Archive for the “Life notes” Category

I’m spending a week in Michigan near Detroit on family stuff. Lots of things going on. Barak Obama and John McCain both made appearances nearby, the PGA is making traffic on some roads difficult, and the mayor of Detroit just got hauled off to jail for skipping bail…twice.

Unfortunately, where we’re staying has no Internet access. Nothing. Not even a dial up modem. To get online I have to go out on the front porch and try to hop on a neighbor’s open wireless network (my Mac hunts and hunts and finds ‘linksys’). Depending on the cloud cover, the wind, a car going by I can stay on for 10 seconds, sometimes 10 minutes. At night the light from the laptop attracts hordes of bugs and I go to bed scratching.

But just a few miles away, the local library has wifi access throughout their facility. Not only that, they have these great tables set up with lamps in the middle that have outlets for you power cord. They want you come in and be comfortable and use their facility. It’s a wonderful library with large reading and study areas and even a café.

I am so glad the Eureka branch of the Humboldt County Library finally got wireless capabilities so people in a situation similar to mine can get Internet access. If I hadn’t found this place I would have had to spend an inordinate amount of time and money at Starbucks.

Technorati Tags: humboldt county library, library access, WiFi

The Eureka Reporter had an interesting article this week about Zero Motorcycles. These dirt bikes are electric with no noise and zero emissions. Apparently you can view one at Bedliners Plus at 1326 Koster Lane off Broadway in Eureka.

But the real news is that the company expects to come out with a street legal version this summer. The current off road model costs $7450 (plus shipping) and you can order them from their web site. No information is on their site as to when exactly the new bikes will be available nor how much they will cost. The current dirt bikes can go up to 60 mph, have a range of 40 miles and take 2 hours to fully recharge. Of course, while you may not be making any noise or belting out pollutants, most of the electricty we use is still generated by burning fossil fuels (71.4%) so you will still be in the global warming tar pit.

Technorati Tags: electric motorcycle, fossil fuels, global warming

Happy July 4th, the day we celebrate our independence from tyranny. Perhaps it’s time to revisit the Declaration as our rights keep shrinking under a government out of control.  Just to quote the most salient phrase:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The latest breach of our rights is a ruling by a federal court for the Southern District of New York that orders Google to divulge when, what and who watched YouTube videos. The ruling is part of a Viacom vs Google lawsuit over copyright issues.

Just one more step in the erosion of the freedoms we celebrate today.

I’m wearing my flag pin on my blog today.

Technorati Tags: declaration of independence, privacy, rights, you tube

So the Bank of America, I guess trying to streamline the deposit process, has installed these new ATMs where you no longer put your checks in an evelope, but instead insert them one at a time into a slot like the dollar bill slot in a vending machine. The machine is supposed to scan your check and read the amount. Great. Except they don’t work half the time. Or, in my most recent episode with the bank, 2/3 of the time.

Last week I had three checks all the same size and configuration, all from the same company. All neat and flat, no wrinkles. I stuck one check in and it got rejected 4 times. I stuck the next check in and it got accepted. Thinking maybe the machines are smart enough to learn, I stuck the 3rd check in. It too got rejected multiple times. I know, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is supposed to be a sign of insanity. Believe me, this was driving me insane.

I did finally give up. But since it was 8:30 in the morning I couldn’t even go in to the bank and deposit the remaining checks with a real person. Instead I had to wait until later in the day and visit another branch where the line was very long. So, just to be perverse, I tried my checks in that ATM. They were accepted. Same checks, maybe even a little worse for wear. WTF? Technology should be installed to improve our lives not drive us mad.

Is B of A installing these infernal machines everywhere? Or is Humboldt County part of a social experiment to see how long it will take before people start trashing and burning their buildings like they did in the 70s? I know, I should be using a local bank. But we’ve had  those accounts for years. Long before Redwood Capital was around. Besides, I really like the Bank’s online services which save us lots of time. And we do have accounts at RCB as well.

Technorati Tags: atm, bank of america, redwood capital bank

You might remember the film that was shot here a while back called, ironically, Humboldt County. It’s still out there and most recently got some good notices at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin. According the directors’ blog, the film has finally been sold to a distributor and is scheduled for a limited release this Fall. But in  a post script to the latest blog post, director Danny Jacobs hints that the film may get a screening sooner and closer to home.

Belated congratulations to RTC member, fellow blogger, Drupaler, HSU student and advocate for green transportation Aaron Antrim on winning one of the Economic Fuel grand prizes of $25,000 for his already running business of Trillium Transit. Aaron is a great example of someone following his passions and channeling them in to practical solutions.

The technological advances that Aaron is pushing for to improve our environment are great. But I can’t help thinking a great shift in human thinking still has to happen. I live on a bus line. I watch this huge bus go by hour after hour empty or with one person on it. I passed a bus on 101 the other evening. It too was empty. The buses run, but in spite of advances like the ability to buy passes or plan bus trips online the system seems way underused. I admit I never think of using the bus. Will gas need to get to $7/gallon before I start changing how I view transportation? Probably. And it will probably reach $7 sooner than we dare imagine.

