The WAL

Shouldn’t every day be Earth Day?  I think we’re slowly moving in that direction.  It’s preying on my mind a lot lately about the kind of world I’m helping to leave to my children.  My wife and I have attempted to live greener in a small way for a long time now, recycling more than most of the rest of our neigbourhood combined, paying more attention to the contents of our food, actually thinking about energy usage.  I’m pushing it to the next level in the last few months.  I’ve done a detailed analysis of our energy consumption (oh, how I love my numbers), set some realistic goals, and made lists of projects to cut down on electricity, gas, and water usage.  The planning is as much fun as the savings on the various bills and most of the projects so far don’t require a lot of work (well, insulating the water heater was a mild pain in the ass, but there’s far more yet to come).  A few projects accomplished already and many things planned for the coming months, but the very first thing I looked at was my favourite appliance/tool/electronic toy: the computer.

I have no idea how much power the computer actually uses, but I do know that we used to leave it on far too much.  XP seems to have a depressingly long boot up time on my machine and I hate waiting.  The Hibernate function is great when you remember to use it, but I often didn’t and neither did anyone else in the house who uses it.  I had a closer look at the power options settings and changed one tiny little thing so that the sleep button built into my keyboard hibernates the computer instead.  Now it’s easy enough that even the kids can be trained to use it when they walk away from the internet.  Then I put a couple of nails in the wall and hung the power bar where it can be reached - not exactly pretty, but it’s in a corner of the office and doesn’t stand out much.  Hibernate, then kill the power bar to eliminate however much vampire power the box draws.  I don’t know how much this is saving me (yet), but at a cost of two nails I certainly broke even in the first few minutes after I turned the power bar off the first time.  We’re employing power bars in a couple of other spots to eliminate some other vampire draws, too.

Little things can make me very happy sometimes.

Still in Chapter 22, which might take me close to the 90,000 mark all by itself.  My outline contains four more chapters after this one.  Plus I’ve got a pair of subplots that haven’t actually been resolved and their resolutions seem not to have made it into the outline.  This novel seems to get a little bigger every time I stop to think about it.

Happy Earth Day, everyone.

Regardless of opposition parties currently backing away from bringing down the government right now, there is an election coming in Canada and it’s likely less than a year away.  Possibly much less.  One never knows and politics is a strange game.

I’m not currently a member of any political party and never have been.  That may change, it may not.  I tend to vote my conscience and listen to what’s actually said on the issues.  I lean to the left on many issues, to the right on a handful.  Probably you’d say I’m part of the mushy middle.  Wherever I am in the spectrum, I’m a big fan of electoral reform and fairness in the system.  We haven’t got that fairness right now and it’s been a while since it’s been around.

Love the Green Party or hate it, it gathered 2/3 of a million votes in the last election.  Not bad for the pathetic amount of funding they get, the negligible amount of media coverage, and the exclusion from leadership debates.  A significant voice that someone doesn’t want a lot of us to hear.

Think about it.