The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
The Carbon Footprint of Digital Books
Could I have a more pretentious title for a post?
“Ask Umbra”, which seems to be a MSN column on all things green, did a piece on paper vs. digital books. Which is greener?
The answer seems to be that if you keep your Kindle for any reasonable length of time and actually use it, you will be doing the Earth some good.
I don’t care. I like books.
What prompted me to write about it was this:
“A MS candidate named Greg Kozak pitted textbooks against e-book devices [PDF] in 2003. He found that paper production, electricity of printing operations, and personal transportation were the main factors affecting the book footprint, while electricity was the main issue for e-readers; and that books were responsible for four times the greenhouse emissions as e-readers.”
Generally, my courses at BU are offering electronic versions of textbooks. I am not sure if the practice is as high a priority for the on-campus students, or we online students are the primary beneficiaries. But I am not going for them. I like having the book in my hands. I like that I don’t always have to be on the computer to do my homework.
I generally read newpapers online (although I do get the Sunday Tribune. Coupons and bird cage liner. Sorry.) and I pay my bills online and I use e-mail far, far more than I write letters.
But I am not giving up books any time soon. You can read the the entire article here.
The End of the Semester
The final exam seemed easy, but was full of trick questions. Like when there is a fill in the blank that has four blanks, suggesting that four words will go there. I look at the answers. They all pretty much make sense, but no magic words are jumping out. But. Three of the answers are three words long. The fourth answer has four words. To go in four blanks. So I pick it.
Wrong.
I was pretty ticked at myself for falling for the trick questions. But my classmates are ticked at the professor. Apparently they think that writing trick questions tests our knowledge of the English language instead of our knowledge of the material. I think that I was being intellectually lazy on a couple of questions and deserved the grade I received. There was, after all, a curve.
I have been know to argue a grade, but this time I am taking my B+ and running.
I have ordered my books for the next class – Accounting – and am now settling down for a long winter’s nap.
How Evil is HR?
Patrick Erwin at Careerbuilder.com wrote a short article on 5 Job Blogs You Should be Reading.
Blahblahblah.
But wait. What is this? Punk Rock HR?!
So I look at her stuff. The writer, Laurie Ruettimann, worked in HR for a good stretch and is now writing about it. And consulting, it seems. I agree with much of what she says. And then.
I see her blogroll. And I click on EvilHRLady. I say this stuff all the time! I could be writing this! Except that I. Don’t. Dare.
“Not being friends with the boss is not a protected class. This, in my way of thinking, means that you don’t have any claim of discrimination if the boss pays his BFF more than he is paying you, or rather the other entry level workers. You may see it as stupid, he may see it as being generous to an old friend.”
Declaring things that are “not a protected class” is something I do regularly. Another one is, “It’s not discrimination if he is a jerk to everyone.”
EvilHRLady gave sound advice after making that point, but she made the point, which I appreciate. Employees regularly instruct me on “their labor rights” and what is “illegal”. Generally, they don’t know what they are talking about.
Anyway. EvilHRLady is also an active HR practitioner at a Fortune 500 company. It doesn’t look like she is blogging about her employer or co-workers in particular, but she is giving advice. Again, I wouldn’t dare. The lawyers got to me when I was really young.
But now that I know that there are HR people like me..and they are writing…I might never get off the Internet.
Stupid Hard Drive
After spending all day at Scott’s house, my hard drive was re-installed. I went home and re-installed MS Office. It was very easy. You know what was a pain? Waiting for 12 months of updates to reinstall. I was up until midnight.
Then today, I realized that I had to reinstall iTunes.
I had backed up my Library on a flash drive. All but five songs that I had purchased more recently. It is hard to remember the “transfers” from the “import” and whatever else. How can it be so easy to get my pictures back from Picasa and such a pain to get my music back in the same place? It was all on my iPod.
I must say Google wins.
Save the Rainforest for Christmas
The last couple of years, my grandfather and I having been doing donation gifts for each other at Christmas time. One year I gave him a donation to The Elephant Santuary, along with a print of a painting one of the elephants did. Seriously, with a paintbrush she held in her trunk. I daresay it was the best gift ever.
This year, he started early and I received an e-mail with this certificate. Since The Natural Resources Defense Council made it all Blog friendly, I thought I should give them a plug. You can read more about saving the Costa Rican rainforests here.
Because I Had to Reinstall Picasa 3
A crappy picture of where Kiwi the Grey has been hanging out lately.
Dilemma
My brother looked at my laptop and all of its stuff. He makes some calls. He figures out that the problem with my hard drive is covered under my one-year warranty. I bought it on December 16, 2007.
While on the phone with the manufacturer, Toshiba, he is told that the warranty expired yesterday. Their records show the purchase as having been made on December 12, 2007.
I get online to my Best Buy account. I made the purchase December 16. I called Toshiba back. They said they have conflicting information, so I should call their Warranty Department on Monday morning. I have two choices:
1. Make the call on Monday. If Toshiba behaves properly, they will make a correction and give me the name of a local authorized repair person. Monday after work would be the earliest that I could drop it off. If Toshiba stonewalls, I am waiting 7-10 days to receive the bill copy I requested from Best Buy and taking Toshiba to Round 2.
2. Drive the 10 minutes to Best Buy, spend $85 for a new hard drive and fix it right now.
My sister-in-law, Becky, tells me that $85 is worth fighting for, with the underlying implication being that these companies get away with behaving badly because people won’t fight for what they are due.
Yeah. I know. And what do you think I did?
I spent the money.
As my nice brother is downloading or configuring or something, I called my mother and gave her the two options. Here’s what I got:
“GO to BEST BUY.”
Thank you, Ma’am, for the validation.
End of the Semester
I have taken the final exam and now have 4 ½ weeks off from school. I have three more working days until I am done for the holidays (although really, I must get better about using my vacation time earlier in the year).
I am mostly done with my Christmas shopping. Just one co-worker and some stocking stuffers. I am satisfied that I have successfully supported the economy without spending more than I can afford.
I have eight books to read in order to complete the 50 Book Challenge. I expect to finish two by the end of the weekend.
However. My laptop has been giving me the, “Dude, seriously. Your hard drive is about to crash,” message every 10 minutes. I am taking it to my brother the quasi-techie tomorrow.
Tonight, I plan to do absolutely nothing.
After I stop at the Refuge for an hour to close up.
The News Today
I first saw the headline on MSN:
I had been in meetings all morning and was hours behind the news. My jaw dropped to the floor. My co-worker, Augie, thinks that I am dumb. Even knowing in my gut that Governor Blagojevich is corrupt, I was stunned that he could sink so low. There is an old saying in my family:
He should be sent to jail for being stupid.
Yes. I understand that we are Innocent Until Proven Guilty. And I still believed the story immediately.
The Chicago Tribune, which is actually a part of the drama (as opposed to just reporting it), has tons of links to different angles of the story. But here is what I want you to know:
We knew that he was doing bad things. We knew he was being investigated. We knew it would all catch up with him sooner or later. And now…
We don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Rather Out of Commission
I came back to town. The baby niece arrived. Much Christmas shopping was done.
Now, I am cramming for my final exam on Friday. While my laptop is threatening to crash. I am exhausted.
Give me a week and I promise to find things to say.
The Next Dark Age 