jamius.com

I think I have a long way to go, but do little things:

I installed solar PV panels that generate about 30% of my families total energy. I hope to increase this percentage over time by using less energy and maybe increasing the number of PV panels.

I own a car, but try to drive as little as possible (maybe once every 2 months). I walk or use public transit as often as possible. I quit my job that forced me to travel back and forth to the office every day and fly often. Instead I work from home and do conference calls or video chat with my clients whenever possible (vs. flying).

I also repair PS3 game systems for people in my neighborhood. I have repaired over 1000, and hope I have kept a lot of these from the landfill.

How many solar panels do you have installed now? Any pics? I work at home, too, and ride my bike everywhere I can if the weather permits.

You've fixed over 1000 PS3's??! That's impressive.

I too work from home, although I must admit it isn't all it is cracked up to be. I miss the interactions, but I have been doing it for over 5 years now, so I should be getting use to it. The group I work for is in Oregon. I am in South Carolina. I am the only one in South Carolina working remotely for this group, so it can be frustrating.

Unfortunately I live in an apartment in the city. I am considering various options that might allow me to do some projects, particularly with solar power. I have even considered buying a trailer and putting it in the parking lot and mounting solar panels on it. Unfortunately I typically work just about every day, so there isn't a lot of free time.

I live in an apartment out in the burbs. But it's close to work, so I can bike when the weather is semi-decent. And while I can't really put in a full solar system, I'm at least using less resources than a detached house would need for heating and cooling.

Meanwhile I work towards doing things smaller and more efficiently in the apartment. It's a work in progress, which is good because otherwise I'd get bored.

stashvault wrote:How many solar panels do you have installed now? Any pics?

I have 6 Sharp 240w (NU-U240F1) panels. Good idea on the pictures. I'll shoot some -- hopefully tomorrow -- and attach them to this post later.

stashvault wrote:I work at home, too, and ride my bike everywhere I can if the weather permits.

That's great! I wish I could ride my bike around town, but my city just has too much traffic. A lot of people do try to ride around town, but people get hit quite often. We also have a lot of tourists driving around that are confused (not used to the side of the road; etc.).

stashvault wrote:You've fixed over 1000 PS3's??! That's impressive.

Thanks! I enjoy doing it. There's always some new problem I have to come up with a solution for. Also, I charge a little for each repair, and use the money to buy cool equipment. So now I have a machine for removing surface mount components that is the same one NASA used when they developed the circuit boards for the Mars Rovers. It's really cool.

sjvsworldtour wrote:I too work from home, although I must admit it isn't all it is cracked up to be. I miss the interactions, but I have been doing it for over 5 years now, so I should be getting use to it. The group I work for is in Oregon. I am in South Carolina. I am the only one in South Carolina working remotely for this group, so it can be frustrating.

I can relate to this. I think we have to find ways to create more interaction. I was reading an article somewhere that basically said the human brain is wired to expect a certain amount of constant interaction with other people, and without that there are problems. Like a wolf pack. When one wolf is separated from the group, the brain starts to think he will die without the pack and it makes you depressed. Anyway, I'll have to find the link to that article, because I found it interesting.

I'm doing a larger project right now for a company in Ohio and Georgia, and I'm in California. So I know what you mean about frustration. I find that if I do more individual calls WITHOUT SPEAKERPHONE I am much less frustrated. It's those group meetings on the speakerphone that are really bad. You only catch like 70% of what's going on.

sjvsworldtour wrote:Unfortunately I live in an apartment in the city. I am considering various options that might allow me to do some projects, particularly with solar power. I have even considered buying a trailer and putting it in the parking lot and mounting solar panels on it. Unfortunately I typically work just about every day, so there isn't a lot of free time.

I have so little spare time right now -- outside of work. I need to fix that. Life is what we make it, right?

MK500 wrote:That's great! I wish I could ride my bike around town, but my city just has too much traffic. A lot of people do try to ride around town, but people get hit quite often. We also have a lot of tourists driving around that are confused (not used to the side of the road; etc.).

Yeah, I understand. Like I said somewhere, I never knew places like this existed. Boulder has over 140 miles of hiking and biking paths and trails in and around the city of 100,000. You can get almost anywhere.

MK500 wrote:

stashvault wrote:You've fixed over 1000 PS3's??! That's impressive.

Thanks! I enjoy doing it. There's always some new problem I have to come up with a solution for. Also, I charge a little for each repair, and use the money to buy cool equipment. So now I have a machine for removing surface mount components that is the same one NASA used when they developed the circuit boards for the Mars Rovers. It's really cool.

That is pretty cool! Do you put up Craigslist ads, etc? That seems like a lot of business. Good for you, however you make it happen.

stashvault wrote:That is pretty cool! Do you put up Craigslist ads, etc? That seems like a lot of business. Good for you, however you make it happen.

Yeah, I posted on craigslist for maybe 6 months. Then word of mouth kicked in and I stopped posting. Lately I haven't had time to do many because of other projects. There are always way too many things competing for my time. I never really made much money at it, but at least I wasn't operating at a loss, and had the cool equipment. More than anything I hated to see these machines getting trashed when they died; and people were losing all their data. Sony encrypts all data to the particular motherboard; so if the machine dies there is no way to get your data without fixing the motherboard.

As an aside: In about 2005 leaded solder was made illegal for consumer electronics. Since that timeframe you see a lot of electronics failing after 3 to 5 years. This is because lead is a soft metal, and naturally handles expansion and contraction of boards as they heat and cool in operation. The lead-free solder is brittle, so cracks over time. I learned all this when determining the main reasons for failure of the PS3 systems.

Now you see these failures with big screen TVs, game systems, laptops, etc. All those electronic devices end up eventually in landfill, or if lucky recycled. Recycling isn't pretty. It's a bit of a huge environmental mess trying to use chemicals and heat to convert some of the parts into metals again. I find it ironic that we made a law to reduce lead for "health and safety", and ended up creating a massive environmental mess for decades to come. It's interesting to note that NASA and the military got an exemption; so leaded solder is still used in space and military.

Anyway, so if you want long lasting electronic gadgets...make sure they were built before 2005. Also things that produce little or no heat when operating are less likely to have problems -- but a lot of devices today have hot-running microprocessors in them for video decoding, data processing, etc. Heat causes expansion, which causes the tiny micro fractures in the lead free solder.

I have my workshop and recording studio set up in my cabin outside our house, pretty sweet. I dont work from home as such because im only a student, but i gain some money from mixing tapes and youtube adsense etc.

You fix ps3's? awesome! i used to as well, kind of got bored in the end, its always the same faults after a while. oh and my brand new hdpvr failed the other day some im quite peeved to say the least :/

Team Orr wrote:my brand new hdpvr failed the other day some im quite peeved to say the least :/

Is that the Haupauge HDPVR? I have one also. I hope mine doesn't fail.