Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Baaa Baaa, And The Sheep Say Baaa

So, your friends look at you with a smirk of condescension when you tell them that for a hundred years socialist/Marxist/communists have been infiltrating the United States?  Yeah.. me too.

I used to work on an Orchard in Northern Michigan and one day I was cleaning out the attic of one of the houses that the illegal Mexican aliens lived in during the summer/fall months and I stumbled across several election posters.  Interesting... the father of my boss (he must have been like 60 years old back when I was 15 yrs old... so he'd be like 87 years old now)... had run for governor of Michigan on the Communist ticket some while back before that time.

Of course, being a kid it didn't mean much to me at the time because I didn't know the difference between one political party and the next.  I was sheltered very snuggly between one small down and others.. the outside world meant nothing to me.

As the years progressed I have learned a great deal more about this communist determination to take over the United States.  When I talk to people about it I get this glazed over look and am basically told, "The socialist government media warned me not to listen to you when I tell you what they've been doing... so I'm tossing out years of knowing you and your character and integrity and reputation.. and I'm going to distance myself from you now and call you a extream wierdo because that's what they told me to do."  yeah.. you know the look.

I thought it would be fun to put up a cartoon that was published in the Chicago Tribune in 1934.



Make note of the sign in the lower left.

Back in 1934 people were brave enough to call out the truth and be laughed at and mocked.  Today, there are a few of us still remaining.

Still... people will mock you and say nothing like this ever happened 100 years ago and nothing like this has been going on between now and then... you're just making stuff up.


So, the next time you see a cartoon like the one below:


Before you just scoff at them and write them off.... pick up an actual book and learn your history.  A book.... oh dear.. I forget how much we've actually lost in this Country over the years.  Do people even know how to read anymore?

Keep Killing My Child: It Makes The Doctors Happy

Several months back my wife started to talk to me about friends she has back in Michigan. The family was asking for prayer for their little boy because he had cancer. Hundreds/thousands of people started to pray for the little boy as he was going through chemo.


Time passes..... a PET scan is done and he's cancer free (at that time)... Much rejoicing.

A little time passes and we get another prayer request.... the doctors are insisting to continue chemo, even after the PET scans are telling them that the little boy no longer has cancer.. they want to keep pumping the poisons into him anyway.

I'll let the story below tell the full issue.. it covers everything very well.

My wife is subscribed to a Homeschool newsletter and it was interesting that this information about people she knows back in Michigan showed up in the Homeschool newsletter. I thought I'd share it with everyone here so you can see: Just how close you can be from the government taking your children from you any time they get the whim.

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( Full Article Here )

Who Makes the Really Tough Decisions: Parents? Or Doctors?
by Michael Farris
HSLDA Chairman

Who should make very difficult decisions for children? Parents or doctors?

In March of this year, 8-year-old Jacob Stieler was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma, a dangerous bone cancer. His parents took him to a highly-rated children’s oncology center in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Jacob had surgery to remove the tumor, which was followed by several rounds of chemotherapy. The treatment was incredibly difficult, and Jacob’s mom, Erin, told me that when she looked her son in the eyes, she knew in her heart that he simply could not survive many more rounds of these drugs.

Erin and Ken, Jacob’s mom and dad, joined by hundreds of others, prayed for Jacob and his complete recovery.

After all of these rounds of chemotherapy were completed, there was a PET scan done to check on the status of the cancer. There was no evidence of cancer detected in Jacob’s body. Jacob’s family and friends rejoiced in his healing—praising God for this wonderful outcome.

But the doctors wanted to give Jacob several more rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, despite the clean PET scan. When asked why they wanted to keep giving Jacob these incredibly dangerous drugs, the doctors replied that this was “the standard of care” for his illness.

Jacob’s parents begged the doctors to make an individual diagnosis, rather than simply following unbending standards. But the doctors were steadfast. All children with this cancer needed multiple rounds of these drugs—regardless of PET scan results, the doctors contended.

Jacob’s parents did extensive study of the side effects of the five different chemotherapy drugs that the doctor wanted to administer. And they believed that the risk of the drugs was far greater than the risk of recurrent cancer, since Jacob had a clean PET scan. They said no to the doctors. No more chemotherapy treatment for now.

But the doctors would not take no for an answer. They called child protective services in Jacob’s county and asked the agency to file charges against the family for medical neglect.

