It was a day I hoped would never happen, but I sat down this weekend and updated my little US national debt clock to display over $10,000,000,000,000. I say it's a sad day because despite what some people say (that the further in debt our country is the more prosperous we are) I find it hard to believe we're better off because of the debt we've just taken on. The whole concept of "money as debt" just seems corrupt. Then again, I'm not an expert on economics. Maybe having our national debt increasing at the rate of $36 per millisecond is a good thing.

The debt clock started when a friend e-mailed me a years ago and asked how to do a counter like a clock that starts at a specific point. He needed it in Flash so I whipped one together and sent it to him and then realized I could maybe do something worthwhile by putting it out there for people to use. I did.. and it hit myspace and facebook.. and I'm currently seeing about 65,000 views of it each month. I encouraged people to download it and install it on their own servers (it's not sucking too much bandwidth, but they shouldn't have to wait on my server for their page to finish loading..) so I'm not sure how many views it's getting that way.. I know it's being used on quite a few political web sites (both Republicans and Democrats running for Congress for example), in articles, and on some personal web sites.

I don't fuss with the accuracy of it since I figure if they can pull a number like $700,000,000,000 out of thin air just because it's "a really large number" then there's no point in trying to be too accurate on anything based on numbers provided by the same folks. I like to think that over the last few years I've helped a tiny bit to raise awareness of our out of control spending.. I can hope it's not too late to sort things out and maybe someday I'll be able to reverse the clock.

I was working at about midnight the other night when I heard my little VPN app scream that it'd lost connection.. I noticed that I couldn't get out to my favorite site and checked my DSL modem.... the status light was off. So the next morning I got up and saw it was still off. I called the DSL provider, we went through the standard power off/on stuff and the regular checklist and the guy in India said he'd overnight a new modem (it still hasn't gotten here..). A little while later I remembered something from my CCNA 1 class - check "layer 1" first.

So I swapped out the line between the modem and the wall jack. The lights came back on. I took that phone line and tested it with a phone and it was bad... heh. Always check layer 1 first.

So a pipeline in Alaska sprung a leak and roughly 2 percent of the total US oil consumption has been shut off. Prices will rise.. BP will make more profits.. people in the US won't quit driving big gas hogs when they could use a more energy efficient alternative.. nothing new here.

But it got me thinking about E85. It's not going to replace gasoline as our prime source of fuel, but think of this for a moment.. what if starting Monday everyone in the US who owned a flex fuel vehicle capable of using E85 actually fueled up with E85? There are roughly 6 million vehicles in the US capable or using E85 today. As of 2001 there were 191 million vehicles on the road in the US. That number is probably higher today.. but still..

The problem with this? Those 6 million people probably can't find a gas station that carries E85.
Currently out of the (roughly) one thousand gas stations in NC there are only eleven gas stations that carry E85.
Roughly two percent of the vehicles on the road are capable of burning a cleaner fuel and yet many states have ZERO gas stations that dispense it.

Lawmakers and the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition seem to think the solution is to get our government to pay for switching pumps over to E85.. check this out.. the state of North Carolina will give up to $30,000 in tax credits for a gas station to convert a pump to E85. So supply and demand are gone in this country? Our government, which is already grossly in debt, is going to pay a business so that the business can offer a product exclusively in an area (for a while). I guess the demand for E85 is unbelievably low. But why?

Maybe the reason demand is so low is because the stuff smells funny when it burns? Yep.. you drive down the road and the people behind you smell alcohol.
Or maybe it's because since there's little competition among stations selling it (since they're far apart) they don't have to discount it and so in some places it costs as much as regular gasoline. Or maybe it's because the stuff isn't nearly as efficient? Efficiency can drop 20% when running on E85.. and I pay as much for it as regular gasoline. Ouch.
Or maybe it's because the people who own flex fuel vehicles don't know that it's ok for them to fill up with E85 from a station and where to find the stuff?

Maybe the whole E85 thing just needs more cool marketing?

Anyway, my state gives a tax credit to owners of hybrid vehicles, so I'm trying to find out if they also give a credit to owners of flex fuel vehicles. All of those stainless steel fittings in my truck didn't come cheap you know

btw.. the best alternative isn't a different fuel. It's people driving cars and trucks less and using public transportation, bicycles, and their feet more often.

Just thought I'd point this out.. Stanly Community College (Albemarle, NC) just got approval from the state to offer a degree in "Simulation and Game Development". I think this is huge for any high school students in the Charlotte NC area who are interested in this field but can't afford the high price of an art school, private college, or university. It's also not unheard of for people to move to an area where a community college is offering a specialized degree like this.. who knows.

I've spoken with Scott and he said they would be using some Flash in the classes. Most classes will be using the 3D modeling apps and such, and they'll be covering game development using C++... but Flash will be in the mix too.