The Snow...

The Snow is Falling

The Snow is falling.

Just like the stock markets.

The Baby is sleeping.

And I'm drinking rum.

Big Changes, Good News

Well! No posts since August, eh? Bad old me.

Lots has changed. My wife's gone back to work so I am much more the primary care giver to our daughter, which is exhausting. I mean, I knew I am an introvert, it just all makes life so different. It's great, don't get me wrong, but very different.

My house in the UK sold, all the house stuff here is done, just have a nasty tax bill to pay this year.

But best of all: I was looking for orange squash, couldn't find any... so I tried Ribena, and Walmart sell it online! And in a blinding flash of inspiration I thought I'd check for Twiglets, too.

And OH MY GOD they sell them. The thing I miss most from home!

So I ordered some. Omnomnom.

Now we're looking for replacement cars, possible investment properties, some winter getaway when the snow (literally) gets too much.

Further Frustrations

Things are... moving. Slowly. But, still, most stress I have is due to the high price of lawyers/solicitors and how banks 'get you'.


And wasps, a bit. But I keep hitting them with a stick, and that slowly seems to be working. The wasp nest is getting smaller.


So. Getting a co-signer on a house: BAD IDEA! Expensive to get them *off* the mortgage. Don't do it, kids!


Applying for a Barclaycard in the US without an SSN: poor idea. While they accepted an "ITIN" over the phone, they then said they needed more info.. namely, an SSN. If I had an SSN I would've used it in the first place!


Cashflow is king. Really. I've got money *in theory* all over the place, but until one house sells (as in, I get the money into my bank account), I'm strapped - and no more rent in the mean time.


Guess what - there's a referendum in Scotland next month. I have no idea what that'll do to the pound. I'm hoping a NO Alex Salmond (your politics smells) will make the pound significantly stronger vs the loonie (CAD). Of course, it has to BE a "no", first.


Oh, currency markets, so fickle. Painful to sit and watch it go up and (mostly) down while I wait for a house to sell...


Don't get me wrong. I'm really lucky to have a house to sell. Just the uncertainty is a bit... What's the word? Ulcer-inducing?


Better find something else to think about for a month (or two). How long does it take to sell a house, again?

Awesome article on jobs

... and how pointless most of them are. Love it.


http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1s_sick_and_twisted_new_scheme/

Frustration Rant - QROPS, Mortgages, Loans

Banks. And solicitors.


Can't live without them, right?


So I'm trying to do "some stuff" - shifting a pension from the UK to Canada via QROPS**, selling a house, refinancing a house, all the good stuff.


The QROPS department of the bank I'm trying to move my pension to (that's you, Scotia!) are insisting they need to fill out four responses on a form *I* have to send to HMRC.


Fine. Fill it out, and send it to me, so I can fill in the rest? No. They want me to fill in my bit, then I send it to them (this is a form they sent me in the first place) for them to complete the receiving institution info, then they send it back to me and then I send it on to my old pension co.


Why? Let me guess: Because they are nosy fuckers. They want to see what I fill in so they have it on file, even though it has nothing to do with them (my old address in the UK, date I left UK, what else? Anything? Probably nothing!). If *they* had a legitimate reason to ask for that info they'd have asked it already - so they are just getting it 'by the back door' because whatever I send them they get to keep.


I'm just... fed up with it. It's disingenuous. They won't *say* that of course. But really, what other reason could they have for not giving me the two really simple pieces of information?


Selling a house... Well, this isn't Scotia, nothing to do with them at all. Just takes time. Offer's in and accepted but the solicitor (mine) wants a complete list of fixtures and fittings (I don't know, it's rented! Everything that isn't the tenant's!), amongst other things. Fine. My letting agent isn't getting back to me about exactly when the tenant is moving out but oh well. The English system of selling is pretty awful in that, until contracts are exchanged, the buyer can back out with no penalty. And that doesn't happen until really late in the process.


Refinancing.. this *is* driving me crazy. We're taking a co-signer off the mortgage as well as getting a HELOC. Apparently this means we need to disclose how many times a day we go to the toilet, as well as (re) paying for 'title searches'. Bear in mind we bought the house 3 years ago and the same lawyer did title searches then. Why do we need to get them done again I have no idea, but they are being very firm on this. To protect the (Scotia) bank.


