Chatter Of The Squirrel

The 501st Post

June 5, 2008 on 11:13 am | In Me! | No Comments

Minor landmark today. 501 posts since I started blogging on 14th Sept 2005, 996 days ago.

That gives me an average of marginally above 1 post every two days. Not too bad.

Hot topic today, petrol increase in Malaysia.

Hardly a surprise. Luckily I just ran out of gas early yesterday morning, and had filled up before heading to work. Getting home, I was plagued by slow traffic all the way from Shah Alam to Damansara. Went to do some shopping at Tesco, and the jam was still on at 930pm.

Petrol just went up from 1.92 MYR/L to 2.70.

But no worries. The govt will give all small cars a rebate of RM625 a year to offset this scheme.

RM625 / yr = RM52  /mth = 19.3 L /mth

If a person uses 66.7L of petrol a month, then the rebate will help him break even.

On my trusty well-tuned Charade (average 17.7 km/L), 66.7L gets me 1187km.

So, I mustn’t drive more than 1187km per month, or 277km per week.

My drive to and from the office costs me 40km a day. That leaves me 77km to use for weekends, and Kempo practices…

That might leave me a fair bit short. But not too terribly so.

But unfortunately, I renewed my road tax in early March. So I won’t be eligible for rebate till next year!!

Frack!

I wonder also… If I can buy a dead car (that’s still registered). Sell it for scrap. But continue to renew the road tax for RM30/yr, and collect the rebate of RM625…

This rate hike is inevitable. But it’s obviously very poorly thought out by the government. Very poorly thought out, if their plan was for the betterment of our nation.

But who knows what they want to do with the billions they’re saving on fuel subsidies? Is this their last round of pillage and plunder before they cut and run? Or to fill up their war-chest to buy political support? It certainly isn’t for my sake, that they’re doing this.

Social Spark

June 5, 2008 on 10:35 am | In Me! | No Comments

Just created a profile on SocialSpark.

First, it’s a community where Bloggers gather and meet each other.

Second, it’s a place where advertisers come to find bloggers to review their stuff. Something similar to PayPerPost.

But at first glance, the website looks better. There’s blogger to blogger interaction, and there looks to be many more advertisers and open opportunities here.

Blogger-blogger interaction is good. Meet more people to share links. Cross linking each other’s blogs will bump both party’s Page Rank. That’s always good.

The technology appears to be better too. You have to install tools in your blog header so that the site will monitor what’s happening. Pages load faster.

The profile I created is here. It takes a fair amount of time to set it up. Need to put in a lot of info on your interests etc, so that advertisers can target your blog. Hmm… I’ve only put in all my geekiest interests in there. And as far as I know, companies who market geeky stuff usually aren’t as rewarding as companies selling fashion items, random luxury items, pharmaceuticals, credit services, and insurance. Especially pharamaceuticals…

Gauging from the kind of spam I often get, there seems to be big money in pharmaceuticals… Maybe I should also declare an interest in popping random pills and that I love money. That’ll bring in all the companies selling happy pills and cheap mortgages.

So far, it looks very promising and certainly worth exploring.

I’ve already started the process to verify my blog. Let’s see how it goes when I start taking opportunities. Await more updates.

Disclosure: This post is paid for by Social Spark.