This morning I started my usual routine a bit later than usual … ah the luxury of sleeping in!

So it wasn’t ’til 6:30 that I let Caleb out of his kennel and he and Ruby trailed outside to do their ‘business’ then raced back in for the excitement of BREAKFAST!

After feeding them I pulled out the old Flip video in hopes of catching some playtime.  Unfortunately, they were mostly either lethargic or overly interested in the camera (guess they’ll have to get used to being movie stars).

I finally managed to snag a couple of snippets …

… and will get better at this, I promise!

As for the disturbing info, it has to do with the carbon footprint of the internet.  I had been complacently thinking that somehow my obsession with gadgets was justifiable as the Kindles and Sonic G-Tabs of the world were helping us to cut down on activities that contribute to global warming.

Come to find out, instead, that those little thoughtless “Googles” that I do throughout the day are costly …

Say you do a Google search. Your query kicks into action about 1,000 servers at various Google data centres. Those computers scan billions of web pages already in Google’s archives and spit out an answer.

Total time elapsed: 0.2 seconds on average. Meanwhile, Google’s data centres are also constantly combing the Internet to update their archives of web pages.

All those computers have a voracious appetite for energy, especially for cooling equipment to prevent overheating.

Apple’s 46,000-square-metre iDataCenter is set to open in North Carolina this spring with a price tag of $1 billion U.S. It will use an estimated 100 megawatts of power – as much as about 100,000 Canadian homes.

Apple’s mega-facility is part of a cluster of gigantic new data centres coming on line in North Carolina that are powered largely by cheap and highly polluting coal power. Google has a 44,000-square-metre data centre in the state that will eventually consume an estimated 60 to 100 MW. Facebook has a 28,000-square-metre facility under construction there that will eat up 40 MW.

Greenpeace calls the three facilities “North Carolina’s dirty data triangle.” Coal, it says, is the most polluting of all fossil fuels and the world’s single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The technologies of the 21st century are still largely powered by the dirty coal power of the past,” the environmental group said in a report card on the IT sector in April, titled How Dirty is Your Data?

I am bummed … need to give this some thought.