We agreed to do the HELOC and make all this happen *two months* ago.


As someone who usually gets things done very quickly, I'm finding all this very frustrating. Incomplete answers, foot-dragging, etc.


The pension transfer thing will probably take another month or maybe longer, I have no idea (still waiting for a whole other set of documents from the UK side to arrive so I can fill them in).


I just want to scream. It's all such bullshit bureaucracy, red tape ("etc").


Such is life, I suppose.


** QROPS is a mechanism for getting a group pension plan out of the UK and into a foreign country. It's quite simple... Or rather, it should be.

Cold

Luckily, we're not one of the unfortunates in Toronto with no power. No. While we've had plenty of snow, we still have electricity and gas, so we're warm and snug inside.

Today is beautiful actually - the first bright, blue sky day we've had for (what feels like) ages. It's -22 degrees C outside, though.

Minus.

Twenty Two.

Compared to, say, Leighton Buzzard? Plus 7. Edinburgh? Plus 4. Well.

So in an attempt to be a little more weather proof should the gas *or* electric go out, I just bought a Mr Buddy Heater on sale. I've read good reviews about them in the past - should I manage to live in a van some day, or a cabin in the mountains, this will come in very handy then, too.

But for the time being, having a source of heat that is not dependent on electricity is a Good Thing (we have a couple of electric heaters - for if the gas is off, but mostly we use them as a boost for our bedroom which seems not to get much of the forced air forced into it!)

For the last couple of days, I've been fixated on videos of tiny cabin living - for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQyOcv9dJ2A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKfioojESyM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9_oeUqa_jg

How much space do I need? Well.. it's not that simple - we have *loads* of space in our house but it is inefficient (our main room is maybe 18 ft square!). I have the strongest urge to just throw it all away (Playstation 2, Dreamcast, computer, desk, books - especially the IT ones, TV/monitor), buy an RV, rent the house and JUST GO!

South, ideally!

Sadly I send my passport in to the US government in order to get some paperwork done.. so I can't go anywhere even remotely warm at the moment, even if I (really) wanted to. I mean.. I do want to. It's just not practical.

Thankfully, it's warm in here. And I have some stuff growing - a pepper plant is starting to fruit (!), I have some salad mix on the go, and a saved avocado seed has split and the stem is showing. Pretty cool!

Happy solstice (bit late but never mind, eh?)

New Normal

So... now we have a baby. Life is different. The baby is very little trouble, and yet there is much more to do. Thankfully I don't have a 9-5 job to return to after two weeks of 'paternity leave', so I can.. cook, do laundry, shopping, read to my wife so she doesn't get bored while breastfeeding, and so on.

Not much has changed - apart from the crib in our room, the dirty nappies (we're using cloth diapers, which means not too much to throw away, but lots of pre-rinsing and a little scrubbing, plus an almost nightly laundry load to do - when previously we'd do maybe two loads a week!). Apart from the fact my wife is a voracious eater (and much slimmer than she was a few weeks ago!!). Apart from everything.

I still have plenty of me-time, but my wife is now at home, all day, every day - rather than out at work, at meetings, events until various times in the evening, many or most days of the week. I am beginning to understand why married men with children stay up so late... because after everyone else is in bed really is the only time to ponder personal stuff. I lived alone for many years, and my wife's usual working habits mean it's been a bit like living alone until now. Having her at home is great (except for the regular "feed me!" cries, ha), but still, change. Adjustment.

It's snowy out. I forget, every year, what it is like for me walking in snow - not out-in-the-forest snow, just to-the-supermarket, where the pavement is sort've cleared, but maybe a bit icy, maybe a bit slippery. We only have one car on the road (mine!), and it only goes out once or twice per week - so both car insurance and fuel bills have come down a lot. Of course, we're keeping the house much warmer, cooking and washing during the day, so our utility bills are going up... but it's ok.

And the baby. Ah, the baby. She eats, she sleeps, and she poohs. She looks around a bit but doesn't really react to what you say to her. If you poke her with a breast, she'll go for it, latch on and omnomnom; if she's wet, she'll cry. She's 'cute', so everyone says, but she doesn't really do much.

