"We must become the change we want to see in the world." - Mohandas Gandhi

It seems that a lot of people are talking about a lot of things. Gasoline prices are one of those things in the public conscience. Years ago, I never thought about gas. Now, my awareness is raised. Each time I fill up, I reset my trip miles so I can track how many miles I went for the gallons I bought last time. I'll put together some graphs on this later. But it turns out that I'm averaging 24 miles to the gallon (I drive a lot of highway miles to work in Princeton from Conshohocken). It costs me about $15/day in gas and 2 hours of my life in transit lately under some hot sun. My car is now 10 years old and nearing 200K miles. So there's lots of data to consider for decision making of buying a new car. Should I hold out for newer models? Will the cost of these newer models go down with more competition?

Unfortunately, decisions in the real world do not move as fast as the mind and mathematics can model the outcomes. That's probably ok because mathematical models also don't consider all the intangible, more human factors. However, I do believe the abundance of new information, the ties/links everyone seems to be making to the environment and world economies (i.e. use corn for fuel, have less corn to field all the starving) makes a lot of decisions much more logical on a world scale.

In my own little world, I believe I've hooked on to a full time job where using my mind can make a difference in how energy is managed. At the same time, I've locked into an income that lets me see the end of the road in the next few years for paying for my home. I can focus on new goals like having enough to help my kids improve their lot in life. I also can now afford a small stipend to bring others into the world of balancing software development/business intelligence/politics and the increasing power it has in solving world problems.

I will continue to clean up my ideas for a sustainable company that is a microcosm of the types of problems we as a community are trying to solve. For instance, for every baby boomer that retires, we need to train 2 or three more folks. I will continue to fund the training of others with my time and small monetary stipends. I will use their energy to make my ideas for a sustainable company into a reality.

As  these ideas manifest themselves, I'd hope to build a credibility that draws other like minds to my aid to acceterate what I'm trying to do.