Sound Tracks

OK, this is mindless, but I am on vacation.

How much does the soundtrack make the movie? I am a big fan of the sound track full of actual songs. Here is a quick list of movies that I enjoyed MORE because of the sound track.

Notting Hill
Forest Gump
O Brother Where Art Thou
Dan in Real Life
Juno

Others in your list?

New Milk Jugs

Below is an article from the NY Times that my good friend Carol sent me. I love this kind of thing. Here is a purely economic change that impacts the environment and my pocket book in a positive way.

Here are two observations.

1. People will HATE it. Regardless of the benefits, people will complain and complain. I hope that the economics of it drive all dairies to use these containers, but people will not care about the environment or the cost if they don't like the container and they will probably not be willing to 'get used to it'.

2. Organic milk doesn't come in these containers, so I will not be buying them. They come in the worst containers of all: the waxed paper carton. This is unrelated, but hugely annoying for me.

NY Times Article

Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Published: June 30, 2008
Correction Appended
NORTH CANTON, Ohio — A simple change to the design of the gallon milk jug, adopted by Wal-Mart and Costco, seems made for the times. The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less.

Greg Soehnlen, who helps run the company that designed the newfangled jugs, with a pallet at Superior Dairy in Canton, Ohio.
What’s not to like? Plenty, as it turns out.
The jugs have no real spout, and their unorthodox shape makes consumers feel like novices at the simple task of pouring a glass of milk.
“I hate it,” said Lisa DeHoff, a cafe owner shopping in a Sam’s Club here.
“It spills everywhere,” said Amy Wise, a homemaker.
“It’s very hard for kids to pour,” said Lee Morris, who was shopping for her grandchildren.
But retailers are undeterred by the prospect of upended bowls of Cheerios. The new jugs have many advantages from their point of view, and Sam’s Club intends to roll them out broadly, making them more prevalent.
The redesign of the gallon milk jug, experts say, is an example of the changes likely to play out in the American economy over the next two decades. In an era of soaring global demand and higher costs for energy and materials, virtually every aspect of the economy needs to be re-examined, they say, and many products must be redesigned for greater efficiency.
“This is a key strategy as a path forward,” said Anne Johnson, the director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a project of the nonprofit group GreenBlue. “Re-examining, ‘What are the materials we are using? How are we using them? And where do they go ultimately?’ ”
Wal-Mart Stores is already moving down this path. But if the milk jug is any indication, some of the changes will take getting used to on the part of consumers. Many spill milk when first using the new jugs.
“When we brought in the new milk, we were asking for feedback,” said Heather Mayo, vice president for merchandising at Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart. “And they’re saying, ‘Why’s it in a square jug? Why’s it different? I want the same milk. What happened to my old milk?’ ”
Mary Tilton tried to educate the public a few days ago as she stood at a Sam’s Club in North Canton, about 50 miles south of Cleveland, luring shoppers with chocolate chip cookies and milk as she showed them how to pour from the new jugs.
“Just tilt it slowly and pour slowly,” Ms. Tilton said to passing customers as she talked about the jugs’ environmental benefits and cost savings. Instead of picking up the jug, as most people tend to do, she kept it on a table and gently tipped it toward a cup.
Mike Compston, who owns a dairy in Yerington, Nev., described the pouring technique in a telephone interview as a “rock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip.”
Demonstrations are but one of several ways Sam’s Club is advocating the containers. Signs in the aisle laud their cost savings and “better fridge fit.”
And some customers have become converts.
“With the new refrigerators with the shelf in the door, these fit nice,” said April Buchanan, who was shopping at the Sam’s Club here. Others, even those who rue the day their tried-and-true jugs were replaced, praised the lower cost, from $2.18 to $2.58 a gallon. Sam’s Club said that was a savings of 10 to 20 cents a gallon compared with old jugs.
The new jug marks a sharp break with the way dairies and grocers have traditionally produced and stocked milk.
Early one recent morning, the creators and producers of the new tall rectangular jugs donned goggles and white coats to walk the noisy, chilly production lines at Superior Dairy in Canton, Ohio. It was founded in 1922 by a man who was forced to abandon the brandy business during Prohibition. Five generations of the founder’s family, the Soehnlens, have worked there.
Today, they bottle and ship two different ways. The old way is inefficient and labor-intensive, according to members of the family. The other day, a worker named Dennis Sickafoose was using a long hook to drag plastic crates loaded with jugs of milk onto a conveyor belt.
The crates are necessary because the shape of old-fashioned milk jugs prohibits stacking them atop one another. The crates take up a lot of room, they are unwieldy to move, and extra space must be left in delivery trucks to take empty ones back from stores to the dairy.
They also can be filthy. “Birds roost on them,” said Dan Soehnlen, president of Superior Dairy, which spun off a unit called Creative Edge to design and license new packaging of many kinds. He spoke while standing in pools of the soapy run-off from milk crates that had just been washed. About 100,000 gallons of water a day are used at his dairy clean the crates, Mr. Soehnlen said.
But with the new jugs, the milk crates are gone. Instead, a machine stacks the jugs, with cardboard sheets between layers. Then the entire pallet, four layers high, is shrink-wrapped and moved with a forklift.
The company estimates this kind of shipping has cut labor by half and water use by 60 to 70 percent. More gallons fit on a truck and in Sam’s Club coolers, and no empty crates need to be picked up, reducing trips to each Sam’s Club store to two a week, from five — a big fuel savings. Also, Sam’s Club can now store 224 gallons of milk in its coolers, in the same space that used to hold 80.
The whole operation is so much more efficient that milk coming out of a cow in the morning winds up at a Sam’s Club store by that afternoon, compared with several hours later or the next morning by the old method. “That’s our idea of fresh milk,” Greg Soehnlen, a vice president at Creative Edge, said.
Sam’s Club started using the boxy jugs in November, and they are now in 189 stores scattered around the country. They will appear soon in more Sam’s Club stores and perhaps in Wal-Marts.
The question now is whether customers will go along.
As Ms. Tilton gave her in-store demonstration the other day at the Sam’s Club here, customers stood around her, munching cookies and sipping milk. “Would you like to take some home today?” she asked.
A shopper named Jodi Kauffman gave the alien jugs a sidelong glance.
“Maybe,” she said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 2, 2008 A chart on Monday with the continuation of a front-page article about a new milk jug design adopted by Wal-Mart and Costco used an incorrect unit of measure. The new containers store 4.5 gallons of milk in a cubic foot — not a square foot. The chart has been corrected.

