DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Pictured is my favorite spot on the trail to Bullfrog Pond. The 180° wrap-around view reveals nearly no sign of civilization. Within California’s borders are millions of acres of local, state, and national parks; from this perch I can see several thousand of them.

Anyway this is an ideal spot to stop and inhale a processed-food bar.

This is my mantra: reduce, reuse, recycle. Notice how “recycle” comes at the end of the chain, implying that it is the least important of the three.

It is better to consume less, because everything you consume puts a strain on the environment: manufacturing, transportation, packaging, etc. For those things you do consume, it’s better to consume them completely than to use them once and then send them to the landfill.

But when all else fails, the minimum thing you can do is recycle. Think about the amount of paper you consume in a day: the morning newspaper, the carton of orange juice, the paper towels and napkins and toilet paper, the insulation ring around the cardboard cup of coffee, the sack your lunch comes in, the Post-Its stuck to your monitor, the stack of magazines and junk mail… You’re awash in paper products, and at the end of the day I bet you’ll have discarded 90% of it. Would you want the paper companies to chop down another tree to create the paper you’ll want tomorrow? Or would you rather someone found a way to reuse the stuff you threw out today?

So, anyway, I recycle just about everything because it makes sense to me to do so. I’m cognizant of the costs of recycling: machines sort the refuse… trucks haul sorted refuse to processing plants… more machines chew up the used paper or plastic or aluminum, etc., into small bits… chemicals are added; fumes are released… Recycling is not the best thing that ever happened to the planet, but considering our lifestyles, recycling is a sensible mechanism for coping with the enormous amounts of waste we produce.

Remember how far we’ve come. Why is it easier to recycle now than it used to be? Maybe it’s because people demanded it. Demand creates an economic force. At some point somebody invented more-efficient ways to recycle, so now it makes economic sense to do so. Now imagine what would happen if twice as many people were recycling their paper, plastic, and aluminum waste. Isn’t it reasonable to believe that new efficiencies would be discovered, costs would be lower, impact on the environment would be reduced?

Today I gave the effort a tiny push. I picked a grocery item that I buy in quantity, and wrote a letter to the manufacturer requesting that they begin using recyclable packaging. The solution may be as simple as stamping the plastic bag with the appropriate resin code.

Next, I wrote a letter to the local warehouse chain — the place that sells probably 75% of the paper towels used in the state — requesting that they carry recycled paper products. This particular effort could have a huge impact, because the store has millions of customers, many of whom would happily pick the greener product if it was convenient.

If you have 120 seconds free, you could help with this effort by sending an email requesting recycled paper products to your local warehouse club:

• Request recycled paper products from Costco
• Request recycled paper products from Sam’s Club
• Request recycled paper products from BJ’s Wholesale

I need a new firewall. The one I’m using now works fine, which is a real credit to Linux, for the hardware is about 15 years old. It’s an IBM PS/ValuePoint, originally equipped with a 66 MHz 486. I’ve added a second disk, more RAM, and upgraded the processor, but the thing is still loud, slow, and ugly. It weighs about 50 lbs and makes enough noise to be easily heard over my office stereo, even though it sits 12' away.

The replacement is a Mini-ITX system, which is tiny, quiet, and cutting-edge. Here’s a complete hardware list:

• VIA EPIA ME-6000 mainboard and CPU
• 40 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 disk drive (p/n ST340014A)
• Mitsumi slim CD-ROM drive (p/n SR244W1)
• Morex Cubid / Casetronic 2699R case
• Mushkin “blue line” 512MB PC2100 DIMM (p/n 990856)
• additional flat internal IDE cable
• ps/2 mouse and keyboard

Total cost, shipped: $475. Sources: Shentech, iDot, Mushkin

The Mini-ITX mainboard is the heart of this system. VIA has managed to put a 600 MHz processor, 10/100 Ethernet, soundcard, video card, and no CPU fan onto a board about six inches square. See the Mini-ITX website’ projects page for all sorts of unusual applications.

My needs are much more pedestrian, so I opted for a standard case rather than a plush toy or motorcycle helmet. The finished machine provides USB 2.0, FireWire, CD-ROM, 40 GB storage, and fast ethernet in a box 11 inches square.

The system came together quickly. If you’re building your own, the following notes might help:

• Mini-ITX.com’s review of the (older) 2677R case serves as a helpful assembly guide.
• The Mitsumi CD-ROM drive I purchased came with the laptop-IDE-to-desktop-IDE converter preinstalled. This is fortunate because the 2699R case did not come with this converter, in contrast to what Mini-ITX.com’s store claims. For more info: notebook IDE converters
• The mainboard kit includes one internal IDE cable, which will not reach both the CD-ROM drive and a disk drive. You’ll have to supply a second IDE cable. Get a flat one; the round ones are too thick and inflexible to work well inside this small case.
• There’s probably a trick I don’t know, but I managed to get all the case connectors reversed. They were mounted to the right pins, but rotated 180°, so that the switches and LEDs didn’t work. If you find an LED or switch failing, try reversing its connector.
• When you order RAM, make sure the DIMM is 30MM or less in height. The helpful folks at Mushkin actually measured their PC100 DIMMs for me so that they could suggest one that would fit (see part number above). If you’re not adding a CD or DVD drive, though, DIMM height is irrelevant.
• The iDot store claims that the 2699R case’s power supply cannot simultaneously power a 3.5'' disk drive, a CD-ROM drive, and an M-series ITX mainboard. This is incorrect. The 2699R was designed for that combination of components, and I’ve had one running that way for over a week now.

