Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
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9:50 pm - bike trailer stroller ad
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There's such a thing as TMI when you write an ad on craigslist:We bought the trailer to haul our dog around up north, but she did not like it at all. [she peed in it] It has been used less than ten minutes. [we pulled her out before she finished pooping] It is brand new. [we cleaned it] I bought it from D&D Bikes in Berkley for 269.00. [that's less than I paid for my dog's designer sweater] I will sell it for 225.00. In other words, it wasn't good enough for my dog, but I'll give you 15% off to use it for your kid!
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| Sunday, May 17th, 2009
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9:53 pm - FAANS?
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Does anyone have a good copy of FAANS that we can digitize for the SFOHA archives? We discussed this at a recent meeting, and I just got off the phone with Howard's daughter, who has never seen it, and is sure that Howard's copy got thrown away because they got rid of all the old VHS tapes she didn't recognize... and I've talked to Larry Tucker and all of his copies got destroyed or lost over the years... I have a copy Howard made me, but it's at least third generation, not great quality.
For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, FAANS was a video by Larry Tucker, filmed at the 1982 WorldCon in Chicago, starring Roger Sims as the hotel detective and Howard DeVore as JoPhan, with Ro Nagey, Jean Barnard, Mike Glicksohn, Tom Barber, and I don't remember who all else.... Anyone remember who played the dead body and the hotel maid?
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| Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
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10:05 am - Test drive a Ford for the Cure
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Now through June 1, Ford will donate $20 for every test drive taken at a participating Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealership to your local Race for the Cure. Dealers around the country are joining in to match the company's donation.
To participate, log on to www.fordcares.com, sign up for a registration number, then visit a dealership and take a test drive. You'll need to go back to www.fordcares.com again with information from the dealer to validate your drive so the donation is made in your name.
To help out, they're giving me two additional X Plan discounts for Friends and Family to buy cars in 2009. It's easy, all I need is your name and email to get you a PIN, and when you tell the dealer you have X-plan, they have to show you the invoice price.
Over the past 15 years, Ford, along with its employees and family, have contributed more than $100 million to the fight against breast cancer. My wife, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) thelifeofbrian, and I will be running and/or walking in the Detroit Race for the Cure on May 30th - ask me if you want to join us and sign up for Team Ford!
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| Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
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3:19 pm - Fusion Hybrid goes 1445.7 miles on a tank of gas
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That's 81.5 mpg, almost exactly the distance from New York to Key West on one tank of gas.
For the Ford Fusion Hybrid JDRF Challenge, a team of Ford engineers in Virginia with help from hypermiling world record holder Wayne Gerdes and NASCAR driver Carl Edwards (who came in the day after his wreck to drive the 1000th mile) ran a production Fusion to empty, driving in shifts over three days.
JDRF gets $8004 in donations from Ford and BP employees trying to guess the final mileage... I was too low, I guessed 1230 miles, which is about the best I could get with normal city driving and air conditioning.
http://www.thefordstory.com/ for videos of the event.
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| Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
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8:48 pm - More book questions
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Select as many answers as you want.
Poll #1383776 more questions
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllHow much would you pay for book club hardcover editions? For a book sale eleven minutes away from the convention hotel, what days would you prefer?
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1:24 pm - Howard's cheap books and Penguicon
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Howard's daughter called me again, looking for advice on selling books after Penguicon (a SF/Linux con). Please answer the poll if you read science fiction, whether you go to cons or not.
Poll #1383504 Psst! Wanna buy a book?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllDo you attend conventions? Would you be interested in buying a grab-bag box of 80-100 random science fiction books? (whether you go to cons or not) Would you be interested in a box of SF books if you got to go through and choose? How much would you pay for 80-100 random paperbacks? How much would you pay for 80-100 paperbacks you got to choose? If you go to cons, would the best day for a book garage sale be:
Howard's family dragged books to Lansing not too long ago and swore never again, they just don't enjoy cons like Howard did... Karol mostly wanted my opinion on selling books by posting flyers at Penguicon. She has 50-75 boxes full of cheap science fiction paperbacks and about 20 boxes of book club hardcovers that she'd like to get out of Howard's house, and she'd prefer to let fans have them directly for a reasonable price. Her idea was to say that people could stop by the house Sunday after the con and buy books by the boxfull, hoping that enough people would stop by 5-8pm to get rid of a lot of them.
I told her it would be great to put some flyers out, at least get her phone number and email address out there so people could contact her, and that maybe advertising a weekend after the con might work out... my thought was that most people at Penguicon were local. Am I right in that?
She doesn't want to cause more mess than she had before by people digging through books and leaving ones on the floor that they don't want, or making it completely unmanageable if there are a lot of people... but then again, I worry that not enough people would show up at the house to make it worthwhile... and people might be upset to get 25 copies of War of the Worlds if they went for an unopened grab bag box. You should probably work it so that you get to open and look at the box before spending your money, just don't get to sort through it, pick and choose unless you pay more.
I'd like to get ideas on how to sell 'em, how to communicate, and dates, plus of course can pass along her contact info if anyone wants to get books for sure or help out! The really valuable books and pulps are already moved to the daughters' houses, if people are interested in particular things... I know there's a signed Dune and a signed Psycho they're thinking of selling.
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| Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
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1:15 pm - Do you actually have ANY cheese?
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Thought I'd drive down Greenfield north of Ford and look for cheap florists... I found one, but, "do you have any roses?" No, waiting for a shipment. "Flowering plants? Lillies, tulips..." no, the shipping... I can highly recommend Eddy's Florist if you want an excuse for not buying flowers.
