Green Remodelling

In the course of researching and working on remodeling our house, I've tried to keep things as green as possible. Green these days can mean different things to different people, and in my case it has meant focusing on health (particularly in-door air quality), efficiency (using less energy and water) and using renewable resources wherever possible.

Here are some specifics:

• Low-VOC paints (the Kelly Moore Enviro-Cote line). Our painter also did a bit of research and is using a high volume, low pressure (HVLP) spray gun to reduce overspray, which means less paint particles floating around in the air and more paint on the wall.
• More/better insulation - not only will insulation help reduce heating costs, but we're using UltraTouch insulation, which is both good for the environment (uses recycled denim) and better for your health (no VOC, no chemical irritants).
• New energy efficient windows.
• Energy Star compliant appliances:
  • New, high efficiency furnace.
  • New, high efficiency water heater.
  • New refrigerator.
  • New dishwasher.
  • New washer and dryer (there's no such thing as an Energy Star compliant dryer, but it's still possible to find a more efficient one).
• Using fluorescent lighting as much as possible.
• High efficiency dual flush toilets - replaced our old ones with Caroma Sidneys.
• Installed a hot water recirculation system. We used to have to run the water for several minutes before we got hot water in the master bathroom and it was a tremendous waste of water. I didn't want the hot water recirculation system running all the time either, since that would waste both the energy it takes to run the pump as well as the energy to reheat the cool return water, so I opted for a pump that runs on a programmable timer.

Note that our house is roughly 40 years old, and most of the appliances that came with it have probably been there from the very beginning.

At some point in the near future, I'm also hoping to install a PV system, and a smarter water sprinkler system.

Things I've considered but did not do:

• A gray water system - the issues surrounding this are still too murky (no pun intended), and Santa Clara township is actively warning people against any such systems
• An intelligent sprinkler system, one that'll check existing conditions before watering

Moving Back In

After taking a little more than twice as long as originally expected, the remodeling is finally coming to an end. Enough, at any rate, that we were finally able to move back in on Sunday.

The house is pretty bare as we're not moving back our old immediately-post-college furniture, and the built-ins that we'd originally planned on building in haven't quite been, um, built (we're now waffling on what we want exactly). But hey, it's great to finally inhabit the space that I've been obsessing over for the past year!

So what's left? The master bathroom, mainly, which is still missing its shower doors and vanity counter-top. We'd been waiting on the latter, hoping we wouldn't have to buy our own slab of Caesarstone (that we'd be able to split it with someone else who might also want the color we wanted), but with no success and we've decided not to wait any longer.

No Escape / Transparency

There's just no avoiding the talk about the financial meltdown these days, despite McCain's claims that the economy is fundamentally "very strong". And now this bit about a(nother) bailout? Yeeesh.

I was in a news blackout while I was diving off the Channel Islands and we were all caught off guard when we stopped at a Starbucks and saw the news on the front page. And now this mad rush to grant total, unreviewable and unquestionable power to the Secretary of the Treasury to spend $700 billion in what's potentially a total conflict of interest (i.e. the best interest of the taxpayers vs. the best interest of the companies being bailed out).

I'm no economic expert, but what I do know is that no matter what happens, we must have transparency. Everyone should know how the money is spent, and once we start selling of these assets, how much of that money was recovered.

A Bit of Fun

Been listening to music on Pandora again. Adding Bebel Gilberto, Pink Martini, Bitter:Sweet, and Serge Gainsbourg seems to have produced the optimal mix of music for the moment.

Oh yeah: which word would you save? I'm voting for vilipend and periapt, mostly because I'm familiar with them.

Update: As much as I like Serge, adding him just pulls in too much other crap that I'm not a fan of.

More of the Same

The more I learn about Sarah Palin, the harder it is to see how she's any different from Bush. Cronyism? Check. Secretive and negative administration? Check. Total disregard for the separation of church and state? Check.

And while it's true we're not voting for her for president, a lot of people seem to forget this fact. And if McCain does win, she's just a very short hop away from the presidency...

Republican Reform

One of the new campaign directions to have come out of the Republican convention is the whole idea of being a reformer. Palin in particular seems to be tripping over herself in an effort to use the word as many times as possible whenever she speaks.

What I'd like to know is if they realize that what they're talking about reforming is the Republican party? Who are they claiming McCain and Palin went against? The mainstream Republican party! Isn't that basically admitting that the Republican party/system is just deeply flawed? If so, can't they reform their party on their own time? You don't need to run for President to clean up your own house...

In any case, it's nice to see someone finally asking McCain some hard questions, even if he does manage to evade most of them.