Still. She's, like, a tiny human being, y'know? Pretty amazing, but also amazing how utterly defenceless she is! The center of our lives. For the next.. 18 years?!

You can see it coming, but I certainly didn't know what it'd feel like. I doubt I can put it into words. It's incredible, scary, humbling, and delightful. Everything has changed; but I'm still the same.

Pretty cool. Would I recommend it? I don't know. It's so entirely personal... and of course I love her completely. She's part me!

She's got really big big toes, though. Yeah. pretty cool.

Winter is Coming

Oh yes. And not in the Stark way, either - just a normal, buried under snow Ottawa Valley type way. First snow tomorrow, apparently!

So, the winter prep is pretty much done. After a mostly benign but occasionally grim wait of three weeks for a replacement part for our furnace, we have lovely warm natural gas heat blowing up from the crawl space. Apparently the furnace is 'why companies like these went out of business' - it's 30 years old and should last another 30. Not very efficient, but considering a new furnace is $7k, and the gas cost (excluding delivery - so just the cost of the gas we burn) is about $600 a year, an update that saved half is in no way worth it.

Suffice it to say that new, more complicated furnaces probably don't last as long, either...

I've done some 'yard work' - taking branches and leaves to the dump - so the garden looks ok. Three trailer loads! That's stuff that has built up over the last year and a bit. So the pile behind shed number two is more manageable. I want to get a wood stove in here so we can burn the bigger bits!

I also got gravel for the rear easement, and parking spot at the front. Hopefully that'll help with drainage in the spring. $30 for 'a yard' of gravel - bargain.

Finally, I just put the winter ti/yres on the car. Phew. Forget chopping wood to keep warm! The breaker bar I got last year is a godsend...

So we're all good, snug and cosy in our little house. The final tomato harvest was a thing of wonder - probably over a kilogram of really small ones, not ripe but they ripen up just fine near a banana! Should keep me going another week or two! Yum!

In other news - my house in Texas is tidy and ready to rent, just waiting for the agents down there to find me a tenant... Fingers crossed it won't take *too* long...

Couch Potato Investment Plan for the UK

In Canada, there is the excellent Canadian Couch Potato, but I haven't seen anything similar for the UK.

If you are looking for a very simple, inexpensive way to save for retirement in the UK, I'd go this route:

1. Find a brokerage. iWeb is one, and their fees are lower than the others I have looked at. Open an account - preferably an ISA.
2. Set up monthly transfers in to this account from your bank - as close to payday as possible so you don't 'see' the money and want to spend it. If you can afford it, set it up to you get close to your ISA allowance over the year - £950 a month.
3. Set up purchases of low cost exchange traded funds, 'ETFs', in roughly the following proportions:
  - 25% FTSE 100 (eg: HUKX.L)
  - 25% FTSE 250 (eg: HMCX.L)
  - 20% Gilts (eg: IGLT.L)
  - 30% international equity (eg: IWXU.L)

Regular purchases are cheaper to do than manual ones (at least on iWeb) at only £2 a go. By doing percentages rather than specific amounts, any leftover cash from the prior month will get used.

I am not an investment professional, which means two things. Firstly, don't sue me if it all goes wrong - but there is no reason for it to go any more wrong than any managed fund, and plenty of reasons that it'll go much better. Secondly, I'm not trying to make money with this advice. I get no kickbacks, no fees, nothing.

Basically this is 'cheap' in terms of fees. The management fees for index trackers are very low, and there is little commission-generating (for the fund managers) account 'churn' - the ETFs rebalance when the underlying index does so.

Asset allocation is a hotly debated topic - should you have bonds when they are likely to decline in value (yes, as an anchor; yes, they might still go up before they go down; yes, because the point is that you rebalance every so often - perhaps once or twice a year - to get you back to the asset allocation above; no, if you have a mortgage that has a higher rate than the bonds will give, or in fact any debt). One method is 'your age as bonds' but this is probably too cautious if you are far from retirement - 20% will probably work just fine. Stocks do better than bonds over the long term, but rebalancing like this forces buy low/sell high - and if you have no bonds, you can't sell any! But having a smaller percentage of bonds means you give up less potential return.

