Bob Martens

It seems that you always need some sort of introductory post to a new blog, and this is my third such blog, so I’ll go ahead and keep it as brief as possible.

First, the reasoning behind the change back to WordPress. It really comes down to two things: Tumblr’s recent outages and the fact that I was already paying for a cloud server from Rackspace (I’ve been really happy with them). That was enough to bring about the change. I still have access to my Tumblr blog at http://tumblr.bobmartens.net and I will be keeping that up indefinitely or at least until I find the time to transfer over my stuff from there to here.

Second, and maybe most important, is what this place is going to hopefully become. Honestly, I don’t really know. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get back into writing some more, but it is hard to say how much time I will really have. Until then, expect some changes here as time permits, but don’t expect too many or for them to happen too often.

That’s about it at the moment. Thanks!

So our family currently owns two vehicles from (alright, we own one and the bank currently lets us use the other): a 2005 Ford Freestar and a 1996 Toyota Corolla. You can guess which vehicle is mine, it won’t take you long.

With the move coming up I’ve been debating whether keeping two vehicles is both needed and/or beneficial. Milwaukee has a bus system which can pretty much get you anywhere, but I have no experience actually riding it to and from work. Couple that with the fact that we are not going to know where we are going to be living for the mid-term and I really can’t make a decision as to what to do at this moment.

Part of me would really like to ditch the second vehicle (the Corolla which is very dear to me) and just swing it with one vehicle and riding the bus. Only having to pay for maintenance, insurance, gas, etc. on one automobile sounds like sweet music to my ears. It is a minimalistic approach to living that is appealing to me at the moment.

However, losing the second vehicle also limits us in many ways. If the van needs work, we will not have a second vehicle around to use. If I work late, I’ll still have to take the bus, I’ll be limited by the schedule the bus has (which can lengthen the commute considerably) and we also lose an asset we actually own.

So it becomes a conflict for me. Right now no decision will be made. I am driving the Corolla (complete with two cans of freon added as of tonight) to Milwaukee where I will use it to get around for the short term. I will be taking stock of the amount of money we are going to be sinking into it over the next month or so and then compare that to a month-long bus pass along with time constraints of the ride to see if it might be a better fit for us to just go with one automobile.

This could also be remedied by having teleportation devices.