Earth Hour?
How about “Earth All The FRIGGIN Time”? [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Hour ]
No really, I’m going to have to post the holier-than-thou entry I wrote about all the ways I have been working on reducing my footprint.
And it won’t be pretty… or humble.
Chris Hume is the Toronto Star’s architecture critic, and writes about the impact of Earth Hour, speaking of Canada but the message is universal:
“Across Canada, power use was down 5 per cent. That’s good, but far from spectacular. And if the message is that we must treat every hour as Earth Hour, it seems we still haven’t worked up the sense of urgency necessary for the big changes ahead….
But it’s crucial not to confuse the gesture with the thing itself, the symbol for the reality. Even if Earth Hour had seen every light in Toronto dimmed, the fact remains it’s not a solution to the environmental problems we face, not by a long shot.
What will be so hard for Canadians to accept is the realization that technology can’t save us this time. Instead, we will have to come to terms with our vehicular dependency, our oil addiction and all the rest. What will happen when the power goes off next time, not just for lights, but refrigerators, air conditioners, furnaces, or TVs?”
[Treehugger article]
Monday and then some.
I got some stuff done this weekend, but not nearly what I had in mind.
I tried to find a cheaper option for shelves rearranging things from the house in different configurations (namely, the 4 Mac SE’s and SE/30’s with dark brown wooden shelves stacked up) however, it didn’t hold all that I needed to hold by my desk area.
I did manage to vacuum up 3000 pounds of dustbunnies and also re-routed a lot of plugin stuff to be able to just switch it off to not draw power to the power supply.
Fortunately, I found several very good options for the shelf area.
Unfortunately, they are all about $120…and I am trying to behave (and the last month has not been kind to my plan for behaving what with birthday presents to buy, taxes to budget for and Roth IRAs to fund… not to mention a little sale shopping I did.)
I’ll percolate on it and clean in different areas while the need isn’t so crucial.
I have a monster list of stuff to clean and clean out and it is a bit daunting, but I know I’ll be happier after all is said and done. Also, went to a new Lowe’s in Dublin Sunday and, among other things (such as a set of the perfect shelves – I’d link to them but they aren’t on the website), I found some African Violets. I got fixated on getting some the other weekend after I had to use ant spray to kill ants that had gotten into my lucky bamboo planter on a set of drawers in the bedroom that I also have the altar on. Not cool to have a little line of death there, so I am trying to make it up the the Goddess… flowers. Purple ones seemed the right thing. I put an ivy there last weekend, but still didn’t seem enough. I just need to re-pot them tonight in the african violet pots I have.
In the effort to behave I mollified my spring decorating urges with cheap eBay finds (limit was less than $20 total for the items I wanted. I got 
one more ceramic pitcher for my knitting needles. Currently, I have Meme’s needles in a stripey pitcher (another eBay find from ages ago) and the really small ones that would get lost in the taller pitcher in yet another eBay find, a Pernod water pitcher. This other pitcher is for my newer needles. I didn’t want to mix up the ones I got from Meme and potentially lose them. I have no qualms about taking out the others into the wild where the potential for confiscation (TSA, jury duty…oh yeah, I got called for jury duty. I’m actually looking forward to it… I can NOT be at work and knit all day. Mmmm.) is there.
I also strapped my PSP speaker thingy to the treadmill so I can watch converted tv there and hamster my designated 30 minutes a night. I have a love/hate relationship with my treadmill. On one hand, I love walking and walking is my exercise of choice. I also love that it is possibly the simplest treadmill ever produced. It has no motor, it folds up to take up very little room and even though I killed the speedometer and poxey little electronics on it, I still like it better than others I’ve seen. Not to mention that I can move it without help, which is still a requirement for most things in my apartment.
Couch and mattress excluded.
On the other hand, it is a bit rusty and sometimes I would love a fancy treadmill to tell me how many calories I burned or how many miles I walked or even a magic interval trainer for hills and speed changes… with a cup holder and a home gym to put it in while I’m being all grabby.
Ah well.
Solio experiment is going well actually.
My nano takes *nothing* to charge, as does my bluetooth headset. The Treo well, I cheated a bit and put it on the charger during my work at home day since not being reachable would have gotten me fired. And having a job that lets me work at home some is worth keeping. Also the energy offset of that one day on the charger vs. 1 day commuting and using office energy, I can live with. Otherwise, I have dropped the screen brightness and am a bit more judicious about surfing and the battery has held up well. I need to find another app to automagically turn off and turn on the data radio each night and morning (the one that worked on the 600 crashes the bejezus out of the 650). That seems to be the biggest power savings regardless. No surprise there though.
