Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Picking up black walnuts to Bring Down THE MAN!

(WARNING: This post is Not Safe For Work if you're Al Gore.)

Yay! Hooray for me! I'm done with walnuts for the year! After probably ten hours of work, I cashed in my walnuts today, and received as a reward for my work a grand total of $6.57.

That wouldn't be much, if the story stopped there, but it doesn't.

I took my walnut money and bought two of the little pull-chain light socket adapter thingies that let you turn off a light bulb without flipping the power switch.

I put them in the bathroom, so now I can burn only one bulb when I need only one bulb, which is the vast majority of the times I'm in there. The only time I really need to burn all three is when I'm shaving. With the pullchains, I can turn on the two over the mirror at the sink if I need them, and turn them back off when I'm done. Previously, with all three running off the same switch, it was all or none.

Awhile ago, I had already switched out the 60-watt incandescent bulbs for 23-watt CFLs, so now instead of running 180 watts whenever I went into the bathroom, I'm only running 23 watts, less than 13% of what I WAS using.

(Pause here while Al Gore needs a moment of "alone time.")

I may ... MAY ... switch out the one bulb for a 10-watter from the kitchen. That'd be a 94+% energy savings.

(Pause here for Al Gore again.)

If I wasn't effectively trading walnuts (which are of no real use to me) for the adapters, I don't know how long it'd take for them to pay for themselves, but I don't think an estimate of "years" is all that unreasonable. So I don't know how cost-effective this is for real-live, actual humans. But once they save enough to pay for the three bucks or so per adapter, everything else will be just gravy.

(Now someone please get Al Gore a baby wipe!)

P.S. The less electricity you use, the less money you're paying the utilities in rates, and thus the less money you're paying the government in sales taxes. Just one little way to help Starve The Beast.

(Now Ron Paul needs a baby wipe too!)

Now, just to review -- Yay! Hooray for me!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hooray 4 P Delta Alpha! Stick it to the man. I got 4 years out of my two 20 watt CFL bulbs in the ceiling over my living/learning area and could do as well with the replacement 20 watt CFLs in the same fixture, and it pleases me to read checked-out gummint-owned library books under that light, very cheaply indeed.

DeArman