Experiments in Anachronism

Current chick shots

2012-02-11T18:49:00.001-08:00

- Fin

2012 Seed List

2012-02-08T10:43:00.000-08:00

This is what is getting planted this year....of course always subject to getting added on to, depending on our whims :)

hairy vetch
oats, hulless
winter rye
amaranth - golden
amaranth - mayo indian
amaranth- love lies bleeding red
bean - dragon tounge
Beans - selma zesta
beans - grandma nellie's yellow mushroom bean
beans - rattlesnake pole
long beans - Chinese mosaic long beans
Long Bean - thai purple podded yard long
beet - lutz salad leaf
beet - chioggia
beet - golden beet
beet - mamoth red mangel
broccoli - romanesco italia
broccoli - waltham 29
cauliflower - early snowball
brussels sprouts- catskill
cabbage - early flat dutch
cabbage - premium late flat dutch
cabbage - red acre
cabbage-savoy
carrot - danvers
carrot - cosmic purple
carrot - jaune Obtuse du doubs
celery - utah tall
corn - cherokee long ear small popcorn
corn- wade's giant indian
cucumber - poona kheera
cucumber - edmonson pickling
cucumber - home made pickles
cucumber - little leaf h-19
eggplant - listada de gandia
eggplant - rosita
ground cherry
red wonder wild strawberry
wonderberry
yellow wonder wild strawberry
Garlic- Best selling sampler
wong bok cabbage
kale-lacinato
kale-vates
kale - russian red
kale - larks tounge kale
leek - king seig
lettuce - iceburg
lettuce - jericho (cos)
lettuce - yougoslavian red butterhead
lettuce - wild garden lettuce mix
melon - edisto 47
melon - kansas
melon - green machine
okra - bowling red
okra - burmese
okra - jing orange
onion - crimson forest-bunching
onion - he shi ko - bunching
onion - evergreen hardy white
peas - sugar snap
pepper- napoleon sweet
pepper-orange bell
pepper- yellow bell
pepper - sweet chocolate
pepper - anehiem
pepper - jalapeno
pepper - ashe county pimento
pepper - corno di toro
pepper - sweet bananna
pepper - aji dulce
wildflower- siberian wallflower
radish - easter egg
rutabega - nadmorska
sorghum - mennonite
wild flowers- maltese cross
spinach - bloomsdale
wild flowers- black eyed susan
spinach - new zeland spinach
Zinnia - persian carpet
spinach - red malabar spinach
squash - kamo kamo
squash - tromboncino
squash - waltham butternut
squash_ golden bush scallop
chard - five color silver beet
chard - oriole orange chard
chard - perpetual spinach
tomato - green zebra
tomato - black plum
tomato - cherokee purple
tomato - yellow bell
tomato - german red strawberry
tomato- otv brandywine
tomato - striped roman
ground cherries - cossack pineapple
turnip - boule d'or
turnip - scarlet ohno revival
watermelon - moon and stars, long milky way
basil - cinnamon
Marigold - brocade mix
basil - holy basil
lavender, english
bee balm - lemon
catnip
Chamomile
parsley - dark green italian
parsley - moss curled
purslane - golden
sage
soapwart
bachelor's button - polka dot mix
cockscomb - dwarf mix
cockscomb - tall
milk thistle
valerian
marigold - tashkent #1
Morning glory - grandpa ott's
Nasturtium - tall trailing mix
Lion's Tail or Wild Dagga
zinnia- Envy
sunflower - peredovik
sunflower- tiger eye
Sunflower - mammoth

I also plan on making seed tapes this year. I've developed a taste for orderly rows that are easy to mulch. I don't have enough patience to plant each individual seed and always end up scattering them. Then I either live with the really spotty coverage that gives, or I dig them up and make nice neat rows. I think just having the tapes from the beginning will make a difference on having to dig things up. I've come to realize that proper spacing makes a difference on how things grow, especially lettuces!

-Fin

The State of Linux (Hint: Still Not Good)

2012-02-07T22:15:00.000-08:00

I try to avoid talking tech on here. I get most of that out of my system during my day job. Yet, my recent foray into running Linux again has me needing to vent. Roughly a year ago, I switched over to Windows 7 for the sake of "it just works". Now, a strong desire to continue on some of my hobby projects, as well as web and server-side scripting development has led me to reinstalling Linux. I tried the "linux in a vm" for a bit. Sadly, the performance just kinda sucked. A second linux partition is a lot cheaper than a kvm switch and new computer.

Who the hell took over development in the Linux world? When I left Gnome, KDE and friends were getting more usable and awesome by the day. Now, it's like someone took a look at the user interface hall of shame, noted all the worst ideas, and puked them out onto a desktop. One would think with all the backing and developer support, the basic menu items would all be tested and work relatively well. Nope, I see random apps with text overflowing (leaving critical portions unaccessible in non-resizable windows), random installation failures when installing "gold" packages, and what appears to be a 5th rewrite of device management where I _STILL_ can't easily browse detected hardware. Somehow, developers have managed to wade 10 years in the same shallow waters while Microsoft and Apple got their shit together and made some decent stuff.

Myopic developers and "UI designers" continue to piss all over the basic idioms "lusers" know, and ignore power users that want things simple. I'd be better with /etc being a mass of binary blobs with FUNCTIONING UIs, as opposed to randomly generated shell fragments with half-assed GUIs attempting to gather the pieces, happily trouncing changes I'd like to make in a sea of "GENERATED FILE DO NOT EDIT" comments. Then, we have the fun of a default theme that leaves me simultaneously straining my eyes to read anything at all and finding random windows with obnoxious huge text overflowing their overly tight boundaries.

Given the number of developers being paid to develop this shit, it's shocking the complete advancement from high school and college students doing all the real work in the mid to late 90s. After being paid to do linux kernel development work for the day job, I know there's some advancement going on under the hood. I also know that when writing a driver, 95% of your time is spent tracking random "fixes" in a source control system that makes IRS tax forms look user friendly.

So far, Linux Mint is proving at least moderately usable compared to the travesty that is Ubuntu and Unity. I'm looking for an alternative to Gnome3 currently - waiting for KDE and XFCE to install. If neither of those don't work out - I've got some old backups of a fvwm95 configuration and a Debian stable download going.

Linux needs FUNCTION, not wiggly windows with drop shadows and a full OpenGL rendered spinning cube for a mouse cursor. I use my computer for work, not masturbating to graphics algorithms.

-- Fate

The otto project updates

2012-02-06T16:15:00.000-08:00

Current tank water tests:

GH =89.5 @ 5 drops
KH= 53.7 @3 drops

GH is lower....KH is higher. The water softner pillow did lower the GH, not the KH tho, from what I can tell.

tds = 468
temp = 75.3

Temp is the same. The tds has increased. After doing some reading that seems to be the case. I tried the peat granuals and all they did was raise the tds to way over 500. So, I am down to buying reverse osmosis water from a big box store. I may do some more testing with peat at a later time, but not the stuff you buy at the pet stores.

Values for replacement water:

GH = turned color on the first drop
KH = turned final color on the first drop
TDS = 31

So basically no hardness to this water at all. I will be mixing it with my water to keep the GH and KH at a reasonable level so I don't end up with a PH crash in this tank. I'm trying to keep the TDS around 100.

This the thread I've been reading to try to copy his results. His water values are higher then mine are but I am also trying to breed crystal red shrimp and pygmy cories.

The TDS of the tank was 355 after the water change so there's no reason to check the other values. I will be doing weekly water changes to get that value down slowly.

The cories were super active after the water change, they are young yet tho, so probably won't see a spawn from them until this spring at the earliest.

- Fin

Chicks LOVE fresh from outside greens!

2012-02-06T13:42:00.001-08:00

- Fin

Crappy picture problem: fixed.

2012-02-05T22:15:00.001-08:00

I got a new case for my phone and shortly after downloaded the Blogger app for my phone. I noticed that the pics I've been uploading have had some weirdness to them that I attributed to the screen over the lenses on my phone. I removed the screen thinking that would help. Not so much, still the weirdness with the pictures. I cleaned the lenses really good thinking that might help, it didn't. I tried messing with the settings on my phone but couldn't see anything that might be affecting it.

I did some looking and noticed that I was uploading pictures just fine to Facebook and Picasso, but not to Blogger. I realized that I could change the picture setting on the Blogger app to upload my original pictures, and bam, problem solved.

I have no idea what the Blogger app was doing to my pictures but changing that setting seems to have fixed things. Posts with pics seem to take slightly longer to upload now, but at least you can see what I was taking the picture of. Not that my camera phone is that amazing, but its sure better then Blogger was making it out to be!

I will be going through and reuploading the pics from the messed up posts probably tomorrow, and shouldn't be seeing this problem in the future.

- Fin

Current fish tank shots

2012-02-05T21:49:00.001-08:00

-Fin

Wings

2012-02-05T21:41:00.001-08:00

You can tell by how feathered out their wings are how that some of them are a couple days older then the others. They are growing so fast.

- Fin

Musings about Chicks

2012-02-04T13:01:00.001-08:00

I've had my chicks for only 24 hours now and already find them so interesting. Nature is amazing to me, providing new and interesting every day.

Some of my chicks hatched Tuesday, some Wednesday and some Thursday. They are mostly all acting the same, even though some are a bit older then others. It's amazing to me that with no mother to teach them how things work they already know. They scratch the ground and peck at it for food. They well regulate how hot or cold they are by moving toward or away from the heat lamp. They drink, automatically like birds.

I'm not sure why I find all this quite as amazing as I do. The instinct on these little creatures is amazing to behold. They hold such great interest and intelligence in their eyes that it just astonishes me.

I've been around other peoples chickens before, seen how they act and interact, heard watching them called chicken tv. I never exactly got it, but I truly do now. Watching chickens be chickens is a lot of fun. They run away if you make sudden movements, but come right back to inspect what you are doing. They let me pick them up and magically bed down and fall asleep if you cover them in your hand. They like to be scratched.

I fully intend on making pets out of these guys, they are my future egg layers. Even the roosters will find a productive place in life, some in the freezer and some breeding a future line of chicks. I want them to have the best life possible, no matter what their future destiny.

I already have plans for future plantings into the yard and garden beds and boxes for them. I am hoping to improve the "grass" in my yard with great diversity so that these guys have plenty to eat while they free range. I am hoping to grow several different kinds of crops to both supplement their foraging and store for winter.

I have big plans for these tiny chicks.

-Fin

Chicks are here!!!

2012-02-03T10:56:00.001-08:00

-Fin

Chicks are coming!

2012-02-02T20:51:00.001-08:00

I was supposed to get them today, however, as of this morning only seven out of the ten I ordered had hatched. Hopefully I will be able to pick them up tomorrow.

I'm getting Buckeye Chickens. They ate a dual purpose egg/meat bird. From what I've read they are very cold hardy so I shouldn't have to worry to much about them this winter.

I've got my brooder all set up:

-Fin

Winter in the Garden

2012-01-31T16:24:00.001-08:00

It hasn't been super cold here this year. We've only had a couple days and many nights below freezing. It's been enough to kill most of the veggies but some are still going, some limping along.

Kale and maybe some Kolrabi:

Garlic:

The cover crop is coming in nicely in places, not as well in others:

Fate took down the Christmas tree yesterday and I cut it up to make a support for some climbing things this summer:

I'm not sure what will be climbing it yet but it should provide a nice support for something.

I've started chopping up the rotted wood for my hugelkulture beds in the front yard. It's slow going. Its hard work and I am convinced I lost a lot of muscle from being vegetarian for so long. Slowly but surely I will build it back up tho. I've got plenty of time.

I've been enjoying going through my seed catalogs this winter. I've am getting ready to put an order in very soon. It's getting time to start seeds for the garden this year. I'm excited to see spring come and things start growing again.

- Fin

27 days

2012-01-28T09:28:00.001-08:00

I changed my diet 27 days ago now to a low carb and sugar free diet. I just went cold turkey, from a vegetarian diet prior, which was interesting to say the least. I am basically following the paleo diet these days, tho that's just a label to make it easy to reference the way I am eating. I've heard it called paleo, primal, caveman, and various other things, all being about the same.

My main goal with changing the way I eat was trying to find a way of eating that 1. Made me feel healthy and 2. Made it more likely that we would eat out of the garden.

Some things that I've noticed after changing my diet for 27 days:

1. No more heartburn

Seriously. I used to have heartburn every day no matter what I ate. It seemed like a constant thing that I was just living with. It's gone now, literally overnight. I hope for good!

2. I feel a lot less tired all the time

I don't feel nearly as run down all the time like I used to. Considering that its winter, which is usually a tough time for my energy levels being anything but non-existent, I think that's pretty impressive.

3. I feel leaner

This isn't about loosing pounds, which I have, but about how my body feels. I used to be pretty substantially muscled, which I feel like I've lost over the last couple years. I've been feeling a lot weaker, as well as just kind of generally "puffy." Not bloated, just kind of fluffy. I've lost about 10lbs according to the scale, but I swear I've lost many inches of fluffyness all over my body. I'm hoping to be able to gain back all the muscle I feel I've lost this year. I'm not concerned with what the scale tells me I weigh, but with how "in shape" I feel in general. I've been feeling more and more out of shape the last couple years, which has seemed strange to me considering I feel I am far more physically active these days then I used to be. I blame it on my former vegetarian diet.

4. I don't have a stuffy nose every morning

Not entirely sure what's up here with this. It used to be that I would wake up every morning and desperately need to blow my nose. Sometimes many times throughout the day. I've felt almost constantly stuffy for awhile now, but for some reason that seems to have gone away. I'm not sure what I cut out that caused this, however, I'm happy about it!

5. I'm loosing that constant craving for sugar

Don't get me wrong, I still want to nom down some chocolate hardcore. I've been slowing myself a couple pieces of chocolate at night, as I feel depriving myself completely of the things I love is foolish. It just makes me more likely to binge on an entire chocolate bar (or three!) when I don't allow myself a small controlled amount. It's the taste of the chocolate I want tho, not the sugar. There was a time where I'd crave sugar constantly, and it didn't matter at all what kind it was. Candy, cookies, cake, tons of sugar in my coffee in the morning, I'd even eat brown sugar straight out of the jar! That craving is going away, slowly, but it is going away. These days I still want the sugar, but its a lot easier to ignore.