Algae fuel?

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0806/gallery.plot_save_planet.fsb/4.html

I have started to be leary of these types of things as promising because the true costs are seldom disclosed. This one is the most interesting I have seen in a while.

Posts on Public New Stories

Sorry it has been so long.

I am going to rant a bit here. Who are these people who comment on news stories, especially political ones? I read the Fox News political pages occasionally and today I read a story speculating about who would be the vice presidential candidates. Then I noticed that there were 10 pages of comments. So were these long diatribes about why Romney or Clinton would be wrong, or who they would vote for if they were the VP, etc. My question is: Why do these people waste their time commenting? Do they really think we care that much? Or what about the guy who posts "I Agree"? Why take up bandwidth and storage with that? Are they in some contest about who can comment on the most stories? Maybe I am walking a thin line here, since here I am commenting about their comments, but at least you are reading this because you know me in some way. Maybe there are people I don't know out there reading this, if so, I'm sorry. Well anyway. To all you people I don't know out there who aren't reading this. Stop posting dumb stuff!

Flower Mound Reuse and Recycling

Packing peanuts - Mail & More - 200 South Mill Street in Lewisville (972) 221-7965; Post Net in Super Target shopping center in Flower Mound; National Mail Centers Located at 1301 FM 407, Suite 201, Highland Village - (972) 317-6254. (also accepts preformed styrofoam packaging materials.); Parcels Plus Located at 2250 FM 407, Suite 108, Highland Village - (972) 317-4966. (also accepts bubble wrap)

Packaging Foam (e.g. TV, VCR, stereo equipment, etc.). - Foam Fabricators Located at 900 E. FM 1709, Keller - (817) 379-6520.

Wire Hangers - One Hour Martinizing Located at 2250 FM 407, Suite 148, Highland Village - (972) 317-9171. (also accepts plastic dry cleaning bags ). Other emails were sent out with drycleaners that accept the hangers only but this one also takes the bags so I'm listing it here.
Plastic Grocery Bags - Tom Thumb & Wal-Mart have drop off boxes to return plastic grocery bags. Even if they have the recycle symbol on them they don't take them in the blue bins on recycle day. A friend emailed that it's because they clog the conveyors. Makes sense!

Plastic Pots and Plastic Flat Carriers - Hartwells Garden Center Located at 1570 N. Stemmons, Lewisville - (972) 436-3612.; Huggins Garden Center 1616 Arrowhead, Flower Mound - (972) 539-4011. one & five gallon pots and plastic flat carriers.

