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Introducing "Beauty"

Every few months our family makes a visit to the animal shelter to check out all the critters. Until now it has always been pretty non-committal - mostly for everyone to say "hi" to our little furry buddies. This Saturday, we ended up bringing a not-so-little friend home - a lovely one year old Shepherd-Husky mix named "Beauty".

It turns out Beauty was given up by her previous family earlier the same morning due to some incompatible moving situation.

It's barely been 24 hours and she is already comfortable in her new home.

Prius vs. Pickup

In a rare moment of weakness, I broke my Zen master concentration for a few milliseconds during the morning commute and ended up kissing the bumper of a full size pickup truck. I was going perhaps 5, no more than 10 miles per hour when the whole "two objects can't occupy the same space" rule came into effect. My kid was impressed: "That was scary" followed by "My muffin fell on the floor" and later "Wow Dad, looks like your license plate is bent!". Two immediate observations: 1) Every conceivable crumple zone did lots of crumpling and 2) the pickup truck bumper was completely unscathed.

I stopped by the local dealer's body shop to test the waters: $3,200. Time to call the insurance company.

I am happy that no one was injured and it teaches me to pay even more attention driving. However, I am a little surprised at how much damage was done.

Vampire Power

Many of us have oodles of electronic gizmos plugged into power outlets 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The trouble is even when these items are not "turned off" and not in use, many are consuming power - sometimes egregiously as if they were simply left on. In some ways and perhaps more insidiously, many draw a few handfuls of watts just sitting there and doing nothing useful. Hence the term vampire power, which some estimate uses about 5% of the total US power generated. (I wish they called is zombie power, then I could mention that World War Z is still the best book I've read this year).

Properly eliminating vampire power is a tricky proposition and the real solution is for the consumer electronics industry to drive this trickling power use to near zero. There are initiatives such as Green Plug, but those for the moment are vapor (my definition being that I can't go down to the store and buy electronics so equipped).

I stumbled upon the Smart Strip and realized this would be a perfect solution for my home entertainment center. The Smart Strip works by plugging a "control device" into a specially marked outlet - when this device is turned off, the Smart Strip detects this and then shuts down all of the "automatically switched outlets". The opposite occurs when the control device is turned on. Here's my setup:

The one catch is that my DVR needs access to power all the time - it needs to wake itself up in order to record a random show during the day. To enable this, the Smart Strip has "constant hot" outlets.

I've made the speaker system/sonar array the control device. It will always be on whenever we're actually using any or all of the entertainment system and most importantly off when we're not. From here, everything else is plugged into the automatically switched outlets.

The whole setup is a snap and it doesn't require any thought to put to use. But the question is, what am I really saving?

Modern televisions are significantly improved in their vampire power characteristics. My television draws only 0.2W while in standby mode, the PS3 quite a bit more at 1.9W. That looks like small potatoes, but ends up being 18 kWh over the course of a year (2.1W x 8.670 hrs/year).

Perhaps even more useful is attempting to reduce "oops left the TV/PlayStation on" kinds of episodes. The PS3 consumes a whopping 177W turned on a doing nothing (as compared to 166W for my television). As long as the speakers are turned off, everything else is taken care of.

Overall, the Smart Strip is a quick, easy and relatively inexpensive solution to one form of vampire power.

Soap Nuts Drive Me Nuts

By the title of this post alone it's clear that I was scarred as a youngster, probably on some road trip trying to read the mudflaps on a semi trucking down the interstate.

What is really on my mind are the byproducts of the genus Sapindus. These caught my eye recently, being marketed as "soap nuts" - a natural, environmentally friendly alternative to conventional laundry detergent.

I read oodles of testimonials on numerous websites proclaiming the awesomeness of soap nuts. Not only do they get your clothes squeaky clean, they are 100% biodegradable (heck, compostable), a renewable resource and most importantly the name reminded me of another product that is a little out there and mildly entertaining.

My inner skeptic was screaming bloody murder, but the marketing message caught me hook, line and sinker. A low-cost experiment was in order and I whipped out the credit card with reckless abandon. I won't mention the specific website here, since I don't want to single out any of the many you can easily find online.

I ended up with a box of 1) sticky prune looking things (dried versions of the fruit in the picture here) that 2) smelled kind of funny. The box came with a small canvas bag to put a few of the "nuts" into and toss into the wash. Simple enough.

