Karin's Adventures

In the light of our recent city water odor episode the discussion about "good" or "bad" reverse osmosis filtered water called for renewed investigation. I've heard both sides of the arguments, but maybe there are new, more recent, studies? Maybe common sense, and my own judgement, can now be proven, or disproven?

Here's what I found, or should I say confirmed, for myself:

Reverse osmosis is the only purification system that can remove the majority of dangerous chemicals and pollutants from our drinking water. Reverse osmosis also removes contaminants that countertop and faucet carbon filters cannot including viruses, bacteria, pesticides, arsenic, fluoride, drugs, cryptosporidium, mercury, nitrates, microbes, heavy metals, all radioactive materials, and many more.

The lack of minerals in your water should not keep you up at night. The increasing amounts of chemicals, drugs and carcinogenic/radioactive materials potentially found in tap water should!

Your calcium, magnesium, and other minerals should come from a healthy, balanced, clean nutritious diet - not from your water. The main concern with water should be over toxicity, not mineral content. Whether water contains 1 or 100ppm (parts per million) calcium doesn't really matter, but the difference between 1 and 100ppm arsenic is of grave importance.

For the past four days our tap water has had an awful, foul, chemical smell to it. It makes me gag when I take a shower.

City officials were quick to tell us that this has a natural reason - it's because of the melting snow. Strange, though, that we've had melting snow every year, but this is the first time I have experienced that kind of a horrific stench coming from the faucets.

City officials also told us, that the odor would dissipate on its own soon. So, hang in there people - just hold your breath when you shower.

In the meantime the mayor and some of his friends and coworkers also appeared on TV, sipping water out of tiny glasses. They were saying that, despite the horrible smell, our tap water was safe to drink.

I believe these are the same kind of people, who are telling us that it is safe to drink a carbonated mix of high-fructose corn syrup, brominated vegetable oil, and yellow 5, out of an aluminum can.

Good thing that we have a reverse osmosis filtration system under our kitchen sink!

In September 2009 I bought this cute little Samsung N140 10" netbook to facilitate my academic endeavors. It featured Windows XP and a German keyboard. Last year, when Microsoft stopped supporting XP, I reluctantly put the poor little thing away, only using it once in a while, for fear of virus attacks.

Even though I now have a Surface Pro 2, and like that a lot, I still felt there was more life left in the netbook. So I bought a 2GB memory chip for $22, and a full version of Windows 7 Professional 32-bit edition for $73, on eBay. I spent the weekend refurbishing my old friend.

After 189 updates, installation of MS Office 2010, Visio 2010, AVG, Zonealarm, Superantispyware, Malwarebytes, Skype, VoipConnect, a VPN client, my favorite Skat game, three Auslogics utilities, the Live Movie Maker, Audacity, C-Cleaner, VLC Player, Firefox, Chrome.... and another round of 72 updates..... my little old netbook is good to go for at least six more years.