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More Deals For Solar Panels

In keeping my promise to post more often, here goes… While surfing the internet today, I ran across what seems to be a pretty good deal on solar panels, it’s on eBay:

https://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-50W-polycrystalline-
solar-panel-charger-power-jack_W0QQitemZ120
285442073QQihZ002QQcategoryZ41981QQcmdZViewItem

It’s a 50 watt, polycrystalline solar panel, $249 plus $50 shipping,

it’s a buy it now thing, no waiting for the auction to end,

Oops, never mind about the buy it now thing, upon further inspection, it is an auction, not a buy it now, but right now, as of this edit, there are no bids, and the price is great, they have other solar panels that are great deals too, some like the Harbor Freight panels for a better price.

Be back for more later…

Wretha

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Community

More Stuff Added… Comments

Ok, another “improvement” I just made on the blog, I went back and added each and every comment made to the main page, in other words, you do not need to click on the comments link to READ the comments, they are all right there, well more or less, it is not automatic, I have to manually go in and edit the message and add the comment to the main message, so if you leave a comment, it will appear (on the main page) as soon as I copy it over.

You will still need to actually click on “comments” to

LEAVE A COMMENT

, hmmm, leave comments, can you tell that I LIKE comments??? LOL

Another thing, I added some fun stuff, check out the post below

Hair, Shrimp & Crab Legs

I will be adding more like this, in small quantities, to make the messages look better, more like reading a magazine, that particular effect is called “pull quotes”, I got the inspiration (and the code) from this site: https://www.mandarindesign.com/troops.html#magazinelayout

If you want to add this to your blog, you will need to do it through https://draft.blogger.com
it will give you the choice to make that your default Dashboard, I would recommend not doing it, but bookmark the draft blogger page, that way you can use both, use the regular one for the majority of your editing and posting, and use the draft.blogger one for editing specialized things like this.

Wretha

2 Comments

b16-rounded-4008479 Kenneth H. said…

I think I found this blog through ‘mayberry’s Keep It Simple Survival! blog’. Anyways, I’m glad to have come across this blog. The posts are different with talk of html, css, hair and shrimp lol

Keep sane! Thanks!!!

July 22, 2008 1:11 PM

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b16-rounded-4008479 Wretha said…

Thanks Kenneth! I suppose my blog is a bit eclectic, but then again, so am I… :) Glad you enjoy it.

Wretha

July 22, 2008 2:42 PM

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Lucy, you got some splaining to do…

It has been brought to my attention that I have been neglecting my on line family, ie not posting much on my blog. Well, as you might or might not know, I have been spending a lot of my internet time learning about editing, customizing and generally tearing up my test blogs, I already knew how to make web pages, HTML is fairly straight forward, when I was learning HTML and DHTML, I chose to ignore CSS (cascading style sheets) because I preferred doing everything myself, I didn’t want to have to learn a new code that would basically do the same thing I could do in HTML, that being said, it turns out that Blogger relies heavily on CSS, I can’t ignore it any more if I want to really customize the look and feel of my blogs. So these last couple of weeks, I have been learning, researching, head scratching, testing, making mistakes and trying to figure out what happened… all about CSS, fortunately I am smart enough to make test blogs, several in fact, to play with and learn on, otherwise, this blog would have been changing (sometimes for the good, sometimes not…) over and over again, not a good thing. I have greatly enjoyed learning how all of this works, I guess I truly have a bit of geek inside somewhere…

Excuses aside…

So, now on to what has been going on the outside… The garden is doing great, it’s been raining pretty much every day, sometimes once a day, sometimes 3-4 times a day (and night), so I haven’t had to water the garden much, but I do have to go out once a week (or so) and dust with diatomaceous earth, the bugs aren’t really too bad, but I don’t want them to get a foothold, the biggest problem I have had is cutworms, so when I first plant something, I have to watch it closely, the first sign that something is breaking ground, I start dusting liberally, once the plant is 5 or 6 inches tall, and has more than the original 2 leaves that start, then it’s pretty well safe from the cutworms. I planted more things for the fall, they haven’t sprouted yet, but I expect to see something happening soon.

Right now, Bob is outside, improving the north deck, that is where we go in and out of the house, he put a roof over it, and is now working on making it stronger and better, I’m not sure exactly what he is doing, I hear the drill going and occasional words I can’t repeat here (grin!!!), whatever it is, I am sure it will be just fine, it usually is.

We ran out of propane last week, or was it 2 weeks ago? Anyhoo, I got 2 small canisters from the country store to hold us over, I haven’t …

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Community

Deer

A couple of days ago, something odd happened, usually the whitetail deer are very skittish around people, if they hear, see or smell you, their tail goes up and they bound away. I was up on the west deck and I noticed a whitetail standing on the ground, it looked up at me but didn’t run away. I slowly went into the house and got some crackers, I came back out, expecting the deer to run away at each movement and sound I made. Instead of running off, the deer stayed put, I threw a cracker down at its feet, I expected it to run away, but it started munching down on the cracker. A few minutes later, another whitetail appeared, I threw more crackers and they happily munched away.

A short time later, some mule deer walked up, I didn’t know what either group would do, they seemed sort of OK with each other, a little skittish but no one ran away, at least not at first, I threw more crackers down and each group munched on them, eventually the bigger mulies scared the more dainty whitetails away, but not too far, they stayed around to finish off their snack.

This is the first time I saw both whitetail and mule deer together in such close quarters, they usually stick to their own, though there is some interbreeding going on, occasionally you will see a herd of mulies running around and one of them will have smaller than normal ears, I haven’t seen as many whitetails so I don’t know if the breeding goes the other way as well, though I’m sure it can and probably does.

