PGE recently replaced our analog meter with a digital one. So far it does not 'phone home' to me and I only look at it when taking out the trash, but the odd thing is my usage dropped by about ten percent since they put it in. No changes at all in appliances or usage. I'm becoming very suspicious that a faulty analog meter or reader's eyeballs have been charging me an extra ten percent for years.
I'd suspect a faulty meter over being misread. While a meter is easily misread it is usually corrected on the following read. If you are seeing longer term less usage it sounds like the old meter was not being nice to you.
My meter comunicated with the thermostat and then through the modem to give the power company the information. The meter readers would give that meter the strangest looks as it was not readabel IIRC, the modem was the link to my billing.
--------------------------------- On the bright side, lawyers fly too.
The old V-tail is a good airplane but you can't overcome perception so the went conventional.
During the airline strike in the mid 60s, had to get from Cleveland to San Angelo, TX.
Almost an impossible task, but there was a solution.
Had a tech service guy who was rebuilding a "Banana" while keeping it in flying condition.
He became our airline.
Had a grass strip beside his house to allow him to keep the plane at home while he worked on it.
The plane had seen service in Alaska and thus had the big Lycoming engine in it according to the tech.
Cleveland to Memphis to Dallas to San Angelo.
Made for an interesting and very long Sunday.
Arrived in San Angelo to be greeted by newspaper headlines announcing that race riots had broken out in Cleveland on Saturday night.
Some very interesting tales to tell about that trip.
Among other things, learned about Omnis and how to use them.
Lew
Heh, I find myself playing "spot the car" in the US, having grown up on the other side of the Pond. Saw my first X1/9 on US soil last year, one "proper" Mini so far (not the crappy modern BMW version), a 2CV a couple of months ago... quite a few VW bugs, of course. A few MG Midgets (but with the shitty rubber bumpers that they were forced to have in the US)
I've had a major hankering after a first-generation Celica for a few months... I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing!
I really want a Jensen FF, but that's waiting until I win the lottery ;)
cheers
Jules
I give up.
Lew
"hot" water heater? I only need a "water heater". ;!) Iknow, I know, it reheats relatively hot water, but would a hot water heater work if it were full of cold water?
I don't know which generation was which year, but when I came to the US from Australia at the end of 1977, I saw Celicas that looked considerably different from - and inferior to -- the ones I had been seeing in Australia for the past year or two. The internals might have been the same, but I much preferred the styling of the Australian ones.
Perce
It is my vague recollection that the V-tail was one of the early civilian planes to have a flush riveted wing and was very "clean." As a result, an inattentive pilot would be flying along and get into a very shallow dive. Before he got any shuddering, noise or other indication of speed, he would have far exceeded the "do not exceed" speed of the airframe. Eventually, he'd notice that he was going like a bat out of h*ll, and would pull back instinctively on the stick. The wings would be instantly overloaded and he'd look up to see them fluttering away.
This is just a recollection from my own flying lesson days, and I can't say that I can vouch for the source.
On 12/17/2009 1:27 PM J. Clarke spake thus:
And at some point in the US Singer (the sewing-machine company) bought up Graflex and made them (or had them made) under their name. Not sure how that worked out w/the Japanese co.
They're out there just waiting for you. Film and stuff is still available too.
Also trucking (same same).
Definitely not as cold.
Why would you want electric water, whether it be hot or cold?
I suspect so. I'm going to have a wee chat with them if the next couple of bills bear me out. Perhaps we can come to a reasonable accomodation. "Reasonable" being I don't tell channel 2.
I'm not sure what this one does or how it does it. Might be good to find out. Be neat to have an easier way to figure out what is going on with usage.
LOL... good'n I would rather electric water than gassy water
I'll tell you what MOST gets my goat: the materials science. Plastics made in China seem to have about half the lifespan of plastics made in Thailand. If that ... some stuff starts to crumble a week after it comes out of the box.
Generally this is not quite as much a problem with stuff designed in XXX and made in China, because they tend to do QC, but it happens still. Our Bosch washing machine, when delivered, turned out to be manufactured there. Within a week, two switches had disintegrated. Our friend bought the same model, and found herself holding the plastic handle for the door in her hand inside the first month.
