Author: Philip St.Jean

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NFL Divisional Playoff Results

Playoff results:

  • Chiefs safely over the Colts 31-13. Well, I had picked the Colts to upset, but the Chiefs defense showed up. Mahomes closes his eyes and completes passes. Game over.
  • Rams control Cowboys 30-22. The Cowboys lost just by showing up. Did Dak even run forward? Linebackers stunk. Rams are tough, maybe.
  • Patriots steamroll the Charges 41-28. Patriots just controlled the first half like San Diego didn’t show up. Very little pressure on Brady. The offensive line was just on fire. Charges seemed to be unorganized on multiple plays.
  • Saints best the Eagles 20-14. Seems the Eagles had Brees under pressure, but he simply steps up and throws a dart, freezing the defenders way off the coverage. Saints could have managed the clock better, way too many hurried snaps. For some reason I thought Brees would hit 42 points. I think Brees wants to hit a thousand yards passing in one game before he retires.

My score 3 and 1.  See predictions here.

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What’s in a Name (part 2)?

Recently I had blogged about the problems with a last name such as mine. Well here’s an update with a picture.  Seems Discover Card “College” has figured out, perhaps phonetically, where I live.  Incidentally, I have lived here since 1992 – my name hasn’t changed that I know of.Continuing, I imagine that since the last name went from “St.Jean” to “SA Jeine”, they might as well go full throttle and change my first name “Phil” to “Vill”.  Veal?  Perhaps the originator was from Montreal, but I seem to recall the pronunciation there for “Phil” was more like “Feeel”.  BTW, I’m about 35-40 years past traditional college age.

I am fully aware that this is a problem that many folks doing genealogy research encounter.  Before I go into that, I will point out that I am still alive.  Often times in the Census records, it might be difficult to locate ones ancestors.  For example, you Cyr folks, some federal census records might have you as Cyr, Seer, Sear, and so on.  For you Therriault families, you might be Theriaut, Terrio, etc.  Basically an English speaking guy going into a French speaking town and trying to figure what the heck he needs to write.  Not that all of the census records are like this, but quite a few are.  I imagine other national origins are similar.

To make some things interesting, the St.Jean ancestry can be traced to Louis Anctil who was born in 1673 in Saint-Pair de Ducey, Normandy, France emigrating to Canada at some point.  According to what I know, Louis was also known as “Louis Anctil Dit St. Jean”.  In some circles, the Dit part is often hyphenated, so “Louis Anctil-Dit-St.Jean”.  This family, or parts left of it, eventually settled in northern Maine in the latter 1700’s.  And when the census takers eventually caught up to them, the census takers couldn’t handle the long name like that in such a small box on the form let alone how to pronounce it.  So some took the Anctil surname and others took the St.Jean surname by virtue of the census taker’s patience.  Others have suggested that the surname split had to do with criminal activity but my great uncle Lettuce assures me, from jail, that they only made small batches of whiskey for personal use.

So back to the immediate point.  I find receiving mail such as this to be humorous for my benefit.  I can throw it away saying “nope, no one here by that name”.  Comes in handy if it’s a bill – “Nope, never got it!”.  I mean think about it, how would I know if it was really for me anyway; and if it was, then have the time to help them fix it.  Of course I jest a little bit.  Next time send a twenty with that.

 

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Central Maine Power Billing Blunder

According to this WMTW TV news story, CMP has under-billed several thousand customers.  And, CMP is thinking of possibly spreading the missed charges throughout their customer base.  How wrong is that?  Completely wrong – other customers should not pay for electricity used by any other customer.

So the number seems to be 3,400 customers were under-billed.  There is no mention of a dollar amount, but I’m pretty sure it would be easy for CMP to figure that out.  In fact, they should already know what it is.  So how much?  

Here’s a kicker, according to the published story, CMP is blaming it on a rash of recent retirees who failed to keep up with accounts.  Can you say “Hello, computer automation”?  And no, it is simply poor sportsmanship to blame it on retirees.  One could say procedural problems, and thus management.

