Bi-losing.

Hmmm... I must be doing something right.

So maybe the cliche "everything happens for a reason" is rather indefensible. Saying "some things happen for a reason" is not particularly telling. Perhaps slightly tangent yet still fitting would be "there is always a lesson to be learned."

Inertia is a property of matter.

Often times I observe how life has it's own momentum. When a few key things start getting good, more good things follow and vice versa. Feast or famine. The tricky part is finding out what those key things are and how to jump start them in the right direction. But once that's done, the rest should follow.

Momentum and inertia are different things, as momentum is not a property of matter.

I've been thinking about what makes up a good person. 'Good' in the more archaic sense might be connotated with being generous, but that is fairly one-dimensional compared to how we throw around the word these days. Also traditionally one might define a good person as of high moral value, though I feel there's been a strong permeation of relative morality in atleast the world I live in so that definition doesn't hold much meaning.

I guess I would say it is someone who is kind-spirited, both well-intentioned and sensible, and has a positive outlook. Maybe that's an odd combination of characteristics, but it sounds right to me. And as broad of a definition as it might seem, I feel like the times have been few and far between that I've met someone of good standards. It's really quite refreshing.

Do you ever think about how ridiculous our petroleum based fuel system is? The crude is pumped from somewhere in the Middle East and then shipped over here in a giant tanker. Then it's refined at some plant in the middle of the country, only to be driven in a gas tanker to be delivered to your local gas station. Then we have to drive to the gas station to fill up. Every single part of the process consumes it's own product along the way.

What if you had a solar panel that fed into a battery during the day, which charged your car overnight at your house? Beast.

Take me to the grid.

Words cannot express how much I would like to be a stay at home husband or father.

I've been working on this new sleeping experiment for a while.

For the past 6 plus months, I have consciously played several games of solitaire (single draw) every night right as I get into bed. I'll play as many games as needed as long as I win about 2 or 3. The effort is to ultimately self-program myself to sleep using a mild brain stimulation pattern. Solitaire is perfect because it uses the same patterns, strategies, and actions. The opposite would be to kick around on Facebook in bed, as every entry is unique and elicits an emotional response.

So do I have any successes to report? It's hard to tell. Probably about 99% of the time, playing is the last thing I can remember about going to bed, but there are too many variables that prevent me from deriving any conclusive evidence. For example, I think I typically run at an above average tiredness rate compared to others, so the fact that I knock out quickly might just be because I'm exhausted all the time. Other patterns skew the experiment such as me going to bed around the same time every night.

Perhaps in another 6 months I'll have gathered better evidence on whether or not the experiment is working. This may call for a spreadsheet to use as recordkeeping.

i'm so fly i fell asleep on the plane

I love traveling.. even for a short time or a short distance, though the longer and further the better. One day when I have my own private jet, I will fly to a different place every night.

The Problem with Smart Grid:

Today's energy lesson is on the problem with the Smart Grid. First of all, there is no single definition for Smart Grid, so there is enough confusion stemming from that. But really I'd like to discuss Time of Use (TOU) rates and general future the industry is envisioning.

So I've already mentioned the concept of peak shaving, but let's hit it again. Everybody gets home from work, turns out their air conditioning, starts cooking dinner, and flips on the lights and tv all around the same time between 6 pm and 7 pm. If we say that to serve all of this load we need 1000 MWs and our powerplants can produce 10 MWs, we need 100 powerplants just to serve that one hour between 6 pm and 7 pm. The goal behind TOU rates it to encourage consumers to consider doing some things at different times so that maybe that 1000 MWs over one hour might be 500 MWs over two hours or, even better, 333 MWs over three hours. Then you'd only need to have 50 or 34 powerplants. The mechanism to spur this behavior is the cost of electricty from 6-7 pm versus the cost of electricity from 7-8 pm. Also the technological piece that aids in this behavior are smart appliances, which are programmable to the extent that you can at least load your dryer at 6 pm, but tell it to start running at 8 or 9 pm when electricity rates are lower.

So this all sounds fine and dandy, but do you think that your parents or grandparents will really grasp and embrace this concept? Consider how deeply engrained into our patterns and mindset the fact of instant electricity is. Also people in general are stubborn and self-centered, where a small amount of inconvenience to them is not worth the greater benefit for the whole community. Maybe I have little faith in the human ability to adapt.

