News and Views

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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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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Every summer we get ants in the house, especially in the kitchen where they like to harvest Apollo’s leftovers. We hate to spray insecticide around where Apollo and we eat, but hate having ants in the house too. Last year we found Ecosmart Ant and Roach Killer at Home Depot. The active ingredients are peppermint […]

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I just passed 1000 miles in my new Volt (1024 to be precise). I am still on my first tank of gas — I’ve used about 6 gallons so far, leaving a little more than 3 in the tank. 807 miles were all electric, and the remaining 217 were using gas — most of them […]

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I took a trip out to see Richard and Dianna today in my Volt. They are staying near the village of Congress, about 90 miles from my house. I was interested to see how the Volt did on a longer trip. Here are some numbers: First a summary: — It cost the same to make […]

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I had to burn .17 gallons of gas today, driving the last 5 miles home from Mom’s house today. I would have made it, barely, but I added 5 miles when I stopped to meet my friend Don for lunch. It was about 35 miles without the lunch detour. For you Democrats, Obama said he […]

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After buying my Acura MDX a year and a half ago, I had buyer’s remorse. One comment I made below this post was that I could have bought a Chevy Volt instead, since it looked like I was going to keep my Honda mini-van anyway. Well, I finally did just that. I traded in my […]

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That’s how much electricity I bought from SRP this month. There is a $15 service charge each month and some taxes added on that, so my total bill is $19.21. Last March I paid $116. I would have been net negative this month except for a couple of cloudy days. As I’ve mentioned before, March […]

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