Cap and Trade

I am reading through the Cap and Trade bill that now sits in the hands of our incredible elected officials in the Senate.

Well, I came across a section on electric vehicles that "will" reduce the carbon emissions when they are introduced. This is specific to plug in and charge electric vehicles and the states that elect to use them and manufacturers that choose to produce them.

I don't buy into this though. To charge these vehicles you have to use electricity which is produced from burning fossil fuels (coal). This isn't a solution, it is meant to make the user feel better because he is not directly contributing carbon dioxide to the air. But that really isn't my point. I really want to address something totally different in this post.

I recently purchased a truck that has the ability to run on ethanol. The first thing I did is start searching for gas stations where you could buy ethanol, and I am here to tell you that there aren't that many. So few in fact that the closest one to my house is about 20 miles away and then the next closest is 100 miles away. There is only a single gas station in Louisiana that has it, and most states are about the same. But the fact that it is hard to find or get isn't even my point, though it would be nice to be able to find it more readily available.

Think about the plants that you will be depriving of glorious carbon dioxide that they need to grow and produce oxygen. But that isn't even my point.

It comes down to this. Ethanol give you roughly 15% few miles per gallon than gasoline. The price per gallon is roughly 15% cheaper than gasoline. When the price of gas goes up, the price of ethanol goes up and it is always a 15% cheaper. I don't understand how this is the case because no one is using the stuff which is evident by the amount of gas stations where you can get it. What is happening is that the price is being fixed to a price of gasoline minus 15% because that is your reduction in gas mileage. And this brings me to my point. What do you think will happen to the price of electricity if all of a sudden people are using it to charge their vehicles? And that isn't just for the KW/hrs you use to charge your vehicle, but also for the usage of watching television, using your computer, etc.

Just thought I would point this out and see if anyone else had thought about it.

Shortly Overdue

I wouldn't even call it overdue, more like tardy.

I removed 'In Dubai' from my header.

That is all.

MapQuest iPhone App

MapQuest released an application for the iPhone last week and it is awesome. The link at the beginning of this post links to the iTunes App page.

I really dig the application. The one thing that I really like about it, as opposed to the maps application that comes with the iPhone, is that it can mark the location of local points of interest. For me this is great because I just moved to a new area and I use it quite a bit to find restaurants. I am sure it can be used for other things too, like for instance, coffee shops or gas stations. It also includes a feature where one can turn directions in landscape view and flick through the directions as they menuever through the stages of their drive, thus acting much like turn by turn directions without the benefit of changing screens when the action is completed.

All in all it is a pretty cool application that I have been using in the place of the maps application for almost a week now and haven't had any regrets about changing, though I am sure with the addition of the compass, that the maps application is pretty cool right now.

If someone out there is works for MapQuest and is reading this, I hope you add the driving direction deal (map switching direction based on your direction of travel) into account when you release subsequent versions. I would also like to see some new Points of Interest added like Furniture Stores or maybe music stores or possibly even Historic Locations/Points of Historical Interest.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and haven't already gotten this app, I reccomend you at least download and try it.

Google Contact Sync

For everything that Google does well, for everything I say "Google is the coolest" about, I have finally found something that I hate that Google has done.

Contact Sync sucks. I had a feeling that it was going to great problems, but when I finally got to it, it created huge problems.

I did a lot prior to starting the sync up so that I wouldn't run in to too many problems.

1. I made sure that my address book on my computer included everything from my google contacts.
2. I made sure that I had a backup of my address book so that if anything went wrong, I could restore it.
3. I deleted my entire google address book, thinking that if I start from everything on my computer, it would create fewer problems.
4. I uploaded my current address book to google.

At this point, my Google contacts and my address book were identical; same names, same numbers, same addresses, etc.

I then synced my iPhone to Google. You can only sort them with the first name first. I don't like that. Also, it creates 2 address books. One from your computer and one from Google. I don't like that.

Then I plugged my iPhone in and it downloaded my Google contacts into my address book, with the names reversed, so then I had 2 of each contact, on that read first name first and last name last, and one that read last name first, first name last.

Wonderful.

I deleted the duplicate contacts and turned syncing off.

Travel

I really thought I was done with travel. I thought my job was to hang out and get things figured out. I thought life was going to be a lot easier and in one place for a while. I thought wrong.

I am in Oklahoma City for about a day and a half. Looking forward to getting back to Houston.