Earth Hour

I just tonight received an email from my town reminding me of Earth Hour on March 28, 2009 from 8:30 to 9:30 PM –

Earth Hour began in Sydney, Australia in 2007 when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008, the message had grown into a global sustainability movement with over 50 million people switching off their lights. This is an opportunity for people everywhere to show their support for greater environmental responsibility. The simple act of turning off our lights will demonstrate our commitment to personal responsibility to reverse the effects of global warming. This year, people and organizations in over 74 countries and territories have pledged their support for Earth Hour 2009. Organizers of this event hope to obtain the support of over one billion people across the planet. Results of this effort will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009. Won’t you join us? For more information, please go to http://www.earthhour.org.

I wrote about this event last year and, just like last year, I haven’t seen much publicity about it. So, I though it was a good time to mention it and update you on my electricity usage and attempt at better environmental responsibility. In that last post I mentioned the effort I had undertaken to identify the electricity hogs in my household.

First and foremost saving electricity means saving money. But, in June of last year it was really time to ‘put my money where my mouth is’. We signed up for a clean energy option from our electric supplier. This means that 100% of the electricity we use is generated through renewable sources. In our locale that means small hydro and wind. Well, it’s not exactly the electricity we use but an equivalent amount of clean energy is introduced into the regional grid.

This change means we spend an extra $8-$10 per month. But, I am happy to report that in 8 of the 9 months since that change we have used less electricity when compared to the like period in any of the five years that I have been keeping usage records.

So, join Earth Hour. Then go out and push your 5.0L V8 Mustang to the limit…guilt free, of course. Continue reading

Success with first mailing using phplist

I have a confession to make — I send bulk email. It’s good content, though. Honest.

Most readers of this site probably received an email yesterday. It was the first I sent since redoing my mailing list. I had previously maintained the list in my email program, Lotus Notes. Maintaining it was somewhat of a chore. I typically waited until right before I needed to send an email to do the updates. That meant processing up to 10 months of updates at a time. It involved adding new email addresses from the registry, adding new emails from correspondence through my contact/about page, removing unsubscribe requests and removing addresses that were no longer valid and ‘bounced’. Whew.

So, I searched for and found something better. phplist. There are a lot of alternatives out there. phplist had two things going for it. It’s free and it’s compatible with what runs on my web server.

The mailing went very well. 315 emails; 16 bounces; 2 unsubscribe requests (so far). All processed by the system. Nice. So far I recommend phplist if you have any bulk mailing to do.

If you didn’t receive an email from me and would like to be added to my mailing list, please see the subscribe page. I don’t email very often but when I do it is pretty important stuff. If you didn’t receive an email from me and think I already should have your email address please check your spam/junk folder. And, add my email address to your trusted list of contacts

Special thanks to my beta testers who I asked at the last minute to respond to a test message and provide feedback on the new approach – 92LX, 93triplwhtpony, Cobra2top, Cougster, jburns57, jkupka, Rare_92, Stangfan, twocarnuts

Registered for 2009 Carlisle All-Ford Nationals

Carlisle AdCarlisle is only a few months away. So, it was time to register for the 2009 Carlisle All-Ford Nationals. This year it will be held from June 5-7. Similar to in the past we will be attending as a club and reserving a tent. Planning information has been added to this site on the Carlisle page.

I have begun lobbying for a separate class for feature cars. I don’t know how far I will get with this but it is worth a try. I’ll keep you updated in this space.

UPDATE: added a discussion thread on Carlisle 2009 as well as a post seeking your feedback related to the impact on attendance if there were such a class.