The following data was pulled from the nces.ed.gov website.  I have listed the source data link at the bottom of this post.  The first thing I noticed about the data was that adjusted for inflation, 4 year institution tuition is up about 240% from 1980 to 2010!  This is far more than 2 year institutions from the same time period that increased 150%.  The next piece of data I noticed was the price difference between private and public 4 year institutions.  In 2010, the cost of a year of private 4 year institution was about $32,500 per year, compared to about $14,800 per year for public 4 year institution.  Public college on average is half the cost of Private college!  If you were to go to a community college for two years than transfer in state to a public school you could save over $80,000!

Option 1 - Community College / Public 4 year institution:

Cost of 2 years of community college: $16,902

Cost of 2 years of a public 4 year institution: $29,740

Total cost of degree: $46,642

Option 2 - Private 4 year institution:

Cost of 4 years of Private 4 year institution: $129,900

By going to a community college than transferring to a Public 4 year institution, you can save $83,258!  

¹Constant dollars based on the Consumer Price Index, prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, adjusted to a school-year basis.

source: nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

Is it any surprise crude oil prices continue to climb?  The writing was on the wall during the late 70's when America was going through an energy crisis.  Jimmy Carter, the president at the time, made an effort to change America's short sighted energy policy.  Here is part of Jimmy Carter's April 18, 1977 on his proposed energy policy.

"The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation's independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce.

The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day and demand increases each year about five percent. This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue."

It has been almost 35 years since Jimmy Carter gave this speech and we are more dependent on oil than ever before.  A couple years ago in 2010, The US Joint Forces Command issued a report warning US military officials that "By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day." Here is the link to the report http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf 

Our government is aware of peak oil, and I can guarantee you it is coming.  So what does this shortfall in output mean to the world?  The short answer is that we really don't know.  The only real known is that as supply drops, prices rise.  Maybe the price continues upward slowly, allowing the economy to adjust.  Maybe prices fluctuate wildly causing havoc on the world economy.  Or maybe the "free market" kicks in and magically solves all our problems.  Peak oil is staring us in the face and we don’t have another 30 years to beat our crude oil addiction.  

I just received an email notification about the nest learning thermostat I back ordered a month ago.  The Nest thermostat is like no other programmable thermostat.  It learns your heating and cooling habits.  You start by installing the nest programmable thermostat.  Make sure to check so see if the thermostat  will be compatible with your current thermostat wiring.  Nest.com has a the compatibility checklist to help with this task. Once you have installed the thermostat the real fun begins. 

 Day 1, via the nest interface, you will be asked the following questions 

What is your zip code?

Should nest start heating or cooling your home?

What temp should nest use when you are away?

Day 2 - Day 8 will be for teaching nest your heating and cooling habits.  When you leave the house for work or before bed, turn down the temperature.  When you wake up in the morning turn up the temperature.  On day 8 Nest will have created a customized schedule for your home. 

You can override your Nest anytime you want.  Every time you change the temperature manually, Nest will learn.  A nice feature of the Nest is after setting up your thermostat with your wireless home network, you can access and change settings via nest.com, an iPhone application, or an Android application.  At $300 the Nest is a bit on the pricey side, but come on, it's a pretty cool for a digital thermostat.

This is my second recipe using the potjie.  My first recipe was a chicken dish; I figured I would give my wife's meat sauce recipe a try in the potjie.  For more information on potjiekos, this site has some great information - http://www.taste-africa.com/product_potjie.php.  Making a meat red sauce in bulk and freezing it is a great way to save time during the week.  It is easy to boil water, make pasta, and defrost your sauce for a quick meal.

For this recipe you will need the following ingredients.

2 lbs Italian sausage (I used 1lb sweet and 1lb hot italian sausages)

2 - 1lb 12oz cans of crushed tomatoes

1 - 6oz can tomato paste

4 cups of water

1 - carrot (absorbs bitterness, discard after cooking)

1 bunch of chopped fresh basil 

1 tbsp chopped garlic 

Pinch of sugar

Pinch of salt

Pinch of pepper

Pinch red pepper flakes

2-3 bay leaves

2 tbsp olive oil (enough to coat the bottom of the potjiekos)

The first step is to get a good fire going.  Once you have some coals ready, move some hot coals under your potjie to heat it up.  Add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of your pot and wait for the oil to heat up.  Once your oil is nice and hot add your minced garilic and brown.  Pay special attention to not burn the garlic.  

After browning your garlic add your sausage to the pot and cook on all sides.  You don't have to cook the sausage all the way through since they will cook when we simmer our sauce after adding our other ingredients.

