3 Tips for Reduced Consumption

In the last couple of months, I've started a business called Austin Auditors that reviews building's energy efficiency (visit the website at www.austinauditors.com). Currently, the business is geared towards residential construction. This business was inspired in part by the City of Austin passing an ordinance mandating energy audits for homes being sold that: 1) are over 10 years old; and 2) do not meeting certain qualifications. Ultimately though, the idea is to move into doing energy audits for people who intend to stay in their home and want to make upgrades to their home to improve its energy efficiency.

Surprisingly, there are a number of home improvements that can be made that cost less than $500 and have a noticeable effect on both home comfort and the energy bill. Examples are: 1) improved insulation, 2) sealing up leaky AC ducts, and 3) improving solar shading.

Moving along with the theme of energy efficiency, I am going to give you 3 tips that can have a real effect on reducing your consumption of resources and won't be monumental adjustments to your lifestyle.

1) Use compact fluorescent light bulbs, a.k.a. CFL bulbs.

These things are ubiquitous nowadays and you probably have a bunch of them up already. If you haven't seen them, they look like the bulb to the right.

If every household in the country used one of these guys rather than an incandescent bulbs, it would be a pollution reduction similar to taking a 1,000,000 cars off the road. The CFL bulb uses about 75% less energy than an incandescent bulb and lasts about 10 times longer. Yeah, they cost more at the store, but over the life of the bulb, you'll save over $30 when compared against the incandescent bulb. Plus you don't have to change them nearly as much. And changing a light bulb is a pain in the heiny.

Don't toss out your working incandescent bulbs though. Wait until they burn out and then go buy CFL bulbs to replace them. Click here for a fun site about CFL bulbs.

2) Drink less bottled water and more tap water.

First off, bottled water produces 3,000,000,000 pounds of plastic waste per year, about as much waste as the combined annual waste of San Antonio and Atlanta.

Second, bottled water is no more healthy than the water coming out of your tap (sometimes the bottled water is the water coming out of your tap - take a look at the fine print of some of the larger Ozarka containers and it reads something like this "Source: Houston Municipal Water Supply"). The FDA regulates bottled water and the EPA regulates tap water. However, because 70% of bottled water doesn't cross state lines the FDA can not inspect it. Furthermore, the EPA has stricter guidelines for the quality of water than the FDA does. I don't think that any water you're going to buy, whether tap or bottled, will have any negative health consequences, I just thought that the regulation was interesting.

Also, you like those pearly whites that so many Americans have? Thank your municipal water supply and keeping drinking the tap water filled with all that fluoride. The Center for Disease Control identifies community water fluoridation as one of 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.

What if you don't like the taste of tap water? For instance, here in Austin, every fall and spring, the tap water tastes like algae. The solution is easy: a water filter. You can even buy one that attaches to the tap so you don't have to fill up a Brita pitcher.

3) Brush without running the water.

I used to put the toothpaste on the toothbrush, turn on the faucet to wet the toothpaste, and keep the faucet running the whole time I was brushing. I didn't even think of the fact that I was actually using none of that water running down the drain. Over the last couple of years, I turn the water off once I've wet the toothpaste and I'll turn it back on at the end when I actually need the water.

If you do this, you'll save close to five gallons of water per day. If the whole country did this, we'd save close to 1,500,000,000 gallons a year.

Three simple ways to reduce consumption and pollution and none of these will really inconvenience you. Here's a link to list of 47 more relatively easy ways to assure that our resources and our world will stick around for more generations.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

The stark white cover of the copy of Disgrace that I read reflects the simplicity and depth contained on the pages within. The brief novel (only about 215 pages) by J.M. Coetzee tells the story of an older, anachronistic university professor in South Africa, who following an ill-advised sexscapade, loses his job, falls into disgrace, and then visits his daughter in the countryside, where a tragedy befalls them.

Coetzee's storytelling created a world in which I felt as if I were a third-party observer more than a reader. His descriptions seem true and concise and the language never struck me as indulgent or verbose. The story was very believable. For example, an important scene that dealt with a home break in was so well crafted that I spent the next couple nights being hypervigilant about the doors being locked and responding to creaks in the house. While the action drives the story, Coetzee does not center the book around action, but around the underlying causes of those actions and the surrounding circumstances.

Some of the book's themes were societal division based on age and race, the exploitation of the disparity of power, and a desire to subjugate. Central to the themes is that the book is set in post-apartheid South Africa. Division because of age or race is the book's most prominent theme. The author seems to draw a parallel between the older professor's age-based division from the younger generation of his student lover and his daughter and his white daughter's race-based division from the black community amongst whom she lives. The author depicts both the age divide and the racial divide as a cruel and jagged schism.