EV's:

On Friday I had the opportunity to attend a technical conference on electric vehicles hosted by the the Maryland Public Service Commission. There were representatives from Ford, DOE, PJM, Delaware University, and several regional utilities speaking on the future impact of electric vehicles on the grid. Really the presentations were quite layman in my opinion; not nearly as technical as it might sound.

For those of you who don't know, battery electric vehicles are cars that run on a battery that will generally allow you to travel 40 miles per charge. That charge could cost you as little as a dollar on your electric bill versus the 1.5 gallons of gas you'd use which right now would probably cost you $4 or $5. Plus you're not blowing emissions out of your tailpipe. Of course the trade off in emissions is that they are produced at the power plant and losses are afforded through the wires, but energy produced and delivered at a power plant is many, many times more efficient than a combustion generation process in your car. Think of all that excess heat your engine generates.

So electric vehicles are awesome and the way of the future. There are many ancillary applications in the grand scheme of EV's, such as how they support the growth of wind and solar generation or how they will effect the prices in the energy market, but those are more complex concepts and you are welcome to ask me about them in detail if you'd like.

Tea Party: something little girls do these days

I don't usually like watching people get embarassed. I don't typically enjoy getting political, though I do read some of the news. This is just too good to pass up, though.

Sometimes while I'm taking a whiz at work I'll see a fat employee walk into one of the stalls behind me. I immediately think to myself, "I gotta get the hell outta here." Is that wrong?

Work is usually full of nerd stuff which typically bores most people, but there are a few cool programs where if people understood a few of the engineering concepts behind them, they'd be much more interested in participating. For example, take the PeakRewards program. Essentially, the program allows BGE to remotely control your central air conditioning during a few days throughout the summer for a lump sum rebate paid back to you. Now the obvious benefit is that it forces the customer to conserve energy then and there at the cost of potential minor discomfort. The other part is that on the whole, energy is more expensive for BGE to buy during those peak times when your AC would be running, so the energy market will eventually reflect lower prices as per the lower demand. One of the bigger benefits that most people don't realize is that transmission, distribution, and all equipment associated with electricity delivery become less efficient if heavily loaded at those peak times, and typically the design only calls for appropiate peak capability. Significant shaving of peak loading can lead to exponentially fewer losses on the transmission and distribution systems. Lastly, the least addressed benefit is the curtailment of capital expenditures associated with designing for peak loading operations. For example, when everybody turns on their AC from 5-7 pm in the summer, the load on a transformer may reach 35 MW for a 30 minute period. If the transformer is only designed to facilitate 33 MW, we'd have to spend $5 million on upgrading that transformer. Sufficient enrollment in PeakRewards may shave that peak below 33 MW, thus deferring or all together dismissing the need for spending all that money on an upgrade. Eventually, those savings to the company are passed back to the customer through rate casing.

I may be a nerd, but everybody wins.

I have work to do, but it is simply work that I don't want to do right now.



Two weeks ago I put in an order for a pen and today it came into the office supply cabinet.

Uniball's Jetstream RT. It writes pretty smoothly, but the best feature is that the ink is smear resistant. The office already had the cap-style version, but I prefer retractable.

Also, I have been drinking as much water as I can. I then try to pee at the same urinal to see how much progress I can make on melting the urinal cake.

Dear Chinese commenter: I appreciate the attention and your efforts in posting links as comments, but I cannot read Chinese so it is all lost on me.

I can't wait to watch more Veronica Mars. She is perfectly sassy. I wish Kristen Bell really was like Veronica, and not some complete bore on Twitter.

What a hot birthday weekend. Nice and easy.

I think it's pretty hip to treat AC as a true luxury. Consider what people used to do in the old days.

I am very much looking forward to jumping into a pool next weekend.

the Greendale Community College Humans

I was thinking about this for a while last night. Say:

Alex of Filipino ethnic background and Allison of Nordic background have a child, Brandon.

Carl of Ghana and Cathy of Native American decent have a child, Deborah.

What does Brandon and Deborah's child, Edgar, look like?

What does Edgar and Jasmine's child look like, given Jasmine's grandparents are of Asian, Middle Eastern, other European, etc. decent?

My goal for the rest of the year: keep on travelling a ton.