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Showing posts from January 14, 2007

$146 !

I knew our gas bill this month would be high - but $146 ! So much for Questar bringing the price down again - that worked really well. Ok I know its been cold but that's daylight robbery.

My eyes! They burn!

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When you see shit like this, you realise why Americans have such a hard time shedding one of their stereotypes. In this case - no taste. As if the H3 isn't enough of an eyesore as it is, I present the H3 Faux-Woodie. If your eyes aren't burning now, here's a link to even more pics of this awful thing: http://news.windingroad.com/aftermarket/hummer-h3-country-squire-edition/

I think that might be a record.

My home weather station recorded a low last night of -20.4°C (-4.7°F). Whilst that's not the coldest it's ever been in Salt Lake City, it's certainly the coldest I've ever been here. I started thinking about this last night. The temperature differential, (rounding to the nearest degree) is -20°C to +45°C here, from winter to summer. That's a 65°C difference in air temperature. To put that into perspective, if it was water, at the bottom end it's well frozen, and even if it wasn't (like it was agitated water) you'd get near instantaneous frostbite if you put your hand in it. And at 45°C, it's hot enough to burn you. Or to put it another way, if you adjust the scale so that the 65 degrees is all positive, that means the water goes from frozen to 65% of the way to boiling. No wonder we have central heating and central air conditioning.

Rewiring the roof.

Given that I didn't go skiing today I decided instead to spend the day up a ladder. Well what else would you do on a day when the high temperature was -12°C? It was for a purpose though - I decided to re-do the heater cable on the roof, this time using metal roofing screws to attach the cable clips. When I tried them just clipped on a couple of years ago, the snow pulled them all out when it avalanched off. I had to use a mini chef's torch to melt the mass of ice that had built up in the valley between the two roof pitches and one large *crack* later, two huge chunks of it broke off and shot down the roof towards me. Hopefully, with the way I've done the cables now, at least if we get another ice dam, there'll be a runoff underneath.