Common Ground

Black Friday. We hear about that so much. Reports are that consumer spending was up a few percent over last year. That's good news, but for who? Do Mom and Pop downtown report their sales to the keeper of the statistics? I doubt it. The unfortunate fact is that the winners during most of Christmas shopping are the retailers of clothing, toys and electronics. Few if any, are made in America. Much goes to China who in turn lends it back to some government bureaucrat so we can have such a high standard of living and think that we are a wealthy country to boot.

How to spend like a patriot? Take most electronics off the list. I think the last American television was Zenith. If you want to buy something practical, buy that furnace and air conditioner that you need from your hometown heating contractor. Most of that equipment is still made in the USA but some air conditioning components are being made in Mexican factories. If your furnace is good yet, consider a humidifier, high efficiency air cleaner or HRV (heat recovery ventilator). Many of those are made in Madison. Ask your dealer where his brands are made.

Consider some remodeling in the plumbing and electrical department. Buy that water saving toilet, but beware that foreign brands are creeping into the market. I was quoted all Japanese fixtures for a remodel job. Good stuff but doesn't help the economy as much as something made in the USA or better yet in Wisconsin.

Put the shovel in the garage and buy a snowblower. There are some brands made in Wisconsin. Try to get a Wisconsin made engine on whatever brand you buy.

Then there is the prestige of a new car in the driveway. This gets confusing, such as the Toyota Sienna minivan that I drive for work which is made in Indiana near one of our stores. But buying a GM, Ford or Chrysler brand car/truck that is also made in American will keep more of your money here. Yes, I know there is controversy about how much the factory workers make per hour including benefits, but so much of a car or truck is NOT made at the factory but by a vendor company where the workers might not have such generous pay and benefits. Johnson Controls in Milwaukee is an example of a local vendor to the automotive industy.

Can't buy a new car? Fix things up and more money helps local people. Now is a good time to get summertime items tuned up and repaired like the lawnmower or things on the boat. See if the motorcycle shop needs work. Maybe they will do free pick-up of your scoot to keep the shop busy. How about that garage door or opener? Time to get the springs adjusted or get a new opener before the old motor burns out?

Pretty presents under the Christmas tree are a great tradition, but things change. People voted for change. I hope I gave you a few ideas to facilitate some of that change and help the local economy too.

I'm a bit of a GPS collector. I have six presently. Some are handheld that I use for Geocaching, two are the navigation type that are popping up on windshields of cars and one is part of my so called "Smartphone".

Since learning navigation back in my piloting days, GPS has been a huge step ahead and now that it is becoming very affordable, paper maps are quickly becoming an artifact from the past.

If you are going shopping for an automotive navigation GPS, you will usually find a confusingly large assortment of brands and models. I'm going to make some suggestions that I hope will make shopping for one easier for you and the person receiving it happy.

There are several brands available. The most popular is Garmin. Next is TomTom and a distant third but gaining in popularity is Navigon. Each will have more than several models to choose from though the store you shop at may carry a limited number of them. That would be a blessing. There are other brands. Sony is getting into GPS. Audiophiles will recognize Blauplunkt. They are making a GPS with a camera that gives you a fighter jet heads up view of the navigational situation and even reads some signs, such as speed limits. Currently this is available in Europe only.

First of all, ANY of them will get you from where you are to where you want to go. Beyond that most basic feature, the first step up you should consider is the size of the screen. There are two sizes. Three by three and four and a half by three. I prefer the wider screen. Next is the ability to speak the name of the road rather than just saying "turn left in 500 feet". I think that is a worthwhile upgrade. From there are many options that will keep a gadget freak happy for many miles.

If the user drives the expressways during rush hours or takes trips through big cities from time to time, the traffic reception feature is worth considering. Traffic data is available through bluetooth wireless connections to some smartphones with data service or through an antenna cable that receives traffic information embedded in FM radio stations. This feature can route you around traffic jams and suggest alternative routes that are presently faster. It isn't perfected yet but worth getting.

