Your app is a piece of shit.

It’s not going to change the world, or my life, or anyone else’s life. It’s a stupid little web app that is a rip-off (oh sorry, a re-hashing) of someone else’s failed ideas. You are not original and your software is not revolutionary. So stop writing job posts that go something like this:

Ruby ROCKSTARS Wanted

Want to change the world? Want to be part of an amazing team of rockstars that are working on the next social network that will revolutionize the way people use the web and connect with each other? Do you want to work for a well-funded (not profitable, highly likely to fall on its ass) startup? We offer a hip working environment with free soda (until our investors start to lose faith in our meaningless cause) and 30 inch apple cinema displays! If you are obsessive about testing and know how to get things done (we don’t stop until we drop) and you’ll work for equity, then we’ll take your soul. Promptly.

Here is what I have to say to you fucking idiots. Your app is a piece of shit. Want me to say it again? PIECE OF SHIT. It is so rare that anyone is inventive enough to come up with a truly original or really good idea. Which is why equity is a retard penalty. The only idea you should believe in enough to work for free for (or for low salary) is YOUR OWN IDEA.

The web app market is saturated. I feel soggy every time I use my computer. There are too many of them and most of them are fucking useless. Some of them might be kind of neat, or interesting for a few days but they are really very useless in the long run, unless you are a specialist and you need a specific app for a very specific application. We don’t need more social networking. We don’t need more twitters, facebooks, assbooks, myspaces, social gaming communities, cancer survivor networks, parenting networks, book lover networks, cat lover networks, youtubes, or googles.

Thousands of software devs have been having fun working for all these well-funded startups that eventually fail. But at what point will they realize that the world only needs so many stupid web applications? We keep waiting for the next best app, but when does the river run dry? There are only so many good ideas and I think we might be hitting the limiter for social networking-ish apps.

What ever happened to writing software that actually does things and fixes real problems? Do people do that anymore? We don’t need more reasons to waste away in front of our computer screens. We need reasons to stand up because we’ve been sitting down a lot and we’ve taken a political, social, economical, and spiritual beating. In the words of the great Bob Marley, “Get up, stand up; stand up for your rights…. life is your right.” Perhaps we wouldn’t be such a dumb, placated culture if we actually left our houses and talked to people in RL, YO.

I was in the laundry aisle at the grocery store, looking for my usual Arm & Hammer brand of laundry detergent, when I realized that they too were trying to trick me into paying twice as much for half the detergent. The oddly small bottle explains that it’s eco-friendly because the detergent is twice as concentrated, so they can pack just as big of a punch in a MUCH smaller bottle. I’m not so sure. I’m very concerned with sustainability and being a good steward of this beautiful planet, but I’ve also got a good eye for SCAM.

I saw this trend happening slowly over the course of the year; one by one, different brands changed their bottles and their “concentration”; for awhile you even had a choice of buying the old fashioned earth-hating sized container or the trendy new scam bottle. But the choice soon disappeared. Arm & Hammer was the last to convert at my particular store. I can no longer purchase a regular size bottle of laundry detergent, and I’m fucking pissed about it.

Why would I trust that they are doubling the concentration? And even if they are, most people (myself included) will go through the bottle twice as quickly anyways because we are conditioned to think that we need a certain amount of detergent to effectively clean our clothes. I find it hard to believe that every single laundry detergent making company decided to make the environment their top priority, and change their formula.

If I were an empty suit at a big corporation who got to make lousy decisions I’d think this whole idea was FABULOU$!!! Hey, let’s tell people the concentration is doubled, give them half as much, advertise it as earth-friendly, and charge twice as much! But we won’t really double the concentration, now will we? I mean, there is money to be made here, right? The economy is hurting right now, and my fourth wife needs her left tit blown up a bit more, it’s not quite proportionate. I could use some extra cash. And those oil guys think they’re the only ones that can play in the big leagues….

And most detergent consumers (er, everyone) might be a little dismayed about the industry-wide change, but the companies let us have a choice for a couple months to allow us to warm up to the idea. And now we’re all fucked. We’re paying assloads of money for midget soap.

As someone who actually is eco-conscious and not just earth trendy, I decided to find a way to make laundry detergent at home in great quantities. It’s my *silent* protest of stupidity and manipulative consumerism. Regardless of the size of their bottles, we’re all paying a very high price for something that is very easy to do ourselves. Rolling your own is CHEAP, EASY, and SAFE!

I scoured the web and found great instructions on The Simple Dollar’s site. After making several batches over the last few months I’ve settled with a recipe that works great for us, so I will share it with you!

Bair Clan Goop

1 Bar Fels Naptha Soap
1 Cup Washing Soda
1 Cup Borax
Lots of Hot Water

Shred the whole bar of Fels Naptha. Meanwhile, heat water in a pot to boiling. Add the shredded soap to boiling water, whisking slowly until all of the soap has melted into the water. Pour the soapy water into a 5 gallon bucket.

Add the washing soda and borax to the bucket. Whisk quickly to dissolve. Add extremely hot water to the rest of the bucket, stirring continually. When the bucket is full, cover it and let it sit for 24 hours.

