I've got a couple of things that I wanted to post, but don't have time to give them all a full post treatment.

Subversion and Smoothwall Fighting
I fought all afternoon with being unable to do checkouts, updates or checkins into Subversion on Dreamhost. I had that hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach since I wholeheartedly have been recommending people use them for cheap Subversion hosting.

Turns out it wasn't Dreamhost's problem, it was mine. I recently switched on the transparent web proxy in my Smoothwall firewall. Apparently, the Squid proxy doesn't cooperate with the REPORT WebDAV HTTP headers that Subversion uses, thus resulting in the errors. I've shut the proxy off until I can figure out a better solution.

So, if you're getting "REPORT request failed", check if there's a proxy in the middle.

Home Theater Projector
Something like 18 months ago, I investigated the DIY projector information from Lumenlab. Since they used a 15" LCD, I ruled it out (no room for a projector of that size in my home theater). However, 6 months ago, I noticed that they had announced that they were taking their design and getting some smaller ones manufactured.

I added myself to their list to be notified when they were available to buy and I got the email a few weeks ago. I'm now eagerly anticipating mine to end up on the doorstep.

It was $499, with free shipping. Instead of an expensive $300 bulb, they use a cheap $30 bulb that lasts 6000 hours. According to their distance calculator, I should be able to get at least a 100" 16:9 image, but will wait to buy the screen until I'm sure about the size. However, this is the first inexpensive projector I've seen that doesn't throw out a postage stamp sized image at 10 feet.

The IRS Roller Coaster
After getting a letter from the IRS "requesting" a payment in the amount of almost $1200 due to under-reporting my 2005 taxes, things have gone 180°. We tracked down the glitch (we actually paid taxes on the money in 2004 and they didn't match things up).

Then, today, we got the call that we're actually getting almost $2000 back. What a roller coaster. I hope that they lose complete interest in my financial arrangements.

The cash will come in handy following the large soapy puddle in the middle of the kitchen coming from the dishwasher a couple of days ago.

The Electric Bike
I hit Target looking for a donor bike and bought the closest thing I could find: a retro, cruiser-style bike from Schwinn. Basically, if the motor doesn't fit in this bike, there isn't a cheap bike nearby that this thing will fit into. It was the only one there that met the requirements.

With the motor, I'm not terribly concerned with leaning down, so the more upright position is actually nice. There won't be as much weight on my wrists and the bigger handlebars offer plenty of space to mount the throttle and other accessories.

So, here's to hoping that the motor spins freely.

I'm a different kind of technology enthusiast when it comes to buying stuff. First, I NEVER buy top of the line, under any circumstances. Second, I pretty much never buy bleeding edge products. Even though I seriously love technology and gadgets, I've got a chart in my head for every purchase that looks something like this one.

We've all heard people spouting the "wisdom" that you get what you pay for. It's usually offered to someone who had their cheapest-product-in-category item fall apart on them. The problem with that is that the price/performance curve that the axim hints at isn't entirely straight and it doesn't go on forever.

For most products in the marketplace, especially geeky ones, there is a curve for how much you get in terms of measurable features for the money. Now, it doesn't measure things like prestige or intangible, feel-good benefits. However, I believe that if you wouldn't be happy with a purchase unless you could tell someone, you probably shouldn't buy it.

Regardless, to a large degree, you get more quality/features/durability, etc. (with some sloppy variations) as you climb the curve. A non-geeky example would be T-shirts. The more you spend, the better the stitching and the heavier the fabric. For $2, you get a pretty thin shirt only suitable as an undershirt. For $10, you usually get a dyed colored shirt on heavier fabric. For $15, you usually get a clever slogan or some other printing. For $30, you usually get some sort of souvenir value. However, at $50 or $100 or $500, you're pretty much only paying for a designer name, artificial scarcity or someone tacking things with an outside value (like diamonds) onto it. Thus, the curve on T-shirts probably peaks at about $30.