Another feature is Bluetooth connectivity to a compatible cell phone.  When In my car, all my phone calls come through the GPS. It's hands free and good audio quality. Another feature is voice recognition. Some top of the line models have this where you don't have to punch in addresses. Just speak to the windshield and the GPS hears you.  Some allow you to store your music and pod-casts in them and will transmit the audio to your FM radio. Some have a remote control, yes, a remote control, in case your GPS is too far to easily reach. I find it much safer to use with a remote than trying to poke at the screen while I'm driving. Yes, I should pull over when doing anything but glancing at the screen. Usually features like traffic information are a subscription service but if your unit is capable of it, a free trial is usually included.

What do I recommend? A Garmin is my first choice and TomTom is a runner up. I have a top of the line TomTom 930 but had to spend another $100 to buy a traffic receiver antenna because my Motorola Q smartphone and Sprint service are not compatible with it. TomTom also advertises some "IQ" features and advance lane guidance. These features got me so interested that I had to buy one. I have found that many of these features are not in Wisconsin yet and even in Chicago they are on only a few places of the interstate. More marketing hype than usable substance. To be fair, they are adding to these navigation features often.

If you want more information, I recommend an excellent and unbiased website, www.gpsreview.net .

Today our children and their families will gather at the Bukosky home in Waukesha. Missing will be Jennifer, Cortney and baby Sophia. Alive but elsewhere will be Zack. You've heard it many, many times that no matter what the times brings to you, as long as you have family, you have something to be thankful for.

Don't let distance, political differences or long forgotten skirmishes keep you from embracing your family members. Telephone those that are distant or at least send a card. Remember that all can be lost in an instant.

I wish you all a happy thanksgiving and a prosperous life.

It has been said that all things are affected by even the slightest action. The flutter of a butterfly in the right place at the right time could be the cause of air currents ending up into a tornado. It is also so, that government meddling with business can have unexpected consequences.

The US automaker leaders were chastised in Washington for flying in on corporate jets. Will the flutter of the lips of politicians cause a sell off of corporate jets so that the correct image, the politically correct image, is portrayed by businesses? Will Washington slap some kind of "excess tax" on corporate jets?

Remember when Wisconsin jobs were lost when Washington slapped a luxury tax on things like luxury yachts and jobs were lost until the tax was dropped which revived the industry? I once made my money by fueling both private and corporate aircraft at Timmerman Field in Milwaukee. I made minimum wage, two dollars an hour at the time. There are people like me doing the same at Crites Field. Trickle down economics is reality. Less corporate aircraft, less need for the guy that puts the fuel in the aircraft. Less need for mechanics, avionics technicians, spare parts vendors, pilots and the list goes on. The more government intrudes on business, the more jobs will be lost.

So will Air Force One be mothballed? After all, the government doesn't earn any money. GM, Ford and Chrysler are still trying to.

In the year old Minooka Dog Exercise Area there is a depression called a seasonal pond. This last winter with record amounts of snowfall and spring rains, it filled that area and more. It was in the original dog park drawings to improve the pond and the County Parks workers have been doing just that for the last few weeks as time and weather permitted. Today, Friday, the area was finished in sloping the area towards the pond, seed was laid and a fence put around the area to keep foot traffic out.  The upper portion of the old campgrounds, below and alongside of the restrooms have also been seeded but are not fenced off. Eventually the pond will be permanently fenced off and gated so only people wanting their dogs to splash around will have entry.

Dog owners will have to make a effort to avoid the area as it seems that the dog's curiosity has them finding ways to get into the fenced off area. The first found that they could slide under the plastic mesh fence. Some found a way around the ends of the fence and a large hound just jumped over it a couple times! One Husky owner walked away saying that he was afraid his might learn how to jump a fence. Indeed, my first Husky, Kanuck could jump over a standard height chain link yard fence pretty easy. One small dog wandered around the fence and couldn't find it's way out and became scared. A helping hand raising the fence bottom solved that.

So I believe that the pond is still a work in progress. More will will be done as Parks workers have the time and material.  Keep a close eye on your dog and try to avoid the fenced and seeded area. There's many acres of land still open for us to enjoy!

Tonight the salters came out and I felt the all wheel drive kick in on my Subaru while heading to the Minooka Dog Park. Earlier Kanook and I were at Brookfield's Mitchell Park where the northwestern sky turned dark grey and soon a blizzard of snow pellets lashed down at us. People that I met muttered something about global warming.