Aluminum, copper, brass, batteries, glass, plastics, aluminum/copper reefers, stainless steel. Almetco Recycling - RECYCLE FOR CASH!! Located at 709 North Cowan, Lewisville - (972) 221-7442.

Appliances, Scrap metal - Fulton Recycling and Supply Located at 1404 Ft. Worth Drive, Denton - (940) 383-1651.Usable Paint - Lewisville High School Drama Department Located at 1098 West Main, Lewisville - (972) 221-3535.

Car batteries, tires & motor oil - Auto Zone (5 gallons per visit), all locations - car batteries and motor oil; car batteries only - Ken Owens Battery Store Located at 275 S. Mill, Lewisville - (972) 436-3974. ; West-Tex Tire and Auto Located at 1425 FM 407, Lewisville - (972) 317-4599. Accepts motor oil, oil filters, car/boat/motorcycle batteries, used tires.
Small Batteries - Radio Shack All locations. Recycle Batteries Hotline - 1-800-8-BATTERY. Accepts Nickel-Cadmium (Ni-Cd) batteries found in power tools, cell/cordless phones, camcorders, etc.


Used Children's and Adult's Athletic Shoes - 1st Serve Shoe Bank has a collection box at Bridlewood Elementary. The large red collection box is about 50 ft inside the front door on the left wall, just past the second set of security doors.

Used Cell Phones & Used Toner Cartridges - Bridlewood Elementary collects these items, turns them into a recycler and gets money back for the school! There are a few cardboard boxes to collect these items across from the red shoe collection bin on the opposite wall. If you don't see a box for these ask in the office.Used working, non-working or damaged stuff - see huge list - computers, cameras, office equipment, multimedia, entertainment electronics, portable electronics, home and garden, video games, sporting goods, nonfiction books, and musical instruments can be dropped off at Marcus High School's period recycling program. Marcus turns these items in to various groups for cash back to support the school! You can get more details about what can be dropped off by checking this link: http://mhs.lisd.net/news/worddocs/Recycling.pdf

E-waste - seems the Marcus program would be better since it provides money to the school but they may not take all the same stuff and the dates of this event may work better for you. Flower Mound Recycles Day is May 17, 2008 from 8:00am - 12:00pm at Geralt Park. Here's a link that describes what they take. It looks like the date on the flyer isn't updated but you can see the details of the event from the flyer. http://www.flower-mound.com/kfmb/flowermoundrecyclesday.pdf

Document Shredding - we can put regular copy paper that has been printed on in our recycle bins. I'm planning on getting a separate trash can for it to put next to my desk in my home office because this is something I always recycled in my office at work but for some reason I forget to recycle at home. Often however we are concerned about personal information on our documents. The town of Flower Mound is providing free shredding services at Flower Mound Recycles Day on May 17, 2008 from 8:00am- 12:00pm at Geralt Park. Each resident can bring up to three boxes of papers to be shredded and recycled. They ask that the boxes not contain binders. You should remove the paper from the binders for shredding.

Used prescription glasses - Lewisville Lions Club collects glasses for those in need at multiple locations a list of which can be found in this link: http://www.lewisvillelions.org/glasses.htm. Super Target in Flower Mound is one of the locations where glasses can be dropped off.

Grocery Bags - if we bring out own paper, plastic or cloth grocery bags to Kroger they will give a $.05 discount per bag they don't have to use. Whole Foods also offers a discount. This one isn't about giving stuff to others to reuse but about us not continue to consume grocery bags as a disposable. If you are interested in cloth bags folks recommended checking out the following: Costco 6 for 4 dollars; reusablebags.com; Tom Thumb has them for $.99/bag; Wal-Mart and Kroger sell them too.

Miscellaneous - You can donate goods to a number of charities. Two that have pickup service from your home are the Salvation Army 214-630-5611 and CCA 972-219-HELP. Goodwill and CCA have local drop off stores. Consult your tax professional. With an itemized list and a certified receipt from these registered charities you may be eligible for a tax deduction for the value of the goods you donate.Everything and anything including hard to get rid of stuff like mattresses, broken appliances, left over building supplies - Try freecycle.org. You can list your item and someone local who wants it will pick it up. Most pickups are driveway or porch pickup so you don't even necessarily have to set up a pick-up appt. It's very easy and even broken things surprisingly end up with a home with someone handy!