When you open it, you’ll see that it has formed into a gelatinous, goopy mess! Just give it a stir and it will break up. You can use a funnel to pour it into old empty detergent bottles for easy use! One batch of this stuff lasts us about two months, and we do laundry frequently. It has also cleaned our clothes as well (and usually better) than store-bought detergent. Sometimes I add white vinegar and an essential oil (like lavender, eucalyptus, etc) to a downy ball and throw it in to freshen the clothes during the rinse cycle, but it’s not really necessary.

I should also mention that some websites recommend using Ivory soap in place of Fels Naptha, but I’ve tried this and nothing cleans as well as Fels Naptha. On our first iteration we actually used Irish Spring because had a bunch of it around. It sucked. Don’t even bother. The Ivory was ok, but Irish Spring (and other regular bar soaps, I assume) do not clean clothes, nor are they really meant to. Fels Naptha is actually meant for clothes.

Try this a couple times, and tweak the formula until it meets your needs! You’ll save lots of money on detergent, you’ll consume less awful plastic, and you might even enjoy knowing that you can make something you never thought regular old consumers could make themselves

And while you’re at the store picking up supplies, grab yourself a spray bottle, white vinegar and some lemon essential oil. Fill the spray bottle 1/3 of the way with vinegar and add water to the rest. Add a couple drops of the oil and you have yourself an extremely powerful, versatile all-purpose anti-bacterial cleaner that cleans windows, counter tops, tables, stoves, toilets, mirrors, and more! If your kid finds it and decides to drink it she won’t die! Non-toxic, homemade cleaners are another way to fight the war against corporate consumerism propaganda

Before I became a parent I had a wonderful life that was all about me. I sought out fun and oh, the fun I had! I played board games, LOTS of video games, I drank beverages that actually had alcohol content, I danced around pagan fires in the dead of winter, and I had a habit of seeing live music. I read books! I planted flower gardens! I organized events! I had friends and we read each other’s tarot cards, we made herbal teas, and we traveled to fun places! I didn’t have a blog, I didn’t email much, and I certainly would not have had a use for Twitter, had it been around back then.

See, I even had time to color my hair and wear jewelry!

But that’s not my life anymore. Now I wake up early each day and I get my kids dressed. I try to feed them balanced meals throughout the day; we play with peg boards and make puzzles, we read stories, we dance in circles as we sing nursery rhymes, we paint, we color, we cook, we drive places, we do housework! It’s a much different life than I had before, but it’s an awesome life that I wouldn’t change.  I cherish every moment with my kids. In fact, I often get dreary eyed as I think about how empty my lap will feel when there are no kids to fill it, and how empty my home will be when there are no laughing voices filling its space. My friend Bryan shared something with me that his grampa told him before he passed away years ago: “I’d rather be up all night long hearing the voices of children than sitting alone in an empty, clean home.” I share that philosophy completely. 

Being a mommy is a crazy kind of fun!

I am trying to integrate some of my past hobbies into my new “adult” life as I search for balance as a mother and a regular humanoid. But what I keep finding is a lack of commonality between myself and others around me. I’ll find a super cool geek that doesn’t have kids, or find someone that has kids but the similarities end there. 

Of course I have grown in many ways since those days have come and gone. I’m not sure I’d get as much pleasure now from spending 100 hours of my time leveling up an Amazon in Diablo II. But there are more simple and similar pleasures like playing geeky board games and learning Ruby. Adam and I like to play Munchkin, Carcassonne, and Settlers of Catan pretty regularly. But those games are tough to play without more players. Our evenings together usually consist of programming on the couch together, listening to DJ Tiesto, or sitting out on the back porch on summer nights staring up at the stars above us, dreaming about life. 

Renae rocking out at Catan

We used to have a couple of friends with pretty common interests that we hung out with regularly. But now that I’m a parent and we’re in the middle of Maine, I can’t seem to find many friends in our area that enjoy gaming and geeking out. There’s more to me than coding and gaming, of course; I love watching independent films, Japanese films, anime, and laughing at the horrible videos on break.com. I like listening to different types of music. I care about sustainability and where my food and products come from. And I love coffee! Tell that to anyone in Maine and you’ll get this response “OMG, I LOVE coffee too!!! I go to Dunkin Donuts three times a day!”; to which I respond, “Ahhh….”; next topic. Being a pagan means I’m pretty drawn to the earth and her cycles, and I love celebrating the seasons and the natural rhythms of the earth. 

So, it’s pretty hard for me to find friends with common interests. Which is why most of my free time is spent in my dining room learning Ruby after the kids are in bed or reading Twitter! Adam asked me last week, “Why are you so addicted to Twitter?” Well, as a stay at home mommy without many local friends, it’s my only source of social interaction with people that are professionals, geeks, and parents. Today, I’ve been able to read about @MikeG1 griping about date parsing, @gilesgoatboy wishing he had more video games to play, and saw a picture of @SummerTulip’s piggie pancakes she made for her son. It’s this great eclectic mix of humans that I love to spy on because they are each like myself in some small way. It makes me feel connected to something that is like myself. The sum of twitter’s parts add up to a nice online friend. It sounds sad, but it can be hard to connect to anything in Auburn, Maine without getting the_hiv.

I know that my Twitter addiction needs to end someday. I spy an intervention sooner or later. But for now I’ll keep enjoying reading about the experiences of my twitter-folk friends and sharing my experiences with them. Twitter fills a niche in my life right now, and I’m thankful to be able to draw on a hand-selected community for wisdom, giggles, and inspiration!