After looking into the matter, both the local CPS agency and the local prosecuting attorney refused to file charges. They believed that the parents were making reasonable decisions for Jacob.

The doctors still would not take no for an answer. They called higher authorities in the state level CPS agency. The doctors had to make several calls before they finally found someone who would agree with them.

As a result of all of these calls, the local CPS agency was pressured into filing medical neglect charges against the parents.

The local prosecutor still refused to take a case against the family, so the state level CPS officials hired an independent private lawyer to serve as the prosecutor against Ken and Erin Stieler.

A jury trial is scheduled for early January to determine if the doctors will be given the authority to take over the medical decision-making for Jacob.

When I heard about this case—and checked out the facts—I knew that I could not sit on the sidelines and watch this family be overrun and parental rights be trashed by well-meaning but overzealous doctors.

I recently flew to Michigan and took the depositions of all three doctors who were scheduled to testify against the family.

Jacob’s treating physician is the key.

I prepared for the depositions by obtaining copies of the official “package inserts” that the FDA requires all drug companies to give to physicians and patients. Undoubtedly, you have seen these inserts when you have picked up prescriptions for your children.

The inserts tell you several things:

Indicated uses—that is a list of the diseases for which there is evidence that the drug is a safe and effective treatment.

Warnings—these are strong cautions that indicate serious potential issues.
Side effects—these disclose all of the potential consequences that arise from taking the drug.
Approved for children—there is a specific disclaimer on many drugs that indicate whether the drugs have been proven to be safe and effective for children.

“Have all of these drugs been approved by the FDA as safe and effective for children?” I asked Jacob’s treating oncologist.

“Yes,” she replied, they have been FDA-approved for children.

According to the official package inserts that we were able to obtain, she is just flat wrong.

She wanted to continue to give Ifosfamide to Jacob.

The FDA disclosure for this drug says: “Pediatric Use: Safety and effectiveness in pediatric patients have not been established.”

The oncologist wanted to give Jacob a weeks’ worth of Etoposide.

The FDA disclosure says: “Pediatric Use: Safety and effectiveness in pediatric patients have not been established.”

The warning on the drug Doxorubicin says: “Pediatric patients are at increased risk for developing delayed cardiotoxicity.” This means that the drug can cause severe harm to a child’s heart—at even higher rates than it can in adults.

In fact, as it turned out, the treating doctor had never even seen, much less read, these official FDA-required package inserts. She did state that she had seen similar information from other sources.

Most of the drugs did not list Jacob’s form of cancer as an “indicated use.” This means that these drugs had not been tested and validated as safe and effective for this particular kind of cancer—even for adults, much less for children.

And then we get to the official warnings and side effects.

In addition to the strong warnings about “congestive heart failure” from Doxorubicin, other drugs the doctor wanted to give were known to have caused cancer—new forms of cancer—in patients being treated for an original cancer. Vincristine’s label is typical of these warnings: “Patients who received chemotherapy with vinchristine sulfate in combination with anticancer drugs known to be carcinogenic have developed second malignancies.” The warning labels say that sometimes these second cancers develop years after the treatment.

All five of the drugs that the doctors want to give Jacob are either known to cause other cancers or have not been fully tested.

Some of the other side effects for these drugs include:

Damage to the cranial motor nerves
Serious infections
Failure of boys to sexually mature
The inability to father children
Anorexia

It would take pages to recite all of the warnings and side effects.

Parental rights are increasingly being lost in the medical arena. I am beginning to wonder why physicians even bother asking for parental consent if they will just do an end run around the parents whenever it is convenient for them to do so.

This is not an easy case. It is not a case where a child has a current illness and the treatment is tested and proven to be safe and effective—those cases are easily resolved. The best evidence is that Jacob no longer has objective evidence of cancer. And not a single drug that the doctors want to give Jacob is FDA-approved for children for his kind of cancer.

This is a case where there must be a judgment call—a balancing of risks.

Who makes that call?

The doctor told me during the deposition that she thinks that she should make the call—for every child in this situation. And she would give the same answer every time, rather than making an individual judgment.

I can’t imagine a more clear case of the need for parental rights. This is a decision that requires the wisdom of God.

