Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Keith Walendowski has been charged with felony possession of a short-barreled shotgun or rifle and misdemeanor disorderly conduct while armed.
According to the criminal complaint, Walendowski says he was angry because his Lawn Boy wouldn’t start Wednesday morning.
He told police: “I can do that, it’s my lawn mower and my yard so I can shoot it if I want.”
A woman who lives at Walendowski’s house reported the incident. She says he was intoxicated.
This is good news for Hillary.
I can actually take transit most of the way to work. It means I have to leave an hour earlier in the morning, which I don’t mind. The problem is that at the end of the trip, I have about a 20-minute walk to work. In Atlanta, that means you’re soaking wet when you actually get there. So I have to drive. Because of the high cost of gas, I’ve been doing a few things differently. Fortunately, I have a great job and can afford the gas, but it’s irritating enough that I am conserving as much as I can. Here are a few tips I’ve picked up that have saved me (a lot of) money:
1. I got rid of all the crap in my trunk (about 80 pounds of junk.)
2. If I need groceries, I go get them. But I also go do all the other stuff I need to do. I switched grocery stores. I now drive a little farther, but to a store int he same complex as a Home Depot, Target, and all the other places I would normally go to.
3. I’ve slowed down. Seriously, I am actually driving the speed limit. In Atlanta, that almost always means having to put up with peoples’ horns blaring at you, but I’ve noticed that driving about 60 (instead of 75-80) has seriously cut down on my fuel consumption – by about 25% actually. Honestly! People hate me, but I am saving money. And really, do I really care about that the guy in the Tahoe behind me who is pissed off because I am not driving 80? No, I don’t.
4. I check weather.com every night. If the humidity is going to be low, I always take transit.
My commute is 54 miles round-trip. At the end of the week, I estimate that I am saving about $25 a week on gas. I’ve taken my fuel costs from about $80 a week to about $55-60 – mostly from slowing down. Still way too much though.
When the humidity goes down in Fall, Winter, and early Spring, my costs for commuting to work are about $13 a week – the cost of a MARTA card. The ride is great, I read about 3 books a week on my commute, and the exercise from the walking burns about 1000 300 extra calories in addition to the running I do daily.
Update: I honestly don’t know WHY I said the 20 minute round trip walk was 1000 calories. That’s just idiotic. Probably around 300 in the heat and humidity – 400 max when it’s blistering hot.
The coolest pictures of a leopard attacking and killing a crocodile that you will probably see all day.
A picture of sunny Centennial Olympic Park, taken yesterday.
Even 3 months after the tornado, the Westin still hasn’t replaced the windows.
This just seems more relevant than ever:
Nothing particular in the news that made me post this, just a nagging feeling I have had for a while. Plus, I think everyone should watch this and read about the Milgram experiments.
Via Matthew Yglesias, it seems that the Saudi claim that the kingdom can produce up to 15 million barrels a day is just blowing smoke. Business Week:
But the detailed document, obtained from a person with access to Saudi oil officials, suggests that Saudi Aramco will be limited to sustained production of just 12 million barrels a day in 2010, and will be able to maintain that volume only for short, temporary periods such as emergencies. Then it will scale back to a sustainable production level of about 10.4 million barrels a day, according to the data. BusinessWeek obtained a field-by-field breakdown of estimated Saudi oil production from 2009 through 2013. It was provided by an oil industry executive who said he had confirmed it with a ranking Saudi energy official who has access to the field data. The executive, who has proven reliable over several years of reporting interaction, provided the data on condition of anonymity to protect his access to the kingdom and the identity of the inside contact who confirmed the information.
and…
On oil matters, the kingdom’s credibility has been clouded by intense secrecy. The Saudis, for instance, refuse, unlike Russia, Venezuela, and Norway, to release detailed assessments of their oil reserves, which has made many skeptical. “They are just a bunch of empty boasts,” Matthew Simmons, chairman of Houston investment bank Simmons & Co. International, says of the kingdom’s recent promises of 12.5 million barrels a day. He is also skeptical of Saudi reserve estimates.
Oil took a small dive yesterday on speculation that global demand for oil will go down because of the high prices (which would be good). When you factor in the high demand from China and India, I wouldn’t look for them to go down much further. I was having a conversation with a friend this morning, and we talked about gas prices hitting $6.00 a gallon around Labor Day. We’ve already hit $5.00 in some places.
Saudi Oil: Not as Much as They’re SayingPost + Comments (44)
Missed in all the trivial bullshit of the past few days is this really big story:
The broad cutbacks included a 20 percent reduction in payroll for salaried workers, elimination of health care for older white-collar retirees, and suspension of G.M.’s annual stock dividend of $1 a share.
The retirees will receive an additionally $300.00 a month, but as we both know, that will not make up for the loss of their health-care plan. If it did, GM wouldn’t be cutting it in the first place. The $300 is just a cushion. Additionally, how easy is it going to be for 70 year-old retirees to find a new plan other than Medicare? By 65-70, pretty much everyone has a pre-existing condition.
This is a sign of things to come:
General Motors Corp.’s (GM) plan to cut health benefits for certain salaried retirees may make only a small dent in profits at Medco Health Solutions Inc. ( MHS), GM’s pharmacy benefits manager, but it could signal broader, more significant changes to come for the health-benefits industry.
“GM’s decision to cut retiree benefits is likely to have only small impact on (Medco’s) 2009 earnings. Even so, we see the move as a watershed event for the retiree benefits marketplace that is likely to lead other employers to do the same, which will, in turn, cause the issue to grow as an overhang for the stock, ” Morgan Stanley analyst David Veal said.
Probably a good thing the Bush Medicare veto was over-ridden yesterday.