we went out for dinner last night, after going over to a friends’ house to access internet – moe has “discussion topics” that she has to contribute to, which are a part of her grade, and i had to check email – and when we returned home, the electricity was back on…
WHEW!
much as i enjoy fantasizing about fishtown, it’s occasions like yesterday which drive home the point that i probably could not make such a place work on anything more than a temporary basis if i had no electricity.
quite apart from network access, which can be provided by portable devices fairly easily these days, if i didn’t have electricity, both to power things and to recharge things, i wouldn’t last very long at all.
which, of course, brings me to the next stage in the process of making myself independent of infrastructure that supplies such things in a “normal” way, which is researching and creating a reliable, alternative source of electricity.
which, ultimately, shouldn’t be that difficult: i have a number of friends who have done small-scale power generation projects in the past, and that was before things like wind-spinners and solar panels became so “mainstream”. at this point, it shouldn’t be that difficult to attach a combination of solar panels and a wind-spinner to the roof of my house and/or my workshop, and drive things like the computers and network stuff – and, potentially, important things like the refrigerator and freezer – from batteries…