The 2006 Archives
Just look at all of the great stuff that I wrote in 2006
(or move onto the literary gold from 2007 or the gems from 2005)
November is National Novel Writing Month
See you in December.
The Dangers of Recycling
This morning was garbage day. It had the added bonus of being a very rainy and crappy garbage day. I dutifully dragged my garbage and my recycling through the rain from my garbage box at the back of my property to the pickup location at the other end of my property. A couple of hours later, I went to retrieve the now empty recycle bin only to find that one of them was completely wrecked!
It's not the end of the world, but I've had these bins for years. I have one from Markham where I used to live, one from Montreal where I also used to live, and one I purchased locally for $7. I have to admit, it got under my skin a little. Now granted, it's a pretty terrible day to be collecting recyclables, but I give a little something to these guys every Christmas and I make sure my stuff is organized neatly for them every week, so I don't think I deserve to be penalized just because the recycle guy is having a bad day, you know? And I'm out $7, so I made a mental note to be waiting and to chew out the recycle guy next week when he comes around.
Much later in the day, my wife and I are chatting and she offhandedly let's me know that she accidentally ran over a recycle bin with the van when she took the kids to school. Apparently, it made "a noise" and was "very scary". Realization dawned then, and I told her what I thought had happened.
In the end, we both agreed that it was a very good thing we cleared up the issue, because it probably saved me from getting beaten up by our garbage guys next week.
NaNoWriMo 2014
What is NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
In 2005, NaNoWriMo had over 59,000 participants. Nearly 10,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.
Sounds real glamourous, don't it? :-)
Hey, it's possible...
Like many others these days, I do all of my banking online. I enjoy the fact that it allows me 24 hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week access to my finances (or lack of them). Recently though I was doing my standard banking - writing credit card cheques to cover credit card payments on other credit cards, when I noticed a small dollar discrepancy in one of the accounts. No sooner did I notice this, when the entire PC (running Windows) crashed on me. (first time ever!)
As an IT specialist, the first thing I did was shake my monitor vigorously. After I was done breaking the monitor I made a note in my Palm Pilot to purchase a new one, then I picked up the phone and made a call-for-support to the crack IT team at my local bank. After several hours on hold, "Bob" picked up. He apologized in advance for sounding tired; apparently his Mom forgot his chocolate milk before nap time, so he was suffering from "low mental sugars". I made a mental note to write an email to the bank congratulating them on the success of their cost-cutting measures with respect to technical support - just as soon as Bob and I had my PC back up and running.
Now, I'm an expert, but unfortunately I don't know it all. That's why I need the Bobs of the world. Luckily Bob did know it all - he let me know this fact many times during our diagnosis, and, after a time and by putting our heads together, we finally had a solution to my computer woes. And, what kind of PC experts would we be if we didn't share the benefit of our knowledge and "learnins" with you, the great anonymous internet masses?
The problem was that a small amount of money got stuck (to use a technical term) during one of my many funds transfers from one debt account to another. And stuck pretty good judging by the way it jammed up my machine. Luckily I had noticed the funds discrepancy just before the crash or we might have been diagnosing this issue for some time. As it was, Bob said I only had to open up my hard drive and remove the stuck funds. Bob would handle the reconciling of said monies at his end.
The drive came out of the PC easy enough, and within minutes I had my 200 gig SATA beauty in the palm of my hand. It's pretty full of extremely vital documents, moderately sinful images and videos, and of course, my banking information, so with such important data I didn't want to make a mistake so I took it out to my garage to perform the delicate work. I've included pictures so you can do this too if stuck funds ever happen to you.
First, I removed the 6 screws holding the two halves of the drive together. Then I used my trusty screw driver to pry the two sides apart. I could have swore I heard the sucking sound of a vacuum seal breaking, but we all know that hard drives spinning in a vacuum is a myth. Prying the sides apart I could see the money in there but the drive wouldn't come apart all the way allowing me to reach it. I decided to remove the controller to see if there were any other screws holding the drive together.
Unfortunately I broke one of the connectors while removing the board, but it was no matter as I own lots of glue and tape. Once the controller was away, I couldn't really see any screws on that end so I started scraping those useless silver stickers off here and there to see if there were any screws underneath, and sure enough, I found one or two! But still, after giving the whole drive a serious "look-see" from every angle, it still wouldn't come apart.