6. I am shopping for food almost exclusively at the farmers market

I've bought almost everything in the last few weeks that we've been eating at the farmers market here in town. All localy grown meats and vegetables. This gives me great hope that this year we should be able to eat out of our garden as far as produce goes. I am hoping to be able to have the money to join the meat csa that Parker Farms puts out. This is the farm I've been buying my meat from, and it is awesome.

I know there are more things I've noticed in these 27 days, but those are the ones that stick out in my head. I had said originally that I'd be trying this diet for 30 day and then re-evaluate how I felt....but I can tell you 3 days early (and, really even after the first week!) that I don't intend to change the way I eat.

I just feel so much healthier these days.

- Fin

The Otto Project

2012-01-26T16:36:00.001-08:00

The tank:

The supplies:

The subjects:

The Project:

These guys are Otocinclus vestitus, or at least that's the most commonly imported one and the one I am assuming that I have. They are one of my favorite fish and I've been wanting to try to breed them for awhile now. I've kind of played at it for the last year but I'm getting serious now. They are one of the least bred fish in the hobby, and one of the harder ones to get and keep alive.

Easy to acquire, hard to keep alive due to the fact that they are not fed right in store tanks. I've read that they have a bacteria in their stomach that helps them with their digestion. If they are not fed pretty much constantly that bacteria in their stomach dies off and they soon follow. It's very common to loose these fish between two weeks and a month after you get them home for this very reason. If they stay alive that for the initial month then they seem to be extremely hardy.

Todays test results:

Tds: 389
Temp: 75.3
Kh: 35.8 @ 2 drops solution
Gh: 179 @ 10 drops solution
Ph: 6.6
Ammonia: .5ppm weird
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm

I'm going to be recording my test results on this tank here on this blog. The ammonia reading from today is either a fluke or from the fertilizer tabs I put in yesterday. I will test again tomorrow to make sure. This is a long established tank so I'm not worried about it, there is plenty of established nitrifying bacteria present.

The total disolved solids (tds) are extremely high, as is the general hardness (gh)...we basically have liquid rock for water around here. I'm using a water softener pillow in an attempt to get those values down. According to the directions it should take 48 hours to do its work. I will test values tomorrow to see where we are on that. I bought it on clearence so hopefully it does work!

In the future for water changes on this tank I will be preparing the water ahead of time in an effort to keep the values the same. I may turn up the heater a bit, I haven't decided yet.

This is a good time to be preparing for this as catfish usually breed in the spring. I have some pygmy cories on the same tank I would like to see breed as well. I accidently bred them once back when I first got them (no clue how that happened) but not since, and none of the babies survived as far as I can tell.

The other thing I would like to see in this tank that I've tried and failed at twice now is crystal red shrimp. I think they are awesome looking but with the liquid rock around here they just can't handle it. They need much softer acidic water to even stay alive.

I've been following a thread on one of the forums that I frequent from someone that has bred these guys repeatedly, and am hoping to have as good of results here!

- Fin

Current tank pics

2012-01-25T15:30:00.001-08:00

Did a bit of rescaping over the last couple weeks. I'm not overly happy with the tall tank, but we will see how it grows out.

- Fin

New zones

2012-01-25T15:21:00.001-08:00

Well, what do you know, I'm in zone 6a. I have no idea what zone I was in before, but now I know what zone I would be considered now!

Check out this awesome interactive map with the new listings:

http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/

-Fin

Dear Time Warner Cable,

2012-01-22T22:33:00.000-08:00

Fuck you.

Yes, you read that right.

For the 3rd year now, winter has brought me flaky internet connection. I go to browse the interwebs. The modem dies. I call the support line. As directed, I unplug it and plug it back in. The support line recommends a service technician come out and take a look. The connection comes back online (sometimes minutes before the service technician arrives). The service tech comes around, looks around, and says they can't find a problem. Occasionally, they'll make an appointment for a line technician to come out, replace parts, or say they'll "monitor things". This Wednesday, I'll have my third appointment in 3 weeks. So far this year, I've only lost 1/2 vacation day. I'm actually coming out ahead of last year at this point.

I could switch my business to another company and you wouldn't even notice. Fin's refused to switch over to DSL for a long time now, but we'll likely have AT&T out here shortly if this continues much longer. Bad customer service and high prices? Annoying yes. Forcing me into business with the Death Star? Unforgivable.

I'm not a fan of governmental regulation, but your complete disregard of customer service makes even the most anarchist weirdo want to call up his rep and scream "there should be a law". Even from an "evil capitalist" standpoint, your actions don't make sense. A rough calculation would indicate that it'd take around 6 months to get back the past 3 weeks of phone calls, service appointments, and "line techs". From a corporate perspective, you'd be better off giving me AT&T's number directly at this point, versus having ANOTHER guy come and say he doesn't see anything wrong.

I'm forced to assume you either have employed the most perverse sadists of all time or have an ingrained institutionalized incompetence so truly awesome as to necessitate an academic study. I'm not sure which destroys my hope in humanity more.

If I took a deep look into your company, I'd probably discover many decent technical people floating around in a cesspool of mediocrity. Sure, they might have ideas that'd save you money. Simple things, like tracking an ongoing issue to insure it stops. Perhaps skipping the 3rd technician after each one indicated there was a line issue and sending a line person out. Maybe giving front-line support the ability to start crediting bills when an on-going issue is happening. Realizing that an ongoing issue might be easiest to solve by sending someone out while the problem is actually happening! No doubt the decent people are your company have brought these ideas up. And, I'm sure you have shot each of these ideas down as "costing too much" or being "difficult to implement".

Karma's a bitch when companies start finding customer centric solutions "too difficult to implement". Ask AT&T about regulation. Ask Sprint about customer attrition. Ask Blockbuster about bankruptcy.

Now, please remove your head from out of your ass, and start figuring out how to have some customer service. I don't need you for TV service anymore - not between the great number of online services and cable alternatives in existence. AT&T will work just as well for NetFlix as your sorry ass.

Edit: While attempting to submit this post, I lost my connection. Again.

Raised bed project

2012-01-15T15:02:00.001-08:00

Beds built! Now just gotta fill them!

-Fin

On getting a new truck and reusing stuff

2012-01-15T09:33:00.001-08:00

I totaled my car last week, which is a major bummer to me. I really loved that car. It was getting old, no bones about that, and had some issues that were going to need fixing coming up sooner rather then later, but I still loved that car. It got amazing gas mileage and I could haul a lot of stuff around. I got an average of 40 mpg....and it cost around $20 for me to fill the tank.

Man, oh man does owning a truck after a car like that turn into major shock at the gas pump. I got a 2004 Ford ranger xlt. It's a nice truck. Super comfortable, power everything, not too big to drive around. I get 18mpg. 18. Bleh. It costs me $40+ to fill it up. I can't even go as far on a tank of gas as I could in my car! So not happy about that. I think I'm in for a lifestyle change about the way I drive around.

I'm having trouble with the halving of my gas mileage, using twice as much gas as I was before. I'm not even sure if I think this truck can haul any more then my car could. Using twice as much of a non renewable resource as I was before just does not sit right with me at all.

However...

I was able to respond to an ad on Craigslist for some weathered wood. A lot of weathered wood. A whole decks top of wood someone had pulled off to replace and wanted to get rid of. Non chemically treated weathered wood as far as I can tell.

It's not any good for a deck anymore, a lot of the ends are rotted and the screws that were left in it are rusted through. They are mostly 2 x 6's as far as I can tell of all various lengths mostly over 6 foot. Most of the screws are gone and I didn't see any nails. The boards are solid for the most part if you'd cut off about 2-6 inches off the ends.

Absolutely perfect for my uses.

I am planning on making raised beds in my front yard to hold the dirt I dig out of my new bigger pond project. The beds will be used to plant various garden crops this spring and in future years. What doesn't get used in the front yard will be used in the garden for the same purpose.

I'm got something for free that was someone else's trash I get to put to a new purpose and it stays out of the landfill. I got to save money by having the truck to haul it in, it would have never fit in my car at all. I got to save new lumber from being used for this purpose, saving trees from being cut down needlessly.

Is this one thing worth the environmental hit on halving my gas mileage over all? Not in my mind. Not just this one thing. I hope in the overall ownership of the truck to keep being able to do this kind of thing. Keep offsetting my overall greater gas useage with an even bigger overall greater ability to reuse various things in my projects going forward.

Balance is an important thing in my life. I hope to be able to achieve it with this truck. I think so far with what I've done its been a net win, but I will have to be very aware of this in the future to be able to keep it that way.

-Fin

Karma is a bitch

2012-01-07T09:29:00.001-08:00

I have been struggling in my own head with something for a while now that I thought I had resolved. I guess the law of balances decided to make it quite clear, however, just exactly how it works.

My belief system is set up around the idea that you take responsibility for yourself and your actions and you do so in such a way that you cause the least amount of impact, harm, or suffering on anything not-you involved. No, I am not a perfect person, but I try my hardest to live by my moral and ethical beliefs.

I've been struggling with becoming a meat eater again due to my belief that I should be able to raise and kill my own food and my inability to kill. I don't even have a really good explanation as to why I felt that way. I just feel that if you are going to take a life directly to feed yourself that you should be able to honor that life by raising it humanly and killing it mercifully. An awesome life followed by one quick bad moment.

I've been struggling with the knowledge that given the opportunity to take a life to feed myself that I could not do it. Even with the knowledge that this vegetarian diet was killing me slowly I still knew that if it came right down to it chances were that I would probably starve rather then kill an animal to feed myself.

I had, I thought, come to the realization in my own head that if I could provide a good or service to trade for the meat I needed to survive that that would absolve me from doing the actual killing. It would be enough that I could be part of a community, trading my gifts for someone else's. I even almost believed it. Almost.

There was still a bit of doubt in my head. It was something I strongly believed after all. I never could quite resolve it all neat and tidy in my mind. I figured this growing season I would be producing enough to trade for some of my meat needs and I would be putting adequately back into my "community."

So, a week ago, I started eating meat again. I made sure the meat I bought for my consumption was ethically and humanly raised and slaughtered. I made sure that all my values were being upheld in what I consumed. I did my research! I still had this little niggling doubt in my mind that I was trying to resolve but I felt strongly that I was doing the right thing.

I've started feeling a lot better this week. My body needs meat aparently, but that's what I've thought anyway for a while now.

I hit a deer with my car Thursday morning. Three days after starting to eat meat again. Three days after not quite really resolving my mind on the whole issue. My car, which I absolutely loved more then most stuff in my life, was completely totaled. My body was banged up, but I wasn't seriously hurt.

I killed the deer.

This is probably one of the most horrible things I've ever done in my life. I will feel absolutely horrible and guilty about it for the rest of my life. I'm not talking about the fact that I killed the deer, I'm talking about the amount of time it suffered before it died.

I carry an extremely sharp hunting knife in my purse. Unfortunatly, I didn't damage the deer enough to be able to get close enough to cut its throat with my knife. I called the police to come and kill it with a gun, since I didn't have the resources avaliable to do it myself. The policeman took almost 30 minutes to get to the scene. Not more then 5 minutes before he arrived the deer died, having suffered, I am sure horribly, for far too long. I saw the damage my car inflicted after the fact. He really did suffer horribly.

No, this was not my fault. Yes, this was an accident. I lost one of my favorite things in the world and watched an animal die a horrific and pain filled death by my hand. I learned something about myself in the process.

I can kill.

No, I will never be able to kill without remorse. I don't think anyone who is not a psycopath could, or at least I'd hope not. I can, however, make sure an animal that's been raised ethically and humanly has a quick and as painless as possible death. I need to feed myself and by honoring the animal completely by the way I raise it and use the entire thing with no waste, I am honoring my value system.

That deer that I killed is currently in my back yard being eaten by my dogs. Whatever is left over when they are done will go in the compost pile to feed the plants in my garden in the future. Everything will be used and I have learned something about myself in the process, this is how I thank that deer for its sacrifice.

I guess karma has a way of resolving things for you when you try to take the easy way out.

- Fin

Distractions

2012-01-06T22:11:00.000-08:00

I often find myself annoyed by the environmentalist type so caught up in what they're "doing" that they wonder around stomping on others without realizing it. Often, they'll look at others doing various projects with a distinctive air of superiority reeking of smug. There's a word for them: assholes.

For roughly 3 years now, I've been vegetarian. Fin turned to the vegetarian path not long after for her own reasons. And now, after 3 years of towing the hippy not-quite-vegan line, I'm scarfing steak, jerky, and chicken soup. Well, sortof, I'll get into that later.

When making an active attempt to build/create a different lifestyle, it's pretty easy to get caught up in your own shit. Next thing, a long look in the mirror and it's pretty obvious you've joined ranks with the asshole crowd. I'd like to think 3 years of being vegetarian would be a net-win for the environment. Now, it looks more like a distraction than anything meaningful.

Before jumping into the asshole camp again, let me say if that's your thing, kudos to you. I've done it long enough to know how much it can suck living in a world tailored around veggies as side-dish only. Going out to eat is near impossible, parties tricky at best, and often meals require substantial backup planning. A vegetarian diet isn't easy. Of course, you can look in the mirror and say - "I haven't supported factory farming today."

Well, not really. You haven't support factory MEAT farming. That load of chips? Factory. That veggie burger patty? Factory. That bottle of ketchup? ... The list goes on.

From a "sustainability" culture standpoint, Fin and I made some big mistakes while we were vegetarian. Instead of meat, we ate meat substitutes grown with fairly traditional agriculture, occasionally slapped with an organic label, and then thrown into the super-market complete with easy-plastic packaging. Making one big decision led us to cheating on hundreds of day to day decisions in food purchasing.

After some substantial discussion as to pro/con on being vegetarian and other general dietary choices, Fin decided to leave the vegetarian camp, and I decided to follow her. We also decided at the same point to only eat meat after doing some homework to insure the farm treated its livestock with dignity. In practice, this leaves eating out mostly vegetarian. I'll leave it to Fin (or at least another post) to fill in the details.

