what did you do today? (2008-2015) (closed)

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Got up took the garbage out then went and had brunch at the Yacht Club with other clients of my FA. (his yearly brunch for all) On the way home stopped and got the DW car washed, brought the garbage can in, did some laundry (with DW), played on the laptop, had a late lunch, took a nap, loaded 8' folding table into my truck and took it over to my sister, had dinner at my sisters since I took the table, home now reading e-mails, writing blogs. Watching a little TV.
 
REWahoo said:
Am I correct to assume your FA has a yacht there, you and the rest of his clients do not? :cool:
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No he has no yacht yet. lol He is a member tho. Some of the clients are just members too, not me, I actually don't own a boat, but have full access to two, one in the water all the time and one on a trailer. I keep them clean and full of gas and the owners are happy. Sometimes my hardest decission is to which one to take out.
 
pb4uski said:
Stopped and bought a couple smart power strips on the way home for the upstairs TV/DVR/DVD, etc and downstairs TV/DVD/Wii, etc. Have been analyzing various loads using a kill-a-watt type meter and am trying to reduce the power bill.
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What an appropriate place for a dumb question.

What's a "smart" power strip? I think I have our house pretty well tricked out with the "other" type but I'm always looking for improvements...
 
Nords said:
....What's a "smart" power strip? I think I have our house pretty well tricked out with the "other" type but I'm always looking for improvements...
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It was new to me too Nords. It has two different sets of plugs; one set that are always on like a regular plug and another that are only on when a "control" device is on. The objective is to minimize vampire (standby) power draw.

So in my case, the Dish box/DVR and radio will be plugged into the always on plugs and the TV will be the control device and the DVD, Wii and TV headsets will be switched devices. When I turn the TV off it will kill power to the DVD, Wii and TV headsets and eliminate any vampire power draw of those devices.

I ran the kill-a-watt with my current set up and will run it again with the smart strip and get a sense as to what the savings would be. The smart strip was ~$20 at my local hardware store.
 
I like it; my rough calc is that if the phantom load it saves is 13 watts, it would take 1 year to pay back the $20 expense.

Hey kids want to impress your frugalista friends by doing calcs like that in your head? Here's how: run the numbers with your electric bill to determine how much it would cost to have a 100 watt light bulb on 24/7 for a year. With that you can calculate a watts to $/year conversion factor. For me it's 1.5.
 
I am sitting at Le Tub in Hollywood Beach, FL, and a bird has just dropped a sachet of sweetener on the table from a tree above my head. This place is quirky!
 
TromboneAl said:
I like it; my rough calc is that if the phantom load it saves is 13 watts, it would take 1 year to pay back the $20 expense.

Hey kids want to impress your frugalista friends by doing calcs like that in your head? Here's how: run the numbers with your electric bill to determine how much it would cost to have a 100 watt light bulb on 24/7 for a year. With that you can calculate a watts to $/year conversion factor. For me it's 1.5.
Click to expand...

Do you mean 150 rather than 1.5?
 
Adopted a new kitty after euthanizing my 19 yo guy last Thursday. Will be bringing her home on Friday!
 
pb4uski said:
Do you mean 150 rather than 1.5?
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No, I think I got it right. Please check it for me:

100 Watts * 24 hrs/day* 365 days/year / 1000 W/kW = 876 KWH per year

876 KWH * $.14/KWH = $122

Conversion factor = $122 / 100 Watts = 1.2 (Dollars/Year)

So my conversion factor is actually 1.2 and not 1.5. Last time I calculated it we were using more juice and paying 17 cents/KWH, which made it about 1.5.

PGE.jpg

To calculate your personal conversion factor, multiply your cost per KWH by 8.76. So, for example, if you pay 15 cents/KWH at your marginal rate, your factor is 1.3, and a 100 watt light bulb on 24/7 will cost you $130 in one year.

Or send away for your decoder ring.
 
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Ah, I now see what you mean by conversion factor - it is the cost per year per watt which you then multiply but the watts of the item (100w lightbulb in this case) to get the cost for a year.

So in your example, a 100 watt bulb multiplied by a 1.2 conversion factor results in an annual cost of ~$120 which is the same as 100 watts * 24 hours a day * 365 days /1000 * 0.14 per KwH.

I thought the 1.2 was the cost per year.
 
W2R said:
I was curious too, so I searched for it and found these:
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pb4uski said:
It was new to me too Nords. It has two different sets of plugs; one set that are always on like a regular plug and another that are only on when a "control" device is on. The objective is to minimize vampire (standby) power draw.
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Cool, thanks!

