Filling up more often is less painful

With gas prices continuing to soar, I thought I’d try an experiment. See normally, I wait until my fuel gauge is below the 1/4 mark before I even think about filling up the tank. But even though I use regular unleaded, filling the tank at that point takes over $40. That’s a painful amount to pay.

So I thought, why not fill up the tank more often? The idea being, if I fill up before the guage hits the 1/2 mark, then I’ll be filling up with just 50 to 60% as much gas as if I wait until it’s between 1/4 and Empty. So I’ll be paying 50 to 60% what I’m paying to fill the tank now.

Turns out that really helps. It sounds stupid, because of course I have to fill up more often. But I felt better about putting only around $20 into the tank, even though I knew I’d be putting in another $20 a few days later.

I’m surprised how badly Iron Man beat Speed Racer

Iron Man absolutely crushed Speed Racer at the box office this weekend. That’s not how summer blockbusters are supposed to work. Last year in May, each week’s new release managed to be the number 1 movie at least for that initial weekend. Only to have its crown taken the following week when some other big blockbuster movie opened.

You could kinda see this coming though. Iron Man was one of the best-rated movies so far this year, while the buzz around Speed Racer was much less positive. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the last two Wachowski movies, the two Matrix sequels. Frankly Speed Racer would have had to be getting rave reviews before I’d even consider going to see it. Given the lackluster reviews so far I’m never going to be seeing Speed Racer, at least not at the movie theaters. Maybe when the DVD hits the bargain bin at Circuit City.

The size of Iron Man’s victory though is still pretty impressive. They earned $50 million in the second weekend, while Speed Racer only scraped together $20 million in its opening weekend. That is the definition of a whuppin’, Speed Racer definitely got its hat handed to it. I love the brave face that the studio execs put on the performance, but they’ll be lucky to recoup their investment in this one.

Al Gore would be very angry with me

Fellow Tennessean Al Gore would be quite cross with me. Last night when I got home I realized I had left a light on all day. It’s not a big light, I think it’s a 60-watt bulb. The one that lights the stairway up to the second floor on my little townhome.

Still, it was on over 12 hours unattended. So it burned up a good amount of electricity for no reason. I can just see Mr. Nobel-Prize-winner Gore waving his finger at me and shaking his head in disappointment.

But hey, in my defense it’s clear that my townhome is way more efficient than living in a house was. The most recent power bill on my home in Louisville was $80, and that was for a house sitting mostly empty. The lights only turned on when the realtor was showing somebody through the house, no washing machine or dryer being run every week, no hot water being used for showers, no computers and TV’s plugged in and running, none of that. Meanwhile my most recent bill here was just $50 and that’s for a house where I was definitely using the washer / dryer, using hot water, running TVs and PC’s, etc.

So my move into a townhome has greatly reduced my carbon footprint. Though I fear in terms of the commute it’s a wash. Because even though I live much closer to work than I did in Louisville, there’s no reliable bus route that lets me ride public transit. So whereas in Louisville I rode the bus to work three or four times a week, here in Nashville I’m driving to work every day. Net mileage on my car is about the same.

Looking up your paystub on ADP is freaky

At my previous two jobs they had internal Web-based payroll systems where you could look up and print out paystubs if you needed them (i.e., when you are applying for a mortgage they usually ask for your most recent two or three paystubs to verify salary). My new employer is a believer in out-sourcing wherever possible, and that includes this paystub feature.

It’s outsourced to the very company that prints out our paychecks, ADP. That makes sense, they already have your payroll data so why not handle this stuff rather than risk shipping the data to some third-party vendor?

Turns out that when you register for ADP’s Web site, they can display the last three years’ worth of paystubs from their database. Even if those paystubs were from a different employer. Which is a little freaky because when I first signed in they were showing paystubs from 2005, 2006, and 2008. Well the 2008 ones are from my new employer, but the 2005 and 2006 are from when I worked at CNET.

It was a weird to be able to browse my old paystubs from my previous employer. But it’s also kinda cool, I bet for some people ADP has their entire salary history stored in its database. Because ADP handles a very large percent of all payroll in the US.

The Louisville home is officially sold

As of today I no longer own two homes. The new owner officially closed on my home in Louisville, and I ordered her a thank-you box of cookies from the Mrs. Fields Web site.

The sales price wasn’t great but given this market I’m actually pretty happy with what we got. I’m especially happy that there was only one month (May) where I had to pay two mortgages. It was kinda painful setting up those two payments last week, I’m glad that was the last time it will happen.

