In the Year 3000…In the Year Three Thousaaaaand

Mountain Dew, Red Bull, & Amp will form a partership to combine their technologies into one drink….it will be called “OH HELL YEAH I’M TWEAKING BABY!”  It will be a hit.

People will still speculate whether or not Elvis and 2Pac are still alive.

All of Europe will have transitioned into a nudist continent.

Blogging, Facebook, Twitter and the rest will be replaced by ThinkWarp.  You simply think something, in your mind, and your friends will hear it in their ears.

People will think of the A-Bomb, Napalm, and Nuclear Missles the way we think of spears and slingshots…as in, “Wow, I can’t believe people back in the 21st century had such primitive means of battle.  What woosies.”

Braveheart will still stand as the movie to which all other movies are compared to in terms of overall greatness.

Cows, pigs and chickens will no longer need to be raised and killed.  All meat products will be expertly grown in labratory-factories with giant petrie dishes.  All humans will have become lactose intolerant because of 21st and 22nd century steroid enhanced milk, making dairy products obsolete.

Bill Clinton will be looked upon as one of the greatest presidents in our nations history.  George W Bush will still be the butt of presidential jokes.  Barack Obama will have paved the way for future black presidents, hispanic presidents, and eventually a gothic teenage president.

Because of increased fear and crime, Trick or Treat will devolve into “Knock and I’ll Shoot”.  Of course, shoot is such a present day term, as guns won’t exist as we know them in that time.  It will probably be more like, “Knock and I’ll Say Intruder”, at which point the voice activated home protection system will active the magnetic field under the porch (all people will be required to wear lightweight magnetic shoes, enabling law enforcement to stop an individual at any time by activating the magnetic field under the area in which they stand), causing the person to be stuck in that spot.  It will then automatically alert the local law enforcement agency with a detailed report of the both the person (through use of a retinal information scan, or RIS) and the incident.  Police will arrive within seconds through an underground tunnel system (sort of like a hyperspeed roller coaster with protective tubes that you travel in), and take the person in question to jail, where their punishment, which will actually be the uniform punishment system, will be to sit in a room for 48 hours, where they will have nothing but bread and water, and be forced to watch all 12 Seasons of the early 21st century version of ABC’s “Wife Swap”.

Threds is on Facebook

Did you know that Threds is on Facebook?  Now you do. 

Wanna help me look good to my bosses?  Become a fan!

Video Games

Thanks to the gracious allowance of my wife, in the last 10 days I have obtained a used X-Box game system and 20 (yes, 20) games ….. all for about 50% of the price of a new PS3, Nintendo Wii, or an X-Box 360.  This is my first game system since I got rid of my original Playstation about 7 years ago.  It’s funny how easy it’s been to get addicted again.

Anyways…in honor of this new possession, I thought I’d share my favorite video games of my lifetime.  Keep in mind – this list is pulled only from the games that I’ve owned or played, so it’s certain to leave off many, many great/classic games.  I’m going to do my best to do these in order.

10. Combat – Atari
9. Breakout / Super Breakout – Atari
8. Double Dragon – Nintendo
7. Cyber Tiger – Playstation
6. Contra – Nintendo
5. Double Dribble – Nintendo
4. The Legend of Zelda – Nintendo
3. Tecmo Bowl Football – Nintendo
2. Top Spin Tennis – XBox
1. NBA Jam – Sega

is blogging already obsolete?

My wife just joined Facebook this week.  As “tech savvy” as I may be (which is definitely in the moderate range…I’m more tech savvy than maybe the average joe, but not as much as one might think), blogging is my only real cyberspace medium.  I have not joined Facebook.  Let’s just say this … when I joined My Space about 20 months ago, I was fairly quickly booted from it.  Legal reasons.  Most likely would encounter the same fate with Facebook, so I’ve made no attempt to join.

However, in the brief time Erin’s been on Facebook, just in helping her get some stuff set up, photos uploaded, etc….I’ve been able to see how it actually works for the first time.  And it’s making me think that blogging may soon be … if it’s not there already … obsolete.  I still want to blog.  I enjoy writing about the random thoughts in my brain, dusting in a little humor here and there, giving occasional updates on life, work, and family.  But I feel like my readership – or the “reach” of this blog – has likely peaked.

If you’re curious, that pans out to, from what I can gather, about 20 – 30 legitimate readers per day on average.  My “view count” would say it’s more than that, but it’s not accurate…it includes up to 125 views per day from people that have found my blog by using random Google search terms….for the last 2-3 months, I’ve had a tremendous amounts of search hits from the Google terms “Hillary Clinton Cankles” and “Foreign vs Domestic Cars”, which are two things I wrote about months ago.  But these viewers are not reading anything.  They open the blog, realize it’s not at all what they were searching for, and immediately leave.

