Charity for Dummies (Part 1)

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"

"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?

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

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

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

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

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?