HSLDA was established to defend parental rights in the context of homeschooling. But the assault on parental rights comes to us on many fronts. This is why we have set up the Homeschool Freedom Fund to enable us to fight important cases for the broader principle of parental rights. Our regular membership fees do not stretch far enough to cover these kinds of cases. We truly need your help to be able to fight for the principles we all hold dear.

If you would like to stand with us in this critical battle for parental rights, I would ask you to send the very best gift you can to the Home School Foundation’s Homeschool Freedom Fund. All gifts to HSF are tax-deductible.

This trial is coming soon—we will send out email alerts if there is any change in the schedule.

Fighting a case of this magnitude is an expensive proposition. I hope you will be as generous as possible so that we may cover travel costs, local counsel, and deposition expenses—for this case and future cases where justice demands action to preserve freedom.

Our nation was founded upon the traditions of Western Civilization. This civilization was founded on the principles of the Word of God. God gives children to parents—not to the state, and not to doctors. In cases like this one, our legal system must remain steadfast in following the principle that God has delegated these kinds of decisions to parents, not to doctors, social workers, or courts.

Please pray for the Stieler family’s case and help as best you can. Thank you.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Speeding Ticket Hell

I am going to chronical the experience of getting a speeding ticket here in Arizona.  I can tell you, if I would have been given this list up front about what crap I'd have to go through I'd have just shot myself in the head.  But.. because it was hell one step at a time, I was able to slowly go insane rather than become overwhelmed all at once.


*Note*: Whenever calling the driving school, assume a 10-20 minute stint being on hold (even when not mentioned below)

