Working Hard to Save the World

It's a great job...until you sometimes stop and think about the way things are headed.

Here are two things, one from each aspect of my current job,...a blog post about the Colorado wildfires, and an article on Climate Change from the Chicago Tribune. The former was written by a former employee of my company, the latter features quotes and work from my boss' boss in Illinois.

On the surface, the messages that we get from these things are that maybe we should just give up....but really, if you believe in what we're doing....the messages are that the world is encouraging us to use disasters and changes to show people that what we're doing is important. Nature is delivering us the messages we need to send.....

General public! Please listen!!!!!


http://databasin.org/blog/2010/09/08/sleeping-dragon?ref=nf

Fires are happening because we do not burn as often as we need to. When that happens, we drastically increase the likelihood of naturally occurring fires. If we were to take over and burn in a calculated and controlled fashion every few years, we could prevent the widespread destruction that is currently going on.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-climate-change-chicago-20100914,0,5406204.story

Climate change, at this point, is inevitable. But we can prevent it from getting worse by making sure that we keep as much land as possible in grasslands and forest so that we can make sure the carbon stays fixed in the earth. Plants breathe IN CO2 and breathe O2 out...that's one of the fundamentals of biology that nearly everyone learns in grade school. If we have more plants, they will be more able to deal with the CO2 that we're all producing to live our comfortable lives. If we take the plants away, not only can they not help us manage the CO2, but all the CO2 that they have stored up inside themselves and the soil beneath them over the years will flood the atmosphere and do nothing but make problems worse.

There....your semi-regular update on conservation science from someone who is in the midst of it.

No Documentation Needed

I was driving through the suburb between my current residence and my former residence the other day, and I saw this sign posted along the roadside.

I just thought I'd make you all aware.

Don't forget. No documentation necessary, but.....you know what they say happens when you assume

(For the curious......what this is actually referring to is this church celebrating (apparently) this festival.)

The Return of Cake

My friends.

THE CAKE has made a triumphant return to the kitchen. I once again have evening commitments and cannot eat it.

Or I could.

And have that glorious last meal twice within a week.

I think you know which one I'm choosing....

Bakeries Everywhere...You Might as Well Stop Trying

My friends....I have just eaten some of the greatest cake in the entire world. Ever. Definitive. No exaggerating, no overdramatics, just pure and simple fact.

I do not know where this cake is from. I do not know who made this cake. All I know is that it was in a box in the lunchroom at work and it instructed us to eat it. So eat it we did. Or rather, because I cannot eat cake without severe repercussions later on in my day, I scraped some of the frosting off the knife. And then off the side of the box. And then off the bottom of the box. And before I knew it, I was standing next to the box savagely harvesting frosting from every available non-cake surface and shoveling it into my mouth with my fingers in pure, primal fashion.

This cake is so good, that if I didn't have very important things to do tonight, I would eat a piece of it. And in 6 hours when I felt like I was going to die as the gluten was eating a hole inside of me, I would still not regret eating this cake.

As I lay there, thinking about death, I would think to myself: "If that was my last meal, it was TOTALLY worth it."

This Is a Tribute

Here is a fantastic article.

It starts out with a fantastic intro that talks about Tenacious D.

It then goes into a fantastic bit of metaphor.

It includes this quote, which made me read the article in the first place: "The job of river conservation boils down to this: If at all possible, save the original; create or save tributes where you can’t."

This Is a Tribute | Cool Green Science: The Conservation Blog of The Nature Conservancy

For More Information, Please Visit Our Website

For quite a long time now I've been amused whenever I see internet/cable companies advertising for their services on TV. Especially when they advertise on CABLE TV. But my favorite ads have always been the ones that directed me to their website to learn more about their fantastic internet deals. From a young age I was able to see the absurdity of someone telling me to visit their website to learn more about getting their internet service.

Even better, is B canceling our old internet and the service rep telling him that they would send him an updated bill to his e-mail address.....

This week, I managed to top even THAT absurdity......

