10 Easy, Green, Money saving ideas.
There are certain things that I guess make me weird.. green.. hippie-ish? These few save money and resources so they’re green and money saving.
10. Wear an outfit twice before washing it.
.: Now I know this may sound gross, gnarly, grody. However, hear me out, if you work in an office and you haven’t managed to work up a sweat then your pants, shirt, and tie don’t need to go through the wash. You’ll save water which helps the planet and your wallet. Next you’ll save on detergent, fabric sheets and other cleaning products. Lastly you will save electricity and natural gas. I’m not saying wear you undies twice… That’s just nasty! But when was the last time you worked up a sweat in your day to day at the office?
9. Use mother natures coolant, and turn your air off before you leave.
.: This relates back to the fact that you can wake up pretty early, say six in the morning. This shouldn’t be strange if you’re a working stiff. On most nights/early mornings, it is pretty cool outside at 6:00am. Put several fans in your windows to pull the cool air in and vent the nights gases out. You won’t be living in a tight box of germs because you’re getting some air circulation and you just cooled off your whole house. Then once you are done grabbing all that fresh cool air, close the windows up and the blinds. This should keep the house cool at least until noon. By 5:00, depending on where you live the house won’t be too hot. Programmable thermostats may help, but those aren’t “easy” to install.
8. Re-use packaging in the kitchen.
.: You know those plastic bags that have the super awesome lock tight seal and are super expensive because of that? Well, are you throwing them out after just one use? Here is an idea, just save the bag, wash it out and re-use it. If you’re just storing fruits and veggies or a sandwich in them then just wash and re-use. If, however, you have stored meat in one of those bags, toss it. Cross contamination is not a fun night.
7. Turn lights off and use natural light.
.: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been over to someones house in the middle of the afternoon. The shades were drawn and they had almost every light in the house on. Lights off, blinds open, money in pocket! If you are worried about the sun heating up the house open blinds to windows where the sun will not shine in.
6. Donate all but one TV.
.: I know… I know… it’s like I just swore at you and told you that your first born child is an ugly duckling. However TVs use lots of energy and typically you will have a light on in the room that you are watching TV. So you can save money and energy by powering only one TV and light. Your family will actually be stuck with you and have to be in the same room, or find hobbies and actual ways to entertain themselves. TVs do not belong in bedrooms. You wouldn’t put your bed in the family room would you? So, one TV, closer family, fatter wallet, and Captain Planet won’t attack you.
5. Turn off computers when you are not using them.
.: This one used to not be such a big problem, however with the up and coming generation it is starting to be. Here is a fine example. I had a computer that I kept on all the time. It broke, funny enough the power supply died. It wasn’t really a primary computer as I use my laptop most of the time. So I didn’t fix it for a month or two. My electric bill was about $15.00 cheaper for those 2 months. Sleep mode is fine for machines, although the one I had was never set to sleep. However computers still draw power even when they are “asleep” so just shut it down.
4. In the winter wear a sweatshirt to bed and turn the heat down to 65 to 68.
.: This will actually feel better in the long run and let’s face it… There is no reason to be sleeping in your boxers in the dead of winter. Use a warm blanket and wear a sweatshirt.
3. Move the family room to the basement and keep the air off.
.: This may not be as easy to implement and if you don’t have a basement, then it’s impossible. Also this is kind of an extreme measure. However, basements tend to be way cooler than the upstairs. So if you can just sit down there with the family you will all be cooler, saving money and enjoying some time together. Then if it’s still too humid or hot when you go to sleep kick the air back on. You won’t sleep well without it.
2. Let the grass get a little brown.
.: I know! More blasphemy! However grass is pretty resilient, it doesn’t just “die”. So don’t water your lawn every day. Do it only once or twice per week. Sure it won’t be the prettiest lawn out there, but you won’t have to mow as often, water it as much, you’ll save money, gas for the mower, etc. Lawns are actually REALLY expensive to maintain.
1. Use plastic on your windows, if you are living in an older home.
.: Most hardware stores sell plastic that you can use to line your windows. It goes on the inside frame of the window and should help trap that cool or warm air, depending on the season. If you’re worried about how this may look you can just use it on windows that company won’t see. It’s actually a great trick if you don’t have the cash to get a house worth of new windows. Here is a link to what I am talking about 3M 2141W Indoor 5-Window Insulator Kit
The End
That’s all. 10 easy tips in no particular order. Some you are going to find helpful, some are going to make you scratch your head, some will make you think I’m a hippie. However, if you find one or two helpful then I have succeeded. So try one or two out, see how they work for you.
