Lease solar panels to help defray costs (image from Wayne National Forest on Flickr)

One of the most exciting, easiest ways to install solar panels is gaining momentum!  Two new solar lease programs have recently been announced, which help people convert to solar energy while minimizing upfront costs.

Can you imagine tapping into solar electricity with no down payment?  Did you know that you can lease solar panels?

Consider these two new options that can help you reduce the cost of solar panels:

Sungevity is launching a 10-year residential solar lease program.  The monthly fee (there are no upfront costs) covers maintenance, monitoring, cleaning and insurance of panels installed on your rooftop.  Sungevity also helps you determine which solar system is best suited for your location, and has consultants on call 12 hours a day to answer questions.   In fact, customer service is such a priority that you can get a proposal based on your request within 24 hours of submitting it – weekends included!

Similarly, those who live in Texas can explore a solar lease with TXU Energy.  Through a partnership with SolarCity, the solar lease program will run you only about $35 a month!  You will save much more than that in monthly utility bills.

Once again, there are no upfront costs, no maintenance – its so easy.  I wish I lived in Texas!

Stay at home for work on Climate Care Day

Coming up – two weeks from today – is Climate Care Day!

Make plans now to revise your business travel schedule on Friday, March 26.  Instead of hopping on a plane or even braving the local commute in your car, hop on the Internet instead!

Use your email, telephone or even VoIP (voice over internet protocol) services like Skype, which allow you to video conference over the Internet for free, all from the comfort of your home!  Be sure to get your boss’s approval first though….

Can you imagine business meetings in your bunny slippers.  Conference calls with your cat?  Why not?

The impact of Climate Care Day can be huge!  Carbon emissions from air travel in particular could be cut significantly if more companies reduced business travel.  Its safe to say that much of the traveling done in the name of work could just as easily be done from your own hometown.  If we can cut back on business travel to the bare necessities, we’ll save across the board: time, money and the environment!

Breathe easy on Climate Care Day

Arkadin Global Conferencing constitutes the brains behind Climate Care day.  Just for 24 hours (longer if you like) businesses are urged to schedule remote meetings instead of business travel.

The hope is that businesses overall will realize that the global and financial expenditure of business travel is not worth its price.  Just as much – if not more – work can be accomplished remotely.  If you are not spending 2-12 hours traveling, just imagine what you can get done!

This year’s Climate Care Day is scheduled for March 26, which will be the 24 hours leading up to WWF’s Earth Hour.

State basketball results:
• Mountain View boys in semifinals
• Summit boys in consolation semifinals
• La Pine girls in semifinals
• Bend girls eliminated
BRACKETS.

Mountain View survived a late charge from Glencoe to advance to the Class 5A state boys basketball semifinals. Summit is trailing 20-12 at the half against Crescent Valley, with the winner facing Mountain View.

Ryder’s friend popped over to say hi when Ryder wasn’t home…and I needed a test model for a shot….Score!

Every year PDN (Photo District News) releases it’s 30 emerging artists. I have to say I wasn’t overly impressed this year. Some of the work is interesting but a lot of it lacks real purpose and people are just picking a story to tell as opposed to really digging deep and finding something more meaningful. However, there were a few standouts that I found interesting. Here’s my PDN 5 ;-)

Danfung Dennis : “By bearing witness and shedding light on another’s pain and dispair, I am trying to invoke a common humanity and a response to act.”

Alex Prager : One way to get someone to confront something that’s not happy is to have a facade so they will want to look at it.”

Anna Skladmann : “The glamour of the Nouveau Riche and the romance of Soviet Nostalgia.”

Yang Yi : “My personality and artistic cultivation came from the mountains and rivers of my home town”

Reed Young : “Life is fascinating and photography is my excuse to see as many sides of the bigger picture as I can

Amazon.com

Wildlife Specials is a bounty of BBC wildlife documentaries hosted by David Attenborough, who performed similar duties with the fantastic, 1993 Life In the Freezer. Wildlife Specials consists of six outstanding works focusing on different animals in their natural habitats. Eagles shows us a wide variety of the remarkable, predatory bird in North America, Africa, South America, and parts of Europe. Attenborough explains how eagles are designed to be powerful hunters (t (more…)

Awbrey Butte Bank Foreclosure

Awbrey Butte bank foreclosures represent some of the best buys happening in the Bend Oregon real estate market right now.  There have been 9 bank owned homes sold on Awbrey Butte in the last 12 months. 

There’s currently one  Awbrey Butte bank foreclosure for sale.  The list price is $659,900.  It has views and 5,190 square feet.  That’s $127.15 a square foot.  You could not replace this home for less that $750,000 and that does not include the lot!

