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Sunday, March 8, 2009

New Laptop!! :) - Not mine, yet! - & suspicious amounts of housework!! hm!

My sister's bought a new laptop, so the house has been frantic.


Word of advice: NEVER buy a laptop on a Friday!!

Also, never buy a laptop on a whim! (if you can help it!:)
/& without having techie people notified in advance!/
She's had trouble uploading drivers and getting the sound to be heard, and all techie people we know were kinda busy.. My sis is kinda techie too, so she did the DIY - some of it went well, but no sound.

No surprise, many others had the same or similar experience, as found on online forums.
Hopefully the things can be resolved in a day or two.

Dad is milking the cows at Uncle's again (he's had another tiny operation & must rest for at least a week), I may even go up a few times myself again, but the memory of the terrible cold (the first time we were there) kinda haunt me still.. I do miss the cute cows & cats a bit.. :)

Sis (& the whole house) has been kinda in a laptop driver-seeking frenzy (I guess I would be too..) It's difficult to focus on other things if you have visitors (uncle &Dad) over half the day and a sister who admires your googling skills :)
/'How do you find those forums?' she says!/

Luckily, this will enable us to have each own computer to work on, so hopefully the hours can be better (& the PC turned off earlier..:) hopefully helping reduce energy & time waste.. (I know a PC AND laptop can use more energy than just one of those, but often sis & I just found ourselves procrastinating by the PC 'cause it was free'.. :) instead of properly working..so time management will hopefully be easier now.. once the drivers are installed proper..)

I am also oddly relieved that I don't have to buy a laptop now! It was driving me mad, trying to research and find the 'most zero waste' & 'low-toxic' & generally best & most affordable laptop!
/Though EthicalConsumer is kinda helpful (may be a bit dated though?) & Guide to Greener Electronics by Greenpeace offered a lot of info too! Those Guides have changed so much every few months it was difficult to tell who's actually REALLY better at any given point of time! (& it was driving me mad, kinda, lol!!/

/The terrible news of bad 'recycling' practices with regard to computers had me worried too.. For example, see this movie - quite shocking!!/
It would be MUCH easier if we KNEW exactly WHERE all our recycled stuff goes, no?
/The companies say it's all completely trackable, so why not put up little films and charts/maps and independent organisations monitoring them?/

I would be much happier to buy a laptop (or anything else) if I were sure what would happen to it afterwards!

I also had a thorough talk to myself (& did some heavy journalling) AND as a result, did immoral amounts of housework this weekend! (Okay, partly cause it was International Women's Day & I wanted to help Mom too!)

I wanted to give Mom some flowers, but Sis is allergic to pollen (or the chemicals that come with it? we live near a chemical factory, remember?) and also, Mom said it's a shame when the flowers wilt so quickly and all.. & they're much prettier outside in Nature!

Helping with the dishes (& lunch) - or other housework - is a REAL zero waste gift!! (and Mom appreciated it greatly, I think, lol! She's even written a tiny play about little kids helping their Mom as the ultimate 8th March gift when we were small - we enacted it on 'celebrations' for our street when we were kids!)

/I really hate doing the dishes, can you tell?!! :) I hate to admit, but it's true!! I'm always worried about the dishwasher liquid. We have an 'eco' one now, but it has artificial food preservatives in it, which I've been allergic to as a kiddie already!! - And that's the 'eco' one, god knows what's in the other ones!!

Also, I got really upset by any (excessive) tetrapaks garbage in the bin I might accidentally see! had a word with Sis, hopefully she'll do better now!/

- WASHING THE DISHES IS ZERO WASTE! Why? It's better than throwing them away, no?

- COOKING (FROM SCRATCH) IS ZERO WASTE! Why? Better than throwing tons of pizza boxes away, no? ('polluted' paper or cardboard is unrecyclable here. Maybe-compostable, if in small amounts & if the paper/cardboard is 'okay' - no iffy chemicals used, but still, 'zero' is better, no?)

It's making it so much easier for me to do housework, just reframing it this way..

It may sound silly, but it helps!! :)

PS HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY, everyone!! :)
Hope you had a FUN day!!

