Thinking Six degrees future communication

Those six degrees of separation are really a lot less than six when it comes to communicating with people who are, say, on the same forum as you are, live in the same street, or to people you actually know.

But even when they arent people you know, six is not so many. From now on, Im going to just rely on the few degrees of separation for all my communication needs. Booking doctors appointments, airline tickets, ordering pizza, everything.

Ive been dealing with the support desk of a net based business trying to find some information, and I think my new method might be substantially more effective than my current approach of filling out thousands of web forms.

It would certainly be more comfortable.

Because theres only a few degrees of separation between me and whoever it is a want to inform,  from now on, Ill  just chat about it casually to someone I meet in the street, and hope the query or order finds itself on the correct desk on the other side of the globe.

As a method of getting a help desk to respond, I cant see it being any worse than my recently tried methods.

I feel better already.




120 Things in 20 years - Going crazy one purchase at a time when thinking about my communication issues.

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Thinking Driving Hollywood style

For years I would cringe every time I saw a driving scene in a movie.

The driver would look away from the road for ages at a time to talk to their passenger.

I always thought it was just poor realism, in much the same way as people in movies get pushed off their feet when they get shot, but now Im not so sure.

Perhaps the reason people cut me off sometimes is because they actually drive like that. Perhaps the reason some people just drive into intersections when their light has been red for a few minutes, is because they are trying to get their partner to understand something really important. The kind of important that only fifteen seconds of sincere eye contact can truly establish.

Or perhaps they watched some movies where people looked  away from the road for ages, and instead of being a little disappointed at the lack of realism, they just took it on board as the obvious way to drive.

Either way, I want it to stop. In the movies, and anywhere Im likely to be.




120 Things in 20 years is sounding like a grumpy old dude when thinking about driving Hollywood style.

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Aquaponics Roots in the media

Its quite possible that this is one of those things that everyone does, but its so obvious that nobody mentions it.

Perhaps everything is one of those things, but Id rather hear something twice than never know about it, so Ill say it anyway.

For some time, Ive been harvesting things like lettuce, then spending valuable seconds of my life getting the media out of the roots and retuning it to the grow beds. Clay balls get loose a bit more readily than scoria, but roots seem determined to hang onto whatever media they find themselves in.

Dont get me wrong, this is no way an issue because it really is only a few seconds, but Id rather spend those few irreplaceable seconds doing more important things - eating strawberries, looking at fish, that sort of thing.

But I discovered that if you just snap off the roots and leave them in a bucket, the media falls out all by itself.

Bam! Earth shattering tip right there.

I add an extra step for the worms.

When I pull up a lettuce, the root ball always has a few worms in it. Even in the constant flood grow bed there are worms everywhere. And as much as Im happy to feed my worms to the fish, I like my worms and like it when they live in my growbed rather than die on the ground. So when I snap off the roots, I lay the ball of roots, and media back on the growbed until the next time I wander past. This allows the worms time to get back into the growbed as their root ball home slowly dries.

The next day (or whenever) I drop the root ball into my root ball bucket, where it dries out and leaves the media behind. After the bucket has seen a few root balls added, or when I get around to it, I return the loose media back to the grow bed, and the dried roots and stems to the compost heap. Once in the compost heap, they sit for eternity. We dont use the stuff.



120 Things in 20 years - Wasting compost from the roots caught up in my aquaponics media.

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Thinking Roots and that

Sometimes you think it might be nice to chat with the CEO of a multinational company and tell them some stuff about whats going on within their company, but you think it will be a pointless exercise.

But sometimes, when you spend the few hours tracking them down via their old bookface accounts or whatever, then take a punt on the most likely email account they might own within their company network, they turn out to be way interesting.

I just had a very (way) interesting encounter with a young upstart/startup that might prove to be something I can work with on an ongoing basis.

You never can tell from where (whence?) the next opportunity might come.

That last line is probably worth reading again no matter who you are. Unless the grammar is all messed up. Then its probably only worth reading the once.

But its definitely worth reading the once.



120 Things in 20 years thinks that stuff is probably worth reading at least once.

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My Roots part 1 of 2

Since I cant buy my next system component until payday, and I cant submit my application for permit until Virginia posts the new forms, Ill defuse my frustration by writing about my agricultural roots. (A post on my fishing heritage will help defuse frustration later in the week).

The Mayflower

Turns out I descend from seven individuals who came to America on the Mayflower in 1620: Priscilla Mullins, her parents, John Alden, Richard Warren, Francis Cooke, and his son, John (who married Richard Warrens daughter, Sarah).

