Always critical, sometimes angry

MyStop - What’s up?

Mon, 1 Oct 2012 15:53:56 -0600

I love technology. So when I received this letter the local school board rolling out a new program called ‘MyStop’ I was intrigued to say the least. And as a ‘customer’ spending $750 a year on transportation, it was a nice ‘value-add’ to the deal.

Do you know what’s in your gasoline?

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:40:43 -0600

I bet you don’t. I know that I sure didn’t. Of course I had seen the stickers popping up on fuel pumps around the city some time ago but didn’t think much of it. Gas is gas, right? Guess again. Anyway one day I came across someone commenting on the BTU content (or more simply put energy content) of straight gasoline compared to ethanol. This got my mind going, and a simple search later I learned that it is a scientific fact that ‘pure’ gasoline contains 114,100 BTU/gallon whereas the same gallon of ethanol yields only 76,100 BTU/gallon... So the bottom line; ethanol contains less energy than gasoline therefore your truck/car/lawnmower will not travel as many kilometres on ethanol as it would with that same gallon of gasoline.

Who cares, right?

Well the ‘gas’ you are putting into your tank today may actually contain a certain percentage of this lower energy content ethanol. What exactly is ethanol you ask? Basically, for North American it is refined corn or wheat, basically converted into alcohol. Now, I am not going to get into the politics of ethanol production but as it turns out the government has mandated that every litre of gas sold in Canada must contain a certain percentage of ethanol. Why? I honestly have no clue, as far as I can tell there is very little benefit to using ethanol as a fuel source for our vehicles. In the meantime we are all stuck with the decision, as uniformed as the general public may be.

Anyhow, there are a number of ethanol/gasoline blends that you may come across, denoted by an E followed by the percentage of ethanol blended with the gasoline. So E85 means 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline. You might see fuels labeled as E5, E10, E15, or even E85. As it turns out, there is very little E85 fuel infrastructure available in Canada, so to be honest I don’t even know where you would purchase that particular blend. E5 and E10 though, are very common.

Paying for Nothing. Literally

Mon, 5 Mar 2012 14:53:13 -0700

I wasn’t initially angry with this purchase today, as a matter of fact I was thrilled. For a number of years I have loved our Keurig single cup serving machine and the width and depth of coffee selections that are available. And today, Starbucks finally had their K-cup available for sale in Canada (Caffe Verona, if you are interested) at the local Costco. My neighbour picked up a box for me and dropped it off, not long afterwards I ripped it open to give it a try.

Here is what I saw:

iCloud - Who ‘gets’ it?

Fri, 2 Mar 2012 10:43:29 -0700

Over the past week I have had a number of interactions with family and friends (and even my sister’s manager who needed iPad tech support that her organization couldn’t provide!) regarding iCloud on their iPhones/iPads. In a nutshell, they don’t get it so they don’t use it. Maybe it’s just me, but I have a feeling that many people are missing out on some of the pretty cool features of this service.

The story begins about two weeks ago. I had sent out iCal invitations to a large group of people for my daughter’s birthday party. My two sisters discovered three days ago that there was a party, and had no idea as they never received the invitation! Needless to say they were a bit angry and a little confused at being not invited to their nieces’ celebration. So of course I had to troubleshoot; I double checked that I had included them. (I had) I checked that I used the correct email addresses. (yes) I checked with other people on the list to see if they could confirm I had included my sisters (no problems) I finally resent the invitation multiple times, but still no luck. I kind of just left it at that.

Until last night - my sister dropped by for a visit and we were joking about her lack of invitation and her hurt feelings. I asked to see her phone, (I first commented on how it’s an ancient 3GS, mat that was the problem) and went straight to the calendar app to double check that the invitation wasn’t hiding somewhere. Then I got into her settings and into iCloud. As it happened she had almost everything turned off! No calendar sync, no photo stream, no contacts, no iCloud backup, nothing. She said she didn’t understand what it was there for, and had just basically shut it all off.

Efergy Elite Update; one month later

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:49:37 -0700

And just like that one full month has passed. We received our January power bill from EPCOR and it was still quite high, as I hadn’t had the Efergy Elite long enough to make a huge impact. But since then I would say the results are quite shocking! Bear in mind that in December we used 1800kWh of electricity; as of February 29th our household has used 700kWh. Quite a reduction, wouldn’t you say? I has guessed at 25% but it was more like 60% - your mileage may vary though.