They call me Phucie...pronounced Foo'-Key

If someone called you from ACS and says you or your friend is in legal trouble.  Please note that its a scam! You should then monitor you finances very closely.

Took me a while but I finally brute forced my way in this goreous windows phone 7. Ahh the pleasures of simple batch scripting

“The point of risk is not to lose it all but to gain everything.”

To mostly everyone, yesterday was probably just a normal day. For me though, being the geek that I am, it was a very exciting day. It was the day windows phone 7 was released. I have been waiting for windows phone since it was announce last February at WDC. So of course I saved up and picked up a brand new windows phone, the first chance it was available.

The decision came down to the Samsung Focus or the HTC HD7. I ended up picking the Samsung Focus mostly because of the super amoled screen. So far the Focus and windows phone 7 os has been a pleasure to use, but it’s only been a day, so I will be doing more in depth opinion post on it later.  Until then I will put windows phone 7 through its paces.

A curriculum that is sorely missing from higher education is business email etiquette. The course would go over such things as, when to CC, when to BCC and when to not “reply to all.” The advance course can go over such things as how to keep emails brief, and who the email should be addressed to versus who the email should be copied to.

I thought that this was all remedial stuff but obviously it isn’t!

Facebook knows when your relationship is on the rocks http://www.geekosystem.com/facebook-breakup-graph/

Today is one of the few days where you can do something about all the things you complain about on a daily bases. Go vote or stop complaining.

Green is the new “IT” thing you see it in fashion, in design and in politics.  I am a proponent of not trashing our environment as much as the next person, but I am also a proponent of common sense.  So I am going to go through a little excise in logic, yes I know, crazy right.. “Logic who da thunk.”

Of course one of the things that always come up in a green conversation is the electric car, and how the electric car will be the saver of us all. 

Imagine a world where we all drive around in cars that make no noise or horrible fumes.  This is great right? Why can’t this world come any sooner?  Well, imagine that in this world instead of old engines being recycled for parts or scrap metal. We have landfills filled with lithium polymer or lithium ion batteries. Better right? “Oh wait no, not really.” A person might apostolate.  “Well surely there won’t be that many batteries that will clog up the landfills.”  Looks like that person would be wrong. GM and Nissan are releasing their electric cars the Volt and Leaf respectively, both GM and Nissan predict a 8-10 year life span for the batteries¹.   Assuming that these batteries last 10 years that means if every car sold in the year 2000 was an electric car, this year alone we would be putting 41,215,653 ² dangerous, non biodegradable batteries into landfills.  Good thing?

Well surely the pollution of throwing away used car batters is offset by the pollution you are not creating when you drive the car right? It is true that when you drive an electric car you are not burning any fossil fuels which mean no pollution.  This sounds very good and all, but where does the electricity come from to power these electric cars?  Well most likely this power will be provided by the power outlets in our homes, which come from the power companies. Seeing that 83.4% of the energy sources in America come from fossil fuels³ (petroleum, natural gas, coal) chances are your electric car is going to be running on electricity that comes from burning fossil fuels.  Now imagine how much fossil fuel we will burn if a majority of the cars driven were “electric” cars.

Reading this post you might think I am against electric cars, and that can’t be further from the truth.  I am totally for the idea of cars that use alternative energy sources, but it has to make sense and be practical.  Going from an efficient gasoline engine to these current so called electric cars, feel more like a step to the side instead of a step forward.

Currently gasoline engines are power generators. This means they take chemical energy, in the form of fuel, and convert it into usable kinetic energy, motion.  Batteries on the other hand are not power generators; they are vessels that store energy. So you are taking what use to be a one step process, and making a 3 step process.  See flow chart

Chemical energy -> Kinetic

Chemical energy -> Charge Battery -> Kinetic energy

You know what the real bitch about physics is? Every time you see an arrow above you lose efficiency.

Sources

1)      Nissan Leaf Battery life span http://inhabitat.com/2010/03/11/will-the-nissan-leaf-battery-deliver-all-it-promises/

Cevy Volt battery life span http://wot.motortrend.com/6665707/technology/chevrolet-volt-battery-to-have-8-year-100000-mile-warranty/index.html

2)      Cars sold in the year 2000 http://www.worldometers.info/cars/

3)      Sources of US energy http://www.ehow.com/about_5366484_main-sources-energy-united-states.html