Despite the gravity of the book's predominant themes, the book has a certain levity, which in retrospect is kind of inexplicable. It could have something to do with the whole unbearable lightness of being thing (from the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, which wikipedia explains best:

The book [The Unbearable Lightness of Being, that is] centers on Nietzsche's idea of eternal return - that is, the idea that the universe and all the events therein have all happened before, and will continue to recur ad infinitum. Kundera challenges this idea, offering an alternative: each of us has only one life to live, and what happens once will never occur again. He calls this idea "lightness", and refers to the concept of eternal return as "heaviness" or "weight".

In describing the effect his idea of "lightness" has on a person's life, Kundera says Einmal ist keinmal ("what happens but once, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all"). By this logic life is ultimately insignificant; in an ultimate sense, no single decision matters. Since decisions do not matter, they are light — that is, they don't cause us suffering. Yet simultaneously, the insignificance of our decisions — our lives, our being — causes us great suffering. Hence the phenomenon Kundera terms the unbearable lightness of being: because life occurs only once and never returns, no one's actions have any universal significance. This idea is deemed unbearable because as humans we want our lives to mean something, for their importance to extend beyond just our immediate surroundings.).

Or it could be that I wasn't in a real pensive, dark, the world sucks kind of mood when I read the book.

One way or the other, this book was excellent and I would highly recommend it. Even if you don't like it, it's only 215 some odd pages, so, unless you are majorly busy or a really slow reader, you're not dedicating a month of your time to some book you feel provides more value as kindling (as an aside: I don't think any books should be burned unless I don't agree with them. Here's my books to burn list: anything by this guy, this guy, or this gal -- all three are blights on progress and sacrifice honest, well-founded ideas for entertainment dollars -- this guy too -- actually, I wouldn't burn any of their books, but I would throw them away, because they are in fact garbage).

Hangover. Make It Stop.

Pretty much across the board, every time I don't come home from work on a Friday 'til after midnight, on Saturday morning I feel like I got punched in the head. Without fail, I wallow all day Saturday, not being able to get comfortable for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

Friday night I didn't get home 'til like 3, I think b/c I really don't remember, and I'm relying on my lady's word. And yesterday's hangover was particularly bad. If only for the fact that when I woke up, I felt fine because I was still drunk; it was not until I had been up for a couple hours that I felt the wrath of the ? shots of Jamesons from the night before. There was the inevitable, "I'll never drink again" or "Why did I drink so much?" This gave way to the most rejuvenating night's sleep and, because I didn't get super fucked up, I had a Sunday morning that felt like the way that the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" sounds. So that's where I'm at: glad yesterday's over, a little pissed off I missed out on 80% of my Saturday, and knowing that sometime in the next couple months the shots are gonna get lined up again and kick me in the head so I feel piss poor the next morning.

Scientists aren't 100% sure what causes the misery I suffered on Saturday, but they've got an idea. As anyone who has drunk too much, had a lot of water before going to sleep, and then woken up to feel relatively chipper, hangovers are likely caused by dehydration. Another additional cause of the hurt is that when the liver breaks down booze, it produces a chemical that is significantly more toxic than the alcohol itself. Darker boozes, like whiskey, have more of this particular chemical, than do light colored boozes, like vodka. Another cause of the general malaise is that a process occurs that causes the liver to divert glucose from tissues resulting in the tissues having less energy thus causing lethargy. Another supposition is that the hangover is a mini-withdrawal (if this is true, and the pain from the booze is a "mini" anything, then real withdrawal must be absolute hell).

Onto the remedies. The obvious proactive remedies are eat, drink water while boozing, and stick with one type of booze. According to a lot of stuff I looked at vitamin B6 should be ingested before drinking, while drinking, and after drinking. Also, prickly pear extract is supposed to reduce the pain caused by the darker boozes. I gotta say I don't know what I'd think of the person who busted out their vitamin B6 or, worse yet, their prickly pear extract at the bar. That being said, if it works, then who gives a shit what I think. Another remedy that is nasty but effective: purge before sleeping.

Reactive remedies. Eat a big greasy breakfast. Drink water. Sleep more. If you're nauseated, drink fruit juice or soda. I say stay away from milk even if you're not nauseated. I drank some yesterday and felt like I was gonna yack.

Take some pain killers, the stronger the better. Problem is they say that the combo of booze and pain killers, particularly Tylenol or anything stronger, makes your liver work real hard and can be pretty bad for it. I like Alka-Seltzer b/c it feels like it cleans my insides out and its effervescence is oh so nice.

Exercise. Sounds terrifying, but I will say I took a long walk yesterday and, while it was no fun at the beginning, I felt a lot better during and afterwards.

