Category: Misc

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Hello Superbowl Champions New England Patriots!!

Yes!!  Patriots win a defensive game with the offense taking the weekend off.  There were some good plays on both sides of the ball, but did NE dominate the first half clock or what?  A few flubs on offense kept the game lower scoring that it should have, but some key plays by NE on the RAMS offense in or near the end zone simply kept this a low scorer.  A few inches here or there and the score could have easily been 20-10, with NE still on top.  There were a few drives that the Rams would have been better punting on first down! Can you say Edelman, Edelman, Edelman?  That must have what the Rams saw, or didn’t see, on the field as he racked up some serious yards.  Gronk caught some key passes in the TD drive and some key first downs by Sony Michele and Rex Burkhead.  No this wasn’t a high scoring game everyone thought it might be.  But the Patriots Nation won.  It was pretty much a won game before it even started.

Update:  Based on intercepted interstellar transmissions, only about 132 Ram fans were watching the Superbowl during the second half – the rest were outside practice punting.

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NFL Conference Championships Predictions and Results

Here it is Wednesday the 23rd of January.  The NFL conference championships were held on the 20th, 3 days ago.  My predictions are therefore a little late, so we’ll dispense with those and just publish the results of the games, both of which went into overtime:

  • New England Patriots over Kansas City Chiefs 36-31.  The Chiefs forgot to play in the first half, but that was quite the last quarter we all saw.  In overtime, Patriots took possession on the coin toss and marched down the field and score a touchdown – game over.
  • Los Angeles Rams over the New Orleans Saints 26-23.  That certainly was a missed pass interference which should have been called on the Rams in the waning minutes of the game.  It is arguably a no-call that resulted in a missed opportunity for the Saints to be in the Superbowl.  Instead, as it was, the Rams won in overtime with a field goal.
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Snowplows 14, Mailboxes 0

No that isn’t a football score, it’s a wintertime annual event when it snows – and the score for this 3 mile stretch of road. Here in Lisbon Falls, Maine several of the snow storms this winter have been the type mixed with rain, resulting in some slush galore. Gadzooks when that freezes, which it has.  And watch out for sure when the snow plow goes by on a fast clearing run.  A clearing run will throw the snow from the street into the shoulders and way beyond.  The velocity of the flying snow will knock out just about anything, especially these country mailboxes – metal, plastic, it doesn’t matter.  So this here mailbox took a flight into the shrubs leaving just the post – the board the box itself was mounted to was split in two.  As any Mainer would do, I screwed the two pieces back to the post with 4 inch decking screws. But in true Maine fashion I duct taped the darn box a few times around back to the boards. If I could have somehow put a tarp into this fix, I’d be a real redneck for sure.  At least the red tape looks kind of like reflectors.  The bottom hinged door almost didn’t make the repair, but some red duct tape put there makes it somewhat usable.  There are in reality a few resilient mailboxes back up the ridge, and I can only imagine what the plow drivers have in their thoughts with an approaching snowstorm just a few days away.  Note the metal post about 30 feet further down the road: It used to have a 3 x 5 aluminum MDOT reflector – it’s gone.

My mailbox on a mild 34F degree day, January 16th, in Lisbon Falls.
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Central Maine Power Data Comparison


Central Maine Power vs. AEON Home Energy Monitor

The above graph shows two data streams. The blue line represents the data downloaded from the Central Maine Power (CMP) website, which is essentially the data from the smart meter attached to my house. The orange line represents the data collected by my own AEON home energy monitor attached to the mains at the circuit breaker box in my basement. That data is fed wireless via ZWave protocol to a local computer for processing by the openHAB software. Both data sets are imported into an SQL database for comparison and plotting.

The graph is showing 66 days from November 8th 2018 to January 12th 2019. The CMP data for January 12th is missing the data for one hour (11pm to midnight), but overall, there is no large difference between the two measuring devices. Whereas the AEON HEM is not completely calibrated for voltage level and temperature variations, I believe the CMP smart meter is likely to be. The CMP smart meter does not have a UL label on it, so I’m not sure what independent agency can confirm its accuracy versus any other. It may be on the UL website as simply existing, which I believe to be misleading.

In number format, the data for the above graph is as follow:

Recorded DateCMP KWHHAB KWH
2018-11-0834.80936.274
2018-11-0945.55546.58
2018-11-1038.88639.795
2018-11-1132.63533.897
2018-11-1245.07446.189
2018-11-1338.22739.28
2018-11-1437.99439.129
2018-11-1539.44440.415
2018-11-1637.51238.365
2018-11-1745.11346.197
2018-11-1836.18637.079
2018-11-1938.3339.239
2018-11-2046.81747.607
2018-11-2142.24443.715
2018-11-2260.48360.92
2018-11-2358.30259.198
2018-11-2444.63645.446
2018-11-2551.88452.564
2018-11-2644.99645.938
2018-11-2749.66250.358
2018-11-2842.10843.296
2018-11-2932.60833.738
2018-11-3032.27733.407
2018-12-0169.81170.934
2018-12-0245.69946.561
2018-12-0335.53336.348
2018-12-0444.26345.1
2018-12-0547.46347.969
2018-12-0645.88346.495
2018-12-0741.92942.863
2018-12-0868.41969.118
2018-12-0952.8552.969
2018-12-1055.00555.563
2018-12-1156.25556.746
2018-12-1245.545.693
2018-12-1362.74862.857
2018-12-1446.22547.437
2018-12-1553.45754.158
2018-12-1653.56654.238
2018-12-1746.86447.494
2018-12-1852.17252.754
2018-12-1944.65145.354
2018-12-2050.7151.397
2018-12-2148.51349.268
2018-12-2248.96649.98
2018-12-2336.40337.93
2018-12-2458.60759.31
2018-12-2561.81962.335
2018-12-2641.89342.535
2018-12-2750.0850.948
2018-12-2856.45757.048
2018-12-2956.76157.282
2018-12-3049.24749.803
2018-12-3145.39146.196
2019-01-0150.14251.197
2019-01-0253.57553.988
2019-01-0344.10345.446
2019-01-0442.6143.186
2019-01-0556.42857.028
2019-01-0653.29653.775
2019-01-0742.46143.403
2019-01-0855.08355.847
2019-01-0957.97858.529
2019-01-1041.08541.882
2019-01-1152.28553.255
2019-01-1267.77870.144
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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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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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Roadkill 2018 I’m OK with that!

