After deciding against an on-demand hot water system, I went out this weekend and bought a General Electric 12-year 40 gallon natural gas water heater. Consumer Reports and others recommend getting longer life water heaters because not only should they last longer, but you are getting other extras like added insulation, a better burner, and faster heat-up times. There is not nearly the selection available for water heaters as there is for refrigerators. The differences in energy consumption are pretty minor. Disappointingly, even though Home Depot calls this a “high-efficiency” water heater, the Energy Guide on the side indicates it will use 254 therms out of a range going from 234 to 258. So “high efficiency” means 4 therms less the least efficient heater in the entire class. This is still more efficient than my old one which was rated for 319 therms per year. Sears has a 12-year model that only uses 238 therms, but GE heaters use a magnesium anode which is supposed to be better than the aluminum ones used by some Sears heaters (I couldn’t tell from the Sears website what the 12-year tank’s anode is made of). Not that Sears makes theirs (they are made by A.O. Smith). GE doesn’t even make theirs (they are made by Rheem). Not many choices and very difficult to shop online. From most efficient to least efficient there is only a 10% difference.
Year: 2007
Rainfall Gauge
For my birthday, Susan gave me an electronic, wireless rainfall gauge. Not that it will get much use, but it should be pretty neat and beats the bucket on my front porch that I had been using to measure rainfall previously. I’ve always wanted one, ever since I wrote a paper in my college Hydrology course called “Rainfall Gauges: Our Funnel-Shaped Friends.” This one is by Oregon Scientific so it should be compatible with my network of indoor/outdoor thermometers. In fact, it came with another remote thermometer, so now I have a backup (you can only have three).
Medieval Times
Some friends of Susan’s invited her to go to Medieval Times restaurant. She asked me if I would like her to take me there as a birthday dinner. I had never been and I don’t even think I’ve known people who have gone, but I was game. As I told Susan, it should be like the Renaissance Festival without the porta potties.
We did a little research the night before to see what we were getting into. It’s kind of like dinner theater where the show is people dressed as knights fighting and riding around on horses.
Money Machine Is Rusty
I started pointing my Amazon links back to my account since November commissions won’t be paid until 2008. I have no idea what sales were like during the blackout period that started July 1. However, I do know that Apple introduced a whole new line of iPods in that time. So during the first 8 days of sales, only one order seems to have been placed. It was for multiple items and generated a couple of dollars in commissions, but this is nowhere close to what was happening in July when I was making sales almost every day. I’m not sure what the deal is, but at least part of it has to be that the new iPods have batteries that last a lot longer. My new nano rarely needs to be plugged in. Even the iPod Classics have much longer battery life than the previous generation.
It’s still free money, so I can’t complain. It’s just not as much.
Pumpkin
I left work a little early today to get ready for trick or treaters. Though I had bought a pumpkin, I hadn’t carved it yet. It was kind of small, so I was thinking about just putting an eye on it, like the Eye of Sauron. Then I thought maybe two eyes. Then I thought I could make them look angry by adding eyebrows. As I was standing at the kitchen counter carving the pumpkin, Austin was very interested. But he’s always interested when I’m in the kitchen. The cutouts from the eyes were kind of ear shaped so I used some matchsticks to hold them onto the side of the pumpkin and drilled 9/16″ earholes. Eventually I added a triangle nose. It turned out okay. The ears made it a lot more interesting.
Then I went outside to sweep off my walkway. When I came back, one of the ears was gone. At first I thought it must have fallen off and the matchstick was left sticking out of the pumpkin. But then I found it half-eaten in my dining room (where else?). I bent down to pick it up and Austin sped in to get it just before me. I wound up getting it back and sticking it on the pumpkin.
Then I got the nose cutout to see if Austin really likes pumpkin or if he was just playing around. He liked it! He also ate an eyebrow and then I decided he had had enough pumpkin. I should have named him Peter.