Electric Cars

I just found this site promoting a new documentary on EV's called Who Killed the Electric Car. The website has a lot of good info on the history of the electic car. I truely believe that electric cars are a crucial element to reducing the US dependence on foreign oil. I can't wait to see this documentary.

The Future of Power

Finally, some good news!
Nanosolar is a company that is using Nano-Technology to create a new kind of solar cell that, if their claims are accurate, could create an entirely new, distributed, energy infrastructure in this country and beyond. Their solar cells are about 10% the cost of traditional solar. Traditional solar costs can't compete with fossil fuel and hydro energy sources but Nanosolar's cells hold the promise of slashing those costs but 90%. I haven't been able to locate any information on the effeciency of these cells but, even at half the efficiency of traditional silicon cells you would be talking about a major decrease in cost/kilowatt.

One day, perhaps, we will all produce solar energy on our rooftops and feed the grid in a distributed fasion. If this were realized then fossil fuel electricity production would be needed only as a supplemental energy source and the sun would be the primary energy producer.

Arctic Sea Level Dropping: My Theory

An increase in the amount of sea water represents and increase in the mass of the oceans.
The moon's gravitational pull on the ocean would then increase proportionally so even though there is more overall water in the seas there is a greater pull from the moon so the earth becomes less round and more eccentrically shaped.

My Tic-Tac-Toe

Here is a little tic-tac-toe game I wrote this morning... Enjoy.
And a link to the code: Click Here

HP Printer Support Can't Identify PCL

Maverick: Welcome to HP Total Care for All-in-One products. My name is Maverick. How may I assist you today?
Will Perry: I hava one, hopefully simple, question... Which OfficeJet printers support PCL5
Maverick: Could you please elaborate the issue, which would allow me to understand the issue better?
Will Perry: I am looking to purchase 5 or more OfficeJet Printers but the software I am printing with requires PCL5 compatibility. Which OfficeJet models support PCL5?
Maverick: Could you please let me know in brief what is PCL5?
Will Perry: It is a printer language written by HP
Will Perry: You can get a more information here: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/PCL.html
Will Perry: Is there someone there that is familiar with HP Printers?
Will Perry: Are you still there?

UPDATE: 2006-06-14 02:33 PM PDT
I contacted HP support again and this time spoke with Rebecca who was quite helpful and came back with a list of printer models that met my specifications.

UPDATE: 2006-06-15 09:46 AM PDT
I received this e-mail from HP today apologizing for the chat session that apparently got disconnected by accident and informing me that Officejets don't support PLC's

Dear Will,

This email is a follow-up to our recent Chat interaction. We regret the inconvenience caused due to incomplete chat session.

I would like to provide a resolution to the issue which we were troubleshooting in the chat session.

Will , I am sorry to inform you that our Officejet 's are not compatable with the PLC's and only few laserjets support them.

If the issue persists, please contact us by visiting the following Web site. We will be glad to assist you further.

http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/contact/chat_1.html

We are available 24hrs a day, 7 days a week to serve you.

Note: Please do not reply to this message. If you need further assistance, please return to our chat website for further support.

Regards,
Maverick
HP Total Care.

Our advice is strictly limited to the question(s) asked and is based on the information provided to us. HP does not assume any responsibility or liability for the advice given and shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages in connection with the use of this information. Always back up your data. For more information, including technical information updates, please visit our Web site at http://www.hp.com/support.

A Bad Idea

This is far and away the worst idea I have heard from an administration that has come up with some whoppers. Someone actually sat down and said "We need a new generation of nuclear (or nucular in the words of our president) weapons" or maybe it was something like "How about we start a new nuclear arms race". Here we find ourselves, involved in a war in Iraq that was apparently started to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction and we are now pursuing more modern weapons of mass destruction for ourselves. We are telling other nations like Iran and North Korea, "You can't have nuclear weapons" while building more ourselves. No wonder the world looks at the US as though we are a bunch of hypocrites and there is widespread distrust of our motives.
Write your Senators and Representatives and tell them to oppose new nuclear testing.
US Senate
US House of Representatives

Kennedy Pays His Due

So what I'd like to know is: where are all the republicans screaming about preferential treatment now? Patrick Kennedy went to court plead guilty and is now facing the consequences for his actions. The same cannot be said for Dick Cheney who had a few drinks at lunch, shot a man in the face and then refused to talk to police for 14 hours while evidence of his blood alcohol level at the time of the incident drained down the toilet.

Save Public Broadcasting

House Republicans have been trying for years to elimitnate funding for the corporation for public broadcasting which in turn funds PBS and NPR. These are the least biased of any nationwide broadcasters and provide an important service to our children in the form of educational programming like Sesame Street. There are also may areas where we could raise much more money to help balance the budget.

I regularly listen to NPR and find the format of their shows to be much more academic and even-handed than those elsewhere on the radio. Aside from NPR your choices are pretty much Air America for a liberal slant or just about any other AM radio show for a conservative slant on the news, both claim to be unbiased news shows but are basically comparable to the opinion page in the newspaper. Listening to any of these you will hear a host ranting about their side of the issue, papering the guest they agree with, or attacking a guest they don't. The same goes for television but without the liberal slanted outlet. You have a number of networks all more concerned with ratings than portraying an accurate picture of the news. On top of that many of these networks accept pre-recorded press releases from corporations and even our own government and send them out as though they are real news! (See 1, 2, 3) Public Broadcasting has a long history of integrity and un-biased reporting that no other network can hold a candle to.

Then there are the educational progams: Sesame Street and others. These provide a valuable educations resource for children whose parents can't afford to put them in preschool or even afford cable. These parents can all afford PBS because it is free to them. I know that while I didn't learn my ABCs and 123s from Sesame Street it was certainly instrumental in reinforcing these fundamentals. Sesame street is also not the only educational progam on PBS there are educational programs for both children and adults on subjects ranging from math and science to the arts and history.

We should not balance the budget by taking services from the most poor and needy in our society. The 23% cut will leave the CPB with a budget of around $380 million meaning that they actually cut about $114 million. Compared to the $9 Billion that went missing in Iraq in the hands of contractors hand picked by the Bush administration from a pool of their buddies that's nothing. Or how about cutting the $250 Million bridge in Alaska that will server all of about 50 people.

The problem is that the right sees true unbiased reporting and education of the poor as a threat and they feel that with control of the White House and Congress they feel that they can squash one more program that benefits the poor or educates the masses.