Greenify Your Life

I've uploaded a new (updated) copy of my book for the 3rd time this month. In this latest version, I've included MANY references for the stats given in the book, and updated/expanded/corrected a few of the tips.

http://greenifyyourlifebook.blogspot.com/

Comments are welcome...

2nd Orienteering

Cool! Much better results!

P   Name                  Company                Time           Pnts
1   Ukjent løper,403026   Ukjent tilhørighet     12:25 + 00:00  1000
2   Rodriguez,Victor      ABB Automasjon BIL     16:28 + 04:03  754
3   Wallis,Anthony        Shell-Sport BIL        19:07 + 06:42  649
4   Aarsand,Tore          TKS Heis               19:57 + 07:32  622
5   Geerts,Wim            ABB Automasjon BIL     19:58 + 07:33  621
6   Day,Lawrence          ABB Automasjon BIL     21:00 + 08:35  591
7   Francesco,Pierfelice  TDC Song BIL           27:55 + 15:30  444
DNF Sirevåg,Ingve         dk Digital Systems AS                 0
DSQ Onck,Rien             ABB Automasjon BIL     17:07          0
NC  Fuglestad,Joar        OK Ålgård              18:34          0

DNF = did not finish
DSQ = disqualified
NC = did not compete

A Month in Review

As of today, I've been in Stavanger for a month. As such, I felt a review of what I've done so far is in order:

• Met coworkers at a cowboy-themed party
• Started work
  
• Bought a monthly bus pass
• Settled into my apartment
• Drove my manual transmission car to work
  
• Took a road trip to and hiked up Preikestolen
• Took a road trip to and scrambled around at Gloppedalsura
• Biked the countryside to neighbouring cities including Tananger, Randaberg and Sandnes
  
• Biked to local landmarks including Ullandhaug, Valandshaugen and the cathedral
  
• Jogged around Mosvatnet about 8 times
• Spent a lot of time walking around Stavanger's downtown and old city
• Biked around Stokkavatnet
• Walked to the end of the island chain of Buøy
• Used the company gym about 6 times
• Learned a few words of Norwegian
• Bought a hybrid bike
• Visited the Swords in Stone monument twice
  
• Visited the Stavanger Botanical Garden
• Got a prepaid cellphone
• Posted my How to Greenify Your Life book online
• Wrote some blog posts about economic doom and gloom
  
• Bought a pair of snow pants so I can go skiing
• Managed to crack my camera's LCD
• Tried orienteering and will do so again tomorrow
• Spent some time at a nature info gathering and lying in the sun at a scouts gathering
• Got my dishwasher and TV fixed

So what am I going to fill the rest of my time here with? Well, I still have Kjerag, trips around Norway to further place, trips around Europe, a trip to the UK (coming up), skiing, more orienteering, a neolithic cave, the Botanical Gardens again once they start to bloom, much more running/biking, maybe training for offshore work, maybe a trip offshore, getting Norwegian ID which will allow me to get a bank account, visits by friends, learning more Norwegian, a visit to a stave church, maybe a trip North to see the Aurora Borealis, more fjord trips, experiencing very short days in winter and very long days in summer, etc. I won't be bored.

This is worth 10 minutes

La Cuchufleta
Uploaded by SODEPAZ

Some Analysis

My monthly bus pass is running out soon, so I wanted to check the math on driving versus taking the bus. The advantage of the bus is that I can read or nap on the way to and from work. It's also better for the environment than driving my own car. It's about a 15 minute bus trip and the bus comes every half an hour. I have a 5 minute walk from the bus stop to the office as well. Driving is clearly more stressful but I can leave whenever I want and don't have to walk to the bus stop. However, I can't say I trust the car I was given very much.

mileage (liters/100km)	9
price of gas per liter	$2,10
km per day	20
working days per month	21
cost of bus pass	$105,00
liters per km	0,09
price per km	$0,19
price per day	$3,78
price per month	$79,38
Savings by taking the bus	-$25,62

(all figures converted to Canadian dollars)

Wow, that was worse than I expected. I figured the bus would be cheaper than driving but would be offset by the inconvenience of not driving. However, the big factor missing here is the true cost of car ownership which should approximately triple my driving cost figures. On the other hand, the cost of car ownership to me is zero since I'm not paying insurance or maintenance on this car.