When researching local farms, farmers markets, and coops though, Fin and I saw the local community in a new way. There's a fairly good number in the metro area dedicated to the ideas of local agriculture and sustainability. Organic or no, a quick search finds multiple producers nearby.

Of course, we knew about the local farmers markets, but the reality of our food choices became clear. Our vegetarian lifestyle didn't include supporting the local markets, it just continued feeding the Walmarts of the world more profits for overpriced 'organic' goods.

In short, sometimes multiple small and continued gestures can do more than a concentrated grand gesture. Something to keep in mind for our next effort.

Finding the beauty in winter

2012-01-03T10:00:00.001-08:00

My garden is all but shut down for the winter. There is still a few edible green things out there but they are few and far between: turnips, kale, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts. Usually this would be cause for a serious bout with the blues for me. Not this year, this year I wanted things to be different.

I used some cold frames to extend my season this year, but was only partially sucessful with that. I learned a lot: cold frames need venting as much as possible or things tend to mold with all the moisture, even warm the lack of sun causes things to grow much slower, frosted tomatoes don't ripen off the vine. I went ahead and closed down the beds that were cold framed a couple weeks ago and planted a cover crop in them.

I'm making an effort to see the beauty in the winter garden this year. This isn't something I've ever done before. I usually just walk away from the garden when things start dying back since the dying foliage usually depresses me. This winter I focused on cutting down the things that were frosted and composted them in my newly built pallet compost bins. I made sure that every square inch of bare soil had something covering it.

This fall I brought in a bunch of composted horse manure and some composted cow manure to help build the soil fertility. I planted cereal rye as a cover crop to build a deeper tith to the soil. The cover crop came up nicely and is providing a beautiful green grassy look to the mulched beds of the garden. I am excited to see what the soil looks like in the spring after adding all of this to the beds.

The beauty of the winter garden is hard to explain to someone, but its there. It's in the potential for the spring. It's in the green of the last veggies holding on. It's in the cover crop holding down and improving the soil. It's in the potential new pond site, just waiting to be dug out.

This winter is the first year I've ever been deliberate about trying to enjoy the season. I decided to try taking a niacine supplement to hopefully help with my seasonal depression and it has helped so much. I notice it helping in drastically upping my cold tolerence as well as my mood. I've had the ability to see the joy in the season even when it gets darker every day as the cold intensifies.

Winter solstice has passed and the days are gradually getting lighter longer and longer again. Soon the promise of winters potential for growing will be realized and my favorite seasons will be here...but until then I will try to continue seeing the beauty in winter.

Of course it helps that I should be starting seeds for spring soon too!

- Fin

2012 New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

Well, it's that time again. 2012 is here, and I'm doing my usual "New Year's Resolutions". Fin noted that my resolutions are really more goals - and I'm ok with that. I'd rather have goals to accomplish than vague notions of things I'd like to do.

Anyway, here goes.

1. Pay-off 2 more major debts
Continuing with the "Dave Ramsey" plan here. At some point, I'll chronicle the travails of Fin and I working our way out of debt. It's been a long road, but the end, while a ways off, is finally coming into view across the horizon.

2. Make liquid soap and write some tutorials on Soaping
Mostly, this will be a challenge in obtaining potassium hydroxide. Sodium hydroxide is fairly available at a few local hardware stores. I'll also need to do a little bit of research into the differences between the saponification processes. I'd also like to write some tutorials on how to make soap, for other curious people.

3. Perfect 3 Chopin pieces
Right now, I'm considering Prelude in E minor Op. 28 No. 4, Prelude in B minor Op. 28 No. 6, and Nocturne in Eb Major Op. 9 No. 2. I'm also experimenting with a webcam and mic setup, hopefully I'll be able to record and post some playing. We'll see how that goes.

4. Make Time-Lapse Garden Video
I've been discussing this one substantially with Fin. The idea is to record a video of the garden over the course of a year, and post it to online. Hopefully, with a soundtrack I've create myself as well. This is going to be a rather involved project. I've begun looking for materials / equipment / camera angles and ideas.

5. Play in a recital or public forum
Not entirely sure where / when this will happen, but I hope to work more on playing in public for 2012. Since the start of 2011, I've gotten a lot better about dealing with performance anxiety and public playing. Hoping to continue this progress into 2012 and hopefully start looking at doing gigs the year after.

6. Take a few days off this Summer for some local vacationing
This is largely dependent on 2012 not sucking like 2011. In 2011, many of my vacation days were used visiting sick family. Still, I have a fairly good balance at the end of the year, even after taking several days off to see a wedding across country. In the 'vacation time is meant to be used' vein, I'm hoping to actually take some time off this spring/summer to do local stuff in KC. Current ideas: Apple/Berry picking, helping Fin do garden stuff, Lake trail biking, maybe finally visit local museums.

7. Take a trip to CA.
Fin isn't the only one that wants to see friends in CA - so if she goes I go (provided we can afford the tickets). I'll be keeping an eye out for deals through the year, and hopefully we can figure out how to swing it without spending boatloads of cash.

8. Responsibly add meat back into my diet
After some considerable discussion, Fin and I have decided that we'll be moving away from a vegetarian diet. The reasons and thoughts behind this will likely involve an entire dedicated blog post, but the summation is that being vegetarian doesn't fit well with our goals of being self-sufficient and sustainable. Fin will likely start before me, as I've decided to get a couple blood panels done before and after to see the effects of changing on my blood chemistry.

9. Eat out lunch only 1x a week and on special occasions
I must admit to a bit of an addiction to fast-food and eating out for lunch. I think a lot of this has to do with being vegetarian and having difficulty packing decent, non-repetitive lunches. Usually, Fin helps keep frozen lunches in the freezer, quiet often pastas and rice-heavy dishes. At lunch, I generally look at these and find them relatively unappetizing - wanting something heavier / different.

10. Martial Arts / Gym / Park?
Maybe I'm kidding myself about this. There's a lot I'm trying to figure out in what this meant to me earlier, what it means now, and why I haven't gone back. I think the reality is basically the 45 minute drive across the city is too much for a class I can't afford financially anyway. I do know there's some Tai Chi and Yoga classes about that are free/cheap. There's also a few other martial arts studios much closer to home. I'm also considering perhaps other forms of exercise now. I do know there was a spiritual component to MA that was important to me.

I would add an "honorary" 11th, but that didn't make it in the list. This year, I'd like to actually write about how these goals progress a little bit more. However, I'm striving to make this list realistic and writing on this blog generally happens when I feel a need to broadcast something versus everyday events.

Happy New Year everyone and may your resolutions end up working out. :-)

The Folly of Modern Convenience

2012-01-02T09:45:00.002-08:00

For over two years now I've been comitted to an every other week meat pickup that consists of the trashed meat from a major retail chain. This is a twice weekly pickup, of which I only participate in twice a month. The average size of the pickup is in the 1500lb range....every time.

Did you realize that those clean, tidy, non bloody, sterile, styrofoamed bottom plastic wrapped chunks of meat in the grocery store were once a living animal that had to die so you could have the convenience of popping in to your one stop shoping experience so far removed from the place that meat comes from that there are actually people out there that have no idea what meat really is? I wish I was kidding.

We were a society with a farm on every corner, a garden in every back yard, milk delivered fresh from the cow in glass reusealbe bottles , a society that knew the person who raised their food and the location of where it came from. These days if you ask somene where food comes from they are likely to say "the store." When asked where the store gets it from they probably don't even know. If you ask the store where the food on their shelves comes from they are likely to name off one of only a few conglomerate food distribution companies...and have no knowledge of where those companies get that food from.

Every time I turn around these days it seems like there has been another recall on some form of food that has been tainted in some way or another with bacteria of one sort or another. Back when I started to keep track of all of this, back when I went vegetarian, it was only meat of one kind or another that was involved in these recalls. These days it seems to be a little of everything. Within the last couple of weeks a local man died from tainted cantelope. Tainted cantelope. Tainted....cantelope? This just blows my mind.

I've seen first hand in the last 2+ years how much food gets thrown away by just one major retail store here in the metro area. This is just meat and processed meat products. From there I can extrapolate easily the amount of fresh produce, bread, dairy and so called shelf stable foods get trashed as well. Let me tell you that the shear amount of waste that goes on from each and every retail store around the states will absolutely blow your mind. You truly have to see it to even imagine the scope of it. This was, before it passed its "use by" date, perfectly edible food for human consumption. I'm not even talking about the millions of pounds of food included in the recalls for one reason or another that is destroyed. I'm just talking about the food that was shipped in from all over the globe so the average consumer could have the convenience of one stop shopping. This is the food that gets too old to be either "pretty" or "safely eaten."

I have little to no sympathy or patience for the talk I hear about people starving either here in the states or around the world. It's not that I'm not a compasionate person, that's not it at all. My heart goes out, it truly does. However let's not fool ourselves into thinking that there isn't enough food in this world to go around. I'm not even including the food each and every one of us lets go bad in our pantry, freezer, or fridge here. I'm sure that adds up as well. I'm simply talking about the food that every day ends up in the landfills feeding no one due to our cultures insistance upon "convenience."

So, for the last 2+ years, I've been picking through the meat only garbage of a typical major retailer for food for my cats and dogs. 99% of this food is either on the day of expiration or only 1 day past it. Perfectly edible for even human consumption. Yet, its trash. Don't talk to me about people starving in this country, I've seen the reason.

This meat pickup that I've been doing for 2+ years is at an end, I won't be seeing the folly of modern convenience anymore going forward but you better believe that I will never forget it.

- Fin

Downtown Denver Aquarium

2011-12-29T16:32:00.001-08:00

I'm currently in Denver for a wedding so of course I had to go check out the local fish stuff! Too bad I'm a weekend early for the local fish club meeting :(

We went to the downtown denver aquarium yesterday evening and it was truly amazing. I took a bunch of pics from my camera phone and some of them turned out pretty awesome. The link is here if anyone wants to see them.

We also went to a couple different aquarium stores today that I would recommend if you are in denver, nice selections at both. Lots of plants at Fish Den AND they gave me the fish club discount with my HAAS card! They said they were low on plants and fish cause of the holidays and they STILL had a great selection! They had a ginormous flowerhorn there, biggest I think I've ever seen. Then: Some plants, a few unusual fish, and some neat salt stuff at Todd's Tropical Fish.

A couple of recent fish tank pics

2011-12-27T17:24:00.001-08:00

Blogging from my phone and some new years goals

2011-12-27T10:17:00.001-08:00

Mostly I'm far too lazy to go find the laptop, set it up, log in, post, balh blah blah blah from the computer. Usually by the time I do all that I've forgotten what I wanted to post anyway. I downloaded the google Blogger app for my Android phone...so we will see how this works out for me. Hopefully it will lead to me posting more, especially since I originaly intended to keep track of progress in the garden and with other things urban sustainability like....and that has been a complete and utter fail all around. My total of posts has been completely lame in the last couple years now(!) This blog has been up.

There's been a lot going on. A lot. I expanded the garden after the season ended this year...and considering expanding it further before the ground freezes. I learned a lot this year from it. Built a pond....expanding that this spring now. Built a solar heater....planning on v2 now that I've seen v1 in action. Haven't used my dryer since spring....and not planning on using it any time soon. Much more I can't think of right off the top of my head, which sucks because its all stuff that would be awesome on the blog.

I don't do new years resolutions, however, I do have some goals for this coming new year (in no particular order):

1. Actually blog
2. Start eating a more paleo diet while still applying the ethics of why I went vegetarian in the first place.
3. Actually harvest and eat what I grow in the garden
4. Obtain chickens
5. Talk fate into rabbits
6. Build v2 of solar heater
7. Minimize watering in the garden
8. Year round use of the clothes line
9. Better note keeping of garden progress
10. Get the greenhouse up and running
11. Grow all annuals for the garden from seeds
12. Get healthy through food, not drugs
13. Buy local for what I can't produce myself
14. Visit my bff in california at least once this year

I think that's a good start...I know there are a bunch more things I've been kicking around but most of them fall under those kind of general goals for the year.

Merry (late) Christmas

- Fin

Fate's 2011 Resolutions Recap

2011-12-24T07:50:00.000-08:00

2011 has been something of a rough year, rather have in the "bad times". Things are looking up now, and looking back, I see a lot of Fin and I supporting each other. It's weird how nasty happenstance can make a relationship stronger. But, that'd be the subject of another blog post.

I'm going to make this recap short.

1. Better manage eating out and bringing lunch to work
EPIC FAIL. I'm getting slightly better at the end of the year, but Sept-Nov were really awful on this.

2. 3 camping trips for 2011 - with 1 in a new location.
FAIL. We did however take a few trips across the country. Seeing Nashville was fun. Sadly, our vacation time was largely nuked by family challenges.

3. Pay off one more loan.
WIN. The "Dave Ramsey Plan" is working well.

4. Do more writing / more blog posting.
FAIL. I've actually been far more focused on piano this year.

5. Ship something at work or home.
WIN. I hope to post the press release about this when it's out.

6. Improve garden and yard care.
FIN - WIN. ME - FAIL. Fin made a lot of progress on the garden this year. I'd like to say I did more, but I worked a lot this year. Garden looks a lot better now.

7. Return to Martial Arts.
EPIC FAIL. I've been thinking a lot about this, and most of my return is directly related to money. I'm considering some alternatives on how to make this inexpensive, but the reality is this is an expensive hobby.

8. Unpack office, file 'to file pile', and unpack 1 garage box.
Mixed. A couple boxes have FINALLY been unpacked. Office still needs unburied and shit needs filed.

9. Start making molded soap.
Partial WIN. I made one batch of molded soap, it turned out ok. Need to continue on this.

10. Complete at least one carpentry / wood working project solo.
FAIL. Never really had a solid idea that panned out.

Black Friday Suggestion

2011-11-24T10:18:00.001-08:00

If you're going to do some shopping tomorrow, why not support locally owned businesses instead of mega-chains?

http://kansascity.about.com/od/shopping/tp/HolidayGiftsKC.htm

http://www.kckidsfun.com/2008/11/kansas-citys-toy-stores/

Eden Alley notes on Plaza

Consider stopping by the "HMS Beagle" in Parkville, MO or "Brookside Toy and Science" in Brookside. If you're shopping online, consider using a smaller online store, Etsy, etc... And remember when shopping for yourself, most of these super awesome "black friday deals", can be met and then some at local thrift stores - with the bonus of supporting various charities.