This was getting frustrating. After fiddling a little more, I finally was able to finesse the unit apart with my pry bar. There was a bit of a snap as I separated the halves - it looks like I did forget to undo at least one screw! ha ha. In any event, there it was! My 10 bucks! And as an added bonus, I found I could see myself in the drive platters - you know, they are just like little, shiny, round, mirrors.
So, after admiring myself for a time in my new mirror, I put everything back together, wrapped the whole thing up with duct tape, and carefully collected and discarded all of the extra parts. (so as not to make a mess) I reinstalled the drive in the machine and ... well ... I'm typing this out to you aren't I? Success is a sweet thing.
If you decide to give this a shot, then take my advice: Save some time and skip the screwdriver; proceed straight to the pry bar.
Customer Service and ducks
Provincial
parks are certainly not what they were 10 or 20 years ago, yet
interestingly they enjoy much more popularity now than they did back
then. Perhaps it is this single fact that has contributed the most to
the Provincial parks' decline. Or then maybe it's simply because of the
filthy facilities, the disinterested teen-aged staff, the myriad rules
and posted threats you must navigate for a successful stay, or the
sandy/muddy campsites themselves. But lately I've figured out that private
parks actually have something that provincial parks don't: customer
service and ducks.
For the last few days, we've been out camping at Rideau Acres near Kingston.
Sure the site was small and not private, but what am I doing that requires all this privacy exactly? But it was practically on the beach, there was a great lookout trail, a pool, a wicked playground for the kids, and friendly, helpful staff and fellow campers. It was also super-proximate to Kingston, Ontario (the birthplace of the least genetically diverse university students on the planet; their practically British royalty...), had an excellent park store, hydro, water, the cleanest bathrooms EVER - certainly many, MANY, times cleaner than our bathroom at home has ever been - a fact my wife was thrilled to hear about - seventeen times...and did I mention the ducks?
The park had lots of ducks, and even some peacocks. Apparently ducks must eat their weight in mosquitos each and every day because provincial parks have no ducks and many, many mosquitoes, and our park had all these ducks and not a mosquito to be seen or felt! We even had a resident duck at our campsite and who my kids imaginatively named "duck" though I named him Billy Idol because he had a sort of Mohawk that made him look a little like Mr. T from the A-Team.
Our duck was extremely friendly and stuck around the whole time we were camping there, but it was just about the ugliest duck I'd ever seen which is really an allegory for life, isn't it? You either go for the pretty ducks for a short time, or have long-term relationships with the friendly and smart-with-good-personalities ducks...Ours had this kind of red rubber covering most of his face...like a duck/chicken/rooster cross but I guess it's actually a breed of duck in its own right. "A Muscovy duck with large red warty caruncles above the beak and around the eyes." Believe me, looking at this duck, it can't be that popular a breed.
Moving on, my family and I were sitting around the picnic table, with the duck, wondering about exactly what kind of duck it could be and I, seeing a once in a lifetime opportunity, said: "Well, a German duck is called a Guck, and a Hungarian duck is called a Huck, so a French duck is called a..." And my 6-year-old daughter (whom I knew couldn't wait to answer) promptly yelled out the correct expletive at the top of her lungs, and upon hearing hearing it from her own mouth (rather than her father's for once) assumed an expression of such utter mortification, and she clapped her hands over her mouth "Home Alone-style" so comically...well, I'm still laughing about it days later.
So later, again with "Billy Idol duck" present and allowing this line of discussion, and as I am wont to do while camping, I asked my wife what a duck's natural predators would be. Because ducks really aren't that fast, and a duck's quack is not exactly on par with the arsenal of say, a skunk - skunks which I believe do not naturally exist in Sweden... but I digress. I reasoned a bear would eat ducks, for the only reason that I could literally picture a bear sitting on its haunches eating a duck, which to be honest made me a little hungry.
My wife suggested that the only predator for ducks would be foxes and human hunters, which got us both thinking about the pride a hunter must feel at first tracking, and then bagging the elusive and ferocious duck. It actually got us laughing pretty hard as we came up with things the hunter would say to his wife as be brought home his kill-or-be-killed prey..."Honey, it was either me or him!" and "Honey, it just walked right up to me!" and "I just put the gun on the side of it's head and pulled the trigger!" I fear I will never get to experience the duck hunter's pride after acting on those atavistic urges...
