Water, oil and the Internet
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.
Learning the ropes in detached house living; there must be at least a dozen contracts you need to negotiate and sign before your new house is linked with all those invisible networks this society consists of. We got water, we got electricity — but we never got the process of
acquiring and comparing competing bids from oil companies finished until the oil actually run out. In -30C nights, in an oil-heated house, having no oil is not fun at all. Happily Esso (Exxon over there) managed to deliver us this precious, soon-to-be-extinct stuff in six hours next day — with some extra cost, of course. In the evening, feeling the warmth come back, and seeing the online content (and hearing it, Last.fm is now available across the house, Wi-Fi) come streaming in, it occurred to me that with water, warmth and Internet you could probably go pretty far. Or then again, I am just being nerdy.
frans goes blog 
Oil? Frans, you filthy destroyer of Nature! 😉
I have to admit I’m a fossil burner myself also as that’s how the house was when we bought it. Switching to geothermal heatpumps in a few years I suppose.
BTW, Teboil tends to be cheapest around here.
Yeah, same thoughts also over there — even if oil companies would prefer us to stick with oil, and only install solar panels for auxilliary power. Transfer costs are pretty high though with geothermals and wood pellets or whatever those are called.
Teboil promises an extra 10 % discount if you are member of “omakotiyhdistys” (neighborhood association?), so I guess they are focusing on heating oil sales. But they did not promise an extra-fast delivery which in this case was a priority…
that’s a “sitkeä hanu” who’ll take a photo from the oil-truck at the same time when the house and the water pipes are near to broke