the domain name says it all

So the boys went up the coast for the long weekend chasing some epic uncrowded waves.
We found waves but they were neither epic nor uncrowded so some other activity had to be found so that the whole weekend wasn’t spent in the pub.

For the sake of this post we’ll call him Tiger.
Tiger suggested the inaugural long weekend golf classic. Tiger is a smug little fucker who loves nothing better than to gloat to anyone and everyone about how good he is. And as none of us are golfers apart from Tiger we  knew immediately what was going on. Kick our asses and bask in the glory for the rest of the weekend. After reminding Tiger of how his last episode of self promotion ended (this involved boot polish, razor and a tampon) it was off to the golf course.

At the first hole we had our tee off, I’m sure you can imagine the results, till it was Tiger’s turn.

He strutted up, chest out, with his own personalised clubs and balls and credit where credit is due damn the guy has a nice swing on him but this is where the whole thing went pear shaped.

The guy gave it to the ball and we still have no idea what it hit but the thing came straight back at him travelling as quick as he hit it – AND GOT HIM SQUARE ON THE NUGGIN!

He’s rolling round the ground with claret pissing out of his head screaming in agony and we’re rolling round the ground pissing ourselves. You’ve never seen anything so funny!!

Took the poor bastard to causality, 1.5 hrs away, where he ended getting his head glued. As luck would have it we got a young doctor who joined in on the festivities.

Have a look at the second last line on the hospital discharge note; Responsible adult supervision  for 4 hours post head injury – good luck with that!

(click for larger)

Interesting read in the local rag yesterday about the payback period for home installed grid connect solar PV systems.

We had a choice a few months back to pay to have the little princess’s teeth fixed or install some panels on the roof. No point having a nice smile if you are stuck living in a cave out west after society as we know it has collapsed I told “bright eyes” – so she looks a little funny but I’m sure there are people out there that find quirky attractive.

So in update number two of our journey of going green thought I’d just give some figures on our PV install.

System specs are as follows;
Panels: 24 x 175W Conergy Mono
Inverter: SMA 5000TL
System: 4200W
Incline: 26deg
Orientation: NE
Location: Bar Beach
No major shading problems, a few trees that shade for a short period in the morning

June to date has been a mix of clear and cloudy days so I thought I’d use it for the purpose of this update.

Lets start with a graph (to be honest it’s the main reason behind the panels – gotta love a good graph!)
Solar PV production v Sunshine

Average daily production comes in at 11.045545 kWh 
Total production month to date 121.501 kWh

Looking at return on investment
NSW gross FiT, the money you get paid for power produced, is currently $0.60. AGL and a few others are giving people an additional $0.08 on top of this.
Money made this month… 121.501 x $0.68 = $82.62068……..$82…..for doing nothing….SHIT HOT!

But how much was the investment to make the $82?
Using the daily average month to date for June it will take 3,066.666667 days before the system has returned a profit, I’ll leave you to do the maths.

The first in a series of articles of random updates on our journey of going green

So I had an epiphany the other day at work on how we could reduce our power used at night for lighting. 

Aldi had a special on LED head lamps that were AA battery powered (generally they are AAA or need some other odd size that you can never get) and with no shortage of AA’s and my trusty solar charger I was onto it!

In my excitement I phoned home and a made a request that the “at homers” all be present on my arrival as I come bearing gifts.

Well as you can imagine the reaction from the angry teenager and her indoors was the usual “what the fuck is he on about now” but the little princess immediately saw the potential in my plan and squealed with joy.

After a couple of hours talking about money saved on our electricity bill and what we could spend it on the “at homers” agreed to give the head lamps a one week trial.

This is the point where a valuable lesson was learnt – never underestimate the lengths addicted power users will go to cover up their usage.

The angry teenager on the first night of the trial retired to his temple of joy to finish off the project that was due in two days time, or play with Mr Stiffy not real sure which one, and  what did he do?

TURN THE FRIGGING LIGHT ON!!!!!

“you haven’t got the light on have you?”

“no”

“but I can see it under the door. USE your head lamp!!”

Well the second night some more “homework” had to be done but his time no light under the door. How good is this I thought?  I’ve finally converted someone over to my grand plan to help save the world!!!!!

Long story short the sneaky little shit had placed a towel at the bottom of the door so no tell tale signs for his power addiction would escape to incriminate him. *sigh*

Plan B was called for.

After much research and soul searching  may I introduce to you,  Wattson.

In his own words “I’m the award-winning way to help you save money and do some good for the environment. With my friend holmes, I help you cut energy use and reduce your electricity bill by up to 20%”

Wattson is the cordless power see all.

You turn a light on, I’ll know about it.

Open the fridge, I’ll know about it.

Think you can feed your addiction when I’m not here? Wrong! 21 days of 1 minute power reading stored and ready to be download at my leisure.

Wattson has a radius of 100m so I can monitor usage anywhere inside the home and be ready to pounce at a moments notice.

 BE WARNED AT HOMERS YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.

The headlamp trail has been extended an additional week with the introduction of wattson and I only hope that this is the start of bigger things to come. Stay tuned.

Had a proud dad moment the other day.

Picked the little princess up from school and the teacher showed me this drawing.

“Its daddy looking at the inverter on the house” Just brings a tear to your eye doesn’t it?

Feeling down?
Think you got things bad?

Go and check out the Nikon-Walkley Press Photo Exhibition at the Lovett gallery and have a look at the shots from PNG and then we’ll talk

So we were sorting through boxes the other day and came across an old travel diary from years gone by.   Having a flick through I came across some notes from a trip west in the late 80’s and it brought back a few memorable moments.

Backpackers in an old Holden halfway between Cobar and Broken Hill with a flat tire. Stopped to see if we could lend a hand,  they had no spare of course but as luck would have it the stud pattern on one of ours was a match so at least we could get them mobile. Put the jack under the car to change the tire and it went straight through the cross member. Climbed under to see what was going on and the entire floor pan was just about gone. 7 people, no seat belts, no spare, no water, we left them in Broken Hill and wished them all the best!

We were camping rough crossing the Nullabor, swags after pulling off the highway. One night we spent just west of Madura and called into Cocklebiddy the next morning for a freshen up. We were standing around the front of the car having a chat when a snake dropped out of the engine bay and was he pissed. Must have crawled in there the previous night and after hanging on for 80km’s just wanted to stick his fangs into anything to show his displeasure.  Once he’d finished with us instead of heading bush he went straight for the cars refuelling at the bowsers, the chaos that followed still brings a smile to my face 

Talking about refuelling and this is the thing that sticks in my mind the most. Fuel prices were such a concern back then we were without a vehicle for a few weeks before the trip due to a  long range tank being fitted. I was also on the scrounge for gerry cans to take with us. All up, from memory, we were carrying 120l in the tanks plus eight 20l gerry cans, giving us a total fuel capacity of 280 litres.

And here’s the killer, as noted in the diary, fuel at Balladonia WA the most expensive on the trip was

.

.

.

.

50.8 cents per litre!

PP was out today, and the photos really doesn’t do it justice, putting on a display of power surfing. Even stopped shooting just to enjoy it. Alley oops, air reverse, supermans, rodeo clowns are part of the future but bottom foot fin straining jams –  I love ‘em!