The film was a look at industrial design and how it impacts our lives today … they looked at a ton of objects and designers from a sustainable toothbrush to the mac powerbook to the oxo vegetable peeler. It was amazing to see how much thought and effort goes into every object we use (a lot of which we already know) but one of the biggest themes was sustainability – how can we make objects that last, or if they aren’t supposed to last (like your cell phone) how can we make it in a sustainable way so we aren’t filling our landfills with plastic.

It was a great night … but when I got home I said to mark, I had so much fun tonight but  going out on dates are so different now that we are older. He said I know, but there is one thing that really stuck with me about the film tonight was items that you grow into not out of, items that get better with age – like marriage. (and like the leather briefcase they were actually referring to in the film). I totally agree, Mark!

(ok, so I hate posts that are so sickly sweet – but that one had to be documented!)

So to top this off, I wanted to add an early photo (actually the first one ever taken) … Mark and I officially hit it off at a mutual friends wedding where we were both seated at the singles table – that some how collected all extra champagne bottles.

A special thanks to scott and julie for organizing the whole night! It was awesome – but it definitely made us miss you more.

Now that Elsie is moving into the phase of loving baby einstein, elmo and pixar movies, the AppleTV gives us an instant way to play any of these, and download video podcasts rom sesame street, superwhy and a ton of other children’s programming. But as we bought the pixar DVD box set and ripped them with handbrake, I found my 40Gb capacity was not enough for all my music and videos. So I decided to try to upgrade my AppleTV hard drive to 250Gb to future proof it for a while. After a few mistaken orders, I got the hard drive for <$100 and followed the instructions online, had to dig up a workaround for an error I kept getting, and finally ended up with everything working with a 230Gb capacity instead of 30Gb! Sweet!

This morning we woke up to a blizzard…

Hopefully the trees weren’t tricked!

After sitting around in the shop in Billings for a while, the weather cleared and Kevin did us the huge favor of renting a trailer and dragging it down to Colorado and we got it set up.

The shade structure consists of a lot of big wood. the support columns were 8×10, and some of the extensions were over 20 feet long. That’s some heavy wood! The first step was to stand up the posts (9 feet tall) that sit on some steel footings we had mounted on the patio.

Then we had to get the main long beams installed. We had Tom and Mike (who recently helped us with our landscaping) come by for a few hours in the morning to add some muscle.

It took all of Josh, Kevin, Mike, Tom and I to get those long beams up to sit on top of the posts.

After the long posts were up (with no injuries), we put on the large cross beams. Once that was done, the heavy lifting was done and we had a beer!

Kevin and I then mounted the 4×6 cross beams and the 4×4 extended beams on top of that and we were done with the main construction.

Next step is to electrify this structure with some sconces and a ceiling fan for hot summer days. Mandy might also put up some shade curtains to soften this up a bit. But the hard work is done and the structure looks just amazing! More pictures to come when we have the space a little more finalized.

This was quite a surprise to us given that we had just invested in something that we were supposed to maintain for 20 years per our agreement with XCel Energy who was subsidising the system substanitally so they could meet their renewable energy goals as mandated by the state. First of all, we were fairly shocked that a golf ball would break the panels given we were continually assured that the panels hold up to “golf ball sized hail” whenever we expressed concern. Of course, we all know that the reason we pay up to $5 per golf ball is that in theory it should go considerably further and faster than an equivalent sized piece of hail if we hit it just right (and also not explode on impact). So shame on us for not delving into that piece of sales magic!

We expressed this concern to the vendor REC Solar as we felt we had been mislead into thinking the panels would withstand our occasional golf ball hits we get and they claimed to feel awful . Actually I should say I expressed this: I have found through this process that my wife can sometimes exhibit a temper that borders on the incredible hulk. If you add sleazy sales practices, considerable financial outlay, and destruction of property together, she would poke a guy’s eye out if you’re not careful. So I took ownership over a relatively genial email and phone discussion that over the course of several weeks we went from a “gee, I don’t know what we can do” to an agreement that they would replace the broken panel and the next 6 for free and all subsequent ones at cost. Still not ideal, but the best we can hope for.

We’re all crossing our fingers in the hope that that truly was a freak shot… and if it wasn’t and we’re down 2 more panels this time next year, then we’ll look at removing the panels and figuring out what to do next. But for now, we’re back to full capacity (over 5kW at peak production today) and feeling good.

But to top it all off, we have been working on getting solar panels installed. What, solar panels, those ugly 70′s things that heat your water? No, I mean real electrovoltaic solar panels that generate electricity. This wasn’t an entirely altruistic decision, though it does assuage our guilt at the fact that the two of us consume about twice the national average energy for a house.

XCel energy has been told (Colorado Amendment 37) it must generate at least 3% of it’s energy from renewable sources this year and at least 10% by 2015. So to get them there, they have set up a “Solar*Rewards” program (link here) that provides fairly generous rebates for consumers to set up Solar Panels as long as they can claim them as part of their renewable energy portfolio. The rebates are so generous that they cover more than 50% of the cost of the panels.

Given our perfect south facing roof, we can accomodate a lot of panels, so we decided to go with a 6.5kW system (that means peak production will be 6.5 kilowatts) that was installed on our roof over the past few weeks. The installation included the panels, two inverters and now we’re just waiting for XCel to come and install a new net-meter that will allow us to put juice back into the grid if we produce more than we consume. Once it’s all switched on, we’ll get a readout of our power generation and we hope to be able to get a real-time and historical view of the production so we can feel good about our expenditure. I also hope that in time, solar panels will become a real selling feature to the new eco-conscious youth of America, but that may be hoping for too much!

Here you can see our red house (second from the left in the front) and its 36 solar panels ready for action (thanks Dave Fish for the aerial photo)!

Here are the two inverters – yet to be turned on – and the soon to be replaced power meter.

We hope this makes up for the fact that we are using disposable diapers with Elsie. Sorry Earth!