Daley Ponderings

Capital One Referral Code

jondaley — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 11:30:11 -0500

I switched to Capital One after being with Citibank for years (decades, actually). Citibank started a poor security practice of sending you a text message that says "never share this with anyone", and then they ask you to repeat that code over the phone (even after authenticating me with security word, address and phone number verification).

We had stuck with Citibank mainly because they have Virtual Account numbers, which I don't understand why all companies don't do that - it makes things so much more secure - I can confidently use insecure means of communication, like email for one-time use credit card numbers. And we love that feature, but Capital One now has it as well, and arguably, their system is even better - you need to download a browser extension, but it will auto-detect I am on a shopping page and pop-up a prompt to generate a new number and it pastes the number and CVV code into the fields automatically. They also have very long running expriation dates (Citibank is limited to 1 year) which means I can use unique credit card numbers with services that I don't want to have to update every year, like Comcast and USPS, etc.

Capital One has a referral program, where I'll get $150 if you use this link. Thanks!

Heating

jondaley — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 10:46:37 -0400

Since I'm on a roll of typing out the insulation we've used, I figured I might as well post about our heating systems too.

We have five different heating sources for our home, and someday we'll get a sixth...

1a. Oil burner base board radiators.

I grew up with base board radiators and I always thought they were the best. In college, we had the larger radiators and found those hard to control and were super hot if you were closer to the burner and not hit enough on the upstairs floors (huge house with one zone per floor). When we bought the house were living in now, it came with an old boiler that was leaking. We had one contractor who said after it got warmed up and wet, the gaskets would seal again, and he was probably right, but by getting a new boiler, we gained efficiency, moved the chimney from the middle of the kitchen and space in the basement. The new burner also came with a new controller that can adapt its top temperature based on how it is being used dynamically, so when just using the radiant or hot water, it runs at a lower temperature saving fuel. We also put in six zones, though one wasn't necessary (put in on the bad advice of my plumber who should have known better, see the comment in the radiant heat paragraph).

Baseboard heaters circulate the air in order to work, which is surprising to some people because they think it is only about water. But as a friend of mine discovered when he tried to heat his baseboards with his water heater (at 140 degrees, rather than 180 degrees), the lower temperature isn't enough to get the air moving and actually heat the house.

1b. Oil burner radiant heaters

I say that I used to think baseboards were the best, and they are vastly better over traditional air heat (no hot or cold spots, can't hear it running, doesn't dry the air). Note that geothermal water to air heat pumps work really well, and while they do have air movement, they generally run at lower air temperatures, so you don't get the hot and cold blowing as with traditional air ventilation. However, any air heating system (including my pellet stove) has a significant problem in that unless you have a mechanical air handling system to heat incoming air using the exhaust air, you have an air/leak problem (or if your house is too air tight, which can happen, you get mold due to the nasty humidity increasing creatures in your house that some call humans).

You've probably heard advertisements or people say that radiant heat is warmer than other heating methods, so you can leave your thermostat lower. This never made any sense to me because BTUs are BTUs, so how can one heat feel better than another and I'm not convinced that if my feet are warm, the rest of me feels warmer. But, after using radiant heat for 9 years, I do agree. But my theory isn't because my feet like being warm, but that because the radiant heats the floor, rather than the air, the heat doesn't leave the house as quickly (when we moved in, our house probably had at least 6 air changes per hour, if not more. We didn't measure it until after doing some improvements, where it came in at 4 air changes an hour. I theoretically knew about the ideal air changes an hour and mechanical ventilation, etc, but had never really considered what it meant. My baseboard heaters and pellet stove, dutifully circulating air as part of their operation, were heating air that left the house 15 minutes later. It is kind of staggering when you think about it that way.

So because the radiant pipes heats the floor, and then the air drifts up by convection in its own (and at a lower temperature), colder air is leaving the house, so you waste less fuel.