This is far from guaranteed, and you should of course do your own research. As CCP mentions, though, not starting at all is a much worse option than picking a not-quite-optimal asset allocation - and the above 'will do'. You have large cap, small/medium cap (ie, size of company) British stuff; rock-solid bonds (Gilts are UK government bonds, so called because of the gold edging); and a nice chunk of 'international' stuff - so even if the UK has a bad time of things, there's some other stuff to *hopefully* still give a good return.
Two things are missing from this portfolio - real estate, and developing world. Those could be added in very easily with, say, IUKP.L and IEEM.L. The latter is more expensive in that it has a management fee of 0.75%. You can of course roll your own - figure your own allocations out. But, in doing so, don't settle for some fund manager that is getting 1% or 2% in kickbacks from the expensive fund providers for everything they sell you!

Bay Trail

I'm very much looking forward to new Intel Bay Trail based tablets or hybrids that are coming in the next month or so. They are a much-redesigned 'Atom' platform, which means very low power consumption but enough power to do most stuff.

The original Atom CPUs went into netbooks, in 2009 or so. In fact, I'm typing this on one - an MSI Wind U100 clone from the UK, called an Advent 4211. 10.1 inch screen, 1024 * 600; 1.6GHz cpu, pretty decent keyboard. I had an SSD in it for a while, but went back to a standard hard drive. Running Windows XP it's actually fast enough for most stuff.

It falls over with YouTube and other video related tasks - the GPU integrated here is just too slow, or lacking in the optimisations required to do stuff in hardware - meaning the already-weak CPU has to pick up the slack.

Anyway, enough about this laptop. The new Bay Trail systems will have much that this lacks: HDMI (or, mini HDMI, but good enough); an SSD (how fast remains to be seen, and what premium for a reasonable amount of storage - the lowest tier will come with a mere 32Gb, and Windows will take up 20Gb or so of that..). USB 3. Some will have high resolution screens, some 1280 * 800 and some 1366 * 768.

I'm getting one. I just don't know which one will carry the right specs for me, namely:

4Gb RAM (there will be ones with 2Gb; some of the processors will allow a maximum of 2Gb, so I'm limited to the better ones)
64Gb storage or greater (on the good side, most seem to come with micro SD for music and such)
3g connectivity
Not crap quality

From what I've seen so far, I don't know that there is something that will tick *all* my boxes - the Asus T100 has a lower resolution screen, and no 3g; the Dell Venue doesn't have a full dock, but does have 3g (but at what cost?) - more specs are coming next week.

Pretty exciting. For a long time I've known I don't need cutting edge computing power. Pretty much any Core2 Duo CPU is powerful enough - and that includes the Celeron 847 in my Dell Vostro. If I can get that much power in a small tablet form factor, I'll be able to retire my Playbook (good for in bed, bad for web browsing though, really - until I found Origami Browser, which makes things a bit better), a couple of laptops if I get one with a nice resolution screen, and a whole load of power supplies, cables, etc.

Here's hoping something comes along that is able to meet my requirements! These things are going for a really good price, too - I wonder how Microsoft's ARM-based Surface 2 can compete, when it can't run all the stuff a Bay Trail tablet can.

Things...

I really enjoyed reading about the '100 Thing Challenge' when that all kicked off (guy named dave). While staying at Tremblant, and over the last few weeks at 'the farm', I've realised I need far less.

How many things do you 'touch' a day? In my case, my pared-down kit is:

Clothes - hat (because bald), t-shirt, socks, pants, trousers, shoes. Depending on the weather, jumper, coat, scarf, gloves. One thing about the 'vandwelling' movement is that you go where the weather is (or where the weather isn't!). So I'd be targeting 21 degrees C.

What else? Well, sleeping bag. I've only been to places with beds lately, so a sleeping mat hasn't been necessary, but should probably be part of my kit. As should a proper pillow - currently I tend to use either a towel or just go without. I'm fine without, for a while, but sometimes...

Toothpaste, brush, general purpose soap/shower gel, towel.

Laptop, power supply, USB cable to charge phone, headphones.

Cup, spoon, knife (more a pruning knife than cutlery). Instant coffee (urgh). Powdered milk (actually pretty nice). Noodles, plus something to eat with them. Water bottle. Trangia alcohol stove plus some alcohol.

And.. yup that's pretty much it.

