A Slower Pace

Back in 2008 and 2009 when gas approached 4 bucks a gallon (or passed 4 bucks a gallon for those of you on the left coast), I remember thinking back to “cheap gas” below $2.50 a gallon.

Well, at least for a short time, we are there in Kentucky. Check out my gas receipt from this morning. And if you are reading this from the left coast — neener, neener!

Now I could go further and say (in a wheezing old man voice) “I remember when you could fill a car with gas for $10”. Now while that ain’t your grandpa’s 25 cents a gallon, it is still going back a while.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

Oh yeah, today was also the longest day of the year and the official start to summer blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…..

My earlier post was more important.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

I posted earlier this week about my wife’s truck hitting 100,000 miles. Well, this afternoon on my commute home I doubled that on my daily driver. See my cellphone picture below.

This is the second time I have clicked over 200,000 miles on a vehicle. And both are Mercedes diesels. Gotta love ’em.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

When we first moved to Kentucky, the weather caught us off guard (read about it here, here, and here). While snow and ice don’t make a habit of lingering around Kentucky like they do in Michigan or Minnesota, it does snow here. When it does, the roads are unpleasant. So one of the first things we purchased when we moved here was a 4×4 Chevrolet Tahoe for my wife to get around in. That was 5 1/2 years ago.

Today her truck hit a milestone.

Pretty cool. The last time this happened for one of my vehicles, it was here.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

I have the NASCAR Cup race on TV while I am tinkering about on the pool, garage and laptop. They are racing at Pocono and experiencing a short rain delay so they are interviewing all the drivers to kill broadcast time before the race.

One of the drivers, Clint Bowyer, was being interviewed and was asked about the recent Ford decision to kill the Mercury line. He was asked because he owns a beloved custom ’49 Merc and the reporter asked if he had stored up all the parts he’s gonna need to keep it running.

His response cracked me up:
“That’s funny. Well, you know, I gotta be careful. I gotta make sure that, uh…..it does have a Chevrolet engine in it. It’s gotta have a Chevy in it to get down the road. It wouldn’t run.”

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

Last Friday I posted about the 30th anniversary of PacMan being celebrated by Google on their homepage. And I also wrote that I was hubbing through Dallas-Ft. Worth airport on my way home and was playing the game courtesy of their free internet connection. I spent a while doing that and it killed a good chunk of my layover.

It seems that Google’s homage to PacMan didn’t just kill a good chunk of my time — it killed a good chunk of lots of people’s time — to the tune of $120 million. See the article here.

Google’s Pac-Man Logo Costs Society $120,483,800 in Productivity

We joked last week when Google changed its logo to a playable game of Pac-Man that the world’s collective productivity would take a sharp plunge, but it turns out that’s exactly what happened.

The blog for time management tool RescueTime did the math and determined that Google Pac-Man consumed 4,819,352 hours of time, or $120,483,800 in productivity.

The cost was determined by looking at how much time was spent on Google’s (Google) homepage the day the Pac-Man logo was up (48 seconds) versus the average amount of time spent on other days (11 seconds) and multiplied by the number of visitors to the site that day (503,703,000).

The cost seems like a bit of a stretch, though. RescueTime assumed that the average Google user makes $25 per hour; that’s considerably higher than median income in Internet (Internet)-connected nations. Also, you probably can’t assume that everyone who visited the site Friday was on the clock at work.

If you haven’t wasted time at work playing Google Pac-Man already, you still have a chance to add to that lost productivity tally. Google has preserved the Pac-Man game logo at www.google.com/pacman (you can also download the game) even though the front page has returned to normal.

For those of you who missed it, you can find it at www.google.com/pacman.

Now get back to work!

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

For those of you who might have missed the live stream in my last post, here is a link to the replay of the fireworks.

Go check it out. It was very cool last night to watch it with the family.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

As I highlighted in yesterday’s post, Kentucky Derby season is now officially upon us. One thing I found out for those of you that might want to watch all the festivities live is that a local TV station, Wave 3, is streaming the airshow and fireworks live at www.wave3.com.

Go check out how cool Thunder Over Louisville is for yourself.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

While I don’t follow college basketball, it is that time of year where, in the state of Kentucky, it is mandated that you follow college basketball and March Madness. And Kentucky was lucky enough to have several teams make “the dance” — UK, U of L, and Murray State among others. I had the tournament on the garage TV this afternoon while I wrapped up the brake pad and rotor job on my car. I was amazed that another #1 UK seed, luckily University of Kansas, was knocked out by Northern Iowa. Way to go!

And my wife and I are cheering on the Cats against Wake Forest. Go Cats!

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

“God just doesn’t want you to believe in him,
he wants to have a relationship with you!”

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net