The only "vampire" loads we have left (other than miscellaneous displays like the microwave oven) are the DSL modem and wireless router. I leave those on 24/7 for our TiVo and for anyone who's up on the midwatch. I don't think anyone would be happy having to click on a switch and wait a minute for them to come up to speed, but I'll have to ask spouse.
 
tangomonster said:
Adopted a new kitty after euthanizing my 19 yo guy last Thursday. Will be bringing her home on Friday!
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I'm so sorry to hear of your loss, tangomaster. My two girls are 16 and I know the day is coming soon; I dread it. I wish the best for you and new kitty.
 
I just filled out a pre-printed form today with my most recent technological acquisition, a 1960s vintage manual Smith Corona typewriter. It was the perfect tool for the job, although it did feel somewhat disconsonant to type in my email address.
 
I'm not starting my day in a very good mood! Tried to add minutes to my prepaid cell phone account. I had $98 worth of prepaid in it but unless I either used it or paid another $16.00 my phone would be useless tomorrow. So, again, as I do every 2 months, I tried to add $16 to my already abundant minutes only to be greeted with a little security box asking for, yet again another password, required by Wells Fargo. I went thru that sh*t last time and set one up but this time....no....didn't work. So...madder than a wet hen, I attempted to use my debit card...nope...stupid system didn't like me doing that.

So....I no longer have a prepaid cell phone. Back to the dark ages for me right now.:mad::mad: I only use it for communication via txt with my daughter. She will just need to find another way to communicate with me now. Time for a nice warm shower or maybe a cold one.
 
Six weeks into ER and my routine so far (for week- former w#rk-days anyway) is : up at zero-dark-30 to make coffee for DW to take to the job she still likes (normally would include a little shoveling this time of year, but not this winter so far); leisurely breakfast with morning news; take mutt for a walk along beach, weather permitting; fire up the PC to catch-up on news, weather & sports; linger on the PC to catch-up on ER.ORG; do some house-husbandry (laundry, grocery, general cleanup); occasional text/chat with former colleagues at former employer (which usually re-enforces that ER was the right decision); prepare a mean slow-cooker meal for the evening dinner. So....that takes care of the morning.:D Afternoons are still kinda free-form, doing whatever strikes my fancy: maybe a little interior housepainting, a little light carpentry, a little reading. (I'm actually reading an annotated Bible right now; I'm not particularly religious, but I figured it's time I tried to better understand it's social/cultural significance.) My retired status is still a little unreal, and I suspect my days may get a bit more regimented as time passes, either from desire or need, but certainly no complaints so far!:whistle:
 
happy2bretired said:
I'm not starting my day in a very good mood! Tried to add minutes to my prepaid cell phone account. I had $98 worth of prepaid in it but unless I either used it or paid another $16.00 my phone would be useless tomorrow. So, again, as I do every 2 months, I tried to add $16 to my already abundant minutes only to be greeted with a little security box asking for, yet again another password, required by Wells Fargo. I went thru that sh*t last time and set one up but this time....no....didn't work. So...madder than a wet hen, I attempted to use my debit card...nope...stupid system didn't like me doing that.

So....I no longer have a prepaid cell phone. Back to the dark ages for me right now.:mad::mad: I only use it for communication via txt with my daughter. She will just need to find another way to communicate with me now. Time for a nice warm shower or maybe a cold one.
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With T-Mobile pre-paid, you can put $100 good for a year, subsequent years are only $10 if you stay within the minutes (and they roll over).

Your daughter can send texts to your email address. You can text from your computer email. It is just the 10 digit phone #, then an address for the carrier (you can google to find it for each of the carriers. ( xxxxxxxxxx@tmomail.net for t-mobile)

-ERD50
 
ERD50 said:
With T-Mobile pre-paid, you can put $100 good for a year, subsequent years are only $10 if you stay within the minutes (and they roll over).

Your daughter can send texts to your email address. You can text from your computer email. It is just the 10 digit phone #, then an address for the carrier (you can google to find it for each of the carriers. ( xxxxxxxxxx@tmomail.net for t-mobile)

-ERD50
Click to expand...

Thanks...I will be looking into T-Mobile. I think the deaf community uses T-Mobile a lot from forums that I've read in the past. T-Mobile isn't "big" around here, but I know they have ads in the newspaper. I will be looking at it!!:greetings10::greetings10:
 
Hey ERD50....that's so neat. I just wrote my daughter an email and it was delivered to her as text. She was able to respond!! I found a site that listed her carrier's text address and now she has mine too. Works really good as long as I'm at home with my computer and WiFi. Another reason for me to get an iPad, but then I would need G3 and probably be back with Verizon pre-pay again. Need to look at T-Mobile yet.

Thank you!
 
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