Christmas Tree and Turkey Oil Recycling - Annually by the town at Geralt park. Check the web site for details http://www.flower-mound.com/kfmb/index.php. This year until Jan 13 between 8:00am and 3:00pm

Hazardous Materials - periodically the town has hazardous material collection days. I don't know when the next one is but I think they have a couple a year so hang onto your hazardous stuff and wait to see when the next one is. They collect pesticides, paint, batteries, etc. If you want to get rid of this stuff prior to the collection day you can call the town and they will give you a voucher to pay for depositing the stuff in a hazardous landfill. I did this once and I can't remember exactly where the landfill was but it was pretty far away (an hour I think) so I decided going forward to just put a little bin in my garage to hold this stuff until the next hazardous collection in Flower Mound. For paint specifically, you can open the cans let them air dry until they are hard and then put them in the regular trash. There is a product sold at hardware stores that you mix into the the paint to dry it up faster if you are trying to do this. We had to do this once when we were moving and couldn't wait for a collection day.

In Honor of Earth Day!

G.I. Joe Commandeers the Barbie cruiser!

Solar at Home?

OK this is what I have been looking for

http://www.seventhgeneration.com/learn/blog/sun-savings-powerful-new-idea-energizes-homes-solar-industry#

Everybody wants a rooftop solar system. But nobody wants to pay for one. What would you do if you didn’t have to?
That’s the idea behind a new strategy being put to the test by the solar power industry, and it could be the breakthrough we’ve all been waiting for.
The trailblazing concept is called a purchase power agreement (PPA), and it’s designed to address the key problem solar energy systems have historically had: an unaffordable initial cost that puts them out of reach of most homeowners. Depending on where in the country you live, for example, a typical four-bedroom home needing a four-kilowatt system could cost anywhere between $25,000 and $35,000 to outfit. Even when the rising costs of conventional electricity are factored in, that’s a budget-busting investment whose payback time is far too long for all but the wealthiest purchasers.
PPAs, also known as solar power service agreements, take a different approach. Here, the solar energy company pays for the installation of all the necessary equipment. In exchange for what’s essentially a free solar system, homeowners sign a long-term contract in which they agree to pay a set rate for the electricity their system generates. Much like their arrangement with their local electric company, there’s still a meter and monthly bill, but the amount due now goes to the solar provider and comes without an environmental price tag.
There are other benefits as well. PPA customers lock into a set rate for the power their system generates, which usually mirrors local electricity rates at the time of installation. Once the contract is signed, they’re insulated from future price increases in the open market. Over the course of a typical 15 to 20-year contract, those savings are significant. (Imagine paying 1988 rates for the power you use today!)
A PPA system also comes with no servicing worries. Because the solar company owns it, they handle all maintenance, replacing often costly broken or worn out parts for free. At the end of the lease, homeowners can renew or in some cases even purchase their system at a reduced price that reflects its depreciated value. For their part, solar PPA providers can claim any state and/or federal tax benefits that the installation would normally provide to the homeowner, and they get a guaranteed monthly income.
There are lots of variations on the basic PPA idea. Some companies will charge a relatively small upfront free of several thousand dollars for the installation. Others sell the power their systems generate at variable rates. In every case, however, the consumer wins because their electricity costs are stabilized at below-market rates and their carbon footprint is greatly reduced, an advantage whose importance can’t be understated.
PPAs aren’t the only new type of solar system financing to emerge recently in the marketplace. Solar companies have also begun leasing systems. Under this arrangement, customers make a one-time payment at installation and then a set monthly rental fee unconnected to the amount of power their system is generating. Unlike PPAs in which the solar company owns the power being generated, the energy that leased systems produce is the property of the homeowner. Under this arrangement, if their system generates power their home doesn’t use, the homeowner can sell it to their local utility by sending it out onto the electrical grid, an arrangement called reverse or net metering.
With average national electric rates expected to rise about 2.5% annually in the coming years and the cost of solar panels predicted to drop dramatically in the next 12-24 months, PPAs and solar leases are expected to combine with increasing amounts of low-rate financing being offered by financial institutions to create a solar boom. Here are some resources to help your family take advantage of it:
For more information about solar energy, visit the Solar Energy Industries Association and Renewable Energy World.
To learn about state and federal tax credits and other renewable energy incentives, visit DSIRE, the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency.
For a state-by-state guide to renewable energy programs, services, and resources visit The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
For a handy solar estimator and more information about finding a solar installer, explore Find Solar.
Three national companies currently offering creative solar installation arrangements for homeowners are Sun Run, SunPower, and Citizenre.