May 30, or 530. 5 3 can be read "gomi" in Japanese which means
garbage. So what does May 30 mean in our village? Garbage 0 day. This
morning, I participated with most of the village in picking up trash
and junk around the village. Along one of the roads, there was an area
that was clearly being used as an illegal garbage dump by many people.
There were mufflers, car batteries, toilets, beds, bicycles and even a
car dumped there. We spent the morning hoisting this junk out of the
mud and carrying it in trucks to a location where the local government
would come and collect it for us.
There were many children helping out as well. Hopefully this annual
garage day will help educate them not to dump trash by the road.
I got a chance to meet more of my neighbors so it was nice. I still
have a hard time remembering everyone's name but sharing this massive
chore with the whole village was quite a bonding experience.
Scoble
was fascinated how news of the Longhorn recalc propogated, but he
missed the most fascinating aspect of the announcement. Microsoft
shipped the story on a Friday night, I even got a detailed email from
a Waggenerette, but the blogosphere waited until Monday to carry the
story.
It wasn't that we were on vacation or weren't checking email
over the weekend, it's just that by announcing it on Friday, Microsoft
was clearly "taking out the garbage" (a term I learned from The West
Wing). The blogosphere didn't play along. Blog flow over weekends, esp
a late summer weekend, is miniscule compared to the flow on a Monday
morning.
Garbage man damage update03/19/2005 03:02 AM Mark Frauenfelder:
(Click thumbnail image for enlargement) Here's an update from
yesterday's garbage man damage report. The cable guy spliced the
TV cable yesterday afternoon. He did a nice job. I gave him an orange
from the orange tree.
The phone company won't come until Saturday. I was getting tired of
having no internet or landline phone, so late yesterday afternoon I
grabbed the phone cable that was lying across the road and ran with it
quickly to the ladder and got up on the roof with it. (I had to run
fast because there were a lot of cars on the street and I didn't want
one to drive into the cable when it was only a couple of feet off the
ground.) Then I took a bunch of wire nuts and some wire strippers and
spliced the severed wires. Doesn't it look pretty? This ought to do
until the phone repairman comes and yells at me for fixing it myself.
Also, here are a couple of emails I've gotten about
yesterday's incident:
Jay says: I feel your pain about having
the lines cut--I work from home and the loss of my cable line would be
a disaster. And your garbage man sounds like a jerk. But don't
castigate them all. There are deadlines--the crap has to be picked up
in one day whether every house leaves one bag or a small mountain. I
think there is plenty of stress too. Garbage stinks--and plenty of it
is heavy and awkward to lift. I have left hot water tanks, washers,
dryers, mounds of wet drywall, paneling, chunks of concrete--and
plenty of good ol' household waste. It gets cleared away without
fanfare, and I am very grateful. I live in a pretty affluent
community and the garbage men make about 13 bucks an hour. Maybe
trying to make ends meet on that paltry sum engenders some anger; for
sure, it is hard to derive much joy and fun from life on such a cruddy
wage. Or maybe it is the people who get impatient and roar around a
stopped truck and nearly run them down all the time. Whatever. I
don't call that well-paid, and I am ashamed it isn't higher.
You had a bad day for sure, but I thought I'd point out how you came
across and offer the other side. Boingboing is one the few things
that lives up to its billing "a directory of wonderful things." Just
this once, not so wonderful. -- Jay
Levi says: If you're looking for an answer [to the
question "Why are garbage men so angry?], re-read what you said. When
times get
tough, you can fall back on your social status, education, or whatever
else you inherently feel the world owes you. He, on the other hand,
gets the shit end of that world payment structure. He implicitly takes
the shit from people like you for being lesser than you. Feed that
cycle back for years and years, and you get your incident today.
Greg says: Here are some answers:
1) He was as high as he thought he could be and still do his
job. It's a boring job.
2) Realistically, it's not all that well-paid, and there's no room
for advancement, especially without a bit of education.
3) They can be fired, but they have to work at it.
Maybe this is his chance? One of our guys rolled his oversize
truck on a residential street in front of a visiting
dignitary. That works, but you need to be on a hill.
4) It's a boring job, and you only get to listen to junk
radio.
Joshua says: Our garbagemen knocked over our
mailbox and just kept going. Which meant
the post office wouldn't deliver our mail until the mailbox was fixed
(because
they post office won't deliver to our door, only to our streetside
mailbox--I
don't know why). My wife called our landlady, who called the city
about the
mailbox. The mailbox was fixed (by our handyman), but as far as we
know,
nothing ever happened to the garbagemen who knocked over the
mailbox.
Adventures in Garbage Collecting04/09/2004 04:10 PM One of the nice things about being within driving distance of people
who're phenomenally smarter than you are is that you sometimes get the
benefits of their research. (Though Citeseer's darned nice too) For
the interested, there's a seminar on garbage collection at MIT on
Monday April 5th 2004. The announcement follows: "A (Grand?) Unified
Theory of Storage Reclamation"Speaker: David F. BaconHost: Professor
Martin RinardHost Affiliation: Computer Architecture Group Date:
4-5-2004Time: 3:30 PM - 5:00 PMRefreshments: 3:15 PMLocation: Gates
7th Floor Lounge The two basic forms of automatic storage reclamation,
tracing and reference counting, were invented at the dawn of...
