random things
GE has shipped their 10,000th 1.5MW wind turbine. To put that in perspective, you'd need to do that again 2,000 times to meet just the US energy use if those turbines were running full clip 24x7. Of course GE isn't the only people making turbines (the US used to import them from Europe), so there's a lot more than that being built but we're still a long way from capacity. On the upside, a couple of years ago having 1000 turbines in the US seemed unlikely - 10,000 is pretty cool.
I've been reading a bunch of frugal living blogs recently, which range from the depressing to the inspiring, sometimes at the same time. Today's interesting (to me anyway) post was a discussion of Irritation Threshold - at what point does something becoming annoying enough to spend money on it, and how does that change as your income does? It's an interesting question as I'm constantly trying (and frequently failing) to reduce our expenses so I can finish fixing up the house and start paying down the mortgage, but also trying to buy higher quality things so they last longer.
I've been reading a bunch of frugal living blogs recently, which range from the depressing to the inspiring, sometimes at the same time. Today's interesting (to me anyway) post was a discussion of Irritation Threshold - at what point does something becoming annoying enough to spend money on it, and how does that change as your income does? It's an interesting question as I'm constantly trying (and frequently failing) to reduce our expenses so I can finish fixing up the house and start paying down the mortgage, but also trying to buy higher quality things so they last longer.