Hygrometer Sprinklers

Warning:  Audubon Society Moment

I grew up in a double-decade drought in California.

California, where cities are all as vain as Agrestic.

It was an interesting juxtaposition of water conversation and beautifully manicured landscaping.  I remember laws of all sorts aimed at saving the water:  can't water during the day, can't water on this day, can't use the hose, can't wash your car, etc.

I remember what a pain it was to turn on the sprinklers early, early in the morning before... automatic sprinklers.

Then, the invention of the automatic sprinklers led to the wonderful solution of letting people sleep in, while the sprinklers are running during a rainstorm.

And thus we find the problem with automatic sprinklers:

Sprinklers are only automatically controlled by a clock.

How is this helpful to water conservation AT ALL?

The answer is:  it's not.

What we really need is this:  We need automatic sprinklers that are controlled by hygrometer (moisture sensers).

In combination with this, the American populace needs to realize that continued cultivation of the water-sucking weed we call grass cannot continue while we have continually diminishing fresh water reserves on Earth.  We need to get used to playing in drought-resistant lawns (like crab grass) instead of poisoning these plants (and thereby the ground and water) to make our lawns "pretty".

Now, I'm looking at buying a house with a lawn for a child to play in.  This idea doesn't sit well with me, either.  Perhaps I need to look into astroturf- perhaps we all should.

Regardless, we do need to change how we water our lawns AND our crops.  We need to be smart about how much moisture is actually needed based on the amount that's already in the soil.

We need hygrometer-based watering.

And we need it now.

Seriously Sears!

Twelve years ago, I bought an air conditioner from Sears.

(yes, like Sears &Roebuck...the Craftsman tools company).

It was for a house, that I no longer own and haven't owned for most of the time since that purchase.

I have not purchased anything else from Sears since then.

(Let's just say that it wasn't a great experience...resulting in them blowing the furnace wiring during the coldest part of the year, which resulted in me having to manually the furnace on and off so that the house didn't freeze)

ANYWAY,

Today, I received a letter from Sears telling me that the warranty on that air condition has experience.

o_O

Now, like I said, I am not at that address any more.  I haven't made any purchases from them since....

HOW DID THEY KNOW WHERE I LIVE!?!

Evidently, they purchase updates to their customers from those unethical personal information marketers, like Intelius, and they track you and your information in their database.

The best part of about this whole experience is this:  It's completely legal.  It's legal because I bought something from them and the US government has guaranteed them the right to keep track of me, my information, where I live, my phones, my purchases, my education, etc as a previous customer so that they can market to me.

The moral of this story is this:

If you are going to buy something big on a credit card from a retail company, be sure to open the junk mail from that company and read it occasionally.  You might find out some interesting rights that you forfeit just by shredding it unopened.

Now, if you had made a purchase from Sears and you don't want them to market to you (or keep track of your life), call this number and ask them to remove you from the database.  Of course, I'd wait until your warranties have expired, but you can still insist on your privacy.

Sears warranties and management of your private information:  
1-800-366-2320.  
Then press option 4 to be removed/update your information.

Recycling Energy

My daughter has a couple of pinwheels that she conned me into while we were out shopping on various occasions.

At first, she didn't quite get how to work them, but then I showed her how to hold them above the air vent to make them go.

This was _quite_ a hit.

And this got me wondering:

Why don't we have some sort of indoor pinwheels for recapturing some of this spent energy?

I mean, it wouldn't necessarily be a lot, but if you add up a few pinwheels in your home running when your air or heat or ceiling fan runs...and then you multiply that times the number of people in your neighborhood ALSO running the air...

...it makes you really wonder why we aren't making better use of the energy that we spend.

Well, That's a New One

I grew up calling them "gassers".

I call them "toots" for my daughter, giggles with glee with every "musical" note.

I've heard them called Dutch Ovens, Depth Charges, Green Clouds, Cutting the Cheese....

...but my husband clued me in to a new one, as our daughter ran over to us, tooted, and ran away laughing.

Evidently, this type of gas bomb is called a "Crop Dusting"

Gives new a slant on the whole thing, doesn't it?

Introducing My Daughter to the Best Online

It's a surprise. Something from my past. It's not a virus...but it is contagious :)

Dental Sealants

Why are they not covered by insurance?

Hell, why aren't they MANDATED by insurance?

Dental sealants are an epoxy/porcelain mix that are basically glued into the ridges of your molars and premolars to cover the crevasses...you know, the places where cavities form.  So...this is basically a cheap, nearly guaranteed prevention of cavities in the crevasses of your teeth.

Each sealant is cheaper than a shot.

Each sealant lasts about 10 years.

Each sealant prevents cavity, which results in a filling that is a WHOLE LOT MORE expensive than the sealant.  AND once you start drilling the teeth, you compromise the structural integrity of the tooth, thereby pretty much guaranteeing that you'll be visiting the dentist again for that tooth...for bigger and nastier "treatments".

Why would insurance not want to take that bet?

It just goes to show you that insurance is NOT interested in helping pay for your health and welfare.  It's completely interested in you continuing to purchase insurance.

It's a business.

Keep that in mind.

And I'd recommend paying for the sealants out of pocket- no matter what your age.

Coloring for the White Collared

This week, I find myself working on a requirements traceability document.

The goal of the document is truly requirements traceability:  identifying the source of the requirement and whether or not that makes the requirement out of scope.

Now, as it turns out, one of my colleagues is rather fond of color-coding.  I opened up this document and it looked like Rainbow Brite threw up on it.  And then to kick off the meeting, my colleague wanted to know what color to use for today's meeting...

Uhm...

I am NOT fond of color-coding documents.  After being married to two color blind men, I kind of get the hint that color-coding is kind of a dumb idea.

Why?

Because the two most common colors in color coding are what?

Green and Red

What is the most common form of color blindness?

Green and Red

What type of information are you really expecting to convey to people in gray?  The common colors aren't even different saturations, so they LOOK the same to a color blind person.

See, dumb.

It's much better to identify your content with, uhm, WORDS.

Despite the color palate provided by Microsoft, there are really only 7 different colors that the human eye can distinguish.  And you all know what they are already:

ROY G BIV

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

Everything else is a shade or tone of those hues.

Whoa, fancy artist speak there.

Hue is the actual color; adding white or black creates a different tone of the color.  But basically, I go back to what I learned from Crayola:

In a box of 64 crayons,  I still have to look at the label to tell the difference between Yellow Orange and Orange Yellow or Blue Green and Green Blue.  

Now, I will give you this:  I can tell the difference between pink and red.  I think most people can- even the color blind.

And this is because they are different tones of the same color.

So, I guess my advice is this:

If you want to be Rainbow Brite and vomit colors all over your business documents:

• Use different values/saturations of colors- don't use the same darkness of all colors for your coloring
• If you have more than 7 colors, you're painting.  Stop.  Color in coloring books, not business documents.
• Please, please, please:  Use a freakin' legend.  Some of us can't understand how your artistic expression relates to due dates.