Back home, there are still some leaves hanging on to the branches of my maple tree. Saturday I hauled a few trash cans of chopped leaves to the dump where I was chastised for not putting them against the wall. Sorry, I'm not a mind reader and all the leaves in the pile seemed like they would welcome some more.

I still have some leaves to contend with. I can probably mulch them with the lawn mower, but as I'm on vacation this week, I spent much of the afternoon looking for clear plastic bags and a mechanical partner to hold the bag open. Two hardware stores, a Home Depot and a Walmart later, none had anything that I wanted. There are plenty of large paper bags but sitting by the curb for the few weeks until pick-up will likely have them fall apart and looking worse than the neighbors who have raked leaves by the road thinking that they will still be picked up.

Driving around town I see a lot of leaves piled by the curb and often flowing into the street. Perhaps some are still scheduled to be picked up, but I know my ward is finished so that makes me wonder whats going to happen to all these leaves waiting for the pick-up that will not come. It seems to me that our communication of the pick-up schedule could have been better conveyed. Or perhaps some people just have not made the effort to search out the information. What I am pretty sure of is that come the first snowfall big enough to bring the plows out, an ugly, leafy mess will be overturned spoiling the small comfort of clean white snow.

Perhaps all of this can be corrected next fall. May I suggest that we take a step back to the colonial days and get the word out by via a Town Crier. Let the Aldermen wear a three cornered hat while walking the streets shouting out the ordinance and rules of leaf handling. Maybe they can include where to buy bags and holders too.

I'm what you could call a GM baby. Dad was an engineer for GM at the old AC Spark Plug turned Delco Electronics plants once in Milwaukee by North and Farwell and then in Oak Creek. As a child I remember Dad bringing home pamphlets. Some I would read, some were of no interest to a child. A child never thinks about it but now that I am a grandfather and my parents have passed on, I realize how well GM took care of their employees. Even after Dad passed away, GM continued to take care of Mom. And this is why GM and Ford are in the trouble that they are in now.  Toyota, Subaru and others never had the long term relationship with employees or benefits negotiated by labor unions. Not strapped with pensions and US automaker level benefits, it was not a level playing field and we as a country have suffered for it while we drive these cars build by foreign owned companies.

GM and Ford did for their employees what the country has voted for the government to do for all. The same can be said of Chrysler though they have been sold twice. Bailing out the automakers is not without precedence! Republican President Nixon in effect bailed out Harley Davidson when he put a tarriff on foreign motorcycles that competed with Harley-Davidson. If not for that, The Motor Company would not be in existance and would be but another ghost of American industry.

The US automakers have some great electric powered cars near being ready for production. The government must see that they are helped along and see that the playing field for them is level.

Being a dog lover, I don’t encourage or tolerate biting. That being said, Barney, President Bush’s Black Scottie Terrier nipped at a reporter when the reporter reached down to pet the dog. I’ve heard all sorts of things about the behavior of the dog and the approach of the reporter. Having seen a video of the incident, anybody that knows dogs can see that Barney didn’t want any part of the reporter. Obviously a refection of above average canine intelligence! However, the whole incident is a wonderful ending metaphor for the press relations that the eight years of the Bush administration has had to endure.

There is talk of President-elect Obama getting a puppy for his daughters. May I suggest something that reflects how his administration will be. Perhaps something along the breed of, say, a Neapolitan Mastiff?

I like to read news from England via the BBC news feed. One article is about massive unemployment in China due to the credit crunch.

The time is past for pointing fingers on who is responsible for the recent financial disaster. The question is how fast can it be fixed and fixed fairly. We know about the mortgage mess. I've not seen anything about unsecured credit card problems. Just like too loose of mortgage requirements, people have been bombarded with credit card offers for years. One very unfair tactic that these credit card companies are allowed to do is to change the rules when they desire and it is usually right when it can hurt consumers the most!