Conclusion: Ducks really like Corn Pops.
I'm an Arby's girl...in an Arby's world...
I've wanted to put this up for a while but it kind of got lost in the depths of my laptop.
The following is an email I sent to Arby's after dining at one of their fine establishments back in 2004. Upon rereading it, I have to admire myself for my ability to accurately describe a situation without embellishment or hyperbole, as well as my knack for judging and giving criticism without offending.
Almost immediately after sending the message I received a canned response back from Arby's (which I will add to the end of this just as soon as I find it), however that is the only response I ever received.
August 14, 2004
I just wanted to take a moment to thank Arby's LLC, and specifically the Unit #02040 on 1063 Chemong Road in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada for my recent dining experience there.
It was a Saturday afternoon in July around 2PM. The store was almost empty although I guess there was some activity in the drive-thru. That though, didn't stop the cashier from running around like a chicken with her head cut off. I ordered some combo (a sandwich, drink, and curly fries) and a pie. What was most notable aside from the 5 minutes that it took this person to assemble this simple order, was the "temperature reversal" of absolutely everything about the order. The fries were not simply warm or even room temperature - they were actually cool! The soft-drink had no ice and was warm. The sandwich was totally pathetic. By the time I got to the pie, I was unpleasantly surprised to find it was actually pretty good - although it was the wrong pie. This wasn't take-out; I "enjoyed" this meal in the restaurant - a dirty, depressing place... Now, I've eaten at several Arby's before (all in Southern Ontario) and I certainly wasn't expecting gourmet fare. I was expecting something more workman-like, simply a few minutes of decent fuel before I moved on with my day, but this meal was so fabulously bad, so terrifically fucking awful that I actually was forced to re-evaluate the choices I make when I choose to dine out.
Here's what I've come up with:
More and more often lately, I've been feeling something vague and undefined after experiencing something this far removed from what is promised in the slick marketing from big fast food chains such as yours. I wish I could describe it - it's not guilt, it's not really anger, but more of a feeling of having been deceived or swindled. It's like you are screwing me right up the ass, and I just take it like an idiot.
Now don't take this too personally. You are in good company with McDonald's on this. And I imagine you don't want me to feel this way - it's not in your best interests. But after the odd meal like this over many years, it (an epiphany) has finally come to me!
You, Arby's, pay your people a totally disgraceful wage. The work is mind-numbingly boring - hell, it borders on demeaning. Your staff would be better off prostituting themselves in city parking lots, at least then they wouldn't have to be so ashamed of what they do for a living. Paying them what you do, it's no wonder they have absolutely no interest in what they do or in the food they slide across their dirty counters at me.
To test this theory out, I have started dining only in independent establishments. Nothing affiliated with any chain. Boy, the food is good! The service varies but is uniformly better than any Arby's anywhere. The price is only slightly higher, but I figure that's OK because I am supporting my local economy now, instead of some conglomerate. I've come to learn that these small establishments depend on me coming in and coming back and it really shows in the food, the cleanliness, and the service. So for all of this I thank you. I'm not being sarcastic when I say that my visit to Arby's was a positive one. In fact, that 8 bucks I spent was not only the best 8 bucks I have ever spent, it was also the last cent you will ever see from me. I want to give you full credit for all of this as you deserve it - I feel like telling everyone I know about my experience!
Thanks again,
Stephan Hoppe
Addendum 2016: Arby's never answered me more fully. Not even a coupon for some free, ice-cold curly fries. :-(
ACNielsen - the worst job I ever had
Earlier this year, I worked briefly for ACNielsen. Though touted as one of the Top 100 Companies to work for in Canada, I never took into account that there are only really 100 companies total in Canada, and that the results of Top 100 poll can be skewed by an "enthusiastic" senior executive team that does everything in their power to rally their staff so that they get on the list.
In the end, I determined that there were countless cons and only three pros to working at ACNielsen. The pros were that it was close to home (only 45 minutes away), the cafeteria was this fantastic, gorgeous space with equally fantastic and gorgeous food, and I think my chair was an Aeron or similar knock-off. The back of this chair looked like the Alien that comes out of the chest of the guy in the first Sigourney Weaver movie, and unfortunately it was about as user-friendly - there were operating instructions built into the armrests! I never did get comfortable in that thing.
