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During my recent drive from Chicago to Hicksville, I drove past several large wind farms. As a rough estimate, I'd say that about 25% of the turbines were turning. And by that, I am saying that, on a farm on which 25% of the turbines were turning, 75% were idle. Same location, same wind.
I am thoroughly disgusted with the political/economic mire which wind power has become.
I mean, forget about the huge monetary waste. The total number of people killed by wind-turbine generation in the US over the past 50 years (more than one) exceeds the total number killed by nuclear generation (zero) by an infinite amount.
The problem with Nuke power in the USA is that it exists in the construct of a for-profit business. This creates a conflict of interest between safety and profit.
For an example of this in action, review the history of Vermont Yankee. After it exceeded it's design life, it was sold to a company called Entergy. Entergy was in the business of buying plants and squeezing end-of-life value from them.
Entergy quickly filed for a permit extension beyond the end of the plants designed life (which is fine).
Then it filed to run the plant at 126% of design maximum (this caused a 26% increase in radiation at the adjacent school, which they said was anticipated, so OK).
Then it asked to distribute the money it was required to hold for disposal of radioactive waste as a special stock distribution to share holders.
Then it asked to distribute the money it was accumulate for decommissioning the plant after it's end of life as a dividend.
Then they were told they had to inspect their cooling towers, as other GE designs were seeing failures. They claimed they had inspected the towers, and they were fine. They had not done the inspection.
Then radioactive levels in the CT River were found to be rising and the plant was asked if they had any underground pipes that could be leaking. They said there was no underground piping and no leaks. They were lying. The plant blue prints showed many underground pipes that carried radioactive material, and they were leaking.
In summary, people do bad things for money. If we want to use nuke as an energy source, we should have it run by a not for profit, or perhaps a government agency that is not tempted to make poor safety decisions for profit.
Hmm better cabinet/snack setup, but I see no TV/PS4/Ping pong table either. How many employees? I think we only have about 45-50 in our office and half the time only about half are working in the office.
Must have Larry E. up his game in the break room. But they are too busy trying to take over the rest of the floor in our building at the moment.
Ping pong table, weight room, and shower are on the next floor up. No video games that I've seen so far, though apparently a couple weeks before I started they had a game day -- people brought in VR stuff, arcade cabinets, board games, etc. Not really my thing but I like the sentiment behind it.
The only ongoing games in my department are the daily Nerf dart gun attacks and ambushes.
Ping pong table, weight room, and shower are on the next floor up. No video games that I've seen so far, though apparently a couple weeks before I started they had a game day -- people brought in VR stuff, arcade cabinets, board games, etc. Not really my thing but I like the sentiment behind it.
The only ongoing games in my department are the daily Nerf dart gun attacks and ambushes.
NICE! We are already seeing a nice addition to our facilities since Oracle spent $10 billion for us last year. I'm hoping within a year or two we will have the rest of the top floor. But it's only 5 floors, but I sit next to a big row of windows looking back over downtown. Don't have a glorious downtown like a big city, but the "tall" tower has a great restaurant on the 49th and 50th floors.
In all seriousness, of all of the people I know personally who adhere to a specific, mainstream religion, Bobby and Jessica the Satanists are by far the most tolerant, open-minded, non-judgmental, coolest people you could imagine.
* = Personally, I'm kind of agnostic, so I say this in a humorous context, as I don't really believe in Satan any more than in any other deity. But at least Satan, as depicted by his present-day church, is a pretty cool guy.
And now, a few observations from a recent transplant to the 'burbs.
1: Laundry.
This is seriously ******* amazing. I have a washer and dryer. They are mine. I share them with no-one, and they are physically located in my unit, not 50 floors down. I am in complete control of them. If I am not using them, then I know they are not in use. If I feel like just casually doing a load of laundry, I can! No planning, no scheduling, I can even toss some shirts into the washer and then LEAVE THE HOUSE, knowing that they will still be there when I get back.
This is schweet.
2: The Thermostat.
