For many of us who have worked hard to make this day possible, this is truly a day of celebration. I think for all Americans, regardless of your political persuasion, we should be happy to look forward to what the possibilities are for us in the years ahead.

In a bit of a spate of irony, I may be personally contributing to this economy. I have had to recently think about buying a new car. With the state of the US economy and in particular, the US automakers, the question is: should I buy a car from one of our troubled US automakers? I’m thinking so.

At The Car Connection, my most recent haunt for online car shopping, I’ve been looking at GMC cars. I like the Car Connection’s website since it makes it easy to locate the various models and features and has quite a bit of detail on the ratings. While GMC might have its share of financial problems (probably much more so than Ford and certainly Toyota), at the very least they don’t have as much of the significant quality woes as Chrysler. I once owned a PT Cruiser, and while it was fun for the first year or so, you could easily tell by the second that quality was not job one over there.

Anyways, GMC, like most automakers, are now producing Hybrids that approach the fuel efficiency of the Japanese automakers. I am hoping that they can power past that and work directly on Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), which would be my preferred mode of transportation.

Should I buy a car? Should I wait? What should I buy? If you were put in a position where your current car was no longer available, what would you do?

First, the site is now upgraded to WordPress 2.7, and I’m looking at fixing a number of glitches in the site, including missing downloads, incorrectly functioning tickers, etc. If you spot a problem that needs fixing, please let me know.

Second, I’ve been making lots of progress on personal goals and especially around the FHWW. May “main job” has now been pared down to 4 hours  a day (I know, not a week, yet), but this year I will be paring it down even more. I will spend more time thinking about and writing on muses and microsourcing, so if you have any thoughts, please let me know.

I have a few posts queued up, so I will be uploading them over the course of the next few days. Stay tuned!

1. 30 Free Professional WordPress Themes – My favorite themes are here…. notice one in particular ?
2. 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes - Another great list from the same folks who put together the above list
3. 21 Fresh, Usable and Elegant WordPress Themes
4. TopWPThemes – Hundreds of free themes
5. Best WordPress Themes – “Cool free and premium WordPress themes”
6. FreeWordPressThemes – “Collection of free quality WordPress themes.”
7. Freewpthemes.net – “Totally free WordPress themes for your enjoyment”
8. WordPress Themes Directory – Directly from the source
9. SiteGround WordPress Themes – A few more from SiteGround, a web hosting company. “The SiteGround Design Team has created professional WordPress Themes that you can use for free!”
10. Aslamp Themes – A few interesting themes here
11. H4x3d – Some very artistic themes here

Know of any other good lists of themes that I should post here? Let me know!

When I first started blogging on the 4HWW topic, there were quite a few bloggers… but now it seems they have (mostly) all stopped blogging and their blogs are idle. What has happened? Has the bloom fell off the 4HWW flower? Have folks determined that the 4HWW is mostly hype, or have they had reasonable success and squeezed 50% of out of your schedule, as I have?

I don’t want to be a pessimist, but I want to reach out to the community, and especially to you 4HWW bloggers. What happened? Has anyone else seen any success with the concepts in the book? Do you want me to keep on journaling my experiences?

Comment and let me know if you’re alive!

I often listen to NPR and other Public Radio stations. Do you? Doesn’t it annoy you when they have to interrupt their broadcasting to make an appeal to their audiences for donations and support?

Just like you, I find it annoying that those pledge drives interrupt the shows I like to listen to you, but at the same time, I understand why they do that. They have to somehow fund their activities, and since they don’t barrage you with advertisements, the pledge drive is the only way to make their financial ends meet. It’s actually good that they don’t rely heavily on advertisements as the non-public radio stations do, since that could also taint their independent perspective.

Like public radio stations, I write in this blog mostly for my amusement and for the information and pleasure of those who read it. While I do have many advertisements placed throughout the site, the truth is that they really don’t result in much, if any, revenue for me.

I posted a while back on the topic of blog revenue as a passive source of income, but until this blog reaches a significant traffic level, it’s pretty much all a pipe dream.

In that vein, I come to you, my faithful readers. Like NPR, I’d like to take this opportunity to pass the Tip Jar and ask for donations. I am working as hard as I can to turn this blog into a Muse and thus a Passive Income source. But until then, it’s hard for me to focus on the blog when there are other pressing financial concerns.

As such, I’d like to ask you to donate whatever you can to my cause. On the right side of the screen, you might notice a donation widget from a website called ChipIn that allows you to contribute to my Muse. If you can’t find it, I’ve also included it below:

Thank you so much and keep tuning into this station!

Yes… you CAN live a 4-hour work week. Or at least, not have to live a 40-hour work week. That said, I have not mastered many of the concepts of the book around Passive Income and Muses and outsourcing, but at the very least through more focused time management you can recover the inherent waste in your day and Eliminate it. Next step: Automate and Outsource better to reduce my time another 50%.

Stay tuned!