But as I just said, the cons were many. On my tour-of-the-office on the first day, I asked about all of these terminals that were scattered about the office hallways and cafeterias. My manager said: "Oh they are there because not everyone needs Internet access at their desks. If they want to browse the web on their break or lunch hour, they can use one of these public terminals..." In retrospect, I realize I should have quit right then. That's like saying not everybody needs a phone or a stapler. You can imagine the first thing I did when I got back to my desk was check for Internet access and, thank Google, God popped right up. (I tend to get those two mixed up lately)
But their IT department was pretty expert. First of all they choked the shit out of the Internet connection. I could measure my speed (or lack of it) in single digit baud rates. In the IT usage policy, they made me sign away my IT life and my IT firstborn. I was not allowed to install any non-ACNielsen software on my laptop at all (what about my Palm Sync?) and not only could I not subvert the security measures they put in place, I was forbidden to even try to! This is so contrary to my usual nature (to crack whatever I come across) that I felt somewhat paralyzed and afraid to touch my laptop for fear of contravening the IT Usage Policy.
I was in training in ACNielsen University for over a month. Maybe it's because I'm a trainer (they say physicians make the worst patients) but that was the absolute worst training I have ever experienced. ACNielsen will crow from the rooftops about the "investment" they make in employee training and "ongoing career development" but really, if they had stood me facing the wall for a month instead, I'd have learned more and would have been a whole lot less bitter at the end of it.
If you understand the trainer lingo, ACNielsen does absolutely no pre-qualifying of attendees, they continually put learners on the spot and they know nothing about the concept of "assuring learner success". The majority of the trainers look like they'd rather be doing anything else - I suspect they are completely burnt out. They don't use measurable objectives, their tests and happy sheets have central indicators - essentially they are Market Analysts that became trainers instead of the other way around. The trainers all seems to display visible contempt for internal trainees (vs. clients) which is ironic since everybody who trains there was once an internal trainee right?
In my starting class - the people who started on the same day I did - there were 5 fresh-faced MBAs and me. The trainers would say things like: "Of course you all know what a SWOT analysis is..." and these lemmings would nod and write down the word "of course" and I'd be like: WTF is that?!
Nobody did anything but work there. I would jump around a corner of a cubicle like Mr. Rooney jumping into the kitchen doorway in front of Ferris' sister in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and I never once saw even a glimpse of someone guiltily minimizing their browser window. I understand that when you are at work, you should be working but I found that phenomena completely sick. I think you need a few minutes of personal Internet or email time every day just to decompress from your demanding job, right?
There were exactly 3 moderately cool guys there, but we had nothing in common and I never got to see them during the work day so I never could establish the Dave, Vlad, Steph trio thing again. So, I really didn't click with anyone while I was there. I'd be at lunch with my class, and they'd be all like "All Commodity Volume" this and "A/C distribution vs. Opportunity Cost" that and I'd be like "So! Who saw Survivor last night! Hell's Kitchen? The Bachelorette?..." and they'd just stare at me blankly - if I was lucky. If I wasn't so lucky one of them would says something like. "I NEVER watch TV...I just don't have the time..." which makes me wonder because as a vocal TV aficionado I talk to people all the time about TV. FIFTY MILLION PEOPLE watch Desperate Housewives every Sunday but I think I've asked 500 people if they watch it and not one will admit to watching TV at all, let alone DH. Yeah right.
There was this one girl there. She was an MBA of course, in her middle twenties, and somewhat attractive if you plot her on a bell curve and don't rate her on her own merits. For some strange and stupid reason I was nervous around her and I hated that since I have been married to Patti for something like 75 years now - so what do I have to be nervous about? Also I found out that I am finally getting and feeling old. I had these strange paternal instincts that would kick in when she was around. I obviously had nothing to offer her from an intellectual standpoint but I figured she could benefit from my years of professional work experience. I could show this greenhorn how to navigate the rocky shoals of office life. But the more I tried to ingratiate myself with her, the creepier and more perverted it looked, until the last time I visited her desk, she made a big show of letting some pepper spray fall out of her purse.
