Solar Water Heating

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You’re probably familiar with the concept of solar heating – high-tech panels mounted on the roof that convert sunlight into electricity. While definitely helpful, the cost to install them ($30-60k for an average home before incentives) is prohibitive for most people, and the payoff period can be 15-20 years. A cheaper, easier, and more cost-effective option is to install solar water heating instead.

Simply put, a solar water heater uses a panel on your roof to collect solar energy to heat the water, which it stores in your existing hot water heater. When necessary, such as at night, your existing hot water heater can heat water like normal. The solar heater can assume over half the load, maybe more depending on how much hot water you use and when you use it. For a typical home, the savings are estimated at $50/month.

Thanks to the Obama administration’s tax credits and a special program by Oncor Electric Delivery for its customers, the net cost of installing a system in the DFW area can be around $2000. By saving around $600 annually on your electric bill, the system pays for itself in 3-4 years.

We would love to add one but haven’t decided on the timing. Have any of you installed one of these?

iPhone Theme

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For those of you who use an iPhone, Droid, or similar smartphone, I have added a plugin that formats my site for easy viewing on your phone. On an iPhone, AndyBox.com looks like an iPhone app. You lose the sidebars and navigation menus, but the blog posts work great. I hope this helps.

Worth of Your Work

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In the summer of 1999, after a month of mostly unsuccessful job hunting, I accepted a job waiting tables at Cracker Barrel in Bellmead, Texas. It was one of the hardest and most stressful jobs I’ve ever had. I actually went home and cried on my first solo night. It wasn’t all bad, as I describe in “A Note at the Table”, but overall I hated it and quit within six weeks. In exchange for my nightly punishment, I made $2.15/hr plus maybe $5-6/hr in tips for a total of $7-8/hour with no benefits other than a discount on food during my shift.

Another summer I worked at a day camp in Coppell, where I made $10/hour taking care of kids all day. It wasn’t a bad job. I liked many of the kids. We got to spend time outside on most days. The job had stressful moments and a horrible boss, but I didn’t dread going to work each day. That’s a huge plus in my book. All told, it was easier, caused less heartburn, and paid better than waiting tables at Cracker Barrel.

Why?

For years now a question has troubled me: what is the true value of a person’s work, and how does it compare to his/her actual wages?

As a general rule, the market assigns a value to a person’s work based on many factors, including level of responsibility, skill and experience requirements, and supply and demand for workers. Depending on the job, an employee might receive a fixed wage for the position, possibly determined by a union contract, or negotiate the wage with the employer. A self-employed person sets his or her own wage, striking a balance between personal needs and business needs.

I can’t help but think that a person’s work must have a more real value than what the employer is willing to pay. I just can’t figure out how to determine that value. The following factors are worth considering:

Difficulty

Should a more difficult job pay more? My gut reaction is a strong YES. In the Dallas area, I would say construction is one of the most difficult jobs, especially in the summer. Washing dishes and bussing tables at a restaurant might be another. All require hard, physical labor with minimal breaks. However, for various reasons, these jobs pay very little. An extreme example is a stay-at-home mom like my wife, who works hard throughout the day, every day, for free.

In contrast, some jobs are easier overall but pay much better. My current job is one of the easiest I’ve held but also pays the best. It has difficult moments, for sure, but I normally have some downtime every day and the stress is manageable. I’m also in a office rather than outside in the blazing Texas sun.

I see little correlation between difficulty and pay, and it bothers me.

Responsibility

Should a job with more responsibility pay more? I would say yes, and in practice, this seems to be the case. Many of the high-paying jobs in our society involve high levels of responsibility. Physicians preserve their patients’ health. Attorneys fight for their clients’ financial and personal interests. Business executives make decisions that affect the success of their companies. Jobs with low levels of responsibility, in terms of impact on others’ lives, seem to pay less. Entry-level jobs such as waiting tables, flipping burgers, and lawn care don’t pay much, but if a waiter messes up an order, no one dies or loses thousands of dollars as a result.

