Look at this flooding in Iran. Cars just getting washed away! An Iranian woman at Bible study last night mentioned the flooding. I haven’t seen or heard word one about it in the States.
Category: Ecology
Pave Paradise and Put Up More Data Centers
It griefs me to see how much the area by my office has changed. My office is in a data center in a complex of four buildings, nearby is what was once the Verizon HQ which has a few large building, and Amazon has data centers in the area. As of this time last year, there were 6.5 million square feet, about 107 acres, of data center floor space in my area, which is Ashburn, VA, one of the wealthiest areas of the country w/ very high property values. The fact that there are so many data centers here already makes it cheaper to build more data centers in the area. With the property values as they are, the fact that companies can afford to host data centers here means they must be making a good profit though one of the reasons they do build here is because we have some of the cheapest electricity in the country. Why that would be I don’t know.
As Ed can attest to, there was a fair amount of undeveloped land in the area….not virgin forest by any stretch of the imagination but there were maybe 500 acres of unused land. As I watch day by day and month by month, construction (or destruction) vehicles, rip up the trees and bushes to clear the land to build more data centers. It was particularly unsettling to watch, as I sat at a stop light near my office, the destruction of some very lovely flowering trees. More than likely, that section of land will be cleared by the end of this coming week.
I don’t understand why we need all these data centers. What is all this data for? Where is it coming from…besides Facebook? What good is all this data? Can it really make life better for humanity? I doubt it. And what about the damage to the environment. We’ll see more erosion, convert less carbon dioxide to oxygen, diminish habitat for God’s creatures, and certainly not improve the views. It takes power to run all these computers in the data centers. Then it takes power to cool down the computers in the data centers. As of last year, there was 676 megawatts of commissioned power for data center use in Ashburn.
I don’t know what that means really or how it translates into say… powering homes. I am still trying to figure that one out. I do know that it seems like a waste of resources. As regards that data, I am not keeping my personally created files out there in someone’s data center so whatever all this is for, it isn’t benefiting me. Given that, is it really benefiting that many of us that is worth the expense and resources. I would venture to say no.
Got Gloves or Mittens?
I saw an advertisement for those packages that you rip open to expose the interior to air so it heats up to warm your hands or other body parts as desired. Really?
The FAQs say the innards are all natural and biodegradable. I don’t know about the packaging but I am going to say it probably isn’t readily biodegradable. Even if it is, what the hell ever happened to gloves and mittens?
Letter to My Virginia Legislators
Legislation, proposed by Virginia’s right-wing nut bag governor and passed by Virginia’s apparently right-wing nut bag Assembly, that includes removing our 17.5% gas tax, not changed for 25 years, and replacing it with a 0.8% sales tax increase makes no sense to me, probably because I am not a right-wing nut bag. This is just redistribution of wealth to the wealthy and cannot help with Virginia’s transportation infrastructure problems nor can it help to reduce consumption of gas or vehicle created pollutants.
Read more here about the current state of the legislation:
Va. lawmakers give McDonnell partial win on transportation at session midpoint
Below is my letter to my representatives asking them please to not let this legislation pass:
Please don’t let this legislation pass. I think about all the poor people who ride buses because they can’t afford cars. Their environmental and consumptive impact is minimal thereby reducing long term costs to our environment and infrastructure. They are the least likely to benefit from no gas tax and most likely to be negatively impacted by an increase in the sales tax.
On the flip side, those in the upper middle class and higher who can afford to and are more likely to buy and drive unneeded gas hogs including SUV’s and sports cars will certainly benefit from no gas tax. They will then contribute less to minimizing the economic impact of pollutant spewing gas hogs and the degradation of our transportation infrastructure. Lastly, since they have more disposable income, the impact of a 0.8% increase in the sales taxes is much less likely to impact their personal finances.
Global Warming?
I know a lot of people don’t believe that the earth is warming and, if they do, they don’t believe the warming is caused by humans, or gaseous cud-chewing quadrupeds for that matter. I am not going to argue either case though I believe in both of them. I will just state the facts.
It is January 30th. I live in the mid-Atlantic states outside of Washington, DC. I am showing 71 degrees on the thermometer on my balcony at 1620. My heat is off, sliding glass door to the balcony has been open since last night, and the thermostat in my apartment reads 76 degrees. Something doesn’t seem right in the world to me.