Weekend Plan Ideas

http://gardkarlsen.com/broken_column.htm
http://www.stavanger-web.com/touristinfo/vistehola.htm

Trip to UK

Next Friday I've got tickets to the The Gallery at Ministry of Sound nightclub in London, UK. Then I've got about a day in London to look around. On Sunday I'll travel North to Telford for a week-long ABB training course, and then back to Stavanger on Friday.

Bike Ride III

Third big bike ride of the month today (I can tell from my picture folder names). It was another sunny day and lots of people were out and about. Took a long bike ride around Stokkavatnet and then passed by the Stavanger botanical garden (nothing in bloom yet) on my way to a big green area south of Ullandhaug (the white radio tower) where I could bike around.

I passed two big gatherings - one with booths from local organizations having to do with nature (they claimed to have never heard of Earth Day though) and the other was a scout gathering. I took a picture of the smallest car I've ever seen next to my bike for comparison. So many hills! It's like San Francisco but with trees and fields and rocks and mountain/ocean backgrounds instead of trolley cars and concrete. No wonder everyone is in shape here.

PS: Yes, all these are taken with my broken camera (cracked LCD). I need to get that fixed though, because macro mode as well as any of the advanced options are just about impossible to use (unless you have the menu sequences memorized).

Sandnes

Took a trip on Saturday to the nearby city with the auspicious name of Sandnes. Even though it was a beautiful sunny day, nothing much was going on. I guess it really is a bedroom community for Stavanger. However, the view of the hills around Dale in the background have inspired plans for a future hiking trip there. Most of the other contractors live in Sandnes since it's much closer to the office than Stavanger, but after this trip I'm glad I live in Stavanger.

Off to an odd start

Bus 72 passes my stop 6 minutes before the bus I normally take to
work. I was in view of my stop this morning when 72 went by, but my
bus never came. I ended up waiting 30 minutes at the stop until the
next time my bus came. No explanation.

Then I get to work where I find an email from a local company asking
for some information. I emailed the person back only to get an auto
reply saying she is out of the office and to please email another
person instead. I emailed the other person and got an auto reply
saying she is out of the office today and to please email the first
person. Gah!

Things can only go up from here, right?

Orienteering

I ran my first orienteering course yesterday with a guy from work. I finished the 1.7km loop in 27:53, which I thought was awful but was actually comparable to the others in the 'newbie' category. It was promising to see that an experienced competitor takes between 1.5 and 3 minutes between stations, and I took between 2 and 2.5 minutes between 4 of the 6 stations. Too bad I took 6 minutes to find the first one, and spent over 14 minutes lost in the woods trying to find the 3rd one.

The next event is next week, so we'll see if I learned anything yesterday.

Predicting the Stock Market

An article about predicting the behaviour of the stock market in the middle-term by charting positive and negative news.

http://www.hussmanfunds.com/rsi/econsurprises.htm

I Posted My Book!

As some of you know, for the last few years I've been working on a book loosely titled 101 Ways to Greenify Your Life. Well, today I posted version 4 of my book online as a free download. Hopefully it'll get used at least once. Now to just sit back and watch the quarters roll in....

http://greenifyyourlifebook.blogspot.com/

Hope This is not a Scam

I just heard about a new site called me2everyone. It's currently in beta and is gathering members now for a startup later in 2009. The full blown release won't happen till 2012. It promises to combine a Facebook/Myspace community with a SecondLife interface. Signup takes about 8 seconds. If you're interested, please click here:

www.me2everyone.com/394735

They won't spam you or sell your email address or anything, at least according to their privacy policy.

Gloppedalsura

I spent today exploring Gloppedalsura.

