Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Lost (or perhaps gained) in translation

I ran across a set of dish drain covers in a Puerto Rico supermarket, and found the following text on the back of the package:

Chenyang Commodity World Using

WELCOME SHOPPING CHENYANG SE-
RIES HARDWARE TOOL ASSEMBLED.
THIS SERIES PRODUCT ADOPT ADVA-
NCED JOINT PACKING, CLARITY AND
AND HANDSOME,DAMPROOF,CONV-
ENIENCE TRANSPORT.

THIS SERIES TOOL HAVE COMPLETE
VARIETY,CREDIBLE QUALITY,BROAD
PURPOSE.

I especially like "DAMPPROOF" and "CREDIBLE QUALITY."

Monday, April 07, 2008

Favorite photos....

I have created a Flickr Set containing some of my favorite photos. I hope you enjoy them!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60694364@N00/sets/72157603882863063/

Friday, April 04, 2008

Battery Water

We recently installed a solar power system on a house we own in a very sunny clime. Along with the 12 180W solar panels, we have 16 batteries to store all that electricity from the sun. And those batteries need to be topped off with water - water for batteries: battery water.

Electricity: all by itself it is totally amazing and must rank as one of the great modernizing inventions of humankind, but getting it from the sun? Even more incredible, wonderful, sensible, liberating. And yet....we are still living in a world of conflict and poverty that in many owes itself to our oil/carbon-driven economies. There is so much talk about dependency on oil, so many tax dollars spent to subsidize ethanol - which takes more energy to create then it produces! and is disrupting corn-based food economies....and yet a.

All the technology exists so that at least in sunny environments, governments could lead a major conversion to solar power.

It's all very frustrating. But that's not what I meant to write about in this blog. I want to talk about "battery water" - a very ridiculous scam.

Batteries like the ones we use in our solar power system, and also those used on motorcycles, etc., need to be "topped up" on a regular basis with water. Water that goes in a battery, hence, battery water. Our batteries were getting dry, so we went to a Pep Boys auto store and found a gallon of battery water for $3.99. I looked at the label. It said that the water does not contain any minerals and also that it is "not for human consumption." Wow. Water that people can't or should not drink. And it doesn't contain minerals.

Well, I kind of knew about some other water that doesn't contain any minerals - distilled water. So I went online and looked up information about water that is supposed to go into a battery. And it turns out that this special "battery water" is, indeed, distilled water!

So we went to Walgreen's, where they sold us distilled water for the price of $.99 per gallon. One quarter the price of battery water.

And that is the point of this blog: if you need to put water in your batteries, DO NOT BUY "BATTERY WATER." It is a rip-off and nothing more than a repackaging of distilled water.