Happy Thanksgiving All!

Politics of Anger: Introduction

2011-11-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

I promised myself to never really discuss politics here. Political discussions often devolve into shouting matches on the internet. Still, the whole "occupy wall street" and "tea party" crowd have grown in such popularity that I can't seem to turn around without seeing something new from them.   Fin and I started this blog with the goal of expressing our journey down a different lifestyle, and these two groups converge at a portion of that journey for us.

As a country, we are in the midst of a sudden and dramatic shift in politics. For years, we've seen the politics of fear. Now, we're seeing the politics of anger.    When OWS started, I strongly sympathized with the protester. I saw people out there making a statement. They say something isn't right, but never what. Now, the rallying call against elites brings many together, all with different agendas.

This of course, made it easy for the media to distort and misrepresent the goings on. In turn, other supporters of OWS make post destroying strawman arguments in themselves based on earlier strawman arguments."Official" voices (as much as a decentralized protest could have) didn't help matters either - contradictory statements, sometimes intelligent, sometimes idiotic, sometimes angry, sometimes obscure...   In any case, this post isn't about any of the "output" from the OWS or Tea Party crowds. It's about "the problem".

Previously working in consumer electronics, I've seen the decision processes large corporations use. Products are designed for what the company thinks will sell, at the price they think they'll sell for, all based on the current "market". Anymore that means, frankly, cheap shit. The "market" here wasn't someone in a dark room making calls for everyone - it was the sales figures coming in at the end of the day. People wanted widget A for $69.99, so by God we'd deliver.

And what the people want, they got. Screw the consequences, or the poor 10yo kid that gets to drink lead poisoned water after you trash toxic electronics in a bargain bin "recycling program". Doing procurement now in a new industry with lower cost constraints, I'd figured I'd look at "buying American". Try to find someone that produced stuff in the states with provable ethics. You know what? They don't exist. Why? Because we drive them out of business.

If I'm making the next whiz-bang electronic device, I grab a catalog of manufacturers of various parts. They give me prices, and a minimal bit of info about the company. I call up the company, and find out about the part, make sure it'll meet whatever requirements I have. I hope that when I order these parts, they're produced ethically.   I might even ask for information about the company, or make sure they meet various materials safety standards. At the end of the day though, I have to trust them and still figure out a way to get widget A down to a price people will pay.

The buck doesn't stop at the producers though. The big box stores purchase from the producer, with the aim of keeping overhead low enough to hit the price point people will buy at. Perhaps this means hiring minimum wage workers, or gouging people unpaid overtime.

It's hard to see until you take a step back from it, but the middle class works and toils endlessly to have a never ending supply of bigger and fancier toys - smartphones, high definition TV, video game systems. The same mindset extends to food, as we choke down "all you can eat steak" at the local buffet without any consideration of quality.    And when we run out of money? Put it on credit.

Our government reflects our society. Willing, in large part, to mortgage our future and work to further the development of toys. I can't really blame the government much either. If people woke up tomorow forced to pay 10x as much for a phone, TV, or food, there'd be a rebellion. I have no doubt in my mind that there are some of the "1%" crowd that plot to expand their empires without regard to anyone. For that crowd to do ANYTHING, however, requires the implicit support of everyone else:

The engineer that picks a part while overlooking the suicide rate of a factory. The business owner that hires unrealistically low bidders for services.   The consumer ignoring quality in favor of cost and advertising.   The voter willing to vote for the crooked candidate because they pay lip service to a single issue (here's a hint for both sides - they don't give a DAMN about the big-A word).   The shopper financing everything without concern for never-ending payments.

There's a lot of noise coming from the OWS and Tea Party crowds, but mostly I hear anger.   Some of that anger is directed positively, but a lot of it simply floats around splashing randomly. I'd like to point out where that misdirected anger needs put:

Look in the mirror

Fate’s Piano Adventures - The Forgotten Moments

2011-03-13T10:13:00.001-07:00

William Tell Overture Part 1

In general, classical music exists in little tidbits on the web and radio or as background music for movie trailers. Most performances and recordings show off the ‘popular part’, but leave the remainder of the song out.

Today, I’m not feeling much for writing a long blog entry, so I’ll leave you with two of these ‘forgotten moments’. The start of the William Tell overture (aka theme to Lone Ranger), and the end of the Moonlight Sonata, a popular piece for beginners to learn provided they completely ignore the second half…

Excellent performance of 3rd movement of Moonlight Sonata

Fate's Piano Adventures - Unexpected Discoveries in American Music History

2011-02-27T19:04:00.000-08:00

I don't often venture into 'race' here, but I thought I'd take a few moments to write about my current piano adventures, and the topic seems even more appropriate given that it's currently Black History Month.

Getting back into piano, I've found a strong desire to learn more than simply old-school "classical" music (Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Mozart...) Last weekend, my wife and I visited a rather large estate sale, and I happened to stumble upon a collection of sheet music. Thinking some of the pieces looked interesting, I grabbed the stack and took it home. Out of the entire stack, one piece in particular drew me in. Yellowed paper, much older than I, marked on the top as "The St. Louis Blues."

Now, while I may have a significant degree of knowledge on classical music, modern music (past the early 1900s) is not my strong point. My radio does stay tuned to stations playing mostly recent stuff, but I'm not a music historian or 'nerd' beyond my little bit of piano. And really, if I had been, I would have immediately recognized the title.

Interested in learning what the song should "actually" sound like after pounding it on the piano for a week, I began doing some research. Quickly, I discovered that this particular song was created by the "Father of the Blues" himself, W.C. Handy. As musician, I can easily recognize the influence of Blues in modern Rock, Metal, Country, and so on. But, I find it fairly amazing that I never really stopped to consider the Blues itself and how it developed. Or the person(s) responsible for its popularization and push into the American mainstream.

The Blues was around before Handy came on the scene, but it was musicians like him that helped popularize and influence American music history as a whole. As time moved on, the St. Louis Blues would become a standard part of Jazz reportoire, played by the likes of Louis Armstrong.

The more I learn of 20th century music history, the more interesting I find the various cross-overs of cultural and racial divides. Even in the past decade, modern music genres have obvious roots in the past crossing racial boundaries:

Studying early and mid 20th century artists like Oscar Peterson, Ray Charles, and now earlier links as well, has definitely aided in understanding how 'Piano' works with modern music, and is helping me, I feel, be better at what I do. Interestingly enough, even some of the most stereotypically "white" music - country - has obvious and traceable influences.

Anyway, I leave you with a video on the cross-over between two of my all time favorite musicians - Johnny Cash and Ray Charles.

More on W.C. Handy:
[1] http://www.una.edu/library/about/collections/handy/
[2] http://www.wchandymusicfestival.org/history.html
[3] http://www.biography.com/articles/W.C.-Handy-39700

NFL shows no talent in finding talent

2011-02-06T21:05:00.001-08:00

I like watching the ads and the game. Unlike most people, I'm also interested in the half-time show and the national anthem. Mostly, I'm curious how the singer will present the national anthem, and what tweaks they'll do to it. I also like live music, so I'll pay attention to the half-time show.

I'm not a tweed wearing patchouli splashed hipster who discusses obscure indie-bands in some sorta effort to win a pissing content on being anti-establishment. Nor am I some conservatory trained brat that discusses at length how Lang Lang is an overrated pianist and that any real musician would understand the proper interpretation of some obscure classical piece (and then gripe it wasn't actually classical). I have no aspirations of being a professional musician. I simply enjoy music - I don't really care what form or if it's popular or not. I like major commercial labels, indy, and stuff played at smokey bars in scary areas of town.

I should know now to not expect much from the clowns that run these shows, but year after year has shown nothing but disappointments. I'm not sure what made this year so much more remarkable to me, enough to write about it. Perhaps the butchering of the national anthem. Frilly, showoff singing, while butchering the words. To the performer's credit, at least she kept going. That ability is one of the big separators between amateurs and the pros'.

The halftime show was a disgrace. Hardware issues in performances happen, but at some point I must wonder what's going on. In general, it sounded like whoever ran the mixing board smoked a bit much before the show, passed out, and managed to flop across the board leaving all the levels set randomly. One overly auto-tuned main singer, and then another that cut in and out all the while being out of tune. I almost wonder if some software error forced us to hear uncorrected audio.

I must admit to being partial to the 80's costumes, but the dull lifeless performance put a sour taste in my mouth for a band I occasionally like... I'm not sure exactly why the Halftime shows continue to suck. I thought it was the continued usage of bands well past their prime, but today's show throws that basic assumption in doubt as well. At this point, I'd rather see a college marching band... Maybe something about the huge stage takes a band like the Black Eyed Peas and zaps them of talent, leaving them a group of lifeless zombies stumbling through set after set.

I'm not a big fan of country, but maybe they should consider throwing country acts at it for SuperBowl 46. Hey, they'd probably at least get the words to the national anthem right...

Fate's Piano Adventures

2011-01-30T07:23:00.000-08:00

Fin recently decided to dive into aquariums and has been some awesome things with our tanks. We now have four active running aquariums, with varying degrees of decor. For a while, we'd both been just coming home and watching TV. But, seeing her interest in taking up a hobby, I've decided to get reinvolved in another long running hobby of mine: the piano.

I've "played at" the piano for roughly 20 years now, and after 2 decades of playing, you'd think I would have achieved some mystical level of awesomeness. While the knowledge of piano has been floating around my brain for 20 years, I've only actively played for roughly 9 or 10 years. And of those, I received formal training for roughly 2 or 3 years. Playing actively for multiple years, then taking a multi-year hiatus results in going back in time abit and having to relearn.

In my high school days, I developed a list of pieces I wanted to be able to play, and started trying to knock them off one by one. I hit a rather massive brick wall on Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G minor. I played it for a few months, but it always sounded forced, strained, and mistake filled in playing.

This was only the 3rd piece in my list... My tastes have changed a bit, though I still really like a lot of Rachmaninoff in general. Were I to take on one of Rachmaninoff's preludes now, I'd probably go after G Sharp Minor Op. 32 No. 12. That said, I'm putting more advanced pieces on "pause" for the time being.

I believe every pianist has 3 levels of playing - "polished", "sortof", and "delusional". A child walks up to the piano, starts tinkering, and may develop a delusional playing level of Horowitz or Mozart. Then, a teacher gets a hold of them and either starts pushing their actual playing level up (letting them decide where they're at), or crushes the delusion making them quit altogether. At first, the "polished" and "sortof" levels stay very close, but some pupils go out and venture into other more advanced works they want to play, perhaps before they have the skill or technique to do it. More advanced pieces can move up "polished", but in my experience only moved up "sortof".

So right now, I can "sortof" play various pieces from Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff. But, pieces I can polish and play convincingly (make it sound like it should and add my own feeling to) are on the same level of a 2nd or 3rd year piano student. And some of my "foundations" are more remedial than that. When I started "playing at" the piano again, I decided that I wanted to venture out into other types of playing - Jazz, Blues, Standards. Quickly, I discovered that my high level of "sortof" couldn't overcome my very low "polished" level. And then, I realized that I had deluded myself into believing I was better than I was (at least in terms of technique). So, I went on Craig's list in search of a piano teacher, found one, took lessons for a couple months, then crashed and burned, deciding to just "noodle" and not worry about learning for real.

Then, a few weeks ago, something clicked in my head on some of the advice the piano teacher had given me. Sadly, while she was a good player, I don't think she was the best at teaching, being relatively new (I doubt she was giving intermediate-advanced lessons for more than a couple years, if that). So now, I'm playing again and advancing at a steady pace. Every now and then I take one of the "sortof" pieces of the shelf and discover that I can no longer play a section or can mystically play a section better. The sections I can no longer play, generally tend to be those that never sounded "right" in the first place, and looking at it again, I can move it back up into the "sortof" category but a bit more polished.

In a personal effort to keep my advancement going, I've decided to try to write here about it. Hoping that the effort will keep my thinking about and playing more. We'll see how it works.

Fate's 2011 Resolutions

2011-01-01T10:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I told Fin I wrote a couple blog posts. Her immediate response? "So, did you post your Resolutions recap and are planning on posting resolutions for next year?" Me: "...." Well, why not? It's tradition... So, new years resolutions, again:

1. Better manage eating out and bringing lunch to work
Fin and I have a basic "frozen leftovers" system where we freeze main courses for me to grab with my lunches. Still, I find I've slipped on my lunch grabbing for the office. This year, my goal is to get back to eating out only 1x a week, and making that a more planned event.

2. 3 camping trips for 2011 - with 1 in a new location.
This is less a resolution and more of a plan. Next year, I'd like to make 3 camping trips instead of 2. This really depends on both Fin and my schedules, but I think it should be doable.

3. Pay off one more loan.
Making good progress on this. With any luck, this will be nuked from my resolutions list the next couple go-a-rounds.

4. Do more writing / more blog posting.
I've got a few writing projects in my head that I'd like to get accomplished. I'd also like to see myself blogging here more often and about more stuff. I started the year off right on that, let's see if I can keep it up. This years goal is 1 post a month here, and at least half of a book I want to write.

5. Ship something at work or home.
My professional life has seen so many, many canceled projects and products and time sinks over the past few years. I'm hoping to get something out the door either professionally or in my hobby time. By the time this year is out, I'm determined to have SOME software being used by a new customer SOMEWHERE. Damnit.

6. Improve garden and yard care.
For 2011, I'd like to see us have a better looking yard / and continue on making the garden awesome. This year, we did a lot to get the garden started. This next year, I'm hoping to continue that tradition, and help Fin make an even better garden. There's a few things that went wrong last year, and a lot we did right. This year, we should be able to do even better. Better yard care basically means keeping a solid schedule of cutting the grass, triming the bushes, and ensuring the garden doesn't get overgrown.