But it’s difficult, and sort of selfish, to “market” a blog.  You can’t really put it in people’s faces.  They have to know you exist and actually want to take the time to open you up and read.  Facebook, Twitter…and I’m sure other sites I’m not aware of…are much different.  You communicate in snippets, and what you communicate is there for everyone to see, quickly, almost invasively in some ways.  It’s a constant, CNN-like message board of friend updates.  It’s easy to create readership by simply making LOTS of friends…which is sort of why Facebook exists, which means it’s very EASY to create lots of friends.  No one really wants to deny a friend, because it’s simply not cool.  A blog is much more static.  It exists in its own vacuum, waiting to be found, twiddling its thumbs, hoping to be read.  It’s not as real-time or busy-person-friendly.  A blog is like a VW Mini-Bus, taking you on a months long cross-country journey, stopping at interesting points along the way.  In comparison, Facebook is more like speed dating on a pogo stick, hopping from person to person to person, never really encountering a need to hop off the stick.

I’m not knocking Facebook or blogging.  Facebook obviously works.  It’s grown like wildfire, overtaken My Space, and is currently the ultimate friendship and community site.  (Although it is still run by a guy with lots of geek-sense, but little business-sense.  If Facebook bombs, it’ll be because they’re not making money, not because it doesn’t work on an end user level).    Blogging is still here.  It hasn’t gone away.  But why record shows on a VCR when you can afford a TiVo?  If history hold true, by about 2014, Facebook will have become obsolete as well, having been shown up by a newer, faster, more tantalizing and amazing social networking site than any of our minds can comprehend.  And all the while, this little blog will keep cruising, sometimes speeding and sometimes sputtering.  It may get a new face plate, replace some worn out parts, and receive some factory updates along the way.  Maybe one day it’ll finally break down on the side of the road for the last time.  But for now, the journey will continue, and the VW Mini Bus will roll on.  I’m just hoping to keep as many passengers as possible.

free

Did you know…

800-FREE-411 

Program that into your cell phone.  It’s a free nationwide directory service.  I’ve already used it, and it works.  It’s all automated, and while the computer is looking up the info, you get a little to a little advertisement over the phone (which I’m assuming is how it’s paid for), but it still works.  And, in today’s economy, it sure beats getting shafted for $1.50 just to get a phone number on one of those late Saturday mornings when you’re bored and really hungry, and absolutely cannot for-the-life-of-you remember whether your favorite Chinese joint opens at 10:30am or 11:00am.

The Electric Car

This one is for all my environmentally friends out there. And there are many of you. I want to recommend a documentary. I would actually consider it a must see.

Who Killed the Electric Car? Seen it? Heard of it? You need to. It’s pretty amazing. Back in the mid 1990’s, partly out of pressure from the California State Government, the electric car hit the streets.  Most of us here in the southeast or midwest may have never seen one.  Many of us probably never even heard of it.  But it existed.  And it worked.  And the cars were amazing.  Many were owned by celebrities….you know, all the ones that now drive Prius’s, ride bikes, speak out against smog, and live in homes that cost $1000.00 each month just to heat and cool?  Yep, those celebrities.  Without giving away the plot, the electric car effort came to a screeching halt, back around 2000 or 2001. 

However, back then, in the $1.50/gallon days, no one could have forseen $4.00/gallon gas just 7 years down the road.  So, after a short hiatus, in which most of the population has probably forgotten the electric car ever existed…..they’re making their way back.  For real.  You can check it out.  Here.  Or here. 

And whether you’ve seen them or not, electric cars are on the road.  Their just few and far between.  Want proof?  A couple of weeks ago, I was in the Barnes and Noble parking lot on Kingston Pike at about 8:00pm.  Was heading there to do some reading before meeting some friends to play tennis.  When, what did my eyes behold?  This…

That’s right.  An electric car.  And not only that, but one with some BAD ASS wheels baby!  Notice the picture on the left.  I really liked how the car was parked right in front of a $50,000 Porsche Boxster.  Awesome. 

So, cross your fingers.  I say it’s very possible that, within the next 10 years, electric cars could be a true reality.  And not just 100 of them scattered across the nation, but mass produced and parked in yours or my garage.  Well, I don’t have a garage, but that’s not the point.  It’s real.  It’s coming.  And I’m terribly excited about it.

Topic #4 – Fuel Economy

I’ve always been a junkie for compact cars. I currently drive a 2002 Mazda Protege LX, which looks very much like the one picture to the left. I bought it new. It now has about 85,000 miles. I’ve always gotten about 29-30 mpg from it.

I’m now pretty totally enamoured with the Honda Fit. Awesome car. 35 mpg, tons of room, sporty, great standard features, air bags all the way around, and really fun to drive.