And Get this. ACNielsen is a consumer packaged goods market analysis firm. They obtain TLOG data from retailers (like A&P and Loblaws) they massage it to make it all agree, then they sell that data to Manufacturers (like Pfizer, and General Mills) in a proprietary database format and call it MarketTrack. In order to pull reports from MarketTrack, you need this Win32 app called Workstation Plus. After several days of training I was getting mixed messages regarding this simple concept. So I asked the trainer at the end of the day: "Is MarketTrack an application or a database?" It's a simple question, right? You know what she says to me? "Ummm, that's a technical question. You should ask your manager..." When did that become technical?! My own manager, who has been a Market Analyst with the company for more than 8 years, couldn't answer the question. Finally the third trainer I asked told me that MarketTrack was an application you could use to get data. WRONG! This may be my biggest pet peeve - people who bullshit rather than admit they don't know what they are talking about. It actually set me back a bit because I needed to know this little fact to reconcile everything I was hearing, and here I was being led down the garden path by some idiot trainer who is afraid to say: "I don't know."
And speaking of idiots, at ACNielsen I was one. At the conclusion of the month long training there was an exam. It was one of those "don't worry about the exam" exams, and an "even though your job depends on it" exam. So of course, up to the fateful day, everybody is studying for this thing like it's a University final. I am ashamed to say that even I studied my butt off, and I'm ashamed to say it because I failed the test - twice. I also have the distinction of getting the exact same mark on both tests 62%. (A pass was 80%) Man, they phrased the questions all ambiguous and tricky! That is so unlike IT and computers. After training my mind for the last 10 years to express myself in the clearest and most unambiguous fashion possible, all of a sudden I was expected to interpret things, and put "a spin" on them. It has just occurred to me that this might just be the single biggest reason why I couldn't pass that test, and why I ended up courageously dropping my keys and letter of resignation on my manager's desk after she left for the day. (Boy, does she ever work late. I didn't get home until like 8PM.)
After I failed the test the second time, I could really see disgust in my colleagues faces. To be honest, I'm not used to being the "dumb one" They started making me wear this helmet while I was at my desk. People would walk by me and slap me on the back and say "Way to go Steph!" for no reason at all. It was so surprising that usually I would end up dropping my crayons or spilling my chocolate milk on myself. It got so bad I could barely sleep on my mat at nap time.
Client trainers (of which I was one) at ACNielsen get free lunch on days when they are either in training or conducting training. You get this little ticket you hand in to the cafeteria staff at the till and you can put anything you want on it. Keep in mind that this cafeteria is awesome - 20 varieties of coffee, salad bar...really everything you could ever want for lunch. Regardless I considered this free lunch thing a sort of tainted benefit since you usually have to sit with the clients and make chit-chat while having your free lunch...it's not like you can eat with your buddies and play cribbage. So one day , I'm sitting with my class (I ditched the clients) and my tray is loaded down with stuff I would never actually pay for given the choice - one of those overpriced energy drinks, two entrees, two desserts, chocolate bars, gum...the works. My class is wondering about this so I tell them about the ticket. Well, you'd think I'd won the lottery. I mean, we are talking about the equivalent of $15 and these people are literally green with envy. You'd think an MBA wouldn't freak out over something so trivial.
Anyway, I was planning on dieting anyway so I promised that the next 5 tickets I got, I would pass on to each of them in turn so they could experience the joy of "free lunch". That was instant popularity for me. And as promised for the next five days, I would get my little ticket, track down someone in my original class and give it to them. I would then buy a more reserved lunch with my own cash. I reasoned (and I still do) that there is no ethical or moral issue here. I wasn't making any money from this transaction - I was simply spreading the joy a little.
It all went well until person #4. You see, whomever tallies up these tickets at the end of each day is accustomed to seeing 8 to 15 tickets in the cafeteria till, representing a classroom worth of lunches. Person #4 wasn't really hungry the day I gave him the ticket, so he saved it and used it on a day where there was no client training. (God, do I always have to spell everything out in excruciating detail?) So on that day, there was only one client ticket in the cafeteria till. As you can see, this is an impossibility.
