I attended a one-day course by Edward Tufte a few weeks ago.  I’ve since read 2.75 of his 4 books given out as part of the course.

My brain is now alert to all the chartjunk and PowerPoint fluff running rampant in the world.

So, I’ve taken up the crusade to troll blogs that post wasteful data graphics.  Please see my comment at a popular programming blog.

I’ve learned something from software development and travel.

The world is simply too big and too diverse for any kind of global management.

There is no one software architecture to solve all problems.

There is no one political model to solve all problems.

There are only best practices.

I began collecting statistics of my car and gas purchases around June 1, 2004.

There’s a gap that’s not represented in this graph for when I was in Maryland without a car for 10 weeks (summer of 2005).

Important facts from the graph:

• All prices are from the Twin Cities metro area
• First point is roughly June 1, 2004
• Last point is May 8, 2008
• Min Price: $1.86
• Max Price: $3.66

No, I’m not being laid off. Yet. But I could be, and that possibility grows ever more likely each day that passes. And it’s caused me to start to think about some of those Bigger Picture items in life.

One blog I read fairly regularly is The Simple Dollar. The author, Trent, has written a 31-part series on fixing your finances. I don’t necessarily need my finances to be “fixed”, but I think the idea of this series is a great and important one: a little work each day over a short period of time (one month) can set you up for long-term growth, not only in personal finance, but in life: your work, your personal life, your dreams and goals, pretty much all the Big Picture items alluded to earlier.

So, tonight, I will begin this exploration with my five main values. This should be an interesting and enlightening experience, and perhaps I’ll share some of it as I progress through the steps.

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly,
while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

- Plato (427-347 B.C.)

1. I would like a cheeseburgers.
2. I would like an cheeseburger.
3. I saw an geeses. (bonus points for double incorrectness)
4. I brushed my teeths.

This is a cross-post from my personal blog, linked here for great justice and the web spiders. I’d repost the spreadsheet here, but WordPress doesn’t seem to accept iframes.