Jeremy Herndon

I’ve seen pictures of the Smart car on the Internet, and on television, but not “for real” very often.  I was waiting to pull out of a parking lot and a large tractor trailer passed me by, followed by a Smart car.  What a huge difference in size that was!  It was a cute little thing, a bright red, but it brought back memories of many years ago when I saw the results of a little car being in an accident with a tractor trailer and it made me shudder.  I don’t know how safe I would feel in such a little car!

In my campaign to save money I’ve been thinking about replacing our exterior back door’s deadbolt lock with a remote control keyless deadbolt.  There are many times when one of the family members goes out at night and leaves lights on out by the door simply because it makes it easier for them to see the lock to insert their key to get into the house.  There are plenty of other lights around that area to help them see their way to the door.  (Those are motion sensor lights.)

I’m thinking that it would be really nice to have the remote because there are a lot of times folks have their arms full and can’t easily unlock the door with their keys.  Pushing the remote button on their keychain would let them enter the house more easily.  It would also let them into the house quicker if they felt threatened in some way.  I’ve been looking around on the Internet for price ranges and styles and it seems that they will cost about $100.  I was glad to see that some of the systems have additional remotes available so that all of our family members can have one.  Naturally these locks will also work with a key if necessary.

I was reading an article on a news website that I found called livescience.com that states that many schools have decided to stop supplying trays to their students.  They think that this will save energy, by not having to wash the trays.  The article indicated that they students are not very happy with the decision, as it makes carrying their food to their tables a lot more difficult.

Do you know what parthenogenesis means?  I didn’t until I read it in an article that was talking about how a second case of asexual reproduction in sharks was documented  in Virginia Beach in October of 2008.  It seems that a female blacktip shark, having been the only kind of her species in an aquarium, gave birth without benefit of having a mate.  The article also mentions that last year a hammerhead shark in a zoo in Omaha also gave birth without benefit of mating.

I found this to be quite fascinating!  I knew that there were some animals that could do that, but not sharks!  Considering how many people are afraid of sharks, this could be very scary news to some people.  I would not be surprised to see this story on the Colbert Report’s threat down!

There is absolutely nothing more annoying to me than to come home and find that all of the lights in the house are on, but no one is in most of the rooms!  I can’t seem to educate certain folks that we need to save money by turning off lights when we leave the room.  Well, I just found out that Black & Decker is releasing for sale motion detector light switches that will turn the lights off automatically after a few minutes of detecting no motion.  The price sounds reasonable, about $30 per switch.  They are supposedly going on sale in April.  I’ve signed up to receive an email notice from them when they come out!  I am DEFINITELY going to buy several!