Author: Jon

Wanna use your blog for good?

Blog Action Day

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

I know, many people use their blog to further good causes every day while I complain about the awful horrors of living and parking in Washington, DC. But I think many people who do fight for these causes forget that most people not only aren’t fighting, they’re not even aware.

The wife has complained about Metro riders who don’t recycle the Express newspaper. This morning, there were two down escalators at Columbia Heights. I went down the one that the girl with the large suitcase didn’t choose. At the bottom of her escalator, I saw a copy of Express that someone had dropped. As I was heading to the bottom, planning to pick it up, a woman on that escalator picked it up. “Wow,” I thought. “I never see people pick up trash in the Metro station”.

And then she turned left to throw the paper in the trash, rather than right to recycle it. It got me thinking. I know that my first thought if I have paper trash is to recycle it. In fact, I’ve been reading Express this week because I haven’t been to the library. They’re doing elevator work at Pentagon City, and the recycle bins are blocked. So I’ve been putting the Express in my bag and recycling it at home, or at Columbia Heights in the evening.

But lots of people don’t even think to recycle. I’m sure this woman didn’t consciously choose not to recycle – the thought probably never crossed her mind.

That’s why it’s important to tell people about the little things you can do to help the environment. It’s no harder to recycle Express than it is to throw it away, so you can’t say it’s hard to recycle (At least in this instance). Compact fluorescent bulbs are cheaper in the long run. Cutting down on energy use at home will save you money. There are plenty of things that you can do that are easy, that don’t require huge lifestyle changes or lots of money, and that really do make a difference. But people have to know about these things.

Once you get people started thinking about how their actions can help the environment, the effect can snowball. If that woman thought about recycling Express, she might wonder why she doesn’t recycle more at home.

Anyway, join me and tons of others on October 15th for Blog Action Day.

Be a part of local history might be a bit much

Columbia Heights News – Washington, DC – Columbia Heights Day – October 6

The First Annual Columbia Heights Day Festival is scheduled for Saturday, October 6th from 11 AM to 6 PM.

But hey, at least we’re having a Columbia Heights Day.  Not much detail at CH News, or at the CH Day website.  But there’s supposed to be a meeting of local business owners tonight, so maybe after that they’ll have a better idea of what’s happening.  They’re not giving themselves a whole lot of time.

Why am I not mad?

I just can’t seem to get worked up over the DC voting rights push.  Sure, it bugs me that I don’t have a representative.  But when I see the “Taxation without Representation” license plates (which aren’t the choice I thought they were – they’re standard issue DC tags) and I read about the “injustice” that this is, my immediate reaction is, “Stop whining”.

It may be that I moved from Virginia into the District knowing full well that we had no representatives, so I feel a little silly complaining about it now.

I really do want to have someone speaking for me at the national level.  I think it’s the right thing to do.  And I’m even okay with this little deal with Utah to placate Republicans who see giving DC a vote as a Democratic ploy to gain a seat.

Maybe there’s some argument that would strike a nerve and get me worked up over this that I just haven’t heard yet.  Anyone know what that argument might be?

And with them goes the stench of failure

AOL Moving Executives, Headquarters To New York – washingtonpost.com

The company said that while senior executives would depart for Manhattan, most of the 4,000 employees at the Dulles campus would remain. The shift is the latest step in the company’s transformation from a provider of dial-up Internet access to one focused on online advertising.

While I’m disappointed that the Dulles area may lose a bunch of jobs, I can’t say that I’m sorry to see AOL start to pull out of our area.  I say, “good riddance, you miserable failures”.  This is a company that for a while was synonymous with “the internet”.  Your average American didn’t “go online”, they “went on AOL”.  Never mind that the day AOL merged with Time Warner is generally considered the day the internet boom died.  These guys were so entrenched as number 1 that it’s amazing how clueless they turned out to be.

I would warn Google and the other companies that AOL’s entrance into the online advertising world probably means that the business is going to be changing significantly very soon, but I’m pretty sure they already know.  And don’t think I mean that AOL will drive the change.  I mean that AOL throwing their hat in the ring probably means it’s time to move to the bigger and better ring you’ve been building down the street.

Anyway, I don’t want to lose area jobs.  But I would like to see the Dulles area get a flagship company that doesn’t symbolize everything that’s wrong with the internet.

Go high or go home

We were at Science Club on 19th Street Saturday night.  I’ll try not to pass judgment on the crowd, because I was kind of tired and not really up for a crowded bar.  I went because some good friends were going and we didn’t want to call it a night.  I had a good time, but it was definitely the company, not the bar.

