Posted 2 days ago
I decided to share some of the ways I have been modifying my daily routines to live more efficiently not only in an economical, but also in a green fashion. Doing these things save me money, and are friendlier to the Earth. I am not a green freak, not one who rubs it in others faces or is smug about these changes that I make. I do them for myself and for the Earth because it makes me feel better about myself, it also of course saves me money.
Water
- Do not leave the water run while brushing teeth.
- Turn the shower off when washing, shampooing. Turn it back on to rinse.1
- Do not leave the water run while scrubbing dishes. Soap and scrub them all, then rinse all at once.
Electricity
- Cathode Fluorescent Light bulbs of course.
- Turn electronics (televisions, computers, etc.) off when not in use for extended periods.
- Trying out solar lights. Starting with a motion activated security light.
- Use ceiling fans to optimize heating/cooling unit.2
Gas
- Adjust the temperature on your gas water heater more efficiently.3
- Avoid unnecessarily extensive showers with hot water.
Other
- Recycle of course; paper, plastic(#1,#2), glass, steel, aluminum, styrofoam(some not all).
- Wear pants twice if they are not dirty.4
- Use towels and wash cloths a few times.5
1
Marketing might have you believe you need an expensive shower head system for this. Well, I'm no plumber but you don't. It is really a simple concept, just turn the water off when you are not using it. I will admit that my temperature control for my shower is quite conveniently operated by one adjustment and not two like the older style shower setups. I imagine that for roughly the same cost of an expensive shower head one could just replace their temperature control adjustments. Its a more cost effective investment.
2
During the summer turn your ceiling fans motor in reverse, usually there is a small switch on the fan to change this setting. The fins will pull the cool air that tends to sit at the bottom of the room near the floor up toward the ceiling and keep a better flow. During the winter do just the opposite and set your ceiling fans to push the warm air that tends to rise to the top of the ceiling downward. I had been having a difficult time keeping the second floor of my house cool. A friend of mine who happens to work in HVAC gave me a tip to run the fans on low, for some reason apparently running them on a higher speed doesn't work, I believe that, for a reason that my understanding of physics can not comprehend, running the fans on low creates a better pressure that causes a suction force pulling the air from the vents and downstairs and creating a more effective airflow.
3
I often find it interesting that I always left my water heater to keep my hot water at a temperature that I never really use it at. I set my water heater to maintain a temperature that still allows me to use hot water, but not at such a temperature that I can not bear to wash dishes at or take a shower in. Keeping water this hot is a waste of gas, or whatever precious resource is used to heat the water.
4
Unless I have been sweating profusely, spilled or contaminated my pants or if they smell funky I fold them and wear them another day.
5
I once had a health instructor in middle school that made a great point in answering a question one day. Once I have taken a shower, I am clean. So why the need to wash towels after every shower. Even wash cloths can be used a few times. Just simply hang them over a drying rack or bar. After 2-3 uses they will start to smell a tad funky, but then it is just time to send them off to the laundry. It is surprising when 2 or more members of a household take part in this to how much laundry it can save.
Hopefully these tips are helpful to someone that may not be privy to some of them.
Posted in General | Tags efficient, green, green living, living, save money | no comments
Posted 4 months ago
During the 4 hour drive back to Canton from Lansing, Michigan from the Great Lakes Ruby Bash I had a realization. Its been long past due, I couldn't even bring myself to guessing how long its been since I last booted to it. Its a waste of time, space and hurting my morals.
Step 1- Staring off positive...
Step 2 - A good song and it makes sense...you'll see
Step 3 - NTFS hrm wonder what that could be?
Step 4 - Ah, who cares!
It should be noted that I am so confident in my actions that I didn't even take the time to look through the files to see if I wanted anything on the file system...obviously its nothing important otherwise it would be on a journaled file system!
As reward for my accomplishment, I decided to subscribe to a
Twitter account.
Posted in General, Linux, Tech | Tags freedom, Microsoft, Windows, windows vista | no comments
Posted 5 months ago
The night started fine at Munson's in Canton, OH last night. Of course the early night is always ok at Munson's and its a great place to grab a bite to eat during the day. However unless you enjoy being shoulder to shoulder with the scum of the earth I advise avoiding the place during the later hours. Its nothing but another overcrowded dance floor/restaurant/bar crawling with the very people that make me ashamed to be an American and even further so of the human race. The kind of people that make you wonder if we can really be considered an advanced life form.