I'm thinking that I'll sell my car, as the plan is to take one of our two off the road for Kara's maternity leave. Depending on how much I want to go trekking in a minivan, I'll buy a minivan at the right time. Leave three seats in (benefit to having captain's chairs for the second row!), make a milk crate bed, and put my Things in.. and I'll be good to go!

Kara raised a good question: What to do with diapers/nappies when on the road. We're planning to have reusable ones, but without a washing machine? Hmm.

What am I missing? Well, a mini-fridge would help, plus a more sophisticated cooking setup. The trangia works well - but it chews through alcohol quite quickly, and is only a single burner.

You can fit quite a lot in the back of a minivan, though. And it's not like we'd - all three of us - be sleeping in it for extended trips, more one or two days between visits, or the occasional hotel.

Well.. that's what I'm mulling, anyway.

Bought A(nother) House!

It's a funny old world.

I'm in the process of buying probably the largest AND cheapest house I've ever bought. The fourth house I've ever bought.

This one is going to be.. hopefully fun, not 'fun'. It's in Texas, so there will be another tax return to do. It's a rental property.

The returns are good on paper, but we'll see how it pans out. It is a relatively small purchase so, even if it goes wrong, shouldn't be *too* expensive a mistake (think.. nice mid-range luxury car).

What makes my head spin is that, as I said, it's a reasonable size - three bedrooms, garage, roughly 1/5th acre lot, and yet it is about 1/8th the price of my house in the UK. Once the renovations are done, perhaps 1/6th. Roughly a quarter of the price of the house we live in here in Canada.

It's not a mansion, far from it. Solid (fingers crossed) - metal roof and siding.

I am nervous about buying in the US, but the returns, as I said, seem good. Greed or good sense? Time will tell.

In other news: The tomatoes are doing nicely, the courgettes are getting close to being done. We just spent $500 on one car (two new ty/ires plus some little bits), $180 on the other (oil, fuel filter, wheel balancing...) which.. is a bit painful but I guess it's just part of the driving habit.

Kara just did a job up in Iqaluit where it snowed a little on her last day - in August! I'm just back from Mont-Tremblant. And next week we take a mini-trip down to the US.

I'm retired? I don't know. I'm puttering or pottering. Not really sure what I'm doing - is 'investor' a job title? 'Lazy bum'? Oh yeah - stay at home father. Just under 3 months now, ohmygodohmygod.

I don't know what to think about impending fatherhood. At Tremblant, I spent a little time with my (wife's) nieces - 3 and 5 years old, or there abouts. I guess I'm avoiding thinking about it too much - what will be, will be, worrying about it (which is something I do about lots of things) won't do much.

5-6 more food boxes to do - can't wait for that to be wrapped up. Then, in theory, I'm really free - I could just take off for three weeks. Abandoning my wife, 6 weeks before her due date, though? Well - she's working til the start of November. So I could - for a week, 10 days maybe. Maybe I will.

The other thing.. is cars. We have two. Once the food boxes are done, one will be entirely surplus to requirements - so what do we do? Sell the (my) Crown Vic, which I got a hitch on, and really like? Or just put it off the road? Or keep it on the road, and put the Civic off for the winter/until Kara goes back to work?

Leaving a car sitting all winter.. not the best. Off the road but put into a warm garage? Well, that's just wasteful, and it'd be almost as expensive as keeping it on the road. Selling seems best.. I suppose. But I love my Crown Vic! And if we keep the Civic, we can't do the soapstone (easily) - plus buying a vehicle in Ontario leads to sales tax, so 13% of the purchase price.

Oh well. I did need the car this year. I should've bought a minivan (something I can sleep in, for fun). But I have enjoyed my Crown Vic.

Well, that's enough of a ramble on a Sunday night. Happy long weekend, if you happen to have one!

Surgery - Squash Vine Borers

I overplanted one bed - courgette plants plus squash plants plus cucumber plants. They get big!

Anyway, in addition to cucumber beetles and squash bugs, it turns out I also have Squash Vine Borers.

It's probably too late for the plants I have. They have already mostly wilted and died back - I have pulled a few out already.

But for the two left, I performed surgery. Have a look at this video:

My plants do NOT look as healthy as his, sadly. What I have done is cover parts of the remaining vines with soil in an attempt to get the plant to produce more roots. I pulled 4-5 borers out, though not all in one spot like in this vid.