Also, happily the north windows in the living room are bright enough to generate a charge on the Solio. So when I am home in the day, the Solio sits in the window there. This weekend, I got 25% charge from sitting in the sun in Tex’s Beetle while we were out. I haven’t plugged the Solio in to charge at all. During the drive to work, I put it on my dashboard, but I’m certain that the amount of time it is there is negligable as well as the drive home. If I was a little less paranoid, I might park on the roof of the parking garage and let it be out in the sun, but I’m not that brave. Maybe I should see about figuring out an attach-y thing for the moon roof and see if it charges enough to make that worth while. It wouldn’t be visible then and would be available for over head sun (the UV film on the window might defeat any gains though.) For now, I have the Solio in a sunny window which lasts until about 1 or so in the afternoon.
However, I may add in one more item to the experiment because I am using the Treo USB charger on Fridays. I’ll see what I use regularly and report back later.
I also was thinking the other day about my former regular “column” back on PalmPower magazine. I do miss writing regularly (blog doesn’t count. This has been going on since 1996 and will continue til a new media craze makes me migrate.) But I would like to have a regular column again somewhere.
Travel writing might be good. We’ll see what I can find or what the universe drops into my lap.
In other news, I was talking to someone the other day about retirement accounts and strategies (a little light conversation) and they mentioned my Social Security income… at which point I just laughed.
Who are we kidding? I’ll never see any of that. At this point, my grandmothers are eke-ing out a living with the paltry amount they get in addition to their retirement stuff. Mom probably won’t be able to buy the poopers plain hamburgers from McD’s for their birthdays with it and I have no illusion as to our government’s fiscal accountability for the LARGE sum I am contributing to a system that sucks ass, fuckyouverymuvch.
Just makes am obsess over interest more in my accounts.
And, I still want to be able to get a few tiny homes built that are self sustaining so I won’t be pissing away good travel funds on utilities (as well as being a good Earthling to the environment my species screwed up.) Maybe a few sheep (mmm, think of the wool!) to mow the lawn and a few goat (mmm..cheese and stuff) to eat the brambles. Haven’t decided on chickens. (I wouldn’t be able to get the Phoebe song out of my head if I did have them.)
Anyhoo, I’m tired today, but not nearly as tired as I usually am on Mondays (I get my schedule all cattywumpus on the weekends. I am a night person. Work people persist in being morning people. Freaks.) and I went to bed early last night; for some reason I got very tired at about 8pm. So getting up wasn’t so traumatic this morning. Maybe I can get some stuff done tonight instead of doing bare minimum of tomorrow prep and cat (and fredlet) maintenance then passing out at 8:47 pm.
I’ll let you know if that actually happens.
Garfield Minus Garfield
http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/
Is it just me or do these all come across as dirty? ;)
Again with the major arcana
|
You Are Death |
 You symbolize the end, which can be frightening. But you also symbolize the immortality of the soul. You represent transformation, rebirth of a new life. Sweeping away the past is part of this card, as painful as it may be. Your fortune: Don’t worry, this card does not predict death itself. |
The Customer Ain’t Always Right
[link]
I know people who regularly ask for things that they know are not allowed or things that are specifically not offered because they think the rules don’t apply to them-or even just because they try to try. What I don’t accept is when people get pissy when they don’t get their way even when they know it isn’t an option.
What I do think is that both sides need to figure out what the customer needs and either provide that service to the benefit of both or find another service provider who can provide that service (without operating at a loss regularly) for that person. Or use them as a guinea pig to see if you can offer that service reasonably. If a customer wants to just put you out of business for sport, they should be put out of my misery. That’s unacceptable behavior.
If a customer is having a bad day, fine. But don’t take it out on a service provider. It doesn’t make you right to be an asshole just because you are a customer.
When I was working at Apple in tech support I got the occasional rollover customer service call. People treated this phone number as a place to spew their blackened, evil souls over someone who had to sit there and take it and be gracious about it. Quite frankly, I wasn’t hired to be abused (although some people would argue that being on the phones at all should be covered by the Geneva Convention) I was hired to solve peoples’ problem with their Macs. And I generally did (draped temporarily in the pelt of a customer service rep) the person went away happy with their problem fixed. And truly, 99% of the time it was a fixable problem, but the outsource vendors who originally took the support call couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag and probably just sent these cases to customer service out of sheer laziness… so no wonder these people were pissed. Incidentally, this was 10 years ago, so I don’t know what the state of Apple tech support is now. But back to the point, if I was going to have to sit on the phone and take those vitriolic calls all day, I told my manager I would go look for another job. Thankfully, he didn’t make me do too many of them and let me groove on what I really excelled at… and I did excel. I *closed* 40+ cases per day with high satisfaction ratings. People went away laughing (I had them do the “printer dance ” with me, I had them reminding their printer that they loved it and lo and behold, it printed again! I jollied people through their issues. I gave a shit.) and we were fine.
