AdventureFrank's Xanga

coinstar

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:48:23 GMT

went to ralphs with one of my roommates yesterday. after i bought my stuff, she drew my attention to a bag of coins sitting on a nearby coinstar machine (thingy that counts coins and gives you real money for them). it was a plastic rubios bag with a couple holes in it and the coinstar machine was off/broken. our guess is someone came to cash in on the coins, saw the machine didn't work, and was like ah screw it, and left the bag there. the bag was pretty heavy. 5-10 pounds, maybe?

we decided to take it. got an extra ralphs bag to put around it, and brought it home. we started a pool. whoever had the most accurate guess gets to keep the value of the coins in amazon gift certificate. (coinstar usually takes a percentage if you redeem in cash, but gives you full value if you redeem in certain gift certificate amounts, like for amazon.com.)

first i just jokingly guessed it was like $5, but then my roommate said she cashed in some coins before and estimated the bag be worth $65. i was like psshhhhh, but here were our final guesses:
cat: $29
me: $40
sarah: $65

i stopped by albertsons today...

where are you?

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:04:12 GMT

bag tax?

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:52:18 GMT

i heard a commercial on the radio and visited the website... www.stopthebagtax.com

CALIFORNIA POLITICIANS ARE LOOKING TO RAISE YOUR TAXES IF THEY DON’T HEAR FROM YOU SOON.

As if the cost of gas and food isn’t enough... politicians now want to charge you $.25 on every grocery bag. That adds up to about $400 per family per year!

BUT WILL THIS SAVE THE PLANET?

NO. Plastic bags are fully recyclable. Grocery stores already make it easy to recycle with convenient recycle bins.

WHO WILL THIS AFFECT?

This will affect everyone, but it will be especially devastating to low income families, seniors and anyone living on a fixed income. Plus, it could cost thousands of California jobs.

CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS AND TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON AB 2058 – THE BAG TAX

Listen to stopthebagtax.com radio spot (en Español)

Sponsored by the Progressive Bag Affiliates of the American Chemistry Council and The California Film Extruders and Converters Association

mmmmmm yeah.... so.. several things...

"That adds up to about $400 per family per year!"... you're an idiot if you know you're being taxed 25 cents per bag and you haven't done anything to reduce your use of plastic bags. that figure is based on some pretty ridiculous assumptions. then again, a lot of pretty ridiculous people will buy into that figure.
"Plastic bags are fully recyclable." ... recycling isn't a process where a material is magically resurrected. the entire process, from collection to breakdown to manufacture to redistribution uses many resources.
this is an obvious attempt by the bag manufacturing companies to save their own asses ("sponsored by...")

so, do i support the tax? my knee-jerk reaction was "yes" just to spit in the bag-manufacturers' faces for their lame attempt at persuading people to oppose the tax. however, after some consideration.. although i'm all for reducing the use of plastic bags, i don't think a tax is the most effective way. taxes mean more bureaucracy, more of the government sticking its fingers in other peoples' business. ideally, the effort would come from consumers and retailers, like how ikea is charging a few cents for their plastic bags or how ralphs gives you a 5 cent refund for every bag you bring.

i'm not proposing any specific solutions, but i think there are better ways to discourage the distribution of plastic bags. sometimes government involvement gives people a good kick in a certain direction, like how santa monica and san francisco banned styrofoam take-out containers. however, this case is different to me because it involves handling money, which is much more of a logistical nightmare.

now i'm kinda hoping all the tree-huggers out there don't go urging their legislators to support the tax. if "the people" are in favor of reducing plastic bag usage, they can uhhh... STOP USING PLASTIC BAGS. why go through government when your actions are what make a difference.

reference: full text of the bill, AB 2058

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update: coincidentally, i ran into this column, which discusses banning plastic bags. i'm actually against banning plastic bags. i am for reducing their use. occasionally i won't have a reusable bag on me and i'd rather just get a plastic bag (or be willing to pay 10 cents or whatever) rather then buy a new reusable bag. that would just be wasteful. plastic bags have great reuses, such as trash liners or portable trash bags. i just think there should be incentive for people to stop being wasteful about plastic bags. in most cases, using plastic bags is very avoidable.

it's wasteful when many groceries are double- or triple-bagged when they don't need to be.
it's wasteful when you take two or three disposable bags (then add double-bagging) when you can fit craploads of groceries in a single reusable bag
it's wasteful when we need to get plastic bags primarily just to give items a "handle", like how a gallon of milk usually gets its own bag (or is usually double-bagged)
it's wasteful when along the same lines as the previous point, sometimes people request a paper bag be put inside a plastic bag so they can have the combined strength of a paper and plastic bag, plus have the handles of the plastic bag
it's wasteful when for small items, like a greeting card or something we can easily carry in one hand, we request (or are suggested by others) that we get a bag for it because it looks more "legitimate" walking out of the store like that so people don't think we're stealing.

