I’ve been looking at a LOT of material related to climate change.

I’ve learned enough about it that I’m NOT going to simply accept what is being put out by the media and by government.

However, in going down this path I didn’t want to hijack Exit78 and make it into a niche blog on climate change, so I created still another blog.

It’s called On Climate and it’s an Exit78 spin off. I’ll be posting on things that I’ve learned, views that I’ve developed, material that I’ve discovered, and climate related news.  I’ll also be posting links to videos, news, and other climate related pages.

While I may on occasion still mention things related to climate here, it’ll be an exception rather than the rule.

For those that might want to visit On Climate, I’ve added a link.  Right now it’s on the top menu bar, though it may move to another location.

If I get any comments there, I expect that they’ll be a lot more focused and, there may be some who flat out disagree with what I’m posting.  I’ll have to publish a comment policy, of course, and it will probably be very similar to the one that I have here.

On another note, I plan to get back to posting more photos here in the near future.

In January, I wrote about a coworker’s suggestion that I apply for unemployment when the contract that I was on was over — even though I didn’t need the job when I took it.  Comments on the piece overwhelming supported my decision not to apply for unemployment compensation. (see Applying for Unemployment)

The contract was over at the end of August.  In the turbulent economic months since then, I’ve had a few moments where I’ve thought about the extra cushion that unemployment income could provide.  However, I’ve never had a moment where I regretted my decision.

A few weeks ago I was at one of our every-other-week retirement breakfasts when I heard some fellows talking about putting in for unemployment benefits after thay had finished a contract job.  The nature of the industry that we retired from is that there is a lot of opportunity for contract work for those with the right experience and/or credentials. It wasn’t surprising that the idea of putting in for unemployment had occurred to others.

Apparently a couple of them had actually applied.

They were turned down!

They weren’t qualified because they were making too much money from their pension!

Since I was a contract worker working as an employee and NOT an independent contractor, if I didn’t have any other income, I could have applied for unemployment payments.  However, with my pension and other income, it didn’t seem right to apply.

In the end, I was not only morally right, but legally right, as well.

I would not have been able to receive unemployment compensation.

posted on Flickr by diaper

Remember 2008 and the price of fuel?

Time magazine had an article in its June 5th edition titled, “Will the Oil Bubble Burst?”

What a timely article!

Crude oil prices peaked the first week of July on the The New York Mercantile Exchange at $145 a barrel.

Oil is now selling at over $100 a barrel less.

I was confident that prices would drop.  The way prices were rising just didn’t make sense to me.  To me, the only thing that made sense was the idea that speculators bidding on the future price of oil was driving prices ever higher.

Several years ago, there was a piece on National Public Radio where a guy was talking about his new book on the coming bursting of the housing bubble.  I knew that home prices were outrageous, but, until that point, I never thought about there being a pricing bubble in housing.  It made complete sense.  Though I never read that fellow’s book, it didn’t take me by surprise when home prices started to free fall.

The free fall in home prices and the rising cost of fuel, along with the prices everything else related ina any way to fuel usage, exacerbated the problems of the already anemic economy.

My forecasts for the future?

1. The economy will begin recovering by the middle to the end of 2010.
2. Global temperatures will continue to drop until at least 2020.

(some of the sources I’ve been reading on climate change)

Karen took this picture a couple days ago.

It’s the first we’ve seen in 2009.

[continue reading…]

Hotel Petit Jean,
Petit Jean State Park

see my Petit Jean page and gallery

I had intended to continue posting from the old location of Exit 78 until the end of February so that those who are subscribed to the feed would all be able to transition to the new location — if they wanted .

To make sure that all links pointed to the new location,  I used a WordPress plug-in to redirect visitors to the right place.

Unfortunately, it works a little too well.  Apparently, I logged out of the WordPress dashboard at the old location and, when I try to log in, it tries redirecting me to the twilight zone to log in, which, of course, doesn’t work.

So, now I can’t post anything to the old location. 🙁

This is not a problem that I’m going to try to fix.  I was not going to be doing anything more with the old posts as all the ones that I was keeping have been transferred to the new location, along with all of the pictures, comments and links.  I guess if some folks missed my earlier announcements, they won’t know to subscribe to the new, not that I have that many people subscribed at this point anyhow.

WordPress 2.7.1 is out and I tried the automatic upgrade feature.  So far, it seems to be working just fine.

I think I have all of the plugins working on the new location now.  The last one was the CommentLuv, but I’ll check on the rest.

I’m also using a WordPress using a plugin at the old blog location to redirect visitors to the new location.

We’ve got potentially damaging spring-like storms heading our way tonight. I checked our storm shelter had took some folding camp chairs down there.  We’re subscribed to a weather alert service that will call our home phones and cell phones.  In September, when we were visiting in Wisconsin we actually got calls on our cell phones for Tropical Depression Ike.

It’ll probably snow next week or next month.

This rose is published in the new location only.

Olbrich Botanical Gardens, Madison, Wsconsin, September 22, 2008

I’ve completed “Moving on up.”

I am currently double posting each blog post through the end of the month.

One post is sent under exit78.com/weblog — this is the one that you are getting if you’ve been subscribed to the feed for more than a day or so. This also the one that will stop being published at the end of the month.

The other post is sent under exit78.com — this is where I will be publishing all posts from now on.

If you want to continue receiveing Exit78 posts in your feed reader, you’ll need to subscribe to the new feed address, which is https://exit78.com/feed/ .

During the process of moving, I reviewed every page and a lot of them were deleteted. Any links to pages that still exist will automatically be forwarded to the corresponding page at the new location.

Comments are turned off on exit78.com/weblog and are turned on on exit78.com and all links are do-follow for links back to your blog.