Working for Peanuts

Ok, maybe this iPhone thing is getting out of hand? 

I'll admit to being a techno-dweeb.  I own a smartphone, a laptop, a couple of computers, and a GPS.  The iPhone, however, seems like a marketing gimmick wrapped around a black hole.  Oh, the iPhone is “cheaper” this go-around and has more features, but the AT&T-Apple alliance will get you, only worse this time.  The iPhone 3G comes with a $199 price tag AND a $10 increase on the data plan. The two-year contract that you are signed into raises the final cost of the iPhone 3G to $439 when including the phone and data plan hike.

The iPhone 3G is cool, I will refuse to take that away from Apple, but why a GPS without navigation? Not even for walkers! 

My advice to anyone planning to get an iPhone, try before you buy.  And if you don’t, well at least they have high resale value.

We certainly have ourselves in a pickle now don’t we? We love our gasoline. Of course, it’s not that we love the gasoline, we just love our cars. In fact, I think the bible had a quote about it:

“For we so loved our cars that we gave up our one and only future, that whosoever drives a hummer shall not perish, but have eternal strife.”

Ok, maybe not, but the freedom always comes with a cost. Either in lives, or money, or time, a sacrifice must be made. The ever-increasing population density of our cities demands a solution. I spend 300 dollars per month in gas now, so if I could find a public transportation solution, (well, with Wi-Fi), I would be there tomorrow. Of course, too many consider riding a bus beneath themselves. I am all for growth, but do we really want Myrtle Beach to look like Los Angeles or Atlanta during the morning commutes? Do we really want to wake up to catch the Smog Levels on the morning news to determine if we should go out? The time to answer the questions is now because it’s a lot easier to prevent the problem before it happens than to clean it up.

Now to place our problem in perspective by first saying that it’s only going to get worse, so stop whining! Whining will fix nothing. We have all heard that the Europeans pay more, and that bottled water costs more per gallon than gas does, and that ethanol is causing people to go hungry. From the American way of life, who cares! What should concern us is that diesel fuel is now about $4.30 per gallon. Trucks carry everything in this country and as the cost to deliver increases, eventually there won’t be any more “loss” that the trucking industry can take. At that point, we will get VERY uncomfortable at the grocery store line, at the line at Wal-Mart, or any store you like that has stuff made from somewhere else. I think if we cannot get the diesel cost under control, then we know hard times are a-coming.