It was interesting to see the two of them together, that gave me the opportunity to see the differences between them. Their coloring is a bit different, the whitetails have a reddish coat, the mulies have more buff coloring. The tails are different, the whitetails have, well, fluffy white tails, the top is the normal coat color, the underside is fluffy white, the mulies have a less fluffy tail, and it’s mostly black. They are about the same size height wise, the mulies are bulkier, they have bigger heads and much bigger ears, their necks are a bit bigger. The whitetails are much more delecate, they have a slender head, much smaller ears and a more slender neck. Both have just about the same leg size (length and width), the feet/hooves looked similar, and the body size is about the same, if there is any difference there, then the mulies would have a bit more bulk. The mulies seem to be the more aggressive of the two, of course this could be because the mulies were young males, had they all been females, it might have been different.

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Wretha

4 Comments

b16-rounded-4008479 Lisa said…

I would love it if the deer would stick

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Update

The monsoon season has finally started, we get some rain once or twice a day, I haven’t had to water my garden in about 4 days (woo hoo!). Today has been mostly cloudy, but it hasn’t rained yet. The only drawback to the rainy days is we don’t get as much solar power… it means we have to really watch how much electricity we use, can’t run the computer all day, or run the refrigerator.

The hottest part of the summer has passed, the nights are cooling down, the days are still fairly warm/hot, but once the sun starts going down, I start looking for something to cover my arms, this morning it got down to 59 degrees F, I’m even starting to think about firewood for this winter, only have a couple of months of warm days & nights.

The garden is doing pretty well, but there has been some insect eating some of my plants, chewing the stems and killing the leaves, I’m pretty sure it’s cut worms. I know about using collars and such, I am looking for BT, that has always worked good for me in the past. I ordered some diatomaceous earth and a duster to apply it. I also ordered a hose end sprayer, I’m going to use an organic mix to spray for fertilizer.

We have been seeing lightening bugs, just a few at a time, but more and more each night. I’ve been told that before the summer is over, it will look like Christmas trees all lit up, I can’t wait to see that. :)

I have been cleaning a lady’s house out here, it’s much more fun cleaning someone else’s house for some reason. She thinks my house must be super clean because I do such a good job on hers… I hope she never sees my house! Living in a small, barely 2 room cabin/house, yeah, it’s clean, NOT! Hehehe, I tried to tell her that, but she doesn’t believe me… oh well.

This lady wants to sell her house and she wanted me to detail clean it, from the ceiling fans to the corners of the rooms, it’s been quite interesting… she is an artist and a very nice lady. The first day I worked over there, about 3 hours in, she asked me if I wanted to go into town, I said sure, we went to the bigger town nearby, then she took me to another town where I hadn’t been yet, we went shopping and I took advantage of being in town to stock up on foods and goods, I don’t think she was expecting me to get as much as I did, but I went as fast as I could, and she had plenty of room in her vehicle, it was quite the fun day. She has offered to take me into town any time …

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Mountain Man Bob

You might be a mountain man if you look like this:

bob01-2342348

Rather handsome I’d say, and pretty handy around the house too! :)…

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Community

Inexpensive (Cheap) Solar Panel Kits ala Harbor Freight

UPDATE 6-24-08
One of my very informed readers passed this site to me:

https://www.sunelec.com/

They have solar panels for as little as $2.98 per watt, as long as you buy in quantity.

FYI, Harbor Freight is selling their 45 watt solar panel kit for $179.99 again! Here is the link:

https://www.harborfreightusa.com/usa/tabviewer/
startBrowseBook.do?bookid=210&preview=&type=RET&simple=

This expires : 07/07/2008

I’ve heard that you might even be able to use one of their 15% off coupons with it, though I haven’t seen any coupons lately, if you have one, (lucky you!) USE IT! :)

I have one set and will soon have 2 of 3 more, this is a real bargain, they normally run about $250, $199 on sale, this price is well worth checking out.

4 Comments

anon16-rounded-5661787 Anonymous said…

These panels have a limited lifespan, usually MUCH less than the other types of panels. If you have the $ to buy 760 watts, they can be had for $2.98 per watt and are kick butt panels. https://www.sunelec.com/

If you want to learn LOTS about solar electric stuff go hang out on the forum at https://www.wind-sun.com/ForumVB/

The bottom line is the the HF panels are ASI silicone that do not last very many years. I do have a 20% coupon for HF if you are interested email me at:

survival@roscoevideo.com

Take care,

Skip

June 23, 2008 11:36 PM

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b16-rounded-4008479 Wretha said…

Hi Skip, thanks for the info, I included the link in the message. If I had a spare 2 grand, I would probably order a pallet of solar panels from that company…

Email me directly about the coupon.

Wretha
wretha @ gmail . com (just remove the spaces)

June 24, 2008 4:22 PM

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b16-rounded-4008479 Wretha said…

Oops Skip, I didn’t see your email address until after I posted my reply, I’ll email you.

Wretha

June 24, 2008 4:23 PM

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anon16-rounded-5661787 seth said…

If you check with Steve Spence @ greentrust.org, he had mentioned on one of the yahoo groups about having the HF panels for a number of years already and they are still working fine.

June 30, 2008 10:25 PM

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Community

I resign from eco-committee

Eco-town Minister (3rd from left)
Eco-town Minister 3rd from left

The UK administration’s plans for new eco-towns are increasingly threadbare, and Labour ministers are rowing back from earlier commitments. As reported in The London Times, I am therefore resigning from the committee which is supposedly advising the towns on their energy footprint.

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