But force me to say I’m wrong because some cheap bastard wants a freebie and he knows that behavior that would have gotten him a spanking when he was 4 but now gets his ass kissed is not acceptable.
Forget it.
“One woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.
She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere.”
So reading all of that, why the hell did this woman fly SWA? That’s exactly what they are known for. It would be like her going to Chuck E. Cheese’s and bitching about the noisy atmosphere interfering with her dinner… and why isn’t there veal piccata on the menu?
Grow up America.
Stop behaving like petulant children.
Employers, start valuing your employees and invest in good ones. We are not disposable… and on the other hand, employees, get off your ass and start focusing on your job.
If you ever wonder why things are being outsourced its because employers are not seeing the value of an on-shore workforce.
Help make us an asset again.
Favorite Things Update…
I’ve been a bit lax on updating, but not too lax. I am a Leo, it takes me a while to fall in love with new things.
~Liam Finn – I’ll Be Lightning (RIAA free!)
~PSP – Patapon
~My Sony eReader (and check out the new one!)
~Pattern Recognition also available in ebook form on the Sony eReader site
~Granite Gear Air Grocery Bag
stop using plastic grocery bags
~Method Plastic Bag Rehab Shopping Bag
stop using plastic grocery bags
Office Do-Over
I’ve probably just had too much coffee and don’t have any work to do that doesn’t make me want to pry my own eyeballs out with a fork, but I really want to rearrange my office area at home.
When VAIOlet was in the shop I moved my former computer beast over as a stop gap solution and consequently I had to switch tables that I use as a desk to another that doesn’t match my desk/cabinet as well as I’d like even if I do like the table I am using now a bit more (Mission style folding dining table from Target).
Here’s what I need to accommodate:
- Very little space. (natch…)
- 2 laptops (though one is teeny and I do have a KVM switch and a 19″ monitor so that should help) + keyboard + Wacom tablet
- printer/scanner (which means it needs to have topside access-I scan a lot more than I print)
- Various electronics such as my speakers/ipod charger and sync, recharger cables (that I need to reorganize the cords so that I can flip the switch and not have their transformers draw power when not in use-but that is another project in itself)
- little box of odds and ends (adapters etc.)
- room to store computer reference books
- room to store project binders
- room for file box (2 actually-they aren’t huge, but they aren’t pretty either and while I need to get to them once in a while, I don’t want to look at them everyday.)
- room for me
- miscellaneous crap that amuses me to look at.
I think the addition of a set of shelves will do the trick, I just don’t know which table I should match… the larger one (and here’s the shelf ) or the wee one (and here’s the shelf ); each has pros and cons such as how much size I have to make room for it, or how much I want to clear out of the area, not to mention how mis-matched it will look with one vs. the other.
I’m also on a Solio kick. I’m going to see if I can just use the Solio (charged only from the sun I get from windows and the car visor on my way to and from work) to charge my Treo 650, my bluetooth headset and my Nano. I want to get a solar panel to stick in the kitchen window (along with the bewildering calculations that it involves to run things hurts my head. Jeebus, I’d rather read Chanson de Roland in Occitan than think in Amps, Watts and Volts. Its a good thing Tex understands that shite… he’s good for a lot of things.) to run whatever I can off of it. I got a sunny window, might as well exploit it.
Sunday was Tex’s birthday
It was also the xtian’s zombie day, so we planned around that and tried to schedule things for Saturday.
I also was kind of insane to get something done this weekend because between Tex getting a new job, various people being out of town before I left for Texas, being gone for 9 days and recovering from being sick those self-same 9 days, my house is a wreck; I have gotten exactly nothing done on my To Do List.
The preceding was a truly horrible sentence.
Anyhoo, I lucked out on Craigslist and found a non-smelly wingback chair for not much money, so we ran out (sniffed it first) then bought it and took it home. I’ve been looking for one of these for ages. Stopped at Target on the way back to see if the Easter stuff was on sale yet, maybe find a slipcover for the chair and get some food. I was trying to avoid the grocery store. For some reason I really hate the grocery stores lately.
We were supposed to go to the Left Bank for Tex’s bday dinner in the afternoon, but he said he really didn’t want to go anywhere and then I passed out on the bed with the cat, so we just hung out at Mike & Lee’s that night and I did my taxes on his TurboTax.
Sunday I decided that we had to actually go out for more things or there wouldn’t be lunch or dinner for the week (getting me to do anything at all after I get home lately is an exercise in futility) and I somehow got it into my head that I wanted an African Violet. The Target nearby has a garden center (one of the few left…and also what the hell is it about them closing it so that people who actually have jobs can’t make it to their hours? Hey Target, if you are trying to prove that it is a money drain, then don’t make it one by making it utterly useless and inaccessible. Gah.) and, again, I wanted to see how soon they would put the easter stuff on sale.
But they were closed.
Hmmm.
