Today I’m taking my life into my own hands. In just 2.5 hours (after I first drop Jessi off at the airport), I’m getting on the dreaded FungWah bus and heading to New York.

We’ll see if I make it there alive. The first thing I plan on doing is heading to the SoHo Apple Store (I haven’t been to that one yet, and it’s located conveniently close to China Town), so I’ll check in there. Check back around noon to make sure I haven’t died horribly in a freak bus mishap.

Jeff Woelker just wrote a post about how ridiculous American car makers are when it comes to fuel economy. Apparently Chrysler is currently running ads for their cars (Jeff has an embedded YouTube clip of a Jeep commercial) in which they’re touting 30 miles per gallon as if it were some sort of selling point.

I thought this would be an opportune moment to point out that the 24 year old, 4000 lbs Mercedes that Jessi and I just bought gets—get this—30 mpg! Doesn’t seem quite so amazing anymore does it.

A related point: while we were in Wales, the owner of the B&B we were staying at in Dolgellau drove a new VW Jetta station-wagon. It got 50 mpg. And I’m fairly sure you can get cars in Europe that get 70+ mpg, better than even a Prius.

These, of course, are all diesels, and the modern ones with amazing efficiency can’t run on the diesel we’re currently selling here in the US. But, as I’ve mentioned before, the decisions has been made already to start selling low-sulfer diesel here in the States that will allow us to suddenly increase our fuel efficiency from 30 mpg or less to 70 mpg or more. Of course we’ll have to buy imports, because American car makers are still claiming that they aren’t capable of mileage that high.

It will be an interesting day indeed when the low-sulfur diesel starts flowing through American pumps.

Well, Zooomr (my photo hosting service of choice) is currently in the middle of an upgrade so I can’t upload the pictures I have either from the trip or of the car. So I’ll unleash my newest rant about the RMV.

As you may recall, Jessi and I went to the RMV a little while ago to convert our out of state licenses to Massachusetts ones. After more or less an entire day and two trips to the RMV in Chinatown, we had failed. So we decided that this past Monday, as our first full day back from Wales and the day before Jessi started her new job, we would handle all the car stuff: picking up the plates and registration from the insurance company who had taken care of all that for us, getting our Massachusetts licenses, and actually driving the car to Somerville from Franklin. The RMV, of course, apparently felt the need to throw a wrench in our works yet again.

We got there pretty early, maybe 10 am, so there weren’t that many people in front of us. We waited for about an hour until there were only two people ahead of us in line. Finally we were going to be finished with the damned RMV and have all that needless, inefficient bureaucracy behind us! Then, mere minutes before Jessi’s number was to be called, and mine right after, an RMV employee appeared in a flash of smoke and brimstone to inform us that ‘Social Security [was] down’ and so they couldn’t process any new licenses or license conversions. All they could do was renew existing licenses because that process didn’t require confirming your identity with social security.

As I had already gone most of the way through the process before only to be turned away when my passport, California license, and bank statement proved to be insufficient proof of my date of birth, signature, and Massachusetts residency, I thought that maybe they would still be able to take care of my license. Alas, this was not too be. They also informed me that the problem would be affecting all branches foiling our backup plan of going to the Watertown RMV once we had our car.

So now we have our sweet new ride, insurance, registration, and parking permit, but are still without our Massachusetts licenses. For the time being, at least, the RMV has overtaken the MBTA (and IRS) as my least favorite governmental body.

Well we’re back in the US. Today is mostly dedicated to sorting out the car (I’ve got another nice rant about the RMV to post), and that’s keeping us pretty busy. But once that’s all taken care of and I’ve sorted through the 300+ pictures I took in Wales, you can expect some updates.

Well, Jessi and I are off to Wales. We’ll be gone and more or less completely incommunicado until the 21st. So don’t expect any blog posts from either of us until then.

Cheers.

Somewhat ironically, a story was just posted on TreeHugger entitled ‘10 Reasons to Ditch the Car’. Why is this ironic? Because Jessi and I just bought a car after six months or so of car-free living.