Green Change #5

No more antibacterial soap. More specifically, no more triclosan. It's not good for us, it's not good for kids, and it's not good for the environment. I usually don't pay too much attention to this and just pick up whichever is cheapest at Costco, but that's going to change now.

Here's a simple write-up on why it's no good, and if that's too fuzzy for you, here's a more technical doc from the CDC.

Conventions

Now that both the Democratic and Republican conventions are done with, I'm feeling a bit of fear at what November may bring. What I found most interesting between the two were the tone and content of the conventions, with tone being the more critical issue and a probable prediction of things to come.

I generally found the Democrats to be civil and respectful, especially when they were talking about John McCain. The Republicans, however, were totally uninhibited and were constantly on the attack, ridiculing Obama at every turn. Giuliani's speech is a good example. This kind of rhetoric is totally unnecessary in my opinion and turns me off the Republicans even though I think McCain's a good guy. And seriously, most of the arguments they level against Obama are just distractions and FUD.

My other issue, content, is obvious when you compare Obama's speech vs. McCain's speech. While McCain is pulling his grandfather war hero routine, Obama is actually providing some details on what he actually plans to accomplish, instead of what he has already done.

A simple test: just try counting how many sentences in each speech starts with "I will".

So why am I afraid? Because the Republican spin and FUD machine is going to go into overdrive now, and if there's one thing they're good at, it's spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Don't provide any details, appeal to your patriotism, scare you into feeling insecure, and promise you safety. That's how they won in 2004, and it looks like that's how they're planning on winning this year as well.

But this is just my opinion. Come November, make sure you vote, and vote informed. Don't just listen to the rhetoric and the ads on tv. Want to know where the candidates stand on the environment? Or something else?

Lightroom 2 *RAWKS*

I can't express how much of a joy and time saver Lightroom has been ever since I started shooting with my D40. What happened when I got my D40? I started taking a lot of pictures, that's what. While I was in Indonesia I was shooting over 300 pictures a day. There's no way I'd be able to sort through over 2K+ pictures from a week of vacation in any reasonable amount of time and get them processed without Lightroom.

And now they've fixed the biggest annoyance I've had with it in the new version: lack of support for Nikon's proprietary color profiles. It's only in beta right now, but now I can get my pictures to look as good on the PC as they do on my camera's LCD without a ton of post-processing. Want to see what a difference this makes? Check this out.

And that's not even getting into the other improvements (so much faster! support for multiple volumes!) and new features (that I've yet to really play with).

KBR Day 5

Today was just an amazing day. All four dives were fantastic and chock full of critters. Even got to play around with a couple octopi!

The first dive of the day was at Kapal Indah ("Beautiful Ship"), a wreck dive where we found a pigmy seahorse.

The second dive was at Jahir 2, where the highlights were a frogfish and a leaf scorpionfish (no good shot of the latter though).

For our third dive, we went to Hairball. Spent a long time here with a seahorse and an octopus.

If at first you don't succeed... Went back to Aer Prang 2 to try and catch the mandarinfishes going at it. And joy of joys, there were feeling frisky tonight! As an added bonus, an octopus came by to play while we waited for the mandarinfish to do their thing.

KBR Day 4

Did something unexpected and different today -- drove to the northwest side of North Sulawesi to dive at Pulau Bunaken. Another couple had made all the plans and I just tagged along. It's a completely different sort of diving there, all wall dives where you just drift along the current.

I'd hoped this meant that I'd be able to put my wide angle lens to better use, but the visibility there was working against me and most of my shots came out less than satisfactory. It's entirely possible that I just don't know how to take these kinds of shots/how to work with these conditions...

The first dive was at Mandolin; a fun, relaxing and enjoyable affair. The wall was teeming with life of all sorts, and there were large schools of fishes everywhere (very unlike what I'd been seeing in the Lembeh Strait), but I have to report that there was nothing really impressive per se. This of course only in comparison to the amazing critters I'd been seeing the past couple days.

The second dive at Lekuan 2 was a little better: saw an orang-utan crab as well as a green turtle which swam by us in the open water. Tried to go after it, but couldn't really get a good shot (the visibility issue).

Totally unrelated to diving, but still pretty cool nonetheless was who I went to Bunaken with: Joshua Marston, the writer/director of Maria Full of Grace, who was nice enough to talk a little about the movie business.