charging consumers 10 cents a bag would make people at least think twice.. which is all we need to get things started.

in norcal

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:53:39 GMT

took the alternative vietnamese bus (xe do hoang). ehhh. well, it's cheaper at $35 instead of $40, but the stop is like 2 miles north of the old vietnamese bus' stop.. so i either have to take an additional bus up there or walk like 30 minutes like i did today hah. i'm taking the bus next time... didn't look that bad on google maps... but i guess it's a lot smaller on screen. :o| plus, instead of rice and meatish sorta vietnamese lunch, the alternative vietnamese bus gave us a vietnamese sandwich. not bad... but... not as good as vietnam xe khach. aw... i miss vnxk.

oh yeah.. so i had to replace the battery on my fossil watch... saw a watch place yesterday near my sublet.. gave em a call... their estimate: $18. yikes. brought it to la chinatown today. cost: $5. booyah.

vietnamese bus

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:56:50 GMT

vietnamese bus... where are yoooou?? i've been using the same vietnamese bus company for years (vietnam xe khach... yeah no idea what that is... i mean.. apparently it's vietnamese). it's been so dependable. and even the one time we ran into a hitch, they recovered oh so beautifully.

recently fonzie alerted me that their number wasn't working and their voicemail was full. that was about a week ago. it's still the same today. wonder what happened. recently megabus.com canceled their norcal/socal service. they're a semi-well-known tour bus/shuttle company, infamous for their as-low-as-$1 deals. i know of their service change because there was an article about it in the la times.

so the la times writes an article when megabus.com removes one of their routes. hey la times... where's my article about vietname xe khach??? :o0

(hahah but really.. that'd be awesome if there were an article)

so you think you can dance

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:15:09 GMT

omg best ever!! :oO

plus the girl's really cute. dang... well choreographed, well danced. beats all the other dances i've seen on sytycd... although i've watched only like 3-5 of the finalist episodes ever haha.

people dont think as much as they should

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:41:59 GMT

you think with all our education, especially with college and everything, that people would think more. we can be all "educated", know lotsa stuff, be good at lotsa stuff... but don't even know how to think critically on an everyday basis.

so here's my rant.. and i see it all the time. i guess maybe it's also a pet peeve now. it seems most people soak up any bullshit they read or hear. people see things as black and white, fact or fiction.

case in point: ten shocking facts about global slavery

okay, you don't have to read the article if you don't want.. but you see this kind of shit all the time. people tell you "shocking facts"... all these "shocking statistics"... omg 9 OUT OF 10 PEOPLE bla bla bla... or EVERY YEAR 50,000 TONS OF bla bla bla ENDS UP IN LANDFILLS..... and then they don't state a single freaking source of their "fact". where the hell did you pull these "facts" out of? (some sources in the article are cited, but that doesn't necessarily fix things)

i guess then this rant is about two things.. first.. how you find many people stating -or blog posts stating- these "facts"... without referencing ANYTHING. second... how many people who get exposed to these "facts" just soak it up. "OMG what a shocking fact! i did not know that. :oO" and then they share this shocking "fact" with their friends, who are in turn, shocked. then their friends post about it in a blog. "omg!!" :oO

in all our years being educated, you think most of us would have learned by now that when you come across certain claims, you stop to think.. "hey... i wonder how they got that number". perhaps you know someone who has read a news article and gone "omg this news is outrageous! i can't believe president bush actually said that! it's gotta be true because it's a quote from the article!".. and then it turns out these people were reading a news article from a link a friend sent them, and didn't even bother to check the source of the article. because.. u know.. if it's from a professional newsy-looking website, then it must be a reliable source, right? until you find out they were reading the onion (america's finest news source, btw).

but this isn't about citing sources or checking sources... it's about our way of thinking and questioning things. say a "fact" comes from a certain study. is that study reliable? how was it conducted? i'm not saying every fact we come across, we need to investigate in so much detail, but at least be aware of where your information comes from. take things with a grain of salt. the more you look into it, the smaller that grain of salt becomes. the article cites a source... "Human trafficking has recently been described as 'the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world.'This shocking claim was made by former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright." uh ok, just because she's former secretary of state, does that mean she's a reliable source for that data? apparently if she got that statistic off some random blog and made that statement, you'd still quote her. and it's not just about how "true" something is, but what it might mean in a bigger picture.

assuming a "fact" is actually true, what is its significance? when i was doing research for my posts on my (defunct) green blog, i was looking up stuff for toothbrushes. there were all these sites that states "every year so-and-so TONS of toothbrushes end up in the landfill".. then the article goes on talking about what you can do to reduce that number, including buying toothbrushes with just replaceable heads, or mailing the toothbrush back to the manufacturer if they recycle it, etc etc. uhhh.. ok.. here's the thing. stating a big number (assuming it's even accurate) means nothing. but i'll at least give it to them that it achieved what it's supposed to-- emotionally move the reader. at least most readers. who don't think. say that many tons of toothbrushes do end up in our landfill. well... what percentage of our total waste is that? like... 0.002%? so you can see, the significance of the "tons" figure is pretty small.. it's basically irrelevant to the information you do want to know. sometimes tree huggers and their websites piss me off... altho not them exclusively because many groups use the whole "shocking facts and figures" scare tactic by using unreliable sources or facts in irrelevant or misleading contexts.