The ME-6000 board is fanless and therefore silent. The 2699 case has two small fans that I attached to the mainboard’s SYSFAN connector. I have not verified this but I believe the power to this connector is regulated, so that the fan spins faster when the CPU is working harder. [Update 2005-07-19: it appears the sysfan header supplies constant, not variable power.]

The 7200.7 drive is fairly quiet. Apparently the 7200.7’s predecessor, the Barracuda IV, is even quieter. There appears to be a tradeoff: noise vs. performance.

In any event, the assembled system is very quiet. It’s not silent, but significantly quieter than that train-wreck 486 it will replace.

The software is taking longer to configure… more on that later.

I pulled up to an acquaintance’s house the other day to pick up something he’d been holding for me. I was amused by the collection of geek stickers on the back of his car: “NYC Wireless”, “Coding is not a crime!”, and “Linuxgruven”. “What a nerd!” I thought, reflecting that I had no such stickers on the back of my car.

And then I considered why I was visiting — to pick up a piece of a 24dBi parabolic grid (a wireless-networking antenna). And I considered that my trunk contained all the parts necessary to assemble a 600 MHz Mini-ITX server: case, fanless mainboard with CPU, low-profile DIMM, micro-size CD-ROM, IDE drive, cables, etc. I’m a nerd, too; I just don’t advertise it. In fact, I hide it. Maybe someday I’ll work up the courage to announce my nerd-dom to the world — to come out of the [network] closet.

Back when I was an Ander-clone, one of the few diversions of the day was a contest we called the “Coke Game.” The manager who introduced it timed it strategically to interrupt the food comas that set in around 2:00PM. (In those days, I’d frequently cope with my job dissatisfaction by stuffing down a Grilled Sourdough Bacon Cheeseburger and XL fries for lunch. The mere recollection of that meal makes me wish for a hot flax enema.)

The Coke Game required three players. We usually had five; with more, it becomes too expensive, for reasons that shall become apparent. One player starts the game by privately selecting a number between one and 1000 and recording it on a scrap of paper. The rest of the players take turns guessing. With each guess, the person who selected the number says “higher” or “lower;” subsequent guesses have to be higher or lower, respectively. The game ends when someone picks the written number. That person, the loser, has to buy sodas for everyone. The goal of the game, then, is not to guess the written number, but to guess the number one higher or lower, so that the next player is forced to say the number and buy the drinks.

For the first few weeks, I lost as often as you’d expect — maybe once a week. Then the planets went out of line, or something, and I started losing big, days in a row. It gets demoralizing quickly, having to buy sodas for the team over and over again. I didn’t even like soda. I’d played just for the camaraderie, although that faded too when I realized I was getting milked for Coke (in a manner of speaking).

So I stopped participating and felt immediate relief. Over the cube wall I’d hear the guessing and again feel relief when the loser turned out to be someone other than me, as irrational as that was considering I wasn’t even playing.

Eventually someone goaded me into playing again. I’d had a week or two off, and I reasoned that even if I did lose, it would have been acceptable, the only loss that week. So someone picked a number and wrote it down. I was the first to guess. “Ahh, 874,” I said, picking the most obscure number I could think of.

“I’d like a Mountain Dew,” the guy said, holding up a slip of paper with “874'' inexplicably written on it. I resolved to never never ever play the Coke Game again.

A few weeks later, the same guy who’d goaded me before leaned over the cube wall. “Siege?” he asked, pronouncing the initials of the game in the way we used to do. “No, thanks,” I said. Never never ever. “Oh, come on, it’s been weeks!” he said, goading goading goading, and then “I’ll tell you what — if you lose, I’ll pay for it.”

I considered that. On the one hand, if I lost again, it would prove that I was doomed to fare badly in games of chance for pretty much the rest of my life. On the other hand, if I lost, this irritating guy who I sort of disliked anyway would have to buy sodas for everybody. Tempting… but no. I didn’t bite.

“Oh, c’mon,” he urged, “what have you got to lose?” He didn’t understand is that losing cost much more than the round of $0.75 sodas. I admit now, with the perspective of many years’ distance, that I was overreacting, but my emotional burdens were heavier then, e.g. I had a lot more years’ worth of pointless jobs ahead of me. So I joined the game after all. Someone wrote down a number, and let me guess first. I had 999 chances not to pick the wrong number, so I thought about it for a few seconds, finally selecting the most obscure number I could imagine that didn’t happen to be 874. “319,” I said.

The person with the number didn’t say anything. He just held up a scrap of paper that said “319” on it.