The Freecycle Network™ is made up of thousands of groups with millions of members around the world. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by local volunteers. Membership is free.

To sign up, find your community freecycle list by searching on the Freecycle web site.

BookMooch.com is a huge (as in: 100,000's of books), free, book swapping site. Why buy a new book when you can save one from the landfill?

I lobbied for a new idea: Let's stop talking to each other from different rooms. Let's take the time to find the other person, and to wait until they are ready to listen before we begin speaking. I hoped this would eliminate the hearing-related false starts. But to be fair, we agreed this should be a two-way street; We would both work to try this new idea.

"Therefore when we build let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such Work as our descendants will thank us for and let us think as we lay Stone on Stone that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them and that men will say as they look upon the labor and the wrought substance of them, 'See this our fathers did for us.' "
~ John Ruskin

That's sure has a nice ring to it. We need more people with a rock-solid work ethic, who are self-starters, able to be detail oriented, capable of anticipating problems and acting in advance, and who can think things through. These are things worth striving for.

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."
~ Blaise Pascal

The time-sink of video games, the distraction of mindless television, the constant interaction with others (twitter, text messages, etc) without real communication, the seeking of incessant stimulation without actually feeling anything, the inundation with information with no chance for finding knowledge; These things we can do without.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
~ Bertrand Russel

This seemed to be trite commentary until I realized that one could also read it to be actionable instructions: The key to solving big, real world, problems is figuring out when one is being the fool/fanatic versus the wise.

"programmer, system administrator, problem solver; casual mountain-bike cyclist, avid reader, student of Aikido"

Programmer, system administrator, problem solver: My story is basically: I went to college, and then into business. Started working on the Internet, back when... well, it's a long story.

Casual mountain-bike cyclist, avid reader, student of Aikido: You might need a link for the Aikido part (about Aikido), but the rest is pretty self-explanatory.