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November 1, 2009 6:33 AM A little bit of both  Early Sunday morning. It's dark. There was frost on my windshield when I went to start my truck. Not the sort of frost you have to scrape, but a few minutes on defrost and it was cleared away by the windshield wipers. Which reminds me, I need to get the rubber thing that lines the top of the windshield repaired. I had the windshield in my truck replaced a few weeks ago, and this morning when I turned the windshield wipers on there was a terrible smacking noise every time they brushed over it. That's because it has pulled away from the vehicle and is drooping down in the middle of the windshield like a great big frowning unibrow. I'm at the airport. Gate 31. An hour until boarding. I realized a few minutes ago that I left some files on my computer at home, but I cannot connect to the airport's free wireless Internet service. I guess I'll ask for my money back. You get what you pay for. This is my life. I'm a security technician, working for a company called Convergint Technologies, who is sending me for the last week of my training on one of their high end products. They pay for everything, which is nice. It will be the first time I'll have gone this far away by myself though. O'Hare International Airport A Traveller's Experience Those CRJ-700 aircraft sure are smooth fliers. Our takeoff was effortless, the ride smooth and quiet, and the landing nearly picture perfect. We taxied for what seemed like a long time. I wondered why they couldn't have just built the airport closer to the runway. Oversight, I concluded. I had to wait on the jet bridge for my second piece of carry-on luggage that had been stowed underneath the plane. Apparently Carry-on is a relative term. I suppose all luggage is carried on board the airplane, with the variable being the person doing the carrying. In this case, I stood on the bridge with a dozen or so other passengers, also waiting for their so-called carry-on baggage. The first item was a guitar case that, judging by the recipients' response and subsequent thorough inspection of said guitar, appeared to have received a large gouge on the side of the case. His body language shouted disgust and helpless frustration. Several people picked their bags and walked up the bridge. The man standing in front of me was uttering obseneties under his breath. Apparently he'd had the privilege of watching the airline personel mishandle his luggage. It reminded me of a time I watched some of the fast food I was about to consume being prepared. Even though you know things happen to it while it's out of your sight in the kitchen, in many cases it's just better you don't see it for yourself. He was also not happy. Off to a great start. My bag arrived through the bridge door. Containing only clothing I wasn't too concerned for it's shape. Up the bridge I walked, about to enter the iconic O'Hare.  My first observations pertained to the security measures employed at this airport. It appeared they used keypads at many of the doors, some with scrambler pads, special keypads whose buttons' values change on each key press to prevent people from gleaning a code by looking over someone's shoulder. It didn't seem like they used prox cards, or any other kind of access control cards. It wasn't until I was farther into the airport that I saw readers that appeared to be able to read a proximity-style card. More to the observances of a common passenger, the airport was big. It looked like I'd arrived down one finger and would have to walk a ways to my connecting flight which was down another finger. A lot of people speak French here. I hadn't expected that. Immediately I thought of Grace. I began to walk. With nearly four hours to kill, I thought I'd take my time and find somewhere to eat. Many of the shops, stores, and kiosks were the same as ones back home. Quizzno's. Starbuck's. Chilli's. I saw some name tags and identification cards. They are all run by HMS host, the same company that runs the same companies in the Calgary International Airport. Small world, or one big monopoly... Actually, I found things more similar than not down here thus far. But I have decided to implement the rule of travel experiences: Try, if at all possible, to eat at places we don't have at home. Starbuck's will be a noted exception to this rule. With that in mind, my first cross-the-border meal was bought at an airport cafe called "Tuscany Cafe." It was an Italian restaurant which employed a diverse selection of people — none of whom appeared to be Italian. The food and service style reminded me of The Olive Garden, and the food was delish, but already the US-Style Proportion (subscript EXCESSIVE portions) has begun. And while portion sizes increase, prices seem to decrease. A personal sized pizza with Minstroni soup and bread, plus a carbonated soda pop to facilitate the digestion put me back $23.40. There was some fascinating people watching all the while, and it seemed that I was in the company of a number of fellow Canadians. The hostess even greeted me with a "Hello there handsome fellow!" I couldn't exactly fire back a you too! I really shouldn't have eaten the whole pizza. It's thin crust was deceitfully filling. I guess this is what it feels like to be an American. My stomach is