and now...  an old school tom post.

i'm tired, and i hate working on websites.

was in a 5.8 earthquake today, my biggest yet.  it was fun.  like, 15 seconds of "umm, should i be doing something other than grinning and wondering if i should be doing something?" fun.  nothing too crazy happened, just some action figures and a monitor went down in the office.
where were you when it all went down, do tell!

oh yeah, mom and marty visited again...  a while ago.  we went to sequoia national park.  beautiful.  i uploaded pics a while back but forgot to tell.

after that kath and i went to portland to see casey and abbe schilperoort (sp?).  it was so relaxing and portland is beautiful. thanks guys!

i'm doing effects at supervillain now.  it's a good change for me.  it's fresh and i get to learn some new things.  it seems it may be my sole responsibility on this project. fun!

i'm taking a new route to work.  there's more bike lanes and less lights, so it's safer.  it's also half a mile longer, but i get there in the same amount of time.

i might get to playtest left 4 dead at valve. hawt.

time for a clove.

and a beer.

i know more people read this than just those who comment, please say something!  is my blog that boring!? (hi lurkers)

and gnite.

I'm so over cars.  The more I think about it the more I realize how wasteful it is to drive a car.  I'm not trying to get on anyone's case here. I realize there are many situations where driving a car every day can be a legit "necessity".  But for the majority of us, I would say it's not.  I bought a bike and started commuting to work on it.  I decided to crunch a few numbers in a spreadsheet just to see what's happening here.  I was a little shocked.  Here are my results:

All numbers are based on full round trip to and from work.


So here I already see there's something wrong.  Why does riding my bike only take 20 minutes more per day!?  As I ride, I find myself keeping up with most vehicles for 2-3 lights before they catch a break and get a green that I can't make.  That's a 2 block minimum that they cannot pass me on my bike.  The results of these facts are interesting.

Wow.  I'm only going 6 mph faster in my car.  The speed limit on these roads ranges from 35 at the lowest to 50 at the highest.  Let's go further, shall we? Let's look at some stats on my car.


So, with some simple math I can derive some facts.  By riding my bike 7.6 miles a day instead of my car:

• I only lose 20 extra minutes per day.
• My bike will "pay for itself" in 350 days.
• My car will have been paid for by commuting on bike in 37 years.
• I get good daily excercise for doing this.

Keep in mind that all of this is based solely on my work commute.  Imagine how much money would be saved if I rode my bike for everything that didn't require a car!

Imagine what it would look like if we each stole a dollar a day from the gas companies.  I mean, there's only 300 million of us.


EDIT:  I was thinking about it and some of my math towards the end is off.  It assumes I commute 7 days a week as opposed to 5, so it would take a little longer to pay things off.  I'm not gonna fix it, I'm tired of thinking.