I just moved, and I wanted to get a new customer rate on TV and internet services. I went to the service center for Comcast (the local "Comcastic" cable/internet provider) since I cannot have a dish at my new place, and they told me what their current TV special that would still allow me to get HD, DVR, and Fox Soccer Channel was. I told them to sign me up. They then told me that they had a deal on internet. I was debating not getting their internet and going with the DSL instead because DSL internet is cheaper, so I thought I'd hear them out. What they told me was that I could get their fastest service for $19.99/month for 6 months IF I was an existing Comcast customer. So, the guy at the service center advised me to get my cable installed, wait a day, then use my customer number to order my internet. BUT! The deal for internet was only valid on the website. Yes. Comcast instructed me to ORDER my internet OVER THE INTERNET. It was all I could do to not look this gentleman in the face and say, "You're kidding me, right?"

And so. Tuesday night. I took my laptop (fortunately I have a laptop) and my customer number and walked across the street to the coffee shop (which is fortunately right across the street--though not close enough that I could just use their internet from my living room window) and attempted to order the internet over the internet.

I leave you with some parting screen grabs from my unsuccessful attempt* to order my internet off of a website.

Did you just seriously say you were going to charge me $30 to install a CD and plug a coaxial cable from my outlet to my modem, but you would only charge me $25 to pay your tech to come out to my house and do it?

I'm pretty sure you asked me the same question twice here. I could be wrong.

So, apparently there are two $30 fees? Neither of which makes sense?

It was a failure, ultimately. I ended up just calling them the next day and getting the slowest level of service for $24.99/month. I should have just gotten the DSL.....

* Waste of a perfectly good hour, which then led to me having to sprint across the street in torrential downpour with my laptop only to get home to stand in the hallway with the power out dripping wet and trying to get into the house in the dark.

California in the Summer

It's cold. And cloudy. I haven't seen the sun since I left Minneapolis on Thursday. And, I'll be honest, I didn't really see it then since I left Minneapolis before the sun had decided to rise.

Regardless.....here I am on the California coast. Beautiful Monterey Bay! Which looks less like this:

And more like this:

To be fair, it's still the ocean, and therefore still pretty great, and I expected the cold, but when I leave the upper midwest and a state notorious for cold and come to the Pacific coast of California, it's still a bit of a conceptual anomaly to know that Minneapolis is currently having a sunny, hot, humid day while the weather along the beaches of California is cloudy and in the 60s.

It's been a good trip, though I had this weird moment this morning while standing on the beach watching the tide come in where I just sort of really wanted to go back home. I was talking to B on the phone and he was complaining about how hot and humid it was and I just sort of said......"I really miss home. I want to come home. That's stupid. I'm standing here looking at the Pacific Ocean and all I'm thinking about is how I can't wait to come back to the stupid upper midwest." But, I guess, you feel how you feel. Or something. And honestly, this traveling was really fun at first, but I think it's starting to wear on me. And I haven't traveled since March, but even then I remember thinking how good it was to be home.....after being in the Rocky Mountains...one of my other favorite places in the country. Stupid. And weird. And maybe I don't hate Minnesota as much as I think I do. Or maybe I just love B that much. I told him that after I said my earlier piece. I ended it with "You hear that, I love you more than the ocean." And then we laughed.

Ok, but I don't want to get all sappy. I wanted to tell you about California.

Here are some highlights of things I've done.

• I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They have penguins and sea turtles and sharks and rays and tuna and awesome.
• I walked around Cannery Row. It looks like every other tourist street along an oceanfront that I've ever seen.
• I saw sea lions and harbor seals hanging out on the rocks in the bay.
• I got hit in the head by a pigeon. I'm not going to explain that.
• I hung out with some people and had a bonfire on the beach next to the ocean last night.
• I learned how to open a beer bottle with a lighter.
• I saw some really inspiring sessions about what people are doing with GIS and conservation. The one in particular that I want to highlight is from Columbus, Ohio. It's a project by the Ohio Audubon Society to restore an old brownfield in a high-crime area of Columbus to awesome habitat for birds using volunteer labor and students from charter schools. They also went on a crusade against honeysuckle in the city of Columbus and contacted landowners of parcels where they identified honeysuckle in order to get them to remove these plants from their yards. It's an inspirational and amazing story. If I ever find myself in Columbus again, I will go visit their center. Here's a link: http://grange.audubon.org/Support.html

And that's California so far. One more day, and then I will head out tomorrow morning. Everyone was right about one thing......this is one of the best conferences I've ever attended. I'm going to try to come back. Because I love conservation and GIS.