It Can Be Easy Being Green

But I've jumped on a greener bandwagon. There are a few reasons. If you know me, you know that I'm a "path of least resistance" guy, or as I've sometimes heard it described: lazy. So, am I going to go out of my way to milk an organic cow for my cereal? No. Am I willing to put an extra few bucks into the hands of a farm that has taken on the more difficult path of keeping their cows healthy without hormones and feeding them grains without pesticides? Hell yes.

We were buying flats of 32 bottles of water per week. I've seen the documentary on "the Great Pacific Garbage Patch" and it made me concerned on a number of levels. (Warning - video NSFW)

First, that's just one known patch of refuse in one spot. Imagine the managed landfills and how much we produce. Plastics were the future in the 1960s, but they're the present now.

Anyhow, I hate preachy stuff, but this information put things in perspective for me; kind of like Supersize Me did with food marketing and consumption. Alas, that's a worth a whole other post.

Point is, with minimal research and effort, I figured that I could easily buy a water container and use that over and over instead of buying a whole flat of the same old problem every week. My part, with very little overhead, is saving 32 bottles a week from hitting garbage island. It's made out of food-grade stainless steel, fits in car cup holders and on my bike's water cage, and unlike a plastic or aluminum container, it has no liner. That makes it dishwasher safe, too.

That worked out pretty well, so I decided to do the same for coffee, since I drink a 16-oz cup every day. Starbucks uses a paper cup, but it's waterproof, which most likely makes it not a recyclable product. The plastic lid and paper sleeve are, but the cup itself is highly doubtful. So, I found a coffee cup from Aladdin that is not only dishwasher and microwave safe, but it's also made from recycled plastic bottles! Win/Win/Win. That's five or six more containers per week NOT headed to a recycling bin thanks to me.

We've been pretty conscientious about recycling in general at our house. We have a compost bin, and we recycle everything our local hauler allows. So, we'll typically fill our recycling bin each week, but rarely put out a full trash can. While I do have to think about it a little every time I want to discard something, it's not that hard, and I feel better about how we're living in general.

Updating Windows? Check This Out

I made the move to Windows 7 back in August when they released their RC (release candidate) for free. I had just built a new computer and needed something for a few months, so the timing was perfect. Over time, I installed the applications I normally use to see how they'd work with 7. I found no real problems.

Around that same time, Microsoft offered an upgrade for $50 as a pre-order. It's a testimony to my laziness that I only used that upgrade this past weekend. (The RC was good until March, then they'd have forced my hand.) The worst part about doing a complete Windows upgrade or buying a new PC is setting it up the way you like it. To that end, I was very excited to find Ninite.

Click that link and you'll arrive at the main page, which lists a ton of common, free applications. Most of the stuff I use is on there. What's the big deal? You just check off the ones you want, then they create one file that installs all of those packages. Bloody brilliant. Here's mine, if you're interested.