7. Return to Martial Arts.
With the new job, the work/schedule/money matrix looks a lot better for making this happen. It might have happened last year, except I started in mid-Dec right before the holiday season. With the holiday's past, this should be doable. It's just a matter of getting the motivation now that several obstacles are improved. By December next year, I'd like to have a couple months attendance at a local school. After that, I'll decide if my not returning was do to lack of interest or being overwhelmed otherwise.

8. Unpack office, file 'to file pile', and unpack 1 garage box.
I'm simplifying my unpacking resolution this year to something very specific. There's probably too much crap floating around the house to see everything unpacked, but this should be doable and greatly improve our computer area.

9. Start making molded soap.
At this point, I've made some solid soaps, and an (accidental) batch of liquid soap. With this years Christmas presents, I have some nice soap molds. I hope to make some cool molded soaps. I'm also thinking about maybe introducing color into the soap as well. Right now though, I do like the no added colors and only essential oils for scent though.

10. Complete at least one carpentry / wood working project solo.
I like that I've got family willing to help with a lot of this sorta stuff, but, I'd like to start doing more of this stuff on my own too, now that I'm getting a better feel for how it works.

Fate Gets A New Job

2010-12-31T09:43:00.000-08:00

I don't talk much about work here for a couple major reasons. First, I'm not a big fan of writing 'blog-as-therapy' entries. Second, my old employer forbade work-related blogging. Big companies generally try to keep their outward facing image consistent. Individuals muck that up.

Now, I'm sure all 3 of our readers will likely have noticed something of a sharp decline in the amount of entries here. I like writing, and when I started this blog, I had high hopes the experiments Fin and I were doing in our daily lives (trash reduction, used vs. new, composting, soap) would make interesting reading. We continued the experiments but I never really wrote about them. And really, the experiments continued more from Fin's stick-to-it-ness than my efforts. For the past year or so, I've been fighting depression.

In early November, I stayed home sick a few days with the flu. Staying at home, I realized just how crappy "the job" making me feel. Of course, it doesn't help when you've heard so much news about lay-offs and friends having difficulty finding or keeping a job. The thought comes, shouldn't I be happy to just have a job? In my head, there's a whole essay that answers that question. The short version is that in life it's important to be happy with what you have, but also strive to do what you want. But then, where will you go?

"But where will you go?" is a bullshit question for fear based decision making. When asked by yourself or others, it tends to be more of an answer than a question. It's implied that there's not a better solution or way. You're at the top of the world already, any other direction will be a step down. Being successful means finding where you want to be, not asking a bullshit question to not make a move.

So, I sent my resume out to a select few companies that struck my interest. I interviewed, and managed to find something new. I'm not sure how long I'll be in this new spot, or happy there, or any other thing really. For the time being though, I'm happier than I was before. Part of that is finding something that better fits with my desired lifestyle and ideals. I've moved into a "Green Company" that will be helping me continue with the volunteer work I've been doing at local schools.

As advanced as society and tools have become, our lives have also become complicated. Health insurance, transportation, standard of living, job security, etc... etc... It almost seems to me, that as we moved away from the farms into industrialized civilization, that we introduced complexity just to make things in life seem more meaningful. As much as the tools of civilization make our lives easier, I also wonder if they simply enable us to lie to ourselves too.

Fate's 2010 Resolutions Recap

2010-12-31T09:31:00.000-08:00

Recap of last years resolutions:
1. Reduce / Eliminate trash at the office
Success. I started bringing in dish towels instead of using paper towels. At the my new job, I'm throwing practically nothing away on a daily basis. :)

2. Go camping / outdoors more often
Mixed. Fin and I spent more time outdoors, but spent less time camping. We did a LOT more outside though, with the garden.

3. Pay off another debt
Success. I got rid of a particularly nasty cash advance that had been around my kneck for a while.

4. Perfect a soap recipe / be able to make commercial quality soap
Success. I won't say 'perfect a soap recipe', but we've been using my soap for the past year, with excellent results. Even the mistake batches have been good. Hoping to do another batch soon.

5. Return to martial arts
Fail. This never really worked from a time / money standpoint, and my old job was getting in the way as well.

6. Post more useful stuff more often
Fail. I've been really distracted for a while.

7. Grow and maintain a garden
SUCCESS. We had a great garden this past year.

8. Release some software / finish a project
Fail. I did make a lot of progress though...

9. Finish unpacking
EPIC FAIL. Yeah.... about those 5 new boxes of packed random crap...

10. Grow in maintenance / carpentry / plumbing / etc... skills
Continuing. I've got a lot to learn still...

Dear Target,

2010-10-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

Why is it that everyone must purchase the same mass produced crap for the holidays? I've seen the premade costumes, and it doesn't take much for homemade creations to trounce them. As a society, we should be encouraging creativity instead of bashing it.

After seeing this commercial:

(Youtube Link)

I question if I'll be doing any Holiday shopping at your stores.

In short: shame on you.

Anti-Environmentalism - Grocery Bags

2010-05-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

Fin and I are fairly big about taking reusable trash bags to the grocery store whenever we shop. Green grocery bags are interesting to me for a few reasons. As far as "going green" goes, switching to reusable grocery bags is one of the easiest moves to make. More amazing to me is how telling people's reactions about trash and the checkout line can be.

Funny enough, grocery bags put me over the edge from thinking about the "anachronism" concept here, to actually living it. A few years ago, I lived in a small apartment within walking distance to a super market. When I say walking distance, I mean visitors to the complex sometimes used back spots of the market for parking. As uber-bachelor, I kept my kitchen with the required necessities: ketchup, mustard, alcohol, pickles, and random baking stuff years old carted from each move and woefully out of date. Moving next to a store let me stop by, pick-up dinner for the night, and simplify my epic fail meal planning.

This grandiose plan didn't come immediately, but after I got in my car, drove across the parking lot, loaded the car with groceries, and drove back across the same parking lot to unload. I think the thought was: "wow, this is lame-ass lazy for even me." So, I started walking. After making the journey a few times I decided a couple things. First, buying groceries that day, and cooking never frozen meat and (sorta) fresh fish is awesome. Second, plastic groceries bags suck. I noticed the store was selling reusable grocery bags ($0.99) and offering a $0.05 refund for using them. I have a few bags now which have paid for themselves several times over.

The thing that got me though, was my initial reaction to the thought of buying one: "I don't want people to group me with those environmentalists." Then, I just got mad. Somehow, someone had put into my head the idea that purchasing a 99 cent bag would lead me straight into being a Green Peace hippy blowing up SUVs. Isn't it funny how some ideas have a life of their own?

Over the past 2 years I've heard multiple people say, "I like the reusable but don't want to use one with Go Green written on it". That's not as bothersome as when I hear things that amount to "reusable grocery bags are communism". Point is, as reusable bags become more prolific, I hear multiple people saying the exact same things that went through my head when I made the switch.

At times, when I'm at the grocery line, I get reactions verging on offence when I give the cashier a reusable bag. Reusable bags long ago lost their novelty for me. Now, they're just part of my life. I keep them in my trunk, and try to remember to bring them when I go in the store. Most cashier's treat them as routine. And then, there are the special that do things like bag items into plastic sacks and then place those in the bag...

Cloth bags are convenience for me, not environmentalism. I don't go through grocery stores and snear at people not using them. I'm really beyond even thinking they're a big deal.

Still, they illustrate a larger issue, one that I'm trying to wrap my head around and plan to explore here. Of the two of us, Fin is more of an environmentalist. I simply enjoy exploring ideas and value free thinking. I understand the drive and desires of the environmentalist. I understand the not being an environmentalist. What I find concerning is the growing population of otherwise normal people actively anti-environmentalist.

Please be a video from April 1st

2010-04-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

365 Days Of Trash: Potato or Tomato?

I lack words.

iPad - Revolutionary? Or Evolutionary?

2010-04-04T11:00:00.001-07:00

No, it isn't a marketing graphic for the Apple iPad. It is the cover of a 1992 manual for the GO Pen Computer. Lately, there's been a lot of media hype over how Apple is changing the face of computing as we know it. The cover article in Time Magazine (Inside Steve's Pad) kinda took me over the edge. Et tu, Time? Not that I'm all that surprised, Time is definitely staffed by "unabashed Apple fans".

Really, I like the idea of Tablet computers, E-Readers, and so on. I wouldn't mind owning a Kindle, though I don't like the idea of not "owning" my books and the fact that the technology allows Amazon to remotely delete items I purchased . I refuse to purchase books like that. The idea of ownership of things is important to me. As much of a "liberal" as I may be, property is something that I greatly value. Which is why I don't plan on purchasing an iPad. I also won't begrudge those that do, after all, it looks like a very well done device. Still, Apple tightly controls what I can and can't do with it. That however, is not the point of this post.

The point is about those in the media insisting this device will "change computers". Apple is great at marketing their originality, but when it comes down to it, the reality is far different. Let's take a stroll down history.

1987 - NestorWriter handwriting system is introduced for IBM Compatible computers, it features a tablet and hand writing recognition software

1989 - GridPad tablet computer is the first ever Tablet computer to be released.

1992 - The GO tablet computer was released (pictured above), later followed by the GO based AT&T EO 440.

In the '93 and '94 time frame, there was a lot of interest in tablet based computing. Even Microsoft got on the scene with releases of Pen extensions for Windows. Fast forward to about 8 years ago, when Microsoft again attempted to bring back Tablet computing. Dan Bricklin, co-creator of VisiCalc, wrote a rather significant essay on tablet computing as Microsoft made the push for the concept. (For reference, VisiCalc is one of the single historic and revolutionary apps in computing history.)

When these tablet computers came out, I remember having some rather extensive discussions about utilizing them for various teaching and academic purposes. Working at a community college, multiple people felt these could be extremely useful tools for presentations, paperwork reduction, etc... The word "revolutionary" was used then too. I wasn't as impressed as a then complete Micro$oft hater (as I'd spell it), and Free Software advocate. (Or, as I'd say now, a college student not yet jaded to the business place.)

Revolutionary annoyed me then too. Mostly because I'd had a lot of fun with the Apple Newton a few years before that.

(Photo Credit)

At the time, my thought was OMG Ev1l Micro$oft steals idea from Apple l33t engineers.

After working in the industry for a bit, talking to people beyond the shaded ivory towers of academia, and feeling a few hard knocks, I was a lot more receptive when tablet computers began making a new appearance.

Slightly before the Kindle was released, I visited a bookstore for my standard movie + fiction books run, and discovered an E-reader on display. Working in the industry on consumer devices, I get to see and hear a lot of opinions about technology from a creator's perspective. I knew seeing that device, there were more in the wind.

At certain points, evolution hits a tipping point were people can look at something and say "wow, that's it". Apple wasn't the first to launch a "tablet device". But, more importantly, the oncoming numerous Tablet devices we'll be seeing aren't cloning or ripping off Apple's invention. Like Apple, they're standing on the shoulders of a great many devices and ideas from the past.

All this to make a couple points. The iPad isn't going to bankrupt Amazon or kill the Nook. It's not going to change the way everyone uses computers overnight. What will it do? Move a cool technology that's finally ready for prime time into a more mainstream audience.

And that is why the iPad is awesome.

Review: No Impact Man

2010-03-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

Fin and I have been on a documentary kick here lately, so when our next movie choice came up, we decided on "No Impact Man". Fin was fairly excited to see it - "No Impact Man" is one of several environmentalist blogs she follows. As far as documentaries go, the film itself was fairly interesting and well put together.

Colin Beavan decides to put his views into action by making "no impact" on the environment for a year. He does this by removing various modern conveniences from his life (the biggest of which is apparently toilet paper), and attempts to reduce the amount of trash he outputs.

While I found the film interesting, I don't think it really had any point besides being something of a human interest film. Other documentaries do a far better job of explaining the effects of modern agriculture, pollution, or attempting to be "Green". However, seeing some of the normal arguments environmentalists might have with each other, or the general public, did provide some food for thought. The value of being an environmentalist is taken as a given at the start of the film. Lacking however, was any real advice on how to put ideas into action - most of the things highlighted in the film weren't things everyday people would find useful.

If documentaries are your thing or you've heard about "No Impact Man" otherwise, you might want to watch it. Unlike some other movies I've seen, it doesn't hit the level of "need to see" or even my giving a strong recommendation.

That said, while it is a documentary, be warned if you read further for spoilers.

Watching the documentary, I do have some very strong thoughts as to environmentalism and what an environmentalist lifestyle would be like. Now, I'd like to start by saying that the primary focus (for me) of writing here isn't exactly environmentalism. It's about focusing on the reality of the world around us. At one point in this movie, an older New York hippie highlights the hypocrisy of Mr. Beavan's lifestyle when his wife writes for Business Week. That one moment highlighted my main objections to the whole idea of his "No Impact".

Like it or not, the mere act of being alive has an impact. Nature isn't an all giving kind and nurturing place with fluffy bunnies and puppies that never grow up. The documentary never addressed it, but I found myself wondering throughout the movie if the "No Impact" show piece wasn't actually at times, causing WORSE impact for the environment. After removing electricity, "No Impact Man" continues to use gas service (lighting an oven with a match) and water service. He enjoys fruit cooled by ice from his neighbour's freezer. He keeps light at night using candles. Not having the thermostat turned to warm the apartment during the winter, means his apartment mates are subsiding his heat. These examples to me is where "No Impact Man" moved from environmental activist to performing a stunt.

Sadly, part of that stunt seems to be the message "going back in time is an improvement". The "how things were done in the past is better" idea proves just as fallacious as the "new is better" idea. When it comes down to it, so much of what we've discovered makes our lives easier and simpler. Our ability to modify the environment and live in luxury should come with a sense of responsibility.

About halfway through the film, it occurred to me that a lot of what I saw was only sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. I don't think good things come when people sacrifice to assuage their guilt, it comes when people decide to take responsibility for their actions. The difference is subtle, but it is there.

Sprouts and Walkways

2010-03-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a beautiful day and I got a couple outside projects finished up. I cut down and bundled some tree branches and my parents house for them and also finished the walkway at our house between the house and the garage:

I really should have taken a couple before pictures. It used to be mud and you could barely see the stepping stones. The mud turned out to be mud mixed with a bunch of rock that I dug out and found a tarp serving as a barrier. Those black edgers were there already. The only think I had to buy was new rock because I couldn't get the old rock to wash off, the mud was very much clay. It made a big difference and I like the way it turned out.