Anyway, if you’re going to go with a themed bar, you have to GO with the theme.  This place threw a few things up on the wall and left it at that.  We were down in the basement, and they have a periodic table on the wall, a picture of Einstein, and a microscope on a shelf.

How hard would it have been to look up geeky science stuff on Wikipedia?  Or give some GW student a free happy hour in exchange for covering the walls with differential equations?  Shame on you, Science Club.   You  get bonus points for having organic beer on tap, though.

F*** you, recording industry

Q & A with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails | Herald Sun Via Boing Boing

And I just said “That’s the most insulting thing I’ve heard. I’ve garnered a core audience that you feel it’s OK to rip off? F— you’. That’s also why you don’t see any label people here, ‘cos I said ‘F— you people. Stay out of my f—ing show. If you wanna come, pay the ticket like anyone else. F— you guys”. They’re thieves. I don’t blame people for stealing music if this is the kind of s— that they pull off.

Great interview with Trent Reznor, who has the fanbase and the morals to tell the record companies that he’d really just like to make his music available to his fans at a reasonable price. If I hadn’t already bought his latest cd, I’d go buy it right now.

Perhaps the coolest part is that he’s planning to ditch conventional recording as soon as his contract is up. The more people who follow him, the fewer people who are going to get turned into criminals for trying to use an iPod on a Linux box, or maybe copy a cd they’ve purchased for their own personal use.

I still remember the first time I saw the video for “Head Like a Hole” on MTV.  I’ve bought every full release he’s put out since then, and most of the remix albums and whatnot.  I’ll pre-order the next one whether or not I’ve heard anything off it.

Anyway, I’m really glad he’s trying to balance making money with trying to get his music to his fans.

As an aside, you may notice that I’ve linked to another post from Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing.  Despite my post the other day, he does write some interesting stuff, and he’s generally on the right side of things.

Pepco still sucks, but Im not quite so mad

Pepco came out and read the meter after all.  I just got off the phone with the first Pepco CSR who didn’t make me want to break things.  He said the meter was read yesterday, and we’ve used 4344 kilowatt hours since we moved in.  Our latest bill was for 7942 kilowatt hours, or 183% of our actual electricity usage.  Based on what they charged us on our latest bill, I think that’s about $450 that we’ve paid them that we don’t owe them.

Actually, I haven’t technically paid the latest bill.  I scheduled it, but it hasn’t gone through yet.  But apparently they can’t cancel the payment once I have a confirmation number, which is crap, but whatever.  We aren’t going to pay another bill for a few months.

I’m not sure why I had to be home yesterday.  They read the meter after I left for work, despite their claims that someone had to be at the house.

Miro needs your help to not suck

Miro needs your donations to build the future of Internet video – Boing Boing

Miro needs your donations — the project is trying to raise $50,000 to pay programmers and designers to make its player even better

I’m all about a nice, free video player that tries to get us to the next step in how we consume television and movies and whatnot.  I hate that I have to pay for hundreds of stupid channels just so I can get “The Office” and Redskins games in HD.  It’s terrible.  Why should I subsidize some niche channels that no one would pay for on their own?

But the Miro player is a piece of crap.  I’ve tried it twice, and it broke a Windows XP laptop and an Ubuntu 6.04 desktop.

And Cory Doctorow begging for money for the project is just a little bit hypocritical.  He seems to think that everything on the internet should be free, except the stuff he cares about, which should be fully financed by anyone with some spare cash.  If this project really needs $50,000 to be viable, then maybe it’s not such a friggin’ good idea, Mr. “I am a board member for the Participatory Culture Foundation, the 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit that oversees production of Miro“.

I really do hope the Miro project succeeds and gives us another model for distributing quality video content.  But I’m not giving them money when they beg.  Provide me with a service that I want, that works the way it should, and I’ll pay for it.  But try to get me to donate money to a bloated piece of software that I’m not entirely sure fulfills the needs of anyone, and I’m just not interested.

I wish I could fire Pepco

I just got off the phone with Pepco customer service.  They told me they don’t guarantee they’ll actually arrive in the four hour window.  They have lots of meters to read, and sometimes they don’t arrive on time.  I finally hung up on the CSR I was talking to because I was so furious.  I have no idea what I can do.  I can’t take my business elsewhere.

Anyone have any suggestions?