Fairly disgusting!

Hopefully we'll get a couple more squash, but if not... it'll just be one small one that I harvested a while ago from a dying plant.

I'll know better what to look for next year!

Impatient Bread

This is my recipe for bread when I'm hungry:

500g flour
300ml water - warm, not boiling
tbsp. olive oil
tsp yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar

Flour + yeast + salt + sugar into mixing bowl; combine. Add olive oil. Make a well in the center and pour in the water. I tend to use the handle of a wooden spoon to stir it all together at this point, else one of my hands ends up coated in dough.

Anyway, when you've mixed it all together pretty well, into one mass at least, turn it out and knead, adding a little flour where necessary. Cut the dough ball in half, and roll each half out into a baking-tray long sausage; put on a lightly oiled baking tray and cover with a tea towel.

Leave in the sun for ~50 minutes; turn on the oven, set to about 200 degrees C; when it gets to temperature, shove in the baking tray and wait for about 35 minutes, possibly a little less (the thinner the bread the quicker it'll cook!).

It won't be the best bread ever - to be really good, it should rise - get knocked back - rise again. I think I used not enough yeast today so it didn't rise much at all. But - I was impatient, and when it came out I made a little baguette sandwich which hit the spot!

Om, nom, nom as they say.

Now I'm boiling beetroot that I'm going to pickle!

Government, Why?

All this stuff happening to the south of us, in the States. Not good, is it.

It makes me wonder.. what is the remit of government, and how does it get decided that it has overstepped those bounds? Perhaps, every 50 years, there should be some kind of non-affiliated study into government. Clearly, power corrupts, and being in government just makes you insane.

Spying on everyone?

Opt-in to pornography?

Banning parking 'the wrong way' on a street, or having a clothesline in your garden?

None of this stuff is reasonable. I think I have a right *not* to be spied on (as a fairly ordinary person). A right to porn? Well, no, not exactly, but a right to browse the internet "unfiltered" (that means you too, advertising companies).

I accept I don't, strictly, have a right to drive. But I think that until I lose it, as long as I am able to show I can drive safely when necessary, I should be able to, and that nobody can remove my license to do so without a good reason.

We are generally, mostly, honest - about 90% honest. But clearly government and corporate corruption runs rife; studies have shown that this is a human trait, to take office stationery, to let lobbyists buy things, to buy houses 110km from Parliament Hill in order to claim 'living outside of Ottawa' and getting an extra chunk of expense allowance.

Is it evil? Is it morally corrupt? Yes, but the way is not to put those people in prison afterwards (that just costs more money) - it's to make it frowned upon by your peers, against the 'code of honour' of your institution. And to take all of it back with interest...

So, again, what is government for? To do the best for the nation for now *and the future* - not to sell the crown jewels to get you in at the next election. To have long term vision to lead the country to prosperity.

Yes, to protect the country from internal and external threats.

To go round bothering people looking for pressure cookers and backpacks on Amazon? Hmm..

The worst thing, as far as I can see, is not just that the Obama government sanctions this, rather how far it reaches. I'm not American, but I've been to American-hosted websites. The UK has a seriously wonky extradition treaty with the US.

The US is not an imperial power, but it certainly acts like one. Get your hooks out; sort out your own problems; stop being so protectionist and generally hypocritical.

I don't hate 'the US'. Americans I have met are nice people. But the government... what a mess. Stop meddling, fix your own problems first, and get your hooks out! Worldwide income tax for non-residents? You're nuts. Seriously. I don't know how you get away with it (stupid diplomats... oh and a ridiculous defence spend, yes).

Sad... putting whistleblowers in prison. They are the people that will, eventually, allow your - yes - great country to *be* great because they will have started movements that will demand change.

So. Governments. Get out of my internet, everyone's internet. Stop prosecuting your own people. Encourage sensible saving, not reckless credit use (it *will* come back to bite the country as a whole).

It's so stupid. So much of what they do is like self-harm!

Simplify the law. Make it *fairer* but less complicated! Nobody cares about this permutation or that permutation; make it just and fair. Make the taxation just and fair and, most of all, so simple that people can do their own tax returns without fear of prosecution for making a *mistake*.