Here's a couple sprout pictures:

That would be Tomatillos and Early Girl tomatoes. The peppers are just barely starting to peek out, we should really be seeing those in a couple days.

My next project? Researching growing my own edible mushrooms. I'm curious how hard/cost effective it is. I know you can get kits for that, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. Also planning on looking into growing my own sprouts, bean and alfalfa. I know it can be done easily, just not sure how to get started. Research away! :p

--Fin

Things grow when you plant them!

2010-03-22T09:52:00.001-07:00

Tomatoes, 3 different kinds:

Tomotillos, purple and green:

Even though it just snowed like a foot, it kinda feels like spring to me today.

--Fin

Seeds are Small

2010-03-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

"Duh" you say, "Yes, I know seeds are small"

Ok, ok, but, really, have you ever stopped to think about how small seeds really are compared to what they produce? An 80-100 foot elm tree from a seed the size of a peanut. An entire 8-12 foot tomato plant from a seed the size of less then half of a grain of rice that reproduces itself over and over and over and over in the fruits that you eat. Its just amazing to me is all.

I planted some seeds for the garden yesterday (planted 5 of these trays, although the picture only shows two):

4 different kinds of tomatoes (3 heirloom)
Jalapenos
Hungarian wax peppers
5 color bell peppers
Sweet peppers
Tomatillos

Seems there was some other stuff but I don't remember what it was right now. I planted them in 4 packs so we'll see what comes up. I'm a bit late on the planting I think but I guess any head start is better then none!

I have some flower seeds that I bought last year that I am going to try to plant today in flats and we'll see what happens there. I'm not sure if the seeds are even any good anymore, especially since I only paid $0.20 each for the packets.

Dad took the tiller carburetor to get overhauled and we should have that back some time next week. Hopefully we can get the garden all tilled up and start getting some things planted out there soon. For our zone it looks like the last frost date is typically April 15-30 so there are a lot of plants we can't get into the ground until after that, but we can start planting colder weather plants now like: lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, peas, carrots....the list goes on.

Potatoes need to be going in the ground here soon as well. I am planning on trying the container method this year. Sort of. I'm actually going to be using fencing instead of a container, but it should work out ok. It might turn out a bit more like compost potatoes. Its basically the same thing though.

I am going to be setting up a bed on the south side of the house for some rhubarb, I will be getting that in the ground this week. There used to be rhubarb over there once upon a time so I think it will grow well. There isn't a lot of sun, but there is some, and it stays cool over there even in high summer so the rhubarb won't get burned out. I got 3 crowns this year, and next year should be able to split them into 3-4 so I should have plenty after a couple years....or even have rhubarb coming out of my ears!

I cut down a bunch of brush growing in the fence line (you can see it in the background of the picture) as well as trimmed up a couple of trees, plus we took down a tree last year, plus we had a whole shed full or branches.....so, I've been burning.

A bunch.

There is so much brush to burn its absolutely ridiculous at this point. We're lucky in where we live we can have a burn pit, but we can't have bon fires with no pit. Believe me when I say we have enough brush to have one HELL of a bon fire. Its crazy. I'm trying to find somewhere to just rent a chipper and chip it all up and then we can use the resulting chipped wood for mulch in some of the parts of the yard that get muddier all year long. That would be nice. Not having any luck at this point, but I'm going to keep trying.

I also have been busy with the composting. We have an almost full composter going on right now and will have to get another one here soon so we can stop adding to the one we have and it can cook, then we can use it. I also set up the other composter we have for just kitty litter (and other misc "green" components to fill it out.) That one won't be able to be used on the garden for edible stuff but I will be able to use it elsewhere on the yard. I just hated throwing away the kitty litter since it *can* be composted so that's what we're going to be doing.

I'm excited about having a garden this year. I can't wait to start planting outside. Getting some seeds planted yesterday helped a bit but man, its been a hard, cold, miserable winter and I am so ready for spring and the smell of growing things in the air.

Oh, and did I mention warm weather?!

--Fin

All About Soap Part Two

2010-03-14T12:48:00.000-07:00

Sometime toward the end of my college career, I made a sudden switch away from the standard bar soaps into the domain of "body wash". One of the common questions I get when discussing soap is if I can make a liquid soap. The answer is yes I can, but it wouldn't be body wash. Body wash is interesting to me, in that it's recently become more and more popular.
On the package, you'll find this ingredient list:

Water, SODIUM LAURYL SULFATE, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Sodium Sulfate, FRAGRANCE, Sodium Lauryl Sarcosinate, Lauryl Alcohol, Decyl Glucoside, DMDM Hydantoin, Lauryl Glucoside, Tetrasodium EDTA, Citric Acid, Polyquaternium-10, FDC GREEN 3, Green 5, Red 33

Now, let's compare these ingredients to another 'liquid soap':

water, sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium pareth-23, sulfate C-12-14-16, dimethyl amine oxide, SD alcohol, undeceth-9, propylene glycol, cyclohexandiamine, polyacetate, protease, fragrance, FD&C blue, no phosphate

Of note for us are the first two ingredients in this recipes: "sodium lauryl sulfate" (SLS). This is actually the common surfactant in just about any 'liquid soap' you find. It's also the primary active ingredient of (wait for it) dish washing detergent, our second soap here.

Interestingly enough, the primary reasons why people prefer "Body Wash" to soap are based less on how their skin feels, and more on the "shower experience". Making this even more interesting to me is that women are more likely to prefer body wash than men. Why is that interesting? Sorry guys, but women tend to care more about skin care than we do.

Despite what a few pages on the internet will tell you, SLS, is NOT going to turn you into a mutant cancerous growth while deforesting the world and killing puppies. SLS is known to be a skin irritant. It's also a strong part of the body wash pull. A major effect of using it as the primary ingredient is the extremely "sudsy" nature of a body wash. But still, SLS is not good for your skin. And so, the manufacturers of body wash usually add other concocted surfactants (the vast majority of the chemical names in the ingredient list). These others often are milder and known to be "more gentle" on the skin. Sometimes, manufacturers will even include moisturisers to help reduce the effects of the detergent.

From the aspect of this blog, body wash suffers from being environmentally unfriendly. Soap is distributed in easy to recycle paper, body wash is distributed in plastic. And then, in the case of the actual product, body wash often contains multiple chemicals which aren't nearly as biodegradable.

For a final note, I'd like to point to the one item that bothers me most about standard commercial soaps: "FRAGRANCE". I have no way of knowing the breakdown of oils or chemicals used. This is in stark contrast to the more premium or natural soap makers, where the full ingredients are listed.

All About Soap

2010-01-31T13:54:00.000-08:00

It constantly amazes me the number and amount of things we take for granted on a day to day basis. Personally, I like to think I'm rather smart. For all of my modern day "knowledge" if I was thrown in the wilderness, I likely wouldn't live past a season. Think for an instant about everything you use without thinking about it - electricity, microwave ovens, natural gas heating, internal combustion engines. Part of this blog was attempting to understand such things, and what better place than something people have taken for granted in our society for decades - soap.

Now, I haven't read the book "Fight Club", but I don't think it's without reason that a major component was soap. Given that (hopefully) everyone uses it on a regular basis, you'd think people in general would know where it came from. As I discovered on attempting to make soap for myself, you'd be wrong. People don't.

When I announced my intent to a few people to find out how soap was made, I ran into multiple misconceptions on a repeated basis. The biggest, and most substantial, also demonstrated the common level of knowledge -

"Lye soap, doesn't that suck?"

I believe this is the unholy combination of marketing and history. Home made soaps where often made by combining potash with animal fat. After burning a hardwood, water run through the ashes of the wood will pick up Potassium Hydroxide (POH). This water could then be added to animal fat to create a surfactant which we call "soap". A surfactant is simply a substance that lets oil and water mix.

Obtaining, and burning, hardwood, then leaching out the required compounds is something of an involved and time consuming task. So, I, like many others, took a short cut and purchased what I needed, in the form of "100% Lye".

Now, at some point the term "lye" stopped referring to "Potassium Hydroxide" and instead started referring to a very similar "Sodium Hydroxide". Sodium hydroxide however, can be manufactured from a simple chemical process involving water, electricity, and table salt. While lye is somewhat dangerous to deal with, it's been sold as years as drain cleaner, and is also used in other janitorial applications. Go figure Fin would know something about dealing with it before I even brought it home.

In fact, I quickly discovered "cold process soap making" is something of a popular hobby across the states. A multitude of websites, how to guides, and instructions are out there. Many of the "soapers" will say they make "old fashioned lye soap", and many will sell their soap online or at places like Whole Foods. For a nice premium you can find "organic vegan soap". Others will tell you about the many evils of store bought soaps, all the while advertising their own "all natural soap made with saponified oils".

One quality local vendor is Indigo Wild - manufacturers of "Zum Soap" that you'll find at a multitude of locations. At the store, you'll find it a lot more expensive than other soaps. Now, I think Zum soap is in general a high quality product, Fin and I have been using it a while now. We both have very sensitive skin, and Zum tends to work better than any other brand we've tried. Talking to a Whole Foods hippy about Indigo Wild products versus what you'd buy at the supermarket, would likely make Zum soap sound completely different than any of your discount soaps. While I might agree on quality, the same argument doesn't jump into "what the soap is".

Looking at your standard store purchased soaps (we'll ignore those anti-bacterial for now as well as body washes), you'd likely see the following ingredient list:

SODIUM TALLOWATE
SODIUM COCOATE AND/OR SODIUM PALM KERNALATE
WATER
FRAGRANCE
GLYCERN
SODIUM CHLORIDE
COCONUT ACID
PALM KERNEL ACID
TALLOW ACID
PALM ACID
TETRASODIUM EDTA

Allow me to simply all that for you: Saponified animal fat and vegetable fats, salt, and Tetrasodium edta

Now, the Vegan had one small point - if you're vegetarian and/or animal killing is high on your "do not" list, store bought soaps tend to have animal fat in them. More than likely, a part of your soap is coming from rendered animal fats. Also note, I didn't include any added glycerin in there - that's part of what you get saponifying fats.

The only real additive worth noting in the majority of non-premo-organic soaps is Tetrasodium EDTA. Now, there is some valid concern over the chemical, it's effects, and it's safety. There are a couple different websites out there making it seem completely safe, and a cancer inducing death toxin. In general, it's purpose in soap is to make it less reactive. The vast majority of your "natural soaps", will not contain it.

After a weekend of effort, I managed to produce my own soap, comparable in quality to those of premium soap manufacturers. And while, Fin and I will be making soap for our own reasons, we could just as easily go the store and purchase a similar product without being confused by the "Natural" on the logo. Some of the natural soaps might be better quality, but some aren't anything more than repackaged bargain bin discount soap.

In summary, the assumptions we make on something we use on a daily basis can lead to surprising results when pulling back the covers and taking a look at how things really work.

As I continue making soap, I hope to post a bit about it here, what and how I did, how well it worked, and so on.

The Fear Continues

2010-01-17T12:43:00.000-08:00

On Friday, the science project of an 11 year old resulted in the evacuation of a middle school. A 2 liter bottle with "wires sticking out"? It must be a bomb! Hackaday (a nerd blog) has a great editorial on the misgivings of people seeing home made electronics.

Sadly, these responses don't seem limited to just electronics anymore. Any number of backyard projects insight an odd mix of fear and anger - line drying of clothes, making your own soap or laundry detergent, home construction projects / DIY jobs, backyard gardens, the list goes on.

At what point did we as a society decide that it must be purchased at the store to be acceptable?

Sad, so very sad.

Fate's 2010 Resolutions

2010-01-17T12:08:00.001-08:00

While it's a bit late in January to post this, I still feel a need to continue my yearly ritual of posting the things I'm planning on accomplishing over the new year. This years resolutions are largely related to the purpose of this blog, so I'm going to post them here.

1. Reduce / Eliminate trash at the office
Together, Fin and I have reduced our monthly trash output (excepting the ongoing project of reducing our junk count) to roughly a single trash bag a month. However, at work, I'm still outputting a considerable amount of junk - mostly disposables associated with eating lunch. My new goal is to start using washable clothes, and silverware at work. It's way too easy to get caught into the trap of using that stuff when it's readily available, and everyone else at the office is.

2. Go camping / outdoors more often
Last year, Fin and I went on two trips where I was camping. This year, I hope to make regular weekends at a couple local lakes / camping grounds. By the end of the year, I'm hoping for a good 6 times this year out camping with Fin.

3. Pay off another debt
Last year, I set the goal of paying off some of my college debt. I succeeded, and am hoping again this year to nuke another portion of my college and post college stupidity.

4. Perfect a soap recipe / be able to make commercial quality soap
This will be a series of blog entries on its own, but I'm hoping to create some decent quality soap using cold process techniques. My first batch is currently cooking, and I'll have a blog entry about this and my reasons for it soon.

5. Return to martial arts
Fin's been encouraging me to do this, but the time and cost matrix hasn't been favorable to it actually happening. Martial arts did a lot of good things for my health and mental state, so I'd really like to get back at it.

6. Post more useful stuff more often
Part of the original goal of this blog was to post useful information, and post that on a regular basis. However, life's been in the way, and so, not much has happened in terms of useful content here. Now that things have calmed down a bit, some of that should start happening.

7. Grow and maintain a garden
Fin's downright excited about the idea of having a garden this year, and I'm looking forward to helping. Really, this is more of her resolution, but it's one that I'm also looking forward to helping with.

8. Release some software / finish a project
I've done so many hobby projects, but none of them have hit a point to call it done. The goal this year is to actually accomplish something in that. In either software, or writing, or art, I want to actually accomplish something this year.

9. Finish unpacking
This is really the same goal as last year. I want to be rid of the boxes of junk that have been trailing me around and growing for the past 3 to 4 years. At some point this year, I'd like to say, "hey look, I'm done unpacking".

10. Grow in maintenance / carpentry / plumbing / etc... skills
Now that I find myself in the role of "homeowner", I can't call the apartment management company anymore to come fix stuff. My parents were very much the type were doing things around the house meant calling the right professional. I'm hoping to break the trend a bit, and be more self sustaining. So far, no major injuries or limbs lost.

