Today, I had to dump an XML file into a spreadsheet.
For the most part, the file was fixed-width formatted (field 1 was characters 5 to 10, field 2 was 16 to 20, etc.), so I figured I would just open it in Excel as a fixed-width text file and set the column widths accordingly, fixing the few lines that didn’t conform to the fixed-width pattern as I went.
Excel, on the other hand, said, “Oh, this is an XML file (even though you, naughty naughty, gave it the wrong extension)? Cool!” And then it laid out everything perfectly for me.
So, today I learned that Excel supports reading XML files as spreadsheets without any further effort required.
The underlying file format of Excel and Word files (and maybe other Office files; I haven’t tried) has been XML for about 10 years now. They changed over when they started to get worried about Open Document Format as competition.
If you rename the extension of a Word file from DOCX to ZIP, you can unzip it and open up the individual XMLs that make up the document.
I knew that (it’s when the file extensions changed from .doc to .docx and .xsl to .xslx, etc.); I just didn’t realize that it would open and interpret a generic XML file so readily.
Great idea! I have two of the scrunch-up style bags in my purse. They are super handy. Both are over 10 years old and have been washed many, many times, but are still holding up great.
I have two collapsible plastic boxes and a collapsible hand truck I keep in my car.
I don’t get bags and just reload everything in the cart. I then load up the boxes to carry into my place.
I recognise that this is not a solution that works without a car, but I find it easier than a bunch of bags. Easy to clean, too (being hard plastic you can wipe and/or disinfect them quickly).
Don’t they flap in the breeze as you’re driving down the highway?
I keep them on a bookshelf right by the front house door. Usually I remember but it doesn’t matter because the other two dozen canvas bags are in the trunk. We’ve gotten so many over the years, mostly from science fiction conventions, and others from charities, that it’s ridiculous. Of course that doesn’t stop me from forgetting to take them into the store.
I may never get it together with the shopping bags. I have several unused reusable ones. I inevitably end up paying two or four bits for the store’s bags, which I religiously fold and keep for reuse after I unload them. So I have a stack of literally hundreds of slightly-used grocery bags in my pantry, which I will never remember to bring back to the store.
I was a Theatre Arts major in college, and we always referred to our Saturday afternoon performances as the Bluehair Matinee because of all the senior citizens who didn’t like to stay up for an evening show. And in the late 80s, the blue rinse was quite noticeably blue.
We have some reusable bags, but the plastic ones are so useful and convenient. The cats love to play with them and we use them as trash bags for the small cans (bathroom, office) and for misc stuff like cat litter or food that we want to throw out now instead of waiting until the big trash can is full. Sometimes use them as packing material when sending packages. But 5¢ per bag would be overpriced, when you can get them for 0.6-2¢/bag from Amazon or wholesalers.
I think they’re deliberately overpriced as a luxury tax, in order to discourage people from just tossing them in the trash and having them all end up in landfills.
Plastic bags are outlawed in San Jose and the other cities in the area I regularly do any shopping (though thankfully they’re allowed for food takeout and delivery).
Pay 5 cents for a plastic bag? Luxury. We pay at least 10 cents - for paper bags (and some stores charge 25 or more). Actually, Target still does plastic bags, but they’re large, thick, and sturdy, meant to be brought back for reuse, not the classic thin ones (and they charge for them).
It is funny though, when I visit my parents in Western New York, it never fails to be jarring the first time I go to the store and they give me multiple free plastic bags for a handful of items when one would probably suffice. It seemed so normal before, but it genuinely feels like a luxury now.
And, I support the luxury tax on them. San Jose is a dirty, dirty place, but one thing we don’t have is plastic bags in the trees and everywhere else like in Buffalo.
It does bring some oddities, though, as others have noted - namely everyone always forgets their reusable bags (often if I triumphantly remember to take one to the car, I forget to bring it in the store, even if I keep it in the front seat). I use the paper grocery bags I always end up with as recycling bins so it works out OK, but I grew up with Wegmans bags as the kitchen garbage bags (pretty sure my parents have never bought small trash bags - or dog poo bags), and now I still have to buy plastic garbage bags anyway - so basically it seems to me that the point of restricting them is not really material waste or landfill concerns since most trash still goes into plastic (though I will say that I suspect I am far more mindful of waste than average). And it’d be interesting to consider how much environmental impact the manufacture of reusable bags creates as opposed to the thin plastic bags, not that I really think we should go back to using them as freely as before.
I suspect that really getting used to always bringing reusable bags, on a societal level, is going to take a generation or two.
We have a very good recycling program in my area; we put it all in one container and they sort it at the recycling plant. We had to stop putting plastic bags in the container because they were fouling the machinery. Now we take them to the grocery store – even though I rarely get them there. Most of them are those inflatable padding things in boxes from Amazon and the like, combined with the plastic wrap on toilet paper and things like that.
Sometimes I wonder where the recycled stuff _really_ends up – in boxes boxes “made with 60% consumer waste” or in a landfill in China/bottom of the ocean?
if you get in the habit of keeping the reusable ones in your car, it helps. at least then when you’re walking into the store and you suddenly remember you need them, it’s only a trip to the car for them.
I’m not great with the reusable bags, but I like these a lot for the grocery, and because I prefer how they function to other bags, I tend to remember them better.
Trying to find pics that actually show how they work. The two big ones stretch across the full width of the cart. Two fill the body of the cart. One has a cold insulating property. The other is just big. You can stuff a ton of crap into these, then when you transfer them to your car, you can clip the two ends together to form a bag that you can carry over your arm.
The other two are just normal bags. But super thin and strong.
I seriously should be a sales person for these. Every time I shop people ask me where I got them.
My family members who were old enough to remember WWII were very comfortable with reusable shopping bags, although that would have been partly geographical (ie: at the time they lived somewhere it was the norm). Bags are a good example of something everyone used to do coming back.
I’ve been using them since the 90s, and don’t miss having to explain to checkout clerks that no, I don’t need any bags and no, the bags I am presenting are already in my possession (I have had clerks ask me what aisle or department they came from). The stigma about reusable bags is fading fast too, although it was only two years ago a clerk tried to embarrass me into taking a disposable bag. He made a big deal about how my reusables were wrinkly from being stashed in their built-in pockets.
I just laughed at him and asked why I’d care the bags I was about to stow in my car were wrinkly.
Partly encouraging adoption is modelling the behaviour; partly it is talking about the non-environmental benefits. Reusables are more convenient when otherwise you’d have several small bags from different shops. They’re also stronger and can carry a bigger volume of goods without breaking.