When I moved here from California, I brought my car with me. But it didn’t take long for me to decide that I’d be better off without it. Both the apartment we were in before and now our condo are only blocks away from a T stop, we live within easy walking distance of all the necessities, and I haven’t really felt compelled to spend all the money involved in getting a Massachusetts license, registering a car in Massachusetts, insuring a car in Massachusetts, paying for gas, and paying for parking. And for those few times when we needed to get somewhere the T couldn’t take us, Zipcar has done a fantastic job of meeting our needs.

But now, with Jessi’s new job, our needs our changing and we’re getting a car. Being me, I put quite a bit of thought and research into choosing the appropriate car. Really, there’s only one important factor when it comes to choosing a car, and that is cost. Cost of purchase, cost of insurance, cost of fuel, cost of maintenance, and, of course, environmental cost.

Happily enough, there’s one easy way to minimize the purchase, insurance, and environmental costs involved in buying a car: buy used. Used cars obviously sell for less and are cheaper to insure (we’re not talking about a collector’s car here), what’s less obvious is that they’re also the more environmentally friendly route. For the most part, new cars don’t get any better mileage than older ones did. In some cases they’re even worse. Additionally, when you buy used you’re not incurring the added environmental damages of the manufacturing process. Money-wise, with a used car you’re not committing yourself to any sort of financing plan, and it will depreciate in value much more slowly, so you can always just put it on Craigslist and sell it again without throwing away most of the money you spent on it. So we’re getting a used car. The issue of minimizing cost of fuel and maintenance is a little trickier.

There are two ways to minimize fuel costs: get a more efficient car, or get a car that uses cheaper fuel. There aren’t that many choices for fuels, it’s pretty much gasoline or diesel. For a select few ethanol might be an option and I suppose compressed natural gas might work for some people as well, but in general that’s it. Despite the bad rap that it seems to have, diesel is actually a very good choice. Diesel vehicles pretty much always get better mileage than their gasoline counterparts, and even an older diesel will get as good or better mileage than pretty much anything on the road today (other than hybrids, obviously). Some modern diesels get even better mileage than hybrids, though they aren’t currently available in the US, and won’t be until we start selling low sulfur diesel at the pumps (which should start later this year, I believe). Plus, diesel isn’t particularly expensive (Usually $2.99 around here, while 87 octane gasoline is about $2.85. Although one place I saw right by our condo was actually selling diesel for less than gasoline.), and diesel prices are a little more stable than gas prices. Diesel really appears to be the way to go, especially in hopeful anticipation of the introduction of the modern diesel cars that the rest of the world already enjoy.

As for maintenance, you either have to get a car that’s cheap to repair (such as a Civic or something), or a car that won’t have to be repaired very often. One good thing to note when dealing with reliability in cars is that all cars, even new ones, have the potential to be lemons and require a ton of repairs. In fact, new ones are probably more likely to have problems, because the old cars that are still around today are the ones that were well made and not prone to problems. Over the years, the cars that aren’t so reliable are just going to get weeded out, so that the only used cars available to be bought are likely to be pretty sturdy. Of course this only applies to cars above a certain age as the weeding out process can take some time, and new cars will have warranties and lemon laws to protect you. So this one’s a bit of a toss up. It really depends on your situation. But considering the low price of a used car, if you get one and it craps out on you, you can get another and still have paid less than on a new car.

So, with all that in mind I picked a car with a low purchase price, good mileage, great dependability, and a touch of class: a 1983 Mercedes Benz 300sd turbo diesel. It was cheap (another car in the same price range was a ‘92 Accord), it gets 25-30 mpg, it’s probably one of the most reliable cars ever made, and it’s also an absolutely beautiful piece of machinery. It looks like it must have cost a fortune, and in 1983 it did at around $40,000. Adjusted for inflation, that’s over $80,000 in 2007 dollars. It’s currently still sitting in the driveway of the guy who sold it to us, because he was kind enough to let us leave it there while we’re in Wales next week, but as soon as we’ve picked it up on the 21st and brought it home, you can be sure I’ll be out there with my new camera. So there will be picture of it available soon.

In Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, he uses the DMV (or whatever local variant he said) as an example of why people generally feel that the government isn’t really working for them. Today has left me inclined to agree with him.

Today Jessi and I headed over to the Massachusetts RMV to (finally) get around to changing our license over to Massachusetts ones. A process that I’m sure you know was loads of fun.

The first obstacle to converting our California and Illinois licenses to Massachusetts ones was one of location. There is no RMV office in Somerville. The closest one is in Cambridge, annoyingly enough at the Cambridgeside Galleria which is on the Green Line, not the Red Line. Of course, that doesn’t really matter, because that location doesn’t let you convert an out of state license. So we had to go into the Boston location, which is on the Orange Line at the Chinatown stop.

Once we got there, which took 30-45 minutes, we headed inside and found ourselves at the ‘Greeter Desk’. This isn’t something that I’ve encountered during my previous experiences with the California DMV, but I think it’s actually a pretty good idea. Rather than forcing us to figure out which part of the building we need to go to and which line we need to stand in and which form we need to fill out, we simply told the greeter what we were there for, she handed us the appropriate forms, gave us each a number for the appropriate line, and directed us to the third floor.

It was at this point that we realized we had forgotten to bring any of the documentation needed: a passport or social security card, proof of date of birth, proof of signature, and proof of Massachusetts registry. We didn’t have anywhere to be just then, so we got back on the T, came home, got the documents, went back to the RMV, got new numbers, and got back in line.

At this point it was about 2:30. Jessi had a 3:30 appointment, which fortunately was nearby. So we waited in line. And waited. And waited. And then Jessi had to go to her appointment before her number got called. So I stayed, and 15 minutes later my number was called.

I went up and gave the woman behind the desk my form. Had my picture taken. Then gave her my supporting documentation. Only to discover that I didn’t have all the supporting documentation needed. I had my passport, I had my old license, and I had a bank statement. By any reasonable standard, this should be enough. The passport proves that I am who I say I am. It proves my birth date. It proves my signature. My old license also proves my birth date and my signature. And my bank statement proves my Massachusetts residency. But no, that’s not good enough. Apparently each document can only be used for a single purpose. You need separate documents for each of: passport (why?), date of birth, signature, and residency. This is just completely ridiculous. Why is my passport, a federally issued document intended to prove my US citizenship, identity, date of birth, and signature, not count as proving my date of birth and signature to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? And why can a single document not prove more than one thing, especially when it’s specifically designed by the federal government—and recognized by state governments in other capacities I might add—to prove those very things?

I’m sure some people are just dying to know how the meeting I was invited to with the co-President and co-Founder or Wainwright Bank, Robert Glassman, went. First off, two of the other bloggers who where there, Shai Sachs of Progressive Democrats of Cambridge and Joseph Porcelli of Neighbors for Neighbors, have already written up some excellent posts about it, and you can probably expect to see more in the near future from Jessi as well as maybe over at Cos’s blog, Sam Seidel’s blog, or Anali’s First Amendment. But for now, here’s my take on it.

First off, the premise of the meeting was to discuss how Wainwright Bank as a whole and, perhaps, Mr. Glassman specically could engage with the progressive blogging community in the area. If you don’t already know, Wainwright Bank is not what you’d ordinarily expect from a bank. In addition to the standard savings and checking accounts, loans and CDs that all banks have, they also maintain a number of community resources and have a real commitment to helping out non-profit organizations. A good explanation of what this means can be found on their mission page. Their CommunityRoom.net page is also an excellent resource through which they provide (as I understand it) free webhosting to non-profit organizations throughout the greater boston area. And one other fantastic service they offer (that I hadn’t known about until it was mentioned in this meeting) was that each branch has a conference room that they make available to anyone in the community who either banks with Wainwright or is one of the non-profits in the Community Room. As a small business owner who banks at Wainwright myself, this is a fantastic resource I have at my disposal as I basically now have a space to hold meetings other than my living room, or whatever coffee shop happens to be convenient.