Also, though it's probably not accessible to anyone, if you have access to any saline drips, apparently if you rig that bitch up it will clean you up real nice. A bit more accessible but kind of nasty, I've heard drinking pickle juice works.

According to a number of articles, the remedies sold at convenience stores aren't money well spent. Coffee is a bad idea too b/c it further dehydrates you (but then again abstaining will cause all of us crack head coffee drinkers to go into coffee withdrawal).

Also, as we all know, another drink of booze usually sets you straight. If you find yourself curing the pain with another drink on an even semi-regular basis, then you've probably packed your bags, rolled up your sleeping bag, and have been hiking on the path of alcoholism for longer's than healthy. So there's that.

"Do you understand what I'm saying sir?"

Moving words (from an interview with Iggy Pop):

"Punk Rock" by Mogwai

Here's a link to the entire interview without music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqxcgPPdYwo.

Fog of War

Fog of War was an enlightening, well directed biographical documentary on the life of Robert McNamara, focusing primarily on his time as Secretary of Defense under JFK and LBJ. Prior to watching Fog of War, I had never heard of Robert McNamara and had only seen one movie by Errol Morris. Briefly, Robert McNamara was the highest paid and youngest Assistant Professor at Harvard in 1940, the first president of Ford Motor Company who was not a Ford at the age of 44, the Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, and President of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981. By the end of the movie I had a deep respect for McNamara and a real understanding of this monumental figure (I also had 4 more Errol Morris movies added to my queue on blockbuster.com). The movie's interviews were insightful, the editing effective, and the narrative both compelling and well-structured. Rent this movie and watch it; it's worth 2 hours of your life.

Here's a link to info on Robert McNamara: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara#Secretary_of_Defense.

Here's the quote where the title of the movie came from: The term "fog of war" is ascribed to the Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote: "The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently — like the effect of a fog or moonshine — gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance."

Here's a funny story from the movie: According to McNamara, before he became President of Ford Motor Company, when a production executive was fired, nothing was said to him. The executive would go home for the weekend, the furniture in his office would be chopped up, and when he returned to his office the following Monday to find his office furniture in that state, he knew that he was fired.

Snow's BBQ

Up until the middle of ths year, I would guess that most people that hadn't driven through Lexington, Texas had never heard of the town. I live about 50 miles away in Austin and I hadn't heard of it. Then around June, Texas Monthly came out with its Best of BBQ edition naming Snow's BBQ of Lexington #1. Then a couple of weeks ago, The New Yorker profiled Snow's in a 4 page article.

If anything ranks close to the sweet sugar of love, then for me it's gotta be food. And of those foods I love, a tender slice of brisket cut fatty from the fatty side may be #1. A good bite of brisket is like toro tuna sashimi or a chocolate chip cookie frsh out of the oven with a glass of whole milk.Simply said, it can be sublime, close to a religious experience. This is why I enjoy eating at quality bbq joints, something that definitely abounds in the Hill County. Until last weekend, I felt Smitty's had the best brisket, both in the best single bite of brisket ever and in consistency of the product (being each bite was as good as the last). For me the litmus test for a good bbq joint is their bbq, so I don't pay a lot of attention to the other stuff. That being said, the consensus of my bbq eating buddies has been that Smitty's also has the best sausage and Kruez's has the best ribs. Lockhart is the mecca of Texas bbq.

Snows. Snow's BBQ is in Lexington, Texas, about 50 miles due east of Austin. Leington is a ranching town of about 1,500 people. The town was sut down the Saturday we went out there save for Snow's, the people selling honey out of their mini-van parked across the street from Snow's, and a cattle auction down the street from Snow's. The weather that Saturday was near perfect, a mild Texas December day, clear blue skies and temperature in the mid-60s.

Snow's is how a bbq joint should be. It's partially surrounded by grain elevators. There are a bunch of wooden picnic tables outside near the bbq pits (the owner of Snow's, Kerry Bexley, built the pits himself). The actual store is probably less than 1,000 sq. ft., consisting of the food counter and 5 or 6 tables. The pit master, Tootsie Tomanetz, is something out of a tall tale. You couldn't make her up.

The food. There was nothing wrong with Snow's BBQ. The brisket was the best I've ever had, tender, marbled, and moist (if you were lazy to epic proportions, you wouldn't even have to chew the brisket it was so tender and moist)(As I'm writing this I'm honestly salivating). There were bites so good that I'd nod off for a second. Also, each cut of brisket was just as good as any other cut. This is truly notable because there are many times when I've had brisket and one cut was great and another tough, dry, overcooked. Bottom line, Snow's brisket was really good. I'd drive 7 hours round trip for this brisket (I'm gonna rate the food in this post on how far I'd drive to eat it).