In the past several months credit card companies have increase the minimum payments, frequently breaking the budget of struggling consumers yielding to the glitter and glamor of marketing products that we don't need and replacing items still good but no longer fashionable. These changes in the rules frequently cause late payments which in turn can change reasonable interest rates to loan shark levels approaching 30% interest or more! Now a difficult payment becomes impossible to make and it results in phone calls to the many bankruptcy lawyers that hawk themselves on television.

Not too long ago people never heard about a credit score. Now many worry about it. Why? Because of unfair credit practices!

Consumer protection is one area where I do have a spark of hope that the now dominated Democratic government will review and make right. After all, it is affecting more of their supporters than the rich Republicans who allegedly created this unfairness. Or those that appear to be rich.

By this time Tuesday I'll know whether to worry or not. Monday's Journal has several things that I must comment on.

Page One, the undecideds. I consider myself very informed on the presidential politics and it really baffles me how anyone can continue to be undecided. Now, I don't know this fine young family and I do remember when Pat and I were that age with a couple small children, we were too busy trying to survive to worry about politics. However, thirty years later there is a wealth of information out there. The only difficulty is sifting through all the snippets, incomplete stories and outright lies. Forget what they say. Look at their records. Oh, some don't have a record? Well, then look at their character and acquaintances. Perhaps look at the money raised by the candidates. Which party has the money? Where does the money come from?

Politics of personal destruction. Have a presidential candidate wander by your house and you ask a question. It isn't the softball that is generally allowed to be asked. So the media proceeds to tear you apart. Make a statement at a rally that many people agree with and Daniel Bice of the Journal gives you a colonoscopy that has nothing to do with the statement. We are permitted to only ask "the right questions". Please preapprove them with "The Media".

Campaigning and lies. Politicians can say anything they want and get away with it. I never liked it. I wish it wasn't that way. However, the Journal's vendetta against Michael Gableman and the Democrats unprecedented court action against The Coalition For American Families smacks of political heavy handedness and judicial bias. Normally I would applaud any action to shine the light on lies but when it is only used against one political philosophy while anything goes for the other, I cannot help but to be appalled by it.

Wednesday we shall see if the process of checks and balances goes unchecked and out of balance.

My Dad was a collector of pocket knives. I have an eye for flashlights. Being a daily dog park visitor with Kanook, it is the time of the year when the visits are after dark on the weekdays. While there are more visitors to Minooka's dog park, it seems to be empty after the sun sets. Mitchell Park still has some people that enjoy the stillness of the night. We often adorn our dogs with flashing LED lights that clip on the collar. One visitor is using a dog "headlight" that she bought at Cabela's. It straps under the chin and makes the dog very visible and if it's night vision isn't too good, will help it from running into trees, fences and potholes. I bought another blinky light for Kanook. They come with batteries and sell for about $9. When the batteries die out, new batteries will cost about $11. So, I have lots of good blinkies laying around in need of batteries.

 For my use, I long gave up the big "D" cell flashlight. For the last few years I've had various LED flashlights. The batteries last forever, it seems. However, the light that they give off isn't much, until recently. The last few years have seen high output LED flashlights that pack a pretty good light. While at Batteries Plus on Grandview and Silvernail buying a new Blinky for Kanook, I was looking over the wide selection of flashlights that they have. I noticed on the counter one that looked like a cylinder of stainless steel that fit in the hand nicely. It measures about one inch in diameter and about four inches long. I pressed the button and the light it gave off was amazing. Three small AAA batteries power it for over 100 hours and produces 72 lumens. What that means is it floods the area in front of you as you walk around the dog park. I thought that it'd make a great bicycle headlight.

It isn't cheap. It cost $29.95 but I gave up smoking years ago so I treat myself with good stuff once in a while. The associate at Batteries Plus said they have a hard time keeping them in stock. I can see why. If I still fixed furnaces it would be my flashlight of choice because of the bright flood of light it gives. It's name is LED LENSER. The numbers 0089596 are on it but looking at LED LENSER's catalog, I believe it is model 7732.

 See you at the dog parks, even at night!

