YOU5

I recently had my cell phone plan changed to My5. I've never had such a plan before but it seems pretty good, as I mostly call only a small group of people. I also have something like seven hundred shared minutes with my sister and father, and a whole lot of text messages. In these "tough economic times", it seems many people are trying to save money on just about anything. However those whom i'm in immediate contact with don't seem to be taking this economic downturn too hard at all. In fact, I haven't seen any real actions taken on those peoples' parts to reflect a change of attitude with regard to saving money, cutting back on non-essentials etc. This could mean several things, or it could just mean I've been eating out too much -_-.

But alas, good news! From now until May 3, you can get a free small coffee at McDonalds any time until 10:30 in the morning! You can take a look at the *official* facebook event here. What is that like, 23 coffees or something? EXPLOIT DAT SHIT YE

Cheers

Kamster

Energy Savings, Maybe?

Today, I thought up of a weird idea that may one day revolutionize society. Most people in the Western world wake up early, are in the office by nine, work till noon, take a lunch break, go back to work and are back home by five or six. Why not shift our work hours ahead, and save a lot of energy in the process? For most families, the parents are at their workplace for most of the daylight hours, as are their children (if they attend school). During this nine-to-five period of time, energy usage in the home - due to lights, appliances, heating, whatever - drops drastically, I would guess, as there is simply no one at home to use energy. Instead, energy consumption comes from the energy used at the workplace - keeping all those lights on, running those copying machines, and so on and so forth. Then when parents and children return home for the evening, lights and appliances are once again switched on. In essence, with our current state of affairs, we are using electricity both at home and at the workplace, from the start of our day to the end.

But imagine if we shifted our nine to five workday (and similar "school day") five hours ahead. Work and school would start sometime around three or four o clock, instead of the nine as it is now. What would the advantages of such a situation be? Well, people usually keep the lights on at home only during the evening and night hours, when there isn't much sunlight. The same isn't true, however, of most people's workplaces. Lights have to be on work, regardless of whether the sun is out. So, by moving work later into the night and allowing people to do their family, leisure and recreational activities in the morning and early afternoon hours, we could potentially save a lot of energy! People spending time at home in the morning rather than at night wouldn't switch any lights on, but if they were doing the same at night as they are now, they probably would have the lights on (or at least some).

I probably haven't described this very clearly but if you see what I'm trying to get it, a shift of the workday could save lots of energy consumed by lights.

More later.

Cheers,

Kamster