Pearware Blog : Category environment, everything about environment

End of an Era... Sold my first new car

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 13:50:00 -0500

Yesterday I sold the first new car I ever purchased, a silver 2002 Honda Accord to CarMax. It’s always a little sad to lose something like that, but it isn’t bothering me. I hadn’t even driven it once over the past month. I was just sitting in my parent’s driveway doing its best impression of a bird’s outhouse. It was so unused, that I even had to jumpstart the car twice yesterday! Once at the house to get it going, and then again after I got gas (Maybe I shouldn’t have left such little gas in the tank). I even told the appraiser to keep the car running for fear of it not starting back up!

It had been at my parent’s house because nikki and I live downtown (Columbus, Ohio), and we only have one parking spot, which we use for our other car, a 2003 Honda Civic. It’s not bad only having one parking spot, because we only need one car. And that’s why I could sell the Accord. Now that I’m working from home and have a scooter, we just don’t need a second car.

Downsizing was one of the advantages that we saw when deciding on living downtown. For most of my errands, taking the scooter, bicycle, or even walking suits my needs. It’s nice to not have to deal with the maintenance, gasoline, car insurance, registration, etc. It’s really amazing how much goes into owning a car. Oh yeah… it was also nice to get some money for it!

Offsetting flight emissions

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 13:48:00 -0500

I’m flying back to Phoenix today, as part of my telecommuting agreement. Due to the fact that I’ll be flying frequently, I feel that I should do something to balance the impact on the environment of my flights. Flying burns a lot of fuel, and flying from Columbus, OH to Phoenix, AZ is certainly no exception. So, today, I’m purchasing a Flight TerraPass to offset the carbon emissions of my flights.

Solar Wi-Fi To Bring Net to Developing Countries

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 11:24:00 -0500

I think this is a very cool idea and one I am very glad to see happening. I really think efforts like this can be worldchanging, and do a lot to help people, especially children, in the developing world to have more opportunities. The project is Green WiFi and is founded by Bruce Baikie, former manager of strategic marketing and solutions for the telecommunications industry at Sun Microsystems, and Marc Pomerleau, currently a member of Sun Microsystem’s identity management marketing team. According to their site:

“GREEN-WiFi strives to apply smart, sustainable, communications technologies to help bridge the digital divide for children in the developing world. A solar-powered Wi-Fi grid network solution can be part of the answer.”

Here’s a link to the story on Slashdot.