Freecycle. I don’t know how many of you have heard about Freecycle, but it’s a nonprofit group composed of a great bunch of people. And it’s HUGE. It’s so huge that I even know about it. I even moderate a fairly large group, and have been doing so since about two weeks after I heard about them almost five years ago.
They started out in Tuscon when a bunch of friends got tired of taking still usable items to the dump. They put together a little network and started offering their tired but still usable items to each other to see if anybody else could use the stuff before they took it to the landfill. All the gifting was free and it was a form of recycling, so the Freecycle name came into existence.
It grew like wildfire. Other nonprofits and individuals were allowed to ask for items by placing “wanted” posts onto the Freecycle lists and the thing went viral. At this point there are 4,800 groups and 7.2 million members around the world.
If you’d like to know more about it check out Freecycle.org
You get a pretty good look at the best and worst of what your local area has to offer when you’re moderating a Freecycle group. People give away some wild items. I’ve seen pipe organs, boats, cars, computer systems, gardens full of vegetables, loads of furniture, tons of clothing, or just a pile of moving boxes offered on our list.
Although Freecycle asks that members not ask for extravagant items in their wanted posts, they sometimes seem to forget that simple Freecycle request, and go bat shit crazy when they let the group know what they’re looking for. I’ve had members ask for camping trailers, old trucks, cars, apartments (ever see an apartment in a landfill?) and a zillion other weird things.
As if asking for this stuff isn’t enough they’ll send me messages demanding an explanation about why they can’t ask for that camp trailer, or advertise their business. They want to see the corporate rule in writing where it says they can’t do what they want. I shake my head in disbelief and wonder how we got so screwed up in thinking we’re entitled to everything.
Other people will do a garage cleaning and offer whole lists of items, 15 or 20 at a time, and they’ll get a call from someone saying they’ll take it all. The person shows up in a pickup, loads it up and heads down the road. Where’s it all going? Garage sale, auction or EBAY?
It’s none of my business, I’m just the moderator, I listen to what my people tell me, and do the best I can to make the list work for them, but way down inside I have a real burning desire to be the internet police and ferret out the people who abuse such a cool system.
If you’d like to find out more check out Freecycle.com There’s probably a group near you, and if there is you usually find some cool offers on it. If you’d like you can can offer some of your own stuff instead of sending it off to the dump. Or hey, maybe you need a few pots and pans or a couple pair of gently used jeans?
Cell Phones on the Move, Texting on the Road
I was driving a service truck in prehistoric times.
If you couldn’t afford radios you just called in to the shop when you finished every job to see if they had any new work on hold. Then came the days when I carried a pager, a pocket full of quarters, and I knew where all the handy public phones were. It only took a few minutes to find a phone when the beeper went off. Unless I was stuck in traffic, on a job, or the page didn’t go through.
When cell phones came along all my communications downtime disappeared. I didn’t like spending too much time on the phone while driving because it distracted me, but phones quickly became an important part of a mobile business, so I adapted.
Fast forward 25 years. I haven’t remained frozen in the past. I text my kids and use my phone as an mp3 player, but I still don’t spend too much time on the cell phone while driving because it still distracts me. However, society has adapted in a big way.
The percentage of people driving around with a cell pressed to their ear is alarming, and it amuses me when I see someone having an animated conversation in a car alone when I know they’re talking via a hands free phone. The sad truth is though, that the people driving these cars are frequently driving erratically.
I can almost bet that every car I see being driven erratically is being driven by a person with a cell phone pressed to their ear, or worse. Which brings me to what this little blurb has been sneaking up on all along.
Exactly when did we as a nation of people become so self absorbed that we need to have laws passed telling us that it’s unsafe to do something that demands as much attention as sending text messages while driving a vehicle on our streets and highways? How can a person even feel save sending a text while stopped at a red light? You’re supposed to be watching the light and cross traffic for gods sake, and you’re sitting behind the wheel of a running multi-ton weapon pressing itsy bitsy keys on a tiny cell phone broadcasting your thoughts into the ethers in 160 characters or less.
It boggles my mind and scares the hell out of me, both at the same time.
On an entirely different note, what are you going to do when your web goes down? When you can’t afford, or just can’t have the internet, the phones, and the other digital bells and whistles we’ve all become accustomed to living with? The question threatens the hell out of some people. How about you?