When we installed the radiant pipes, our contractors and plumbers were worried that the heat might not make it through the thick wooden floors, so we took as much wood off as we could and installed aluminum convection plates on the bottom side of the subfloor, which gets more heat out of the PEX piping than if the piping is just stapled to the floor. Once we turned on the system, it was evident that a lot of heat goes down and was heating the basement and the ceiling of the first floor (which at 10 feet high isn't useful at all), so I installed flexible aluminum sheets that create an air space around the pipe (to hold heat) and direct the heat upwards. I estimate that keeps 75% of the heat from going downwards. I then installed fiberglass under the aluminum to keep the rest of the heat up, and I no longer feel any heat below the pipes. We keep the thermostat around 6 to 8 degrees colder in the radiant rooms than the baseboard heated rooms and they still feel warmer.

The last owner spent $5000 a year in oil, plus an unknown amount on propane. We typically use around two tanks of oil, (360 gallons total, or less than a thousand dollars). Because oil costs are cheaper than wood pellets this year, we'll likely spend more on oil this year than usual.

2. Propane wall mounted air heater

In our apartment over the garage, there is a propane heater that does a decent job, and can heat the room quickly when needed. However, because we don't use that room that much, we leave the thermostat very low but the pilot light uses a gallon of gas every week and when the room is being used, uses around a gallon a day actually heating the room (when we had guests who kept the temperature above 70, they used more fuel than that). An electronic pilot would be nicer to avoid the fuel loss when it isn't being used. We leave the pilot off entirely and then try to remember to turn it on if it gets really cold. We did have the shower pipe freeze and break once, so then we had an electric heater in the bathroom to keep it above 40. However, see the next sections for how the room is heated now.

Because we no longer use that much propane, I was going to get charged an extra rental cost for not filling it as much as they wanted (typical company wants to see 100 gallons a year at a minimum, and the cooking stove only uses 6 or something like that).

3. Pellet stoves

We now have two stoves, one in the living room that I would call our main heat source - we typically leave the baseboards either off or set to 50 degrees. The living room is usually set to 74 degrees during the day and 70 at night. A fan blows the air to other parts of the house. It can burn three bags a day (120 pounds) if going on full blast, which it used to do when the temperature was below zero, but after our air sealing and insulation improvements, it hasn't ever needed to do that, and it typically burns 1.5 bags a day all winter long, adding up to 4-5 tons in a year.

We have a second stove in the garage/shop, which keeps things comfortable (there is some electrical heat tape installed by the previous owner, to keep the apartment from freezing, but I don't think it has been used since we insulated the shop. I keep the thermostat set to 48 normally and increase it to 64 when I'm out there working. It burns a ton of pellets a year.

4. Air-to-water heat pump

I don't exactly understand the physics of it, but the idea is that because the air temperature in my basement is above absolute zero, it contains energy, and so you can extract that energy and heat my hot water tank. It uses electricity, which in NH is the most expensive way to heat, but because it is a heat pump, it gets "free" energy from the basement and so in the summer is 3 times more efficient than direct electric heat and costs about $6-8 a month to heat our water (120 gallon tank for a family of 8 - see below for the future expansion of yet another heat source). In the winter, it is more expensive to heat with the pump than with oil, so we manually switch over to oil when it gets cold (usually November to March or April).

In addition to being cheaper (and better for the environment, depending on how the electricity is being generated), it also dehumidifies the basement, and so we don't need to run the dehumidifier as much to keep the mildew/musty smells at bay, which saves $20-30 a month during the summer. It does make the basement cooler, but it is nicer in the summer, and I don't run it in the winter, so that works out well.

5. Solar air heaters

I now have 8 wall mounted solar heaters (and have plans for at least 4-6 more). We have excellent southern exposure, and use some really neat homemade heaters that mount on the outside of the wall, and have holes in the top and bottom connecting to the inside and naturally convect cold air from the floor, heat the air (up to an amazing 140 degrees) and exhaust the air at the top. There aren't any fans, but the heat rising blows air out at the top, enough to move a piece of plastic sheeting that covers the top vent (which is necessary to keep the process from reversing itself at night). I improved the design on the internet by adding a double-walled Lexan sheet on the outside, which doesn't look quite as nice and limits the visibility from the inside (with a single wall, you can use them as windows).

