One category which is pretty big is obsolete electronics. I have decided to recycle much of it instead of trying to find a home for it (by selling it). It will save me time, and each year a higher percentage of it has become truly useless.

One problem: It’s really hard to recycle electronic waste in Houston / Harris County unless you want to pay for it (Office Depot, DataReflects, Best Buy, etc.). Since a recycling program should be able to pay for itself — I am recycling valuable metals here — I don’t feel comfortable paying to have stuff recycled.

This means I have to be in the right place at the right time. Houston has two drop-off locations. One is open two week days per week and one Saturday per month, which the other is open one day per month:

• Houston Environmental Service Center – South
  Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
  Second Saturday of each month from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
  11500 South Post Oak, Houston, TX 77035
• Houston Environmental Service Center – North
  Second Thursday of each month from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
  5614 Neches Building C, Houston, TX 77026

I had a hard time even finding out about these options, and it seems that someone noticed this is a problem and did a study on it: “Free E-Recycling, But Nobody Knows” (pdf).

It looks like we need more highly qualified educators to run for Texas State Board of Education. I don’t have anything against being a liberal, conservative, or independent on the board, but I do have a problem with an education board made of people who haven’t taught in the classroom.

I was very concerned about the new curriculum standards the board created for language arts this fall. The previous standards were closely based on standards created by NCTE, a group who should make standards. Luckily TEA got the best teachers in the state to interpret the standards to create a meaningful and sound set of state tests. The tests have more influence on the classroom than the standards, so we dodged a bullet in this case.

Now there’s national attention on what’s going into Texas textbooks. John Stewart illustrated the problem on his 3/17 show.

At the end, he suggests getting elected to TX SBOE. You only need 500 signatures, to be a Texas resident a while, and a few more qualifications.