The Pilgrims werent particularly famous for their agriculture, except for the big feast they had at the end of that first summer. Thanks for a bountiful harvest is sweeter when one has expended labor to create that harvest - a level of thanks most folks in America dont experience anymore.

Western Irrigation

Fast forward 200+ years, and my forebears found themselves in the barren deserts of the west. The joke goes that when the early Mormons first saw the desolate Salt Lake valley, they only stayed because they couldnt bear to repeat the trek it would take to get away.

Everyone farmed. The first two permanent settlements were name "Bountiful" and "Farmington." [My ancestors lived in Farmington.] And the only way farming could succeed in that desert was by careful, painstaking irrigation. Pumps, valves, flooding fields (growbeds) - all things common with aquaponics.

Fields of Alfalfa

My dad bought a 200+ acre farm as an engineering graduate student, before I started school. I remember the 30 milk cows, the shiny milk truck that took away the seeming ocean of fresh milk Dad and his hands collected before dark every morning. Mom once performed emergency surgery on a cow who was bloating from eating the neighbors alfalfa - miraculously plunging her knife into just the spot that would relieve the deadly pressure in the cows gut. Probably stank. Im guessing.

One day my aunt decided to give me a ride on a neighbors horse. The horse was loose in that old alfalfa field, without bridle or saddle. My aunt hoisted me atop the hind quarters of the horse. Before I knew it, I was face down with a mouth full of water, mud, and alfalfa. My aunt said I performed the most amazing somersault as the horse bucked me...

Hydroponics

I had known a neat girl in high school who was a vegetarian. And one day in college I happened across a can of vegetarian vegetable soup. Then and there I decided to be a vegetarian. This was shortly after the huge gas shortages of the 1970s, when school children were convinced fossil fuels would soon run out. We were all concerned about the future of our planet and trying to find ways to survive after fossil fuels failed (or in the wake of a nuclear holocaust, whichever happened first)...

Ten years later I was a single parent living in my moms home. I decided to dig out my college-era books, to live my dreams of a green, self-sufficient life. Per the instructions in one text, I created gravel growbeds in dishpans, plumbed them, and dutifully irrigated my gravel--every day. Sometimes twice a day.

I didnt understand why my seeds barely sprouted. When we left town for a vacation, my Mom unplugged my grow lamp.

For some reason everything was dead when we returned a week later.
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My family history doesnt make me a natural farmer. But working on this little aquaponics system reminds me of my ancestors, who were "green," because there was no other option.

Heres hoping the modern world of DVDs and the internet will help me succeed with aquaponics despite my youthful failures in by-the-[cheap]-book hydroponics....

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My Roots part 2 of 2

Fisherman and Fisherwoman
Huang Shen, Qing Dynasty, China, Nanjing Museum

My Chinese grandparents married because of fish.

They grew up on the eastern coast of China in Xiao Ao (Little Cove), due west of the Matsu Islands, named after the beloved Goddess of the Sea, patron of fishermen and sailors.

There were two fishing ventures in Xiao Ao. The first used a vast fleet to gather fish from the oft-dangerous waters of the East China Sea.

The other worked a tidal fence behind which coastal fish were trapped twice a day at low tide. No matter when low tide occurred, the workers gathered at the fence to bring in the harvest.

Grandmothers family owned the tidal fishery. Grandfathers family owned the fishing fleet. In the early 1900s, the families decided to join together. The union of the sea-faring fleet and the shore-bound fishery was sealed by the planned marriage between the two children.

If peace and harmony had prevailed, I might live in Xiao Ao today. But the merger ruptured when grandmothers brother became a devote of Mao Zedong (Grandpa was aide-de-camp to Chiang Kai-Shek). Grandma and Grandpa ended up fleeing China, and lived their last years in California, an ocean away from the land of their birth.
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I think Ive only caught two fishes in my life. Once I went fishing at Flaming Gorge in Utah. I didnt catch any fish with my line, but I did trap a fingerling in my cupped hands. I think someone else ended up using my fingerling as bait...

Some thirty years later I was on a research vessel in the Philippine Sea, and the crew lent us their fishing gear. At night the creatures of the sea ascend from the depths to feed, and I caught a squid on my first cast. Since it wasnt as huge as the squid a colleague bagged, I threw mine back in. The rest of the night I couldnt catch anything to save my life.
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Tomorrow I can go buy the heavy duty shelves. Hooray!

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