There are three of these heaters in the apartment, effectively eliminating all propane costs, except when we have guests and it isn't very sunny. Typically, the temperature is in the 60s during the day and drops to the 50s at night. There is one heater in the stairway going to the apartment, which gets quite hot, often in the seventies and warmer than our nearby kitchen, so we sometimes leave the door open (Hmm, I should install an automatic fan to blow air into the kitchen when it gets warm enough). There are two heaters in the garage, which aren't enough to make it comfortable in the shop, but reduce the amount of pellets I use. Lastly, there are two heaters on our porch, which aren't 100% installed yet (no one way valve, so they cool the porch at night), but I expect to not use any heat in the porch and it should be quite nice; we might open that door to the kitchen and well as appropriate. I've wondered about installing vents from there to the upstairs bedrooms, but haven't done that yet, we'll see how it works out.

6. Solar water heater (later...)

You might have noticed that our water heater is oversized for a typical house and that is because we originally planned on having it heated primarily by the sun using oil as a backup. Our installer died before we were ready to complete the project and once I had the heat pump, it became a lesser priority compared to some other projects, but we'll probably do it eventually and then use the heat pump as a backup and remove the oil entirely.

I'll have to add some pictures to make this post a little more interesting, but that's a good amount of writing for today.

Insulation

jondaley — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 10:40:24 -0400

Someone just asked for advice on Facebook, and I figured I should save it here so I don't need to type it again when someone asks later.

We've had just about every kind of insulation in our house. So, more than you asked for, but hopefully useful. Also, if you don't know about it, you should go to nhsaves.com and have Eversource pay for 50% of your costs - a great program, we paid $3500 and save ~$1000 a year in fuel, plus the house feels warmer. Air sealing is the most important (one reason spray foams are better; the R value of cellulose and fiberglass goes to something around 1 or 2 if there is air movement)

1. Urea formaldehyde... Just looking at the name should have been enough for people to realize it was a bad idea, but it was the original spray in foam and was quickly banned in some other countries, but lasted here a while. Not counting the short term installation problems of causing cancer, in the long term, it shrinks and getting rid of it is really hard and is really bad for your lungs once it turns into powder.

2. Fiberglass: other than environmental issues, is the good old standby. Rodents don't eat it, and as long as your walls are thick enough and are air sealed, works well.

3. Rock wool: better than fiberglass for environment and easier installation on walls. More expensive than fiberglass, but worth it to me. We built a jig make it really easy to cut squarely (you cut it with a long bread knife so it fits perfectly, and holds itself in the wall, no stapling needed). We were using it in an application that didn't need a vapor barrier on the inside of the wall (see XPS exterior foam below).

4. Cellulose, in attics, great way to add to existing insulation, though not a vapor barrier at all. In walls, only good at high pressure/density, otherwise it settles.

5. Closed cell (isocynene and lots of other patented names that are mostly all the same thing). Vapor, moisture, air barrier. Terrible environmental issues for manufacture and installation, but great R value and air sealing, particularly for old buildings that have thin walls. And as far as we know, doesn't shrink, our grandkids will probably complain about that...

6. Open cell foam: not as good as closed cell, rodents eat it, lower r value. Can be poured in a wall, so easier to install in some cases.

7. EPS foam sheets: good for below ground/ foundation installations. Like all of the foams, bad for the environment.

8. XPS foam sheets, great for outside-the-wall, continuous (unlike everything else, also insulates the studs, which at higher insulation installations, really subtracts from the total R value), bad for the environment, but can be reused from old buildings.

We own an 135 year old Victorian that used to have ~4 air changes an hour (it's hard to imagine all the air that my pellet stove heats leaving the house 15 minutes later...) and we've shrunk it to 1 air change an hour and are doing another round this month. I don't know if we'll ever have to worry about not being leaky enough (like someone said above, which is a real problem for new installations, but really hard to get to in an old house), but that would be a great problem to have (as long as it is handled).