The linked WMTW news article is very sparse.  So here’s some farside data to fill that in.  Note that some info is actually real.

Naturally, I bet the next thing CMP will come out with is that they lost all customer security deposits, and because that is a kind of revenue, that they’ll need to spread the loss amongst the customer base for that.  LOL, just saying.

Anyway, years ago, we manually marked up where the meter dials were for our bill, and sent those in.  If CMP had to do an estimate, they did.  Once a real person read the meter, any discrepancies in the energy used by that single customer would reconcile eventually.  That should not be the problem now, either with smart meters nor analog meters, so I assume it isn’t.

And who are these 3,400 clients?  Do they have special billing privileges that are exceptions to the billing structures and thus are handled manually and not by extremely accurate and faithfully never-wrong computer algorithms?  That can’t be it.

Well, according to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife website, there are about 76,000 moose in Maine.  In the fridge research, I’m putting it out there that there are likely some 3,400 moose living in close proximity to electrical facilities and power transmission lines.  Moose absorb electricity at 1/5 KWh per year.  Maybe more because those beasts can weigh a thousand pounds or more, or less, or more-or-less.  That means 3,400 moose make off with roughly 680 KWh total per year.  At .071 cents per KWh, that means revenue lost to moose absorbency is about $48.28 a year.  After taxes, baseline fees, delivery fees, special fees, hidden fees, golf cart fees, parking fees, storage fees, legal fees, underreported late fees, season ticket fees, duplicate fees, association fees, South Portland plastic bag fees, drive-by fees, wire-watching fees, Canadian fees, occasional fees, spare part fees, incentive fees, 401k management fees, fees fees, Burt’s Bees, fuzzy fees, shop supply fees, Mooselookmeguntic Lake fees, and adjustment fees to the Federal government’s $96 million dollar smart meter implementation stimulus grant, the grand lost revenue total is $20,789,734.54 … even.  Oddly enough, that is suspiciously looking like the CMP Lewiston office’s phone number (207) 897-3454.

I believe they are adding phone numbers, house numbers, random numbers, retired numbers, irrational numbers, and imaginary numbers into the lost revenue audit process totals.  Either that or the moose have hacked the Internet.

UPDATE 2018-12-05:  Newspaper reports on Portland Press Herald website.

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Veterans Day

Today, November 11th, is America’s annual national holiday in honor of all veterans, living or dead.  We especially pay tribute to those living veterans who served honorably during war or peacetime.  Thank you for your service. 

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Home Energy Monitoring

Well, this subject is not exactly electrifying unless you like knowing what  is consuming the power that your electric utility company says that you are consuming.  Not only that but perhaps you want to know when.  Some electric companies provide access to a program that let’s one peruse your usage data on-line and fancy graphs and such are often available.  Other electric utilities provide access to usage data by means of a download capability and you do your own analysis.  Others provide both.  My power provider has both capabilities, but the download option is up to two days prior to the current day.  That last part frustrates me – I like real-time data.  You’ll need to check your electric provider to see what is available to you.

Despite what the power companies provide, there’s a bit of work one must undertake to get somewhere with it.  Raw numbers or a so-called “Green-Button” format, which has dwindled in vendor supported applications are often two options provided for the download data.  I use Raw number, which actually happens to be a CSV file (comma separated values, one line per measurement).  Spreadsheet programs can read the CSV format, for example.

What do I do?  I download the data from the utility company and capture that into my own database for analysis.  Because I don’t trust them so much, I also have my own energy meter hardware and I use an Open-source program called OpenHAB for viewing currents readings, and charting over time.  At the moment of this post, I am posting my data at 1 minute intervals for viewing on my computer.

Here is an example of a minute in time from November 8th, 2018.  Again, this is data that I have captured with my own energy monitor at the main circuit panel and wirelessly connected to one of my home computers.

What the heck is that you ask?