  1. Drive too fast on a road that is stupid-silly marked for slower than makes sense (Yes, that's my excuse.  I am discovering that I really don't do well with authority.  Didn't used to be like that but as I learn what Authority is and has become, I have almost zero respect for it).
  2. Get a ticket and get treated like you're some sort of child rapist by the police officer that has serious issues involving the lack of love from his mother as a child.
  3. Look up online how much the ticket will cost.
  4. Have wife coax you up off the floor after fainting and assist you in taking large doses of meds for your migraine.
  5. Panic when attempting to try and figure out how to come up with $200+ dollars in the family budget over the next month.
  6. Discover that it just isn't going to happen.. so call court house, wait on phone, ask for an extension.
  7. Get directed to a website where it gives you instructions on how to get an extension.
  8. Get your printer at home to work with your laptop so that it can scan in documents and turn them into .pdf files (3 hours).
  9. Scan your drivers license, scan your ticket.
  10. Write a letter asking for an extension.
  11. Print out your letter asking for an extension.
  12. Sign the letter asking for an extension.
  13. Take the letter, the drivers license scan and the ticket scan to work with you.
  14. Fax all three items above to a number at the court house to request your extension.
  15. Wait 3 days and then call between 9:00 am and 11:30 am on the third day after sending your fax to confirm that they received your request for an extension.
  16. Get confirmation that your deadline now isn't until November 21st.  Take just a moment to catch your breath.
  17. Discover that you can take an online driving school for $200+ (basically the same as the ticket) but if you do, they will throw the ticket out and you won't get any points or car insurance cost hike, etc.
  18. Wait until about 2 weeks before the new November 21st deadline because you still aren't amazingly wealthy and it takes you that long to come up with $200 to pay for the online course.
  19. Discover that most online courses have several built-in delays that will cause you to miss your November 21st deadline. (spend another 3 hours finding a course that will accept you enrolling only 10 days before the deadline of the ticket).
  20. Sign up for your online course (zap... they are very eager to withdraw the funds out of your checking account/debit card).
  21. Get told that you have to send the online driving course proof of your extension.
  22. Contact the driving course and tell them that you do not have proof.  That you just talked to the court house on the phone and was verbally told it was approved.
  23. Have driving school tell you that they will contact the court house on Monday (it is currently late on Friday) and get verbal confirmation themselves.
  24. Call the driving school on Monday afternoon to ask about what happened with the verbal approval with the court house.  Be told by the driving school that they tried to call for two hours and that they will try again on Tuesday.
  25. Inform the driving school that you know they are lying because the court house ALWAYS answers the phone within 1-2 minutes of calling.  That you are positive that no phone call was made to the court house and you are running out of time and getting frustrated.  Quick jerking my chain and just do your darn job!
  26. Call the court house yourself (get through right away).. ask them about confirmation of the extension.  They say they need a fax number of the driving school and will send something right away.
  27. Call the driving school right back and tell them you need a fax number for the court house to send the proof of extension.
  28. Call the court house right back and give them the fax number.
  29. Wait 30 minutes.
  30. Call the driving school and ask if they received the fax.  Wait as they determine that they must send a supervisor to go find the fax machine and check (be on hold 20 minutes).
  31. Find out that the fax of the extension has something hand written on it and it needs to be typed and it can not be accepted.
  32. Find out from the driving school that they will just call on Tuesday for a verbal and that a fax isn't really even needed.  Make them promise and make their supervisor promise and it be noted in your file what supervisor said they will personally call the courthouse on Tuesday.
  33. On Tuesday, call the driving school and see if they called the court house like they said they were going to do.
  34. Find out that they did call the court house (after another hour of being on hold) but now it's past the 7 days deadline before the court deadline so they can't let me take the course.
  35. Get access to the supervisors' supervisor and let them know that it is the driving courses fault that I'm past the 7 day before the court date deadline because they failed and lied about making phone calls and are the reason it was dragged out so far.
  36. Agree to pay $20 for a 2 day express shipping of your certificate so you can get it to the local court house before your November 21st deadline.
  37. Pay for the 2 day express over the phone with your debt card.
  38. Get a waiver from the company policy and get them to unlock the computer program so that you can take the online driving school course.
  39. Get home and start the driving course.
  40. Log in - Have the course immediately lock you out because you are within the 7 day window before the court date.
  41. Call the driving school back and explain everything from the beginning to the 9th person in the company and then get the supervisor's supervisor on shift at that moment; to contact tech support so they can bypass the computer auto-locks and unlock it so you can take the test (per your previous waiver).
  42. Start the class.
  43. See that the class is telling you that you only have a regular mail (2-8 days) set up and that you need to pay $20 for the 2 day express.
  44. Contact the driving course company and confirm that you paid the $20 already.  Have them tell you that it's noted in your folder/account that it's paid for.  To just select regular(free) mailing so that you don't get charged twice.
  45. Spend 4 hours taking an online class that is more a test of your ability to listen to someone say "beuler.. beuler.. beuler" over and over without falling asleep.
  46. Finish the course.
  47. Contact the driving course and just double check to make sure the 2 day express shipping is in fact going to happen.
  48. Confirm that they screwed that up and have their supervisor's supervisor make sure that it's going to be the 2 day FedEx express shipment.. good thing you called or you would have missed the court deadline of November 21st.
  49. Insist on a tracking number from FedEx.
  50. Be told to call back the next day after 3pm so you can get a FedEx number.
  51. Call back on the next day (again, don't forget being on hold 20 minutes each phone call) and get your FedEx tracking number (each time you get to explain everything from the beginning and/or let them spend 20 minutes reading the pages in your file of notes now).
  52. Let 2 days pass until the Friday before the deadline (deadline is on Monday).
  53. Call the court house to confirm they will be open until 5pm like their website and/or phone auto-recording says.
  54. Get the FedEx delivery at 1:38 pm on Friday.
  55. Jump in your car and drive 45 minutes to the court house.
  56. Stand in line for 15 minutes.
  57. Hand the lady the driving course certificate and a copy of your ticket.
  58. Lady behind the bullet proof glass makes a photo copy and hands you back the original.
  59. Lady tells you she will hand deliver the course certificate 'right now to the lady that needs it'.
  60. Leave the court house wondering if the lady will actually do her job because everyone you ever meet never does their job and you're the one that gets screwed all the time.
  61. Drive 45 minutes through traffic-hell back home.
  62. Consider moving into the basement at work and selling your vehicles because this crap is bull.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

We Don't Need Your -Stink'n- Electricity!

Oh, what a dream to be 'off the grid'.  I don't see it happening any time soon because we are living in rental houses and home owners just aren't so accepting of the idea of you installing many thousands of dollars of equipment into their house and cutting into their electrical junction boxes and such.

I would just love to get enough solar panels for a backup though.  I'd be just giddy as can be if I could have a small system all set up where if we lost power I could just carry out the solar panels and set it up, let the batteries charge up and run some critical systems off the inverter while we're out of 'grid power'.