Withering Heights
It was in the high 70’s today in Northern Virginia…March 13. Give me a break. If these temperatures continue into the summer we are in for a scorcher. I for one am not looking forward to it. I just got home at 2230 and it is 80 in my apartment. I have only had the heat on for two days out of the whole winter. I should have my AC on!
Speaking of getting home from work…. It was another day at the mercy of the customer who is heedless of the support staff’s personal obligations and lifestyle. Accordingly, my day went from a predictable 8 hours to 11.5. I just love leaving the office at 2130 w/o having had dinner or a significant break all day. I guess that is the price I pay for having a job in a society where the top 1% beats the rest of us into the ground and tells us we should be happy.
To cap it off, we fight hideous traffic in our commute. If you try to work a bit of flex time, you have to fight the highway construction in the area. Flex time in this area means leaving for work no earlier than 0900 and going home before 2230 or after 1930. But no matter how many lanes the state adds to the highway, there is always some bottleneck that makes all the expansion basically worthless.
To make things even worse, most of the highway work around here is for new toll roads along side the normal byways. As such, the 1% can pay their way away from the madding crowd and theoretically avoid the traffic jams. Meanwhile Juan, the landscape engineer and his household maintenance technician wife. Juanita, along with the rest of us can fight the traffic jams.
Well, it is after 2300 and time for me to finish my after work beer and get some dinner! Midnight snacks were never this good!
Kayaking and Walking, Tidewater, VA, October 2011
I headed off to see my sister Kim and brother-in-law Don on Sunday, 2 October, after working the night shift the previous night and catching few hours of sleep. I got down there in the late afternoon in time for an early dinner before heading off to church. Upon our return to the house we just took it easy. Kim was exhausted because she got no sleep the night before.
On Monday morning, I headed off the MacKay Island National Wildlife Refuge on the border of VA and NC. I never noticed it was there before though I been through it once on a road trip with Kim and Don. It looked like there should be some good paddling, walking and wildlife watching opportunities. Unfortunately, I could not figure out where exactly I should be able to put my kayak in so I ended up taking the 5.5 mile walk around the inland ponds.
I did have some good bird sightings and saw either a nutria, muskrat, or beaver swimming about working on its abode. As for birds, I saw numerous Great Blue herons, American egrets, osprey, Belted kingfishers, Eastern meadowlarks (cool birds) and the occasional what I think were Gadwalls or American Widgeons, an American Bittern, etc. I also saw a couple of smashed snakes on the trail including one that was likely to be an adult water moccasin. All in all it was a nice day.
On the way home, I stopped in at the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant near Kim’s for a beer. There I had a tasty Loose Cannon Ale and a Reissdorf Kolsch. I also tasted the Aventinus Weiss which was very good. Hopefully they will still have it on tap the next time I stop in. For dinner we went to Cogan’s Pizza, which except for one sub par experience, I have always enjoyed.
Tuesday was a slow day for me. The mid-watches still take their toll. I was finally able to get going in the afternoon and headed off to one of my favorite kayaking spots down Suffolk way, Burnt Mills Reservoir. It was a beautiful paddle but I think I have explored almost the whole reservoir by now. I always like to see what is around the next bend and there are very few more to go around.
Finally, on my way home and back to work on Wednesday night, I put the kayak in at Deep Bottom Park on the James River SE of Richmond. That is another one of my favorites. The river flows straight through the area but also has a huge offshoot loop where the landing is. I went around the loop all the way for the first time and stopped into this huge lagoon to look for birds. Usually I see tons of Great Egrets there but that day I was limited to Great Blues.
I had a passenger the whole time I was on the river. What I gather was grasshopper landed on the prow of my kayak when I put in and stayed there for the whole trip until I landed. First time in a long time I have paddled with a companion…
I Thought I Had Recycling Issues….
When I got home from work on Thursday, I noticed one of those huge tractor trailer sized dumpsters, one of those that they have on construction or demolition sites, in front of one of the adjacent apartment buildings. The dumpster was overflowing with crap. I noticed that both of the sliding glass doors were open in one of the second floor apartments. I wondered if there had been a fire in an apartment.
