Last Thursday I finally made it to a local animal shelter, Northeast Animal Shelter, to donate clean but (mostly gently) used bedding, towels, and dishtowels. More than six large boxes worth (I filled the backseat!) with the help of donations from my father and a friend. The people who work and volunteer at the shelter were very happy to see the ( Read more... )

Yesterday was a very busy day with much moving of stuff (mostly not mine; mostly belongings of Future Doc fanw). However, I'm happy to say that I successfully dealt with one item that was on my to-do list: an IBM Selectra II typewriter. I had little use for a big, heavy piece of office equipment, such as it was, and yet I didn't want to send it off to ( Read more... )

This is an unabashed service plug: I bought a pair of Vasque hiking boots round the millenium-turn, and wore the soles down to naught. I mean naught. The upper parts weren't in great shape either. In November, I bought a new pair at REI and sent the beat-up pair off to be resoled. REI has a relationship with a "boot guy" in Oregon whose shop is ( Read more... )

And in other news: Greening Server Farms with. . . irrigation?A nifty article (nifty or "informative" mostly due to the info behind its links) about server farms and ways some in the industry are trying to reduce their massive power consumption. Massive? This article states that in the US server farms consume 1.5% of the energy outlay in the US (I ( Read more... )