Bismarck Gets Another Out-Of-Sync Stop Light

When I lived on Avenue C I was always grateful that there was not a stop light, but rather a 4 way stop at Avenue C and Washington Street.

Why? Because it would make traffic move slower. There isn’t a single traffic light in this city that is timed for the flow of traffic.

I drive Century every morning to work. The only way to hit every light green is to start at Highway 83 and drive 53 MPH all the way to Best Buy. Any slower or faster and you will be stuck at every red light.

This works in theory, but there are always at least 2 idiots that drive side by side at 25 MPH on a street clearly posted at 35 MPH, and stop your green light flow.

Anyway here is the excerpt:

The reconstruction project, which should start
this spring, will widen the four-block stretch to add a center turn
lane, and replace a four-way stop at the intersection with Avenue C
with signal lights to improve traffic flow. Many amenities have been
added to the project, including period lighting and special markers to
enhance the project and provide greater appeal to the neighborhood.

and the article link

Technorati Tags: Bismarck, city, stop light, construction, news

Love for Bush

I know I’m pretty harsh on Bush for the war in Iraq and other White House blunders but I came across this on Snopes today and am glad to see he isn’t all faults:

LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.

HOUSE # 1:

A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern “snow belt,” either. It’s in the South.

HOUSE # 2:

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every “green” feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.

HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as “the Texas White House,” it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON’T hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it’s truly “an inconvenient truth.”

Article Link

Technorati Tags: Al Gore, George Bush, politics, house, environment, environmentalist

Why Loan Consolidation is Modern Day Slavery

Loan consolidation is one of the worst things you can do, but seems to be the most popular way to go for recent generations. You’ve all seen the ads on TV and the radio offering “one great, low monthly payment”. That may be true but what they don’t tell you is that the interest rate is probably over and above what you are paying now.

The only reason they achieve the lower payment is by stretching the debt out across more years. So effectively you spend more money on interest than you would have by not consolidating. There is a reason banks/institutions want you to do this. They make major money on everyone that does.

Lately they have even offered to consolidate other things besides credit card debt into these consolidated loans such as cars or other large item purchases.

Why would you ever do this? Now when your car dies and you need a replacement, suddenly you can’t get one because of all the negative equity tied into the loan. Trust me, I fell into this once. I did not consolidate my credit card debt but rather a car loan and my trailer house loan thinking at the time it would be paid off before I needed to sell/trade either.

Boy was I wrong. About a year later I needed to sell the car (it was a lemon) and I had a real hard time getting out of the loan on solid ground. My trailer was already for sale as I had bought a house and luckily it sold so I could sell my car after putting all my trailer house equity against the loan.

Another reason not to consolidate is your credit score is based on a ratio of revolving accounts (credit cards). What this means is if you have a 10,000 limit and you consolidate all your cards onto that one card and use up the entire limit, then your revolving accounts have a 100% used to available limit.

If you keep 3 or 4 cards with 6-7 thousand dollar limits, but only have a couple thousand on each card, then your ratio is a lot better in the eyes of creditors and banks. The limit they like to see is something under a 30% debt to available balance. For example a 3,000 balance or less on a 10,000 limit credit card.

So play it smart and look past all the consolidation offers. They are nothing but a scam to get you indebted for life to these places and tie up any equity you might have with frivolous debt.

Technorati Tags: credit cards, loan, consolidation, debt, scam, finances, money

10 Reasons You Aren’t Rich

Here are 10 possible reasons you aren’t a millionaire: as posted by Jeffrey Strain

1. You Care What Your Neighbors Think: If you’re
competing against them and their material possessions, you’re wasting
your hard-earned money on toys to impress them instead of building your
wealth.

2. You Aren’t Patient: Until the era of credit cards, it
was difficult to spend more than you had. That is not the case today.
If you have credit card debt because you couldn’t wait until you had
enough money to purchase something in cash, you are making others
wealthy while keeping yourself in debt.

3. You Have Bad Habits: Whether it’s smoking, drinking,
gambling or some other bad habit, the habit is using up a lot of money
that could go toward building wealth. Most people don’t realize that
the cost of their bad habits extends far beyond the immediate cost.
Take smoking, for example: It costs a lot more than the pack of
cigarettes purchased. It also negatively affects your wealth in the
form of higher insurance rates and decreased value of your home.

4. You Have No Goals: It’s difficult to build wealth if
you haven’t taken the time to know what you want. If you haven’t set
wealth goals, you aren’t likely to attain them. You need to do more
than state, “I want to be a millionaire.” You need to take the time to
set saving and investing goals on a yearly basis and come up with a
plan for how to achieve those goals.

5. You Haven’t Prepared: Bad things happen to the best of
people from time to time, and if you haven’t prepared for such a thing
to happen to you through insurance, any wealth that you might have
built can be gone in an instant.

The rest

I’d have to say, I’m guilty of a few… How about you?

Technorati Tags: finance, money, rich, top ten

RIAA Backs Down After Receiving Letter from Defendant’s Lawyer

I’m glad to see someone finally beat these guys.

I really wonder why artists need record labels anymore? With all the online music stores, you think they would get smart and skip the middle man…

Technorati Tags: music, RIAA, industry, case, lawyer