So a buddy of mine Lee has been running a web site on Solar Power and other renewable energy sources for I think around a year now.  For the first little while I just kind of thought he was into some sort of hippy related crap that would never come to fruition.

Well, the other day he signed up for our how-to site and posted an article about investing in solar power.  I read over it, and it really got me thinking.  I wonder how much I’d have to spend to get a Solar power system that would either eliminate my Hyrdo bill, or even allow me to get paid for extracting more energy from the sun than my house uses and well put it back into the grid.

The first thing I did was to check and see how many kWh i used a day.  So for the next few days I started writing down what my meter was saying we were using and as it turns out, our whole house only uses 20kWh a day.  Funny, because this is comparable to my buddy Kevin’s apartment.

Before I ever ran a single test I had estimated my power usage to be somewhere around 40kWh and according to some of the online calculators, I’d need something like 8 240watt solar panels to cover my power needs.  This system would cost me roughly $10000 to cover a $50-100 a month Hydro bill.  Fortunately, I don’t use 40kWh and I only use 20, which, by my crappy calculations which may not even be remotely correct, means I’d need roughly 4 240 watt, which with everything included would probably run be around $5000. 

I don’t think I’ll be jumping on the Solar bandwagon quite yet, but when I do, the cool thing is that you can build your system one step at a time.  So when I start, I can get 1 panel, then maybe add 1 panel a year until my Hyrdro company is actually paying me for generating more power than I use.

Oh, and if you think that the time frame to make your money back is too long, you should know that the government is all about giving out grants and tax cuts right now for people who are going green, so there is a more immediate benefit.

So I was looking through some of my traffic logs today for a site called Legal Buds which promotes a lot of things marijuana related.  I’ve owned the site for years and have never really promoted it.  I don’t personally use Marijuana, but I’m open to having sites in all different niches.

Any ways, I’ve always been a big fan of social media sites because they have the ability to make content extremely popular.  This is the case with this site.

I noticed a few random sales fly in over the weekend, I just figured I was having a good weekend.  I typically only get around a sale every month.

So about 20 minutes ago, I looked over my stats and some people had given a good review to the marijuana quotes page, which resulted in over 40,000 visitors this week from the social media site stumble upon.

Pretty crazy if you ask me! So I of course gave it a positive rating as well!  Goes to show you that creating quality content is much more important that quantity.  If you want to add me as a friend on stumble upon, add ‘mcrizzle‘.

So Summer isn’t officially over, but kids are back to school and for as long as I can remember, going back to school means summer is toast. 

To you school kids out there, I’m sorry that the months of fun in the sun is over, but you should know that I am suffering too!

To mourn the end of summer, I’ve decided to post some fun links from the how to  site infobarrel.com.

The first article is about dream facts. Did you know that 3 year olds don’t see themselves in their dreams? Also, snoring sleepers are unable to experience dreams! Crazy stuff.

Next is fattening drinks! Nobody wants to be overweight, but did you know what kind of calories some of the drinks you may consume actually contain?   Bubble Tea’s are the enemy; some of them containing over 40 calories per oz!

My final fun article for the day is a little article on Hurricane facts.  This was really interesting to me because I’ve been feeling pretty badly for the people suffering from Hurricane Gustav.  If you don’t know much about Hurricanes, you should check this out; it is quite educational.

That’s it for today people!

Enjoy the lovely fall weather!