Category Archives: Environment

I Moved, My Website is Now at BlueHost

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After a few small outages with my last site host over the month of September, I decided to go with “Bluehost“…

Now some of you might be asking, why Bluehost… isn’t it one of the more expensive host out there?

Yes, It’s true, it is a few more dollars a month, but I’ve been doing some speed testing of different sites using free online site checkers and my test results has shown that the other sites that I know of, while receiving very respectable performance times, weren’t quite as fast as bluehost..

Here is the real kicker…  I view the slightly higher cost as an advantage!

Why?  Well, I think that since BlueHost is more expensive, fewer people will be buying new accounts in the short-term (at least until BlueHost reduces their rates again). 

Sorry for this lame post.  Tomorrow, I’ll be back to a more normal routine (I hope) and write a longer post.

-MR

Golfing On The Cheap In Hilton Head, Our Caddyshack Adventure

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Golden Bear

Last year we found a golf course a good ways away from the core activities of the island, that was relatively cheap.  But this year we wanted to be on the island and golf at one of the better courses.

We choose “Golden Bear”!  It’s a golf course in a gated community in Hilton Head.  The course is a beautiful Nicklaus-designed course, with a fairly challenging layout.  We saw exotic (local to the area) birds in the water hazards, and even a few alligators basking in the sun.  The houses along the golf course were spectacular (at least million dollar homes)!  Needless to say, I was amazed by both the scenary and the beautiful homes along the course!

To save on cost, decided to book our tee time at discount hours (after 4:00pm).  So we had a tee time set for 4:32pm.  The deal we got was $31.00 (it’s regularly priced in the $70s) per person, and we got my son in for free (perhaps because he’s 10).

So it was a bit expensive for my taste, but a lot cheaper than it could have been!  As we played, we had a blast!  At some holes, we looked like we were living scenes from Caddyshack.  In particular, my dad was driving off of the tee, and when he hit the ball, it hit a tree and came flying back at him (really it came back 10 feet to the left of him, but it was close enough).  My brother-in-law and I were roaring in laughter!  Another Caddyshack scene was when my son hit a ball that almost hit a very large stork-like bird.  The ball land so close to the bird that the sand that kicked up from the ball landing, hit the bird and causing it to fly away to another water hazard on the course.

One final moment was when my dad hit the ball and it hit the water, yet somehow the ball managed to skip across the pond surface and landed high on the fairway on the other side.  Without skipping a beat, I said that somewhere in pond, there was a turtle swearing out loud at my dad.  It’s still a mystery how his ball bounced out of the water, after all he was over 100 yards away when he hit the ball.  That was a first for me!

After we finished the 15th hole, the sun got tired of waiting for us and decided to go down.  The lack of light and the voracious appetite of hungry mosquitoes caused us to decide to leave the last two holes unplayed. 

It was a great experience, and by far the most challenging course I ever played!  Hilton Head is definitely a place full of discounts and deals… if you look!

Do you have any great ways to get deals on entertainment while in vacation locations like Hilton Head Island?

-MR

Comfy Time Out On The Deck

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Not my deck but close enough

 

Yesterday after work, I decided to go out on the deck to chill out.  So, I unplugged the laptop and away I went!  

It rained earlier that day, washing away the hot muggy humidity that was lingering in the air making it hard to breathe!  These last few days have been more like a sauna, keeping me indoors instead of outside enjoying in the sun!  

Now, since the humidity is gone, I decided to go out and soak up the perfect environment.  The song birds are going crazy this evening, creating their frantic songs!  The clouds are slowly floating by, looking more like some grey ghost floats from a Macy’s parade than the soft billowy white clouds I’d rather see…  

My dog, while initially sniffing at the air, had settled down in her typical laying down position, looking like she doesn’t have a care in the world.  Occasionally, she’ll perk up at the sound of kids playing off in the distant.  Perhaps she thinks they are her kids (since my son and daughter are sleeping over at the grandparents).  

I decide to go into the fridge and grab the relaxing cool beverage in the usual brown bottle 😉  It’s a rare time alone, so I decide to blog about the experience, just to give a sense of what my life is like when I’m at my most relaxed time, batteries recharging so to speak.  And to read about some day, just so I remember how great it is here, right now, when everything is quiet and peaceful.  

I think how lucky I am to live in a clean, green world… and that minus the occasional distant kids playing, is very quiet and relaxing.   

As I turn slightly to my right, I see two rabbits jumping lazily in the neighbor’s yard.  I live in a 10 year old allotment, so many of the houses are newer and closer than where I grew up.  Seeing the rabbits aren’t that common, although one lived beside our chimney in the flowers a few years ago…  

In many ways, with the houses equally spaced, it kind of reminds me of a row of plants in a garden, although the trees have grown large enough now to break that feeling up a bit.  

In this type of setting, I do my best thinking and creating!  

I don’t get many days like this, but it’s part of living a frugal life, stopping to listen to the song birds and smell the freshness in the air after the down pour of a humidity freeing rain from earlier in the day…   

Life is good, and the evening is beautiful!  Soon the clouds will turn that reddish pink color as the sun starts to set.   

If you made it this far, thanks for listen to me ramble!  Some days like today are worth writing about alone!  

Have you stopped and enjoy any days recently, especially when it’s perfect outside?  I think it’s good medicine for a stressful life!  

-MR

The Invisible War Against the Oceans

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The more I see the spread of the oil spill, the more I think it looks like we set off a oil bomb that is equivalent to an explosion of a nuclear bomb’s mushroom cloud in the ocean!

Then I started thinking about other ways that we are causing damage to our oceans and the corresponding sea life.

This BP oil spill has the potential to kill thousands of sea creatures in addition to making the beaches unappealing to tourist.  It’s interesting that we really don’t seem to care about all the dolphins, fish, birds, etc that will be killed in this Oil spill disaster!

So what else are we doing to make our oceans a cesspool?  Well, we all know that the United States, Russian and other countries have dumped nuclear waste from their nuclear reactors into the ocean.  The United States has stopped that, but I bet some countries still does this (even if it is under the covers).  

Garbage also has been dumped into the ocean directly (New York use to do this), but I can guarantee that their are definitely some other countries that are going this still today.  Cruise ships still dump their garbage into the ocean when they are out at sea.

Next we have the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a slow churning of plastic waste products swirling in the ocean between Hawaii and Japan.  It’s size is hard to estimate, some say it’s ranges between the size of Texas to the size of the entire U.S.!  The bad thing is that fish are eating the smaller pieces of plastic and then we eventually eat the fish, or other animals eat the fish.

I really have to wonder how much damage we (all countries, not just the U.S.) are doing to the ocean and in the end to ourselves?

-MR