I just bought and watched “An Inconvenient Truth” — quite an eye-opener — and I recommend it to everyone and anyone. Anyhow, aside from now being more of a “light-nazi” that I already was — my wife is the worst offender in this dept, but my daughter’s not far behind — I decided to take an inventory of all of the lights in our house and see where using compact florescent bulbs would make sense. We’re already using some, but I figured it was time for a thorough assessment. Coincidentally, the winter catalog for Energy Star Lights just came in…and I selected over $150 worth of bulbs (not for every bulb in the house, but focusing on the lights that are used — or left on — more often). I just finished filling up my online shopping cart, but am now being told that I’m…
(rant on)
…limited to only six light bulbs a year!!!
You are only allowed to purchase 6 light bulbs as part of this promotion. Please make sure that the total quantity of all light bulbs in your cart does not exceed 6…thanks!
Apparently, they don’t want anybody going too far in their “Change a Light, Change the World” Energy Star promotion…we’re only allowed the change the world at a rate of 6 lightbulbs per household per year.
Sometimes the idiocracy in this country is truely…Un-Freakin’-Believable! We would have been oh-so-much better off if W didn’t win Florida.
(rant off)
OK, now I feel (a little) better, but I still need to figure out where to buy my energy saving light bulbs!!! At six a year, its going to take 8 years to get the 48 bulbs I need to feel that I’m starting to do something about global warming.
I just QSOed Wayne, AL0E, in Alaska! 20m in good shape today. Based on a prior post below, you might think I would be down to three, but as it turns out, the mail man delivered a VT QSL from the November sweeps as Not-in-Log :-(
So 45 states confirmed, Alaska pending, and it’s down to four neighboring states…CT and RI to the south and CT and NH to the north. Time to get on 75m and hope there’s no skip!
I’ve been pondering what to do for a QSL card and today it struck me…base it on another pastime that I enjoy, board games! I set up the stack of games and took the following photo.
Now to figure out the rest of the logistics on getting a card designed and printed!
73,
-john
This past Friday I checked to see what special event stations might be on the air. The one that caught my eye was the National Weather Service Skywarn day. I found a list of stations that were planning on being on the air and noticed that there were at least three Oregon stations and one Alaksa station. Since I had many contacts with CA and WA during the November Sweeps, I figured I had a good shot at Oregon. I ran Ham CAP to get an idea of when I might have the best chance — mid to late afternoon, local. I did manage some skywarn contacts, but as I was scanning around I heard a 7-land station — not one of the skywarn stations, but an Oregon station non-the-less! He ended his current QSO and called QRZ and I was able to QSO with him quite easily. So Oregon is in the books!
46 down, 4 to go — AK, NH, CT, and RI — for WAS! (Actually worked CT back in July, but didn’t get a QSL to confirm.) I’ll have to go to work on 75m for the three New England states and then figure out how to pick up Alaska.
I can remember when I first started, I thought WAS would be next to impossible on 15w — the w1AB “killer antenna” has definitely helped the cause and WAS is now within reach!