Maybe make the system just large enough to keep the refrigerator going, the microwave and some portable fans for cooling (the air conditioning would just take too much intrusive wiring into the house electrical system).  The microwave, refrigerator and fans though could all be run on extension cords from the invertor without any big issue at all.  It'd be fantastic to know that you won't lose everything in the freezer/fridge if the power goes out for a day or more.  Or to know that you can still cook food and boil water without any electricity.

I've been researching electric and wind power for months now.  Once I got past the 'fear of change' and procrastination and actually started to research it; I was shocked at how simple it really is.  You can go DIY style and buy solar cells on eBay and solder them together yourself and make/buy your own frames for the solar panels; or you can just buy the panels already made up from the factory on eBay as well.

You can make them cheaper of course.. .for like $160.  But that's a homemade frame that might leak when rained on and it's all the work and possible mistakes that comes from DIY work too.   You can buy a brand new 100 watt, 18.5 volt, 5.55 amp

I want to throw up some pictures and the procedure on how to do some of this work yourself.  You'll see just how easy it is to get solar power cranking in your place too.  I'm not going to get into the process of hooking it into your house.  I'm just going to show you how to make a small system that can go with you camping or in your RV or just an emergency system like I mentioned above to get you by until the grid comes back online.

Step 1:

Check out what area of the country you live in and see just how smart it would be to look to solar power vs. other options.  I'd say in Michigan you'd better for sure include a wind power generator into the system because most of the time you can't see that bright burning ball in the sky.


As you can see.. where we live in Arizona we get a crazy amount of sunshine.

Step 2: 

Determine what you want your system to run.  Refrigerator and microwave and some fans?  Do you want to include your coffee machine?  How about your television so you can keep up on the news?  Maybe some extra available power for charging cell phones and laptops and various other things?

There are many different charts you can find within 1 minute of a little Google-ing to help you add up the power usage of most appliances in your home.  Just add up all the items you want to be able to use so you have an idea of then; how big your system needs to be in order to meet your needs.

Appliance Chart

The above was a screen capture off a website.  You can find the original ( here ).
These items won't be used all the time.  Like your microwave.  Wow.. 1500 watts?!  Oh.. but you're only going to use it for 1 hour of the day.  You need your invertor large enough to supply for peak usage, but your battery bank doesn't need to be massive because that 1500 watts isn't going to keep draining your batteries for hours.. just a little at a time and your panels will start recharging the batteries between uses.

When off the grid.. all those tree-hugging earth-worshiping cultist suggestions actually become important.  Unplug that/those items that are not being used.  Save your power.

Just add up the items you want to be able to use.  Keep in mind that some items may peak on startup.  To start a motor or equipment the amps sometimes double until it is up and running.

Also a small hint:  Turn off the warmer plate on your coffee machine just as soon as it's done percolating and making your pot.  The hot warmer plate is a massive drain of power.  Make the coffee, turn off the coffee maker (unplug it even), pour your cups and enjoy.

Step 3:

Design the system size you need.  In my example above we have:
  • Refrigerator: 540 watts: It only runs about 4 hours a day though.
  • Microwave: 1500 watts
  • Table Fan: 25 watts x 4 = 100 watts
  • TV: 25" color: 150 watts (need to get rabbit ears for non-cable reception).
  • Incandescent Lights: Just add up wattage on the bulbs.  Here might be a good place to listen to the earth-cultists again.  Those Compact Fluorescent or LED lights are a fraction of the wattage usage.  I'd say 300 watts for lights. (emergency lighting here.. not having the whole house lit up).
  • Coffee Maker: 800 watts
Like I mentioned above, these wattages are not just added up.  That coffee maker with 800 watts is only used 15 minute of the day.  Instead of an 800 watts for a daily use.. it's far less (375 watts daily usage).  But you have to plan your invertor based on the 800 watts so that it can handle the demand and not blow/trip your fuses.

So.. add up what I have above and use the load evaluation pdf file on the website listed above and get your total load.  Ours would be: 12,486 watt-hours/day.

Holy Cow!  I didn't realize it was going to be that high.  Jeepers.  Looking at the pdf file that you make up off that website when you're entering your appliances, wattage and hours used.. you can really see what takes up your wattage in a huge way.  The refrigerator is like 60% of the power usage.

