Lee.org

I may be going as a participant instead of instructor this time.

Workshop Weekend Oakland registration is filling up quickly!

Join us on November 10 & 11 to solder, craft, program, build, make and explore. At Workshop Weekend, a flat $40 admission gets you as many workshops as you can handle!

A number of workshops have already filled, but we still have seats available in quite a few great workshops. Register online at  http://workshopweekend.net/oakland/catalog  – there’s just one week left to sign up!

For families coming to Workshop Weekend together, we’re keeping our $10 discount for all parent admissions with the purchase of two or more admissions for children (under 18). Sign up on the same account, and the discount will be automatically applied.

Workshops with seats still available include:

• Basic HTML for Bloggers and Teachers
• Cake Decorating
• Coffee Roasting at Home
• The Art of Singing
• Make a Kaleidoscope
• Learn to Wield Oxidation
• Modeling DNA with Lego
• Recycle an Old T-shirt into a Market Bag
• DIY Yarn from T-shirts and Grocery Bags
• …and many more!

Register and select workshops online at  http://workshopweekend.net/oakland/catalog

I hope we’ll see you in just 8 days!

I wrote about Boomerang for Gmail in May. This tool continues to rock and be useful every single day. Gmail introduced a new Compose screen and I panicked, worrying this Gmail add-on would be left in the dust. But read from their post…

As soon as we saw the announcement, our engineers strapped on their capes, grabbed their wizard hats, and set to work. Less than 48 hours after the Gmail team announced the new experience, the new Compose view and Boomerang were working together in harmony.

Get Boomerang for Gmail here.  (that is a referral link, if you use it, we both get some tiny free prizes like  these.

“That was an innovative and original presentation you gave. Can I have your lesson plan so I can show other facilitators?”

That’s what my Interpersonal Communications professor said about the presentation that my classmate and I put on tonight. :-)

I got a flu immunization yesterday.

Last night I threw up three times.

This morning I couldn’t get out of bed. I have many of my normal symptoms of a cold: fuzzy thinking, slow reaction times, light sensitivity, exhaustion, poor appetite. But no respiratory issues and only minimal body aches,

This is dumb. I got immunized so I wouldn’t miss time out of my life due to illness.

From M:

‎”Upon graduation from Hogwarts, I invented the Self-Writing Cover Letter, an example of which you are reading now, streamlining the job-hunting process for employment seekers the world over. Thanks to this invention, every cover letter now quickly and accurately sums up the applicant’s relevant experience and qualifications, eliminating hours and hours of toil and anguish.”

A flick of the wrist, a “Curriculus Vitamos” and it’s done! Brilliant!

I sold my car 5 1/2  months  ago and got a bike. Did it pay for itself? Jump to the last paragraph for the money shot.

One Time Bike Expenses:

• $630 Bike
• $80 locking skewers
• $80 bike pump
• $30 bike theft registration
• $150 large backpack
• $20 fancy bungie cords
• $70 Shimano PD-A530 clipless SPD pedals (SM-SH56, silver – multiple release mode cleats)
• $100  Keen Austin Pedal Bike Shoes
• $40 bike stand
• $60 nice front and rear lights for city riding
• $40 bright headlight for dark roads

——————-
$1300 Total One Time Bike Capital Expenses

Ongoing Bike Expenses

Clipper Card

• 5-12 $90
• 6-12 $90
• 7-12 $185 (daily summer school at College of Alameda)
• 8-12 $117
• 9-12 $45

——————-
$517 total Clipper Card train & bus fares in 4 months

• $30 two flat tires fixed in 4 months
• $400 eating 500 extra calories day for 4 months

—————————————————————————————————-

4 Month (May 1-Oct 1) expenses while on a bike from above
$1300 + $517 + $30 + $400 = $2,247  / 4 months = $560/month.

Until I sold it, my car cost $610/month. Amortizing my capital expenses  over 4 the last months, the bike cost about the same ($560/month) as a car.

I haven’t figured in the bother of not having a car at the ready, having to occasionally rely on Megan to pick me up at the BART station, or the freedom of not worrying about maintenance.

In future months, the bike should cost:
$100/month transit expenses, or less as I slowly become able to ride longer distances.
$100/month extra food, I am eating a lot more while biking more!
$20/month misc expenses, a wild guess.