literally throbbing. I was going to call Kristi to say I'd arrived (here) safely, but upon turning my phone on I received a text from Rogers advertising their US roaming rates. I'll have to get our office to set me up with a US travel pack of roaming minutes. $1.50 / minute on top of the long distance! It's highway robbery! And $0.75 / text for text messages! I'd be better off buying a pay-as-you-go phone methinks. I'm going to go sit back and relax for a while before my flight. They have little booths where one can set up a laptop or personal electronic device, little workstations of sorts with electrical outlets. Unfortunately the chairs are less than comfortable, probably to facilitate the perpetual flow of users by preventing any one from getting comfortable. I've heard a lot of restaurants do this too. Their seating is specifically designed to be un-comfortable (I know that's not hyphenated but I did it to make the emphhasis.) The less time people spend eating, the more people they can ram through their cattle guards. I fear a week of gluttany will be the temptation to resist. After waiting for the battery in my laptop to recharge while doing a little programming, I was keeping an eye on the clock. Now when I'd deplaned this afternoon the flight attendant listed some very useful information for all the passengers, the gate numbers of all the connecting flights. Well either I'd heard her wrong or the information she'd listed was for another flight to Rochester, but when I got up from the little Internet work bench kiosk and glanced at the flight information display screen, I was a little shocked to notice that my flight, which was boarding in about 15 minutes, was on the polar opposite end of this very large airport! I quick-walked, as Junie B would say, all the way to the other end of the airport to the real gate through which my flight was to leave, and arrived just in time to hear the general boarding announcement for said flight. You'd almost think I had planned that... The last leg of the air travel was something akin to Westjet's flight from Calgary to Abbotsford. Quick, easy, and painless. Get in, take off, have a sip of a beverage and land. Just like that, I was in Rochester. A quick phone call to my hotel informed me that their airport shuttle service was on it's way, and a few minutes later I was driving along an unfamiliar and dark highway, lit only by the lights of passing cars and a very bright moon under a clear sky. I thought about Kristi, and an old story I read once in which two people, separated by distance were united in a moment by both staring at the moon at the same time. I wondered if it was possible she might be looking at the same moon I was now seeing. The other passengers in the shuttle were chatting happily amongst themelves, for it seems they were all part of a sales conference for a company or service called Paycheque. My involuntary eaves dropping also learned that they were in the SMS division. But apart from that, their conversation was drowned out by my own thoughts. Overpasses glided silently overhead. Occasional streetlights darted past the windows. I had no idea where I was. Yet I wasn't worried, for I knew why I was there. When I got to my hotel and was settled in, I decided a shower was in order. To my surprise and delight I saw in the bathroom of my little room a rubber duckie. In all my travels I've not encountered such before, but I thought it was quite original. My second thought was I wonder how many of these go missing?  I decided to name him Chester. November 5, 2009 6:11 PM (EST) A week in review As I approach Lenel Master Certification  Oh, so much to write, so little time. The week is fast approaching it's end, and I'm about four hours of class time away from being a Master Certified Lenel Technician. What does that mean exactly? Well, not a whole lot, except that I've completed the in-class training and passed the exams necessary to qualify me for Lenel's technical support line, and I believe all subsequent distance learning update classes are now free for me to attend.  Here I am with Mike, my instructor for the Lenel Digital Video class. He also taught me the first two modules when I took that training in Seattle last year in March (which I wrote about here.) Funny thing, he was telling me that one day he typed in Lenel Training Seattle into Google and wound up on my site. I never suspected as I wrote about my adventures that week that it would have found itself near the forefront of Google's search results... It seems to have disappeared into the depths of their result rankings since, but that's not the first time a generic search has found visitors here... You might recall some time ago searching for "White Teeth" landed a visitor face to face with my cousin Mark, in the form of a picture posted on this very web page!  Imagine my surprise when Tuesday morning I went to walk about and see what sort of restaurants or food places I could find in order to obtain some nutritional sustinence when I had no more than travelled a mere block outside my hotel and happened upon a Tim Horton's. I guess they have crossed the border now.  The other night I looked out through my hotel window to see a deer munching away at some grass out by a colvert.     