Boy, I had no idea these tickets were so important! Everybody got whipped into a complete frenzy about the "stolen" ticket. There was talk about overhauling ticket system to prevent any future travesties-of-justice like this from ever occurring. I'm surprised the police weren't called. In the end I decided (wrongly) to come clean with my (just-promoted and pretty inexperienced) manager who was something like 10 years old, and we would share a laugh about it. Instead she completely freaked out, while still being unable to express any logical reason as to why this was unsatisfactory behaviour on my part. So in the interests of harmony, I volunteered to forfeit another 4 lunches to the company, because from what I could gather, if I am not hungry (I said I gave them away because I wasn't hungry) then I should simply not use the ticket and save the company $15. Of course, this is assuming that I give a flying-f@#$ about saving $15 for ACNielsen...
The whole job description ended up being this one big miscommunication. They told me they wanted a technical trainer, but what they really wanted was a MBA Market Analyst clone who counts among their skills an ability to get up front on groups of people. There was no technical component at all. So all of my current skills were useless, and though I was trying to get some new ones pretty darned quickly, by the end of 9 weeks I was feeling a little nauseous every morning on my way to work. And even though I can't really afford to be jobless right now, I quit anyway because the job was really that bad. Now of course, there may be other areas of the company that approach normal; I can only speak for the "excuse-that-passes-for-training" department. I did learn a lot while I was there. For example, I am now more clearly aware of the incredible manipulation perpetrated upon consumers by grocers and manufacturers...Loblaws being the absolute worst offender. So if nothing else, I will become a savvier shopper because of all of this, but details of that are for another short note to you at some unspecified point in the future.
This was from 2006. Things are probably different now.
Am I crazy? Sometimes I read stuff and I think I’m finally losing it. Let me tell you this story and, please correct me if my math is wrong.
Thursdays in my town is flyer day. That’s when the local paper comes stuffed with that week’s flyers. The usual routine is that I wrestle them away from my wife and settle down to browse through them. This week, a page in the Crappy Tire flyer caught my eye. There was a headline: “Take control of your energy” followed up with the tagline: “Produce it, Conserve it, Store it.” And there was a fine selection of solar panels and, get this, wind generators!
You gotta love the modern age. For the paltry sum of just $2999.99 I can now purchase a Whisper 950W wind generator for my home. The flyer promised that my Whisper generator would “quietly deliver renewable energy with little maintenance”. And get THIS! Ontario utilities now pay 42 cents/kW for my excess solar power!
I thought, “The windmill is sure expensive but wow! Freedom from the bloodsuckers at Hydro One! So I started doing some mental math to try to calculate the breakeven point on such a purchase.
Here’s what I came up with. In order to make this happen, I would to need the Whisper 950W wind generator of course. And there is a 30A Charge Controller listed below the generator so I guess I would need one of those too. Inspecting the ad revealed that these two items would probably cover only the “generation” part of the whole setup. I would also need multiple “deep-cycle” batteries strung together into a battery bank. That would be the storage part. Next up would be the part that converts all that DC battery power into usable AC power for my home. For that I would need an Eliminator power inverter. And though I think I’m pretty handy, the ad warned that I should leave the installation to professional installers. No problem. I’m sure professional installers for wind generated energy systems are easy to come by.
I want it! And I want it now! But let’s add up the costs first:
Whisper 950W wind generator $2999.99
30A Charge Controller $129.99
A bank of 6 deep-cycle batteries $599.94
Might as well go for the 3000W inverter. $499.99
Let’s say I can find someone to install the whole shot for $500
And even though the government talks a mean game telling me to conserve, be a good citizen of the country and the planet, and to explore various “power solutions”, they’ll still help themselves to $662.19 in sales taxes, no doubt to motivate me.
Grand total? $5,392 A reasonable one time investment. I say “one-time” because the wind generator requires only “little maintenance”, no doubt by a “professional installer”. That cost is sure to be so negligible as to be non-existent, right?
Now, what do I get for my 5k? Let’s be slightly optimistic and say that the wind generator will run at full tilt for 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Let’s also assume that the entire system is 105% efficient and faithfully generates an even 1000 whole watts of delicious power for me and my family. That’s reasonable, right?
