water reuse the simplest way
Posted by: Anca on: June 3, 2009
“Eco Bath” designed by Jang Woo-seok: this seems like a very easy way to implement a water reuse system, especially in residential situations. Here’s a little quote on the subject from the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Primer on Sustainable Building:
Ideally, treated water should only be used for cooking, drinking, bathing, and cleaning clothes and dishes. Water from showers, sinks, and washing machines — usually called graywater — can be used to flush toilets or for landscaping.
"Eco Bath" sink/toilet water reuse design
to blog or not to blog…and Paris
Posted by: Anca on: April 7, 2009
I wasn’t quite sure what direction to take this blog. Professional blog? Personal blog? Whatever, I’m just going to make “my blog”. No other label needed. I’m sick of feeling forced to partake in the current style of social networking, personal branding, touchy-feely nonsense.
So here’s the current big news: I’m unemployed and going to on a trip to Paris (and Provence, and Bucharest). I decided not to keep my life on hold just because I don’t have a job. I won’t go into the financial details of it (though you can ask me about them), but rest assured I’m not going into debt for this trip.
And best of all, I’ve found ways to turn this trip into a civil engineering “field trip”. Namely, I will be going on the Paris Sewer Tour (Les Egouts de Paris) — the world’s first and longest underground sewer system. I will also be going to the Pont du Gard Roman aqueduct, followed by its termination point and distribution center in Nimes.
Conventional advice vs. reality
Posted by: Anca on: January 20, 2009
Everyone always tells you to “follow up” with potential employers, to show them you’re really interested. Employers almost always state “don’t call us, we’ll call you”, or “due to the sheer number of resumes we receive daily we are not able to answer questions regarding the status of your resume”. So, which is it?
Is the advice still applicable? Are employers lying, waiting to see who is brave enough to call their bluff? I don’t know what the average or specific HR person actually wants me to do, but if most companies plainly state something to the effect of “don’t call us, we’ll call you”, then no, I’m not going to bug them. I’d rather someone thought of me as less persistent than another applicant rather than more annoying or desperate.
I don’t deny that enthusiasm for a position varies both between applicants and positions and that employers prefer enthusiastic candidates, but I think if an employer wants to gauge my level of interest s/he should find that out during an interview with me.
Unemployment Insurance tid-bits
Posted by: Anca on: January 7, 2009
The Economist says “the benefits awaiting America’s unemployed are outdated and skimpy”.
The AP shows how maximum weekly unemployment payments vary by state. The lowest is Mississippi with $210 (unless you count Puerto Rico with $133) and the highest is Massachusetts with $900. I feel the need to state the obvious: holy crap, that is a huge difference!
Green Funerals: Getting Techie
Posted by: Anca on: December 29, 2008
Fascinated by the concept of green funerals.
“Embalming became popular in the United States during the Civil War and is still a significant source of groundwater pollution today. Arsenic gave way to the less toxic formaldehyde as the favored embalming solution around the turn of the last century. However, formaldehyde poisoning can still be fatal and it is classified as a human carcinogen by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Some estimates say that one million gallons of formaldehyde are buried in embalmed bodies each year in the United States. Almost all of this will eventually make its way into our water supplies. Efforts are underway to gradually replace formaldehyde with glutaraldehyde, which is considered less toxic.
“Cremation causes nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, heavy metals and particulates to be released into the atmosphere when a body is cremated. If a body has mercury-amalgam fillings, the mercury will almost certainly become air pollution unless the fillings are removed first. Burning a body inside a coffin also creates significantly more pollution than burning the body by itself. Modern crematoriums often have ‘clean smokestacks’ that ameliorate the associated emissions, at least to some degree, and the cremation industry has claimed that reports of pollution have been greatly exaggerated.”
How to help my career and stop being bored
Posted by: Anca on: December 24, 2008
Being unemployed is boring and all this time just sitting here is bad for my career (and sanity). I have several ideas to combat this.
1. Apply to work as a part-time intern, possibly unpaid. Right now I have one place in mind, a self-employed sustainability consultant in Portland.
2. Take some online courses, especially in LEED.
3. On the non-career front, sell more stuff on ebay/Amazon, donate that pile of clothes to an organization for homeless women, and catch up on a lot of reading for personal enjoyment. I own a lot of books I have never read.
Balanced portfolio tool?
Posted by: Anca on: December 24, 2008
The search for and compilation of mutual funds (etc) for retirement accounts is messy and tedious. And once you have some picked out, more than you can afford to buy yet, how do you keep track of them?
I searched fairly thoroughly and did not find a useful tool. But I did find that Fidelity has a pretty good tool to narrow down funds by several useful attributes: the Fund Evaluator.
What it does not do is narrow down funds based on whether they are eco- or socially-friendly (there are other sites for that though) nor can you exclude certain companies a fund might be invested in (Wal-Mart, ExxonMobil, petroleum companies, ahem). But the latter you can do yourself (though tedious) since all funds list at least the top 10 companies they invest in. I like to use Google Finance for getting the bare-bones details of a fund. It’s clean, spartan, and adequately organized.
So anyway, I wanted the whole of the funds I find to be “balanced”, “diversified”, something like that. I’m no investing guru (it’s one of my least favorite topics in personal finance), but I figured I’d start with some domestic funds, sprinkle on a few international ones, and then spread all those out over the 9 different categories (aka the Tic Tac Toe board) — large-cap, mid-cap, small-cap; value, blend, growth. And then I made a chart. As you can see, I didn’t have the same luck finding the same number of funds for each category. But, close enough.
What I really want is some piece of software (or better yet, and online application) that would function like my chart and its categories, plus have the added functionality of being able to exclude certain companies and also query out, say, the minimum investment for each fund for my IRAs. Then you could sort by any attribute and also have an index of all the funds you chose, even though they’re spread out over (almost) 9 categories.
Progress…?
Posted by: Anca on: December 17, 2008
Well, I faced my fears and sold my first item on eBay and Amazon Marketplace. They were easier than I expected (something I should have expected!). Heck, trying to figure out which shipping option you want at the post office is (slightly) more difficult.
On the job hunting front things are a bit depressing. I don’t know which is worse: possibly having (as opposed to wanting) to relocate to get a job or not getting a job or getting a job you probably won’t like. I found a sustainably-minded company, but “we’re not accepting resumes at this time”. Of course you’re not. And why can’t you accept it and file it away for when the economy bounces back? I didn’t ask that. Snark doesn’t seem appropriate for a job hunt.
Desperate times call for…creativity. Changing gears. Being proactive. And perhaps some sort of yummy dessert?
Flickr Photos
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