On Tuesday I took my camera and went for a walk outside, taking pictures as I went and came across some interesting photoscenic spots. Considering I didn't have a vehicle this trip, I was relieved I did not have to go far to find some great places to take pictures.      On the same block as my hotel there are three separate houses that have each been converted into some sort of dental office. This fish is a sign outside one such establishment which I thought was rather cute. I'm assuming they must cater towards children (or seafood lovers?) with a mascot such as this.    Note the trees' colors, from left to right in the same order as a traffic light! What odd coincidences appear in nature...  Water always seems to photograph differently than the way it appears to the naked eye. I love the way the water almost appears to glow in the picture above.  November 13, 2009 10:54 AM Automated Living Saving money in practical ways I have, for some time now, been working on my own automation system that incorporates various aspects of security, lighting control, and environmental (HVAC) controls. The latest addition to this system is a pair of sensors that could pave the way to some significant resource conservation, and therefore, cost savings. Let me explain. Suppose your car had no speedometer. How could you stay within the posted speed limits? Or suppose you had no watch and your cell phone had no clock. How could you keep appointments at specific times? You may, in time, develop some sort of a sense of how fast you are driving, or how quickly time is passing, but without some way to actually measure these things, it would be impossible to say for sure. This is particularly true for electricity. We all use it, we all pay for it, but do we really have any concept of where this resource is being used? Which appliances use the most? Which use the least? The obvious answer is to measure our usage. This is, after all, how the electrical companies bill us for the amount we use; what if we could make use of this information ourselves to help determine where our money is being spent and where we can cut the costs down? This is what I have started implementing in my software. I installed two AC Current Sensors, Greystone Model SC-55X, on the main leads that feed my house's electrical panel. Since most residential electrical systems use two phases, one sensor is required for each phase. The output from these sensors is logged in my system and can be viewed as a graph showing total electrical consumption in the house with about 1% accuracy. The result is a graph that shows how much electricity is being drawn on each phase, (which has the side effect of also showing how well balanced the loads are between them.) But what does it all mean? Simply put, we can see at a glance how much electricity we are using. How does that help? By being aware of exact consumption, combined with the ability to see the effect of changes in consumption in real time, it creates motivation to conserve. You can see on the graph a dip every time you turn off a light, and you can see it rise every time you turn on an appliance. As well, you can see how much of a difference each appliance makes on the graph. After logging this data for nearly 24 hours now, I've already seen some interesting trends. So far, the largest consumers of electricity in my house are my furnace fan and my Christmas Lights. But even small consumers like compact flourescent lights can impact the graphs. You can buy plug-in power meters, (One called a Kill-A-Watt meter comes to mind) which you plug into an outlet and then plug in an appliance you wish to monitor through the meter. It then does the same thing as my application, on a smaller more localized scale. The biggest drawback to monitoring the whole house's consumption is that it does not tell you where exactly the power is going. But you do see your entire consumption, whereas with a plug-in meter you'd only be able to see the consumption of the device you've plugged into it. Update: 2009-12-02 Here is a graph of an average day. The day starts off with the dryer running (dryinig some clothes before going to bed.) The little spikes on the black graph are the refrigerators' compressors and fans kicking in. There's about a 7 amp rise on the red phase every time the furnace motor runs (six times this particular day) and you can see the stove drawing from both phases around 5:30 PM. A close-up view of this particular time frame is interesting, you can see the electrical consumption pattern of the heating elements - they're not linear to the settings of the dial (that is, setting the burner on 3 does not mean it only applies 30% of the electricity the element could handle,) but a kind of pulse width modulated frequency, where full power is applied for bursts of different lengths. (So setting the knob to 3 would actually apply 100% of the power 30% of the time.) I did not know that, but I suppose in all fairness I'd never really thought about it either... Are you starting to get a little bit curious about your own home's electrical consumption?   In this graph you can see the draw of the oven's heating elements. At first they are on solid for a time to preheat the oven, and once the temperature has been reached (375 degrees F in this case) they turn off and then only come back on for periods to maintain that temperature in the oven. BACK to Journal Index |