Pete Dudchenko

Maintenance people do just that. They help us maintain our normal lifestyle. God bless em because I don’t know the first thing about fixing an electrical outlet or installing a new sink. I must say however that I’ve met a few over the years that makes me think it takes a special breed to do what they do.

Let me start with an example back in my college years. The apartment I had just moved into was somehow wired up so that when I turned off the light switch by the front door, the switch would turn off the lights, the TV, the stereo and basically anything else in the living room. We called the electrician to come fix it and soon enough, the guy had the light switch apart with wires sticking out and was working away. Suddenly I hear this shock of electricity jump from the wires into the electrician’s hands. We both just stood there looking at each other for a few seconds and I finally ask him, “Dude! Are you OK???” His response, “N-n-n-n-no p-p-p-p-probbbblem. It ha-ha-ha-ha-happens all the t-t-t-time.”

Case number two, the other day we had called an exterminator to help us with some ants that had found their way into the building. Showing up he looks around and then starts to spray the corners and bathrooms and stuff. I’m working away at my laptop in the living room when I hear play by play announcements from the back bathroom, “Sooooo looong ants.” and, “See ya later boys.”

So here’s to the men and women that help us live our lives where light switches only turn off lamps and not TV’s, and where we don’t have ants plotting to overtake the apartment. I salute you all.

Thanks to everyone who left a comment. Without any further delay, here are the winners:

Lolly
Christian
Derek
Daniel
Kevin

I’ll be submitting the email invites today but please be aware that it’s up to Google on how soon you get the invitation. My understanding is that they may not be immediate. When you do get your invite though, be sure to add me to your contacts list so we can test Google Wave out.

For those that didn’t win, sorry, but as I get more invites I’ll pass them along.

I was a little surprised this morning to get an email invitation for Google Wave as I thought the invites went out yesterday. Since I was lucky enough to get one then I figure why not share the love. I have five Google Wave Invites to offer and all you have to do is leave a comment below (be sure to fill out your email correctly).

I’ll select five from the list and announce the winners on Monday. Good Luck!

**UPDATED 10/10 – Thanks for everyone who commented. Google Wave Invite Winners have been announced.**

They say that you should find at least one good cause to support. For me, as much as I love cooking and learning about food it’s been pretty apparent that there’s a growing movement around finding sustainable food. I’ve only just started to become educated on the subject but it’s been interesting looking for resources specific to seafood sustainability in San Diego.

But first, what is seafood sustainability and why is it important to the food I eat? According to one website, “It is seafood that is fished or farmed without compromising fish populations or marine habitats. Moreover, sustainable seafood is also generally healthier and of higher quality than the run-of-the-mill seafood.” Basically, it means that we don’t take fish from the ocean faster than they can be replenished and the manner in which we catch the fish is friendly to the environment.

When you look at farming techniques like Salmon farms, not only are they unhealthy for you to eat but they can actually hurt the environment more than just “traditional” fishing in the wild since many of these farms release pollutants into the water from the overcrowding of fish. Also, according to some predictions, Scientists predict that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048.

As a sushi fan, and a big Salmon fan, it was concerning to realize that many of the fish the local restaurants and grocery stores are serving are farmed Salmon and not wild caught.

So what can someone do? Well for me, the first step is to get educated and that’s the step I’m on right now. Below are a few resources that I’ve found that help describe what you can do to help the cause:

Seafood Watch – A great resource for learning more about seafood sustainability and especially great for sushi lovers. Download a free pocket guide or access their site on the go from your cell phone to help choose the right seafood to select.

**Updated – Seafood Watch has been doing a great job with releasing easy to access mobile apps and pocket guides to make it easy to select the right choices. Check out the widget at the bottom of this post.

Marine Stewardship Council – The MSC is the world’s leading certification and ecolabelling program for sustainable seafood. Look for the blue MSC ecolabel when shopping or dining out.

Finding Sustainable Seafood in San Diego – Those of us local to San Diego will find this article interesting as it has a few local links to also investigate.

San Diego Roots: Sustainable Food Project – A list of San Diego Restaurants that use locally grown food.

In Fish We Trust – San Diego’s one-stop-shop for sustainable seafood. Another great list of restaurants in the San Diego area that offer sustainable seafood menus.

The End of the Line – I haven’t watched it yet but it’s a documentary on sustainability. “The world’s first major documentary about the devastating effect of overfishing premiered at Sundance Film Festival.”

Finally, check out for yourself what’s good to eat:

My recent experiences with calling Directv have been anything but pleasurable. In fact, if it weren’t for the monopoly on the NFL games they have, I would have dumped them long ago. Here are 5 actual quotes that I’ve heard from their customer service reps:

1) (When trying to order the Nebraska football game on Saturday…) “Sir, is that baseball or the NFL?”

2) “I’ve gone ahead and escalated your issue to a technical rep but they won’t call you or let you know if the issue has been resolved. You’ll just have to wait until next Sunday to hope the problem was fixed.”

3) “Are there any NFL games on right now that you are having trouble watching?” (This was asked when I called in on Monday at noon)

4) (Again when trying to order a Nebraska football game…) “Did you say you wanted to watch the Cubs vs. Brewers?”

5) “I’m sorry you can’t see the New Orleans Saints game on tv. We can try to fix that for you, or if you like, the Steelers are playing on the local station instead.”

Now I undertsand not everyone knows sports but for a company the promotes itself as a sports authority, their reps are anything but.

Admittedly, this post is technical and niche, but then again, so am I sometimes. Really, I just wanted to share this concept with anyone out there searching for a way to avoid getting bombarded with work emails on their BlackBerry while they also sit in front of their work computer.

My cell phone is not a business phone so I have a BIS account but I still like to get work emails on it so I don’t have to power up a laptop outside of office hours just to see if anything important came through. Of course, while in the office, it meant I was hit twice with any work email notifications; one on my phone and one on my laptop. To me it was pretty annoying, I’d be sitting at work and managing my emails on my laptop, and anytime a new work email would come in, I would get a notification on Outlook and my cell phone. I had to manage both devices to clean up the Inboxes.

The alerts quickly came to a stop, I adjusted my settings on my BlackBerry to not alert me when I got a work email (since I’m right in front of my laptop, I don’t need my cell phone to tell me this). The challenge however was with managing the emails on both devices. When I did check my phone for any other personal notifications I might receive, it was easy to lose a text message or personal email in the mix of the mass amount of work emails received in one day.

The solution was relatively simple however. I set up a new folder in Outlook (I run 2007) and routed all email into this new folder. Since I have a BIS BlackBerry account, I don’t get emails that are not stored in my Inbox. By routing the emails to a new folder, I just work out of this folder during the day as a regular Inbox but my cell phone doesn’t receive any of these emails anymore.

The way I set it up, I created a folder and called it “0) Inbox”. The “0)” part is to make sure it resides right below the actual Inbox since Outlook lists all folders alphabetically. Then I created a rule to route all email into this new “0) Inbox” folder. The rule is set to the condition of “on this machine only” and this is important because what that means is when I shut down my laptop for the evening, all emails I receive will now still go to the original default Inbox and I will get them on my phone.meaning I can still check work email from my phone after hours. When I log back onto my laptop (presumably the next morning) the rule kicks in and moves all of those emails into the new “0) Inbox” folder with everything else.

Again, highly technical and niche but if you were looking for help with this I hope you found it.