I’m on my way to Boston early in the AM to do an install and training for an important reseller. Expect little or no blogging, unless I get stuck in the airport terminal somewhere.
Thursday, I’m off to Manhattan for another day trip. This all starts a stretch of more intense travel. Whee.
During my checking up on insulation progress, I came across an excellent tool to help judge where our electricity is going. Progress Energy has a wonderful tool to show how you spend your electrons. Create an account, log in, and you’re presented with the last 12 months of bills, including kilowatt usage, monthly average usage, and the high and low temperatures for the day.
I once worked for a local commercial weather forecasting company that among other things sells temperature forecasts to power companies. The power companies use those forecasts to know how much electricity demand to expect, which determines if they have surplus to sell or if they have a need to buy. Even so, I never really appreciated how closely temperatures are tied to electric usage until I saw my own electricity use mapped to temperature on Progress’s website. It shows that my recognizing the need for a better air conditoner is right on target. When you’re looking at your own power bill there’s little doubt about where your electrons are being spent: air conditioning. It’s mind boggling to think how much power could be saved if air conditioners didn’t need compressors.
If you haven’t created an account on the Progress Energy site yet, you can find the log-in details on your latest power bill. Check it out!
The results of my recent trip into the attic to improve the insulation have shown it to be an unqualified success! It was three hours of dirty, hot, sweaty work and $150 in materials but it was well worth it. The air conditioner can now keep pace with the thermostat setting, whereas previously there might be up to a 5 degree difference. I was considering all sorts of remedies for the upstairs heat: installing a roof ridge vent ($1.5k to $3k), adding a heat shield ($300), adding (another) attic fan ($300), or even installing a new, separate air conditoner ($3k+). The cheapest solution has turned out to be the best.
The attic fan I installed (with much peril, if you’ll recall) is still not functioning. When it works it can probably cool the attic down by ten degrees. I’d still like to get it fixed but now that the insulation is doing its job there’s no rush. I’ll wait until it cools off outside a bit more.
One thing that still needs addressing is our master bedroom closet. It sits on the end of the house (on the southern side no less), has no air duct supplying air conditioning to it, and has our attic accessway in it. During the summer, this closet heats to 95 degrees! There’s not much reason to add AC to it, but one thing I would like to do is build a way to better insulate over the attic stairs. I’m thinking of building a hinged cover for them.
Ah. So many projects, so little time!
Yesterday I was reading how virtually worthless Vonage stock is now. Analysts question why anyone would want to get into the landline business now, with the assumption that VoIP is essentially landline service provided over broadband. I know at least two friends who have eschewed landlines completely, relying instead on their mobile phones for their service. It kind of makes sense: why have a number anchored to your house when you’re always on the go?
Then I had to reset my Asterisk box this morning as it had gotten hung somehow overnight. It too has a landline connecting it to Bellsouth. I began to think: what a waste! Why am I paying Bellsouth close to $40/month for service with half the features of my mobile phone service? Why am I paying two bills for two separate phone services?
Do you know what would make Bellsouth go positively ape-shit with fear? Someone selling adapters to connect your inside phone lines straight to your cellphone. No landline would be needed. Just like the cradles used to pipe your calls through an amplified speaker in your car, you would just plug a cable into your mobile phone and your inside telephones would magically make their calls through your mobile phone. No fussing with ‘talk’ and ‘end’ buttons: just use it like a regular phone.
Most mobile phone service providers have “family” plans which allow you to share minutes with phones in your family. You could hook up your home to the same number as your “mobile” mobile for something like $10/month extra and have the best of all worlds.
So the question I have about this is, would this provide any real benefit not already present in simply using a mobile phone in your home? Personally, I like the reduced RF exposure it would bring, as the caller wouldn’t be right next to the antenna during a call. Admittedly, though, only geeks like me worry about that kind of stuff. I would also like not having to hunt for my mobile phone when I need to make a call: wired phones tend not to walk off. Lastly, I would like not having to worry about whether my mobile was charged or not: a wired adapter would keep it always topped off.
Most importantly, though, I’d love to make Bellsouth go ape-shit with fear! The days of stodgy old phone service are long gone. Time to shake things up!
If you’ll allow me to put on my tinfoil hat for a moment, I have to say that I’m amused at the controversy surrounding the ABC “docudrama” The Path To 9/11. The controversy is about the movie not being truthful to the 9/11 Commission Report. The irony I see is that the 9/11 Report isn’t truthful to begin with.
Kerosene fires don’t melt steel buildings. There have been many raging fires in skyscrapers before the World Trade Center fires. Never have they caused a building to collapse. Certainly none were ever pulverized into dust. September 11 changed everything.
The black boxes were supposedly never found, yet a pristine passport allegedly belonging to one of the hijackers miraculously is discovered untouched on the sidewalk. How does this happen? September 11 changed everything.
People don’t want to believe their government at best was criminally negligent and at worst was criminally complicit in this tragedy. Why has no one lost their job because of this? If our Secretary of Defense is charged with, well, defending us, why isn’t he in a soup kitchen line by now? This just doesn’t make sense.
People believe what they want to believe. More importantly, people don’t believe what they don’t want to believe. Knowing what I’ve come to know about how things work, I am long past the point of taking my government at its word. I may not have all the answers to what took place five years ago, I just know what I’m being told isn’t it.
Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.
