Fair Trade?

I subscribe to the "This American Life" podcast. This week there was a great segment on fair trade. They tell the story of Cambodia, who is trying to do the right things and treat their workers well, but are being beaten by countries that are not keeping the same worker standards. Click here.

Note that this originally aired in 2005

Subverting Christmas

Heres a great story about someone who got a ransom note instead of an ipod. Click

Christmas Spending

Well its two days untill christmas and I finally finished all my christmas shopping.
After looking at the final tally I am a little supprised. I thought that I was being responsible and limiting my spending, but I ended up spening more than I thought I was going to. No where near the $1,000.00 the average American will spend but rather high for me.

I guess that I didn't pay attention to the message of the movie I saw last week; "What Would Jesus Buy?"

Contentment

I have had a holiday lunch at work and gotten a Christmas bonus. I am officially sedated by the corporate machine.

Priorities

Thank God that John Kerry has his priorities in order. I would hate to miss another Pat's game.

"...Too many American football fans are being held hostage,"

Supply Side Jesus

Ahmadineblog?

Who knew that Iran's president had a blog?

I hope that I'm not on a government watch list now that I have seen it.

Manliness

Today I was able to exert my manliness upon the world, or at least my version of it. (Please note that I sit at a desk all day and push paper around for a living)

The morning was spent painting. My friend works at an organization called Youth On Fire. (It's really not as exciting as it sounds, there are no pyrotechnics involved.) It felt good to see my hands stained with paint, even if it was a girly light blue color.

The afternoon I spent changing my bike tire. It didn't actually take all afternoon only about 15 minutes, but it was satisfying to fix something myself rather than pay someone to do it for me.



PS I live this picture. Here is the website it's from.

Dogs are expensive

I just got back from the vet and what I though would be a simple routine vacinee shot turned into a $400.00 extravaganza.

Don't get me wrong I love my dog but financially she was the second most idiotic thing I ever did.

Cabin Model

Keith and I build a sketch model of the cabin tonight. A sketch model is a simple and quick model of your building. Like drawing a sketch, it is intended to be very basic. Here are two picture of the model.


I apologize for the lighting in the photos. (I have pretty crapy lighting in my apartment.) While making it I came away with a few thing I will change, after all the is the point of a sketch model.

1 The windows on the side, because I work in an Architecture office I have access to glass samples. These samples are 1'x1' insulated glass samples. I think I could use them as a vertical ribbon on the sides instead of putting a normal 4'x4' window. This would add an interesting visual component to the side of the building.
2 The roof, I think I will lowe the pitch of the roof so it isn't as steep.

Getting Older

You know your getting older when you arrive at the mall at 8:00 am intending to get a little Christmas shopping done and you get upset when you read the sign says that the mall that says the mall doesn't open until 9:00.

You say to yourself "I have been up for two hours already why isn't the mall open? It is completely unreasonable that a place of business would open at 9:00, during the holiday shopping season no less!"