Category → life
From the Green Garbage Project
The thing is, the technology is already here and we know it’s better for the planet. Why can’t we move beyond the knowledge stage and get this implemented?
This led me to think about dish soap, of all things. Dish soap has long been a pet peeve of mine, and it’s a tiny example that encapsulates my entire frustration. Here’s the scenario: You go to the grocery store because you’re out of dish soap. You want a soap that costs a reasonable price, that smells good, and that cleans well. Why is it, that when a majority of people get to the dish soap aisle, they buy a brand-name soap when the green variety costs the same amount, cleans just as well and smells nice, too?
There is no reason not to make this switch – not cost, not effectiveness, not smell, not hand-softness, nothing. So why aren’t all the other brands out of business by now? Of course, it boils down to product loyalty and advertising budget, but that’s just plain stupid. It shouldn’t take an act of government to get chemicals out of our dish soap when we know they are bad for ourselves and the planet. We as consumers should be making this happen. The same argument can be made for solar panels and green roofs and geothermal water heaters and porous asphalt and a host of other proven and comparable green changes.
I fully agree.
My Biggest Project Yet: A House :: Tour
Street View
My wife and I bought a house. It is a fixer-upper. Who would have thought. I have big plans for the house… and I can already tell that most of them aren’t going to see the light of day. Being able to talk to a house and have it audibly respond is maybe a bit over-board anyway. Let’s take a walk-through:
First up is the porch:
Wide-Open Porch
Porch Ceiling: Ready for a Swing
Porch Floor: someone barfed stripes
The porch is enclosed and awesome. Notice the puke-toned carpet.
The door leads into the living room:
View from the living room
Living Room
From Living Room into Dining
The Dining Room is right off the main living area:
Ugly Dining Chandelier
Dining Room
Awesome/Ugly Dining Room Wallpaper
Dining Room to Kitchen
The Kitchen:
Kitchen
Check out that kitchen paneling
Let’s go upstairs to the hallway:
Beautiful Modern Rug
The Hallway
First stop on our right is the bathroom:
Blue Porcelain
Even the shower is blue
Now to the three bedrooms:
The Master bedroom
The Guest Room
Other Guest Room Complete with Creepy Water Bed
We (and when I say “we”, I really mean Abby) have started to do work on the kitchen. Check out this paint:
Blueish-Gray with White Pop
Rip those Cabinets off!
LadyAda and Ada Lovelace Day
Ada Lovelace
Today is Ada Lovelace Day; a celebration of women and technology. I have to say the first person I thought of when I heard about this day is LadyAda. Maybe it is because of the namesake, but probably because LadyAda is featured a bunch on my favorite blog, Make:
Lady Ada is a tinkerer, inventor, and all around creator. I discovered hear reading a post about a miniPOV kit that looked super cool (I even asked my mom to get me one for christmas that year [she said she could find them anywhere]). The idea is that you program a message into the Persistance of Vision toy and then when you wave it, it displays the message via LEDs. I went to her website and found a bunch of awesome gadgets and kits. Of particular interest to me back then were, the gamegrrl; a gameboy sized NES emulator and the Mini MintyMP3; an mp3 player that fit into a mint tin.
Since then, LadyAda has started a website to sell her and other kits (today they are giving 10% off in order celebrate). I don’t know for sure, but I think she may work for (at least contributes to) Make: magazine and blog. She is definitely an inspiration to me. I wish I could put the right parts together to make sweet gizmos.
Enjoy the day and checkout other Ada Lovelace Day blog posts and articles.
Compared to Others, How well do you answer questions?
What is the real question here?
So, I’ve been job hunting since May. It is tough. I really hate looking for jobs more than anything else. It is such a hassle to fill out the same stuff over and over again. Everyone needs the same information, but they all want it on their own brand of application. Sometimes, I wonder why I even made a resume.
Anyway, every once in a while I have a good time while filling things out. Today, I was referred to a site that for a customer service company. Part of the application process was taking a 123 question survey. Some of these questions were really interesting to me, so I felt the need to share.
The first one that caught me off guard was the one to the left, #8. “About what percentage of your goals do you have to abondon before you reach them?”
WHAT?!
In my mind, if I have to abandon any of my goals, then I haven’t reached them. Therefore, the only answer I could choose is none. I have to abandon none of my goals before I reach them. But that wasn’t a choice. So I went with the best answer, “less than 10%”
I don't know how well others do this.
Then, in question #22, I had to compare myself to “others”. How affective do I consider myself to be in convincing someone to change his or her opinion on something?
I guess I don’t really know how affective other people are, so I have no way of comparing myself. I would imagine that I’m about the same as most, maybe better.
It turns out about 20% of the questions on this thing asked me to compare myself to others. The other one that really caught my attention was, “Relative to others you know, How long does it take you to get over being upset or angry?”
Everyone I know takes different amounts of time to get over being upset. It depends on what they are all upset about. So, I guess I’m the same as that.
