Corky Hatfield

Me too, Denise.

I'm a bit of a pack-rat and have a garage full of stuff I couldn't bring myself to throw away, because it wasn't obviously worn out and it seemed like it  might be useful someday.

I'm still waiting for the aha moment when I find a use for an empty dental floss spool.  I'm sure it will come, because those little boxes are just too elegant in their design...

"an all-moss lawn"

I live just north of Seattle and often complain about the grass that keeps invading my moss.  But now the buttercups are giving them both a run for the money. 

Good point, Brice.  I was thinking of towers vs. laptops or one of my mini-ITX machines. 

I hear Listers get better with age...

For some reason I read that as listers = people on the list or forum, and thus permies.

Yeah, hopefully we get better as we age too. 

I just watched a documentary called "Objectified", about industrial design.

At one point in the film, one of the designers being interviewed mentions that the really hard thing is to design something that actually gets better with age, as opposed to gradually falling apart and becoming unusable, or even simply lasting a long time.  He gave the example of his grandfather's leather briefcase, and the way its material had become so marvellously supple after years of use. 

The film then cut to another designer firing up an old Chevy truck.  Yeah baby!   

Some buildings age gracefully, others become an eyesore.

Cast iron pans definitely get better as they are used.

And permaculture, of course, is all about designing landscapes that become better with age.   

Can you think of any other things that fit this description? 

I can think of lots of things that last and that I've used for years (my favorite wool sweater, a set of Picardie glasses, a drill brace I inherited from my father along with miscellaneous other hand tools, and a set of history books by Will Durant)  But although they're layered with many fond memories, I'm not sure I can say they've physically improved.

I'm not a musician, but I've heard that some violins, for example, are like this.  Their tone improves as they age.

I buy bars of Ivory soap because they're the cheapest ones in the store,  and I use them to wash both my hair and body. I shave with it too.  A diluted vinegar rinse gets rid of any soap residue in my hair, and the slight acidity seems to have cured a problem I'd been having with a flaky scalp.

I remember Dr Bronner's from my hippy days back in the Seventies, but haven't seen it in a while.  Good to know they're still around.

Refurbishing laptops makes sense, but many of the old desktop machines simply waste too much electricity.  Sure, you're keeping stuff out of the landfills if you go on using them, but you have to weigh that against the impact of everything that goes into generating the power they use.

My advice: find a good PC recycling center (one that actually recovers the materials rather than shipping them off to be dumped in a heap somewhere in China or the third world).

Re Linux:

They say that very few people are able to go on eating sausage once they've seen how it's made.  I used to work at Microsoft, and will never use any of their products again if I can avoid it.

Re power:

Paul, perhaps I should clarify my claim to have a 10watt machine.  That's the power used by the CPU/motherboard.  The hard drive and other peripherals increase the total. 

Especially the monitor.  I've switched to an LCD display, which is much less of a power hog than the old CRT's.  But all by itself it draws as much or more power than the rest of my Atom-based machine.  So I'm always careful to turn it off when I'm not using it.

Still, it's a darned sight less expensive to run than my old desktop machines.  Besides the fact that they were connected to CRT's, they had 250W power supplies ... and needed them. 

I drilled a bunch of one-inch holes in the sides and bottom of a plastic garbage can that I have been using to compost my kitchen scraps and garden waste.  That seems to have solved the problems of air and worm access. 

I don't tumble it, however, because as someone else said, it gets too heavy.  Instead, I get in there with a garden fork, poked down the sides and lifted toward the middle. 

It's probably not the fastest compost or the best, but it seems to work.  (I live in the suburbs and don't have a place for a big pile.)

winsol3 wrote:
I love this!  Everyone should start calling up their local agencies where rainwater harvesting is illegal and overload them with 'maintenance' calls. 

I wonder what the fine is if one is 'caught collecting rainwater'.  Has anyone ever been fined? what's the penalty per 1,000 gallons?

If your roof leaks, can you get the city to come repair the damage 'their' water has done to your property?