My Subaru is nearing 100K. Hopefully I’ll get another few cheap years out of it, but then I’ll have a decision to make. I’m really interested in the possibility of getting an all-electric car. My commute is ~12 miles each way which seems easy for almost all the electric cars out there today. There are lots of free charging stations around the area and there are so many Teslas and Nissan Leaf’s around here that you hardly even notice them anymore.
The costs are really coming down and you can make a fairly convincing argument that you’ll finally break even on the cost after the life of the car (though people on either side of the argument will still say that’s either too conservative or too unrealistic.)
There seem to be two design ideas on the market:
- Most companies spend a lot of money on the battery packs and provide something that will survive many charge/discharge cycles over many years. There are charging stations at many parks and businesses.
- Tesla is building their own “super charging” stations which give you a half charge in only 20 minutes or you can do a complete automated (ROBOTS!) swap of the battery pack in 90 seconds. Charging is free. Battery packs cost about the same amount as a tank of gas.
Tesla is making cars people really want to drive with good recharging capabilities and everyone else is following an agreed-upon standard. Who’s right?
The more I use SkyDrive, the more I like it. It’s an easy way to share files between computers and devices, and it’s a great way to share files with other people. On top of all that, it’s free. At work we use the professional paid version of SkyDrive and I keep all my work documents out there.
Seattle generally has great summer weather, but this one has been extraordinary. The forecast every day is 80 and cloudless sunshine. That generally starts in July but this year it started in early/mid June. If you want to read all the details, check out 
Happy Birthday to the incredible mother of my son! I know it’s a little weird to say that and then use a picture of Tyla and Oskar, but I thought she’d enjoy the photo (from just after we met in 2008.) I wonder how long it will be before Elijah is as big as Oskar?
Our little man is now seven and a half weeks old and he’s not so little anymore! He’s gaining wait at a good rate and seems to be very healthy. He can hold up his head while laying on his stomach and is just starting to give us some of his first intentional smiles. When we’re out and about, we keep him in the Moby wrap most of the time because it both keeps him really calm and quiet (or sleeping), and it helps us avoid passing him around a lot. Pertussis (whooping cough) is still at crazy levels, and I just heard that there are a disturbing number of cases of measles appearing in the area and he won’t get that vaccine for quite a while. So we’ll be the over protective first time parents and keep him in the wrap.
The other day I was wandering through the grocery store looking for some sweetened condensed milk and when I saw the “Carnation” brand, something clicked and I realized there was a big Nestle farm in the town of Carnation, WA. I ride past it on one of my favorite motorcycle loops.
If you’re worried about Prism and the NSA, have you ever stopped to think about that device you’re carrying around in your pocket? The government doesn’t have to worry about tracking where you are because you’re doing it for them. At a minimum your cell phone is reporting which cell tower it’s connected to and sometimes it will report GPS location which is more exact. I’m fine with that, but I also feel that if info like this is being collected about me, I want to have the data! This stuff is cool!
When babies are in the womb, they have quite a noisy environment with all the blood rushing around in addition to the muffled noises from outside the womb. So it makes sense when they are born that it’s comforting to have some white noise playing while they sleep. There are tons of white noise generators on the market, but we picked up an hour long MP3 called “
We’ve been doing quite a lot of grilling over the past year. While Tyla was pregnant, we were extra careful about making sure that the meat was cooked thoroughly. I got in the habit of using an instant read thermometer, but now that Elijah is here, I still find myself using it. Maybe it’s wimpy or geeky, but using that thermometer has saved me numerous times from either over or under cooking the meet. I use this
Treehouse Masters
If you only watch one episode, check out the finale called “Love is in the Air.” Pete builds a treehouse on their own property so he gets to do exactly what he wants and wow, it’s a whopper of a treehouse! What’s even cooler for us is that we saw them building this while we were there. The film crew wasn’t there that day, but they had gotten the metal bridge supports in and were working on the main treehouse building. Pretty cool!
I’m so thankful that we stayed there last summer before this TV show hit. Even then it was nearly impossible to find an opening 6-8 months into the future and now they don’t even offer online booking or prices. You have to email them. I imagine they are flooded with requests!