To alleviate any perception of preconceived bias, I've eaten things more earthy than my new trial laundry detergent. (As a lifelong vegetarian, these things happen).

I ended up running four loads of laundry using "soap nuts" in lieu of conventional laundry detergent. Given that I have a LG WM2688HNM "Dirt Crusher" washer that can make 50 pounds of soiled diapers smell like roses - using nothing more than atmospheric moisture - it would be a little challenging to have the "soap nuts" improve cleaning quality. Mostly, I was looking for any detracting items and I found two that are deal breakers:

1. My clothes smelled like soap nuts. Some more so than others. I have a synthetic fuzzy sweatshirt thing that still smells like them after a number of conventional washes. Not that the odor is outright intolerable, but one that just doesn't agree with me.
2. A load of whites took on a brownish tint that, well, kind of goes against the grain of the whole "cleaning clothes" concept we're after here.

I'm sticking with using my tried and true all free clear HE detergent. Others may find "soap nuts" more agreeable, but unfortunately I'm not one of them. On the plus side I did recycle the cardboard box they came in :)

Attack of the (sort of) Killer LEDs

As part of my campaign to reduce energy consumption, I've been eyeing LED bulbs as the ultimate in lighting efficiency. However, as I mentioned some posts back, they do have their drawbacks - primarily lacking sufficient light to be useful everywhere a standard incandescent or compact fluorescent bulb can go.

To dip my toe in the water, I targeted a nice antique chandelier light in my dining room. It currently has five 40W candelabra bulbs in it - burning a precious 200W when turned on. I use this light quite a bit, so reducing power consumption here will likely result in an overall measurable reduction in energy use.

My first pass was to pick up five LED replacement bulbs from the folks at superbrightleds.com - specifically the 21-LED model shown below.

The first test failed, in that my wife came home and spotted something "wrong" with the fixture even though it wasn't powered - the shape and size difference threw her. Powering them up at night, the 5500K super white color was pretty neat and got a "cool" vote from my 4-year-old - but was eerily different from any other light sources in the room. However, the real problem was insufficient light - very noticeable on the table surface below (at the elevation of the light and above, not too bad). This was quite a bummer, since I was really hoping that at 2W each, I could take this fixture from 200W to 10W in power use.

So it was back to the drawing board and for once timing was in my favor. The superbrightleds.com folks had just added a brighter 32-LED candelabra bulb to their catalog and as a bonus it comes in the traditional aesthetic shape.

This time around I opted for warm white LEDs and combined with the additional light output ended up with improved lighting quality and something I can work with. These bulbs consume 3W each - not bad going from 200W to 15W total energy consumption for the fixture (that's a decrease of 92%).

I am going to stick with this setup, although I would give it a B or B- in terms of being a true drop-in replacement. First, the actual light intensity is noticeably less than the original incandescent bulbs. The claim is that these are rough equivalent to a 25-30W bulb - a lumen-for-lumen replacement for a 40W (or higher) bulb simply doesn't exist. Second, the light emitted does not saturate an area like an incandescent or CF bulb - by their very nature, LEDs appear to be highly directional light sources with narrow beam patterns. Finally, my wife made me promise to keep the old 40W incandescent bulbs around "just in case" we want to swap them out for the random dinner we may host - the LED bulbs have a space age appearance that may not be the best mood lighting for a quiet dinner. And for the icing on the cake, these bulbs are pretty heavy on the pocket book.

I have a few other LED replacements projects in the works and I'll report on those down the road. But for now, LED light technology isn't here yet in terms of being decent 1-for-1 replacements for existing conventional bulbs. I hope this does not remain the case for long.... but it took a while for CF bulbs to get into the mainstream and to be reasonable replacements - I suspect LED bulbs will follow a similar path.

CleanMPG Mileage Log

I finally got around to creating an account on CleanMPG.com and getting my mileage log up to date. It's a pretty nice setup for capturing and displaying mileage data. My record thus far:

I like the fact that temperature data can be captured, since "emperically" efficiency correlates well with ambient air temperature. This graph doesn't reflect that super well - I grabbed weekly mean temperatures for the week around each fill up from Weather Underground. In addition, a spiffy badge is dynamically created from this data:

Overall, I am happy with the mileage log interface and the graphs generated. I'll probably be using CleanMPG going forward to keep track of how the Prius is fairing.

