As the title suggests, I have three ideas for electrical companies.  I am not listing them in any particular order.

1. Legislation has already moved to allow people to sell energy (such as excess energy from solar panels or wind turbines) and more will probably be passed to let companies buy and sell more energy to regular people.  Most entrenched energy companies are spending a lot of money fighting this kind of legislation when they should be guiding it.  Legislators are fond of putting provisions on their bills, why not introduce provisions that allow the above buying and selling of energy as long as a certain percentage of the  income from such transfers must go to building and repairing infrastructure?  If the current companies are smart, they would keep that required percentage lower than what they currently set aside for such activities and then offer new companies their existing services to help meet the requirements.  Current companies would be competing on a more even footing than what some of the current legislation suggests, and would be able to make a profit by extending their infrastructure services to the new companies.  Sure, they would lose their virtual monopolies, but that seems to be the direction that legislation is heading anyway.  This would give them an edge in dealing with the future.

2. Rent solar panels (or wind turbines, natural gas generators, or fuel cells) to business and residential customers at a monthly fee that is slightly less than their current electrical bills.  This idea can turn subdivisions into power generators, providing energy closer to the source ( thus requiring less fuel to meet demand) AND making a larger percentage of the company's power generation come from renewable resources (well, not for the natural gas or maybe even the fuel cells), which is something that will probably also be legislated in the near future.

3. Create an off-shoot that sells more energy efficient appliances in return for recycling energy guzzlers.  They already do this to some degree, but if they do this on a larger scale, they can reduce energy consumption in high volume areas, cash in on government incentives, and hopefully make a profit on selling the appliances.

I'm not saying these are perfect ideas (nor are they fully developed), but I think that they would be steps in the right direction.

To begin with, I admit that I made a foolish deal with God this Lent: I gave up playing single player video games.  Notice how I couched the term: single player, not all.  I justified leaving that loophole because playing Starcraft II online with my brother is one of the main ways that he and I communicate these days, and because I already started making plans with my brother-in-law to visit and play games together.  I did not allow myself the loophole of playing multi-player games with people I didn’t know.  I am also not allowing myself the “Sundays don’t count” loophole.

It’s been only a few days, but I am certainly feeling the pains of withdrawal.  I don’t know what to do with myself in my down time, and I have the next week off of my day job.  In my mind, this wasn’t going to be a huge problem.  I would be able to use the opportunity to get ahead on designing some stuff for my classes (I’ve barely been ahead of the kids this year), clean some neglected areas of the basement, and perhaps get some writing done.  In practice, I have been a bit of a wreck.  I find myself just sitting, staring into space or waiting for my brother to pop on line.

I think that part of the problem is that, other than video games, the only thing on my docket is more work.  Without some sort of short-term reward, completing that work only means that I have other work to do.  This is a vicious cycle that motivates me to get nothing done.

My father has often lamented that video games have held me back from doing great things.  This short experience seems to be proving him right.  My normal work week allows almost no time for games, but I spend a large amount of time during the weekends and vacations, such as the one I’m currently on, playing video games instead of getting other things accomplished.  Granted, after years (decades) of this pattern, I almost don’t know what to do with myself now.

At least one thing is certain: I have not truly learned any lesson from this (at least, not yet).  I will be tremendously happy to get back to my games come Easter.  I can’t think of another year where I’ve looked forward to Easter this much.