So, this curve works for a LOT of the stuff I buy and makes the purchasing decisions fairly easy. The example chart is for upgrading RAM on my home theater PC. Given the current configuration and what the parameters are for RAM that will fit, I can choose between 512MB, 1GB, 2GB or 4GB of RAM to put into the machine.

Here are the prices of each option at the moment:

512MB= $59
1024MB= $98
2048=$173
4096=$800

Now, just looking at the numbers, you could probably intuit what the chart shows graphically: there's a sharp change in what you're getting for the money at 4GB. That's where the peak is. If you take the price, divided by the MB of memory it gets you, you get the chart in this article.

Whenever you do this, you'll find such a peak. If you buy on the left side of the peak, you usually *are* getting what you paid for. If you're buying on the right side, you're either buying to impress someone, out of a genuine need (like a custom application that runs out of memory unless it has at least 8 GB of RAM) or some other emotional need.

Just so no one misunderstands, everyone buys some stuff based on some emotional need. That's just part of being human. I just want to make sure that I (and anyone who will listen) is doing it consciously. Living a deliberate life is something I strive toward.

Back to the RAM example, I'm probably going to buy the 1GB because I just don't need 2GB and 512MB isn't enough for what I'm doing, but I'm now confident that that's a decent decision.

I use this basic chart (and usually it's just in my head) to weed out the choices that shouldn't even be part of my decision. Of course, that's also why Apple's products rarely make it into the final round on a tech decision for me, but the needs and wants I'm trying to fulfill with a purchase just don't result in a curve that favors Apple.

After watching An Inconvenient Truth, I found myself pushed over the line and looking for the best ways for me change my habits. Part of that effort is why I'm building an electric bike this winter. And, as of this week, that bike, the computer I'm typing, my entertainment center and everything else that sucks down 120V AC electricity in my house will be powered by wind. OK, technically, the electrons won't necessarily be directly coming from the wind turbines.

Xcel Energy, my electrical company, offers a program in Minnesota, wherein subscribers can voluntarily pay the difference in price between the normal price for electricity and wind.

Windsource electricity does not go directly to participants’ homes. Instead, it is available on the Xcel Energy system for use across our service area. When you buy Windsource, you increase the amount of wind energy available, without producing air emissions or using water.

My normal electrical rate is $0.072744 per kilowatt hour. That's $7.27 per 100 kw/h (see I'm no dummy. I can do basic decimal point movement math). The wind surcharge is $2.00 per 100 kw/h, which brings the rate under the program up to $9.27.

Now, I'm going to admit publicly just how much electricity I currently use. I say "admit" because the number is downright humiliating. However, if even my bill changes as little as it will, anyone who has access to this program can do it.

I use 1400 kw/h in a month. To my credit, that's down from 1550 a year ago, so I'm making some progress on the consumption front as well and will keep going forward. I'm swapping out light bulbs and planning for appliance replacement, and all of the other recommended stuff to see if I can get that down under 1000 yet this year.

At any rate, my current bill is $101.78. The new bill for this same month will go to $129.78, a difference of $28 per month. That's $0.90 per day, for me to move my overactive electrical use over to 100% wind. I spend more than that on Coke Zero in a day.

I keep hearing about how "expensive" green energy is. Compared to what?

Photo: Jack Keene

Late last week, I received my little envelope from the Social Security Administration telling me how much I've contributed in each year of my life and what that means for future payouts. Of course, the note included all of the disclaimers that the place will be out of money before I'm eligible, making the Social Security part of the equation a moot point.

Digressions aside, the little paragraph that shows a table of my reported income across the years (including $432 in 7th grade) is a really good snapshot of whether, from a financial perspective, I've made good choices and am on the right path.

The numbers made me confident that how I've been doing my career planning/business development is working for me to one degree or another. Since leaving college, I've averaged a 14% raise every year since. In only 1 year was there any backward movement at all and it came in a year where I made a calculated decision much like the one earlier this year where I sacrificed a bit of money to get a boost in experience and skill development.

Given how many people are fighting to get raises of 3-4%, it's clear that I've been doing a decent job (at least on the money front) of increasing my income.

Of course, what I *really* want to do is more things to bring in passive income, but I'm working on that.