In my vehicle history, I’ve owned a 1987 Ford Escort, a 1994 Mazda Protege, a 1998 Mazda Protege, and a couple of compact pickups for a short time. So, for most of my driving life, I’ve gotten about 30 mpg….and I really like it.

What’s very frustrating is to know that fuel economy is the USA could be much better.

Get this…..in 2007, only TWO cars in the US got an average of at least 40 mpg…the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybid. In Europe in 2007, 113 cars got at least an average of 40 mpg. That’s right. 113 different cars.

In 2007, the average mpg of ALL cars/light trucks on the road in the US ranged from 21-24 mpg. In Europe, 2007, the average mpg of ALL cars/light trucks on the road ranged from 40-43 mpg. That’s right…about 70% better than our vehicles. That’s ludicrous. Again, Capitalism bites us in the rear end. Not only that, but have you seen many pictures of the compact cars and trucks in Europe? They look way cooler, more stylish, and more sporty than their counterparts here do! And I’m not just talking about the 2 seater Smart cars. The best resource I can find to look at a sampling of different European cars is this page from Wiklipedia listing the Top 3 finishers the last several years in the European Car of the Year voting. Also, the Toyota Yaris has been gaining in popularity in the US over the last year. This car was released in Europe all the way back in 2000. This is a pretty normal trend, actually. Cool cars are released in Europe, gain popularity, then are released in “modified” versions here in the US…modified in the sense that they are rarely as good looking and get worse gas mileage. I truly cringe when I see the vast number of Hummers, Envoys, Expeditions, Suburbans, Sequoias, Armadas, Range Rovers, Durangos, and other gas guzzlers that rove our roads. And I don’t think people that drive these vehicles are bad people. It’s just that I’m a fuel economy kind of guy. And I hope I’ll have the sense and frugality to remain that way.

i’m confused

Do you, like me, get confused about consumer pricing? We’re sort of taught to believe that as “technology” improves, the prices of things that technology is applied to goes down. TV’s are a good example. New, advanced TV model comes out, and the TV is $5000.00. Technology improves, that same tv is $3000.00 a year later. More technology, and soon the TV is available for $1500.00.

Same thing with cell phones, right? Except that when NEW phones come out, they continually are higher in price than previous new models. Soon after that they’re cheaper than the phone you bought 7 years ago that felt like a big remote control. So are they cheaper, or more expensive? Or both? My first nice cell phone in 2000 cost me about $125.00. The phone I have now is much nicer and only cost $50.00, but that’s because it was on some sort of closeout special. The phone I liked would have cost about $50.00 IF I was a new subscriber, but was about $150.00 since I was only a renewing subscriber. That seems confusing too. Isn’t it better to offer things to KEEP your subscribers, rather than to tick them off?

Technology has certainly improved the way automobiles have been built over the years. Countless workers are laid off because machines do the jobs they used to do. But auto prices keep going up each and every year. My first car – a 1987 Ford Escort – cost me $2300, had 60,000 miles when I bought it, and last me over 4 years. There’s not a car out there for $2300 now that I would trust to drive across the street to Weigles. But doesn’t the advances in factory technology make cars cheaper and faster to build?

And how is it that CD’s are pretty much the same price they were 12 years ago? Or maybe even more expensive in some cases? Are the artists just making a ton more money off of CD sales than they used to, or does it really cost the same to make a CD as it did in 1992, when I picked up my first DC Talk cd…”Free at Last”, for about $15.00?

I really just get the sense that it’s all about greed. Apple charges $599 for a new phone, not because that’s its true market value, but just because they can. My wife loves finding shirts on sale for $7.00 when they were originally $42.00. Doesn’t that make you wonder about the actual value of a $42.00 shirt? When you go to that store in the mall and buy the $35.00 jeans, do you ever stop to think about the time 6 months ago when they were on sale for $18.00, and realize you might be getting jipped? Do you really wear them that much longer than you would a $14.00 pair of Wranglers from Walmart? And are they really made that differently to justify a 150% higher price?

It’s gotten me to the point that I have little joy in buying things when, really, there used to be joy in the obtaining of something new. I can’t stop wondering if it’s worth it, and if it’s 30% cheaper at the next store down the street. Problem is I don’t want to take the time to drive down there and see. So I buy something I need just hoping it will last and praying I don’t walk in a store 2 days later and see the same thing for less.

I’m going now. I want a hamburger. I just can’t decide whether to get the $1.00 Double Cheeseburger, the $2.59 Single, the $3.39 Whopper with bacon, or just buy 4 patties from Krogers for $3.00 and actually invest the time and effort to cook them. Almost makes me not hungry anymore.