and has a an australian focus, it has a generally appel that geocachers every where should be interested. I am enjoying the episodes I have heard so far. Check it out for yourself.

Amy Yoder Bagley

One of the local celbreties around North Eastern Indiana is Amy Yoder Bagley. She is from the area and made it to the Olympics. I am going to highlight her website (here) for this week's webness.

DiHydrogen MonOxide

A lot of people do not know the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. As a result, I am going to use ts week's webness to help enlighten people. The link is here. Enjoy!!

Redcrossracing.com

This is a follow up on a post I made about recrossracing.com. I finally got enough points to get the binoculars. They are a pair of sport binoculars which mean they are low power but small and fit into your pockets. Perfect for the NASCAR audience they are aiming at. It is kinda nice to get a promo for donating blood especially since I was doing it anyway. I was also glad to see that it arrived within the window they said. The website said it would tke them 6-8 weeks to show up and it tokk about 7&1/2weeks to show up. I am figuring that I will have the enough points to get a duffle bag from them by the end of the year. I will report in when that goes through.

The Great Leaves and Eaves Race

It must be the beginning of November and just past Halloween. It is leaf clean up time. This is the time of year where I race the cold weather to clean the leaves off the lawn and out of the gutter. Fortunately, the leaves have fallen in the shortest time I have seen for a while. Since it fell so fast, there are extra big piles of leaves in the street waiting for the city crew to pick them up. I think I will have the gutters and leaves done with no problem before the cold weather hits this year. That is fine with me since I remember me whining about how cold it was for last years gutter clean. Let me just say that I would not mind the weather we had today to hang around a good long time. It was a glorious day. The day was so glorious that if I did not have outside jobs to do today, I would have came up with excuses for being out.