When I built a workbench out of plywood and 2×4’s   I designed it to unscrew so that I could move it out of the rental and into our next home.   It took a few hours and a lot of unscrewing, but I was able to transport it to the new house in a single load.

Re-assembly was much faster than the initial build as most of the screw holes lined up perfectly, although I did swap the position of two of the plywood side sheathing pieces based upon where it was going to be put up against a wall. I also chopped off the upper shelf overhang on the left side, and chopped a few inches off the height of the top shelf to accommodate the lower ceilings.

 
You can watch the video of the re-assembly process here:

Ikea sells a set of cellular shades with built in springs that you can “set” to any height just by pulling down / pushing up.   They are all a maximum of 64 inches tall, and the “stock” widths they stocked at my store (Orlando) were as follows: 23, 27, 30, 32, 34, 38, 48

If you are using the XML Google Maps wordpress plugin (version 1.14.1 by Patrick Matusz), it has not been updated for a while, and won’t work quite right with newer versions of PHP.

If you are getting the following error message twice at the top of every page in your wordpress blog:
Warning: mysql_get_server_info(): No such file or directory in … on line 10

Change line 10 from:

if ( version_compare(mysql_get_server_info(), ‘4.1.0’, ‘>=’) ) {
to:
if ( version_compare($mysqli->server_info, ‘4.1.0’, ‘>=’) ) {

And that will make things work without the error messages.

LED lights are much more efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs, slightly more efficient than compact florescent (with much less mercury!), and have recently really dropped in price.

I just purchased a six pack of 11 watt LED bulbs designed to replace 65 watt flood lights for $27. When lit, together they use 66 watts. (And light up the kitchen better!)

Compared to the 390 watts used by the incandescent bulbs they replaced, this is a savings of 324 watts.     If they are lit for three hours a day the savings is substantial; 972 watt hours, or almost one kWh!   If we pretend the average cost of electricity is 0.10 a kWh (it’s actually closer to 0.117 for me) this works out to paying for the light bulbs in energy savings in less than a year (270 days!).     As long as the bulbs last for at least 810 hours, they have paid for themselves. (The rated life on the package claims 25,000 hours)

If we conservatively pretend the bulbs will only last 10,000 hours (9 years at 3 hours a day), they will continue to save   324 watts x 9190 hours after they have paid for themselves. This works out to 2,977 kWh, or $297 worth of electricity.   Not a bad return on investment for $27 of sunk costs.

In summary, it’s time to replace any incandescent bulbs you have with LED’s. (You may as well wait for the CF bulbs to burn out before you replace them.)

What MPG does a 20 foot u-haul truck get?   8.7 MPG.

My data point: Driving a 20 foot loaded U-Haul truck from Atlanta, GA to Orlando Fl (444.1 miles total, average speed around 65 MPH, using the AC) used 50.939 gallons of gas, giving 8.7 MPG.

I tested my 80% profile (limited to 25A) on a very hot 92 °F day. The chargers reached 65 °C but did not shut down due to overheating. (My 80% profile ends charging when the draw reaches 10A.)

A charger temp of 65 °C is still much hotter than I would like, so I don’t plan on charging in 90 °F heat very frequently.

The Sodexo “Unity” cafeteria at UPC in Barcelona offers a “complete menu” for 6.60 Euros that includes a starter, main, drink, bread and desert. You could typically choose between three different starters and main courses, mixing and matching.

The common vegetables were potatoes and artichokes. Ham, bacon and fish were the relatively common meats.

Below are photos of the ten meals I ate.

Grilled fish, french fries, and kale.
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