Green-Trust.Org

This item is pricey, and we don’t have one ourselves, but we did get to try one once, and were quite impressed. In some cases, a Rhoades car could replace a engine driven automobile, is healthy for you, and with solar charged electric assist, can be downright practical. From their website:

Q. Who is Rhoades Car?
A. We are a division of a 27 year old company by the name of Rhoades National Corporation. Our only goal is to manufacture quality U.S. made 4 wheel bikes diverse enough to suit the needs of our customer. We build our bikes like we would like to have them ourselves. Little things like 3/4″ axles, disc brakes, sealed bearings, and powder coat paint, do not come cheap, but it makes us proud of our product and we’re sure you will be too.

With more than 700,000 children of military families under the age of five separated from their mother or father this holiday season Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, has responded with a program geared to address the challenges military families face with deployment. The half-hour television special, entitled When Parents are Deployed, will be hosted by Academy Award � winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr., premiering Wednesday, December 27 at 9pm ET/PT on PBS (check local listings).

When Parents Are Deployed reveals candid and intimate moments with the parents, caregivers and children impacted by deployment. They express how they are coping with the daily stress and fears associated with having a parent depart for military duty, and how families deal with that member when they return home after serving their country. As the holidays can be a very difficult time for military families, Sesame Workshop saw this special as way to illustrate how this group of Americans is managing during times of extended separation.

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Dharam has returned, and the conversion picks up where it left off. A new connection plate was created for the heat exchanger, with 90 degree elbows, since there was not room for the old one which was straight up. The pipes would have kinked in the space above the tank. It’s in the 20’s (F), and with snow on the ground, makes life interesting for an outdoor conversion.

An aquaintence of ours told us about this site:

Celsias.com – It pays to save the world

Welcome to the world’s first online community for households and businesses to get paid for reducing the carbon emissions from their everyday energy usage.

Global warming is caused by the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gases are created by human activity – primarily the burning of fossil fuels to provide our electricity (generated from coal and gas), cars, flights and to create the food, clothes and other things we buy and consume everyday. This climate change crisis is costing billions of dollars right now and we’re on a path to an uninhabitable planet.

Celsias is the first company in the world to enable everyone to benefit financially from taking action to solve this crisis and our patent pending service is your opportunity to get rewarded for playing your part – registration is free.

We have been using digital cameras for a few years now, and it’s our observation that we are saving money in not having to buy film and having it processed, but we are also reducing the chemical load on the environment, as film processing requires chemical that are supposed to be properly disposed of, but often are not. Our cameras (a HP Photosmart 320 and a Pentax Optio M20) both use our NiMH rechargeable AA batteries, so we do not have to purchase and dispose of tons of batteries either. Available from Amazon.

We recently blogged about a LED headlamp on our Eco Tips page , but since we are so enamored with this item, I felt it should be mentioned here as well. With 6 brightness levels, and two strobe levels, it gives a very flexible compromise between battery life and brightness. The LED’s are constant brightness units, so no dimming with battery discharge. I’ve used it for walking, reading, and computing (on my solar charged laptop) in the dark. My batteries are rechargeable NiMH AA’s, and with over 100 hours of light per charge, it will be a long time before I need another set. I’ve decided to bundle the headlamp, 4 NiMH AA’s, and the solar charger, and make it available to our readers for a few dollars more than it cost me for the individual components, as a service to you. The total comes to $99 including S&H in the USA. The little money we make on this will be used to keep projects and info coming your way.

Every house has a myriad of small electronics devices that take batteries. From remotes, to digital cameras, wireless mice and keyboards, to handheld video games. Our landfills are filling up with toxic waste from used batteries. We have switched to NiMH AA and AAA replacements. They last for years, and charge nicely in the car, from our off-grid energy system (or your wall outlet), or even with their own solar panel. Our friends at Silicon Solar have a compact Sun Powered travel charger that charges AA batteries quite nicely. We think this makes the perfect companion to the LED Headlamp.

Ever need a handsfree headlamp to see what you are working on, or where you are going in the dark. We did, so we found a line of handsfree headlamps from Black Diamond. Being LED, they consume minute amounts of power, while being very bright. We use rechargeable NiMH batteries charged with a solar charger, so the electric is clean, and there’s no battery disposal issues (they last for many years in this application). Dharam bought us a Zenix IQ as an early Christmas present, based on his happiness with one of their earlier models. The company website has the following specs:

Smart lighting for the backcountry, the Zenix IQ provides non-fading, constant illumination in two modes: a collimated one-watt LED for a long-range beam, or two SuperBright LEDs for close-range ambient light. A single switch toggles between four settings for each mode—min, mid, max and strobe—and remembers the last setting you used. This lamp also supplies constant illumination and comes with a battery power meter and Find Me light.