Governments: Don't make life hard for people! Don't protect yourself, that isn't your job.

It's not that easy, I know. But I feel that, while we are going forward *technologically*, we are going backwards *governmentally* at the moment. There are signs here saying "Back Off, Government!" and while I don't know what they are for, exactly, the sentiment rings true.

Yes, I want schools, libraries, waste collection (though more recycling than garbage, thanks). No I don't mind paying for that. I want good, clean hospitals, where the doctors and nurses have good quality of life. But federal, provincial, municipal governments: Give it a rest. Evaluate what you're for, and STOP with the bits you don't need to stick your nose into.

Thanks!

Energy Use - 31st July

Our daily energy use - 31/07/2013

This included baking a loaf of bread in the evening, cooking lunch, and a little desktop computer gaming in the evening.

Productive

Today has been a pretty productive day.

I got up at 8am, ish;
harvested courgettes and radishes from the garden;
set some bread dough rising;
took the dog for a walk;
made the bread dough into bagels;
sold some stuff as part of my New Year's "one in, one out" resolution that I've been failing miserably;
made apple sauce from free apples from my neighbour's overhanging tree;
wrote (will have written) a blog post!

And I don't even have a dog! I walked *someone else's dog* before breakfast!

I've been meaning to make bagels for ages (I've been making bread for a few years now). Yesterday I made houmous with beetroot (oh, man.. really sweet). And with all the apples on the tree (and on the ground), I needed to do something...

Recipes: The bagel one I got on Mr. Money Mustache's forums, which was a good prompt, MMM forum

Apple sauce is basically chop 'em up, add a cup of water, some sugar, and cinnamon to your taste, and boil 'em down.

Houmous recipe was from the Beeb: Beetroot houmous (or "hummus" for North Americans).

And now.. I've got my feet up!

How to... Save $200!

One of our cars is a 2004 Honda Civic. A few weeks back, its Check Engine light came on, giving code P1035 - Oxygen Sensor Heater Circuit faulty.

Now. My wife got a quote of $280+tax or so to fix it. I tried to find the part locally to do it myself - one place wanted $320+tax just for the part!

I did some reading, and looking at videos on YouTube, and determined that a) it should take about 10 minutes (with the right tool - an Oxygen Sensor socket - trying to do it with an open-ended spanner didn't work as I couldn't get enough leverage).

I'm in Canada. That's why everything is so expensive. Fortunately, there is the US Amazon site, and they sell the right part for my car (Denso 234-9005). Ummm... $100? And it *is* the OEM part.

NOTE: This part is for 2004 and 2005 Honda Civics! 2003 and earlier used a 'narrowband' sensor which is MUCH less expensive!

Ok, so it took a few days to come. Amazon.com now takes the import duty at checkout so you don't have to be home to sign, or pay atrocious 'collection of duty' fees.

So I put the special socket in (after WD-40 was sprayed on the old sensor a couple of times) and... bang. Out it came. EASY. Anti-seize on the threads of the new sensor, screw it in, reset the CEL code on the car and... no more CEL!

Some stuff I want to learn to do, some stuff just makes me dirty (oil changes? Hmm...). But this? $200 or so saved, plus I get the right tool for doing it next time (hopefully not for another 200,000 km on this car!).

All I can say is, that the internet really helps with stuff like this. Another thing that helps is having a Canadian credit card that doesn't charge the standard 2.5% foreign exchange fee - in this case, the Amazon.ca credit card.

So in my physical toolkit, I now have an oxygen sensor socket bit; but in my 'finding out how to do stuff' kit I have DuckDuckGo (rather than Google), YouTube, and Amazon.

I'm pretty pleased with how easy it was. Not that I want to put the mechanics of the world out of business, but I don't want to waste their time and my money either!

Simple Solar Setup

A few months back, I bought myself a starter solar setup, consisting of:

20W panel (this was on sale when I bought it for $60)
18Ah UB12180 battery
10 amp charge controller

This will not power the whole house!! In fact, it turns out that even my laptop is a little too much for the panel to maintain - but that's what the battery is for. I am typing on my laptop, connected to the battery via a 12V Dell power supply from ebay (because converting DC to AC to DC is crazy - it's inefficient).