As for the meeting itself, it consisted of Mr. Glassman, the aforementioned bloggers, and several other Wainwright team members. The discussion focused largely on whether or not Wainwright should have a presence on the blogosphere and what sort of presence it should have. We talked about the potential advantages of a corporate blog vs. a personal blog by Mr. Glassman and/or other Wainwright employees. We talked about what sorts of things should or shouldn’t be mentioned on any such blogs. And we talked about the potential disadvantages as well. One of the major disadvantages, which I don’t think any of us bloggers had though of, is that banking is a heavily regulated industry. Much more so than probably any of the others where we’re starting to see corporate blogs pop up. Banks are very thoroughly scrutinized every single year, and it was clear that there was some worry on the part of Wainwright as to whether or not this would be a problem when it comes to blogging. Not being in banking myself, I don’t really know what sorts of things the regulators would be looking for or might have a problem with, but it seems like this was a fairly large concern.

But regardless of how it’s done or the potential problems, the main thrust of any blogging activity would be to spread awareness of Wainwright and the things they do in a way that’s not intrusive or disruptive like traditional advertising campaigns. Basically they want people to get to know them, which, in my opinion and from my experience, is a perfect application for a blog. We came up with a lot of different ideas about things they could do, but there are two of them that really stick out for me. First was the idea that people from the various departments of the bank could blog about prevalent issues in personal finance, politics, mortgages, and general money related issues. For example, with the whole bit issue of sub-prime mortgages right now, we (the bloggers) really thought it would be nice to have an authoritative voice from a bank such as Wainwright talk about what sub-prime mortgages actually are, what the problems have been, and basically just shed light on the whole issue to those of us who don’t know so much about these things. And I’m sure there is no shortage of other such issues that they could talk about. Doing this would create a fantastic resource for people around the country, and do a great job of spreading awareness of Wainwright. The other idea that I really like is a more personal blog, perhaps by Mr. Glassman himself (an excellent candidate as one of the co-Founders, and he did seem interested in doing it). The purpose of a blog like this would be to put a human face on the bank and let us get to know the philosophy behind it on a more personal level. In my own experience with my own business this has been very successful, and from meeting with Mr. Glassman myself, I think he would be an ideal candidate for it.

The decision is far from being made, of course. Banking is slow-moving and cautious industry. But I find it very encouraging that they’re even considering this at all. It sounds like there will be a few more face to face meetings about this in the future as well. I’m looking forward to them as I’d very much like to be further involved in Wainwright’s entry into the blogosphere.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’ve lately been getting into digital photography. I’m pretty sure I’ve also mentioned that I was feeling a bit limited by the technical constraints of my camera. Well, no more.

Before I didn’t actually have my own camera, and had been using Jessi’s, a Kodak EasyShare C340. It’s not a bad camera at all, and I’ve taken some good pictures with it. But it’s more than a little limited in what it can do. In particular, it has no manual focus ability, and no manual aperture control. Certainly these things aren’t necessary to take good pictures, but having them gives you so many more options and creative control over the pictures you take. This wasn’t really a problem until recently, as my photography experience was basically zero, and I wouldn’t really have known what to do with those features in the first place. But in the past nine months I’ve taken hundreds of photos and, I think, made a lot of progress as a photographer. For the past few months, I’ve really felt that I’d run up against the limits of the Kodak, and that there were pictures that I knew I could take, but that the little C340 just wasn’t capable of taking them. It’s an odd sort of feeling, really, when you realize that you’re being held back by the limitations of the tools you’re using.

