Great Good Fortune

Thank you for your thoughts regarding hubby’s grandparents. We keep on plugging along, as does my mom-in-law who is coping fairly well despite the outrageous circumstances.

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With so much change, it only seemed fitting to try on a new look, as well as run amok with new blogging software.

I appreciate your patience as I iron out a few wrinkles (and welcome your feedback if you spot something amiss).

As someone who was laid off from the high tech industry last year, I found this video hilarious. Amazing that there is still the myth out there that you can reap big financial benefits from working at a startup. Some people do, perhaps .01% of the very clever ones who chose companies wisely then work their asses off and sacrifice huge amounts of their lives on the chance it pays off. I have a good friend who lived through the experience with a happy ending, but that is ONE. Of the many dozens of people I know in the industry. And from what little I know, it wasn’t mind numbing piles of cash, just enough to make things comfortable for a while.

As I am looking into the job market again, I think I am just too selfish to put myself through that. Actually, I know I am not the right type of person to take that kind of risk on the chance to win big. And I have a huge amount of respect for those that go balls out and pull it off. Especially when you have a family, it takes an amazing team to pull it off (remember the saying “Behind every successful man, is an exhausted woman.” )

Anyway, go watch the video… it’s great for a laugh!

I stumbled upon this fascinating new style of furniture.

It might be nice to have a stool that politely changes hue to help disguise a more ample derrière, no? The techno-geek in me is fascinated by how the furniture senses breathing, and becomes interactive as a result. It seems like something that would be fun for a few days, tops (though it could have more longevity if it fascinated the children– if so, would it be worth the (assumably high) price??)

While I have hopelessly classical taste in design (give me a nice cherry finish and crown moulding any day!), I think this would be fun to come across in a bar or restaurant. I can’t imagine it in a home setting… unless it’s in one of my single-and-childless friend’s abodes (read: money to burn and fun toys abound)!

With grateful thanks to the Hurculean efforts of Mr. Fortune and a BTDT friend, things are now quite different here. You might notice some changes and improvements. For example, all the months of posts that were lost to la-la land are back! June through October links are functional again, and I can now delete some 34000+ spam trackbacks.

If you have any problems submitting (non-sp@m) comments, drop me a holler at ggfortune at gmail dot com.

"Fast!

Easy!

Convenient!"

This week I was at a pretty swank hotel in the Silicon Valley, and saw a vending machine selling iPods:

Ilove my pink iPod mini, and was pretty impressed that Apple productsand accessories were featured in multiple prominent slots in thisvending machine. While I can’t see much value in buying one on a tripwhere you don’t have your music selection ready to upload, perhaps itwould make a pretty rocking gift for someone back home?

Completely remove the human interaction in your life and buy one from a machine! How Silicon Valley is that??

Yes, we’re tree huggers. We conserve resources like water and electricity. We recycle. We care about the earth.

When we bought the penultimate "green" family car in June, I had all these things in mind. None of those ideals were very quantifiable until tonight.

I calculated that we have saved $178 in gas– and about 68 gallons of gas– since we made the switch! Of course, this is but a drop in the bucket to offset the cost of the car. But the savings is more than I expected. I figure over the next 21 years… it will pay for itself!

What jumped out at me regarding our gas savings is that we are favoring the Prius for our family’s weekend driving, in addition to using it as my commute car (round trip 45 miles/day). We are still driving the same distances, but averaging 44 MPH across those miles with the Prius. While it was time to "up-size" fromthe Miata, I didn’t think we’d experience much gas savings sinceit was no slouch in the gas department at 28MPG. Now, instead of filling up the rather thirsty Sienna every week, it’s down to about once every three weeks!

I do love driving the Prius, as it’s as educational about my driving habits as it is economical. We have often said we’ll be interested in the Hybrid Sienna a few years after it’s released in 2007. It is nice to know that we are measurably making a difference until we can be a completely hybrid family!

Can someone please post a comment to one of my posts? I’m getting concerned that function might not be working at all. Let’s all experiment a bit and see how that part works.

I promise a nice yummy bowl of homemade Rocky Road ice cream to all who volunteer to help. And if you live more than 100 miles away, I guess I’ll just have to get creative with the reward!

Have you heard about the upcoming July 4 NASA experiment? Scientists are planning to blow a hole in a comet to learn more about the origins of the universe. Amateur and professional astronomers are having a field day.

It’s possible that we in the Western hemisphere might beable to see the impact. It seems, given the date of impact, scientistsare trying to improve upon our measly theory of fireworks. By spending $333 million dollars over 5 years?

Normally, I am all for scientific exploration. I’m a fan of survival of the fittest vs. creationism…. oh, um, pardon, it’s now called "Intelligent Design." <eyes rolling> But that’s a topic for another opinion.

What bothers me most is the scientists are so vague about what they expect to learn, and what they plan to do with what they learn. I think I have become extremely sensitized to random expenditures of our taxpayer money. Granted there is a big HUGE ongoing expenditure that I don’t support going on half a world away, but I won’t go into it here.

Are they planning to collect some of the ice and debris from the resulting impact? No. They are simply going to take pictures. I agree that sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, but c’mon guys…. you’ve gone through all the years of effort to coordinate this but you’re not going to collect any of the resulting material for analysis? It’s likely that would have added to the overall cost. If that’s the case, then I’m glad Plan B was chosen.

Suffice it to say: this taxpayer prefers fireworks of the Chinese variety, circa 2200 years ago, thankyewverymuch.

Now, about teacher salaries….