Anyway those thoughts are nothing new, I can't stand society these days its just that simple but lets leave that bridge uncrossed for now. What I really want to say is the security there is pretty shitty at best, a bunch of meat heads running around with XXL "SECURITY" t-shirts on does not replace an (at least) somewhat experienced security team. Guys just so you are aware a major part of your job as security is to DIFFUSE VIOLENCE NOT TO CREATE IT! Of course when half of your security team is there for the thrill ride and badge I'm pretty sure that constitutes conflict of interest.
So unfortunate, but I must say its the last time I will make the mistake of going out for the later hours to Munson's.
Posted in General | Tags bar, canton, Munsons, restaurant, Security, society, violence | no comments
Posted 9 months ago
I am writing this blog in a feeble attempt to rally against this new (stupid ass) game from Infinity Ward. I personally have never been impressed with a number of areas of Call of Duty series from Infinity Ward, however I played because the community I was involved with played almost exclusively CoD series. The group I am involved with currently also plays a great deal of Call of Duty WaW. Many obviously are excited about the new CoD Modern Warfare 2, however I am not the only one that is pissed off about its cost, features and Infinity Wards direction with game costs.
Let me first point out the new feature that Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2 will possess that I and others feel is the most user unfriendly! To the best of my knowledge instead of selecting the server you wish to play in the game will choose the best server for you. Sorry, I know you are trying to be slick here but this is a terrible feature. It's not so shabby if the vast majority of users that are groups of friends all playing on the same connection. Even then with intelligent routing protocols I see the potential for groups of people with the same ISP and general location being sent to different servers. The greatest atrocity is when people from other countries or even areas of the same country wish to play together, sorry guys your fucked.
Now as much as I disagree with this I would still consider purchasing Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2. However the next change with Infinity Ward's game is what has caused me to turn against the game I play as much or more than Starcraft and the Diablo series. Infinity Ward will now charge for game patches. Two words IW, piss off! I'm sorry but your games just aren't stable enough on release nor are they so great that I will not subscribe to this sort of behavior. I am perfectly fine with charging for add-ons to the game, however, charging for patches because your original product was inferior enough to raise the need for a fix I will happily refuse.
I see that Infinity Ward has chosen to bend over the table the same group of people that made their game a success. Before you know it Infinity Ward will partner with, yes I'm going there, Microsoft. Then only subscribers to Games for Windows Live will be able to play and the game will play like hell on anything that isn't a Microsoft Xbox.
Surely Infinity Ward and CoD will continue to thrive (for awhile at least) on primarily game consoles. However, they will do so without much of the support from PC gamers as well as my support. For me this move by IW is the death of a great game.
Posted in General | Tags Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2, CoD, Infinity Ward, IW | 2 comments
Posted 11 months ago
My grandpa is fairly old school. Even when I drove junkers he would always make sure I was waxing the car. I would wax them every once in a while, but never gave it much attention, I just got the job done. Now I have a pretty nice car and pay more attention to detail. I also wax the car every few washes, probably about once a month. Waxing is not an easy job, once you've already cleaned the car, waxing just makes the work put into keeping your vehicle nice looking grow enormously. The work is rather tedious and exhausting.
One issue I constantly get into is getting wax on the plastic parts of cars and the rubber that seals the windows when they are up. I waxed my girlfriends car not too long ago and left some wax under the plastic bumper. Now her car is in good shape minus some paint and light body damage along the passenger side. So while getting the damage inspected, a body work professional told her the wax had soaked into the plastic from being in the sun and would need to be re-painted. Although I feel over the appropriate conditions this would happen I smelled bullshit. The bumper is mostly beneath the car and a good deal protected from the sun. I took a long soft bristled brush to the plastic and eventually got the wax off. It took some elbow grease and some persistence but it came off quite nicely.
I just finished washing and waxing my car today and did essentially the same with my rear bumper which is similarly protected from the sun. However, my side view mirrors also have the same pressed type of plastic around them and had previously had wax left on them. The car has seen a good deal of direct sunlight over a period of time. I took an old soft bristled tooth brush to the plastic and the wax came right out. Another great use for the good old used tooth brush, we keep them stashed in a junk drawer because they come in handy for a lot of different things.