 While my old Windows 98 computer whirs happily along in Pat's room, my fairly new dual one gig processor multimedia computer had the hard drive crash. This after recently running my frequent system protections and checks, including the "Smart Drive" check with supposedly can warn of immenent failure of the hard drive. I couldn't see how that could work all the time and I was right!  So in the mind of the computer savy, did I have back-ups? Yes, but not as recent as I should. What troubles me is that this computer, a Sony, did not come with program disks. It was all on a partition of the HD.

I had bought the machine from Computer City on Bluemound. They have closed so I took it to Milwaukee PC on Moreland.They're a good sized business started in Milwaukee and also have a computer talk show on WISN Saturday morning. Right now I'm using an old laptop that I bought at a ham radio swapfest. I bought two of them for $10 each to make a point to some of my dealers moaning that computers are needed for many of the heating and cooling building controls. These old door stops still work and run the necessary software to adjust modern digital controlled building management systems.

I am using my super duper LCD superfast game quality computer monitor. the screen on the laptop is adequate but very grainy.

What I'd like to share with you from my experience is the necessity of backing up your hard drive. Windows has a back-up program that comes with it but it is junk in my opinion. Also, backing up your computer usually means only saving data that is in the "My Documents" folders. It does not save your programs! For that you will need an "Image" saving program. You should also have an external hard drive capable of holding everything on your computer. If you can, set it up to automatically save stuff as you use it.  I have disaster recovery disks but in my case they did not work.

So if you are looking for a Christmas gift for yourself or someone, look for a good external hard drive and Back-up/Image software. Milwaukee PC, Inet or most Computer retailers can help you out with what you need.
 

Hey Barack! How about sharing your wealth with John McCain so he can have equal time? No better time to start spreading the wealth!

My trade of heating and cooling is greatly related to plumbing and electrical. It is thus that I have an affinity to the concerns of Joe and also am disturbed but not surprised by the trashing that the great institution of the news media is giving him. It is a sign of the direction the nation is going and it isn't the right way.

I've been in the trade for 37 years. I've trained many men and worked with more. One dream that many of them have had is to own their own business and reap the rewards. It's part of the American dream. I've had it myself. Sometimes it comes to light. Sometimes it doesn't.  Recently I invested in one of those dreams but it was shattered in part due to others with similar dreams but having a head start and more money, partly due to the cost of energy and partly due to government.

Many small business owners struggle to begin and nurture their business. They say if you make it the first year, you're probably doing OK. Not all the time. They say if you are willing to work long hours at low pay, you may reap the rewards. Then again, you may only reap failure and losses.

A very wise man whom I have great respect for says that government needs to get out of the way of business. That can be interpreted several ways. Indeed, government regulations are necessary otherwise some businesses could do bad things. However, one of the obstacles that government imposes are taxes. Should a new business such as a national big box store be exempt from taxes for a while? No! But how about the classic small business person? Grant a elimination of taxes for a time and then gradually begin ramping up from reduced taxes to allow small business to get solid footing. Allow money that would be spent on taxes be spent on business building necessities such as marketing to get the customer base created.

Too much now business is getting treated as being a bad thing but in the next breath politicians talk about jobs. No business, no jobs. Oh, they meant creating GOVERNMENT jobs?  Even Russia and China realized that doesn't work.

From our financial crisis of late, everybody should grab their wallets when so-called experts preach about this or that. Yes, I'm sure that there are true experts, but it is to the point that when Congress want to go one way, we should run the other way.

In Sunday's Crossroads section of the newspaper Jerry Resler makes a very lopsided argument for spending more money on something that people don't want, regional high speed rail. I would be a person that such a system is targeted for. In my business travels, I travel to many of the destinations shown on the map that accompanies the article.  This week I am in Nashville for a conference. I drove there. A coworker flew even after spending thirteen hours at a terminal in his last travel. Had I gone to the same one, I'd have beat him home driving rather than flying.

Both the rail system and flying present the same problem when you get to the last stop. You have to get to your destination from the terminal.  Take a bus? Never! Besides, I usually have a computer, projector and other stuff that you just can't take on a bus and then walk several blocks because the bus doesn't stop near where I'm going.

Cars are going to be the primary people mover for many years to come. Fantastic traffic control systems are being developed that will lead to automobile trains operated by communicating computer systems from car to car. Even today, we have communicating GPS navigation systems being introduced that can reroute other so equipped cars around slowdowns.

