: smalleraperture.com :

I’m really bad at it…

Great weather.

Great route.

Great People.

All in all, a fun week. Didn’t bring my camera, but will post photos when team members email them out.

Unfortunately my camera was acting up, leading to quite a few ruined shots. I did manage to salvage a few however…

Found an interesting blog entry about a visit to InfoBunker’s underground data warehouse. InfoBunker is a Cold War era government command bunker converted into a data center. The Department of Defense built it to survive a “Maximum Probably Event,” such as a 20-megaton nuclear explosion. The 65,000 square foot, mostly-underground facility is equipped with a Nuc/Bio/Chem air filtration system. Secure N+1 rack co location starts at $850/month.

It’s not my place to go into too much detail about what’s housed in the bunker, as just to get inside under escort you have to agree to a strict no-photos policy (perfectly understandable); but suffice it to say that the simplex lock on the main hut door is only the very beginning. Many hardened, keycoded, and biometric-protected doors stand between the outside world and the data centers, including the self-sufficient power systems (six days’ worth of diesel fuel; 17,000 gallons of water (for drinking and fire suppression); military-grade NBC air filtration). It’s built to withstand a 20-megaton nuclear blast at 2.5 miles, according to the website, and I can believe it. Your data will be intact even if the rest of the Internet has been vaporized.

Proof there is more here in Iowa than corn and pigs…

InfoBunker Tour

InfoBunker

The girl is growing daisies, I give them another week…

Having grown quite sick of the ridiculous number of plastic bags that are given out with each trip to the store, I got the girl a little present. Chico bags are just one of the many reusable shopping bags available, but they are currently top on my list. They are $5 a pop, but you can get five for $20 at most places. They stuff into themselves for easy storage as well.

As an added bonus, many stores are giving a five cent refund to those using their own bags.

Chico Bags

I knew it! haha

Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarians later in life, a study says.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6180753.stm

I prefer the ‘go vegan seven days a week’ plan, but it’s a start.

The top 10 reasons why adopting a vegetarian diet one day a week will make a difference. In a year you will…

* Save 84,000 gallons of water.

* Save 245 lbs of grain.

* Save 7,700 sq feet of rain forest. (That is equivalent to four good sized houses.)

* Reduce your contribution to the over 10,000,000,000 animals slaughtered for food.

* Save 15.5 gallons of gasoline, good for one fill-up!

* Not contribute to over 403 lbs of manure produced by food animals.

* Reduce your contribution to over 24,000,000 pounds of antibiotics that are added to animal feed.

* Save 87 square feet of topsoil from erosion.

Via

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

NYT