Update On Phidgets and Other Stuff
For some reason I cannot sleep… I got a great chest workout in the other day and last night I got a little too crazy at Kung Fu and did a bunch of pushups. So now my chest hurts like crazy and I’m fully awake for reasons unknown. That said…. I have been messing around with the Phidget servos I received and I must say that going from a realm where the coolest thing I ever do is retrieve a few million rows really fast. Or, make a grid look REALLY cool and apply a filter… or do a pretty picture graph…
Writing stuff that has impact in the physical realm is really cool. The most recent problem I am tackling is my inability to read… My servos turn only 180* and I need 360, fine print, regular print… No match for an excited nerds eyes when he wants to spend money on cool electronic gadgets. So what I’ve done is played with some gearing to turn the 180 to 360. I will post a few pictures once I have things all tidied up and working.
The other thing that I’ve done is I have build a little enclosure for my control board. Now the only task is attaching that to the contraption I am building and maybe looking into hooking up bluetooth communication. Although this is just a prototype so I don’t know how useful that will be.
So between that, this whole Directshow .NET thing I’ve been diving into, and work I’ve been pretty busy. I need to find our Microsoft rep tomorrow and ask him about the direction of Directshow because there seem to be a lot of under-served people out there all trying to code against Directshow for one reason or another. However, the documentation is … meh .. at best and the one book on Directshow is hundreds of dollars and out of print. So if I figure out how to freeze time and read through the Directshow book, I may do a little “follow along with me through my misery series and hopefully we’ll both have a better understanding.” Maybe the Flux Capacitor would help with that time thing? Or… Continuum Transfunctionor?
I know Media Foundation (MF) is supposed to replace Directshow, but it’s missed it’s deadline and feature set from what I’ve been reading so it looks like if you want to write a decent multimedia application then Directshow is still your friend. It would also be really nice if Microsoft provided a library for writing this stuff in C#. It can still be against all the COM components and fast. I’m willing to do some thinking when I write code…
That’s all for now… just randomly ranting.
Adrian.BrainStream.Close();
The Hollywood Cookie Diet
Lately I have tried to be very positive on my blog as positive posts seem to generate more traffic. However… I saw this while tweaking my days meals and had to post about it.
IT’S THE COOKIE DIET! YAY! We’re saved! No more not eating cookies on our diet. So, either they taste terrible or there is a catch. That said I went on a hunt for the nutrition information. Here is what I found:
.: Click Picture For Full-Size :.
Now, if you don’t know how to read one of those tags, and a large portion of the population does not, you may think: “Oooh! Shiny! They have testimonials and the box of cookies is $19.99!! So it must work!” That’s where you’d be wrong.
These cookies have roughly the same nutrition information as a Nabisco Cookies which… by the way are lots cheaper! I mean you’re talking like $3.99 per package versus $19.99. Just so you don’t think I’m lying to you, here is the nutrition info for a Nabisco cookie:
.: Click Picture For Full-Size :.
So, some things to note here. The cookies are comparable, however there are some differences.
- The Nabisco cookie is a smaller serving, so if you were to eat 40 grams you’re looking at 28 more calories.
- The Hollywood Diet Cookies have 4.4 grams fewer fat, and only 1g of Saturated Fat compared to the 4.45g in the Nabisco cookie.
- The Nabisco Cookie has more carbohydrates ( carbs ). 26 grams compared to the 24 grams in the Hollywood Diet Cookies.
- The Hollywood Diet Cookies has 5 grams of protein compared to the 1.48 gram in the Nabisco Cookie.
- The Hollywood Diet Cookies have more Vitamin A, C, Calcium, Iron and fiber ( you shouldn’t get your fiber from a cookie anyway ) than the Nabisco Cookie.
I am sure that there other differences, however those are what I would consider “primary”. Considering the price point of the Hollywood Diet cookies those differences are not vast enough to go with their product.
So what does all that mean? What are carbs, fat, and protein? Well… carbs, fat, and protein are also known as Macro-nutrients. They are the building blocks of food, so when you put them all together you get the calories in a food. The way this works is this:
What does it all mean?
1 Gram of Protein = 4 Calories
1 Gram of Carbohydrates = 4 Calories
1 Gram of Fat = 9 CaloriesProtein rebuilds muscle, replaces tissue, etc. It is broken down by the body and used to build whatever tissue is needed to repair, grow… to live. It can also provide energy, long explanation there.
Carbohydrates provide energy. They are what your muscles will eventually use as fuel. Carbs are broken down into Glycogen and consumed by muscles. If you eat too many and your body cannot use them the liver turns those carbs into fat and stores them in your as… body.