Railroads have a place for the future. Rail can move freight better over long distances than trucks. Lets not waste money on passenger trains when personal transportation is where the money should be spent!

I've passed by the crumbling median divider in front of the Super America gas station on Delafield well over a thousand times through the years. Today while waiting for the traffic light that always is red, it made me think about the crumbling economy and who is responsible for it. 

If it weren't for this computer of mine, I'd have a wastepaper basket full of crumpled paper from how many times I've erased what I've written. I've just going to make a few points that I think we all should consider.

• Having been elected to office does not mean one is an expert on anything
• If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.  This is referring to sub-prime mortgages and housing prices before both crashed.
• There used to be a guide that you should only spend 25% of your income on housing
• If you can't pay for a car in three years, you can't afford it.
• If you want something not necessary for daily survival, put the money in a jar and if after two weeks you still want it, then buy it.
• If you buy it on credit, pay it off before using the card again.
• Cash is king
• Gold and silver are worth more than ink
• It takes money to make money
• In economics, if an ordinary educated person can't understand it, it probably is only going to benefit somebody rich.
• Debt is expensive and talk is cheap
• Birds of a feather, flock together. You may have heard that from your parents while in school or from a teacher. It's true for adults too.
• Beware and learn to recognize Confidence Men
• Pelosi, Frank and Dodd should resign
• Keep the system of checks and balances intact this election.

Enough said.

In the 1960's I had unforgettable years of working as a teenager at Capital Drive Airport. One of the early memories that I had was helping to disassemble a WWII trainer, an AT6 that a co-owner of it had hit the engine of a Cessna 140 with it's prop damaging the Cessna and the engine of the AT6. What stays with me is that I had to hold up a wing tip as it was unbolted from the fuselage and that it was very heavy.

 I had shortly before met Alex Herbst, the other owner of it. In my mind, I recall that Alex always and I emphasize always, had a wide friendly smile and seem happy as can be to make the acquaintance of anyone who loved flying as he does. Even as we took his airplane apart, that smile was quick to appear. Alex was frequently at the airport and I learned that he was one of the pioneers of Waukesha aviation. His name was in the list of those that were part of the "in-crowd". Even though I was a teenager, I was a fellow pilot and Alex always had time to talk with me, usually something about aviation or my motorcycle and sometimes about his family. Perhaps because he had a son named Steven, he mentioned him to me. Once when Steven enjoyed his Chevy Nova with a big engine a bit too much and lost his drivers license for a while, Alex would drive it to the airport and once let me drive it around. That was the most powerful car that I ever drove and I was honored to be trusted with it.

Alex didn't talk about his daytime job to me at all. It wasn't until a few years later when I was in the heating and cooling trade that I saw a head pop out of a hole in the floor of a garage and the famous smile glowed when we saw each other. It was then I found out that he was a plumber, a trade in kinship to fixing furnaces and boilers that I had ended up doing.

Raising a family and paying for a house drifted me from the airport and that was the last time I remember seeing Alex. I had heard that he went to California, something that I never confirmed. Soon crime in Milwaukee forced me to sell my house and I moved my family to Waukesha. I always kept an eye open for Alex. I remember him mentioning Barstow St hill for some reason once. Every time I drive on it, which is almost daily, it reminds me of Alex.

Tonight, while reading the newspaper, a picture of an AT6 caught my eye. The name above the plane hit me as it an electrical shock would have. A little piece of my youth died. I hope after orientation and Alex meets with family, that he and the likes of the Breechers, Crites, Bob Huggins and many others can meet together in a flight office along side of some grass runway each Saturday morning. Keep an ear on the unicom radio, Alex. Someday Aeronca 2081 Echo will be asking for winds and active. Come out to the gas pump and surprise me with your smile.

Check out Darryl's Article about Waukesha testing out a new method of removing radium from the water.  I noticed that the process removes calcium which in turn contains the radium. We've long been told that a conventional water softener will remove the radium.