The pork ribs were tasty. They were different in that the meat on Snow's ribs seemed closer to the meat on a pork chop in texture and flavor than other ribs I've had. I'd drive 30 to 45 minutes each way for these ribs.

The sausage was good too. Loosely packed. Not too greasy. Good flavor. I wouldn't go too far out of my for these links though, maybe 15 minutes each way (then again I'm not a real sausage guy).

The pork shoulder was the only let down of the day. I had high expectations for the pork shoulder. It was by no means bad, it just didn't have the flavor of which pork shoulder is capable. Next time at Snow's, I won't waste space in my stomach by putting pork shoulder in it. I'd drive 10 minutes for this pork shoulder as long as it was being given away.

The sides I ate were potato salad and cole slaw. The potato salad was fine, nothing to write home about. The slaw was actually damn good (I mean as good as cabbage can be when compared next to top notch meat). It was light, flavorful, and crunchy. I'd drive a couple of minutes out of my way for the slaw.

All in all, Snow's is legit and lives up to its billing. The Snow's team was real pleasant, the setting was picturesque, and the food was across the board good. Definitely worth the trip.

Crikey!

I feel like I need to explain why I went to see Australia (The Movie): Thanksgiving is a time meant for spending time with your family; so once I got off work on Wednesday, I drove to Houston, had dinner with my sister and mom, and then went to see a movie with my mom.  Going to a movie with my mom means compromise for both of us (she'd like to see some period piece drama while I'd prefer something drug-addled and esoteric), so after much deliberation we decided on Australia (just as an aside how the fuck is Slumdog Millionaire not playing in the 4th biggest city in the US).  We saw Australia at the Edwards Theater off of I-10 right west of the 610 loop (as another aside, if you go out to any of the clubs in the Edwards Theater complex then you need to spend some serious time looking at yourself in the mirror while punching yourself repeatedly in the face until your nose is a garbled mess-I'll make an exception to the nose punching garbled mess thing for playing at most $20 worth of video games at the complex's Dave and Busters and/or a show at the complex's Comedy Improv if Richard Pryor has come back from the dead to do that show).

So, Australia.  I expected a love story/period piece, hardly bearable, but nonetheless bearable, movie.  What I got was Moulin Rouge set in the desert with a lot less singing (all thanks and praise be to Allah), a lot more cliche Australian vernacular, and a whole shit load of cows.  In all honesty, the movie started out good.  The scene before the title sequence had a strong hook and after that the movie, for the first hour, was for the most part entertaining.  Sure, it was cheesy and the story was closer to Sponge Bob Square Pants than a solid drama, but all of this was to be expected; also, there was enough of Hugh Jackman being shirtless and pouring water on himself for this movie to qualify as soft gay porn.  But all this aside, the plot was captivating, the direction interesting, and the acting believable.  Plus, the kid that played the 1/2 Aboriginal, 1/2 white kid named Nullah was really fucking cute.  

So this went on for about an hour and a half and I was thinking to myself, "Damn, this movie is pretty good.  I'm kind of pissed off at myself for liking it, but man, I am actually enjoying this."  Then the wheels came off, not right away, they kind of rattled a little bit at first, then startled wobbling, and then they just came right the fuck off.  

After the wheels came off  (all four of 'em came off), this movie started skidding around, sparks were pouring out from the sides, then the gas tank burst open, a spark hit the gas that was pouring out of the tank, and BOOM!!!  Nonmetaphorically what happened was that: 1) The movie was about twice as long as it should have been.  I don't know what kind of grand aspirations Baz Luhrmann had, but Australia is in no way an epic and at no point could this story have even potentially been an epic.  It's a light, comedic drama/period piece that should have been at most an hour and forty five minutes.  Thing was 2:45 without the previews.  All in all, this show kept me seated in that damn theater for 3 hours once the lights went out; and 2) From the beginning, the story in Australia progresses interestingly and the movie holds promise.  Then, like a lot of big budget, big studio movies, when the time comes for resolution, the writers look around, and notice that, oh shit!, they've painted themselves into a corner.  So then all types of ridiculous bullshit starts to happen just so the audience can get served a Happy Meal ending.  Instead of this crappy deus ex machina (blue means link), just have a big Baby Jesus float on in, lasers strapped to his head, and clean the messy story up.  It would be about as believable and a lot more entertaining.

In summary, if you're gonna see Australia, leave after an hour and a half and call me to find out what happens at the end.  You'll leave the theater a lot happier.  Oh, and Nicole Kidman can act really well.  Rating:  3.5 out of a 10.