Walking from my car to my building I saw a guy come out on the balcony of the apartment in a low-grade HAZMAT suit. That freaked me out so I popped into the management office to see if the would tell me what was going on. Apparently, the apartment was trashed.
The apartment manager was freaked out. He said it was the nastiest thing he had ever seen. Apparently the renter was dink on his rent and the manager had been trying to get a hold of him for six weeks or so. Residents of neighboring apartments had been complaining of bad smells. The manager had to get a court order to enter the apartment.
Upon entry, they found a wasteland. There were cats in the apartment unattended. The renter had apparently left plenty of food but the cats had run out of water and were nearly hysterical when the maintenance crew got water for them. Of course the cats had to be taken away by Animal Services. The maintenance crew then proceeded to haul 80 bags of garbage/trash out of the apartment the first day.
On day two, they called in a cleaning crew experienced in HAZMAT cleanup. The cats had urinated and defecated all over the apartment. There were flies and maggots all over including in the walls and floors. They are having to tear everything out of the apartment including the walls, floors, cabinetry, appliances, etc. And to cap it off, the bedroom was filled from ceiling to floor with bags of empty beer cans! Recycling anyone?
Quiet Walk in the Park? Not!
I headed out today for a walk on the Occoquan Trail which runs 17 miles from Bull Run Regional Park to Fountainhead Regional Park along Bull Run Creek. The trail meanders along the creek and up into the hills and creek overlooks. I figured it would be messy since we had a six inch dump of wet snow a couple of weeks ago and temps today were in the low fifties. I didn’t expect to see much in the way of critters.
It was muddy as hell in many spots making for slippery, sloppy conditions. But I had the good fortune to meet a couple at the top of a hill, as I was breathing heavily from the ascend, who had just seen a hawk, Bluebirds, a Downy woodpecker and, they said, a Red Headed woodpecker. I stopped to pull out my binos and caught all the aforementioned birds less the hawk.
I pondered the likelihood of seeing a Red Headed woodpecker at the time and a bit later after checking my bird book realized that the woodpecker was really a Red-breasted which are much more common in my area. The Bluebirds were brilliant. I have seen them before later on in the season when their colors are not so vibrant. I followed a flock of them for awhile and everyone I saw had very pronounced blue on the back and wings as well as pronounced orange on the breast. Beautiful birds! I also saw a Tufted Titmouse. To cap it off, I heard either one rapidly moving Bard owl or two of them calling out to each other.
There was a downside to the whole venture unfortunately. As soon as I got on the trail I heard and saw 4-wheelers on the other side of the creek. One was stuck revving its annoying engine trying to get out while a mud-splattered friend was trying to push. Never in the three or four years I have been hiking on this trail have I encountered 4-wheelers. They were not on my side of the creek in the park but they were certainly annoying. I saw at least four 4-wheelers and one dirt bike and heard them and smelled the exhaust for most of the six mile hike I took.
I could see the trails they had blazed including areas where they went in and out of the creek to the islands and up and down the embankments. The noise and smell was annoying enough but when I think about the potential erosion and degradation of the flood plain and all the crap that will flow down the creek to the reservoir and eventually to the Chesapeake Bay I just cringe. I also have two friends who live on that side of the creek who must hate the noise of these off road vehicles.
It is a shame that the northern side, the Fairfax County side, is protected as parkland but the Prince William County side to the south is wide open to such abuse and devastation.
Kayaking the Potomac River Near Point of Rocks, MD
I had quite the nice paddle on the Potomac River on Sunday, 8 August. We have had a dry summer and the rivers are down but, after a mass of rainstorms came through last week, the Potomac near Point of Rocks, MD, still had a pretty good current flowing. The water was crystal clear. At one point up about 1/2 mile from my entry point at Nolan’s Ferry Road, I saw a school of about 300 good sized fish, presumably Largemouth Bass.
The paddle up from Nolan’s Ferry Road to the Rt. 15 bridge across the Potomac was right about four miles and quite a good workout. There were some stretches of low water where the going was slowly but there were more stretches of deeper water, up to about four feet, where the going was much easier. I saw a few Great Blue Herons and Osprey but no eagles on this trip.
Here are a few pics from the trip:
