early morning meander…
by Travis on Oct.02, 2009, under General, Personal
Yes aimless ramblings… pretty much how I feel this morning. I can’t believe I’m blogging at 6:30 in the morning…
Do you ever hate the fact that whenever you have to get up for work or school your alarm clock could go off at 5:30 in the morning and it’s the end of the world, however you get woke up at that time on a day you have off and you’re wide awake? I don’t get it. I wish I could be this awake in the morning when I *had* to get up. It would make life so much easier. I guess it makes for good harassment of my daughter this morning. She definitely doesn’t like me right now since I’m the one that woke her up and won’t leave her alone, lol. She’s not my biggest fan right now since I’m the alarm clock that won’t snooze and I threaten cold water torture. 🙂
Speaking of Arwen… tooth #2 down. It’s so funny to listen to her talk with this big gap in the front of her mouth. I need to take another pic of the progress. Funny how we look forward to teeth falling out when you’re a kid and as you get older you come to fear it…
All is well otherwise, except Travis is currently sick. Poor fella has the worst nasal congestion and you can tell he’s just suffering through it. At least we’ve got him sleeping pretty good now. I think for the last few days he has missed so much sleep it was making him a little nuts. Last night he was staring off through the tv while watching me play Fable II. That kid and video games… he loves em.
So we finally put the casings around the doors in the downstairs. Only took me what, a year? lol. Speaking of… Travis will be a year old this month. Amazing how the time flies when you have kids. At least it makes winters come a little faster….
oh yes, I have the fever already. Only a few more weeks and snowboarding season starts… YAY! We really didn’t have much of a summer here… I *THINK* we had one day hit 100 but I could be wrong. 98% of the summer was low 90’s or well below. We’ve seen a lot of cold fronts and much moisture this summer which has been wonderful. Hopefully it’s a sign of a colder, snowier winter. *crosses fingers and hopes for the best*
Ok, I have much slacking to do today so I must get to it. 🙂
Observations…
by Travis on Sep.12, 2009, under Humor
Some things I’ve observed recently that just were worth sharing…
- The guy who felt his manhood threatened just because the car next to him accelerated faster than his from a light under normal driving conditions. To be a bug on his windshield and see his face when he got that speeding ticket.
_ - Office folks who put their badges in their front or rear pocket then try to unlock a door with it when both hands are full. I don’t think they realize how hilarious they look running up to an access pad and throwing their hips up to it. This is daily entertainment that never gets old.
_ - People who drive up to a red light and “lane dive” from 4 cars back to get that first spot at the light, only to be passed by everyone and end up at the back of the group of cars within a 1/4 mile. Way to go!
_ - “Competitive” joggers who get out on the trail/sidewalk and see you just ahead of them but need to pass you to get that feel good feeling about themselves. As they bolt by all you can do is chuckle knowing full well you’ll be passing them again as they run out of gas 500 feet ahead of you. Ahhh yes… the little 1 mile runners that don’t have a clue they’re sprinting past the guy who’s paced for a 5k+.
September, already!?
by Travis on Sep.03, 2009, under Fitness, General, Personal
So, I guess I succesfully went a whole month without a single post. That NEVER happens. (lol)
Not a whole lot to report. Sure I’ve had my ideas of rants, but not time to put them down. They finally assigned some help to me at work so hopefully I’ll see some of the workload balancing out sometime in the near future. I certainly hope so as much more of this and I’m liable to lose my mind and “off myself” as James so delicately puts it when describing his bad days, lol. At least I have 4 more days off work to look forward to. Maybe I can find something constructive to do other than sit around playing video games the whole time. 🙂
On that note, working out has been going well. Amanda and I just started actually doing some really good recording at the beginning of August and I’m actually seeing much better results in both of us. It renews the goals and keeps us focused. When we started recording at the beginning of August I was at about 25% bodyfat. EEEK! However, within a matter of a few weeks I’m already down to 22% and steadily dropping. If the trend keeps up I should be somewhere closer to 20% this weekend when we take our measurments. We’re still keeping up with the P90X routine with some other stuff tossed in along with it. I took up running again, except this time I got a bit more serious with it. My long runs are about 3.5 miles and my short runs are 1.8 miles. I typically put in a long run Mon-Wed-Friday and short ones on Tues-Thurs-Sat. Typically Saturdays over the summer were skipped due to push mowing a 1/3 acre slot of grass but with winter approaching I’ll probably start throwing that in as well. All in all it feels really good to run, the only thing keeping me from increasing the distance on my long runs is really time. 40 minutes is about all I want to take out of my day in the evenings for “working out” due to my daily schedule. Up at 430, workout til 530, shower, head to park and ride at 6, work by 645, home at 5, run til 6, dinner, shower, hour to relax/read/whatever, then sleep… rinse repeat. LOL
