News and Views

I finally had my 240 volt charger installed for my Volt today. On 110 volts, the Volt takes up to 10 hours to fully charge. With the new charger it takes no more than 4 hours. This will make multiple all-electric trips during the day a lot easier. The electrician had to bury the conduit […]

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The electric bill for May went up compared to April with the higher temperatures and with charging the Volt, but we also saved more than in previous months. The total bill was about $87. Without the solar panels it would have been about $262, so we saved about $175! The Volt costs between $1.00 and […]

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I told the story of Derek and me driving to Northern Arizona yesterday to see the eclipse in some detail in my previous post, and I mentioned that I took my Volt. Here is some info on what it was like driving an “extended range electric vehicle” on a mountainous highway. As I’ve posted before, […]

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Yesterday Derek and I drove up to northern Arizona to view the eclipse. We drove the Volt, but that’s another post. This was an “annular” eclipse, meaning that the Moon was a little too small to completely block out the Sun as in a total eclipse. Seeing a total eclipse is on my bucket list, […]

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Here’s Devon’s latest commercial, for Lipton Peach ice tea.

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I know I just posted yesterday about my new DVR. Well, this is big enough that it requires a separate post. Dish just announced (and downloaded to my DVR) a new feature: “Auto Hop“. This is basically automatic commercial skip. It only works on the prime time shows recorded with “Prime Time Any Time”, and […]

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Dish network just released a new DVR (the Hopper), which I upgraded to yesterday. There are two improvements that stand out for me. 1) I can get HD on my remote TV. Before, the remote TV just received an SD signal, so this is a big improvement up in our bedroom. 2) Prime Time Any […]

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At the rist of completely boring everyone with more talk of my Volt, here’s a cost comparison I have worked out with my previous car (Acura MDX) and the prototypical gas miser, the Toyota Prius. Comparing the cost to drive my Volt (at 2.5 cents/mile) and the MDX (25 cents/mile), I have saved $360 this […]

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Devon has a very brief, but central, part in this new Ford Fiesta ad. The girls says, “Oh, a new car!” Devon replies, “Look at this: ‘CD Player’ “. They dubbed his voice, as they did the girl. The idea is that when he gives the voice command “CD Player”, it’s so cool that it’s […]

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