Maybe it would be a good idea to just get a little mini-fridge and we just shove the emergency items into the mini-fridge and use that instead of having the big 20 cubic foot fridge.  Wow.. what an electric pig!

Step 4:

Take your watt usage peak (add up all items that will run at the same time and double that), that will be the size of the invertor you need.  In our case: about 6,000 peak usage.  It'd be smart not to run the microwave, fans, all the lights, the coffee maker and the fridge at the same time.  It'd be very simple to just make a family rule:  Don't run the coffee maker and the microwave at the same time.  Problem solved.  Just use a 6,000 watt peak invertor.

A 3,000 watt use / 6,000 watt peak invertor I found for sale at eBay for about $225 (including shipping).

Boost Inverter

Step 5:

Now you need to find out how many/what size solar panels you need.

You can pick up a 100 watt solar panel for about $225 each.  A 100 watt solar panel will charge your batteries 100 watts for each hour of sunlight.  The sun though isn't up and useful 24 hours a day.  So you have to plan for only about 6 hours of sunlight (here in Arizona) where the sun is right above and just dishing out the power if you're ready to use it.

So.. 1 panel that puts out 100 watts will give you 600 watts of charging power into your batteries per day.  If our need is 12,486 watt hours per day.  Using online calculators where you put in your data and it tells you how many panels you will need it says I need 8 panels.

But in reading it's calculations it's assuming you will need to charge up for 3 days worth of power.  It's taking into account using solar power in areas of the country that doesn't get as much sun as here in Arziona.

I think it's safe to trim that down to 3 panels instead of 8 if you're living here in Arizona.

Solar Panel

$225 for each panel x 3 panels = $675

Step 6:

Next we need a Charge Controller.  This will control how your batteries are charged from the panels.  It will slow down to a trickle charge when the batteries are almost fully charged, etc.  It also keeps power from coming back into the panels when it's dark and power naturally wants to flow back through the circuits into the panel.

Each panel puts out about 6 amps.  So with 3 panels you are putting 18 amps towards the batteries from the panels.  You need to know this so you can size your charge controller so it can handle the amps you are using.

A 20 amp (just a little larger than your 18 amps) can be bought on eBay for about $93.00

Charge Controller

Step 7:

Last, but not least.  Decide how many batteries you need.  6-volt batteries have many bonuses in these systems.  The main one is that they last longer and function better when they are cycled.  If you drain them down and then recharge them..they hold up better.  A 12-volt batter like is in your car gets real annoyed with you if you keep draining it and recharging it.

So what you do is buy 2 6-volt batteries and link them together with cables.  This makes a large 12 volt battery; but it is made out of 2 s-volt batteries which don't mind your recharging them frequently.

Problem is the 6-volt batteries are larger and then on top of that you need two of them.  So, they take a lot of room.

Checking out battery calculator programs on the internet to figure out how many batteries you would need for our system we would need.  Much of this varies so much because of the type of batteries that you buy.  How many amp/hours the batteries are rated at, etc.

If I choose the highest quality/rating of batter we'd need 3 groups of 2 batteries. Wow.. searching the internet I can get brand new marine batteries (6 volt) for about $230 each.  6 x 230 = $1380.

So.. our grand total:

Inverter: $225
Controller: $93
Panels: $675
Batteries: $1380

We could run our full sized refrigerator, a microwave, a coffee machine, fans and some lights indefinitely (the grid could be completely down).. for about $2375.

Seems like a big pill to swallow doesn't it?  What if you plugged it into your house system with a little different wiring and then you could trim $100 off your monthly bill from the electric company?  About 2 years and it would pay for itself.

You'd have the peace of mind knowing that you're covered if the grid went down and then you'd be making $100 profit every month (reduced electrical cost from the electric company every month)... take that $100 and put it aside for expanding your system.... maybe you can be completely off the grid after a while and then actually have a 'job' where the electric company pays you money every month.

Muahaha!

I just love doing the planning and math and calculating; even if it never happens.  I like to know how and that it is possible.

Side Note:  You can buy a $200 kit with 1 panel, a small charge controller, and invertor.  It's a little system that's just set up for 50 watts.  Something like your laptop can be run off it, charge your phone, etc.

Summary:  I hope you enjoyed my little research project and have found that solar isn't all that confusing after all.