Breathless in Vienna

I landed in Vienna with a bad case of the Lufthansa flu, probably contracted from one of the twenty or so people that bumped into me as I tried to sleep on the nine hour flight from Houston to Frankfurt. The seats were also tiny. In Frankfurt we changed planes and caught an Austrian Air flight into Vienna. The Hotel Herzherzog Rainer was beautiful. We checked in on Christmas Eve and tried to enjoy the mostly closed Christmas Market before meeting up with our oldest daughter, The Professor, who is taking a break from her studies to teach English in nearby Baden. She led me, my wife, and Indiana Jane into the subway and then the train station. Twenty minutes later she was showing off her culinary skills in her tiny basement apartment, and had just enough time to wow us before we headed back to Vienna and a few hours of blessed slumber.

We could have slept in, as it turns out. Vienna was mostly asleep on Christmas day, the cold I caught on the Lufthansa flight had strengthened to the point that I couldn't smell or taste anything, and all of the pharmacies in Vienna were closed. Oh, Vienna, you cold, heartless thing! Do the Viennese not get sick on holidays? And where was your Christmas cheer? I tried to speak your language through my painfully clogged sinus passages, but so many of you chose to be rude. A few of the souvenir shops were open and there were people milling about, so the day was not a total loss.



Tomorrow, Paris.

Kermit Was Right

It ain't easy bein' green.

Wind
I've been trolling the web for over a year trying to find an affordable wind turbine for the house we're building. One of the 1.5KW turbines I researched had an MSRP of $7500 and a 40 year break even point, if I installed it myself. The company selling this particular product recommended that the installers charge between $7500 and $20,000 for the install alone, based on degree of difficulty. This is a company that only cares about the green they can put in their pocket, and is apparently convinced that there are enough fools out there to help them rake it in. Let's hope they're wrong.

Pacwind sells the 3KW vertical axis wind turbine featured on Living With Ed for less than $5000, but has recently experienced some quality control and customer service issues. At least they are closer to having a product with a reasonable break even point.

What is a reasonable price for a 3KW wind turbine? I'm not convinced that any of them have more than $1000 invested in parts and labor, including the inverter needed to tie the system into the power grid. If you are a wind turbine manufacturer, and you put a 50% mark-up on your product, they will fly out the door, you'll get rich, and as a bonus will play a big part in saving the environment and weaning this country off of foreign oil. That doesn't seem like a bad deal.

Water
We're building in Hays county, Texas. Hays county recently outlawed gray water recovery systems, due to the large number of people installing them incorrectly and causing the run-off to discharge into the creeks and aquifers.

We are having a rainwater recovery system installed, instead of drilling a well. The costs will be the same, but the impact on the environment will be much less.

Solar
Way out of our league, for now. We'll build the house solar panel ready, and hope the rumors of a big price drop in the next few years actually happens.

Insulation
We're insulating our new home with a soy based foam. The foam, along with the aluminum roof, will cut our electricity costs dramatically, by a whopping 70%!

Yes We Did!

Tonight the United States of America lived up to its promise.

I was a child during the civil rights movement of the sixties, unaware that it was even going on. We were never taught to hate in my house, and it was a shock to me as I got older and became exposed to the hatred and racial bias around me. Why do so many hate because of skin color? It's as arbitrary to me as hating someone because of the color of their eyes, or hair.

We've still got such a long way to go, but tonight was a wonderful, giant step forward on our journey; not only as a nation, but as human beings. As my wife and I whooped at the announcement of the election results, and later cried tears of joy at President-Elect Obama's acceptance speech, I could only believe that tonight God has truly blessed America.