Once you have cooked your sausage on all sides it is time to add our other ingredients.  Add the crushed tomatos, carrot, chopped basil, sugar, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and bay leaves.  Don't add your tomato paste and water yet!  

Slow cook the ingredients for about an hour keeping the sauce cooking at a slow boil.  Don't let the sauce heat up too much and burn.  I like to pull of the top and give the sauce a stir every 5 - 10 minutes to make sure it isn't burning.  After slow cooking for an hour, add your tomato paste and water and cook for another 30 minutes.  Keep making sure your sauce doesn't burn.  Once done simmering, discard the carrot and bay leaves.  Serve over your favorite pasta.  Freeze any left over sauce for a quick meal later.

I'm a software engineer and during small talk with one of my clients, he brought up that the need to fill a sales position within his company.  I had recently completed development of an applicant tracking software tool called jobbered and knew I could be off assistance.  He would usually post an ad in the local newspaper costing him around $300.  In the ad he would give a fax number and an email address that applicants could use to send their resume.  Faxes and emails are not the best way to track job applicants.  For small businesses like his, jobbered is free and he jumped on the opportunity to use my free Applicant Tracking System.  For those of you not familiar with Applicant Tracking Systems, they are software packages allowing for the electronic handling of recruitment needs.  They allow you to track and manage job listings in one place without relying on saved emails and hard copy faxes.  Here are the steps you can take to post a job listing for free and track the applicants that applied to your listing.

The first step was to log onto jobbered.com and sign up for an free account.  No credit card information is necessary, and once you have clicked the singup link and submitted your information, you will be sent your login credentials.  After receiving your login  credentials , click the login link on the top right side of the screen and login.

Once you have logged in you will be taken to the home page.  The home page contains two links, "Total Number of Postings" and the "Total Number Of Applicants" links are shortcuts to the Job Manager and Applicant Manager pages.  To list your first job, click the "Total Number of Postings" link or the "Job Manager" link in the main menu to navigate to the Job Manager page.  

Click the "Add Job" button on the Job Manager page to create your first job listing.

Fill out all the information for your job listing and verify the "enabled" checkbox is checked.  If you want to require applicants to upload a resume, verify that the "Resume Required" checkbox is checked.  The screen shot below has the "enabled" checkbox unchecked because I did not want to enable my example job posting online.  You will want to enable yours.  Click the "Add Job" button to finish creating your job listing. 

After clicking the "Add Job" button, you will be navigated back to the Job Manager page.  Your new job listing will display in the datagrid.  Let's create a dynamic question we want ask our applicants during the application process.  This question will prompt the applicant for their "Years Experience".  Click the question mark icon in the action column.

Click the "Add Question" button

Select the "Numeric Text Box" radio button and click the "Next" button

Fill out the label, this is what is displayed to the applicant as a question.  We want the default answer value to be 0 for our question.  2 digits is all we will accept for the answer, this will allow the user to add a value of 0 - 99.  Since our question requires an answer from the applicant, make sure the "Read Only" check box is unchecked.  Since we are going to require applicants to fill answer so make sure the "Required" check box is checked.  Click the "Finish" button when you are done editing the properties.

After adding the "Years Experience" question you will be directed back to the questions page.  Your newly created question will display in the datagrid.  Click the "Job Manager" menu item or the "Cancel" button to return to the Job Manger page.    

Let's post our job listing to our twitter page.  You have unlimited options here, but for our example we will only post to Twitter.  When listing for clients I like to use LinkedIn, Craigslist, Ebay Classifieds, and various other free listing services to get the maximum amount of applicants.  Click the link icon from the Action column to display the "Generated Url" dialog box.  Select Twitter from the dropdown box and click the "Generate URL's" button to generate two URLs.  The first URL is the full length URL, the second is a shortened URL.  Twitter only allows 140 characters so let's select and copy the bottom (bit.ly) URL to our clipboard.  Log into Twitter, add a new tweet and include your job listing description with the URL generated.  As a side note, by selecting a source from the drop down when generating your URL's, you can track where applicants are coming from after they have applied.  This is helpful in determining what sites are most effective when posting jobs.

The following pages will be displayed to applicants when they follow the job listing link in Twitter, or wherever you post your job listing.

Once the applicant finishes the application process, you will see applicants start to appear in the "Applicant Manager" page.  

To view the applicant details, click the question icon in the action column.

You can add notes for the applicant or click the floppy disk icon to view the applicant's resume.  There you have it, you have created and listed your first job posting for free.  In future posts I will go over all the search, ranking, and other features available to you in jobbered.com