Two or three years ago many of these homes would have sold for well over $1,000,000.  They are rare bargains which won’t last forever.  I look for more luxury foreclosures to come on the market this year.

If you’re thinking about buying a home on Awbrey Butte you should sign up for Jim’s free New Listing Notification Service today.  Jim Johnson is a Certified Residential Specialist and has been selling quality homes in Bend Oregon since 1981.

 Call 541-389-4511 or see his web site to search the MLS - Bend Oregon Real Estate.  Jim is licensed by the State of Oregon as the Principal Broker for Bend Oregon Real Estate Expert.  E-MAIL  or go to Bank Foreclosure Information.

 If you have questions about Bend or Bend real estate just type in the subject in the search box in the right hand column and click search.  You can use this blog as your search engine for Bend Oregon real estate and many subjects about Bend.

If you've been to a swanky hotel in the last few years, you may have been given your menu options of pillows, like this:

How many people do you think actually order up body pillows? Or, you might be like one of the people I used to travel with on business and you already packed your own pillow and comforter (you know who you are...).

But at this last haute spot I stayed in, we were given further options:

I'm curious about that "Help Me" button - do they send up a spiritual adviser?

I ordered both the Quran and the Torah, just to confuse them. Now I'm on a watch list at Homeland Security.

It's a bathroom scale that takes pictures of you and posts them to twitter.

HackBend, BendTech and this site all posted stories about KOHD ceasing their news broadcasts. Well, apparently they're not ceasing them entirely, just making them much shorter with little blips through the day in between and during other shows. They're no longer doing a full newscasts, from what I can see. Over at KOHD they've updated their news schedule for the various times they'll be on TV with news updates.

I still stand by my original point that I'm not a TV news watcher (I'm rarely in front of my TV, and if I am I'm hardly ever on KOHD/ABC). I also agree a lot with Jeff over at BendTech that the problem isn't with KTVZ or KOHD, but with Nielsen. Having been a Nielsen family on a couple of occasions, I can see how easily the system could be ripe with fraud, skewed or useless data.

I just completed photographing another project for Oregon’s 1859 Magazine. It was a beautiful recipe dish for their Spring Issue, created by the talented Lisa Glickman. (in stores soon) And since I can’t show you the images until the magazine comes out, I thought I would show you some previous recipes Lisa and I had the pleasure of working on together for 1859 Magazine.

The images featured below are from the Fall 2009 and Winter 2010 issues of 1859 Magazine.

Quick side note: If you haven’t heard of Lisa Glickman, I urge you to check out her website (click on the link above) and consider hiring her for your next event as your personal chef. Her meals are DELICIOUS! She is so talented in the kitchen and SO fun to have around!

Salmon Agnolotti with Creamy Hazelnut Sauce

Dungeness Crab Sliders with Green Curry Mayonnaise and Apple, Fennel and Walnut Slaw

by Christian Lander.  This is a pretty funny book…you should check it out.

Lander started the blog [ [stuffwhitepeoplelike.com] ] and then he transformed his blog into a book.

Of the 150 topics, I do/think 60 of them.  My boyfriend does 57.  I think the funnier ones are: Not having cash [only using credit cards... for the miles], standing still at concerts, wear outdoor performance clothes, want to live by the water…in a house with hardwoods, buy expensive strollers, men wear beards/have facial hair, buy $4 coffee, love The Sunday New York Times …

I suspect if he writes a sequel, it will include: Writing a blog.

Posted via web from jessefelder's posterous

One of our Picks of the Week in the last print edition was sending you in the direction of the Domino Room tonight where Bend's community radio station, KPOV (106.7FM), is screening the documentary Playing For Change.

The film is an uplifting look into the global unifying powers of music and follows a crew that travels the world recording music with players from different cultures by way of a traveling recording studio. The result are numbers that include musicians from various contineRead More...

carrrrrlos posted a photo:

Week 10 of 52.

The laws of probability allow even a blind hen to occasionally find a kernel, and the right-wing Cascade Policy Institute to occasionally produce a valuable piece of research.

The institute has come out with a study titled “Oregon’s High School Dropouts: Examining the Economic and Social Costs” that lays out some startling and disturbing facts about the heavy toll the state pays because as many as one-third of its high school seniors fail to graduate.

Among othRead More...

