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!

Green Things

My house has been full of seed trays for the past several weeks. Mostly for Tucker House's CSA, but some pots for me, too.

So far we have aubergines, winter squash, tomatoes (lots!), broccoli, cabbage, and a few herbs. Some older seeds of mine didn't come up - asparagus and pepper.

Outside, the rhubarb looks wonderful, and a couple of asparagus plants I put in last year are poking up. I have planted peas, beans, spinach, radishes, lettuce, and broccoli. It might be a bit risky - last frost is on the 8th of May or so, traditionally, but it's quite warm now. Lows of 7 at night.

But the dandelions... ah the dandelions. They love it here, just as they do in England. Amazing amazing plants, really they are, but OOOH so annoying.