sunday night will be my first genuine “school night” in about 15 years! …although my classes start at the end of the working day, 5:30-9:30pm Mondays & Wednesdays.

having kinda changed careers from electronics design engineering to technical middle-management in ’96, and then after an interstate relocation in ’00 to self-employed IT consulting with the occasional forray back in electronics, i’m setting the scene for another career change in the not too distant future. as yet, my exact destination is unknown – all the more reason to enjoy the journey.

i’d electrocuted myself and nearly burned down the house at an age i can’t even remember. then my grandmother (RIP) gifted me my first Tandy Electronics 75-in-1 Electronics Kit when i was about 7 (followed by the 150-in-1 several years later!). at first i used to think there must be an amazing rats-nest of wires underneath that board to make it do all those things, until the penny dropped that i was the one who had to make all the connections :). i remember being fascinated by solar photovoltaics from about 10yo, & at 11yo up the front of my class gave an oral presentation of what i’m sure for them was a tediously technical assignment :). after saving all my pocket money for what seemed an eternity, i still have & regularly use the Micronta digital multimeter i bought around the same time also from Tandy Electronics (back when they, like Dick Smith who followed their footsteps, were a real hobbyist electronics shop). btw, i’d love to see a Fluke DMM of that era last this long in the prerilous hands of a kid-tinkerer ;)

anyway! solar (and other renewables) always seemed like an incredibly obvious way to go, although i later learned it wasn’t going to be quite so simple to replace the fossil fuel industry :(. 25 years on, the world’s a bit different, and the need to seriously employ various renewable energy technologies appropriate to the location has become an obvious imperative.

so too the need to drag our Government kicking & screaming to the same conclusion…