PRESS RELEASE

Media Contacts:

Lewis Howell, lewisbhowell@gmail.com, 541-480-7267

Robert Kieffer, Robert@broofa.com, 541-728-3274

Ruth Lindley, ruth@edcoinfo.com, 541-388-3236

Central Oregon’s Tech Alliance brokers community office space for tech sector
Dedicated space offers a collaborative environment for tech professionals and startups

BEND, Oregon, March 11, 2010 – Central Oregon’s Tech Alliance announced today the launch of TechSpaceBend (www.techspacebend.com), Central Oregon’s first coworking environment for tech professionals and startup organizations. The project is in partnership with The Old Cigar Building, Economic Development for Central Oregon (EDCO), the Bend Venture Conference (BVC), and BendTech, a local MeetUp group.

TechSpace is available now at the Old Cigar Building, just off Greenwood on Harriman Avenue, in the heart of downtown Bend. The building became available when G5 Search Marketing relocated their expanding operation to Franklin Crossing in February.

“With easy access to and from Highway 97,” said Roger Lee, Executive Director of EDCO, “TechSpace’s ideal location is easy walking distance to Bend’s many restaurants and businesses, Drake Park, the Public Library, and just one block from EDCO’s offices.”

With a hip, industrial feeling, the Old Cigar Building offers an open lounge, private offices, low-walled desk areas, bar stool and café seating, and a conference room (created from the original occupant’s cigar humidor). Local art, revolving every few months, will lend a creative feeling to the office’s atmosphere. The Old Cigar Building will participate in the First Friday Art Walk, on April 2nd.

TechSpaceBend combines low cost office spaces with high value services in an informal and collaborative environment. Space commitments are available on a flexible basis by month, multi-month, or annually and include the services mentioned below:

§ Dedicated space

o two dedicated office spaces ($400 per month) and

o six workdesks ($150 per month)

§ Drop-in space

o four workdesks, three bar seats, and two lounge seats ($75 per month)

Services include fast Internet service sponsored by Bend Broadband, conference room privileges, 24×7 secure building access, an onsite printer/copier, and sponsored events.

“For some time, there’s been a need for communal tech space that’s affordable,” said Dan Hobin, CEO of G5 Search Marketing and co-owner of the Old Cigar Building. “There’s enormous value in having a nexus – an activity hub – that draws the tech community together for ad hoc collaboration.”

TechSpace is considered a “coworking” environment - meaning that it offers virtual workers, telecommuters, and entrepreneurs an alternative to traditional office space or a home office. By design, the structure of the building promotes collaboration, networking and sharing of resources.

“By combining seasoned entrepreneurs with early stage companies, organic growth can occur,” said Lewis Howell, Practice Director for Cinetix Solutions, Tech Alliance board member, and organizer for Central Oregon Information Systems User Group (COISUG).  “We can actively promote the cross pollination of people and ideas, which will result in innovation for the continued growth of Bend’s tech community.”

“TechSpace was created by the tech community for the community,” said Robert Kieffer, organizer of BendTech, a telecommuter with a Bay Area technology company, and co-lead with Lewis Howell to broker TechSpaceBend.  “We’ll work with all the local tech organizations to sponsor events, provide meeting areas, and to give back financially when possible. The Old Cigar Building will help make it easier for everyone to get together and network.”

Any technology companies or professionals interested in becoming a TechSpace sponsor/partner should visit www.techspacebend.com to learn more.

###

About Central Oregon’s Tech Alliance

The Tech Alliance represents the interests of member businesses and user groups in promoting and providing support to the growing Central Oregon technology community. For more information on the Tech Alliance, please visit www.techallianceco.org or contact Ric Newberry.

About EDCO

Economic Development for Central Oregon (EDCO) is a private non-profit corporation founded 29 years ago and dedicated to building a thriving regional economy by attracting new investment and traded-sector jobs (manufacturing, professional, headquarters and high technology businesses) through marketing, recruitment and substantive assistance to existing companies. Learn more about EDCO at www.edcoinfo.com.

About BendTech

BendTech is a user group for Central Oregon technology professionals founded 3 years ago with the goal of creating a stronger, more coherent, tech community by providing networking and educational opportunities both online and offline. Learn more at [www.meetup.com]

About Old Cigar Building

The Old Cigar Building LLC is owned by Dan Hobin and Greg Meier, co-founders of G5 Search Marketing.  The Old Cigar Building is a separate enterprise; see photos at [www.facebook.com]

A whitewater park in Bend may still be a few years out, but that isn't stopping paddling enthusiasts from celebrating their sport this month. Paddlers announced this week that they are preparing to host the second annual Riverhouse Run slalom championships on Sunday, March 28. The contest begins at 10 a..m outside its namesake venue on the Deschutes in Bend and is expected to draw competitors from around Oregon and Washington.

"The Riverhouse is such an amazing venue to have a race likRead More...

La Pine wins, advances to semifinals