All in all I can’t complain. Despite being extremely busy this last month has been a pretty decent one. At the beginning of August we piled into the Highlander and headed up to Bear Lake in Utah for a famliy reunion on my mother-in-law’s side. It was definitely a trip with it’s ups and downs, lol. It was however, good to see Amanda’s family and participate in some activities out there like seeing the Minnetonka Caves. Arwen had a blast of course playing with all her bazillion cousins and being spoiled by Amanda’s parents. We also had the chance to go to Chase’s wedding in Logan, Utah. Talk about timing, the guy got married the day after we arrived and only 30 minutes away. Chase of course jokes that he planned it that way… crazy guy. It was definitely good to see him again and meet his new wife, Shelly. Congrats again to you both! 🙂Â
Arwen is just growing in leaps and bounds. She lost her first tooth (pictures will be uploaded after this post) a couple of weeks ago and she started first grade just a couple days later. It amazes me to actually think about it since it seems like just yesterday she was born. Travis Jr, is growing like crazy too. The lil guy has officially figured out that ‘ ma ma ‘ gets his mother’s attention and has proceeded to use it whenever he wants her. It’s cute and annoying at the same time. Despite the fact he’s been saying ‘ da da ‘ for a couple months this is the first sign of him actually “using a word” so the win goes to Amanda for him saying “mama” first. 🙂 The lil guy is also crawling around now… not proficiently but none the less he is mobile and dangerous. I also suspect it won’t be long (few months) before he’s trying to take his first steps as he is able to hold pretty steady on those legs. Considering how quickly he went from sitting assisted to sitting up on his own, I think we’re in for it for sure. 🙂
Ok, well if I’m going to upload some photos before going for a run, I’d better end here. Perhaps September will hold more time for me to get back to blogging. 🙂
Utility Company proposes ‘backup power’ fee for solar homes
by Travis on Jul.27, 2009, under Rants
DENVER (AP) – Using emissions-free solar panels to power one’s home may help save the planet but having access to traditional fossil-fuel generated backup electrical power isn’t free.
Xcel Energy is proposing a rate increase for solar customers that the state’s largest power supplier said pays for providing electricity in case those homes need it.
Xcel is proposing a 2.6 cents per kilowatt hour fee based on the generating capacity of a home’s solar panels. The proposed fee would be along with actual electricity used and a $7 to $8 service fee now charged to cover meter reading and billing.
The Public Utilities Commission will hold a hearing on Xcel’s new fee on Aug. 5.
Members of the solar panel industry oppose the fee.
NO kidding. I oppose this nonsense. Everyone knows that anyone who uses solar panels in a residential area is always going to rely on regular hookup to Xcel in order to power their homes at night or when batteries run lower than needed to operate a house. The nonsense here is there doesn’t seem to be any definition on where this would apply. Seeing as how there are many people who use solar panels on their rooftops to offset energy costs this could technically cause some serious issues if it applies to even the most basic user. This story taken from 9 News depicts just how freakin greedy these utility companies are. Are you kidding me!?  Talk about a way to completely derail the desire to help the environment or your power bill any. Let me break this down for you folks that don’t quite get what the impact of this is.Â
If they were to apply this to even the most basic solar panel user here is what the impact would be: Â
In a normal month (this is from my power bill mind you) I use a total of 1402 kilowatt hours a month. This costs me $54.86 (mind you that’s after you remove the $76.55 in completely BS fees) which makes each kWH cost right at  $0.039. On another stab, is it really necessary to charge people 150% of their power usage in fees?! Don’t you greedy people get enough money!?
Now, if I wanted to say put some solar panels on the roof of my house to offset *some* of the cost of running my servers and such I would go and spend about $10,000 for a 2.10 kW system for a start. That would probably generate about 245 kWH a month of offset on average. Not a ton, but we’re only doing the basics here. Ok, so with the proposed increase above, if it applies to even the most basic user and because I’ve turned on solar panels the cost of my electricity now goes up to $0.065 per kWH for power used from the grid. This would mean that the now 1157 kWH that I’m using now costs me $75.20 in addition to an extra $8/month for a meter reading. LOL Seriously? What’s the point in doing it if you’re going to almost double the cost of my current usage?
Now, in defense of the utility I’m sure they won’t apply it to the most basic user, it really doesn’t make sense. If they do they’ll have lawsuit after lawsuit on their hands I’m sure.
So let’s look at the impact of a heavier user of solar. Someone who say, offsets half of their electric bill and would more than likely fall into this category. They go and spend $30,000 on a solar system that outputs about 7.2 kW which would put out an average of 800 kWH a month. This offset would reduce the amount used from the grid to about 602 kWH. At the new adjusted rate that’s $39.13 + $8 meter fee. Ok, so you’re finally saving money, but before the hike + fee you were much lower at $23.47.
I’m sure some of my numbers are off here, I’m using some calculators on nrel.gov to do the usages based on outputs of systems so who knows. Regardless, the second user is still looking at a savings of only $8.00 a month as opposed to $31.00 a month based on my scenario. How is that incentive for someone to go solar? You can’t even afford to pay for the system at that point.
I dunno. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