back to the original example of the slavery blog post... i'm not bashing the intent of the author. hey, i'm against slavery too. :oP but it just upsets me that someone could put up so much stuff to be convincing, without even offering any support for their claims. then how it's followed by a bunch of comments of praise and people saying stuff like wow you really opened my eyes. you can see it has over 1000 diggs.. and if u don't know what that means, it means a bunch of people approve of the article. at least there are some comments that point out the lack of support for the claims. that, and so much hangs on their definition of slavery. much of the argument in the comments is about their definition of slavery (which they don't give one... one is just assumed). hey, maybe all the claims the article make are true.. but until they can offer at least some references, they're nothing more than unfounded claims.

don't you ever stop to think about "facts" you've picked up?

men think about sex every 10 seconds ("omg!!! ewwww!!")
washing your hands with antibacterial soap makes bacteria more resistant and you're more likely to get sick ("i'm so smart because i know what the antibacterial soap makers don't want me to know!")

i'm not saying necessarily those things are untrue. but maybe there's not really a simple "truth" or "lie" behind them. did you try checking the validity of those claims or did they go straight to the "facts" section of your brain?

in school they teach you to absorb a bunch of information... but i guess we haven't been trained well in thinking for ourselves and analyzing the information we come across. maybe our training has been not so much how to absorb, but that we do absorb. way to absorb shit, people. absorb and disseminate shit. :o(
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apart from the ranting, i have a theory.

before, the information we read was more reliable. not that everything was a fact, but only that it was more reliable than today. i think that's partially because back in the days, in order for something to be published, it had to go through "filters", or quality control. to publish a book, it had to have certain approval by who you think would be "smart" people ("smart" in quotes because it's a very vague term). perhaps we got accustomed to that and now assume anything that looks nice and published has be "pre-screened" for us. including nice-looking blogs. then we forget even dumbasses can get nice-looking blogs these days. (hey, mine doesn't look that nice)

if you read a list of "facts" written sloppily in pencil on a piece of binder paper, you're more likely to be more critical of it than reading a list of "facts" on a nice glossy brochure with neat fonts and layout. and an official-looking logo of some sort.

and when you see that, you can stop thinking, right? oh hey, it looks like my bank sent me a notice and i need to verify my login information. well, this email looks official. never mind the suspicious circumstances.. or actually, i didn't even stop to think about the circumstances because i saw the officialness and already clicked the link and already typed in my login information oops haha. who needs to think anyway.

tomatoes

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:19:28 GMT

so i hear it's tough to come by good tomatoes these days cuz they gots salmonella. well then i guess it's a good thing i'm growing my own tomatoes. ha! there's only two so far. one is larger than 1" in diameter and is still green of course. the other one is like 0.25" in diameter. baby tomatoes! wonder if they'll turn out any yummy.

i'd post pictures but there's a problem with my camera :o(

(it has a lazy owner :o\ )

get rid of almost anything on craigslist :o|

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:37:08 GMT

i got four responses within a couple hours for my post offering free dying plants...

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FREE dying plants

Not dead yet, just haven't watered them in a while. A couple are orchids, the other two are... I dunno... they produced small yellow flowers a while ago.
Take em all if you want... I didn't want to bother with watering them but they're taking a long time to die. Please don't respond to this ad if you don't know how to take care of these plants, because I don't either.
E-mail me.

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and i included a couple pictures. the plants are mostly green, but lotsa brown. hadn't watered them for a couple months. it was nice that the first person who responded owns a private nursery and offered to give me a couple live plants in exchange. he said he has an aloe that turns red when stressed hehe cool. but yeah, i'm trying to get rid of stuff so i said no thanks.

my friend recently got rid of a couple big stuffed animals on craigslist.. also a flood of responses within hours of posting heheh. yeah.. so if you're trying to get rid of shit, try posting it for free on craigslist.

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cockroach update: thus far, i've killed 7 big roaches (at least 1in long... typically 1.5"). actually, the borax isn't as instantly lethal as i thought. last time i think it was the detergent water that killed it. when i find a big cockroach, i'll dump some borax on it or have it walk around on borax, then confine the cockroach and see how long it takes to die. typically 2-5 days. i'm pretty sure thats the borax at work since cockroaches should be able to last pretty long without food and water. but maybe i'll test that out by providing it some food and water next time i trap one... borax...

steak

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:17:54 GMT

hahah all u need now is a good printer...

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brb, road trip to texas.