OK, based on that I will be generating 24 kWh of electricity per day, 168 kWh per week, and 8,736 kWh per year! I only use ~11,000 kwH per year (I’ll elaborate on that in a second) so my overall consumption will drop to only 2,300 kWh per year! Sure I won’t be able to take advantage of Ontario utilities 42 cents deal, since I will still be using more power than I generate, but man, what freedom!
Now, there really is no need, but again just for comparison’s sake, let’s look at what it would cost me to continue to generate my electricity the old-fashioned way (by paying for it directly to the godless heathens at Hydro One) hmm…let’s see…I know that even though my bill says I pay only ~6 cents per kWh for hydro it’s actually much more thanks to regulatory and delivery charges, and the worthwhile “debt retirement charge” that I see on every bill. So by simply taking my total bill including taxes and dividing it by the number of kWh I used last month, let’s say a kWh of hydro costs me: 11 cents per…times 8,700 kWh I would be generating thanks to the folks at Crappy Tire and our Canadian gub-mint…$957 per year.
Based on the above, in just over 5 and a half years, the system will pay for itself.
That’s great. I’ll race you to the store to get a system before they all sell out. But first, let’s correct our calculations using a new mathematical principal called reality.
You’ll be lucky if the damn windmill runs 50% of the time.
You’ll also be lucky if the whole deal is even 60% efficient.
You’ll be very lucky if you get away with 5% of your total purchase price in annual maintenance costs.
And even if the whole thing lasts 10 years, the technology will improve so much over that time and the costs will drop so much, that at the end of the 10 years, you’ll still have a dinosaur on your hands.
And of course, don’t forget that if you took the initial 5k and invested it conservatively on something else, you could realize around a 5% gain.
So based on that, you’re now looking at 50% of 8,736 kWh, and then only 60% of that. (2620 kWh) And your total costs are now 10% higher than before ($6,000)
And the 42 cents the government will give you for your extra power? That’s a typo. They’ll give you 4 POINT 2 cents, and then only if you’re off the grid and selling them the excess. Your break even point now?
20 Years. (and you’ll never generate a single watt of excess)
I think it was that jerk McGuinty (the premiere of Ontario) who said that an average family of four can live quite well on a 900 kWh per month. Well, could somebody please take off this guy’s helmet, pull him off the back of the short bus and read this article to him? I live in a 1000 square foot house, practically in the f%#ing DARK; every single appliance that can run on natural gas does, in fact, do so. I have nothing but Energy Star appliances yet I still use 950 kWh per month. I am so far below average in this respect it’s disgusting, yet I still use more power than that pinhead says I should be using?! Dayum.
This whole homegrown energy fad is the latest last gasp of the idiot spin-doctors who have yelled themselves hoarse, shouting at us from the rooftops to conserve! conserve! conserve! They’ve finally realized that we’ve already replaced every light in our home with $5 lightbulbs, and every shower already has a low-flow shower head (This allows us to enjoy that thrice-weekly European style dribble that is considered a shower…in Ethiopia maybe)…now they want each household to install their own power generation system! And they promise we’ll be generating so much that they’ll buy it back from us! Morons. Have they never heard of economies of scale? How can little household generation plants utilizing ancient technologies ever hope to be as efficient and economical as massive power plants utilizing truly alternative (nuclear) power solutions? What’s next? Should I trade in my blender for a mortar and pestle? They should pour their marketing dollars into research to find ways of generating power from large scale renewable energy projects, and not con and coerce me into pissing away yet more dollars I can ill afford just to appease some minor yet vocal group of tree-hugging retards demonstrating at Queen’s Park.
I don't want your business.
"I see stuff like this all the time..."
Again and again, "friends" and acquaintances try to give me "business". I don't want it. I've got a million analogies as to why. Imagine I'm body shop guy who makes his living tricking out gorgeous cars, and then my "buddy" comes by, a buddy who shares none of my interests, and with whom I never hang out...he comes with his Vega, Gremlin, or Maverick and wants some simple body work done. The same body work. Over and over...for practically nothing in return. If I do the job and his transmission falls out the next day, it's my fault. For the 20 bucks, I'd rather play with my kids.
But it happens all of the time. These people wonder why I seem so reticent to work on their machines for them. I'm sick of computer novices having me over only for me to find out the problem is that they blocked up all of the ventilation on their machines, or a network cable has come loose from the router, or their much-abused CD-ROM drive didn't last through 7 years of industrial strength abuse.
