Marc’s Musings

Have you heard of hypermiling? They claim they can get about 40 mpg without a hybrid.

After hearing a brief NPR story on hypermiling yesterday, I tried driving with one shoe off. Weird. But effective.

Here are some tips from Wired.com.

There’s even a www.hypermiling.com complete with a CafePress store.

We have primaries here in Maine tomorrow. We have an incredible privilege in getting a say in how we’re governed.

So vote.

For information on the referendum on tomorrow’s ballot, go to:
http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming.html.

There are other great resources at: MPBN.net.

I’m loving using Twitter.com!

It’s so much fun being limited to just 140 characters per blog post. And it’s really neat connecting with people on it.

If you’re on Twitter, feel free to follow me at: http://twitter.com/marcapitman. (You can also go there to see the micro-blogging I do, like my pre-church and during church tweets!)

We’re having a blast at WDW.

Our vacation blog is: http://pdv2008.blogspot.com/.

Photos, commentary, and more!

Yeah, I know we’re supposed to be vacationing. But we’re blogging because we want to try the “blog slurp” feature of Blurb.com to make a book of our vacation.

Okay, so I’m realizing merely joining the Romans8movement group on Facebook didn’t make me memorize the chapter.

It didn’t even help to print out the chapter from Biblegateway.com.

So today I’ll start reading Romans 8. I bet that will be an important step toward memorizing the chapter!

Kivi Miller tagged me on a meme passed on by Jeff Brooks.

I don’t usually play these. In fact, GMail knows to automatically delete forwarded emails.

But something about this intrigues me so here it goes.

Here is what I am supposed to do:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

The nearest book is Katya Andresen’s Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes.

Here are the appropriate three sentences:

And it cost us nothing.

Q: What’s a favorite example of your work in forging unusual partnerships?

A: The Union of Operating Engineers wanted to improve minority recruitument for jobs in the field and to raise the profile of the union and its members in our community.

Delightfully out of context, isn’t it? She goes on to tell of a partnership with them and Head Start.

Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causesis one of the best books I’ve read in a while. And I read a lot of books! Katya knows marketing and this book can help all fundraisers do what they do even better.

Like Kivi I think I’ll tag a couple Twitterati.

• Chad Norman
• Lisa Downing

I’ll also tag:

• my wife Emily
• the book’s author Katya.
• and my guest on today’s Ask Without Fear radio show, Gayle Roberts.

IE isn’t “remembering” my Google settings anymore. I’m having to log in each time.

Other programs are remembering my cookies just fine.

Can anyone help me figure out what I should change?

And can anyone tell me if I can get my IE tabs to be on the bottom of the screen?

This morning I was running around the house almost frantically looking for my watch. I knew I’d had it at the gym but it wasn’t on the bathroom counter where it should be.

I checked everywhere: my wrist (in case I’d put it on), the bathroom (I’d put my glasses back on but why didn’t I put on my watch?), the kitchen (even under the bananas!), the living room (twice), jackets I haven’t worn in a while.

Everywhere.

I even pulled up the sleeve of my right wrist to show Emily that it wasn’t there.

I’m now at work. I just started to check today’s date by looking at my watch.

As I saw the date on my watch, I realized I where my watch in my left wrist. Always have. And it’s been there all along.

*sigh*

I love the NPR news quiz Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me!.

I often am not listening to a radio on Saturday’s at 11 a.m. so I’m thrilled to find out all of the shows are available for listening from the web.

As a result, I’m having a hilarious afternoon!

The show’s web address is: http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/

While I won’t send back the money I’ll get as part of the “stimulus” package, I strongly dislike tools that are designed to “help” our economy by getting Americans to spend even more money. With these rules, if we use the money to pay down debt or to increase our savings, we’re harming our economy.

*sigh*

So I was amused to see Cal Thomas’ comments on the stiulus package as reported in our local paper:

Thomas, who makes frequent appearances on Fox News, … also called the economic stimulus package, which calls for sending checks to taxpayers, “a joke.”

“People are going to be given money borrowed from the Chinese to go to Wal-Mart and buy products from China,” he said.