Fate's 2010 Resolutions

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 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

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.

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

The Gyre As It Looks On Midway


-- Fin

Trash

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

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