Mr. Toy's Mental Notes

I learned some more about Smart Meters over this past week, and I'm no more comfortable with them than I was before. PG&E held an open house in Seaside last Wednesday. The people who were there were friendly and explained their program fairly well despite my surly attitude going in. The two impressions I came away with were that they really wanted to get this right, but that the company is acting too overconfident for my comfort. As a technological innovation, smart meters are definitely cool. The things they can do now and will be able to do in the future certainly make a strong case for their deployment. However, some of the smart meter features can also be obtained with over the counter products, so smart meters aren't essential for consumers to monitor their own energy usage.   PG&E is promoting these devices to the public on coolness alone. It worked for the iPhone, right? Well, not everyone is sold on the iPhone, either, and nobody is forced to buy one...

In my last entry I noted that Monterey will be discussing a possible ban on PG&E's Smart Meters on Tuesday, February 1st.  I just learned that Seaside will be discussing Smart Meters at its next city council meeting on Thursday, February 3rd. If this concerns you, write your city councils a letter or show up at the meetings and let your views be known.

I thought my readers might like to know that the Monterey City Council will consider a ban on PG&E's so-called "Smart Meters" at the February 1 city council meeting. I hope other local jurisdictions will do the same. Click HERE to see a copy of the city staff report and proposed ordinances. My concerns about smart meters are as follows: They record data about your personal habits by recording when you use electricity and gas minute by minute. As I understand it, there are at present no safeguards on how that data may be used. PG&E is likely to use the information to charge you more for gas and electricity during certain hours of the day. The data is transmitted wirelessly from your meter to PG&E and can be intercepted by hackers who could use the data to determine when you are home or away.  The data will also be available on PG&E's website, supposedly only to the customer who resides at a given residence. However, this data could also...

Here is reason #652 why I'm no longer a Republican. Once upon a time, this country accomplished pretty much everything it set out to do. Defeat the Nazis. We did it. End racial segregation. We did it. Put a man on the moon (during war time, no less). We did it. Conserve energy during an oil embargo. We did it. We used to be a "can-do" nation. But as the extreme right-wing nuts have taken over the once respectable Republican party, they keep telling us we can't do the things we need to do. Let people marry whoever they choose, regardless of their sexual orientation? It goes against the Bible, so we can't do it. Make our transportation systems more efficient and comfortable by modernizing passenger trains and developing high speed rail corridors? It's too expensive and government shouldn't be subsidizing trains (even though we subsidize roads, airports, waterways and shipping ports), so we can't do it. Develop environmentally friendly energy sources to...

I hadn't intended to drag a PG&E lineman out to my house at 9:00 at night. It was Friday, and I noticed all of our lights were flickering again, as they had been for a little over a week. I kept making mental notes to call PG&E during the day, but since the lights weren't on during the day I kept forgetting. Friday night I figured I would call PG&E's 24 hour service center and report it, thinking they would look into it the next day. Much to my surprise, they sent someone out almost immediately. The repairman was a very friendly guy. After introducing himself he shut off our power, got in the bucket on top of his truck and rode it up to where our service line connected to the pole. After working for about 30 minutes in the night air he came down and said the connector had worn out and he replaced it. He said we were good for another 25 years. Wow. I hadn't expected such prompt and courteous service, but I was certainly grateful. When our lights came back o...

Whatever you may think about the competency of US automobile executives, please don't tell me their companies are failing because they're putting out bad products. My favorite cars of the last 20 years have all been GM products. Right now I drive a 20 year old Buick. While it is showing inevitable signs of wear and tear, it still gets me where I want to go just fine. Five years ago we bought Mrs. Toy a 2003 Chevy Impala. It is the best car we've ever owned. Prior to that she had a 1995 Mazda 626. The Mazda's transmission failed and had to be replaced before it got to 30,000 miles (still under warranty, thank goodness). We wanted to avoid the next failure and decided to trade it in before it reached 60,000, and thus the Impala came into our lives. The 6-cylinder Impala is roomier, more comfortable, bigger, safer, and more powerful than the 4-cylinder Mazda. But best of all, the Impala actually gets better gas mileage than the Mazda. Our Impala gets 32 MPG on the highw...

Ya gotta love the thought processes of modern conservatives. It wasn't long ago when they were saying that Ford, GM and Chrysler were selling big gas hogging SUVs because that's what people wanted. It fit in so neatly with their confidence in market forces to keep the economy humming along. Their beliefs were accompanied by firm opposition to tougher fuel economy standards, saying it would stifle the free market and force people to drive cars they don't want. Now that the Big Three are failing, largely due to their reliance on SUV sales which went SPLAT on the pavement when gas prices went through the roof, these same conservatives are saying that American automakers were too stupid to realize that people wanted fuel efficient cars. This obvious contradiction has its own internal logic. It allows conservatives to maintain their ideological purity without admitting to any lapses in logic. This tactic will work as long as they can maintain the illusion that they never suppo...

I don't worry about media bias, but I see a lot of media stupidity. There was an article in the Monterey Herald of Saturday November 16th which was a perfect example. The article was about compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), and was written by Mary-Liz Shaw of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I have since discovered that the article has appeared in dozens of papers all across the country, spreading misinformation far and wide. The gist of the rather lengthy article was that people, even those with strong environmentalist tendencies, are shunning CFLs because they make “your living room look like a morgue” among other potential horrors. Elsewhere she described the light of CFLs as “dull,” “harsh,” “ghastly,” and adds that they can “turn even the most environmentally conscious a sickly green.” Now the Toy household has been using CFLs for fifteen years, in every room of the house, and we have experienced none of these problems. Our living room looks cozy and inviting...

I've never been a fan of Paris Hilton. Until I saw this. McCain ran an ad comparing Obama to certain mindless celebrities. Here is how one of those celebrities responded. See more funny videos at Funny or Die I'm actually inclined to agree with her. At best more drilling will only postpone the inevitable, but it could buy us some breathing room, a little more time for technological innovation before the oil runs out. Ultimately, though, dwindling supplies and increasing energy demand will force us to get off our oil habit. We had our first warning 35 years ago, but after Reagan took office we pretty much ignored it. Every day we delay is a day wasted.