Hi
I dropped off of Facebook. I’d rather control my data. Call me fickle, I guess.
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Current gaming schedule
Aion is taking up most of my gaming time at the moment, but I may take a break for Uncharted 2. Or not. I might wait until it’s way cheap and buy then. While I liked the first one, it was too short. Apparently the new one has both a main mission and then a co-op mission. I don’t care about the vs online content. Whatever the equivalent of the ‘nadespammers is, I’m sure the game will have it.
Far Cry 2 is pretty but also broken, and it’s hard to start off quests when the faction HQs don’t let you in. Also, endless car chases, while interesting are a bit unfair since I can’t shoot back without stopping my car, while the AI can fire away at me because they’re apparently better than me. I’d like some sort of blind fire in this sort of situation.
Still haven’t finished Batman: Arkham Asylum yet. Oops. Should sell PS3 version as my gfx card came with the steam version. Looks great on PC except for the cut scenes. 480p anyone?
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So Ramit Sethi, in another attempt to be funny, insulted a segment of his readers again. This time it was BMW coupe drivers, accusing us of being backwards-parking, double space-taking, cell-phone talking a-holes. Wow. That is so the opposite of my habits, it’s wrong on every count.
I park away from people but I always take one space and park inward. I NEVER use my mobile whilst driving. I also keep a large gap between me and other cars. The only thing I do is perhaps drive a bit fast, but again, I maintain distances far beyond what it would take to brake in emergency.
Generalizations suck, people.
Of course, he also said that nobody can predict that they’ll never get married or have kids. I can. I don’t want to get married, and I don’t want to pass on the genes responsible for my diabetes to children. This is just cruel.
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Finding my peak kW load
I’m working on a project in which i try to figure out my peak kW load so I can determine what I’d be paying per month if I went to an on-peak demand power billing method.
I don’t think I can do it without a TED to collect the actual data.
In the month of June, I consumed 15 kWh/day on average. I know my A/C system draw about 8A total including all fans. That’s about 1800 watts. The A/C also runs about 5 minutes at a time, so for the 15-minute peak window, i would average about 600 watts, or less than 1 kWh just for A/C. Figuring that it would come on while my stove and fridge are running, I’m looking at a probable peak 15 minute load of 2 kW during peak usage times.
Weekends and times between 9pm and 6am don’t count toward that peak number.
One method of doing the bill is to use a 5.02/kW peak charge. So if you max out at 2kW you pay $10.04 on top of your $9.85 base. So the bill’s floor is about $20. Then they tack on 6.9¢ per kWh for peak and 5.5¢ for off-peak use. The use cost per kW peak rate changes to $3.73 per kW in the non ‘summer’ months.
The other method is to charge the $9.85 and then charge 5.5¢/17.1¢ for use.
I need to figure out which of the three is best, about how much use falls in the 4 of 7 days of ‘non-peak’ time per week, and to do that I think I need to make an investment in the TED to do the actual measurements.
Oh, and my A/C unit is 16 years old, and I think I should be replacing it soon. Hurrah.
lowmagnet 20:25 on 2009/07/14 Permalink |
More thinking out loud. Since my sustained load for the A/C unit is 7A then it’s approximately a 1 ton unit. My condo is 1,300-1,500 sqft, so that seems mostly appropriate. I wonder if a two-stage unit would be more efficient now that they have >15 SEER models out. I looked at some Trane models that were 20 SEER but they seem to start at the 2-ton range, which I think would be at risk of coolant freeze-out with my floor plan with the newer windows.
lowmagnet 09:10 on 2009/07/15 Permalink |
A thread on hvac-talk with my situation.
lowmagnet 12:38 on 2009/07/15 Permalink |
I have a 1.5 ton (18,000 BTU/h) unit. I have two suggestions I’m considering:
1) replace the condenser with a 1.5 ton 13 SEER R-22 unit while they can still be sold. This would result in an efficiency drop as the coolant passes over my 10 SEER coils
2) abandon hydro heat for an appropriately-sized heat-pump system. This would involve cutting out the water loop on my system, and replacing the plenum. I could go run from 15-18 SEER on a 1.5 ton system, and probably still save a lot monthly, at least in the summer.