Animal hijinks in Truckee, California. The BBC, that bastion of fair and “accurate” news reporting refers to Truckee as a Rocky Mountain town. And to think that until now, I thought the Rockies were in Colorado and up (OK, New Mexico and up)!
When we moved into our new home, we made sure all the lights we used most often had CFLs. Following the 80-20 rule on lights seemed the most practical option given that I would have to spend only an extra Rs 1500 on those few CFLs instead of > Rs 5000 if we had CFLs everywhere.
Recently, I identified the “Tier II” lights that could use CFLs. So I bought a Rs 200 CFL to replace the existing Rs 10 bulb in a light that was used for about an hour everyday. The problem that I didn’t expect to face, was that I had no idea what to do with the perfectly good bulb that was replaced.
There weren’t any empty sockets to plug it into. I didn’t want to keep it as a spare, because if another bulb blew, that would be a good opportunity to use yet another CFL. It could have been donated to the domestic help to use at their house but that wouldn’t save any electricity at the macro level. The last option was to break the bulb and dispose it.
This bulb dilemma is a good reflection of most energy efficiency initiatives and or initiatives to reduce CO2. When there is a new initiative or project and if there is enough money to invest, it’s easy to “buy new CFLs” and save money through efficiencies. The problem is with existing assets. How much money can one spend to upgrade these and what does one do with the residual value of replaced assets? It’s difficult to find projects with no upfront or ongoing costs.
Now the question is, what do I do with the bulb lying on my table?
Just when I was all set for making more tomato dishes before the end of the season, looks like there is something else that is bringing an end to the tomato season, at least for my farmer, Nigel Walker of Eatwell Farm in Dixon.
According to the article in Sacramento Bee, Dixon in Solano county seems to be the ground zero for the Mediterranean fruit fly, which is a dreaded agricultural pest. In order to cease the movement of the fruit fly from the affected area, agriculture officials have placed a quarantine on certain produce within a 4.5 mile radius. This places Eatwell Farm within the quarantine, and they are not allowed to move any tree fruit, eggplant, tomatoes, or peppers off the farm. The potential cost to Eatwell Farm is about $8000 to $10000 for the next six weeks, until the summer produce runs out. Read my farmer’s blog for more insight.
An infestation by the fruit fly can make fruit inedible and cause it to drop too early from the tree. Supposedly, the fruit flies got a free ride from Hawaii in the bags of vacationers, who could not help bringing some mangoes back to California.
PS If the Sacramento bee asks for a login(damn!), try dontbugme/dontbugme as login/password.
I am looking to move to another apartment in San Francisco and boy, is that difficult! I am looking for apartments by browsing Craigslist and have set up RSS feeds on my home page. I constantly check to see if there are any apartments on the market. There are a few that come up now and then. It is not as straight forward as elsewhere in the bay area. There is this open house that you have to go to and there are so many people that show up there looking for a place to live in SF. The owner of the apartment gets to choose the lucky one from many many many applications. Owners’ market for sure. I have found that an open house is a waste of my time competing with so many people and try avoiding them altogether.
Then, I look for ads that do not call for an open house. There are no guarantees even here. When the owner gets too many emails from people looking for a place, they call for an open house eventually. This is what happens in most of the cases in SF. Anyway, I chanced upon an ad that sounded so good.
$1500 / 2br - Amazing apartment! W/D, D/W, A/C, 1300 sqft, all is included, parking (noe valley) (Read more…)
As you have definitely heard by now, the man who made opera accessible to the masses, Luciano Pavarotti, died today morning in Italy. With his passing, we lost a larger than life legend. I have never been much into opera and (unfortunately) never been to a performance but I do have a few CDs of Pavarotti (notably his “Three Tenors” series with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras).
The ever reliable Youtube obviously has many performances by Pavarotti for me to embed here but this one strikes me as particularly awe-inspiring… it’s a duet with the late great James Brown singing Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World.” May both men rest in peace.
That reliable source of news for those of us tired with the war and subprime credit crunch, The Onion, has a bit on outsourcing childcare to India and other emerging nations.
This may be in jest but quite a few people I know (including my own extended family members) have been doing this for ages by sending their children to India to their grandparents and such.
[via Saja Forum]
If Venezuelan officials have their way, children will no longer have to endure their parent’s idea of what makes a good name. In the case of Venezuela, the names that we bid adieu to would be the likes of Hengelberth, Maolenin, Kerbert Krishnamerk, Githanjaly, Yornaichel, Nixon and Yurbiladyberth. Except for a “list of 100 names established by the government, with exemptions for Indians and foreigners,” all other names would be out of bounds. The goal would be to
preserve the equilibrium and integral development of the child” by preventing parents from giving newborns names that expose them to ridicule or are “extravagant or hard to pronounce in the official language,
Recently, fellow blogger Suman asked me half jokingly if there are places in this world that I haven’t been to. Sure, I do love to travel and go to places (some of them damn near exotic) whenever the budget, boss and wife come into perfect alignment and more importantly post photographs and travelogues online. But even my travels have taken me to only a small fraction of this big world of ours. Quite a few of my close friends have been to far more places than I have. Something that can be visualized by the following maps. The first one details all the countries in the world I have been to and the second one displays all the states in the US that I have been to. You can generate your own such links here (world) and here (US).
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