Khan Academy

jondaley — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 12:31:50 -0500

The boys (and Heather has enjoyed it too - I haven't gotten to it yet) have really been enjoying Khan Academy this last week. It is an educational tool, with lots of questions to test you on different skills. Jonathan is especially motivated by the reward badges it gives you when you do certain activities. It does a good job of remembering how well you have done on previous problems to decide whether you need more practice or not. It also has helpful videos to teach you new concepts.

Noah was working on some fraction problems (identifying the numerator and denominator). He had gotten three problems right and couldn't figure out why the fourth was wrong, and so I asked him if he had watched the video. He hadn't, but had just guessed, and the first three has asked him what the numerator was, and so he had picked the first number. He didn't notice the question changed on the fourth problem. I suggested that perhaps he should watch the video, although I think he didn't, but did see that the question was slightly different, and so then did the bottom number instead.... I guess we will see as time goes on whether this form of experimenting/learning is useful, or if it teaches you interesting things that end up not really working out.

Heather has really enjoyed the teacher interface, which lets you see exactly which problem the student got wrong, how much time they are taking for each problem, etc. In Jonathan's case, it listed he was "struggling" on a particular set of problems, but it turns out the "struggle" had to do with not reading the entire problem, and noticing whether it was a subtraction or addition problem.

Heather will probably want to write more about this, but I wanted to share one quote by Jonathan:

"Now that I was programming all day, I can see why you work so much."

If it isn't clear, what he meant was: it took him a long time to do some things that he considered easy, and was a lot of work to get it to work the way he wanted to. He has now been asking about more efficient computer languages; apparently, he remembers a comment I made about javascript being slow, though I can't remember what he is talking about. I suspect it might have been a comment about a certain programmer being inefficient, rather than the language itself. Or maybe he is remembering when John and I were talking about the Ruby guys who claim everything can be coded in 1/6th the time (and John's potential employer figured that he could be paid 1/6th the amount and the project should be completed in 1/6th the time, since Ruby made everything so easy).

They have a LOGO-type javascript interface where you can make different shapes, and program them to interact with the user.

Food Additives: Corn Syrup, Red #40, Aspartame, and Frozen Dairy Desserts

jondaley — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:27:30 -0500

The first blog post in a long time, I realize. And I won't make any promises about more frequent updates, etc.

I have found that I am writing on facebook more often, and reviewing products online (got a Kindle for Christmas, and so have been reading and reviewing on Amazon) and generally have less time for internet stuff anyway, so haven't been blogging anywhere near as much as we were before.

But, anyway... Today's topic: stuff food manufacturers put into food that wastes my time since I have to read the ingredient labels in the store.

We aren't that picky, really, I think. We try to avoid corn syrup, especially the high fructose kind. We generally pick brands that have less ingredients on the label, all else being equal, and we pay more for some items. I try to avoid foods that have unpronounceable ingredients. We try to avoid non-sugar sugars, and foods that have 5 different kinds of sugar to pretend that that sugar isn't the first ingredient. We try to not buy anything from Nestle or its subsidiaries.

I have been happy to see that bread manufacturers are starting to get the idea - some brands put on the front label: "No high fructose corn syrup" - that makes it easier and quicker to find.

We avoid most artificial sugars, and I've gotten better at realizing what the sneaky phrases that really mean "contain chemicals".

But, it is irritating to me when companies put chemicals in our food without any mention in any prominent place other than buried in the ingredient list.

I recently bought some candy for Heather that contained aspartame. I bought some cereal that I checked for sugar content, but didn't notice the aspartame. And then today, we found out that the so-called "100% juice" Langers brands actually isn't 100% juice, but has Red #40 in it. The dyes particularly annoy me as there isn't any reason to add them, and if there was a good reason to add it, there are perfectly good, natural ways of dying food. Presumably Red #40 is really, really cheap, and so food manufacturers use it to save on cost. I'd guess that food is a pretty low margin good, and so manufacturers look for anything they can do to make the food cheaper.

