Okay, maybe a hokey title, but it sorta fits. I've never really been one to buy into global warming (im still not convinced that the warming trend we see is not just part of a normal cycle we are in) and I think a lot of the things attributed to global warming are sort of rediculous. At the same time though, rising energy costs and dependence on foreign energy resources, now those things are a definate reality. Here is something that all of us can do, that does not cost very much money, that will actually save you money if you will do it and its better for the environment. read this article about CFL lightbulbs and you will see what I am talking about. Here are some numbers:

Compact fluorescents emit the same light as classic incandescents but use 75% or 80% less electricity.

What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.

Thats a lot of energy. Just so we are clear, they may be a little bit more expensive in the beggining, but they can last 5 to 10 years. They take less energy. They give out just as much light. The don't produce near as much heat. You save on your electric bill. You make a difference in energy prices in general... See a trend? Walmart is getting ready to launch a campaign to make this happen, and I think its a great idea. We bought some of these lightbulbs a while back and they work great, offering actually more light than the regular incandecents and giving off much less heat. There are some rooms in our house that we have to keep the lights out the majority of the time or the temperature will rise several degrees. (and no, thats not even a good thing in the winter, its a very inefficient heat). So, if nothing else, the next time you have to replace a lightbulb, at least replace it with one of these new "swirl" bulbs. You will thank yourself later on.

I ran across something today that I just want to get into google in case someone cant figure it out. What would you expect the output from the following code would be? Think about it. 0 is obviously not a valid date. My first instinct is that it would return 0, and if not, that it would throw an error about an invalid date. Nope. It returns: 1899-12-30. Two days before 1900-01-01. Any ideas why? My guess (and while it is slightly educated it could be very very wrong) is that it has something to do with epoch. and because of wierdness with leap years around the turn of the century, they backed up epoch a couple of days to make date functions easier. Either way, dont expect the above to throw an error, expect it to give you something very very strange...