Technorati Tags: buses, economic fuel, green wheels, transportation

We’ve been doing recycling for several years. I’m pretty happy that itt’s reduced our garbage output by more than half. I go down to the Eureka recycling center every other week. They’ve recently made it simpler and faster by reducing the amount of sorting you have to do considerably.

What’s funny, or sad, depending on my mood, is the number of huge SUVs that roll in to the transfer station to recycle struggling to squeeze in to a parking space in order to unload their few tubs of recycling materials.

I know we can’t all be in perfect alignment with green living precepts, but there is something increasingly egregious about these huge vehicles lumbering around in face of  climate change, raising gas prices and the political and security hazards that dependency on imported oil imposes on us.

Technorati Tags: energy, green living, oil prices, recycling

Cancer is a scary disease. It can lie hidden for years and suddenly a test reveals your bones/lungs/liver/brain/colon is riddled with it. But I have been fighting the good fight. I have been fending off cancer by drinking red wine. Not only that, but the same cancer fighting ingredient, resveratrol, is also helpful in staving off some of the effects of diabetes. And there is some indication that red wine could be good for the heart.

I just got done hauling and stacking wood. I think I will have a nice glass of red wine and little nap. I’m such a health nut!

Technorati Tags: cancer, diabetes, health, heart disease, red wine, resveratrol

Well, after strutting around all winter with nary sniffle I came down with one of this year’s versions of the crud. Really, just a cold. But a mean one with a debilitating dry cough that caused my  entire torso to ache and found me spending two nights in the living room chair trying to sleep in a semi-upright position.

I tried to work, off and on, at home. I tried to read when I could concentrate or focus my eyes. But really, I spent a lot of time just sitting and trying not to disturb whatever it was that my lungs were trying to expel.

I know I am not alone. I’ve had many friends tell me their horror stories. I’ve read about the losses in school income due to high  absentee rates. I’d felt so fortunate, even a little superior having gotten to Spring in such a healthy fashion. Now I have joined the many weak of soul and body. I have succumbed to the viral menace.

But things are better today. I can walk through the house without collapsing in to a hacking fit.  I can talk for more that a few minutes without my voice devolving in to an incoherent whisper. Tomorrow is a new day. And hey! It’s Friday already!

Technorati Tags: crud, health, sickness

Karen Armstrong is a tremendous writer on religion. She was honored recently at the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference. Her acceptance talk is revelatory and I thought appropriate for this Easter weekend. She includes a proposal that offers a chance of transcendence for all of us. The 20 minute video is well worth watching and contemplating.

And if you aren’t aware of TED, check out the other talks available.

Technorati Tags: Karen Armstrong, peace, religion, TED, the golden rule

I didn’t go to Macworld, darn it. But I did read stuff and watched the keynote. The new MacBook Air is cool looking but way too expensive. I don’t own an IPhone so the new stuff for that didn’t hold much interest. I just got a Tivo so I’m not about to switch to Apple TV at the moment. So, was there anything unveiled this year that floated my boat?

Well, yes, although it hasn’t been released yet. Leopard, the latest release of the Mac OS ships with a pretty nice piece of backup software called Time Machine. I recently bought a new MacBook Pro that came with Leopard so I have this great software. But I haven’t used it because I don’t have a convenient way of backing up to an external drive. And in our household we have more than one MacBook. So, the one thing Steve Jobs did announce that made my wallet flippity-flop was Time Capsule. It’s a hard drive (in either 500 GB or 1 TB models) with a built in wireless card. You can set it up so your MacBook automatically connects to the Time Capsule drive and gets backed up using Time Machine. Stick the thing in your office. Walk in with your laptop and open it up and you are being backed up over the wireless network. Just the thing to make my life a little easier. Sweet.

Technorati Tags: apple, AppleTV, Ipod, leopard, mac os, Time Capsule MacBook Air, Time Machine

It’s sometimes nice to have a soap box. Suddenlink’s head of technology for the western region got wind of my blog post about the problems I had with Tivo and Suddenlink (probably through Google’s News Alerts service). He followed a link to our web site and called my office yesterday. I went over what happened and he promised to look in to it. Sure enough, that afternoon I got a call from Suddenlink local and had an appointment for a service call.

It turns out, there was nothing really wrong with the cable service. Something on the Tivo box had gotten reset (must have been user error on our part). But Tivo support couldn’t help me. The “cable guy” fixed it, explained the issue and all is well. So, I apologize for dumping so heavily on Suddenlink.

However, the  real problem came when I went in to the Suddenlink office to try and get clarification and no one seemed to have a clue, provided wrong information and confirmed that wrong information with others elsewhere in the organization. So, there was really a training and communication breakdown there.

It turns out I don’t need the cable cards that Suddenlink still actually does not have in stock unless I upgrade to their digital TV service. Until then, I got my Tivo back!

Thanks, cable guys….