Well all I can say is …

If the recent decision to switch Indiana to Daylight Savings time screws up my Tivo and causes me to miss an Episode of 24 there will be HELL to pay!

I’d be forced to write a strongly worded letter to Tivo, my congressmen, and perhaps even whatever governing body laid out the global time zones.

Ok well for the record I had a really fancy St. Patty’s day theme ready.

But… then I ruined it last night in a ridiculous display of fatigued induced stupidity.

I’ll see what I can recover…. but for what it’s worth…

Happy St. Patty’s Day!

So I read an odd but interesting article recently.

Scientists extract gasoline from cattle dung

As you may have guessed from the title…

It’s about getting gasoline out of poop.

Cow poop.

Some Japanese scientist figured this out.

The numbers in the article are based on Japanese Cattle statistics, so I was left wondering how viable a solution this would be in the US.

Here’s how it breaks down.

First the problem:

How much gasoline do we use every year in the US?

Well…

The United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil each day.

A barrel of oil (which contains 42 gallons) will yield something like 19 or 20 gallons of gasoline, depending on the refinery.

Therefore, in the United States, something like 400 million gallons of gasoline gets consumed every day.

In a year, therefore, the U.S. consumes about 146 billion gallons of gasoline.

(source: How Stuff Works)

Fair Enough.

Now we know from our Japanese Scientist friends that you can get 0.042 ounces of gasoline from every 3.5 ounces of cow dung.

So the question becomes:

Is there enough cow poop in the US every year to satisfy a significant percentage of our gasoline needs?

Well…

There are roughly 100,000,000 (One Hundred Million) cows in the United States.

According to this article a well-fed dairy cow produces 120 pounds of manure every day.

That’s 40,000 pounds per year per animal.

Which puts the annual cow poop tabulation at an astounding 4,000,000,000,000 (Four TRILLION) pounds.

Wow.

You smell that?

Which converts to 1,814,369,482 (1.8 BILLION) metric tons.

Further we know that there are 35,274 ounces in a metric ton so…

Each year the United States produces 64,000,069,091,189.90 (64 TRILLION) ounces of cow poop.

Which (if we are to believe the Japanese) will yield 435,374,619,667,958 (435 TRILLION) ounces of gasoline.

… which equates to 12,342,649,534.16 (12 BILLION) Metric Tons of gasoline.

… 27,210,884,353,741.50 (27.2 TRILLION) pounds of gasoline.

NOW…

A gallon of gasoline weighs somewhere between 5.8 and 6.5 pounds.

For the purposes of this exercise I used 6 as a nice middle ground.

Which leaves us with…

4,535,147,392,290.25 (4.5 TRILLION) gallons of gasoline per year.

All from cow poop.

If the United States really does consume 146 BILLION gallons of gasoline.

The 4.5 Trillion gallons of gasoline we could get from cow poop is nearly 31 times what we need.

Clearly I think that covers any swag my numbers may have had.

Why the hell are we not doing this?

We’d pretty much END our dependance on foreign oil.

We’d have a USEFUL end for cow poop, which believe it or not is a big problem.

And we’d have enough gasoline left over WE COULD MAKE MONEY.

Talk about a cash cow!!

Hi there folks!

GREAT NEWS!

It’s a bit earlier than I thought I’d be posting anything like this…… but I can’t take it any longer.

The Doctors say everything is groovy and proceeding as planned so I would like to take this opportunity to officially announce… I’m gonna be a Daddy!

Yep! Jana and I are pregnant!

We’re not yet at 12 weeks (the traditional “tell everybody” time frame) so your thoughts and prayers are appreciated.

It’s been a long and winding road requiring all the marvels of modern science available, but it actually worked.

To the left is a picture of the two embryos that were implanted.

In the picture here they are about 2 days old. A collection of cells nine and six strong respectively.

It’s a bit odd how attached one can become to a collection of nine and six cells, but we did.

Jana and I spent a great deal of time wondering which would take.

Maybe both?!

What if none??

None was almost to sad to contemplate.

We’re very pleased that one did take, and now I find myself wondering which one was it?

We’ll never know for sure of course… but I do wonder.

The weeks that followed were crazy.

Fun, stressful, and everything in between.

We counted the hours until our next doctor visit to get another ultrasound and another thumbs up.

Here (to the right) is the six week ultrasound.

The baby has a heartbeat now and is about a quarter of an inch big. (7.09mm)

Let me digress for a moment.

The Six week image is actually four REAL weeks.

Apparently pregnancy takes 38 weeks.

But somebody decided that didn’t sound good so they started telling everyone it was 40.

Forty must have sounded like a nice round number.

So now… when you get pregnant.

They ADD two weeks to everything. So this is our “you’re six weeks along” picture… but we’re really only four weeks at this point.

ANYWAY…

That was a big day.

At that point our percentage of risk for “something bad” to happen that would derail everything before we even got out of the station was about 8%

Pretty good odds I suppose… but enough to make you nervous.

Our most recent visit (shown here) is the “You’re eight weeks along” visit. It went well, and we are now around a one half of one percent risk factor.

That feels better.

Still gotta worry a bit though.

I suppose that’s how the rest of my life will go.

Here the little one is about 18.22mm long.

Growin’ like a weed already.

The heart rate is a good 160 bpm.

Jana is doing great, and despite a little nausea now and then is still functioning pretty much like normal.

We look forward to all the next little milestones.

And before you ask…

1) We DON’T know what it is yet.

It’s still too early to figure out the gender.

2) We DO WANT to know.

Stay tuned.

We’ll let you know when we do.

3) We DON’T have a name yet.

We’re accepting suggestions.. but it’s not a vote.

We have supreme veto power on this one.

In the meantime….

We’re preparing a photo galery.

You can keep up to date here.

So tomorrow I’m going to be helping out with the big event at HHgregg’s! … What? You don’t know about the big event at HHgregg’s??

Well it’s been all over X103 here locally.

Turns out that RCA is a sponsor for a Super cross racing team. Holigan Racing to be specific.

The Holigan Team will be at HHgregg’s Friday with a big 18 wheeler, the drivers will be there… and so will the Holigan Girls

(they’ll be wearing RCA shirts tomorrow)

Holigan Racing even runs their own reality TV show. It airs on … you guessed it… the SPEED channel. So who knows the TV crews may even be there.

We’ll also be showing off a motor cross bike we will be raffling off at one of the races in April.

All of this hullabaloo is geared towards promoting the X3000 Video Lyra.

A cool product to be sure.

But I’m more excited about the Holigan Girls.

Seriously though it should be fun.

There’s even a chance I’ll be able to take Jana to the race here in Indy on Saturday.