Inching closer to cutting landline, again

Just read Walt Mossberg's review of T-Mobile's new cellphone at home service which sounds quite promising. This new service, call Talk Forever Home Phone, uses a 'special' Linksys wi-fi router that transmits your call to T-mobile's cell phone network. It is not a VoIP service. You can use your existing phone to make calls as oppose to a cell phone that was pegged to their Hotspot@Home service. The cost for this service is $10 per month ONLY if you are a current T-mobile customer and have a 'qualifying' plan; $40 individual or a family plan of $50 or more...which I do!

According to Walt Mossberg, there are some drawbacks, for example it does not work with fax machines. Not a biggie for me and do people still use fax machines? It also does not transmit your home address automatically to 911. In order for 911 to have your address linked to your phone number, you need to work with T-mobile to manually transmit that data to 911. This is also not a big deal as that was what I did when we used SunRocket VoIP before it died a painful death. The service is currently available in Seattle and Dallas for now.

• T-Mobile's Talk Forever site
  

If you do not want to read his book

If you do not want to read or want to augment Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food watch this video...

• Michael Pollan on C-SPAN2 TV
  

Tried to be earth friendly...

After my HP ink jet cartridges became empty I decided that I would try getting them refilled instead of simply purchasing new ones. In the past I have sent old cartridges away as part of University of of Minnesota's Raport Center's Recycling for Raptors program.

So, I took my used ink cartridges to my local Walgreens and they quickly filled each cartridge up w/ ink and were charged $25. I thought cool, I save a bit of money (excluding gas), and was able to reuse something, although recycled, I did not have to buy NEW replacement cartridges. Well, to make a long story short, the cartridges stopped working after printing less than 10 pages. I tried cleaning them and printing a test page via the HP printer software...Now, I will have to bring it back to Walgreens and either get a refund or have them refill the cartridges again. The crazy thing is that I saw new cartridges for $3.00 more at Target!

Michael Pollan was right

I recently finished Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food in which he surmises that 'food' is now second to nutrition, or as he calls 'nutritionism.' Nutritionism is the notion that "scientifically identified nutrients in foods that determine their value."And according to Michale Pollan, this nutritionism has changed the way food is made, market and consume all to the detriment to our health. I ran into this at our local grocery store when I was able to reach for a quart of orange juice and realized that orange juice is no longer just orange juice. I can purchase it with Vitamin D, with Calcium or Vitamin AND calcium. Ouch! and that was just the beggining...I noticed now you can purchased orange juice with Omega-3 fatty acid...yummy, nothing like fishy orange juice.

Six word novels, they are great...

Kinda like Haiku, but not quite is the world of six word novels. I recently found this article in Wired where they invited sci-fi, horror and fantasy writers to write a novel in six words. Amazing I found that if you really like six words novel you can now buy a collection from Amazon, and you can submit your story to smithmag.net. Just as amazing I discovered that Treehugger.com is running a six word green memoir contest with smithmag.net.

Here are a few that I like:
Hemingway - "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn."
David Brin - "Bang postponed. Not Big enough. Reboot.
Steven Meretzky - "Wasted day. Wasted life. Dessert, please."
Margaret Atwood - "Longed for him. Got him. Shit"
Me (submitted to treehugger contest) - "Take bus, ride bike or walk."

Year of the Rat

Happy Chinese New Year! The Chinese year of 4706 begins on Feb. 7, 2008.

Y: The Last Man

I am a huge fan of Y: The Last Man comic and have read the first 5 trade paperbacks. The comic, which recently ended its 60 issue run, is about an apocalyptic event that kills all mammals with the Y chromosome except for Yorick and his monkey Ampersand.

Links of interest...

• Wikipedia
• Vertigo Comics
• EW interview with Brian K. Vaughn creator of Y: The Last Man
• Pop Candy article about the last issue of Y
• Interview with D.J. Caruso, director of the upcoming Y movie
• WSJ's article about the ending of Y
• WSJ article about Brian K. Vaughn