National Do Not Call List
Uh, okay. So we have been getting a bunch of telemarketing calls lately, so I went to the National Do Not Call Registry website to confirm that we are signed up. This was the response email.
Your phone number with the last four digits 3341 was most recently registered in the National Do Not Call Registry on April 21, 2009. Most telemarketers will be required to stop calling you 31 days from your registration date.
Visit https://www.donotcall.gov to do any of these things:
— to renew your registration
— to file a complaintPrint this email and keep it for your records.
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Please do not reply to this message as it is from an unattended mailbox. Any replies to this email will not be responded to or forwarded. This service is used for outgoing emails only and cannot respond to inquiries.
Notice the date discrepancy? It is April 20, 2009, approximatly 9:45 am. And the email says what? Tomorrow? Does the government have a top secret time machine? Or do they just not know how to tell time?
Solar Panels
We’ve had solar panels on our roof for about 6 months now, and they’ve been operating for about 3 months. I’ve had quite a few questions about them and will attempt to answer some of these questions here.
The most common question has been “How are they working out?” I assume people are wondering whether we are recouping the money we spent on them. Well… since we are leasing the panels for 15 years we pay about $40 per month with no upfront cost. Our February bill was the first full bill with the panels turned on. I did the math and we would have spent $21 dollars more on our power bill without the panels. So we spent $19 to help save the environment. Our March bill would have been $27 more so we spent $13. At this rate we will at least break even. With the electricity price increasing in May and the day length increasing as well we may even make a little money.
One of the benefits of the lease is that the monitoring is provided free of charge (I’d have to pay for monitoring if I purchased the panels outright). Monitoring the panels refers to the inverter sending production information to Solar City. They in turn publish my production information on a website that they monitor in case the panels start to fail, and allows me to see how much electricity has been produced on my roof. Anyone can see this website: Link.
It seems that many people are skeptical of it being a wise financial investment to put solar panels on their roof. Rumors and heresay permeate the atmosphere when it comes to new technology. I can’t say for sure, I haven’t had them for an entire year, but even if all we do is break even, we’re helping the environment with no out of pocket expense. We are also hedging our power bill against further rate increases from SRP; rate increases that have become an annual occurance lately.
NIST and little miss chatterbox
I read Hannah the Little Miss Chatterbox (Mr. Men and Little Miss)
Hannah didn’t get it and I couldn’t explain it to her satisfaction. I guess the days of calling time are over. I did get a little curious, and it turns out that you can still call time. NIST (the National Institue of Standards and Technology), the people who are the official deciders of what time it is down to the nearest nanosecond (1 billionth of a second), have a number that still tells you the time. (303) 499-7111 or (808) 335-4363 if you prefer calling from Hawaii. It says the time once then beeps at you.
And I thought that calling time was ancient history.
Brake Job on the Mini
So I’ve been changing my own brake pads for a while now. It’s a very easy job, take off the tire, undo 2 bolts that hold the brake caliper on and then take the caliper off. The old pads then slide out. After that you use a ‘C’ clamp to press the piston back in and then and the new pads slide right in and the whole caliper slides back onto the roter and you put the 2 bolts in and replace the tire. Voila it’s done. Not even 10 minutes if I have help 20 if I don’t.
My dad asked me to help him do the brakes on his Mini. Sure, they’re not that bad, I figured with help we’d have it done in 30 minutes. Heck with the mini you don’t even need a jack, he could lift up one side and I’d put a jack stand under it.
Apparently disk brakes on European vehicles work differently than those on American and Asian made cars. After an hour trying to take the caliper off I finally decided that since the pads were going into the garbage I’d destroy them and use a hammer to take it off. That worked, now to compress the piston. After going next door to borrow a clamp big enough we tried and tried and it didn’t compress. After playing for a while we discovered that if we activated the emergency brake the piston would come all the way out. We took the boot off and the piston twisted off. The piston screws on, that explains why we couldn’t push it back into place. At this point we have the brake caliper completely disconnected. With the help of a pair of needle nosed pliers we got it twisted back into place. After we completely reconnected it we went to do the other side. We couldn’t get that caliper twisted back into place until we disconnected the brake lines and drained the fluid out. Still the second brake only took about 15 minutes, well 20 after we found the small leak at the connection of the brake line and got that fixed. After bleeding the brake lines we logged more than 5 hours for a 30 minute brake job. Apparently all we needed was a brake caliper rewind kit and it would have taken the 10 minutes per brake. I guess since one of the brakes was to the metal and we’ll have to replace that rotor before long we’ll have to get that set and save ourselves 4.5 hours.
I learned a lot. I still don’t understand why BMW charges $1,000 for a brake job. We could replace all the pads and rotors for less than $300. If they really make $1,400 per hour I need to be a BMW mechanic. Maybe I should open up my own shop and charge $1,000 dollars per hour. Heck even $100 per hour would be nice.
Crazy Week
This has been an insanely crazy week. Last Sunday I thought it would be a nice slow week that I could really get into the holiday spirit and enjoy life. I spent days after work doing computer repairs/upgrades for people. During the rain we had this week my roof sprung a leak. I still haven’t found it. I do have a coupld places I think it might be coming from, I’ll just have to wait a couple days until it rains again to figure out for sure where it’s coming from. On Thursday the HVAC guy came out to check out the heater and clean it. That took a few hours and lots of money. Yesterday they turned on our Solar Panels. More importantly yesterday was Victoria’s birthday.
Today, lets see, today I cleaned the kitchen (thats normal for saturday morning) then I fixed the cupboard door that has been sitting on the floor for who knows how long; I stubbed my toe one too many times. I fixed the leak in the kitchen faucet. (P.S. it’s really hard to find the right gaskets for cheap, no name faucets. There are kits for delta and moen and other nice brands, the cheap ones are hard to find. I had to by a 12 dollar pack of gaskets to get the right one. So if you need a gasket see me first. I have about 100 in assortes sizes, who needs 100 gaskets?) I also made some good progress on a christmas present I’m making. I really want a quiet week to come home and not have anything to do but spend time with my family. I know it won’t happen for a long time, invariably something comes up, but it sure would be nice.