Fat is very high in energy and thus packs a whoping 9 calories per gram. That is why it is often seen as “bad”. There are many types of fat, some are good, some are bad, some can be bad if they are acquired the wrong way. We won’t get into that. Saturated fat is the stuff that clogs your veins… well if you have too much. It’s actually also used for hormone generation, but that’s beside the point. /mini_rant
Some Simple Math
The Hollywood Diet Cookies have 4.5 grams of fat, 24 grams of carbs and 5 grams of protein. So let’s do the math:
4.5 x 9 = 40.5 calories
24 x 4 = 96.0 calories
5 x 4 = 20.0 calories
———————–
Total = 156.5 calories ( looks like they rounded down lawl )
So the macro-nutrient split is roughly similar between the two cookies and the Nabisco cookie is WAY cheaper. So why do these folks claim that their diet works? Well… I went on to read this little tidbit:
“We all know that to lose weight we have to restrict calories, but that is easier said than done. When hunger strikes, diets fail. The Hollywood Cookie Diet works by satisfying your hunger and your sweet tooth. Simply eat up to four cookies a day, replacing breakfast and lunch, and eat a sensible dinner. Eat a cookie for breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch and mid-afternoon snack. The Hollywood Cookie Diet works because it is a low calorie diet based on caloric restriction by meal replacement and portion control.”
So what you are supposed to do is:
- Eat a cookie for breakfast, starve and be dangerously under nourished until lunch.
- Eat another cookie for lunch and continue to be miserable.
- When 3:00 strikes and you’re about to pass out because you haven’t eaten yet… HAVE ANOTHER COOKIE !!! Whee! Guess what!? You still have not eaten.
- Finally when you get home… “eat a sensible dinner”. Let’s be realistic… if you have not eaten anything and it’s 6:00 in the afternoon you are going to devour a pizza, or slay a box of doughnuts. ( I wonder if there is a doughnut diet!? )
So I’m being a negative ninny! Sure, but this is absolute non-sense… If you want to achieve the same results as this diet buy the Nabisco cookies and give it a shot. If you can eat just 4 cookies and a “sensible” dinner for more than 3 days ( if you try this I am not to be held liable for any consequences! IT IS A BAD IDEA !! ) and not scarf down a pizza or some huge meal or faint… My hat is off to you!
The other choice you have is to throw 2 scoops of Vanilla Whey Protein Powder into home made cookie bater. It will raise the protein content considerably and the home made recipe is probably healthier.
Moral of the story?
There is no way around it. Good old fashioned healthy eating every few hours, 5 or 6 meals per day, with a good macro split and portion control with a nice helping of exercise is the only thing that works. It is way easier to eat 5 or 6 times per day and eat healthy meals. If done right you won’t be hungry at all. I usually eat at my BMR and exercise vigorously to lose weight. Then when I want to gain I eat at about 1.5 times the BMR , lift more and reduce the cardio ( not cut it out… reduce it ). By the way… that’s cheaper too!
Here are some good resources for learning more about macro nutrients, nutrition and exercise:
- This is where I started out. John Stone Fitness
Poke around the forum you’ll find explanations of all the macronutrients, BMR, exercise routines, etc.- This Thread has some great links: BEGINNERS/NEW MEMBERS
These two guides on that thread are exactly where I started:
- Gravityhomer’s fat loss guide (by gravityhomer)
- My guide to nutrition for weight loss (by marcus)
- I blogged about a site I found that had great full body workouts that are about 15 minutes long. Check it out.
Update:
Noticed that the serving size was actually part of the 1 cookie and the 27 vs. 40g makes a difference so I updated the differences section.
Good luck!
Finally Decided To Fix The Blog
Long ago, last year to be exact my WordPress install broke, went out of date, or all the above. So I gave up on the whole blogging thing. However, I’ve had a few things I wanted to share lately so I decided to go through the upgrade process.
Also… The latest version of WordPress is really quite nifty. Very easy to use and … bubbly almost.
VMWare Issues On The Mac!
Good afternoon boys and girls! I know I usually complain about windows, but here goes… VMWare fusion is the topic tonight! I have had more issues than I can count. The latest one I found nothing online so I had to do some digging and experimenting.
I got a message that said the following when trying to start my VM… The state was saved, this turns out to be important… anyway the error text:
Unexpected signal: 10. A log file is available in “/Users/[my user]/VMWARE/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/vmware.log”. Please request support and include the contents of the log file. To collect data to submit to VMware support, choose “Collect Support Information” from the Help menu. You can also run “/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/vm-support.tool” directly. We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.
That last bit was especially encouraging! At any rate, I first got mad, then sad, then I decided to search online, not much there… I finally opened Text Wrangler and went to File -> Open Hidden and opened up the log file in the error message. Now … when you first open this puppy up, you are going to _____ your pants. Assuming you’re having the same issue 
Don’t worry it’s not all hex!
I found the following text close to the bottom :
Apr 13 19:06:04.040: vmx| FILE: ScanDirectory discarding M27100.lck from /Users/[my user]/VMWARE/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/Boot Camp partition.vmem.lck’: invalid executionID.
