SMS from an unknown number on NYE: “Happy New Year”. The number looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t work it out, and it was bugging me. Who could it be? I eventually replied saying “Happy New Year, but who is this, I don’t have your number in my phone.” They replied saying “Sorry, meant to dial xyz. But have a good new year anyway.” Ah, a wrong number - that would explain it.

A couple of Christmas cards addressed to people who don’t live here. I didn’t really know what to do with them, since neither had return addresses. Eventually I put them both back in the mail marked Return To Sender, and hoped the Post Office might be able to figure it out. Then a few days later, a neighbour said hello and asked if I’d got a postcard for him, and told me his surname, which I hadn’t known. Whoops. If I was smarter, I’d have checked the phone book for a matching name elsewhere in my street. He’s in there, too. Maybe Aussie Post’s Dead Letter Office will be smart enough to do that for me. Apparently in December they got 184,469 items to wade through, so it could take a while.

I found a plastic container while I was digging through the cupboards the other day. Very rounded. And not mine. I’m not sure whose it is — possibly someone in my family brought over some biscuits or something and left it behind. Or maybe it’s from Marita’s place. Or maybe it’s one of the people who came for my birthday. Anybody recognise it and want to claim it?

Checked the other day how much of my home loan I’ve paid off. It’s currently sitting at 8.13% gone, up from 6.59% this time last year, and it’s only shifting at about 0.11% per month (unless I choose to pay extra). Slow going. So much for my NY resolution in 2006 of trying to pay off 20% by the end of that year.

Some will say that buying a house doesn’t make economic sense; that renting is overall a better option. When I see the home loan statements, with the humongous amount of interest being charged, I can see that point of view.

But my sister pointed out the other day that it’s pointless looking at it like that. Money lost in interest is just part of the cost of having the house. I guess you could compare it to rent — in those terms, my loan payments are about double what I was paying in rent.

Wait a sec. If you took into account the full proposition, all the money going in, going out, and the how the property value is appreciating, how does it all add up?

So I did a few quick calculations. Thanks to the booming house prices in my area, I’m actually making a huge profit every month. In fact the expenses of loan payments and interest are outweighed 3:1 by the current (estimated) monthly appreciation on the house. Even if prices were rising half as fast, I’d still be ahead.

It’s worth noting that one of the criteria the Buyers Advocate used was that the house would be a good investment — along with all the other factors such as location and affordability and something I liked.

So while it’s money I’ll never see (I’m determined to avoid ever moving house again, cockroaches or no cockroaches), it’s certainly all piling up. That’s cheered me up no end.

My old mate Brian once described his car as being an air-conditioner on wheels.

Which got me thinking. When I go for a drive on my own, the engine in my car is moving me (75 Kg) and the car itself (1356 Kg). Therefore 94% of the energy involved is spent moving the car. It’s only marginally better if I have passengers.

An SUV such as a Ford Territory weighs about 50% more, so 96% of the energy is moving the car.

Of course, there’s a lot more to fuel efficiency than weight. A 3-car train weighs about 120 tonnes (so even if it’s full of people, the weight barely changes), but it’s still more efficient (in terms of both energy and emissions) than a similar number of cars. Ditto for trams:

The Combino light rail vehicle is about the same energy efficiency as a Porsche Carrera GT; the Porsche seats 2, the Combino seats 67 and can carry 180. The efficiency advantage is huge, though the Porsche obviously accelerates better and has a higher top speed!
– James Strickland

So there you go. Just close your eyes the next time you’re on the tram and pretend you’re in a Porsche instead.

… Well, if that’s your thing and you actually think sports cars are cool.

I was back at work today. The city seemed a bit quiet today (Degraves St/Centreway excepted), and with many blokes shunning their ties, obviously things are still a bit in holiday mode.

This morning I found the biggest damn spider I’ve seen this year in ages sitting on the wall above the front door. I know spiders probably help keep the cockroach (etc) population down, but I just couldn’t face one that size being in the house. It took several hits with a broom to kill it, and I swept it out into the garden.

It’s not just that I watched Return of the King with the kids a few days ago (remember Shelob?) — I’ve never been that keen on big spiders wandering around. Turns out Peter Jackson based his adaption of Shelob on funnel-web spiders, though my visitor was probably a Huntsman.

Then just as I was about to leave the house I found a huge cockroach on my bedroom window sill.

I really don’t want to have an entire ecosystem inside my home. I think it might be time to get the house sprayed again.

I have a 240 litre bin for general rubbish (emptied weekly) and a 240 litre bin for recycling (emptied fortnightly).

Usually I put one kitchen bin bag out per week, and the recycling bin is about three-quarters full when emptied.