In a way though I’m sad to have cut my last firm tie with Louisville. I really liked living there, and I’m sure I’ll visit from time to time. Maybe for the next Abbey Road on the River.

Iron Man: movie was great, price of concessions was not

I saw Iron Man last night and it was great. Good start to the summer movie season. But the price of concessions was horrible.

So first the movie itself — Robert Downey Jr. was inspired casting as Tony Stark. He really makes this move, he’s perfect as the drunk womanizer who has his eyes opened when he sees first-hand how his company’s weapons are being used in Afghanistan. He build the Iron Man prototype to escape, and once back home he perfects the suit as part of a quest for personal redemption.

The special effects were top-notch, especially of course Iron Man himself. If there was a complain, it’s that we don’t see anything really ground-breaking from the effects. I mean, we saw Transformers last year so big mechanical creatures are old hat now. But still it’s done very well in this flick.

This was the first movie I’ve seen since moving to Nashville, and I had major sticker shock when I went to the concession stand. The small popcorn was $5, the small drink an equally stunning $4. Maybe it’s just this one theater, the Bell Forge 10 which is near Hickory Hollow Mall. But it wasn’t exactly a fancy place, I’m guessing these prices are pretty representative.

But Iron Man was a great start to the season, and has made me excited about seeing more of the summer flicks. So I’ll have more opportunities to visit other theaters and see if the outrageous concession prices are everywhere or just this one place.

A store full of over-priced kitsch and over-sized furniture

At lunch today I stopped by the Circa Home Furnishings store to browse their going-out-of-business sale. And as I wandered around I couldn’t help but think, the reason your store is closing is that it’s full of over-priced furniture and accessories that nobody really needs.

Oh, and really tacky accessories like elephant statues made of leather. Cow leather apparently, I don’t think it was elephant leather. That would have been extra tacky to use the dead animal’s own leather to construct the little statues.

The prices were just God-awful high. Like there was a sofa-sized painting, meant to be hung on the wall behind one of the over-stuffed sofas also being sold in the store. The painting was of a small herd of water buffalo, which is why it caught my eye. Water buffalo are pretty common in the Philippines.

But the painting was $12,000, that was the clearance price. Original price was north of $16,000. It just wasn’t that good a painting. You were apparently paying for the size of the thing, not the quality of the art itself.

I thought the funniest part was that none of the sofas was anywhere close to that painting in price. The most expensive piece was I think $5,000. A bargain by comparison, since a sofa is actually useful for something. You can’t do anything with a large painting, but a sofa you can watch TV or take a nap or whatever.

Anyway, depending on where I go for lunch I drive by that Circa store at least once a week. I’ll try to drop in a few weeks from now. Maybe that water buffalo painting will drop to something more reasonable. I’d pay $200, but not a penny more.

Bugs cause greenhouse gas

I just heard this story on NPR and it’s kinda ironic. Human-create greenhouse gas has increased the pine beetle population, they in turn are killing forests in Canada. As those trees die, they release all the carbon they’ve stored up back into the armosphere, thus increasing even more the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

I think they call it the “virtuous cycle” in business school. Though generally they’re not talking about environmental destruction.

Anyway this just confirms what I’ve always thought — nature is too destructive. We need to kill all the bugs, starting with the pine beetle but not stopping until all the creepy crawlies are gone.

Why are my shoes $15 more expensive online?

I thought online stuff was supposed to be cheaper. But the running shoes I wear (Brooks Adrenaline) are $15 more expensive on Zappos.com than when I bought them last year at Fleet Feet in Louisville. And Fleet Feet is not exactly a discount sporting goods store so their price should be among the highest around I would have thought.

Well, I don’t know the running stores around here yet and with gas prices like they are I wasn’t sure I wanted to drive around looking for these shoes. It’s not a brand that gets carried at places like Dick’s Sporting Goods or the mall shoe stores. Which is why I decided to order them online in the first place.

Well, at least I’m supporting my former city — Zappos is based in Louisville. Which makes for speedy UPS delivery. The shoes were ordered yesterday, and their tracking indicates that UPS will deliver them today.

Zyrtec isn’t working for me

I’ve tried Claratin in the past and it wasn’t working either, so this season I decided to try Zyrtec. So I’ve now been taking it for the past two weeks and it’s still not working that well for me. I’m still stuffy and my eyes are itchy. I suppose it might be better than it would be without the drug, but I’m not exactly breathing free and easy as they suggest in the advertising.

I bought the 30-tablet bottle so I will finish it out and see if my symptoms improve any in the next couple weeks. Of course the symptoms could improve just because the height of the allergy season will have passed.