5 comments:

  1. Lovely gifts - the washing up and cooking. I did some extensive research about flower farming and it's not a pretty sight. So unless you can get something from your garden (or an organic, local, fair trade company), I would never buy flowers again.

    Glad your sister has a laptop - she'll be able to configure its power management system too to save even more energy. Mine costs me about 15p a WEEK to run (that's 1 and a bit Kwhs) which is amazing as I'm always on it!

    Disposal is a worrying issue though; but we favour IBM and DeLL in this house; not sure how much greenwashing goes on, however...

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  2. Dear Layla, I hope you spent a lovely day, yesterday!
    I celebrated the day with my companion and his old aunt who has a little problem at one eye. But it was a zero waste celebration because my mate brought us not flowers but only little "mimosa" cakes from the usual bakery. Yumm, they were very good!

    And then, we spent the evening having a pizza at the restaurant, talking with a great woman, one of the few people who is supporting the cause against incinerator!

    Going back to the topic of this post, I think it's very sad to see what is the end of our electronic waste! At home I have two computers. An old Apple and a new one. The old I used until the last year, is now closed in a cabinet, but it still works, so I never had the intetion to throw it away! But it's too slow for working at home. I'm waiting to set my room in a definitive state, and then I'll try to plug it into the web, for using it as storage or for other less important works. Or I'll donate it to a charity shop when I see that I can't use it anymore.

    Eco-washing up and cooking are ok for zero waste, but I want to give you a link from the Beppe Grillo's show: don't worry, not a scaring video but a very funny recipe for a safe DIY dishwasher liquid. Some friends of mine tried it and said that works! ;)

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  3. @Rae - Oh gosh, didn't know flowers were so toxic-?? I had my doubts, but would LOVE to read a blog post about this!
    /the idea was to pick some early spring flowers, but sometimes we have bought a nice bouquet to Mum or Grandma..?!!/

    15p a week to run, this is amazing!! hope sis learns to do this!
    She has a Lenovo (ex-IBM) too, so hopefully it's sorta okay (though the best ones are terribly expensive so she didn't get that), the driver thing was really annoying though, she's taking it to the shop to get 'em properly installed.. I think we did all learn a bit about computers in the process though..
    **
    Dear Danda, yes, we had a lovely day! It was sunny and we went for a nice walk with Uncle etc. He also told me how to make zero waste candles! :)
    Glad you had a good day too!! - It's so great you managed to find people against the incinerator!!
    I have an old old computer that's sort of still in the closet too.. I don't think anyone would still use it though..
    I will be happy to see a link for a safe DIY dishwasher liquid!! Please post! :)
    we're not completely happy with what we have now! (dishwasher tablets, sigh - it didn't work well with just powder, not all of it did dissolve) would be interested to see this recipe!!

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  4. Sorry, Layla yesterday I was so tired and I forgot the link! :D
    Here it is:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=IT&hl=it&v=dkXL--5fo0U

    Instructions are in Italian but they are very simple! This would work for dishwasher and to wash dishes by hands! I also want to prove it but I don't have a mixer robot...

    Ask to some schools or social centres... perhaps your old computer could be useful for someone. I did it for my old screen!

    I'm going to see your new post... Have a good day! ;)

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  5. Danda, thank you for the dishwashing recipe!! :)

    It looks very interesting and I LOVE the song!! :)
    Probably best with really ORGANIC lemons, especially since it looks like they put lemon peels in too!
    (I'm not sure if we get really organic here or not? They are called 'organic', but put in a plastic 'net'! will try to look for the company name!)

    Do you know, is this very aggressive for the skin on hands? (I have very dry skin on hands, so it's good to have gentle dishwasher liquid)
    And does it wash away bacteria from raw fresh meat or such?

    How old was your old computer when you donated it? (& what was it? like how much RAM etc? we have a very old PC (from 1992 or so!): 286-upgraded to 486, can't even get on internet, and Word is very slow! - not sure if anyone could use it?) It has a good 'Astro' program though! :) still has big & small diskettes:)

    Thank you for all your good ideas!! :)
    Wishing you a good day too!! :)

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