I made it back to KBR just in time to go watch the mandarinfish perform their mating dance at twilight. Unfortunately, they weren't in the mood tonight and we ended up spending a really boring 45 minutes hanging out underwater before we called it quits and cruised around for another 35 minutes. The only shot I was happy with from this dive was of a couple nudibranchs:

KBR Day 3

Did another four dives today, one more than anticipated because I wanted more practice with the camera. My discovery for the day is that diving with a big dSLR housing is not exactly a walk in the park. The first dive was a complete blur; all I remember was struggling with the camera and buoyancy control. The good news is that I'm improving with practice and am getting reasonably comfortable with it. My biggest challenge now is that I'm muck diving and only have a wide angle lens instead of a macro lens to get up close and personal with my subject. I may not have be able to get really nice shots of the 4mm pigmy seahorses we found, but I think I managed to get some pretty pictures nevertheless.

A few more numbers for the day:

• spent a little over four hours underwater
• saw two pigmy sea horses (we're talking about 4mm or so here!)
• saw the biggest lobster I've ever seen: about 3 ft in length, not including it's whiskers, which were another 3ft in length!
• saw 1 electric clam wedged into a crack
• saw 1 octopus with 4 legs
• saw 1 cuttlefish with hundreds of colors

KBR Day 2

It's 10pm right now and it's definitely time for bed. Some numbers for today:

• 4 dives (3 day, 1 night)
• almost 4.5 hours spent underwater
• maximum depth of 81 feet
• 3 sea horses (never seen them before)
• 2 cuttlefish (never seen them before either)
• 1 huge puffer fish with a remora latched on to it (totally cool)

And that's just the first day! There were also many moray eels of all kinds, lots of puffer fishes (kept thinking fugu! every time I saw one), and basically a ton more life than I've ever seen any where underwater. Definitely some of the best diving I've ever done.

Tomorrow I'll be bringing my camera along...

KBR

After many hours of travel I'm finally at my home for the next 8 days: Kungkungan Bay Resort in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, where I'll be diving for the next week. Woo-hoo!

The room is amazing, as is the view out my porch. All I'm interested in right now though is some food, a shower, and sleep...

Diablo 3

Haven't played any computer games for a while now (Civilization IV Beyond the Sword was the last one), but I have to say that I definitely got the shivers after watching the Diablo 3's debut trailer. It's been a looong while since I've been tempted to buy a computer game...

I can already hear the click click click. Can you?

Green Change #4

Been doing a lot of driving recently, and with the price of gas as it is, enough is enough. It's time I changed the way I drive and practice a bit of hypermiling:

1. slower starts
2. keep (closer) to the speed limit
3. keep tires inflated
4. ride my motorcycle more since I get almost twice the mileage on it than my car ;)

I've been trying to put this into practice lately and #2 is definitely the hardest. I've been able to keep it under 70 in my car, but on C's V6 Accord it's a bit harder.

As for #3, McCain's been in the news lately for being an idiot on this point.

Diving in San Diego

Drove down to San Diego last Thursday to do a bit of wreck diving with the fine folks from Aquatic Discovery. I haven't dived in California for years because of the cold water here and I'd promised myself that I'd learn how to use a drysuit before trying again.

Which I did, before the trip. I'm happy to report that I'm now a firm believer in drysuits. Even with the rental drysuit that didn't fit particularly well, it was just sooo much more comfortable. It's not 100% dry, but it's a heck of a lot better than a wetsuit, and you're much warmer as well.

On Friday, we dove Lazy Days (where I missed seeing a six gill shark swim by) and Seven Fathom Reef; on Saturday, we dove the Yukon and the Ruby E; and on Sunday, we dove the Yukon twice more. The Yukon, an ex-Canadian destroyer that was sunk to form an artificial reef, was definitely worth three dives.

Thief Thief

Saw Jeff's band Thief Thief play at Mama Buzz in Oakland tonight, and was surprised at how good they were. Much better than their recordings on their MySpace page, and they've certainly come a long way from their early days.

I have to admit I had my doubts because it's not exactly my kind of music, but I should have known better. Go Jeff!

Danny's Bachelor Bash

Helped Danny celebrate his upcoming nuptual last weekend. It started with a round of frisbee golf in Golden Gate Park, and then it was back to his place in Belmont where we took it upon ourselves to get him rip-roaring drunk. I think we did a pretty good job...

The picture on the left is how I recall the end of the poker game. The picture on the right is how Danny recalls the end of the poker game. More incriminating shots available on request, and video is available for a fee...

Dr. Horrible

Joss Whedon's at it again. This time it's a musical. A supervillain musical! It's good, but it's going away soon. To a DVD that is. The three acts are only going to be free to watch online for a limited time, so don't delay. Unless you're the kind who likes to wait and get the entire season on DVD. Then you should probably just wait.