We used to buy Breyer's ice cream, but once I discovered that most of their "ice cream" can no longer be called ice cream, I got pretty fed up with the whole system. I figure my standards are higher than the FDA, and so if the FDA is forcing them to call it a "Frozen dairy dessert", it must be pretty bad. I bought a Whynter ice cream maker so we coudl make ice cream with a couple ingredients. We've really liked it, and make ice cream more than we used to, since it is so much easier than with our old ice cream maker (the main feature is that it comes with an air compressor, and so generates -22 degree temperatures and can cool the ice cream without any ice, salt, or planning ahead).

Interesting? Message From Microsoft

jondaley — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:03:35 -0500

I received a free "embedded" light from Microsoft a number of years ago. I put "embedded" in quotes, because I think it is funny that Microsoft considers a lightbulb connected to a USB power source an example of an embedded device. I guess I haven't looked that carefully, but I expect there to be two wires in the device, and so not all that exciting from an engineering perspective.

But, the other day I happened across the instructions for the unit (plug into a USB port, flick the switch) and noticed that there is a message on the back of the piece of paper, and I have no idea what it means. Anyone know?

Young Adult Fiction

jondaley — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:55:16 -0500

I was going to have Jonathan read this article about the status and progression of fiction, as he sometimes questions why we don't let him read or watch certain things, but then I decided the article itself was more than he needs to know right now.

Distributed Social Networks?

jondaley — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:00:25 -0500

I came across yet another version of a distributed social network, this one with hardware. FreedomBox Foundation is working on figuring out how to make tons of tiny little web servers that take out the centralized model. The New York Times has a decent article on explaining why Mark Zuckerburg having all of your information is a bad thing.

The introduction video on FreedomBox's site was a good non-technical description, and with graphics, for all of you who don't like to read that much... :)

It mentions diaspora, friendica and buddycloud. I'd heard of diaspora, and I have an account, but it doesn't interact with me very well. I glanced through buddycloud this morning, and didn't see anything particularly interesting. friendica emphasizes being able to interact with other current social networks, which is a good thing, since it is a hard thing to get people to switch.

I guess I should spend some time in figuring out how to install one of them and see if it is worth using. I've not been clear on how much you can customize the installations, and how hard it is to add features, etc. And how open the development really is, in terms of them wanting features from outside people, etc.

Mostly, I think the problem is that I want it just to work, and so I don't want to spend lots of my own time developing a system. Maybe I could work on figuring out if I could add plugins into LifeType to make it do some interesting things with the new social networks. LifeType 2.0 (if it ever comes out) started a couple years ago adding some social networking features, and so it might fit in well; I don' t know.

But, as facebook and google are increasingly unfriendly (Facebook announced they would no longer import notes, such as this one, starting in a couple weeks) I suppose their theory is that people will manually double post, or move to facebook only, or something like that. But, that is a pain, so I'll probably just stop posting to facebook.

Inflation of "Astronomical" Numbers

jondaley — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:51:04 -0500

A good quote from Linux Journal:

There are 100000000000 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical number, Now we should call them economical numbers. -- Richard Feynman

Firefighting

jondaley — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 16:57:24 -0400

I don't think it has been said here, other than in small mentions here and there, that I joined our volunteer fire company in Middlesex Township a couple of months ago. I am not sure of the exact number of incidents that I've gone out on, but the number is probably around 8 or so, though most of them have been cancelled while enroute to the station, or after we got the truck out, etc. It is often that case that people report a "fire" or "possible fire" when it actually isn't, and the county dispatch systems often are setup to dispatch two stations whenever there is a fire, and so we'll get paged for a neighboring township, and then once a township chief gets to the location, sees that it isn't a big deal, and is either not anything, or can be handled without help, etc.

There were two calls in the last two days (which is more than normal, the average is somewhere around 10-15 a month; and I just found out that I missed another call yesterday while we were in Pittsburgh) where I was actually useful (as opposed to the first fire I went to where I was told to, "stay with the truck", and so we (myself and a junior, defined as under 18, no matter the level of experience) just sat around and directed some other fire company's trucks where to park.

