Don't clean your lint tray

I used to be an apartment dweller, and there was a sign at the dryers in the basement that said

"Empty the lint tray when load is done!!!"

Seems like the courteous and fair thing to do, empty out the lint you made. (The triple exclamation marks emphasized just how important an issue this was ... made me feel like there was a cop watching me when I did the laundry)

The problem is, not everybody does it. When a courteous person arrives at a dryer where the lint HASN'T been emptied, then they have to empty it twice, once for the guy before them, and once for themselves.

The only people this system words for is the guys who don't empty their own lint tray. That doesn't seem very fair to me.

We should all come together and agree that NOBODY empties their own lint tray, just empty it when you arrive. That way, everybody only has to empty the lint tray once.

The guys who don't empty the lint tray only have themselves to blame when they get lint-filled laundry.

Who's with me?


Also applies to:

• Milk bags
• Toilet seats in a men only environment, such as a dorm.

Definitely does NOT apply to:

• Dishes
• Golf turf divets
• Garbage on tables in fast food restaurants
  

Al Gore's desk is messier (more messy?) than mine

I stumbled across this photo of Al Gore on his blog.


And here i thought my desk was a mess ... I've got nothing on Al Gore. A lot of trees have been killed in those reports on his desk ... all for the greater good I'm sure.

At least he looks like he's working hard to save the plantet...

New Mac User - Day 398 - The "dock" just isn't doing it for me

Last year I posted a "new Mac User - Day 1" entry on my blog with my first impressions. Well, it's been 398 days since then, and I know a bit more about the mac now and figured it was time for a follow up.

I suppose it's more like, one year later now...

Topic: The Mac "Dock"
It's the one thing that right away, when windows users look at, they say "what the heck is that?".

It's Mac's equivalent to Windows taskbar, and it works a bit differently. The Mac universe seems to love this thing ... I don't really understand why.

First, the good:

• I really like that when I want to open up a certain app (say, firefox or iphoto), the button that opens it, whether it's open or not, is always in the same spot. Very handy (whereas in windows, apps resort themselves on the taskbar whenever they get opened.)

Now, the bad:

• The doc takes up way to much screen real estate, especially on modern widescreens. It may have made sense with the traditional screen aspect ratio, but it doesn't on my little macbook pro screen (even worse on a macbook). GAH.
  
• Windows can only be resized by clicking the bottom right hand corner of them... but sometimes large windows get stuck BEHIND the dock and I cant get at the re-size button without accidentally opening another application. ARGH.
  
• Minimizing windows to the doc is pointless because unlike the windows taskbar, you can't clearly see what the minimized application is, it's too small. BLECK
  As a result, I don't ever minimize these days, I just let my desktop get all cluttered up and find my apps with expose (which, is super handy BTW)
  
• The dock get's really confused when the same app has multiple windows associated with it. My biggest pet peeve is with firefox. Lets say you downloaded something at somepoint in the day, and you have minimized your firefox window. Later on in the day, click on firefox on the dock and it opens up your list of downloaded files, with firefox itself nowhere to be found. I click like mad on the firefox button, and nothing pops up but this silly download list (until I close the download list). YAR.

I get the feeling that the "dock" is there on the Mac simply because it is "different", not because it's particularly functional. I have moved my dock to the right side of my screen instead of the bottom to get it out of the way, which makes it a bit less obtrusive (but makes minimized windows even more impossible to figure out).

Paris Hilton ruined my planet

Imagine how hard it would be to stick to a budget in a store with no prices. Well, that's pretty much how we buy electricity today.

from the Official Google Blog: Power to the people

Apparently Google is going to work towards making the information from power "Smart Meters" (Not installed in MY home yet) easily available. So you waste less money. So you pollute less. So you save the planet!

For example, lets say somehow I get sucked into watching "Paris Hilton's Best Friend Forever" reality TV show. Google could help me understand that not only did I completely botch 1/2 an hour of my precious life, but I spent $32.6 cents in energy that I could have used to buy organic carrots instead of plunging our planet further into a carbon death spiral.


Groovy. Now if only Google could tell me how much I'm spending on my cell phone bill before it shows up on my doorstep...

Free cable TV legally

I have only had cable periodically since I started university. Two degrees and two jobs later, I still don't have cable. I don't really miss it as most of what's on TV is complete trash, but there are a few shows that I really enjoy and like to keep up on, usually of the drama/sci-fi type.:

1. Battlestar Galactica (dumb name, great show)
2. Lost (Has a great "mythology" and some of the best fiction writing ever)
3. Heroes (about to fall off my list... it was pretty bad last season)

I was hooked on 24 for a bit after getting the DVD box set in my hand, but it turned into the same horrible plot-find terrorist-accuse-the-wrong-person-get-tortured-torture-somebody else-save-the-day lather rinse repeat cycle a few time each season, so that show fell off my radar.

The thing I like the least about cable is having to schedule your life around it, or sitting down and watching something totally dumb that you never meant to watch and losing your whole evening.

... and... after spending a lot of time watching seasons of shows on DVD, it's REALLY hard to go back to getting interrupted with commercials.

PVRs help with that, but the thing I don't like about those is... paying for them.

Fortunately the internet is here to help out. Get yourself a good super-high speed internet connection and you can actually get some really good FREE TV these days. (The Americans have got it better than us Canucks, but we can still usually find the shows we want).

All the shows I like are available online, and in pretty good quality too. They can be found here:

• Battlestar online
  
• Lost online
  
• Heroes online
  

It's completely free, legal, and no hassle. The only downside is that you have to watch a few commercials, but the commercials breaks are only 30 seconds long instead of 2 minutes.

I hook my computer up to my TV and sound system so I can watch it from my couch instead of crouched around my computer.