RasterWeb!

Recently some people expressed concern about Google. Should I use Google? Why does Google store a 35 year cookie? Is Google turning evil/becoming a competitor/employing ex-NSA people? None of that matters as much to me as this: I’ve become reliant on Google. I think that I need Google.

Anytime you come to depend on some resource not in your control, you need to put a certain amount of trust into that resource. Trust that it won’t go away, trust that it will always do what you want it do. Trust that it won’t turn icky. All sort of different trusts emerge.

So do I trust Google? Right now, sure, but that doesn’t mean things can’t change. Do I trust Apple? Pretty much, though I do admit to having some mistrust in some of the things Apple does. Do people trust Pyra/Blogger? Many people lost the trust in Blogger’s reliability and jumped ship to Movable Type. In doing this I’d argue that they just exchanged one trust for another, and since it’s still a resource you don’t have complete control over (read the license) it could also go away at some point. (Though you get to keep your data…)

But I’m getting off the subject…

Google is still a great search engine. It almost always seems to find what I need, quickly and easily. That doesn’t mean I won’t continue to look for alternatives, and see what other search engines out there might be doing a good job. I’d hate to have to someday look for an alternative to Google and realize that when I wasn’t looking all the alternatives ceased to exist.

So if someone thinks that blindly trusting that Google (or anything) will always be there for you, and do exactly what you want it to do, well, good luck with that. I, on the other hand, will continue to search out alternatives, other ways of doing things, other tools to get the job done. There’s more than one way do it, you know…

If this web site had a special categorization for automotive problems, it would have quite a bit of activity in it. As frequent readers know, our luck with cars is not good. We’ve blown out (or blown up) tires, transmissions, batteries, pump, and various parts that probably do nothing but the car won’t function without them… But this time… arghhhh…

See, yesterday I get ready to leave for work. I unlock and open the side van door. I then close the side van door. (I do this so the kids can get in quickly for school.) So after the side door closes, I heard this sound like a big sheet of ice falling off the back window. One problem. There was no ice on the back window. The process of closing the side door of the van caused the back window to shatter. At this point I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get to work on time.

I then figured I’d make some sort of cardboard/plastic window, and I’d take the van instead of the car. I then found out that duct tape won’t stick to anything when it’s below zero outside. I give up, decide to work from home, and attempt to come up with a plan.

A plan you say? What plan? You call an auto glass specialist, and they fix it. Sure, if you’re one of the elite ruling class with many dollars in the bank. That would not be us. After receiving a clue about how much getting the glass replaced might cost, we get an alternate plan. This is, in a nutshell, the alternate plan: Go to junkyard. Buy van door from smashed up van. Switch doors. How did the plan work? Well, we didn’t match the color, so we’ll have to paint it once it gets warm enough, which should be June or July around these parts, but we did get a door. We haven’t put it on yet either. I will require assistance in doing this, and there will most likely be cuts and bruises involved, and since we’re dealing with wiring there’s always a chance of getting a nice electrical shock along the way as well…

So that’s what happened yesterday, and why I still hate cars.

Oh, and I was so sick all weekend I could barely move. Not that it has anything to do with the van hating us, or me hating the van, but I thought it should be mentioned…

Thanks to aaronland we’ve learned about a site at www.localharvest.org, which is extremely helpful, and very useful.

Thanks again Aaron…

My slow blower can’t compare to the likes of the one at the phpMP offices. See, the snow blower I’ve got is what we refer to as, well ‘dinky’ best describes it.

It’s electric, not gas powered. So there’s a big long extension cord (or two) involved. I bought it at a rummage sale in the summer for dirt cheap. I plugged it in and it worked. Yay. I bought it. I got it home, plugged it in and it worked. Yay again. Then came winter. Then came snow. I plugged it in and it didn’t work. Boo. Hiss. I brought it into the house to see what was up. I took it apart. Looked at it. Kicked it. Etc. After while it worked. See, I learned that the electric snow blower I bought for cheap really doesn’t like cold weather. So if it snows, I need to take it in from the garage and put it in the house to warm up before I can use it. That’s seriously messed up.

I’d like to thank my neighbor Erv for removing the snow from our sidewalk earlier this week, because if I had tried doing it with my electric snow blower that doesn’t like cold weather, I’d probably still be doing it.

I know, as a homeowner with a long driveway and a sidewalk, I should have a large snow blower like every one of my neighbors does. But I just can’t justify purchasing something that is used so damn little each year. Not when there’s important things to purchase like organic produce.

Dave had this to say after throwing out some needed disks:

I could go dig through the dumpster. But that would be humiliating.

Obviously Dave isn’t part of the dumpster diving set. I of course have gotten working computers, stereos, TV‘s, and even money out of the trash. People in the US are quite wasteful. This year I plan to take the kids to the university when school lets out in May. Many students find it easier to just toss most of their belongings rather than lug them back home for the summer…

And if anyone can tell me when ‘Big Trash Day’ in Waukesha is, I’d greatly appreciate it…