Spring

Rode my bike to/from work most of last week, a final indication that spring is well underway. Hopefully it keeps this up. Still haven't gone to the mountains at all, last year by this time had already done a couple hikes. This year it feels like the spring and hiking season is later than usual, but I don't really know. Most people I'd go with are now gone, and some of the potential new people are so far busy, or not that interested. But admittedly I haven't tried very hard. I've been kindof busy and tired myself.

At lunch today after the dragonboat meeting, 4 of us went for lunch, and without knowing what each other was ordering/considering, two of us chose 23d and two chose 22b. Somehow that seems neat to me (the fact that we happened to choose the same things as each other out of all the choices, nothing special about the actual numbers). Cosmic psychic links.

Saw a mythbusters where they tested the debate over whether the extra power-up costs of lightbulbs offsets the savings of having them turned off such that it could be better to leave them permanently on. I knew for sure incandescents had very tiny power-up costs, but fluorescents have more. Obviously not enough that you would leave them on permanently, but I wasn't sure about if you were leaving a room for a few minutes. Anyways, their tests showed "break even" points of between a fraction of a second and about 25 seconds, so there's pretty few cases where it's worth leaving the light on. The lights would wear out faster with turning them on and off frequently, but still not a significant issue.

Anyways, it reminded me of some other power-saving related things. How much power do you think a turned-off TV uses compared to a turned-on TV? It can actually be pretty significant! Many devices don't really turn off, they go into a stand-by mode. I want to get a power meter and do some tests around the house, I think it would be neat. See what's using what power, what's significant, and even see about some easy ways to reduce your power consumption (like unplugging or turning off the power bar for that TV, though that's a hassle and the TV probably loses it's channel memory).

Actually just read that TVs get the EnergyStar rating based on their 'standby' power consumption, not their 'on' power consumption. That's how gigantor plasma TVs still get EnergyStar ratings.