Gas is pretty high in Oregon these days. Probably averages $2.00/gallon.

I want to know how high gas would have to get to make it fiscally intelligent for me to move out of my parents house to a place close (or on) campus.


Cost of living at home (even though I don't pay rent, there are some associated costs):

Taxes:

$30.00/month (since I can't claim myself as a dependant)


Time:

55 minutes/day (extra time to drive to and from school). I do this roughly five days a week. That's 55 * 5 = 275 minutes/week = 4.58 hours/week = 19.694 hours/month (assuming 4.3 weeks to a month).

I'm paying about $2000 for tuition and fees this term, and that's for 16 credits. If the term lasts 11 weeks, that's 2000/11 = $181.82/week. If you assume an hour a week per credit, 181.82/16 = $11.36/hour. I'll take that as what my time is worth.

Cost of time = ($11.36/hour) * (19.694 hours/month) = $223.72/month


Gas:

When living at home, I consume probably 20 gallons of gas/week, which translates to maybe 420 miles (assuming 21 mpg--to be more accurate, I'd need to get my log book out and calculate the average). If I was living in Corvallis, it would be hard to say how much I'd drive. Let's guess 160 miles/week, because I'd likely go home and too church several times every week. That is a savings of 260 miles/week, or 12.38 gallons.

The price of gas/gallon is my independant variable (x).

Total price of living at home for a month = 30 + 223.72 + 12.38x = 253.72 + 12.38x


Cost of living in Corvallis

I estimated this with some wise financial friends (Kev and Jean) once, and I think we agreed I could live in an apartment for around $900/month. I don't know if that's reasonable or not, but we'll assume it is.

Total cost of living in Corvallis for a month = 900


The model

The idea is to see at what price of gasoline the cost of living at home would be equal to the cost of living in Corvallis. So we'll set the totals equal to each other and solve for x.

253.72 + 12.38x = 900
12.38x = 646.28
x = $52.20

I'm not moving out anytime soon, at least while I'm schooling at OSU.

One thing about the ACE curriculum, it can be taken advantage of. And I did, when I was a young schoolboy.

Let's say you were studying about early American history. The method ACE uses is several paragraphs of text followed by some activities, such as fill-in-the-blanks. I was all about speed back then. It was a race to see just how quickly I could get my work done every day.

So what I would do is look at the fill-in-the-blank questions and find a key word or two, then blindly skim the text looking only for the key word.

It wasn't until I was older that I mentioned my method to a teacher who told me to start reading all of the text!

Well, I've come full circle. Today as I was studying for my History midterm (which went pretty well, by the way), and I was reduced to skimming for keywords, in this case names of key people in the history of anti-Semitism.

I like the combination of khaki (cargo) pants and t-shirts.

Now that is a comfortable combination.

I give up. There's too many names and too much reading and I can't remember who they are and I didn't do enough.

This History of the Holocaust class is sort of interesting (though we haven't made it to the Holocaust proper yet), but, boy, too much boring reading.

But since I'm an engineering student and this is not a core class in my major, I can take it Pass/No Pass, which means I can get a 70% and get credit for it without it adversely affecting the ol' GPA.

It's hard for me to be a slacker though. Well, actually, it's not hard for the first few weeks, but when the test is staring you in the face it's sort of hard because I'm afraid I'll get a 60 or something.

Dr. Rucker was a visiting professor from Arizona State that taught in the IME department for two terms. He is (pretty) old, tech-savvy, has admittedly bad skin, is extremely intelligent and well-read, but not particularly organized as a teacher. He also said lots of things--deemed Ruckerisms--a few of which are:

"D is for dog, so we have a,b,c,dog"

"So lets just lurch along"

"...so we have this little rascal here..."

"What do we do with this rapscallion?"

"So on a good day, the answer is..."

"If you calculate the axial compression on this beastie..."


I was just thinking, this probably isn't very interesting to you. You don't know Dr. Rucker.

This is for Tom.

The happy brother.



The happy sisters. This is an old picture I think, with Shelley on the left and Shannon (Kon's wife) on the right.

I'm generally not a "funny man" when I talk on stage. Pretty straight-laced, don't have a particular gift of on-call humor.

But once, I had 'em rolling in the aisles.

To understand this, you've got to understand the Holiness denomination and their style of worship a little bit.

Holiness is, in some ways, a lot like Mennonites in that they really emphasize living righteously. But in other ways they're not. They are loud in their services, lot's of thunderous "Praise the Lord"'s. Basically, they are a lot like what I think of when I think of an old-time Gospel church.

AHQ was singing at a Holiness church in Fort Wayne, Indiana once. It was fun to sing to them because they were so responsive, and after we took a break part-way through I told them that.

"Yeah, folks, you are a great crowd to sing to. We're Mennonites and a lot of the churches we sing in are pretty quiet. But there's one thing, I think us Mennonites are going to make it to heaven just a little bit before you... You know, because the Bible says that the dead in Christ will rise first!"

Boy, that set them to laughing. They couldn't hardly stop. For a moment, I was Mark Lowry.

Saturday was an eventful day. I spent part of an afternoon with a bunch of other youth from mostly our church out on the street in Eugene handing out literature and talking to people.

I came away a little discouraged, actually. I let a guy get to me. Again, I think it was pride rearing its head.

Byran’s got it figured out, dude. He knows what he’s talking about, he can defend his faith in the free marketplace of ideas. But I couldn’t, not that time.

But despite that, it was good. I learned stuff about myself, and I hope and pray someone I talked to was encouraged and/or made to seriously think.

Mom wonders how it would be to have two sons dating at the same time.

I’m telling you, she wants me married off.