Reforming a garbage house
Reforming a garbage house12/04/2003 08:21 PM This is an inspiring story about an obsessive "hoarder" whose home had
become a garbage house, so full of crap that he was in danger of going
to jail for criminal violations of local ordinances. Then the county
counsel cut a deal with the president of the local chapter of the
National Assn. of Professional Organizers to help the craphound clean
up his life -- and he allowed a news-crew to document the process.
Drum, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat tied under his chin, will
supervise from a chair near the garage. Breininger is jazzed. Drum has
kept his promise not to bring anything back into the two rooms the
crew cleared out a week ago.
Drum is nervous. He frets about the broken windows and rotting
flooring, things that must be fixed to put him back on the right side
of the law. And he wants shelves so he can have his books, now boxed,
around him.
"First, we get you organized, then we'll figure out how to take care
of the repairs and the beautification," Breininger reminds him.
Cleaner Tosses Art Out with the Garbage (Reuters)08/29/2004 10:54 AM Reuters - A cleaner at London's Tate Britain
modern art gallery threw out a bag of garbage that was part of
an artwork because it was thought to be trash, British
newspapers reported Friday.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has disassociated
himself from a much milder MoveOn.org ad that talks about Bush's
Vietnam-era military "service," a questionable period for the
president at best. Josh Marshall notes the tight connections, politically and financially,
between the anti-Kerry "Swift boat veterans for truth" and Bush and
his associates, and wonders why Bush isn't man enough to disclaim the
sleaze. Marshall notes:
"In any real world sense, this
is a front for the president. And for the saps who are willing to give
the president the most improbable benefits of the doubt -- that this
is something he has nothing to do with and is utterly beyond his
control -- well, he won't even toss them a bone by making even the
most innocuous statement of
disassociation."
Meanwhile, the Washington Post
uncovers information about the co-author of the Swift boaters'
accompanying book that pretty much shreds his claim that Kerry wasn't under fire during
the operation that resulted in the Democratic candidate's Bronze
Star:
"But Thurlow's military records, portions of which
were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of
Information Act, contain several references to "enemy small arms and
automatic weapons fire" directed at "all units" of the five-boat
flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the citation
praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat "despite
enemy bullets flying about him."
Shark Tank: Garbage in, Internet out05/25/2004 11:46 PM This pilot fish's company installs in-room Internet access in hotels,
which is a lot easier when the place is already wired with Cat 5
network cable. When it's not, fish has to work around the problem.
Homeless Man Compacted in Garbage Truck (AP)
Homeless Man Compacted in Garbage Truck (AP)12/19/2004 03:23 PM AP - A homeless man who fell asleep in a commercial trash bin was
dumped into the back of a garbage truck Friday and compacted —
but escaped serious injury, officials said.
Free Real-Time Garbage
Free Real-Time Garbage05/10/2004 04:19 PM A teenage mutual fund manager lends his name to some penny stock hype.
A feel-good story this ain't.
Garbage Man Charged in Cape Cod Slaying (AP)04/15/2005 08:26 PM AP - A garbage man with a long rap sheet was charged Friday with
murder and rape in the stabbing death of a fashion writer whose
mysterious slaying turned a spotlight on a small Cape Cod town and
inspired a best-selling book.
Garbage Collection Library for C++ 1.0 (Default branch)
Garbage Collection Library for C++ 1.0 (Default branch)06/22/2005 02:28 AM LibGC is a small, fast, portable, multi-threaded
garbage collection library for C++. It is highly
customizable, as it can be multithreaded or single
threaded, and the memory size to use for the
collector may be changed at compile time. It is
precise, as it only scans pointers that exist as
members on the stack or as global variables. It's
very easy to use, since it has only two classes,
Object (the base class for garbage-collected
objects) and Pointer (for garbage-collected
pointers).
Garbage disposal installation made simple
Garbage disposal installation made simple12/27/2004 09:28 PM Mark Frauenfelder:
My parents are staying with us for the holidays, and today my father
and I installed a garbage disposal in the guesthouse kitchen sink. My
father did 90% of the work, since he's a lot better at this kind of
stuff than I am, but I had to pitch in for certain parts, because one
of his hands is out of commission. He has a rare condition called
Dupuytren's contracture -- thickening of skin tissue in the hands that
makes it impossible to open them. It's a genetic condition that seems
to affect people with Viking ancestry. He had a "palmar
fasciotomy," a surgical procedure to cut the bands of thickened
tissue. So his right hand is all bandaged up. (Click thumbnails for
enlargement).
We saved a few hours installing the garbage
disposal by using this great wireless switch purchased at Home Depot.
It cost $18 and has a range of 100 feet (we mounted it just a few feet
from the disposal, of course). I'm wondering what else I use these
things for. What a terrific idea!