Yesterday's call was a vehicle accident who collided into the back of a bus that was stopped. The skid marks were pretty long, so he was probably going pretty fast. Though, I have no idea why the bus company thinks it is a good idea to have their bus stop (apparently every day, some sort of commuter bus) blocking a lane and have the people cross over the 5 lanes of traffic to get on the bus. I gather that the accident happened because a second car stopped next to the bus to let the people cross. I put the oil-dry/kitty litter or whatever it is on the ground where the vehicle's oil and coolant, etc. were leaking out. I picked up various bits of metal and plastic and helped direct traffic a bit (people pay a lot more attention to someone wearing fire clothes than without - I tried to direct traffic around a huge vehicle accident the other day, and some people got really upset at me holding up traffic (at a light) giving directions to folks. I hope that they finally realized what was going on when they sat in traffic for an hour, and maybe next time won't be so upset...)

Today's call was a fire in someone's yard, lots of dry grass at ~97 degrees in the sun. So, the other guys let me do the spraying and the chief gave me instructions about where to spray. It was pretty hot, and hopefully I'll get the summer clothes soon - right now I just have the full suit, which is really hot, even when inside an air-conditioned building, and I imagine really hot when inside a building on fire.

I went to my first fire class last weekend, and was joined by a bunch of kids, though there were a couple people my age, and a good number of people in between "kid-age" and myself. It was pretty fun, and I did learn some things - the SCBA (like SCUBA, without the U, which we would have been glad for) appartus class was informative, though I was paired with the least knowledgeable instructor, so she couldn't answer any of my questions. I can finally tie a bowline knot - that was a knot I never mastered in scouts. I'm not sure if it is because I am now smarter than I was 25 years ago, or if the instructor simply explained it better - I think it might simply be a different way of explaining it. We learned some good ways of lifting up various items (axes, big heavy pieces of equipment, pike poles, etc.) using some knots and lifting methods, and that was useful. The class was split up into groups, with a chief randomly assigned. Our chief did better as the weekend went on, so I'm sure he learned some things too. We got made fun of a number of times, "fire fighting is all about being made fun of", primarily for not keeping our group together, so we did eventually learn that lesson. I also learned a couple tricks about putting up a ladder against a building by myself. I didn't learn anything at the hose class, that my company hadn't taught me a couple weeks ago at a dry hydrant training, and I received one bit of misinformation that is widely believed in firefighting circles. When spraying water on a fire, you should rotate the nozzle clockwise. Why? Because of the coriolis effect. If you go counter-clockwise, it will suck the fire and smoke towards you. And in the southern hemisphere you would go counter-clockwise. I was sure the instructors were pulling our legs, but they insisted it was true. I searched around on the internet, and can find some people claiming that to be true, and one analysis where they try to figure out what is really happening, and if it really happens. And Heather and I discussed it for a while, and decided that it couldn't possibly be true, because if it did matter, you would have different rotations based on what direction you were spraying, and not only which hemisphere you were standing.

Apparently, it is now on a firefighter test though I wonder if only the clockwise part is on there, and not the reason why. I asked my guys, and one guy didn't know anything about it, and another, more knowledgeable guy, said yes, you do go clockwise, but the reason is that the fog nozzles (nozzles that can switch between straight stream, and different shower types) have a rotating piece in them that changes the direction of the water and air flow, and he says it will suck and blow the smoke depending on which way you rotate. He asked me today if I tried it out on the grass fire, but there wasn't enough smoke to test the theory.

There was a lot of wasted time, and I wish there was a better way to organize the class. It is called "Introduction to Basic Firemanship", so arguably, it should be a basic class, but it would probably be good if the group could be split, or give more direction to allow people who understand stuff to help other students, rather than force the more advanced students to crawl along.

The Red Cross was there with a therapy dog, and they asked to take my picture with the dog, and I signed a photo-release document, so I might show up in some Red Cross literature somewhere, which would be kind of fun.

My department gave me a new suit, as opposed to most of the students, who had gotten people's old stuff, and didn't fit, etc. so that made Middlesex look pretty good. My chief said my clothes are too shiny, and I made some effort to get them dirtied up, but didn't succeed very well.