Tools made from what can only be described as potmetal ... ok, the Chinese don't have the Exclusive on that one, but they excell at it. I've had Chinese 'stainless' go rusty 3 weeks after unpacking and removing the gel-packs. Chrome plating turning into a razor edged hazard in a space of weeks or even days...
I used to laugh at some Chinese made knives - they obviously had been copied as a design by people who had no idea of the intended use. Cutting edge blunt and 1 mm wide. I've seen a lot of that sort of thing in fact. Mimicry without understanding the functionality of the item.
I'm perfectly well aware of the Japanese example, and I fully expect the same thing to happen with Chinese made goods. Just as it happened with the Taiwanese and the South Koreans. I've no problems buying Japanese or Taiwanese made, somewhat more weary of Korean stuff still, except electronics.
But clearly, the Chinese are not there yet. And with their sanctioned policy of 'saving face is more important than dealing with problems or addressing the issues' this may take longer for China to get up to speed and communicate reliably with the rest of the world. There's been a lot of shit happening this last year in industrial relations between China and Australia and New Zealand, because neither side understood how to bridge this cognitive dissonance.
Some time in the last couple of years we had a German engineer & family as a Servas guest and he'd just come off a tour of duty in China, as an adviser on building up a car factory (I think, for local production of VWs) there. We asked him if he would buy one of those Chinese built cars. He went " maybe not just yet". Lol.
Personally, I shall await such time as ... for the time being I avoid them as much as possible, even if I have to pay 20 times the price, and no kidding.
f.w.i.w. -P.
Well yes, because there's no incentive for them (or anyone else) to sort out the problems or make better products - it really is "you get what you pay for", and most folk seem happy to buy complete crap so long as it's cheap. I've seen good Chiense products in the past - with the associated price tag.
Their labor's cheap, but still skilled if that's what's required; they'll build and test stuff to the exact level that the buyer's paying for.
cheers
Jules
Define "cold". My water comes out of the ground at a pretty much constant
55 degrees year-round, and that's considerably hotter than freezing ;-)
Interesting. I found that with a lot of the old Holdens when I was in Oz and NZ - lots of them were based on US models, but somehow they just had that little bit more grace and elegance in the styling...
And actually, when I say "first generation Celica", I think I'd aim for one of the post-'75 ones after they gave them the facelift. Problem with my being in the US is that I think all of the US ones may have had shitty rubber bumpers added - the Oz ones just had chrome as Toyota intended.
I'm a self-confessed sucker for '70s cars with quad headlights... ;)
cheers
Jules
Mine sure doesn't. There is a big change in the shower handle position between summer and winter. When I lived in VT we were lucky it came out liquid in the winter. ;-) The frost line often went down
7' and not all water lines did. Since we had a domestic hot water coil in the boiler, the hot water temperature varied quite a lot too.
Same here. But ours isn't due to ground temperature, but the storage temperature of the water tanks. During the summer, don't need much hot water at all for a shower, during the winter, we need to turn down the cold water considerably.
If the water is coming out of a well, then the temperature is going to be pretty constant year-round. In general, that means cold. When I was growing up, I'd see pictures of kids on TV running through sprinklers having a grand old time. I'd try that (on a farm with well water) and I'd last for a couple dashes through the water before I had to give up. I think our water was about 60 degrees. It wasn't fun.
China for a couple weeks with Chinese engineers and grad students as hosts. They are VERY interested in doing things right and are very proud of their country. They have a ways to go but it won't take them long. We visited a road construction site where most of the heavy equipment operators were hardly out of their teens. They were putting in the curbing just prior to paving with asphalt. They had modern survey instruments to maintain line and grade and were installing large, but hand handlable and hand installed individual granite curb stones that formed the gutter. The gutter line was perfect as was the pavement when they were done. They also don't waste a lot of time and effort on "environmental and archeological" salvage issues like we do here. They just dig it up and rebury it. We could see the remains of at least two prior iterations of roads buried several feet under the current construction level. The US is almost assuredly on a long, slow (best case) downhill slide due to over-regulation and nannystateism.
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