Did they do this last year? I don’t recall that they did, but it was irritating. I did manage to get more glucosamine for Bunny at the pet store next door (she was almost out and it is making a huge difference, so I want to continue this). After all that we ended up going to TWO grocery stores anyway for low-carb tortillas and chicken… and I settled for an ivy from the florist’s section, not a violet. Sigh.
Got back and I somehow went into overdrive.
Tex put the chicken in to cook (we got boneless because even though it cost just a little more, there is less waste all around and we don’t spend time prepping the chicken) I made another spinach/bacon egg thing, moved the living room around to accomodate the new chair, vacuumed, folded some laundry and changed the sheet (Bunny made a mess. I love my cat. I love my cat. I love my cat.), did a bunch of dishes, put away the food and made lunch for the next day.
All this in a 4 hour stretch.
I still need to attack my closet, but I don’t ever think it will be tidy again, so I’ll see what I can do.
Also laundry? It sucks.
Well, actually, the washing doesn’t seem so bad. Small loads aren’t bad to hang to dry, but folding and putting away everything kicks my ass.
I think when I have a house that I can plan or re-do, I will put the laundry in my walk in closet. Actually, what I probably will do is just take over a room for my laundry stuff, my Stolmen shelves with all my clothes and travel stuff on it as well as all the general travel-ly stuff in there (books, notebooks, posters, etc) then it won’t be a bad job to put it away as I pull it out of the dryer and think how easy packing will be! I think I will end up needing 5 bedrooms in the house (my bedroom, my office, my closet room, guest room, one more room TBD) along with the other normal rooms.
Looks like I’d better hurry up and win the lotto.
What is Your Egyptian Zodiac Sign?
Sekhmet Observant, authoritative, indulgent, moral and witty. Colors: male: green, female: turquoise Compatible Signs: Bastet, Geb Dates: July 29 – Aug 11, Oct 30 – Nov 7 Role: Goddess of war and vengeance Appearance: Lion-headed woman with the sun over her head Sacred Animal: lion What is Your Egyptian Zodiac Sign? Designed by CyberWarlock of Warlock’s Quizzles and Quandaries |
Get Bent(o).
I have been occasionally taking lunch to work, but I haven’t been putting it in my bento a la fredlet. I found a Thermos Nissan 48 oz. Lunch Tote (at kitchenkapers.com) that I used some last week. But I was still a bit tired from being gone to Texas (having had no time to cook on Sunday which usually provides a week’s worth of lunch food) and then this last week I was a slug again and slept all weekend.
I may have enough energy to get to the supermarket and possibly Costco this weekend – and half the battle is getting Tex to go with me. Its entirely too easy just to slouch around the house all weekend and do nothing.)
I am still getting the hang of arranging the Nissan’s containers for food. The snap-lock ware is pretty good because I can load up the levels with the silicone separators, bulkier foods (sliced mushrooms, strawberries, etc.) and end up with lots of good nibbly food, some of which can be microwaved if necessary. The only problem with it is that it needs refrigeration (not a problem at work for me).
The Nissan is insulated beyond your wildest dreams (I got a cup years ago and it still is the best one I own.) and is good for all cold or all hot, but doesn’t allow for much bulk. I just have to figure out what I will be eating the next day and choose between the two.
Tex will be using his Nissan (I got him one for his bday this weekend-yes, he knows, I’m rubbish and waiting until the day to give him presents.) as he is in his vehicle all day and has no good option for refrigeration.
Anyhoo, the plan is to go to the store this weekend and do a batch of chicken thighs in the rotisserie and all that yummy chicken gets pulled from the bone (by Tex-I don’t touch it) and made into chicken salad or put in chunks in quinoa (reheated in the microwave with butter and parmesan cheese). I’ll do more egg things in the little silicone cups – those work well even cold and then standard lunch fodder like cottage cheese, yogurt, cheeses, fruit, green beans, ham salad, egg salad, etc.
In other news, 9 days on the road did a total number on my skin.
Serious icky poo hand was narrowly averted (and icky poo leg, icky poo arm, etc) by the techniques I figured out last time. A big thing is that my skin gets really dried out in winter in Texas not to mention all the time on planes. Add to that all the Sudafed I took just to be able to not drown I was drier than a husk. Here’s the magic trick: a washrag.
Exfoliate, baby.
I hate washrags. Well, I used to because they would get terribly smelly in the humidity and it grossed me out to have THAT on my skin. But now I have a different bathroom that allows for actual drying and it isn’t disgusting anymore.
Frankly, I’d just use a new one each day if it did because this is the key to keep the icky poo at bay.
Maybe I’ll survive the chore list this weekend since I can breathe AND my skin isn’t trying to crawl off of me.
Cross your fingers, eh?
Sweetwater, Tx
Home of Texas’ Quidditch team.