10,000 years ago the ice sheet that covered the area, melted away. For a period of time the massive end moraine dammed the Hunnedal river's former course, towards Veen and Vikeså, and formed a lake in Byrkjedalsgryta. The terraces in Byrkjedal at 240 metres altitude are evidence of this moraine-dammed lake. The annual cycle of frost and expanding ice broke free a vast number of boulders and rocks and sent them tumbling down the southern mountainside. This debris settled as a 100-metre thick scree on top of the moraine. Hunnedal river and the lake in Byrkjedalsgryta were forced to find a new outlet; the water burrowed a gully from Byrkjedal towards Gilja - Giljajuvet.

Basically it's a giant valley filled with giant rocks.

I also broke my camera :( :( :( That's what I get for trying to wriggle through a hole in the rocks with my camera in my pocket. Boo!

Dr. Doom?

Peter Schiff is president of a brokerage and an American economist with a reputation for doom and gloom predictions of the US economy. His credibility comes from the fact that he predicted the dot com boom and, more recently, the housing crash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080729.RHEINZL29/TPStory/Business

From Wikipedia:

"In his January 14, 2009 radio show, Schiff discussed moving out of cities in anticipation of rising crime rates, food shortages, fuel shortages, and rolling blackouts. He also mentioned the need for families to stock up on guns and ammunition as a part of what he expects. This quasi-survivalist stance demonstrates how serious he expects the unfolding economic downturn will be. On March 4th, 2009, Schiff predicted rising prices in weeks or months(not years)."

China's central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, is pushing for the creation of a new global currency to end the US dollar's dominance. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said he was "concerned about the safety of our assets." China currently holds $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities and other government-backed notes.

Cell Phone

I got a cell phone: +47 988 36 828. It's pay-as-you-go so it's for emergencies only.

Got a Variable Rate Mortgage?

If so, you may want to seriously, seriously consider locking in your mortgage now.

First, we now have one of the lowest prime rates EVER in Canadian history. The oldest data I was able to find for the prime rate goes back to 1974. In the 35 years shown on that chart, the prime rate has always been higher than it is now. The lowest it has gotten is 4% in 2002 and 2004, but the highest is 22% in 1981! According to another site I read but could not verify, today's rate of 2.5% is the lowest Bank of Canada prime rate ever. The average has apparently been around 9-10% from 1950 to 2005.

http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/PT/bcm/ref/cibcHistoricalPrime.pdf

Second, there is a decent chance that we are in for a period of hyperinflation or at least high inflation. In order to try to fix the world economy, trillions of dollars are being printed, created from thin air like magic, and that will drive prices up. You can read about this anywhere by doing a quick search.

In other words, historical precedent tells us that this is a great time to lock in as prime is not likely to go lower, and current economics tells us that this is a great time to lock in because prime could go much higher very quickly. I've tried to keep this positive by focusing on what individuals can do to take advantage of current conditions and to safeguard against possible future conditions.

Bike Ride

I did a 5h bike ride today exploring the surrounding countryside. My goal was to reach the ocean, but I took a lot of detours to surrounding small towns.

Google Map

I'll post pictures once I upload them. Edit: Here they are!

Swords in Stone and Stavanger Sentrum

Like Canadians on a sunny spring day, the Norwegians came out of hibernation.

Downtown Stavanger (sentrum):


Trolls for sale:


Swords in Stone:




Easter chocolate from work (sweet, we also get 3 days off!!):


My new bike, cleaned up and ready to go:

Quote

"The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin . . . . Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. . . . Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. . . . But, if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit."

- Sir Josiah Stamp, director of the Bank of England and the second richest man in Britain in the 1920s

More Preikestolen Pictures

I got the pictures from the camera of the guy I went with, so here are some:





And one more picture of the scary spot:

Phone Number (at work)

My phone number (at work) is +47 24 16 52 61. I think I'll stick to just gChat for now for long distance calls. I may still be getting a local cell.

Quote

"A much-needed caveat: if we were to revisit my per capita trash post from earlier in March, we'd see that being the least-wasteful U.S. city, compared to waste levels in European countries as just one example, is about as proud an accomplishment as being the greenest mountaintop-removal coal-mining company."

http://www.climatebiz.com/blog/2009/03/31/most-wasteful-american-cities