dzur dot com

I don’t update this blog very often, as is pretty darned obvious to the casual observer. I switched over to WordPress a little while back, because I liked it as a blog application, and it gave me a quick and easy way to allow comments without having to code it all myself.

Well, over the last two weeks, I’ve had a massive influx of Comment Spam. I’ve been getting emailed about ten times an hour that there are comments to moderate. Now, unless I’ve messed up, none of these spam messages will ever get posted, as I have to manually allow them before they show up. However, much like with email spam, a lack of success does nothing to deter the senders.

I’ve finally had enough, and I’m turning off comments for the moment, to see if perhaps being unable to submit comments for moderation will cause some of the spammers to question whether having my site on their big list of blogs to spam is worthwhile. Maybe they’ll figure it out, maybe not, only time will tell.

It’s already mid-September, and this is only my third blog entry of 2006. I don’t find this surprising, exactly, but it seems a rather succinct summary of whats been happening in my life.

In a word, work. I won’t say its all consuming, as I do have personal time, and treasure it. But somehow, it seems to have cast a stain on everything. I enjoy my job, and my career, but I find it difficult to leave for more than a weekend. There are so many things requiring attention; I often liken it to herding cats. Perhaps a more apt description of how I view it would be spinning plates. Regardless of what I may think it is possible, if difficult, to set things so that I can go away for a break. And I think its past time for me to take one.

That’s not to say there have been no happenings in my life. I now have a nephew. I did have a brief, enjoyable, but sadly unsuccessful fling with romance over the summer. And I’ve rearranged my life (largely dietarily) and as a result have lost a substantial bit of weight.

Going forward, fall is as ever my favorite season. Something about the bite in the air quickens my pulse, and leaves me feeling alive. Let’s see if I can’t do something with that.

Cheers.

So I saw An Inconvenient Truth this past Friday. It was quite good. Informative, entertaining, and quite shocking. I highly recommend going to see it.

A lot of what was covered, I studied in college. That was ten years ago, it was convincing then, and the evidence has simply been mounting since I last looked at the research. I’d have to say, things are worse than I had thought, and I’m a famed pessimist among my friends.

On the positive side, there are lots of things you can do to reduce, or even eliminate, your own greenhouse gas emissions, or ‘carbon footprint’. I’ve had a subscription to Carbon Planet since July of 2005, where they allow individuals to purchase carbon credits. In short, they purchase ‘credits’ that are created by the New South Wales Government’s forestry agency when they plant trees. The trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and store it as carbon. So, you can eliminate the equivalent of your own CO2 output by purchasing these certificates.

Another interesting consumer option is called TerraPass, an organization that allows you to buy a ‘pass’ to offset your driving CO2 emissions. The money for the pass goes to sponsor projects that guarantee carbon reduction, “clean energy such as wind and biodiesel; biomass such as dairy farm methane; and industrial efficiency.” They include window decals and a bumpersticker to help spread the word. There’s even a TerraPass for Businesses program.

While the TerraPass is aimed specificly for consumers to offset their driving, there’s no reason you can’t purchase a larger pass, or more of them, to also offset other carbon emitting activities. Personally, I’m very fond of purchasing green electricity directly. In Massachusetts if you have Massachusetts Electric (a.k.a. National Grid) you can participate in the GreenUp program, to buy 50% or 100% of your electricity from clean, renewable sources for a few cents more per kilowatt-hour. Providers elsewhere offer these sort of things too, so it pays to check them out.

There’s the simple and expedient method of replacing your incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones. “If every household in the U.S. replaced one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), it would prevent enough pollution to equal removing one million cars from the road.” Compact Fluorescent bulbs are not that expensive, save electric costs, and last a lot longer than regular bulbs. When I moved into my apartment a year ago, I replaced all the fixtures with compact fluorescent bulbs. I haven’t changed a single bulb since, and I don’t expect I’ll need to for some years to come.

The movie is good, and quite frightening. But it shouldn’t be a paralyzing fear: there are many things that everyone can do to help reduce carbon emissions. Go out, see the film, and make some changes. They’re not hard and the impact is well worth it.

I’ve certainly not been that quick with adding posts, or with approving comments (and disapproving spam comments). Apologies for that, if anyone cares.

Life has been fairly uninteresting, though I had a lovely encounter with a rather nasty cold the segued rather nicely into a case of Benign Positional Vertigo. In all, it left me bed-ridden for the better part of two weeks, and I still suffer some dizziness and balance issues. However, its no longer vertigo, and that is a promising change.

Ah, Christmas fast approaches, and its been quite a while since my last posting. Sadly, work has gotten rather stressful, and I doubt a four-day weekend in New Jersey is going to resolve that issue.

It seems I may have actually developed a facial tic in the past few weeks, as my right eyelid seems to go a bit twitchy, most often when I’m upset, which is far too frequently at work. Probably makes this a bad time to take up poker.

On the somewhat more interesting side, I’ve been taking Omega-3 fatty acids for a number of weeks now. I had a bit of a run-in with what seems to have been atopic dermatitis, which was a bit of a catalyst for taking them again. I personally prefer OmegaBrite, and I’ve been going through my accumulated stash pretty quickly.

I’ve taken Omega-3’s on and off over a number of years. I can’t say if they’re having an anti-inflammatory effect, helping with heart disease, or any other things. But from an anecdotal standpoint, I can pinpoint one interesting effect.

When I take Omega-3’s for a few weeks straight, I start to remember my dreams much more vividly. I can’t say if the dreams themselves change much, but I find myself remembering far more in the mornings, and remembering some vivid, unusual dreams. I haven’t come across anyone else reporting a similiar impact, so I’m fairly curious if anyone experiences any dream-related changes when taking them.

Occasionally I find I wake up with a strong curiosity about ‘what ever happened’ to someone I went to school with. Usually its someone I haven’t even thought about in years, and its usually a surprise to find I can still remember someone’s whole name.

This morning I woke up and wondered about Robyn Murgio, someone I have fond memories of from school in New Jersey. Well, a quick google search, and it appears I have a pretty good idea of what she’s up to now.

Assuming its not someone else who shares the name, Robyn went to Dartmouth, then Columbia, and later started her own design company Murge Designs in LA. She has all sorts of textiles with bold patterns, and has done quite well with sales across the country.

It’s quite cool when its that easy to find out about an old acquaintance.