We recently contacted EnWise to conduct a home energy audit to find out what government retrofit grants we would be eligible for. The audit reveled that our 37 year old bungalow is the most air tight home that the auditor has ever tested!

We kinda knew this all along and were not really surprised. Our house can be uncomfortable and stuffy at times and I was going to install a HRV to improve the indoor air quality but the audit really underlined the need.

The day after the audit I ordered a Venmar HEPA3100 HRV from the church of the orange hammer’s web site.

Installing the HRV is pretty straight forward and after running for just one hour the improvement of the indoor air quality was amazing! I would describe it as like living in a tent where the indoor air quality is the same as outdoors, far from the hermetically sealed Tupperware container we were used to.

The total cost of the HRV was just a tick over $1000.00 and we will receive $600.00 back from the provincial and federal government making this home upgrade a real bargain at just about $400.00 net.

If you own a home in Ontario and are planning any energy savings related updates, I highly recommend you get the energy audit done before you begin. You may be eligable for up to $10.000 in grants to help you save energy – and money!

• 48 – 2.93 GHz Cores
• 384 MB Level 2 Cache
• 140 GHz Raw Power
• 96 GB DDR2 ECC RAM
• 20 TB Storage

I’ve had the pleasure of deploying a spanking new web hosting infrastructure based on VMWare’s fantastic Virtual Infrastructure. ESX 3.5 is truly the way to go to maximize computing resources and at the same time provide a high availability computing paltform.

Thanks to Andre for allowing me to go down this path!

Oh, and here is the 20 Gal. office tank…

Inhabitants:

3 Male Leopard Tuxedo Guppies
3 Male Blue Diamond Guppies
5 Female Guppies
5 Red Cherry Shrimp
3 Panda Cory
4 Zebra Snails

Eqipment:

1 Fluval 105 w/ surface skimmer
1 100W Hagen Heater
1 24″ Hagen Life Glo T5 Light

Our 90 Gallon Osaka Tank is up and running, it’s a wonderful setup full of live plants (pressurized Co2 injected) and lost and lots of fish.

Here’s our list of inhabitants:

4 Bumble Bee Gobi’s
7 Harlequin Rasbora
2 Red Phantom Tetra
5 Cardinal Tetra
10 Rummy Nose Tetra
3 Pepper Corys
3 Oto’s
2 Male Endler
2 Female Endler
13 Red Cherry Shrimp
6 Amano Shrimp
1 Albino Long-finned Bristle Nose Pleco
3 Tiger Snails

Equipment:
1 Fluval 405 w/ surface skimmer
1 Fluval 3plus
1 300 watt Titanium Heater
Red Sea Pressurized Co2 System
1 Hydor Koralia 400 gal/hr Water Circulation Pump
2 Hagen 48″ T5 Life Glo Lights

Has Apple jumped the shark? Is it time to worship a new fruit?

You decide…

Who said Disco is dead?

In Finland that funky spirit is kept alive by Heikki & Kaija.

Tisko Tanzi Baby Yeah!

Fishy, fishy, fish…

I bought Tab an 8 gallon Nano tank for x-mas and I was so impressed by her enthusiasm and aqua-scaping abilities that we decided to go bigger.

This week we welcome home a Hagen Fluval Osaka 320 90 gallon tank from Big Al’s. The Osaka is all glass with curved edges and raised lighting and the stand is not fugly like virtually all aquarium stands offered today.

I also picked up a Fluval 405 Canister Filter and one Aqua Clear 110 power head to get things started… Stay tuned for more on our new hobby!

The IKEA KRAMFORS Leather Sofa retails for $1399.00 in Canada but if you’re south of the boarder you’ll pay only $899.00!

SayWaaaah? Why is there a $558.66 difference in price for the same item? The Canadian dollar is $0.069 cents more valuable then the U.S. Greenback and is likely going to climb even higher over the coming months.

Ingmar from Sweden better start adjusting prices or IKEA will lose Canadian customers very quickly.

Anyone who’s ever cleaned a litter box knows it’s not the most enjoyable household chore and having 4 Cats means a full litter box every single day. To remedy this unsanitary dilemma I purchased the CatGenie, a fully automatic self cleaning and sanitizing litter box that is worth every penny.

The CatGenie hooks up to your toilets water supply and a return hose hangs over the bowl to pump the liquefied waste to be flushed to never never land. The only consumables are a cleaning solution cartridge (good for 60 cleaning cycles) and washable granuals that take the place of cat litter and never need replacing. Overall the ongoing costs are about the same as buying litter every week

Watch this youtube video to see the CatGenie in action, our cats took to it immediately and we are estatic over the fact that stinky litter boxes are a thing of the past! LINK: http://www.catgenie.com