They say they're willing to pay me for my time. A house call during the dinner hour, while I work on their filthy, poorly maintained and understood PC, usually a P4 that runs like a 286 because they are too lazy to surf for something other than porn and actually learn the basics of operating a PC. And could I run down to Best Buy and pick them up a new drive the next time I'm down there? And partition it? (because they heard it's good if the drive "is in two parts") and could I transfer the data over? And can they pay me next week/month/year?
I think I understand a little bit now what lawyers have to go through. I used to complain about how high my legal costs were. But my lawyer has got some knowledge of the legal system and I don't. I don't have to use him - he doesn't have a gun to my head. I'm sure he'll survive without my business - he's probably got lots of other clients up on assault and petty-theft charges.
My experiences with these people is making me understand my lawyer and my mechanic a little better. Replacing a starter is not rocket science and it doesn't take a long time, but it's not a driveway job (at least not on the cars I've had) and requires tools and equipment I don't have. So why should I throw my guy only $20 plus parts for the job?
As I just said, I work in IT. I also have kids, hobbies, friends, and a home LAN with more than a half a dozen machines networked together. That takes up 50% of my time. My wife takes up another 60%. So yes, incredibly, I don't want your business. How much do you think I want to test 40 feet of your cheap network cable to find where the "break" is, because you didn't know that you shouldn't tie one end to the back of your car to pull it through the wall? And while I'm testing - as long as I'm there, is it long distance if I point you browser to an Australian web site? And how do you get your task bar from the right hand side of the window back to the bottom? And why is your clock off? And why doesn't your sound-card play audio CDs?
Barely a block from me, there is a computer sales and service store opened up recently. At the time it opened, the "buddies" remarked that it would be "the end" of my business, but I couldn't have been happier. The store owner doesn't know it, but I send most of my "potential" (and I know I'm overusing the quotes - "shoot me") business his way whenever I can. He is almost as incapable as my clients are, but not quite. It's a marriage made in heaven.
I mean, I'll help out my Dad, because I figure that's the price I have to pay for him spending all that time to bring me into this world, and if your'e a tier 1 client with and enterprise back-end and more than 800 machines in the field, with a novel issue that's bringing your business to a halt, then I'm your guy. I'll work day and night on your high-end equipment, collaborating with fellow professionals to find a resolution; maybe I'll learn a little something myself and then I'll look for further ways to add value to your IT operations and perhaps if I'm lucky fit a little bit of innovation in there. I'll also offer to help out my closest friends, and people I meet on the Internet who share my interests, IF they don't abuse the privilege, but everyone else? Hey, I'm a plumber to the stars. I simply not interested in the IT equivalent of unclogging your toilet again and again, especially if you won't take my advice and up your fibre intake.
But I do have a nice store to recommend to you. It's barely a block away.
A Tim Hortons Conundrum
I don't feel I am so much a fan of Tim Horton's as a victim. Probably because I end up there way more than I want to be. I'd blame it on my Canadian genes, but Tim's isn't even Canadian any more! Can someone tell me why every day I line up like cattle for coffee that's no better than CoffeeTime's or Country Style's?
On to one of the great metaphysical questions torturing me yesterday:
What is the rule when you are in the drive-thru at Tim Horton’s and you are behind some big truck that, as soon as they’ve spoken their order, they ease forward in line but not enough so that their rear wheels are off the "pad" so that you can get your car up to the drive thru speaker?
- Do you drive up on the pad as far as you can get and wait to get to the speaker to talk?
- Do you drive up on the pad as far as you can get and shout your order?
- Or do you wait short of the pad and simply listen as the cashier says to nobody: “Welcome to Tim Horton’s. Can I take your order?”
Super Funny Berlitz Commercial
The other day, a friend sent me a link to this commercial. For something so "clean" it's just about the funniest thing I've ever heard. (Love it when he slaps the kid on the back!) I just went back this morning and the link is dead! Oh NO! Too much traffic to the site no doubt. Luckily I was able to retrieve it from my "Temporary Internet Files" cache.
And now years later I realize that I no longer have to store a 30 megabyte flasdh .swf file on my web server; the video is available on Youtube for all to see.