I thought this question was funny because of my thought process.
The final question I’m going to specifically talk about is question #77. This one is particularly funny because of my thought process that went along with it. “I recognize relationships between seemingly unrelated events.” The answer chooses were varying degrees of agreeing. Here is what I was thinking about this question:
“Okay, so they’re asking me that if a guy does a bad job on a task one week and then gets fired if I’m going to see the connection. But, if I put down that I do put connections together, they are never going to hire me. Are they just asking straight up if I’m paranoid. Well, I’m not really paranoid, so I should put never agree. But they put ’seemingly’ unrelated, meaning they probably were related events. Still, if that happened would I make the connection? probably. But I don’t want them to know that, right? Meh, whatever. I’ll tell them what they want to hear. I sometimes connect events. That’s basically the truth.”
Then I hit submit with that answer. As soon as I did, I replayed my thought in my head and realized that I just blew that question way out of proportion. I had definitely made a relationship between that question and the hiring process that is seemingly unrelated. How ironic. I realized that the real answer should probably be, I always recognize relationships between seemingly unrelated events. weird.
Check out a few more questions below.
But I hate missing work for all these reasons.
Once again, how long does it take others to get over being upset?
I don't not like any of these.
What Vimeo has taught me
Vimeo.com is a video uploading website that has a great indie/arty community behind it. I love watching videos from there. They are inspiring.
Today, I was watching the video below and I realized, life is better through a nice lens, good music, and in HD. Enjoy.
Check out the HD version: My son from Gunnar Konradsson on Vimeo.
My Family
So I had to write a motivational statement for an Americorps application. The question was: Describe a moment that shaped your life. (or something like that)
Well, I find it hard to pinpoint just one experience in shaping me as the person I am today. Everyday things affect who I am and why I do what I do.
If I was to be completely honest I have to say my biggest influence is my family. Growing up, my family helped shape what kinds of people I wanted as friends, what activities I enjoy doing, and what is important to me. The biggest thing that I can say was instilled in me from my family is being myself. My mother always encourage us (3 boy and 2 girls) to be ourselves. She reminded us all that if we are true to ourselves than ultimately we aren’t living. This is the single biggest “life shaper” that I’ve had.
Through out the years I’ve determined that I am a person who loves to perform… anything. I love to shape people’s emotions. I like to surprise people, calm people, make people laugh, cry or just smile. I love to perform. It is just who I am. I realized that this love for performance stems from a deeper desire to better people’s lives.
This led me to start focusing on the state of our environment. I realized that people could live better if they treated each other better. One way of doing that is through our surroundings; having a healthy planet.
I know that being “green” is a cliche buzz word right now, but I realized during my first year of college, in 2003, that our culture has become too complacent with being a throw away society. I started to figure out ways that I could counter act the waste. Then I realized that I was so passionate about this because I had been taught as a child to be mindful of waste and consumption. My parents weren’t hippies or activists. We just didn’t have a lot of money, so throwing everything away wasn’t an option. Trying to reuse it was a necessity.
I was able to take my upbringing a step further. Now I look for ways to reuse everything. Not just for me, but for everyone around me. If I feel like I absolutely can’t use something and it has to be trashed, I donate it to a thrift store or place of need.
So, anyway, my family has been a huge influence on me… and it really wasn’t until a little while ago that I realized how huge.
Stewards of Christmas
Happy Holidays Everybody. Check out this song, by The Stoughton Stewards of Christmas:
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Late Halloween
I’ve been meaning to post these pictures for a long time, but it took me 1.5 months to actually take them. Anyway, this is my Halloween costume. I really wanted to be Jan and Wayne Skylar from Tim and Eric, but no one wanted to be my Jan. So after much thought, it hit me that I should dress up as facebook. That’d be so easy and fun. Just need some cardboard. About two days before Halloween I realized that I should be a facebook profile of a cherished Halloween costume fallback. My first instinct was ghost, vampire, or zombie, but pirate was an easier costume to find, and was ultimately more fun in the end.
pirate facebook profile
So the costume really consists of a huge piece of cardboard painted and written on with permanent marker. The fun part is that the costume is interactive. I folded some flaps back for photos and info. So if someone pushed the info button, I would unfold the middle two flaps and it revealed some more info. If someone hit photos, I poped the top flaps open and I had some pictures of pirates (all images of pirates are from google search and belong to their original owner).
I also brought a permanent marker for people to write on my wall. You can see them all in the pictures. Also, if people wanted to send me a message I had a pad of paper and pen in my pocket for them. Only one person tried it, but I was glad that I had that covered. Finally, if someone poked me, I generally poked back. It was a super fun costume, I might utilize it again seeing as it only got about 3 hours of use. I hope ya’ll love it.
more info please
Caught between a west coast east coast love sandwich.
I really dig the title of this post. I was reading my past posts and saw this. My sis used it as a sign in name. Good one! poetry.