Fate's 2009 Resolutions Wrap Up

2009-12-31T14:26:00.000-08:00

2009 has been an extremely eventful year. If you told me at the start of last year, everything that would happen - I probably woulda thought you were joking. One of the things that I drive Fin crazy on, is that I tend to view plans more as guidelines, than actual plans. So, it isn't really surprising how this years events are going to turn up in terms of 'accomplished' and 'not'.

First, the accomplished:
Financial: Knock out one of my college debt accounts
Slight Win. I managed to pay off a couple credit cards, transfer some debt, and start making a dent in my loads of stupid.

Bucket List: Create new bucket list and accomplish at least 2 entries this year
Epic Win! Fireworks, BBQ, getting married, going camping, ... I hit lots of entries on the new list and I'm looking forward to making a new list and doing more stuff.

Relationships: Do better than in '08
EPIC WIN! I wake up every morning happy that I'm with a wonderful person, even if she is a bit of a nerd.

And now, the not:

Life: Figure out what I really want to be doing in 10 years.
Fail, but happy about it. This is a sorta weird one. I'm saying I didn't figure it out, but I'm also thinking that's a good thing. The best things in my life so far have been things I didn't expect or know or have a clue about. It's the things I overplanned that tended to blow up.

Personal Appearance: Move from "I buy clothes" to having a style
Fail, and not really caring anymore. I've decided that most all of men's clothing = "I buy clothes".

Personal Fitness: Run a 7 minute mile, continue advancement in martial arts.
Hobbies: Have Something to show for a writing project at the end of '09
Hobbies: Release Self Hosting Microkernel
Fail, but I'm going to try again. The whole process of getting married and helping make a home killed the amount of free time required to do my hobby stuff.

Blog: Post more often
Fail. Funny, I just haven't had as much to say, but that's starting to change now.

General: Finish unpacking
EPIC FAIL! Dear God, it never ends.... And now, I'm convinced, I've accumulated EVEN MORE CRAP, not counting anything from Fin. How?!?! I don't know...

So, to summarize, it looks like I'm 3 out of 10 on actually meeting my resolutions. I wonder how that compares to people in general.

There are reasons I'm a vegetarian

2009-12-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

I like to think I'm not the preachy kind of vegetarian. You can eat a burger in front of me and I usually don't say anything unless I'm offered a bite and then my only response will generally be "No thank you, I'm a vegetarian." Those preachy, rabid, "meat is murder" vegetarians really kinda piss me off actually. After all, you win more flies with honey then you do vinegar, now don't you?

Fate has his reason's he's vegetarian, I have mine. They are different, but have some similarities. He can post about his sometime....but here's mine:

Safeway Beef Recall In Arizona And New Mexico

You say: "What? That happens all the time! Its no big deal, its just a recall and the FDA is keeping us safe"

Um, yeah. Lets do the math:

Meat recalled: 22,723-lbs

Average yield from a dressed beef carcass: 569lbs

Assuming they turned all that meat into hamburger.....

Average number of cows that had to die to produce recalled beef:

22,723 lbs of beef / 569 avg cow weight =

39.9349736

40 cows died.

Okay, so what happens to beef that is recalled? It gets destroyed.

Thrown away.

Wasted.

And this is one of the smaller recalls...

What about pork (that'd be pigs ya know)....

or chicken...

These are living things that had to die in order to produce meat for human consumption. I don't have a problem with that, at all, its the circle of life. I DO have a real problem with life being wasted. This is life wasted, and gross negligence on humanity's part in being care takers of this worlds life.

I am vegetarian as a form of silent protest against the waste of life that is going on in the meat industry. There is waste everywhere in the world, in every part of things, however, this is the only part I can think of where living beings have to die for no reason at all.

--Fin

Weddings, Inc.

2009-11-25T12:40:00.000-08:00

Well, Fin and I have been off the air for a bit. Together, we went forth and managed to live through one of those goals couples have - getting married. And yes, I do mean "live through". Being married to Fin, well, it's an awesome thing. I could go on about how I feel, but it'd really sound like your standard gushy newlywed. And really, for everyone that's seen us together, it's pretty obvious we're really happy with a relationship that's worth the work it takes to keep it great.

So yeah, marriage is awesome. Getting married though - a wedding - sucks.

I was prepared for dealing with the multi-faith issues surrounding the wedding with my family coming. I don't share their faith and was concerned over complications that would bring.

I was prepared for needing money to reserve a venue, and obtain a minister.

What I wasn't prepared for? The long list of items of things that people expect.

In the US, your average wedding costs $20,398, and that doesn't include the honeymoon. Despite the "Father of the Bride" traditions, it's now typical that a large portion of this cost is shouldered by the bride and groom themselves. While I don't want to give out the exact dollar figure for our wedding - I will say we did it for substantially less than twenty grand.

It wasn't that we wanted our wedding to be cheap, although we did have a small budget. No, our wedding was low cost because we did what WE wanted to do. And what's more - the family supported us doing what we wanted to do. When it comes down to it, I'm glad the family was so awesome about everything, because that made a huge difference.

What shocked me was the number of people, and prevalence of the various ideas of things we needed to buy or rent or have available. As we went through the process of the wedding, I decided to grab on the internet and find out what a "usual" wedding consisted of.

As I grew up, a wedding seemed little more than a specially decorated religious meeting, with a reception hall rental afterward. Cheap ceremonies - at least in comparison to the national average, we're very much the norm.

Early on, I noticed an interesting trend. If I called a store to find out a price on a rental or specific item, I'd get a largely different number than if I called a store to find out the price of a rental or item for a wedding. The most dramatic example was in finding a pair of champagne glasses for the toast - "wedding toasting flutes" - started at double the price. Annoyingly, the more expensive wedding toasting flutes were also crap in comparison.

I sat and read article after article for a while, on what was "standard" for weddings. Only to find a dizzying array of things that we "had" to do - bachelor party, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner, wedding favors, save the date cards, ceremony programs, wedding invitations, bridal shower, bridal shower announcement, engagement announcements, etc... etc...

The worst offender of the "have to" list of things? The engagement ring. There's multiple places you can learn about the history of the engagement ring. I'll save you giving details about how short the history of today's engagement rings is. No, what bothers me is the advice on pricing. An engagement ring should cost double one months pre-tax salary. Ever notice they all look the same too?

It's not about finding a gift for a potential bride. It's not about searching for "just the right" thing for the girl. The question of cost doesn't come to a question of compromise between what one can afford and what would make a perfectly sculpted ring. The engagement ring isn't a symbol anymore, it's a business transaction.

Despite all of the commercialization of a huge milestone, we expressed our own individuality. We decided what was important to us, what we wanted to make special. And in that are some of the best memories of all.

The Gyre As It Looks On Midway

2009-11-11T11:25:00.000-08:00

The Gyre As It Looks On Midway

-- Fin

Trash

2009-09-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of only *part* of the trash that one office building produces *daily*:

What do you throw away?

--Fin

Single Serving World

2009-09-02T11:10:00.001-07:00

We are a single serving society. Everywhere you look you see single serving products:

Individual water bottles, "lunch sized" bags of chips, cans of soda, boxes of juice, lunchables, Styrofoam cups for coffee, individual sugar packets and creamers, tv dinners, single serving candy, yogurt, paper plates, plastic silverware, travel sized beauty products.......and this is just off the top of my head!

Almost every day for lunch I send Fate with leftovers for lunch. I send them packaged individually in *reusable* containers. He brings them home (mostly every day) and I wash them and they get used over and over again. I need to start remembering to send him with silverware too, I'm just afraid I'll run out of forks when he forgets to bring them back!

The point here is that its not enough to just recycle, and as a matter if fact most people don't even do that one little thing. Even if they recycle at home, I have to wonder if that extends to work? In the building I clean on a daily basis I dump trash and it really hits home how much people don't recycle, or for that matter even think about reducing their trash output. I see trash cans full of single use products all day long around here.

If people would just change their habits in one or two little ways it would make such a difference on their trash output:

Bring a reusable water bottle and fill up from the sink when it gets empty

Bring silverware to work and wash it when your done

Bring leftovers in reusable containers, take them back home and wash them

Buy in bulk and split stuff into reusable containers instead of single serving packages of items

Bring your own coffee mug and reuse it

We do as much composting and recycling as we can possibly can at home, and I do as well at my business location. As of now we put out *one small bag* of trash about once a month for the trash man to take. One small bag! How much do you dump into the landfills weekly?

My goal: by the end of the year be able to cancel my trash service because we are not using it

What do you do to reduce your footprint on the earth?

-- Fin

Charity for Dummies (Part 1)

2009-08-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

Ask a conservative how the poor will eat without taxes, and they'll be sure to point you to charities. They exist for just about every circumstance and cause out there - battered women, abused children, blood donation, breast cancer awareness, the list goes on. Volunteers offer their time for construction work and house repairs, disaster relief, passing out food, collecting money, ... - again the list goes on.

On a personal level, I see charity as a good thing. Without personal charity, my journey to Kansas City would have been much different. But, someone was willing to lend me a hand when I needed help up. Examples of that sort of thing are fairly widespread. In the local area, 98.8 (among other radio stations), offers help to random people during Christmas season.

Unfortunately, I believe that charities are also being abused. My employer, as well as many others in the Kansas City area, encourages people to give to the United Way. And wouldn't you know, it's easy. All I have to do is fill out a form, and every paycheck I can donate any amount I'd like. Wow, isn't that Great? Well, ...

No, it isn't.

The reasoning behind giving to United Way? "If it's too hard to figure out a charity you want to give to, give to them and they'll figure it out for you." It rather reminds me of a science fiction classic, where people design robots to worship God for them. A charity like United Way isn't charity to support a cause, a passion, or a belief, it is simply charity for the sake of charity. Or, as I like to call it, guilty giving.

Don't get me wrong, the United Way does some really good work. They write grants to some great organizations! And occasionally they'll even help out and do volunteer work or charitable work directly. When it comes right down to it though, they exist to collect money off of our collective guilt.

Guilt is a powerful thing - a basic human emotion that says something is wrong. And while there are circumstances where guilt is uncalled for but natural, I question the creation of organizations that seek to relieve us of our guilt by simple transfer of wealth.

The level of ease with which charitable giving now happens allows us to live like a drunk driver that goes to AA meetings. We give to charity, therefore our rape of the poor and down trodden is meaningless. We can fill free to litter the streets with our garbage, because we pay for prisoners to pick it up.

Paycheck donations to charity do not require us to examine lifestyle or put forth any effort to consider our value systems. You sign a form, and after a few months, the donation to charity becomes another line item on the paycheck, right beside Social Security tax deductions.

And then, when someone sees your behavior, notes that how privileged you are and that there exist others without the same opportunity? When they pull up the mirror and reveal and show that you have done nothing to benefit the society that has given you the gift of wealth? Why, THEN you can point to a forgotten line item on your paystub and say "Look, I give to charity".

"The Dead Zone"

2009-08-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

"Dead Zone"

The name sounds like it's from bad science fiction. I remember hearing about Dead Zones in my high school biology and geography classes. One of the largest is located in the Gulf of Mexico and consists of an area roughly the size of New Jersey. At the mouth of the Mississippi river, a large amount of fresh water flows into the Ocean. But not only is fresh water coming in, but run off water from large farming operations in the midwest. The fertilizer rich water hits the Ocean and causes a food chain march which leads to hypoxia, a lack of oxygen in the water.

This year, the dead zone was predicted to grow to record levels of size. Recently released data showed the dead zone not as large as expected, but more severe. In the end, it covered only 3000 square miles.

At what point do we stop ignoring the cost of our way of life? Today, the Gulf of Mexico dead zone directly threatens $2.8 billion worth of US fishing industry. Put another way, 99 cent cheeseburgers threaten to destroy the option for a slightly more expensive, but much healthier, grilled fish sandwich.

Can we shutup about the f***ing faeries already?

2009-08-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
-- Douglas Adams

So a friend of mine forwarded me a video. Really, it's pretty awesome. Basically, the universe is really big. Like, really.

It's a video that Carl Sagan would have no doubt loved to see. The knowledge of what I'm looking at here is awe inspiring. The commentary about the video though, is not. Instead of a focus on the magnitude of what is, I hear countless people remarking "Awesome, look at this, clearly there is no God!!!!"

Really people? Can't we just ... move on. Believe me, I have plenty to complain about when it comes to religion. Plenty. I don't however, spend all my time watching videos like this thinking, "wow they really were full of shit". You know what amazes me?

"God fearing" people that see that video are probably enjoying it more than the skeptical societies.

See, they actually get to enjoy it. True, there enjoyment is going to take the "look how awesome God is to have created all that" form. But, it's enjoyment and inspiration nonetheless. The atheist watching this as "ohhhh, proof the Goddies have it wrong", well, not so much.

To this day, I am amazed by the fact that we have such vocal groups here shouting their views, that neither extremist side gets to sit down and realize: most of us just don't give a damn. Sorry, it's true.

So, to the "ohhhhhh, look this proves there is a God" people and to the "ohhhhhh, look this proves God is bullshit" people - please shut the F*** up about the faeries, and let the rest of us enjoy the Garden, faeries or no.

Recycling Center in Overland Park

2009-07-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

Overland Park has a pretty awesome recycling center! Its easy to find, basically you go down 119th street heading west, go past metcalf a bit and turn left at hardy st, it goes right in to it. Its by the Time Warner cable center there in OP.

Here are a bunch of pictures I took the first time I was there, they kind of looked at me funny.....

I've gone twice now to drop off my glass and a couple other things. They take just about everything. I can truly say that between composting and recycling we have about a bag of trash a week these days. I am trying to get it down to having NO trash at all, but I'm not sure that's going to be possible, I'm working on it though!

Something else I'm working on is looking for bags that are biodegradable. I am considering using paper bags but curious if there is a plastic trash bag out there that would work.....

--Fin

Anachronism: Line Drying Clothes

2009-07-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

In much of the US, people EXPECT to do their laundry using a washer and dryer. Driving through most suburban neighborhoods, you wouldn't see people out hanging clothes on a line to dry. In fact, many neighborhood home owners associations BAN line drying of clothes as an eye sore.