Apr 13 19:06:04.043: vmx| MM: using ‘/Users/[my user]/VMWARE/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/Boot Camp partition.vmem’ as a paging file
Apr 13 19:06:04.043: vmx| Opened paging file /Users/[my user]/VMWARE/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/Boot Camp partition.vmem
Apr 13 19:06:04.043: vmx| Lazy Restore with prefetch of 2076 MB
Apr 13 19:06:04.151: vmx| Caught signal 10 — tid -1610160352
That looked awesome!!
I know from past experience that the vmwarevm file is really just a giant zip type thing that can be explored… also known as a package. So after some strife and debate… I decided to go to Finder… navigate to the vmwarevm file, right click Show Package Contents and scope things out. In the window that opened I saw a file that was named Boot Camp partition.vmem and also a /Users/[my user]/VMWARE/Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm/Boot Camp partition.vmem.lck folder. After some debate… I deleted both… which wiped my saved state. At this point I’m 2 hours into this process so I just wanted my freaking VM to work!
Restart fusion, tried to restart the machine, it bitched that it couldn’t find the vmem … no ____ Sherlock I deleted it since you couldn’t load it or let me ditch it gracefully!!! Clicked ok to those messages, asked it to discard the state and start fresh. Problem solved!!!
God that was an ordeal!! Now… on to what I was going to do pre-explosion !
Windows Search and Silverlight
So a while ago I noticed that my mac was going crazy with some process… I think it was indexing service or some junk. Googled that and found out it was Silverlight going to town, eating up 100% of my cpu. So at the time I just nuked silverlight. Yes you can stop it, however it is somewhat involved. At any rate that fixed my problems.
A few days ago, as you may have noticed, Vista started to puke. SVCHOST.exe was going crazy, so lord knows what that could be… I shut it down a couple of times, killed automatic updates… AGAIN!!! Ahem.. So that gave me back some more control. But that rampant whatever it was was still going crazy. So I did a few things:
1. Killed auto update. I have it set to ask me when it wants to update. I’m pretty good about letting it do it’s thing and just playing xbox in the meantime.
2. Changed the Windows Module Installer service to be a manual start rather than automatic. This is related to updates. It actually installs the hotfixes and so on.
3. Killed Windows Search service. This is the same thing as that Silverlight indexing on the mac side.
Now, if you know me… you know I had some videogame that blew up OSX. It left some virtual adapter behind and OSX didn’t know what to do. So since that happened my Silverlight index service has been running again, and with updates and whatnot I have not seen it again. So it appears that Apple patched their stuff so it doesn’t eat 100% of my CPU. Microsoft still has to get there.
So doing those 3 things restored my Vista VM to normal. No more crazyness. I should fire up Windows 7 and see if they got rid of that svchost.exe bull in Windows 7. They really need to have processes that are easily identifiable so I don’t have to search for days to figure out what is causing me grief! You never know if svchost.exe is something legit or some virus…
Just to Clarify About Vista
This is how I felt about it earlier tonight:
WARNING: PROFANITY AHEAD. IF YOU HAVE SMALL KIDS, ARE IN AN OFFICE, ETC… PUT HEADPHONES ON!
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of
Only … Microsoft…
Vista Sucks
Ok… I have said this once and I will say it again. Vista is a plague! No… it is not a virus it is a plague! It just took me 30 minutes to get it to run properly! How might this happen you might ask? Well… the automatic update crap I have TURNED OFF !!! Was running, TrustedInstaller.exe ??? Are you f*ing serious Microsoft? . So after looking through some forums I find the error of my ways and that I have to manually shut down a bunch of services. GAAAAH!!! We are now talking 30 minutes. I had to shut down everything I had going, and being that all of it was slower than dog doodie on account of the automatic updates I dont have turned on … automatically running! … it took forever. Now after the restart a bunch more crap starts to run. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY!?!?!?!?!?! I DIDN’T ASK FOR ANY OF THIS!?
I have tried Windows 7 and despite some bugs it seemed to run faster than Vista. Now let’s hope that they just fix bugs and leave the beta alone and don’t bomb it with a bunch of piss like they did Vista. If Windows 7 sucks as much as Vista I am done with Microsoft on the home front. That is it. Done. Finito. Fin. The end. Im out! Doing it at work as a necessary evil and that is it!!!
I’ll start writing Objective C if I have to. Granted X-Code < Visual Studio but at least I won’t have to worry about OSX taking a giant crap and wasting an hour of my f*ing life!
Note:
Just google TrustedInstaller.exe if you see it chewing up 100% of your CPU and don’t know how to make it stop. You’ll find the same jazz I did.
Statement of Work ( SoW )
So I sent myself a SOW to work on at home, and saw this in google ads. Apparently I should purchase a pig slaughtering device ….