When I bought my house it had an old manual water softener. No timer. I had to turn a lever to different positions every so many minutes. Soon I replaced it with a Sears softener. After a while it failed and to make a long story short, I've contended with hard water, not missing the frequent purchase of eighty pound bags of salt pellets and hauling them down the stairs to the softener. It also reduces the sodium in the water. We all know sodium is to be avoided, especially if you are a conservative stuck with a liberal congress! So this process has health benefits to many of us middle aged people who have been ordered to toss the salt shaker.

If this new process takes care of the radium in the water and softens the water, I'm for it. It would cut business for those selling salt pellets and water softeners, but that's progress. Few people remember the Ice Man delivering blocks of ice for the predecessor to the refrigerator, the ice box. So eliminating the water softener business is just another casualty of progress.

Will it increase our taxes if it is successful? Does the sun rise in the east everyday? If it is cost effective, that is, cost competive with replacing the water softener and dozens of bags of salt and perhaps a little bit thrown in for visits to the chiropractor for a sore back, then let's do it!

It'll help to increase the supply of salt for the roads.

It's another chicken and the egg situation. T.Boone Pickens is promoting CNG (compressed natural gas) powered transportation. Honda is currently the only company making a car running on natural gas. Natural gas is cheap, but a car can't carry much because it is not currently possible to store it in a liquid state. It can only be compressed. So to store enough gas to get around yet have some space for people and luggage, the range of the car isn't much over 200 miles before refueling is needed. The nice part is you can buy your own refueling station for your garage and connect it to your gas meter. The bad part is that it takes sixteen hours to refill and empty tank! Oh, it costs about $8,000 too. There are, however, commercial refueling stations that can refill your tank, actually it's recompressing it, and it doesn't take too much longer than putting $75 worth of gasoline into the the old Ford Explorer. The problem is, where are they?

They can be found at www.cngprices.com . You will see that WE Energies has a station over on West Avenue! It's mainly for thier use but they sell to the occasional consumer that wanders in. The biggest surprise is that the last price for it was $1.46 GGE. What's GGE? It's comparing apples and oranges. It stands for GAS GALLON EQUIVELANCY. So yes, you guessed right. Running your car on natural gas would be like paying $1.46 a gallon for gasoline.

Unfortunately, most CNG refueling stations have limited hours and are not in enough locations that a trip to the cabin in Up North Wisconsin can be done. So it is a chicken and the egg situation. Oil companies won't put in CNG pumps until cars line up for it. Nobody wants a CNG car if they can't get gas for it. What's the solution? I propose that the city, all cities for that matter, should step up and provide a refueling station open at reasonable hours and begin using CNG for government vehicles. If there is a market for the CNG fueled Honda, they will make more and I'm sure Wilde Honda will be happy to sell them. Other car makers will get into the act too. Soon Mega Oil will think about putting in a CNG facility at their local station and the ball will be rolling on it's own.

Lets provide the egg and the chickens will soon hatch!

Ten to the One-hundredth equals a Google. Besides being an actual number, anybody who has an acquaintance with a computer knows it to be the search engine of choice. I’m proud to say that before it was well known and people were using such things as WebCrawler or Dogpile, I heard of these two students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, scrounging up computers and connecting them to create a new, faster internet search engine called Back Rub.

Knowledge is power and I know of nothing that makes so much information so easily available to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Even “smart phones” have Google access. All of this technology has reaped great rewards for the creators of Google. That is the American way.

Google is celebrating its tenth anniversary. As part of it, they created the 10 to the One-Hundredth Project. While celebrating their success and fame, they are keenly aware of the people around the planet who face each waking moment as a challenge to contend with. So they have created the project to gather ideas that will improve the world. They show an example called the Hippo Roller. Many of the poor carry five-gallon containers to sources of water and then having to carry them home, usually on the top of their heads causing an accumulation of painful damage. A simple, inexpensive device, the Hippo Roller allows a person to push along five times the water with not too much more effort than one of us mowing the lawn. It is but an example of a step to make some lives better.

Google is looking for ideas to make life better for the poor of the planet. It may be big or it may be small. It may be a product or it may be an idea. Google will narrow the entries down to 100 and then the users of Google will vote on their choices. Google will make substantial venture capital to get those winning ideas moving along.

I’ve submitted an idea of my own. How about you?