This thing rocks. You just tell it what temperature you want the interior of the house to be, and it happens. No fiddly valves, no steam manifolds, just a button. I mean, I knew that the Starship Enterprise had this technology, but I'd kinda forgotten that some residential homes do, too.
3: The Trash.
This one is kind of a bummer. They pick it up once a week, and you have to haul it out in a plastic bin and set it in a specific location on a specific day and time. It's like you're using the Staff of Ra to unlock secret to the Well of Souls, except it's just trash rather than the Ark of the Covenant. If you forget, you have to hold onto it for another week. I much preferred just having the hole in the wall near the elevators that you can dump the trash into whenever you feel like it, but I'll accept this tradeoff for the laundry thing.
4: Groceries, and Parking.
This is the best part. Going to the store? Buy all you want. No need to worry about being able to carry it all up into the elevator in a single trip. Just stash the car in the garage and it's mere steps away from the kitchen. Make as many trips as you want. And best of all, it's free! At my last place, I paid $250 a month for a parking space which took 5-10 minutes per round-trip to get to from my apartment (depending on elevator traffic.) If I'd have wanted to BUY that parking space, it'd have set me back $30k. Here, it was just included with the house, like it was totally normal. The realtor didn't even make a big deal out of it. It was like "Well, yeah, of course there's a garage. Why wouldn't there be?"
5: The Drainage.
It just works.
6: The Volume.
Turn it up as high as you want. There are no upstairs / downstairs neighbors to complain. It's taking me some time to adjust to the fact that I don't have to quickly turn down the volume when we get to the explodey part of the movie. And while setting up the receiver, I noticed that I had the subwoofer level set to -12, and all other speakers at 0. Been so long since I made that adjustment I'd forgotten about it. Needless to say, we're back up to 0.
7: The Hardware Store.
They have hardware. Lots of it. SAE, Metric, stainless, brass, Grade 8, Class 11, bearings, pins, rollers, it's all there.
They also sell really good local honey.
8:WalMart, the grocery store, etc.
Man, these are just blowing my mind. They are so friggin' HUGE, everything is on a single level (no escalators), and they're not even all that busy. No 15 minute checkout lines at the grocery store. And they ALL HAVE PARKING!
9: The Lizards.
I don't know why, I just find them amusing.
10: The Cuban Food.
Ok, to be fair, I wasn't expecting much. And it's not like there's actually a Cuban restaurant here. But the local Mexican joint had "la Cubana" on the menu board, so I tried it.
Sorry, but no. Tampons* do not put chorizo their sandwiches. And where are the pickles? And the mustard? And the roast pork? And what's with the lettuce and tomato? And this bread is just indescribably awful.
This thing rocks. You just tell it what temperature you want the interior of the house to be, and it happens. No fiddly valves, no steam manifolds, just a button. I mean, I knew that the Starship Enterprise had this technology, but I'd kinda forgotten that some residential homes do, too.
If I'm working and its 98 degs out, I open my app and lower the temp so when I get home its ice cold. By far one of my favorite things I've upgraded in the home.
Your link is brokey, but I assume it's a wi-fi thermostat?
I'll look into it. The one I have now is programmable for multiple dayparts and weekend / weekday, which is what I've always upgraded to in the past. Frankly, I'm lazy and I'd rather have the thermostat automatically turn itself down before I get home, rather than me having to remember to log in and do it manually.
I'll look into it. The one I have now is programmable for multiple dayparts and weekend / weekday, which is what I've always upgraded to in the past. Frankly, I'm lazy and I'd rather have the thermostat automatically turn itself down before I get home, rather than me having to remember to log in and do it manually.
I have programmable thermostats, but don't use them. My house is set at 75 degrees Summer and Winter, A/C and heat. I always seemed to use more energy when programming it off and on.
Joe is the person to do an accurate study, and hopefully he will before he meets the cute redhead in the area.
The problem with internet-connected thermostats is that the security on them sucks and is never updated, so they quickly get converted into botnet participants.
07-14-2017, 10:14 AM
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