Qualifications

Should a job that requires higher qualifications pay more? Again, I would say yes. In some cases, such as physicians and attorneys, being more qualified brings a worker more money. However, even strong qualifications don’t guarantee high wages. Due to high unemployment, many recent college graduates are unable to find work in their desired fields, forcing them to take lower-paying jobs for which they are overqualified. Even master’s degrees in certain fields, such as English (shut up, I know!), don’t generally lend themselves to high-paying jobs in the way that a business or engineering degree might. Thanks to union contracts, a laid-off airline pilot with 3 decades of flying experience would start as a junior first officer at a new airline, perhaps making $30-40k in the first year.

Supply / Demand for Workers

Should a low supply of qualified workers relative to demand produce higher wages? I think so, and it seems to work out in practice. Nurses, for example, are in high demand due to our ever-growing population, but the limited number and size of nursing schools keeps the number of qualified nurses low. As a result, nurses make good money and have little trouble finding jobs. Manual labor jobs have the opposite situation. Although demand is high for workers in fields like construction, the low qualifications for those jobs make the supply of workers large, especially here in Texas where so many Mexican immigrants work. Employers in these fields don’t pay much because they don’t need to. Airline pilots, although highly qualified, are much more numerous than the available positions, allowing regional carriers to treat their pilots like dirt and pay them peanuts.

Since our union is currently negotiating a new contract, the issue of wages is on our minds. The union will argue that we deserve much more than we get, and that we deserve big raises because the other labor groups at Southwest have gotten big raises over the last few years. The company will argue that we already make more than dispatchers at nearly every other airline. Which side is right? How much is an hour or a year of my labor worth? How much is your labor worth? I don’t think there’s a clear answer.

What are your thoughts?

LiveATC

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The other day at work, one of my flights was heading toward Salt Lake City, which was fogged in. Due to a combination of runway issues and poor visibility, I wasn’t sure whether my flight would get to land at Salt Lake. I became curious about which runway the airport was using for arrivals. My friend Josh suggested an iPhone app called LiveATC.

As you might expect, LiveATC allows you to listen to live air traffic control frequencies for hundreds of airports throughout the country. In other words, you can use your iPhone to listen to the controllers and pilots talking to each other. This might sound about as exciting as watching snow melt, but in certain situations it can be quite useful. I learned which SLC runway was active and what the current visibility readings were, which helped me gauge whether my flight would get in (it did). The ingenuity of mankind continues to amaze me.

A tongue in cheek birth plan

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Because Brenden was born by C-section, Jonathan is going to be a scheduled C-section as well. This means that I really don’t need to have a full birth plan – go to the hospital, make sure I can’t feel anything, and pull out a baby is pretty much all I am taking with me. But I’m getting lots of emails about setting one up from the baby websites, and after reading through several online, here is my “perfect world” birth plan. Feel free to read the sarcasm dripping from this post:

BEFORE LABOR:
-if I show up at the hospital and I’m not truly in active labor, please allow me to return home without laughing at me. Sending some happy drugs with me would be a nice touch as well.

DURING LABOR:
– Only my doctor, nurse, husband, and anyone I deem worthy will be allowed in the room during labor. I will set a secret password and give it out as I see fit. Anyone else that does not have the secret password will be thrown out immediately.
-Unless said person without the secret password has more happy drugs. Then they can come in.
– I will have two doulas, preferably large scandinavian women named Helga or Olga. One for me, one for the baby. If the best treatment plans conflict, the doulas will arm wrestle to decide who wins.
-I will manage my pain without the use of narcotics or an epidural. My pain management techniques include inflicting pain on others, so a steady stream of strangers and a hammer will be required. Feel free to use annoying family members of other patients.
-I will be allowed to move freely during labor. Including going to the bathroom, the hallway, or Chili’s if needed.
-Only intermittent fetal monitoring will be allowed. In fact, the only fetal monitoring will be my nurse being allowed to yell “baby, baby, are you ok?” at my hoo-ha on an hourly basis.
-In order to promote a peaceful birthing environ, I request that the lights be dimmed, the other patients in labor be told to be quiet, and that a string quartet be playing in my room. Yo-Yo Ma is preferred, but if he’s busy, find someone else.
-I do not want to be induced, but the doulas will be allowed to do a “come out baby” dance and sacrifice a small animal of their choice.
-Birthing equipment I will require: a birthing ball, a rocking chair, a jacuzzi tub, a swingset, and a stripper pole.
-Before any medical intervention is done, the doulas will be allowed to do the “get better baby” dance and sacrifice a larger animal. Please provide a sheep, calf, or goat.
– If a c-section becomes medically necessary, and by medically necessary I mean I’m yelling “I’m not doing this anymore, cut the baby out now!”, please knock me out completely and wake me up when my child is going to college.