Controller, battery, 12V plug and laptop power

When I start the laptop up, the very simple charge controller's charge display (3 LEDs!) drops from full to 2 lights on immediately. If it's full sun out, it will pretty much stay like that all day. The laptop and battery stay fully charged if the laptop is put to sleep. If I plugged the laptop in with less than full charge, it would suck the battery level down pretty quickly though.

So I'm guessing that, in full sun, the inefficiencies of the panel and the cheapo charge controller mean it's probably only putting out 12-15 watts, where my laptop is pulling 15-25.

It's pretty cool. This laptop has a 3g card in it, so I can be totally 'off grid' if I want. I could use the laptop for 3-4 hours a day, and keep the battery and the laptop fully charged, at a guess.

Is this cost effective? No. The whole lot cost me $100 or just over. If it saves me 0.1kWh a day, every day, it would only save me roughly $7 a year - and it is very unlikely to do that much! A 15 year payback!!

But, it's cool. If we go camping, I can bring it along. The battery is neither large nor heavy. The panel is large relative to the size of an 80W panel (amorphous technology I guess) - meaning that, while the 80W panel IS larger, it's far far from 4 times larger!

We've also got solar powered food, but that's another story!

Summer!

Cripes, the first of May was the last time? Oh dear.

Well, it was a wet, dreary spring here. But, at last, it has gone - summer has come, and we're in fully bloom.

The garden is currently just about under control. I found a squash plant trying to climb a broccoli one day, and everything is a little close together (begginer's mistake!), but apart from that.. well, and one large tree making the 'back garden' a bit too shady for anything other than nasturtiums - it's all good.

So far, we've had:

Radishes
Spinach
Parsley
Chives
Courgettes (baby ones!)
Beetroot (we've eaten beet greens; there are a few roots in the fridge now)
Lettuce
Peas (mangetout, or snap peas, I think they are the same)

Plus a couple of raspberries from plants I bought and planted.

To come:

Dill
Sage
Rosemary
Tomatoes
Squash
Cucumbers
Sweetcorn
Potatoes
Beans
Peppers - maybe
Nasturtium flowers/leaves in salad (actually we could have those now, but I prefer the flowers and they are so pretty I don't like picking them! D'oh!)

Our neighbour has an apple tree that comes over the fence; she told me that anything over my side is mine. I think it needs thinning (a lot) as apples have been dropping, unripe. So on Saturday I thinned my side, and collected the unripe apples.

Then on Sunday I made probably 500ml of apple juice, plus a tupperware of.. what was supposed to be apple butter, but is probably a bit watery and more like apple sauce.

I was worried about how much the reducing would cost, on the stove, but actually it doesn't seem too bad - 20c or so. Plus I baked bread for the first time in ages! Om nom nom.

At The Farm, things are less happy. Despite an electric fence, we have multiple incursions. Firstly and foremostly from wild turkeys, which can fly over the fence. Secondly, from groundhogs which I inadvertently trapped *inside* the fence when I did one large rectangle rather than two smaller ones (there is a central wild area between the two fields) - not that it seems to matter, because they go under the fence, too.

Thirdly there is grass. We had a broken rototiller plus a very wet spring on very clay soil, which meant.. we're behind (plus I spent a couple of weeks in France working). Weeds have taken over roughly half the fields entirely, and all of the walking rows, and are trying to take over the beds too.

We're persevering. Un/fortunately we were hoping to sell 20 shares, and have so far only managed 11 1/2. It's fortunate in that we wouldn't have had enough for the first two boxes if we'd sold all 20; it's unfortunate because it means there isn't actually enough money to pay us for the whole season. Tricky.

The larger stuff is coming. A few of the squash plants look sickly. I'm concerned the groundhogs will be at the courgettes soon.. in fact I might rig something over them tomorrow. But my partner in gardening rigged up a whole load of netting and wire over the vulnerable stuff (things that weren't already under row cover) on the weekend, so.. fingers crossed.

I'm (still) pining for a house on wheels. Freedom, life on the open road, etc. With a baby due at the end of November.. well, it could work. Next year, while my wife is still on maternity leave. We'll see.

Oh, and, I'm kinda-sorta FI/RE! Woohoo!