In a perfect world an iPhone application for this would magically appear so I can easily enter the data right at the pump and avoid transcribing data to and from Notes.

All the gory detail of my mileage log can be found here.

Refrigerators

Ok, even I admit the topic of refrigerators leaves a little to be desired. I think I can explain myself out of this, so here goes nothing.

About a month ago my Kill-A-Watt EZ came in the mail. I decided to target something big and easily measurable - my refrigerator. So for the last three weeks I've had the refrigerator plugged into it collecting data.

I have a relatively modern model - a modest Kenmore Coldspot manufactured in 2001. Normal size, nothing too fancy. Energy Star compliant (at least when I bought it).

The Kill-A-Watt measured an average of 2.22 kWh/day, which translates to 810 kWh/year. Granted, this is a landed cost of approximately $53/year (at $0.067/kWh for my local rate), but in 2008 you can't find a refrigerator on the current Energy Star list that consumes this much energy, no matter the size.

I've had my eye on the Sun Frost refrigerators for while now, so I decided to do a little comparison. The RF16 model is probably what I would replace my current Kenmore with and is a rough equivalent (although slightly smaller capacity).

The Sun Front RF16 consumes a between 0.48 and 0.70 kWh per day (ambient temperature dependent). This represents a decrease in energy consumption between 68 and 78%, with a annual cost of approximately $12-$17 to operate.

Now I'm not going to run out and buy a new refrigerator anytime soon - at $2800 the Sun Frost isn't exactly an impulse purchase. However, if my current one dies an untimely death, I'll definitely think seriously about it. Besides, if I ever get around to solar panels on the roof, there is a 12 volt DC option that can further reduce energy losses.

Prius Update - Month Four

Four months into the new car and I am really enjoying it. Certainly I would prefer to spend less time commuting and doing other useful things, but those be the breaks.

Lifetime mileage is still doing pretty well, right in the same sweet spot. I managed to get a 54 MPG tank (offset of course by a lousy 42 MPG tank - cold snap, lead foot or cheap gas - dunno).

Either way I still get to keep my hypermiler merit badge. On the operating cost side, my 42 MPG tank really socked it to me with a wicked outlier, but overall respectable.

I've just come up on 5000 miles and took the car into the shop today for its first scheduled service. I asked for the dino juice to be replaced with synthetic Mobile 1 5W/30. We'll see if that has any positive impact on efficiency. It should certainly lead to longer engine life and perhaps I can skip every other oil change  - every 10k miles as opposed to every 5k miles per the manufacturer's schedule with cheap oil.

War on Junk Mail - Month One

I've been deep under cover the past few weeks - out of town tending to family affairs, etc. Life should be getting somewhat back to normal for me now, which means the blog machinery is starting to spin up again.

The picture above represents 28.5 pounds and four weeks of junk mail at my household. (For scale the yellow tape measure is three feet). I started this collection the day I signed up for GreenDimes, simply to see how effective the service is. I didn't expect to see any magical decrease in junk mail in the first month, due to it taking several months to get off everyone's mailing list. However, now I have a good baseline to work from. We'll see what happens in month two of the experiment.

(By the way, this does not include stuff I've put into the shred pile - credit card offers, etc. That represents a smaller, but significant stack of paper as well).

F# Update

It's been a while since I've noted anything interesting on the F# front. I've been off and on wrestling with getting some F# features such as quotations [PDF] to work properly on OS X/Mono.

One expert opinion is inclined to think there may be an issue with Mono, which bums me out. Hopefully this will get resolved sometime down the road but I'm not going to hold my breath.

That being said it's probably time to pick up a copy of Windows and fire it up under Parallels. I'm still trying to figure out whether I should suck it up and go the Vista route or try and get XP while it's still available. I also need to find out whether Visual Studio 2008 Shell will be an adequate environment to work in. (Yeah, I'm cheap that way).

Or maybe I'll give Mono one last shot and see if it and F# can cooperate under a different *nix platform. The Ubuntu image I installed under Parallels the other night may be a good test victim. Speaking of which, the power and flexibility of virtualization still impresses the heck out of me - but that's a whole other conversation.

Update: I've tried this with Mono 1.9_5 on Ubuntu 7.10 and and it's still broken. Time to leave Mono behind and revisit it later.