observation on consumption

[unclemick]

Quote:

Originally Posted by REWahoo I think it would be nice if you forewarned us of where you decide to go. The way natural disaster seems to follow you, I want as much advance notice as possible if you're headed my way...

In Texas it would probably be considered a minor irritation hardly worth noticing.

Soooo - what's to see in Texas over the Holidays??



heh heh heh - just kidding - been to the ?Riverwalk? in San Antonio and Dallas(Hurricane Ivan) and Houston and Corpus and Rio Grand from Brownsville to McAllen(RV parks). And it's not storm chasing season - besides I'm too old.

[imnxpat]

Tracking expenses is the first step to controlling them. I think when you see what you're spending, it's a lot easier to see just where you can cut back.

[unclemick]

Big snowstorm north of Kansas City yesterday - stopped the shop til you drop/Christmas at the Mall consumption frenzy dead in it's tracks. 40 car/truck pile up on the freeway.

Being a good guy(having read the weather report) decided not go anywhere - and went to the Mall early - bought 90% less energy use LED outdoor lights for the Blue Spruce tree in the yard and decorated ahead of the snow.

Ain't I frugal?

Left those high energy decorations from prior years in their boxes down in the basement.

heh heh heh -

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by growing_older Based on this success, they next decided to count bug reports. Programmers were down rated based on number of bugs attributed to their code. Testers were up graded based on the number of bugs they reported. It didn't take long until testers learned that an easy route to high bug numbers was to report trivial issues quickly, using a separate report for every slight variation. Elusive bugs or larger issues that would take more time to investigate or write up were not worth the effort. Programmers were soon at war with Testers over the bug counts and Management had no end of numbers to report on.

Yeah, they even started that nonsense in the police dept. 2-3 years before I went the fraud section, where common sense prevailed. Tracking every bit of paper generated, thinking that had something to do with the quality of the work. The forms were universally detested. I never worried about it - just pay attention to what I'm doing and the numbers would take care of themselves.

Then there were times when "this or that" form of crime that was emphasized, like DWI when MADD made the issue a public one. A laudable and worthwhile goal, but one of the effects was that our shift Sgt. was down rated because one month we didn't nail any DWI's. The fact that we had seven on-scene felony arrests, which took a lot of fast coordination, was deemed irrelevant.

That nonsense I do not miss.

[kat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Khan I have noticed that whenever I start tracking something I start (almost unconsciously) using less. Electricity, water, natural gas, food, money...

Same here.

A month ago I decided to track how much beer I was drinking, and I used less, cutting back each week. The funny thing is I wasn't cutting back at all until I decided to write it down and once I wrote it down it was easy.