AFTER BIRTH:
-Please place my child on me as soon as possible after birth, but make sure that all that yucky white crud is removed first. Gross!
-I plan on breastfeeding, so do not give my child formula, bottles, or pacifiers while in the hospital. In fact, please remove all bottles, formula, and pacifiers from the hospital. I will provide a picture of my breasts to hang over the nursery bed so that it is all he sees.
-Please keep all family members away from our room for the first 24 hours. Please kick everyone else out of the hospital for us to promote bonding.
-We would like to room in with our child. In order to help socialization, we would also like to room in with someone else’s child as well. If this is not possible, I am willing to have my bed moved to the nursery.
-No medical treatment shall be performed upon our child. At all. Ever. If vitamin C doesn’t fix it, nothing will.
-Once the child is born, I will require an epidural. For at least the next two years.

Now, just in case you don’t know me well enough to know how silly I’m being, please know that I think it is VERY helpful to research all your options before going into labor. But those moms that get it in their head that they are going to do it ONLY THIS WAY may end up very disappointed when all is said and done because you never know what’s going to happen! Babies have a way of changing all our plans, even after they are born, so learning to go with the flow is a life long battle. Hopefully Jonathan is ok with my simple plan for this time!

Random Facts for January 2010

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Let’s see if I can dig up 10 more…

  1. Like my brother-in-law Phillip, I get grumpy when I’m hungry. It’s hard to think about anything other than food. Anything other than my quest for food becomes an irritation. Maybe that Maslow guy was onto something after all.
  2. When I’m watching or feeding Brenden, I find it difficult to concentrate on anything else. When we’re at dinner with friends or family and I’m the one responsible for him, don’t be surprised if I can’t have a normal conversation with you. I’m sorry! It’s probably hard to understand if you don’t have kids yourself.
  3. Strangely, some guys are intimidated by smart girls. I dig them. I even married one.
  4. January 18, Jonathan’s scheduled delivery date, is the same date that my best friend’s son Lacy IV was born 2 years ago.
  5. I HATE being teased – not really because it hurts my feelings, but because I never know how to respond. I might think up a good comeback an hour later. In the moment, I just feel stupid and awkward, especially if other people are around waiting for my reaction. Fortunately, my inability to fire back significantly reduces the fun factor, so I don’t get teased very often.
  6. I am strongly anti-abortion. Life begins at conception, period. I have seen a baby’s heart beating at 10 weeks old. Yes, unplanned pregnancies are inconvenient, but it’s not the baby’s fault the woman doesn’t want him. Thousands of loving families, including one I know, would give almost anything to adopt the baby she doesn’t want to raise.
  7. Several years ago my dad and I went skiing in Canada during a freakish cold snap. The resort had an outdoor hot tub that we couldn’t pass up. Guys had ice on their eyelashes, and their adult beverages turned to slush in their hands. After I got my hair wet, it froze in place.
  8. I finally understand why my parents were so concerned about my safety during my childhood. I feel a tremendous sense of protectiveness over Brenden and search often for potential dangers. When he gets hurt on my watch, I will feel terribly. I’m thankful that nothing serious has happened so far.`I’m curious to see how my views will change as he grows older and more independent.
  9. I can pull both shoulders out of socket. No, it doesn’t hurt. No, it hasn’t made me any money, either.
  10. I honestly enjoy my job and don’t mind being at work. I’m also thankful for the past jobs that I hated because they make me appreciate my current one even more.