In about three weeks, Jessi and I are going on a week-long hiking trip through Wales with my dad (who runs an independent travel consultancy in Berkeley). I’ve spent some time in the Welsh countryside before, and it’s absolutely beautiful over there. When I was there before, I wasn’t much of a photographer and I took a video camera rather than a still camera. It was quite possibly that trip (which happened in the spring of ‘04) that helped me to realize that photography might actually be a good form of expression for me (I guess you could say that I was running into the technical limitations of my video camera in the same way that I recently did with Jessi’s little Kodak). At any rate, I know there will be some beautiful scenery there, and I know I’m going to want to photograph it, and I know that the EasyShot will hold me back if it’s all that I have while I’m there.

So I got a new camera. The new one is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8. It has 7 megapixels, compared to the 5 the Kodak has (not a huge improvement, but still nice). Additionally, it has a built-in 12x optical zoom rather than 4x, manual focus, aperture priority (manual aperture control), shutter priority, optical image stabilization, it can save images in RAW files (uncompressed, and therefore higher quality image files) rather than just JPEG, and it has a great, high-quality LEICA lens. Sadly I’ve been too busy so far since getting it, that I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet (the picture of the old camera above is actually the first that I’ve taken with it), but I can’t wait to take it out for a spin this weekend (which, in a happy coincidence, is also going to be the first sunny and warm weekend in a while). Now that the weather’s better and I’ve got a fantastic camera, I plan on spending a lot more time outside taking pictures, so expect to hear more about that. But for now, it’s back to work for me.

Oh yeah, I also just wanted to say that I bought the camera through Abes of Maine, which is basically an online discount camera retailer. In my experience they almost always have some of the lowest prices around. But that’s really neither here nor there. What I actually wanted to say was that I ordered the camera on Sunday, the 15th. I ordered it with the free shipping option which was supposed to take 7-10 days. The camera arrived on Tuesday, the 17th. Now that’s service.

Also, in case you don’t get the title to this post, it’s a reference to a recent posting on Jessica Hagy’s blog Indexed, which is probably my favorite non-textual blog (it’s images of drawings she does on index cards, hence the name).

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. Just been too busy to find the time for keeping the blog up to date. The plus side of that is I’ve been busy with work. As business goes, I think I’m finally starting to hit my stride. I’m starting to get more responses to my ads (which, I think, probably has to do with people googling me after reading the ads and finding this blog), I’m starting to get more (and better) responses when I reply to other people’s ads, and the specific jobs I’ve been getting are all of the sort that are likely to lead to a longer lived professional relationship. I think the most frustrating thing about this whole venture of mine so far has been the frequency with which people simply do not respond when I contact them about a job they’re advertising. I understand that they might be busy, or might have already found someone else to do it, but is a quick, two-line courtesy email too much to ask? I’ll admit, I’ve probably managed to unintentionally snub a person or two (which reminds me, I have a phone call to return when I get back to Boston), but having had to deal with it disturbingly often myself I really do try and make sure that everyone gets at least some response. But at least it seems to be happening less and less often now. I have to wonder if that is related to my recent upturn in business lately. Perhaps I’m actually starting to build a reputation and am looking more credible to potential clients. One can only hope. Well, one could also retain a PR firm/person, but I don’t quite have the budget for that yet. It’s a good thing I happen to live with Boston’s foremost expert in internet and word-of-mouth marketing.

For now, and until Monday, however, Jessi and I are in Santa Fe visiting my mom. I like it here. My mom’s house is maybe 25 minutes outside of the actual city, off a dirt road in the middle of the desert. It’s about a 12 acre property, surrounded by a small community of similar properties. Most people around here, including my mom, have horses which means they also tend to keep things pretty quiet and relaxed. It’s a great place to go and just do nothing for a while, which can make for a very nice break from being in Boston and running a business (or two). The weather’s also been fantastic. Today it was 75° and sunny. Compared to the rain and even snow Boston’s been getting today. I even managed to remember to bring my camera, so hopefully I’ll be able to spend some time just wandering around the desert taking pictures. I’ve already found a few good shots I want to go back to with the camera later. (And a few that could be great, but not until I get a better camera. The one I’m using doesn’t even have manual focus, let alone aperture priority or anything fun like that.)

Well, guess it’s back to some more relaxing before dinner.