Curiously, I haven’t found good occasion to use my Zipcar membership at all in the year I’ve had it. I’m going to cancel my membership. Granted, I’ve gotten help from Megan and others with the occasional grocery store run.

Conclusion:

Going forward, it looks like the bike will cost $220/month ($2640/year) where the car used to cost me $610/month. ($7,320/month), a savings of 64%, $390/month ($4680/year). Hmm! That’s not as much savings as I thought, but it’s good. Or I can think about it another way… I now have a $390/month travel slush fund to do with what I please!

This has been in progress for almost 2 years but I just noticed it on the Golden Gate Bridge website.

Some excerpts:

December 2012: Functionality Testing

1. Toll collectors will continue to staff the FasTrak/Cash toll lanes and cash will still be accepted.

…

February 2013: Full Conversion to All Electronic Tolling

Toll collectors will no longer staff the tollbooths and cash will no longer be collected at the toll plaza. Instead, customers will have their choice of using FasTrak or the new Pay-By-Plate choices (License Plate Account or One-Time Payment.) Customers will still be able to pay their toll using cash in person at the Bay Area FasTrak Customer Service Center in San Francisco or at a number of new cash payment locations established throughout the Bay Area.

…

When the decision was made in January 2011 to convert to All Electronic Tolling, the GGBHTD had 32 full time Toll Collectors.

As of September 18:

9 have retired or departed the position for various reasons
3 transitioned to other positions within the GGBHTD
12 total have transitioned out of the toll lanes

The GGBHTD is continuing to work with the remaining 20 full time Toll Collectors to identify other positions within the GGBHTD that come open that the Toll Collectors may be qualified for.

…

Additional Stats on All Electronic Tolling

20 million southbound vehicles annually pay the Golden Gate Bridge toll
70% (14 million) of the 20 million use FasTrak today
30% (6 million) of the 20 million use Cash today
2.5% (500,000) of the 20 million that cross are from Outside of California

…

Cost Per Transaction

• Cash $0.83 per transaction
• Invoice $0.67 per transaction
• Pay-By-Plate (tied to License Plate) $0.39 per transaction
• FasTrak $0.25 per transaction

(Image some rights reserved 24thCentury)

(Originally posted May 26, reposted because it’s annoyingly relevant)

In the last 6 months, 12 18 22 25 of my friends have had their email accounts hacked. Either that, or all my friends are jumping on the Make.Money.Fast bandwagon by sending me junk email. If someone hacked your email account, what evil could they wrack upon you and your friends?

Here is a little article showing how you can make an easy-to-remember and (hopefully!) impossible-to-hack password. Please use this advice: Click me! Click! Clickie-poo! Clickie-kins!! Click-er-doodle!

Almost all of my hacked friends are on Yahoo. If you use Yahoo mail, please change your password to be secure!

After 6+ years of riding BART, I still can’t tell when I’m at 16th Street Station or 24th Street Station. Can you? Go ahead and click on the images to look closer.

How long did it take you to tell the two stations apart? Just so you know, those are the best photos I could get of the stations from inside the train after several attempts. Most of my photos look more like this. I’ve got a lot of these shots on my camera:

Can you tell which shots are of 16th Street Station and which are of 24th Street Station? No, I can’t either. And yes, every photo has the sign pretty much in the middle of the shot; I really tried to get good photos.

For comparison, here are some shots of other stations. Same camera, same angles.

The other stations are all much easier to identify. Different architecture, different color schemes, and visible signs.

Fixing this isn’t hard. The signs at 16th and 24th just need to have some light cast on them.

A couple of friends have asked about health insurance they might get. Here is my current solution. Feel free to write me if you have a better solution!

I have ClearProtection Plus 5000 from Anthem Blue Cross http://anthem.com/ca
$190/month for “very good insurance after a $5k deductable” for this 42 year old man living in California.

ehealthinsurance.com is a good site to price out plans. It gets confusing and frustrating quickly thought because well, insurance is confusing and frustrating. It’s likely that my plan will come out the least expensive of the plans that actually cover anything. Cheaper plans are available but I noticed that they always only cover something like 50% after the deductible. So your $100k heart attack might cost you $50k :-(