Also make sure to avoid scrubbing the wax with water, it does not help at all and will keep the wax from breaking up and coming out of the plastic. I also do not recommend steel brushes or anything that could damage the plastic or surface of the paint on your car.
Update: Apparently the most common home remedy is peanut butter.
Off to drink a little more beer after a long weekend.
Posted in General | Tags car, plastic, toothbrush, wax | no comments
Posted 11 months ago
I am considering moving the site to Typo to replace the blog and using Flickr to manage the photo album. I am not sure what I will do about the Utilities. I need to see if I can easily extend Typo or not.
The main reason for this is simply that I end up spending more time managing code and adding new features than I do managing the content of the site. I have yet to dive into Typo and see what capabilities are there. Hopefully if I decide to make this migration, the change will cause me to upload more photos, write more blogs about stuff nobody cares about, and just improve the content of the site in general.
Sean
Posted in Website, General, Ruby on Rails, Tech | no comments
Posted about 1 year ago
An excerpt from Mailing List Etiquette on FreeBSD.
Please use a standards-compliant Mail User Agent (MUA). A lot of badly formatted messages come from bad mailers or badly configured mailers. The following mailers are known to send out badly formatted messages without you finding out about them:
- * cc:Mail
- * Eudora� (older versions)
- * exmh
- * Microsoft� Exchange
- * Microsoft Internet Mail
- * Microsoft Outlook�
- * Netscape� (older versions)
As you can see, the mailers in the Microsoft world are frequent offenders. If at all possible, use a UNIX� mailer. If you must use a mailer under Microsoft environments, make sure it is set up correctly. Try not to use MIME: a lot of people use mailers which do not get on very well with MIME.
I just find this hilarious. I mean what exactly defines user friendly? Software that has shiny buttons or that formats its data in a way that complies with standards and is compatible with other users *standard compliant* software?!
Sean
Posted in General, Linux, Tech | no comments
Posted about 1 year ago
Michael Jackson is dead. So sorry to the die hard fans. He was an amazing entertainer. He certainly had an enormous impact on the music industry.
You know what though, he hasn't done anything since then but cause trouble, molest children and add to the ugly side of our nation. Many will miss him and more will not.
Sean
Posted in General | no comments
Posted about 1 year ago
Been so long since my last blog, half of the routes for my admin are broken and I have not had time to fix them.
Anyway, I bought a new vehicle, finally got out of my rusty 1990 Honda Accord which was falling apart. I bought a 2006 Mercury Milan Premier from Downtown Ford in Canton. The car is black with black leather interior, heated seats, 6 speaker sound system, the whole deal, except for a moon roof.
I was looking at a charcoal Ford Fusion that was also loaded with a moon roof but some other jerk beat me to the punch! I am thrilled with my new car though, its going to be a pain in the ass to keep clean but I love black cars. I might look into getting the windows tinted a little as well.
So I would like to mention how well I was taken care of by Downtown Ford. There is a reason they sell a lot of vehicles. I was lucky enough to know the daughter of a saleswoman there. Regardless of this, it was a pleasure dealing with her. I don't want to make this sound like an advertisement but I would recommend to anyone looking for a new car to check out Downtown Ford.
Aside from my new car I also have a new woman in my life. Did I miss the pearly gates?! She is beautiful, sweet, can and likes to cook, it is an understatement to say that I am ecstatic about my social life right now. I do have a lot of stress from work and some other things but that is just a part of life.
Well thats enough I am going to go call my girlie and watch Heat
Sean
Posted in General | no comments
Posted about 1 year ago
It would seem to be MIA again. Work is super busy and with warm weather on its way I have been working out more. I managed to put my heavy bag back up a couple weeks ago! Getting back on the bag is a really good feeling. Maybe if things die down at work soon I will make a trip to the gym in Akron assuming its still around.
I'm going to go write some code. I would love to go back and clean up some of the code I wrote for this site. It would probably be good for me to code on a recreational level tonight. Well whatever my eyes are already bothering me so I better go make the best of the next half hour. I am trying to get off the computer as much as possible after work and into bed around 10PM. I really need to regain control of my mornings and what time I wake up. It's pretty sad that it requires 3 alarms to get me up...
Sean
Posted in General, Combat | no comments
