To my amazement an actual person answered the phone after just 2 rings. In an age where EVERY company I deal with, both for work and in personal life, makes you navigate a phone menu maze it was astounding. I got my order confirmation number from the guy in under 1 minute. Just another reason Cabela’s is great and they’re earning a lifetime customer.

The last thing I want to do is maintain another service, WordPress/Drupal/sharepoint/blah+blah all mean backups and security lists. So I advocated a hosted solution where I would only be responsible for some initial setup and training then it would be up to content people to do the content stuff. Which is really ~90% of the battle. Good content can overcome poor design, bad technology and terrible graphics.

Jason @ Pignite web design in Chehalis/Lacey/Olympia had told me about Posterous a few weeks before so I went downstairs to pay him a visit. After about 1 hour of nerd talk I was confident Posterous would be perfect. ~2 hours later and I had purchased a domain name from godaddy, setup an account and started hacking on one of the prebuilt themes to fit our red/black/white logo/website branding and we’re done. Presented it to a group the next day and people were generally satisfied. And there you have http://thefarmstand.org .

We still need some graphics done up but otherwise it’s mostly complete. A few of my coworkers also took some initiative and finished the site out by adding a list of contributors with profile pictures and bios.

Update 2:

http://www.solarpowerrocks.com/washington/
(long winded and annoying, but has info on incentives)

http://solardat.uoregon.edu/NorthwestSolarResourceMaps.html
(PNW solar potential)

http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/lacey-washington.html
(Solar path diagram- they’re kinda hard to read, but that’s basically the path the sun follows across the sky from equinox to equinox.)

Update 1:

http://www.windsun.com/ChargeControls/ChargeCont.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmb5MB9_TaM

Sun tracking solar panel w/ arduino
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATnnMFO60y8

Arduino solar Tracker
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1224541956/9

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-13.htm

http://www.discovercircuits.com/B/batt-chrg2.htm

Links:

How to make solar power generator

http://www.rain.org/~philfear/how2solar.html

Solar generator diagram

http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/surv/solargen.htm

Optomize Panel w/ mirrors

http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/surv/panplus.htm

Harbor freight solar panel demo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caeEyhJZnTs

pt2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N86eHRGRJwQ

Inverter:

http://www.lanescarproducts.com/225-watt-power-inverter-450-watt-peak.html

inverter faq:

http://www.donrowe.com/inverters/inverter_faq.html

What are amps, watts, volts and ohms?:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question501.htm

DC Cabling Calculator:

http://www.energymatters.com.au/climate-data/cable-sizing-calculator.php

I honk my horn and go 2 feet out onto the shoulder, basically as far as I can go without hitting ditch. Check my rear view mirror to make sure I can safely slow down without someone running into me. Red car that was in the left lane had switched right to pass as well. Luckily they backed off fast enough and I corrected back onto the road.

I laid on the horn for the next 30 seconds adrenaline pumping. This is the closest I’ve ever been to a serious accident, also the only time I’ve ever felt like road raging.

This reaffirms my previous suspicions held when growing up that RV drivers on the peninsula are all noobs.

I’ll be wearing long pants and sunglasses to keep myself safe.

Text 46645 (googl) instead of 411 and only pay txt messaging fees. In addition the number and whatever else you get back is already on your phone so you can refer to it again later.
Example usage here: http://www.google.ca/mobile/sms/index.html

Another option is the free voice activated version, Goog-411: 1-800-466-4411 http://www.google.com/goog411/

I’ve also been using http://www.grandcentral.com. Although instead of using it to tie together multiple phones I got a local Forks WA number so my Mom can call it without having to use a calling card. Another neat feature is the emailed voicemails, although all I ever get is credit card offers and scams.

Also hooked what looked like a sockeye in the dickey although it would be really late for that so more likely a coho. It was dark and pretty beat up. Good trip, I really needed a vacation, bad fishing though.