EndreWhiteMane: And good morning/whatever time of day to everyone else.

EndreWhiteMane: LaPtiteBete you get you and your little one to the doctor and feel better. What kind of pasta with that Spaghetti? I have regular, thin and whole wheat? I'll make ya a big pot full. ;)

moonshineshadow: *ultimate hug* Here, that should make you feel better :D

EndreWhiteMane: Hummer sorry about the power, my friends up there finally bought a generator big enough to handle the well pump, some lights and the furnace blower.

LaPtiteBete: Me... not really better, I think I caught the flu and not only a cold... I fear my baby girl too... :( we'll see the doc this evening... I don"t know how I will manage to get there, walking with the stroller seems like an odyssey... All I can do since I woke up is lying in my sofa and complaining about different kinds of aches I have ^^ I can't even move my neck or stand on my feet more than a few minutes...

hummer010: I have a generator, but it's only a 110v, so it can run the furnace, but not the pump. Our well water is pretty shitty, so we buy drinking water in the big 19L jugs, so we can get water for drinking and cooking. We can also fill the toilet tank for flushing if need be. Luckily our septic system is gravity drain, so we don't need power for that.

When I built the house, a friend of mine suggested buying a natural gas generator and batteries, and forgoing an electricity connection altogether. Construction price wise, it wasn't a whole lot more than my electric service cost me, but I thought it would be more of a hassle. In hindsight, I wish I went that way. It would have been easier to add a windmill and solar panels to, and it probably would have been more reliable than Atco (our power company). I'm not sure what the actual cost of the power would have turned out to be.

hummer010: That sucks! I hope you and your little one are feeling better soon. Hummer jr. has a cold right now, it sure puts a damper on some of the Christmas festivities.

CarrionCrow: Also, good morning/afternoon/evening to everyone. =)
Only 63 hours, 58 minutes to go....life's just full of timers, isn't it?

AgentBirdnest: Good morning.
Your talk about timers makes me want to watch 24. I love that show. We have a picture of Jack Bauer at the top of our Christmas tree (I am not kidding.)

AgentBirdnest: Good morning, Mr. WhiteMane. How goes it?

LaPtiteBete: Me... not really better, I think I caught the flu and not only a cold... I fear my baby girl too... :( we'll see the doc this evening... I don"t know how I will manage to get there, walking with the stroller seems like an odyssey... All I can do since I woke up is lying in my sofa and complaining about different kinds of aches I have ^^ I can't even move my neck or stand on my feet more than a few minutes...
But ! I cough less :D that's something... Let's see if I can eat anything now... look on the bright side, and STOP complaining :D

j0ekerr: Morning there.

So I spoke to the guy who is doing the job interviews. We talked a bit, I told him a bit about my background, what I could do, what I couldn't, and we both agreed that it wasn't necessary for me to go personally.

He'll just fill up the forms indicating I did attend though, that way the work office should be happy.

I'm honestly relieved, there was no way I was going to get that job and even if I did, I'd just bumble my way through it and do a terrible botch-up job. Not to mention the relief of not having to drive a full 500 miles the day right after Christmas. Plus the salary weren't precisely alluring.


I'm a bit sad to see how few people seem to be left without a copy of both Witchers, no one has even staked a claim yet.

Hummer reminded me of one funny thing about solar panels over here. Consumers are complaining that they are actually having to pay the power companies for the electricity they are producing, through a convoluted tangle of clauses and legalese. Basically it's one big scam. Which very few bother to fight because they feel it's a lost battle.
j0ekerr: The joint ache as well? That's my absolutely favorite of flu symptoms.

[Sarcasm mode off]

(Yes I'm perfectly aware sarcasm is the lowest form of humour, But I'm pretty short anyway.)

Hope you start feeling well soon, the troubling bit is your girl, hope she gets over it quick as well.

I can't cook, but I can make a nice cup o' tea.

CarrionCrow: Good evening. =) Very good to hear that you've been spared the pointless nonsense trip.

Not surprised that power companies found a way to penalize people for wanting to break free of them. If they didn't, they might have to start worrying about eventually being made obsolete, and they can't have that.

j0ekerr: It's actually a bit more slimy than that. They were never supposed to provide enough energy to break free of the power company, only to supplement a small amount of your total consumption, thus lowering your power bill, while pumping the excess you don't consume into the grid. The solar panels were installed with government grants (we are encouraging eco-friendly energy sources, VOTE FOR US!) and financed by the power companies themselves.

Then a couple of years ago, the government pulled the grants away.

Then the power companies found some kind of loophole that claimed that the costs of operating and maintaining a... provider are actually a lot higher than they thought. Apparently since your home is part of the grid, and actually inputting, a small measure of power, that's expensive for them to operate. So those people found out, after a lot of digging, (power bills are notoriously abstuse) that they are actually paying for the watts that they are giving to the power company.

HypersomniacLive: *dusts off the spider webs*

I think I am coming down with something; I got a running nose, my eyes burn, and the worst part is that everything aches as if someone was beating me up all day long.

Meanwhile, I can't resist eating coconut ice-cream bars...

HypersomniacLive: Meanwhile, I can't resist eating coconut ice-cream bars...