Yeah, I know what you mean.  Well a few days ago I reset my meter, so since that time, my house has consumed 67.6 kWh (Kilowatt Hours).  This number will continue to increment unless I reset it again – it’s basically an incremental counter as you use electricity.  The second number is the total watts being consumed at the point in time the sample was taken from the power meter.  In my case, the 6283.6 Watts is equal to, or there about, the sum of the two power legs, seen here as 3209.7 Watts and 3067.1 Watts.  The next minute these numbers may change completely.  For example, my home might just be using 500 Watts.

I know a few things about my electric usage, so here’s some partial info.  I have an electric hot water heater (yes, boo you say).  It uses about 4500 Watts.  When my well pump comes on, I can see it uses about 1200 Watts.  I have about 500 Watts residual power being consumed by things that are always on, which we all mostly have – computers, tv, etc.  So for 6283.6 Watts, I know that my hot water tank is running, the well pump is running, and that leaves 580 Watts for other things that are happening around the house.  The hot water tank is power hungry when the kids take showers.  The well runs for a few minutes when it falls to the low pressure point preset.

I really need to get a hot water storage tank running off my boiler.  I have one, a commercial superstore with two loops, just need to take the time.  I’ll use one loop for the boiler and the other loop will eventually have a solar feed.  I digress, but hey, we should all be looking to save money.

And whoa, you asked for it, here’s a graph for part of the same date.

Energy Consumption – November 8th – Partial Day (about 40F outside).

Just a note about this graph.  At about 6am, someone has taken about a 20 minute shower – hot water heater on, the well kicks in, and a 600 Watt space heater is still loading the system.  Yeah, that’s right, the house is starting to awake.  And around 4pm, that space heater that was on overnight has yet to be turned on for the new evening.

And, I bet your thinking the cops and burglars know this too.  I bet they could.  But then again I own a rifle.

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Knobs of Steel?

We have a Samsung gas oven.  It has been a satisfactory kitchen appliance for several years now, except for the lack of weekly baking of things like cookies – chocolate chip, peanut butter, snicker doodle, molasses, ginger snap, oatmeal raisin, and so on.  Oh!  And brownies – dark fudge and blond brownies for sure.  And cakes.

But then there is the situation with the burner knobs that I’m meaning to talk about.  Seems we have three knobs that have developed cracks around the knob collar which contains a tension sleeve of sorts within the hole that mates to the stove.  The knob itself is plastic, which is why Samsung says not to leave your oven door open when the oven is “hot”.  Can you say melted plastic knobs?  Inside the back portion of the knob is a large thick “washer” held in place by two screws.  This washer gives the knob its weighted feel.  On one of our knobs a few pieces have now broken from the collar (see photo).

The knobs cost about $50 each from the vendor to replace, which would be $150 for the currently defective knobs.  Can you say outrageous?  Come on Samsung.  Anyway, a quick perusal around the internet has found this to be a very common problem.  Come on Samsung.  Solutions range from replacing the knob with a new one to repairing the crack somehow.  Given the price, the repair options seemed to grab my attention.  Some recommended gluing with superglue and filling missing pieces or large cracks with filler (JB Weld, and others).  Others still recommended putting a “sleeve” around the existing collar (there is room back there to do this).  One person used a zip tie as the sleeve.  Another person used a crimp hose clamp as the sleeve, and a few others incorporated a 1/2″ “pipe” sleeve that fit over the plastic collar.  At any rate, there are options here.

The homemade repair options probably would cost anywhere from a couple dimes to a buck per knob.  I’m all-in on the full metal sleeve over plastic collar repair.  Samsung’s offer is still the same knob with no improvements.  New ones will crack the same way until Samsung improves the design.

Home Repair=1, Samsung=0.  Pricewise, not even close.

As i mentioned before, the knobs are plastic not Steel.  But, with this home repair, they can be better and last longer than the original.  Come on Samsung!

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What’s in a name?

I have this name:  Philip St.Jean.  I do have a middle name, but that’s not important right now.  I have received mail as “Mr St” – I throw it out, because that’s not my name, nor am I a street.  But I digress, as I also get mail as “Mr Jean”, and several other variants.  I also get phone calls these ways, but I digress again, I just hang up because I know they don’t know me.