So our weekly household waste comes to about:

• 30 litres of general waste
• 90 litres of recycling (paper, cardboard, bottles, cartons, cans)

The latter has probably dropped a fair bit since the No Junk Mail sticker went up. I do subscribe to the newspaper, but much of that goes into the recycling at work. I’ve considered a compost bin, though the size of my garden doesn’t really warrant it. I can still do more to reduce my consumption though.

I have a filing system which works well on computers, but is hopeless for real life. Everything goes into a big pile.

It’s the GMail principle. In GMail you archive everything in a big “pile”, then search for it later when you need to find it again.

On my work email, I now do the same thing. Once actioned, everything goes into an Inbox Archive in Outlook, then I use Windows Desktop Search to find things later. (My work email is where this has worked best; I’ve actually got my Inbox down to less than 15 items.)

In my home email, I do that too, but the email is in Thunderbird, and searching is using Google Desktop Search.

For my home paper correspondence, everything once actioned goes in a big pile. Uhhh okay, it’s not easy to find again. So about once a year I sort through it all and it gets filed (into smaller piles) or chucked in the recycling.

Even my laundry now goes into a big pile when dry. Once a week I sort through it all and file it. Finding stuff in there when it’s overdue for sorting isn’t easy, I must admit. There’s no Google Laundry Search available, dammit.

So after pondering how heat-efficient my house is (at least for summer), and my water consumption, I was thinking about the rest of my energy use.

Since I don’t have air con, I’m hoping the house is fairly efficient, despite heavy use of two computers. Recent bills show usage at around 8-10 kilowatt hours per day, throughout the year, with a peak of 11 kWh per day in July 2006.

That makes around 3300 kWh a year. Apparently the national average is around 6000 kWh, but 3500 kWh in cities like Perth which aren’t super-hot and have natural gas available for hot water (which is what really burns up the watts for those who have to use electricity for it).

Most of my lights are now CFLs, but there’s probably more I can do on this front, such as setting things up to be able to easily turn off most appliances at the wall instead of leaving them on standby power. Solar electricity is an option, though quite expensive, even with the current subsidies.

Cooking, hot water and central heating for me is by natural gas. Recent bills show usage at about 21 megajoules per day during summer, but a whopping 230 MJ per day in the coldest part of winter. Not sure how that compares with other homes.

Solar hot water (gas-boosted) is reasonably affordable with the rebates, so I’m seriously looking at the options there. But given the bulk of the gas is probably central heating, better insulation may be more effective in the short term.

What I’d like to see from the federal government is commitment to help people reduce their energy needs. Better public transport will help a lot. (See the PTUA’s evaluation of policies). And for buildings, more money for household and commercial solar installations could be the way to go.

For all the talk about nuclear and the myth of clean coal, both of these will cost years and billions and billions to develop (if they work at all). And in the mean time, solar technology is available now, and mass production for Australia’s sunny cities should see the price drop. So how about the right mix of subsidies and rebates to get solar panels up on more roofs?

Get the states mandating better building designs (hint: if you must have huge windows, don’t have them facing the summer sun), and we’ll be going a fair way towards reducing our energy use, and generating more of it sustainably.

Summer is coming. You can tell because it’s baking hot in the sun, the flies are much more plentiful, and outside in the evening when all should be still, instead you can hear the hum or household air-conditioners echoing across the ‘burbs.

Yesterday I spent most of the day at home, as one of the kids wasn’t feeling well. I’m pleased to say that while outside it peaked at around 36 degrees, inside it got only up to about 26 — not brilliant, but quite bearable. So while I do plan to get a ceiling fan fitted in the livingroom, the expense and pollution of air-conditioning seems unnecessary.

(Coincidentally at work yesterday there were aircon faults, so for a while it was warmer there than at home.)

I put it down to home designers of the past being clever about low-tech methods of making houses resistant to heat — even weatherboard houses like mine. Eaves and blinds are in place. Double-glazing and external shutters/blinds aren’t, and I don’t off-hand know if the orientation of the house and windows meets current thinking on the optimum use of shade, but we seem to get by.

In contrast, some of the newer houses you see have enormously big windows, no eaves, no shade, and enormously big air conditioners to match.

Similarly, when my sister got back from Britain a couple of years ago, she mentioned that many of the Brits don’t know how to handle the heat. Some were just unaware of simple things like parking the car in the shade on sunny days, or keeping the blinds down on hot days.

Heat retention in my house may be an issue though. With several hours of windows and doors left open last night, and the temperature outside having dropped to about 18 degrees, inside it was still hovering around 24. I guess that’s where air con really would come in handy.