Ethics - work & other

This post on "What Is a Good Work Ethic?" at Web Worker Daily struck a chord.

I’ve been complimented by several people recently about my work ethic, and while I appreciate those compliments, I’m still trying to figure out whether that work ethic is a blessing or a curse.

Somewhere along the way it had slipped my mind that what I do is called 'having a work ethic'. That's generally considered a good thing and I shouldn't beat myself up over it. Or want to beat other people up over the lack of it.

Although how do you 'lack' an ethic? It's a sort of moral code, even if you don't think about it it's there one way or another. Even if you do think about it the result might be 'it's fine for me to slack off'. It's funny how 'good' is the default state when people talk about someone having a work ethic. A bad work ethic is considered synonymous with 'no work ethic'.

And why don't we extend this to the flip side? You never hear that someone has a 'good relaxation ethic'. How about a strong family ethic? A dedicated service ethic? Yet surely the same principles apply.

Viewed like this I can say that the first and last both cause trouble for me, having too few and possibly too much respectively. Although what sort of quantifiers do you use? (I'm sure philosophers/sociologists have entire lexicons devoted to this.)

Go Nelson City Council!

Via TVNZ News,

Nelson, New Zealand's sunshine capital, is planning to turn its sunlight into power.
Neslon wants to become the country's first 'solar city' with a scheme to help 1,700 homes switch to solar powered water heating over the next four years.
...
So popular that the council's had to run a ballot to choose the first homes to capitalise on solar energy.

And much more information is available on NCC's solar hot water heating webpage. Not only are they effectively giving their residents a long-term (10 years for a few $k) low interest loan, which interestingly is targeted to the property not the owner, but they've used their size to negotiate lower prices, are making sure people get their government subsidy and waiving the fee on the building consent.

It certainly puts Christchurch City Council's paltry $200 subsidy and token installation on a few of it's own 2650 housing units to shame.

For those in other cities, pointers to your local council's equivalent schemes welcome in the comments :)

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While I'm on the subject, here's an update on my own solar hot water system. I've had the programmed nightly top-up turned off recently because even with the few hours of summer sun we've been having there's been plenty of hot water at the top of the tank. I flicked it back on Monday night for a boost and the resulting spike (just 3 hours) nearly doubled our power use for Tuesday.

Can I mention that I also love PowerShop's daily reporting, viewable down to day/night meter resolution :D More on that in a few days time.