So today around 2pm I went to the bank where I have an account.  My bank is part of a larger network of banks “joined” together, which is why they are probably all called credit unions in this case.  Anyway, I can go to my bank and using funds in my account, make a payment on a loan that I have at another bank.   They call it something like shared service banking.  I don’t get charged for the transaction.

I’ve done this same transaction at the same location several times in the past with no problem.  It’s a nice feature, especially when the other bank is located hundreds of miles away.

But then the policy changed!  Seems if the name on the accounts don’t match between the two banking entities, my bank can refuse to process the request.  Which is what happened today.  Whoa there horse.  I have account numbers at each bank, and I know the numbers for both.  Seems to me if my local bank has my funds in my account X, and they know it’s me because I have a picture ID (my license), and I want to pay account Y at the other bank, then they should just do it.  Never mind that my bank says I’m “Philip St-Jean” and that the 2nd bank in this transaction said I might be “Philip J St.”.  My middle name is “James” – neat, just throwing that out there.  Yeah, my license has “Philip J St Jean”.  So which one am I?

Well that was rather long.

Anyway, the teller looked a bit uncertain what to do, walked to a corner room, and came back with a letter of sorts that had the “policy” on it.  I briefly read it.  What nonsense.  I spoke out and said “call them”, meaning the teller to call the other bank while I waited.  I had plenty of time.  Another teller leaned over and looked at the “policy”.  I guess they concurred because I was basically told that I’d have to call the other bank and come back when my name was fixed at the other bank.

I know my last name has caused issues for some computer applications for quite some time.  I have lived computers since the 1970s.  I understand the thought process of a programmer whose surname might be Brown – isn’t that right Patty?

But, in any event I wasn’t going home to call the other bank because my name doesn’t need fixing.  I was thinking “It’s my money, just send it!”.  Actually I was thinking if that’s what they want me to do, then I’m going to close out this account before I leave.  Not that it’s a large account.  It’s the principle – the service, and that’s what I was there for.

After about 10 minutes, this ended up getting resolved locally by the lady in the other office who gave her authorization.  I think that lady was human and not a robot, but I have no proof.  A nice one though.  I surmise some teller training should be conducted to go along with policy changes, not to mention some possible feedback to the bank IT department for a potential problem ticket.

Thankfully, I have a sense of humor.  Don’t bother sending the survey form, just read this, and move on.

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Copper is better, but only if I have it

When my father passed away, there were some things from his business around the house which hadn’t yet to be disposed of in one way or another.  Such as this 2″x2″x2 1/2″  copper tee.  Pretty useless for most homeowners nowadays.

Large Copper Tee
Large Copper Tee (2″x2″x2 1/2″)

My dad was almost 84 when he died, and pretty much worked up until a few years or so before that, although someone was always trying to get a hold of him still the same.  He tended to keep stuff like this around just in case a customer needed it.  I can still hear him say “Oh sure, I have one of those!”

Naturally, some of his traits have been carried on through his children.  My mother often said “You act just like your father!”  Not wanting to think of all the possibilities of what she might mean, I mostly took those type of remarks in a positive light.  After all, we all had a sense of humor growing up.  Take for example, the time I wired up a new outlet in the cellar when I was 13.  Well, when my dad came home from work he carefully listened to what a great job I did.  He then flipped the breaker on.  And POOF – sparks!  One can’t exactly hide that type of thing, I thought.  Nonchalantly, he said something like “Well, that wasn’t very smart, now was it?”  Being 13 and wise for my age, I wasn’t sure if he meant himself turning the breaker on, or that he meant my less-than-perfect wiring job.  But in conceding respect to the adult present, I snipped back the wiring from both ends a few feet and left it.  And that’s the last I ever heard of it – that’s probably because there was always something else happening anyway.   By the time I was out of high school, I had wired up several new circuits and replaced several others.  The house is still there.

Well anyway, I guess I can hold onto this copper tee just a little longer, except hmmm wait a minute, I think I can hear him saying “Why in hell would you want to keep something like that for?”  And that’s weird because that sounds like what my mother would say to him.  Right.  Anyone need one of these?  I have 3!