Cleaner Thinks Modern Art Is Garbage (Reuters)
Cleaner Thinks Modern Art Is Garbage (Reuters)08/27/2004 01:59 PM Reuters - A cleaner at London's Tate Britain
modern art gallery threw out a bag of garbage which formed part
of an artwork because it was thought to be trash, British
newspapers reported Friday.
Garbage man severs my phone, TV cable, internet, drives away
Garbage man severs my phone, TV cable, internet, drives away03/19/2005 03:03 AM Mark Frauenfelder:
I don't understand why garbage men always seem
angry? What's to be angry about? They are well paid, have no deadlines
or stress, never have to get their butt out of their seat, get
excellent health benefits, paid vacation, and so on.
Garbage men never have to worry about getting fired, no matter how
badly they screw up. That's probably why the Los Angeles garbage man
who snapped my phone, TV cable, and internet lines, damaging my roof
in the process, drove away without so much as a note with a number we
could call. A neighbor saw the whole thing happen this morning. The
driver shrugged and kept on going. "Not my problem," he probably
thought to himself, assuming he had enough empathy to realize he had
inconvenienced another person.
Now there are cables stretched across the road. I called the city,
and they told me they'll send me a paper form in the mail to fill out.
That's the city's way of dealing with the problem quickly.
The cable guy is here now, but he said he couldn't fix it until the
pole on the roof was fixed. I climbed up on the roof and unbent the
pole enough for him to pull the cable through.
The phone company won't come until Saturday. Meanwhile, the garbage
man is probably downloading internet porn, yelling at his ex-wife's
child support lawyer on the phone, and watching Die Hard VIII on
cable, because nobody snapped his wires. I don't like you, garbage
man.
Crafty crackhead Powerbook made from garbage bags
Crafty crackhead Powerbook made from garbage bags12/30/2004 02:45 AM Cory Doctorow:
There's a big-city hustle that goes like this: a hustler comes up to
offering to fence you some stolen big-ticket electronics item, still
sealed in its box -- say, a video camera. You can heft that box all
you like, but no opening the shrink-wrap, as that would lower the
resale value. Once you give the crackhead $20 for this boss $1000
camera and tear off the shrinkwrap, you discover that you've just
bought a brick in a camcorder box. Basically, it's what happens when
you combine crackheads, a supply of fresh consumer electronics boxes,
and a shrinkwrapping machine.
Here's a modern twist on an old favorite: buy a Powerbook for
a double-sawbuck. What's in the black, sleek Powerbook box?
"A fake laptop made of gray garbage bag and cardboard, spray-painted
platinum silver and finished with A HAND-PAINTED APPLE LOGO DONE IN
WITE-OUT."
"The Village"07/30/2004 08:17 AM The real mystery at the heart of M. Night Shyamalan's latest: How does
he persuade actors like Sigourney Weaver and Adrien Brody to act in
his supremely lame movies?
Man held over village gun attack06/07/2004 01:00 AM A man is arrested in connection with a gun attack which left two women
dead and one seriously injured.
Eco village plans for city06/22/2004 01:22 AM A firm behind an award-winning housing estate which creates its own
energy wants to build 1,000 similar homes in Cardiff.
Joining the Global Village01/03/2004 03:37 AM Sandeep writes "This article tells of an initiative in rural India, to
provide internet access for farmers. The initiative is called
e-choupal, a name taken ...
East Village WTC mural is gone
East Village WTC mural is gone09/15/2004 01:55 PM that mural was the view out of my office for a long time... i'm sad to
see it go
Disney's Haunted Village
Disney's Haunted Village08/03/2004 01:07 PM "The Village" was the No. 1 movie over the weekend... but is it enough
to break Disney's movie slump?
Why a Village Well Is a Weapon in the War on Terror
Le Pen 'brings shame' on village04/26/2004 08:45 AM Jean-Marie Le Pen's visit to mid Wales is described as "one of the
most regrettable events in the community's history".
Militants raid Kashmiri village06/26/2004 02:38 AM At least 10 people are reported dead after a raid on a village in
Indian-administered Kashmir. Grok Description matches for Garbage day in the village GrokA matches for Garbage day in the village
Garbage day in the village
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
We saved a few hours installing the garbage
disposal by using this great wireless switch purchased at Home Depot.
It cost $18 and has a range of 100 feet (we mounted it just a few feet
from the disposal, of course). I'm wondering what else I use these
things for. What a terrific idea!
I don't understand why garbage men always seem
angry? What's to be angry about? They are well paid, have no deadlines
or stress, never have to get their butt out of their seat, get
excellent health benefits, paid vacation, and so on.
There's a big-city hustle that goes like this: a hustler comes up to
offering to fence you some stolen big-ticket electronics item, still
sealed in its box -- say, a video camera. You can heft that box all
you like, but no opening the shrink-wrap, as that would lower the
resale value. Once you give the crackhead $20 for this boss $1000
camera and tear off the shrinkwrap, you discover that you've just
bought a brick in a camcorder box. Basically, it's what happens when
you combine crackheads, a supply of fresh consumer electronics boxes,
and a shrinkwrapping machine.