Thankfully, there's not a home owners association to bitch at us, and so we have taken it upon ourselves to annoy the neighbors by going back in time to the very recent past. The funny thing is, not many people realize just how much energy drying their clothes uses. An average family can spend a good $100 to $200 a year according to the EPA using a clothes dryer instead of line drying clothes. At an energy cost of near 1000 kWh / year, switching to line drying clothes could power an average home for a month.

Yesterday, I helped Fin put up the clothes line, and she's switched to that from the dryer this summer. Line dried clothes have so far, been an epic win in this house, if only for the fact that my shirts actually seem to loose that dude-funk when they're left in the breeze for a while. The amount of time to do the laundry isn't much changed, and the clothes get dryer much quicker than you'd expect.

It's also nice to be outside spending some time with Fin doing something together. The downsides? Well, I guess people get to see your socks and undewear hanging out there:

Also, clothes dried by the sun do have a tendency to fade faster. Still, if your homeowners association allows it, I recommend the practice. If they don't, well, maybe you should question them as to exactly why they consider it an eyesore. The idea that trying to save energy, help the environment, and reduce costs is an eyesore, well, it's just sorta sad. This blog is about changing that before the rest of the world leaves us in our own wasteful dust.

Laundry and Composting

2009-07-18T15:26:00.001-07:00

Well, we got a composter! 115 gal compster for $50 at Lowes, not a bad deal. Also I am making sun tea, that's what's on the top there. Sun tea says "summer" to me. :) Anyone out there make sun tea? Its easy: take a glass jar, fill it with water, add either loose tea or tea bags, set in the sun. You can pretty much forget about it all day or for a couple days depending on how strong you want it. I use loose tea and when I bring it in I strain it then put it back in the same jar and put it in the fridge.

We got the laundry line set up, yay! I really like hanging out clothes, its very relaxing. I don't spend any more time on it then I would if I was using my dryer. You think it would take more time but it really dosn't Things take a bit longer to dry then they would otherwise, but really not by much. Also I can leave them on the line as long as I want and don't have to rush to the dryer when it beeps or risk having the clothes wrinkled, or worse: over dryed.

There are alot of advantages to line drying clothes besides just the energy savings:

1) They last alot longer
2) They don't shrink
3) They smell better
4) The sun helps remove stains
5) Sunlight helps to disinfect clothing

I was talking to my dad today about line drying clothing and he said he can remember helping his mom to actually wash clothes by hand and use a wringer to wring them out. Then they would hang clothes out on the line. It hasn't been that long that people have been using washers and dryers. I don't think I would like to give up my washer, but I really do enjoy hanging out the clothes.

We hung two green plastic/wire lines and one chain line. Its an actual chain that I got that was intended to be used to chain pets. My idea was that I could hang hangers through the loops of the chain and they wouldn't slide along the line. It worked very well! I was able to space out the clothes like I wanted to and not have to worry about the clothes bunching up or the wind catching them and blowing the hangers off the line. I usually hang up all our shirts and my jeans so I didn't want to be doing too much extra work here. What I did is hang up the shirts, put them on the line, and then when they are dry I can just bring them in and hang them in the closet, no extra work! I used clothes pins to hang up the jeans, towles, and socks/stuff then folded it into my laundry basket as I took it down. Easy!

Here are some great links if your interested in getting started yourself:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Lazy-Line-Dry/
http://www.laundrylist.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_line

This one is *awesome* for learning about all the different methods and styles:

http://www.tiptheplanet.com/index.php?title=Air_dry_washing

--Fin

One Reason Why Computers Suck

2009-07-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

Fate's theory on computers: there is no consumer computing device which actually works.

Everything you see at BestBuy, the lines of laptops from HP and Apple - all of them - are broken in some fundamental way. I don't care how awesome your home PC is, give me five or ten minutes with it, and I'll figure out something you "should" be able to do that causes it to spit up all over itself. Funny enough, there are a good number of people out there actually paid to do that. That certain talent, is the reason why I'm involved with the computing industry, and simultaneously also, technology incompatible.

Now, in my profession, I see a lot of computer equipment, and generally deal with it on a far more detailed level than most people. Floating in my head are a great number of random facts about how various pieces of computer hardware work. What amazes me though, is that when it comes right down to it, computers don't.

If you're reading this blog, you'll likely know the difference between Hardware and Software. Driver software makes the hardware tick. An outsider might expect that driver software would be developed alongside with the hardware directly - when the hardware is done, so is the driver software. Looking at the problem in detail though, it's obvious you've got something of a chicken and an egg here - how do you develop software for non-existent hardware? I'll spare the gritty details of how that works, and jump straight to the results.

And that result, is generally with either you - the consumer - or the OEM (big box PC makers like HP and Apple.) On a modern Windows PC, you've probably noticed "Windows Update", asking on a regular basis if you'd like to ruin...er.... update parts of the software on your computer. Depending on your level of technical sophistication / bravery / stupidity / intelligence, you may have chosen to install / ignore / install randomly these updates. For today, we'll focus on the Driver updates.

Now, let's say I'm an up and coming competitor to ATI and nVidia, and have developed the new wizz-bang awesome 3d video card which has 10 spanking new features, including the ability to render photorealistic boobies realtime. Gamers the world over drool (understandably) over this new piece of computing excellence. The announcement is made, and the new Wank-O-Matic 5000 video card hits shelves. Immediately, my competitors begin discussing how their next version of video card will render even better photorealistic boobies realtime in their next generation of cards. That, however, doesn't stop Gamers from lining up overnight to purchase the Wank-O-Matic 5000.

On buying it however, they take it home, and discover that only 8 of the ten new features work well, and the other 2 don't work well at all. Sad and dismayed, gamers announce it's a good video card, but the major selling point is overrated. Not to be stopped, I now promise every gamer - but wait, it'll be fixed in an update! As time goes on, the major issues with the new creation are fixed, and at long last, the Wank-O-Matic 5000 does everything as advertised. The only thing is, noone is using it anymore, it's now been obseleted by the Wank-O-Matic 6000, and the new up and coming Wanktastic 8G.

Which brings me to the heart of the matter - all of the computer hardware in existence today, is not fully utilized. Indeed, any computer purchased within the last year or so will have a shiney new 64 bit chip in it - being used to run a 32 bit operating system. And, this isn't something created recently. The first 32 bit processor was introduced in 1985. It wasn't, however, until 10 years later, that consumers could take full advantage of that.

I know it's difficult, but, at some point, I just have to start to wonder. The personal computing industry is now over 30 years old. At what point do we stop saying "computers are new" and start expecting everything to work as advertised when we buy it? When do we begin expecting hardware vendors to not simply say "fix it later" when the product can't even be used anymore from being so out of date?

Thinking about it, the answer is obvious to me: people are happy with mediocre. Computers crash, things occasionally just don't work. Part of me hopes, one day that will change - people will begin to expect that this sort of technology shouldn't crash or be difficult to use. Another part of me though, I must admit, is happy we techies can half-ass solutions. Cause really, as long as it's good enough, it works right?

Recycling and Farmers Markets

2009-07-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

So, I called my trash company Thursday to get both my broken trash barrel replaced (the wheels are falling off and the lid is broken) and to set up recycling. Turns out recycling is $18 for three months. I was paying 10.50 for 3 months for just the trash barrel and didn't really want to pay an extra $18 for recycling so I canceled the trash barrel and added recycling. Next project is to get a compost heap set up. I bet we have almost no actual trash after that happens. Supposedly they are going to drop off the recycling thing and pick up the trash barrel on Tuesday. We shall see considering they were supposed to replace the trash barrel like six months ago.

We went to the Farmers Community Market at Brookside and the farmers market in Overland Park. The market in Brookside is a totally organic market, the market in Overland Park is not.

Prices at the Farmers Community Market at Brookside were on par to slightly more expensive then shopping at Whole Foods. It is a pretty small farmers market, I ment to get some pictures but I forgot, I'll have to do that next week if I remember. We had Puddin' Head Coffee and Fate had a breakfast burrito, I had spinach and cheese quiche. I bought some tri color beans, spring mix (thats very spicy!), some tomatoes, scallions, peppers, tomotillos and a couple other things I don't remember. I had some of the spring mix for lunch, it was very good.

The farmers market in Overland Park is a much bigger market. There was quite a few people there when we arrived around 10 am. They have a big pavillion hall type thing set up that is a permenate structure and everyone pulls up to that and sells out on tables and in some cases out of the back of trucks. You walk down an isle of vendors and basically stop at each one and get what you want from them.

There are quite a few smallish local farmers that come as well as a couple that I recognized as being resellers. Basically people that go and buy from big vendors like Sysco or American Food Service and redistribute to the public at these kinds of things. Most of The City Market is people like this if you go durning the week. I think on the weekends the actual farmers come out. That's a market I've been to during the week and the prices are extremely cheap...but the produce is mostly on line with the prices from what I saw.

We got a cantelope, corn, onions, peaches, an eggplant, and I believe a few othere things at the farmers market in Overland Park. We'll be eating very fresh this week!

--Fin

Reduce, reuse......recycle?

2009-07-08T19:52:00.000-07:00

We are a disposable society.

Seems like kind of a trite statement, now doesn't it? Political commentary best left to the media.....except I see it every single day on my job.

I'm a janitor. Yeah, I'm one of those people that most people ignore. That's what I do, not who I am. But I digress.

One of the jobs that I do on a regular basis is empty trash at a very large office building. Its interesting to me what people throw away. I have more then one blog post I plan on writing that has been spawned just simply by the act of dumping peoples trash.

For today's post I plan on focusing on soda pop cans. You know the ones....you put in your quarter (or fifty sense, or dollar...depending on where you are) and get out your Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, or whatever your poison of choice is (and I really do mean poison....have you ever looked at the ingredients in that stuff???)and drink it down. Now....what do you do with the can?

Its been my experience lately that people fall into one of just a couple categories on this:

1) throw it in their trash can
2) take it to the break room and throw it in the trash can
3) take it to the break room and throw it in the recycling bin
4) save it for the janitor as they come by and give it to them to put in the recycling bin

Weird, huh?

Not weird to you? Well, the way I see it....why just throw the can away? Why *not* recycle? Why in the world would someone put their empty aluminum can in the trash can when a recycling bin sits right next to the trash can? Why would someone put the cans in their trash can at their desk when the janitor is more then willing to take their can to the recycling bin for them if they were to just save them?

The only thing I can come up with is people just truly don't pay attention. Otherwise...why would they pick the trash can instead of the recycling bin when they are right next to another? Also...why would they throw their regular trash into the recycling bin?

In a broader sense, why do more people not recycle? Overseas its the norm, and expected. Trash service usually only allows *one* bag of actual trash to be put out weekly. All the rest of the trash that is produced is recycling. A bin is provided, recycling is placed in it and hauled away. (The process for separating it is facinating, by the way) Its easy and simple.

So why don't more people do it?

I have to confess that I don't....yet. I plan on calling my trash company tomorrow and getting a recycling bin so I can start actually doing it.

Oh....I'm Fin by the way :) I'm not as verbose as Fate....but I do have more opinions!

--Fin

How fast do you eat?

2009-07-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

Lunch to me is a big deal. My lunch is 1 hour. Not 30 minutes. Not 15 minutes. 1 hour. So, when I eat lunch with the guys, it's moderately annoying to me that it usually seems more like 5 minutes than 60.

Why?

Well, lunch goes like this - obtain food, eat food, talk about work. Only problem is, the eat food step is completed in about five minutes. And that makes me think, just how much can you enjoy your food in five minutes of eating?

Now, I can understand if you're bringing the same horrific salami on white bread with soggy pickle everyday. Generally though, I have a really good lunch, one that is worth more than swallowing hole - plastic sack and all.

Sadly, I never realized that I too had fallen to the sickness of the overly quick lunch until recently. For some time now, my lunch had been subject to the vacuum cleaner effect. It came to me mid-way through the usual collection of lunch fruit: wow, I'm not getting to taste any of this. And so, I mad a conscious effort to finish my lunch eating at a normal pace.

You probably wouldn't believe me, but just slowing down how fast I ate lunch made the entire world around me move slower too. Seriously. Simply taking 1 bite more per piece of fruit managed to break the laws of space-time. Any physicist out there can try and repeat the experiment by eating their salami on white bread by using more than 2 bites.

As a bonus, your digestive track will thank you for it. Eating too fast can lead to a great many health issues (obesity, acid reflux). Occasionally it pays to take some time, and well, taste the food.

If you find yourself having trouble slowing down, check out this associated content article.

Welcome to the Jungle!

2009-07-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

Over the past several weeks, I've been dealing with a growing annoyance. It started with something simple enough: apple sauce. It was a simple craving for a random food. So, at the grocery store, I attempted to find my mark. Unfortunately, this happened after I started reading labels.

Every apple sauce jar at the store had the same flaw: High Fructose Corn Syrup. Now, in general, I'm not an anti-HFCS Nazi. After all, several of my favorite foods contain HFCS. But what annoyed me most here is that I prefer my apple sauce, unsweetened. You wouldn't expect unsweetened apple sauce, just apple's with preservative, to be hard to find.

You'd be wrong.

I mentioned this at the office, and the general reply I got was, well unsweetened applesauce sucks. When it comes right down to it, adding corn syrup to applesauce is the cheapest way to sweeten it so the most number of people enjoy it.

When it comes down to it though, the annoyance for me was the lack of choice. A lack of choice created by the faster-better-cheaper mentality. We look at our modern world as something purely progressing, and don't stop to think if choices we eliminate have value. It's a curious thing to me, how few people stop to look at what's been done, what can be done, and the possibilities of the world around them.

And in general, I'm convinced, this forstagnation is being subtly encouraged by things we view as beyond question - public education, religion, technological advances, capitalism. All hold intrinsic value, but so often ideas and systems tied to concepts we hold dear are not challenged out of fear for challenging the concept itself.

This blog will be about an ongoing attempt to adopt a lifestyle which values choice, personal freedom, honesty, and individuality. And, it's not just me here writing about this point of view, my partner in crime, Fin, will be updating too.