Waste Management - You are doing it wrong!

My house is serviced by Waste Management. A company, supposedly, on the forefront of thinking green and working to recycle and minimize pollution. Well, I can tell you guys that you are doing it wrong! I don’t know if this is standard procedure, but I for sure know that other companies, which offer recycling, don’t do it that way.

Here is my problem with them. WM asks its customers to separate recyclables from their garbage into different containers, something that is necessary to make recycling easier. But when they come to pic up my garbage and recyclables, they are both dumped into the same container. To me that does not make any sense. Supposedly they sort out the garbage at their station, but then why would you ask your customers to separate these objects if you are just going to put them back together and then “waste” money to pay someone to separate them again? Other companies have trucks, which have compartments for the different recyclables and waste. Why doesn’t WM have these type of trucks?

I think that combining the recyclables with the garbage, just to separate it again at a later point, ruins much of the potential recyclables, like paper products for example. Many times the garbage bags have juices and liquids in them as well as sharp objects. When they are put together and then compressed inside the truck these bags break and all those liquids flow out soaking into any potential recyclable paper products and thus ruining them.

BTW, WM has a new social network called Greenopolis, which is part of their Think Green educational program.

Justin.tv helps in burglary thanks to people with no social live!

A Justin.TV member was victimized by his neighbors who burglarized his apartment. Thanks to other members of the CDN a video of that burglary was isolated. After watching for a while, I can say that those who just site there and watch others through their web cams must have either a voyeuristic issues or no lives. Personally I could hardly watch more than few minutes from the burglary video and I had to run the commentary/interview video in the background and just listen to it, but not without skipping few times.

Watch live video from WOOT TV on Justin.tv

Also, listening to how members of the community talk, I can say that even though they might not know each other they are more open to sharing and conversing. I guess exposing your life for everyone to watch has to come with extrovert personality.

That’s too many cart stalls

We live in the suburbs now. Tonight Amanda and I went to the grocery store. As I was parking the car I noticed that there are 3 cart double stalls on each side of each lain. They were placed every 3rd or 4th parking spot. Coming from the city I was baffled to see that many cart stalls, when in the city for a parking lot two to three times that size of the one we were in, there is usually at the most 3 cart stalls.

From what I have observed, there aren’t that many active shoppers, at any time, to justify the need for so many cart stalls. I don’t think that the store even has enough carts to fill those stalls. I guess Amanda was right when suggesting that the ‘burbs’ folk just don’t like to wall far. Plus in the city, the stores spend their money on buying the carts with the range-lockable wheels.

Evolution of a blog

I have decided to change the blog’s theme once again. I want to go with something more professional. I chose BlueBird, because I wanted something less busy, more open and, at the time, I was also high on the Twitter wave.

Lately I have been kind of burned out on Twitter! I am not as excited or obsessed with it, although I do still look forward to connecting with friends and posting random things. I guess everything comes in waves. At least that’s how it is with me. I obsess with something for couple of days to couple of weeks and then I move on.

Anyhow, back to the looks of my blog. I want to have something plain, which will present the content in easy to the eyes fashion. I don’t want to have busy pages, either. I think I will start with trying out few different theme. Currently I am deicing between Mimbo Pro, The Studio and maybe Unbound. I will test their appeal and organization of the content, but I think, at the end, I just might just create my own theme from modifying the classic WordPress them. Just like I did many years ago, when I first started using Wordpress. I would provide some examples, but the Archive.org does not have that many archived copies of my site. Besides, I think this was probably before the total data loss I suffered in July of 2004.

After I have settled on a theme or have created my own, I will reorganize the pages and the content their provide. Then maybe I will finally complete the About page. I am doing this, because I want to make my blog more useful. I want to start posting better articles and attract new and regular visitors. Eventually I would like to also have a forum community.

We will have to see who this will go. I see this as “The Evolution of a personal blog”, the evolution of my blog. Looking through old posts and remembering old designs I can trace the changes in my way of thinking and writing. I am definitely more mature and interested to provided something useful and not just random ramblings. Well … for most part. It IS a journey after all. Correct?!

Progress and development is a must.

Invites - Tripwolf

Tripwolf is a traveling journal/social network that service as you guide and trip planner. The information is provided by other travelers, as well as local guides and experts.

They are only letting few hundred people at a time. So get in while you can.
http://www.tripwolf.com/invite/backdoor

Helicopter birthday cake

Now that’s a cool birthday cake. A cake shaped like a helicopter with a functioning rotor. Sweeet!!!!

You can find the instruction on how to make your own here on Instructables, an awesome do-it-yourself site.

Alert Thingy - maybe not!

Lately I have been hearing a lot of noise about the Alert Thingy. A desktop client, build on Adobe AIR, which allows you to monitor updates on your FriendFeed, and as a side bonus of its latest release you can also post to Twitter and Flickr. FriendsFeed, for which Alert Thingy was build, is profile activity aggregator. You sign up with FriendFeed and add the usernames to a number of web services like Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and number of other others. Then when there is any activity on the linked profiles, it is distributed to FriendFeed and any other site via API or a RSS feed. FriendFeed takes those feeds and mashes them up into one.

Image via WikipediaBut back to Alert Thingy. The app has been hyped up so much by Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, in the last two weeks that I decided to turn off my Twhirl and try it out. As I finished installing it, Twhirl had an update, so I installed it, too. Looking through Alert Thingy I found myself with very limited options and customization choices. I mean Alert Thingy counterpart, MySocial 24×7, which is a FireFox plugin, offers more options. Yes Twhirl requires two different windows for each service, but I will stick with it. Especially after tonight’s update, which added few new features, and now I can get my FriendFeed through it as well. Not that I care much about FriendFeed, at least at this time. If anyone is interested in adding me as a friend on FriendFeed, this is my profile.

So Michael, why all the hype? Other than freeing desktop space, I just don’t see how Alert Thingy is better than Twhirl.

Invites - UGame network

I have 5 invites for the Facebook for gamers community site UGame Network.

UGame is a community site, currently in its beta, which functions like Facebook, but for gamers. The site allows you to upload pictures, share your achievements, rate games and create groups (private and public). In my opinion, the site is nothing special. If you are a Facebook addict, there are apps that you can install if you want to connect with other gamers.