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| Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
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6:42 pm - The Fiesta Movement
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Ford is giving away 100 new european Fiestas before the US launch... all you have to do in return is post a monthly video blog and talk about the car on social networking sites. The Fiesta has been popular in Europe for a long time, the new one that just came out won car of the year, smaller than a Focus, manual transmission, great gas mileage. The free cars come with free gas and insurance, but probably won't have Sync because it hasn't rolled out in Europe yet. We’re looking for an elite crop of drivers to take the wheel: people with a strong presence on the web, an ability to craft a compelling story through video, and a hunger for adventure. To win, you have to go to fiestamovement.com and follow the instructions to make a YouTube video proving that you can make cool content to help promote the car. The target audience is millenials born after 1980, all drivers must be 21 years of age and US citizens. Entries due by March 13, 2009.
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| Thursday, February 19th, 2009
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11:32 pm - Donate Locally
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Food banks are the best charities for keeping your money in the community and usually have the lowest administrative overhead: Food Gatherers uses 96% of donations to actually buy and distribute food in Washtenaw County. Gleaners is also at 96% but in Wayne County. I have volunteered twice for a day at Food Gatherers, they were founded by the Zingerman's people but are separate now, the food they buy is core nutritional stuff and baby formula, and they get big discounts, plus rescue a lot of food that would go to waste otherwise.
Another good one I've volunteered for is Habitat for Humanity Detroit at 89%, again a good percentage of your money goes to help people.
Compare that to United Way at 72%, Race for the Cure at 78%, World Wildlife Fund at 81%, JDRF at 86%. The big charities spend a lot of money on salaries and advertising, even the best of them, and the money goes all over, whereas food banks are very efficient. A lot of charities are a lot worse, for example the Magic Johnson Foundation at 50%, and scams like the Disabled Veterans Associations at 2%, which makes a lot of money from confusing people with a name similar to the Disabled American Veterans, which is a great charity at 95%. The real charity, the DAV, collected 8 million dollars in 2007, the scam collected (and kept) 9 million. Many "police" or "firefighter" charities are scams, at less than ten percent, the rest disappears as administrative or fundraising expenses.
Data from bbb.org and charitynavigator.org
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| Thursday, December 11th, 2008
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9:40 am - Weeweechu
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 It was a romantic moonlit night when Pedro parked his car at lover's lane and said, "Hey, mamacita, let's do Weeweechu."
Oh no, not now, let's look at the moon!" said Rosita.
Oh, c'mon baby, let's you and I do Weeweechu. I love you and it's the perfect time," Pedro begged.
"But I wanna just hold your hand and watch the moon." replied Rosita.
Please, corazoncito, just once, do Weeweechu with me."
Rosita looked at Pedro and said, "OK, one time, we'll do Weeweechu."
Pedro grabbed his guitar and they both sang.....
"Weeweechu a Merry Christmas, Weeweechu a Merry Christmas, Weeweechu a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year."
(Texican hairless shaggy dog story forwarded from my friend Lis in San Angelo)
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| Monday, December 1st, 2008
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3:00 pm - Natural Landscaping
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The EPA Natural Landscaping Source Book has some good quotes - I have been saying for ages that lawnmowers and corporate grounds maintenance companies are a horrible waste of resources - every time I see them doing something like sprinklers running in the rain, I cringe. I'd like to see more natural landscaping, and if we must cut lawns, we should be employing laid-off workers with reel (cylinder) mowers, saving the environment, and creating more jobs!
Our predominant landscaping material today, the green grass lawn, is borrowed from the heavily grazed, short grass pastures and formal gardens of Europe, particularly England. In that moist climate, the closely cropped grasses evolved with the grazing sheep, goats and cows. Understandably, pioneers from Europe, used to the short grasses, brought the grasses as well as medicinal and food plants to make the unfamiliar feel familiar and homelike. Unfortunately, the grasses they brought do not thrive as well-kept lawns without a great deal of effort to simulate the conditions under which they evolved in Europe.
Our area of the country, with its harsher climate of extremes of heat and deep freezes, drought and drenching rains, is an inhospitable atmosphere for short-cropped, short-rooted grass. Therefore, the contemporary weed-free lawn, is maintained at a high price, not only in terms of dollars but also degraded water and air quality, water consumption, and the peace and quiet of our neighborhoods.
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| Monday, August 18th, 2008
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5:05 pm - Stop the pram, I wanna get off!
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| Thursday, May 29th, 2008
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12:09 am - Credit card foreign exchange refund deadline
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May 30th is the last day to submit refund forms at https://www.ccfsettlement.com/claim/ for the class action lawsuit about MC/Visa/Diners charging ridiculous fees for foreign transactions. You don't have to know your refund ID, but it helps.
Option 1 is the no-brainer, you get $25.
Option 2 gets you a minimum of $25, or up to 1% of the average that people spend based on number of days you were outside the US from 1996-2006.
Option 3 gets you up to 3% (the actual fee your credit card company charged) but you have give credit card numbers and an estimate of how much you spent each year.
There are only a few cards that don't charge the fee nowadays... see Credit/Debit/ATM Cards and Foreign Exchange on flyerguide or the best credit card thread at fatwallet for cards with the lowest fees and highest cash back.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
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5:12 pm - Baywatch Escape Hybrids
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| Sunday, May 18th, 2008
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12:59 pm - Baby Monitor & Engr's Guide to Cats
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1 (20.0%)