I started to write this post stating that this was a rather intense season for roadkill.  The remnant and fresh carcasses of squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, birds, foxes, skunks, porcupines, raccoons were seemingly littering the road more than I can recall starting near the end of August and even up until now in early October.  We hear about Hurricane seasons, but I just wasn’t sure if roadkill season was an appropriate phrase.  But I’ll leave it at that and assume there should be a roadkill season if there isn’t one already.

Skunks.  I prefer that any skunk that ends up roadkill, be at least 5 or more miles from my house.  Preferably 50.  I hear there are disposal sacks that can contain the odor of a squashed skunk.  That’s good, but who tested that?

Foxes, birds, porcupines, raccoons, deer.  Unless sick or almost dead anyway, I’d prefer not to see these animals dead in the road.  Just the other day, a small juvenile fox darted across the road in front of my car.  It had a pretty coat, looked in good shape, stopped briefly on the other side of the road, then disappeared into a culvert.  It made it safely across, and I’m ok with that.  Now the guy who has the chicken coop on that side might have different ideas about how things should turn out.

And that brings me to chipmunks and squirrels.

You see, I posted this past Spring about my small but very important Strawberry garden (see post).  I like fresh strawberries.  I like fresh strawberries with cream.  I like fresh strawberry shortcake.  Strawberry season is usually mid-June to early July, so it’s not that long, but I look forward to it nonetheless.  I just do.  Kind of like getting whoopie pies for my birthday in April.

And for a while I liked chipmunks.  I had commented to my wife, Lisa, on occasion, that we’ve been at our property since 1991 and had never had a resident chipmunk.  That was until the end of 2017 when I spotted the first one to stay.  So when Mr chipmunk again showed up in early 2018 after the snow melt, I was thinking “cool”.

I didn’t know chipmunks and squirrels ate strawberries.

That is, until I bragged about the strawberry garden and how I was so looking forward to it.  And when it came about that time to harvest a bowl or two, I opened the front door, took a step out, and froze.  Yonder on other side of garden, I spotted Mr Chipmunk looking right at me with a strawberry in its possession.  He tried to be very still.  But no way, I can spot a nice strawberry a mile away, and Mr Chipmunk had one solidly in his mouth.   I was rightly furious.  Soon though, the stupid Mr chipmunk dropped the strawberry and ran off.  What a waste, he didn’t even take it.  I walked over to the strawberry and saw it was about one third eaten.  I looked around and noticed most of the strawberries ready to be picked had already been gnawed on.  My wife said both Mr chipmunk and squirrels were at it.

So the strawberry harvest was nil this year, and my “chipmunk’s are cool” thoughts are more like “stay the heck out of my strawberry garden, I own a rifle”.  But I live too close to the road, so I’d probably have to resort to flinging some sharp stones.  I used to be good with a slingshot.

We used to have a few bunnies when the kids were young.  One bunny, Ginger got out of the cage and ran across the street.  It never made it back and was a roadkill statistic that year.  I buried her out in the woods.  I checked on it the next day and another animal had already dug it up and dragged it off.  I’m ok with that.

With such a heavy roadkill this year and an unlikely letup in traffic in front of my house, I think I’ll just sit back and let the road do it’s work, this year or next.  Mr chipmunk and Mr and Mrs squirrels will probably want to try the road running at some point.  It seems these Mr chipmunk and Mr and Mrs squirrels are the majority of those in the roadkill census anyway.  And I’m ok with that.

I will have to mine my strawberry field however.

 

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Lightning Strikes

On Tuesday late afternoon, September 5th, the northwest corner of Lisbon Falls, Maine was the next community to host the severe thunder and lightning show that was going on in the state at that time.  Ignoring previous experiences, I took time away from my computer to gaze out the various windows, doors, and even stood on the deck (it has a roof though).  The dark clouds rolled up fast and the wind pushed the rain like pellets.  A flash boom here, another over there. Flash Boom. Flash Boom. Rolling Boom.  Flash all around Boom.  These were intense bolts and simultaneous thunder claps, or more like bombs.  I watched.  What I should have done is unplugged some of the electronics in the house or even opened the main breaker for 20 minutes or so. But no.  I eventually went upstairs and sat at my desk facing my computer monitor.   At that moment another Flash Boom as I sat down.  But that wasn’t it, the strike was so close I could hear the sizzling of energy finding it’s way to earth.  Little did I know that the sound I heard was the entrance of some of that charge through the cable line.  Right through the cable modem, my router, and one wired Ethernet port on two separate computers.  My Dell 990 was one of those, and an IBM 520i server the other.  I saw the sizzling arc between the Ethernet line and cabinet ground via a reflection in the window located just 6 inches away from the back of the Dell computer.  Luckily the Ethernet port seemed to be the only casualty on that machine, so it is wireless for now.  The IBM server port also was toast, but at least it had an unused wired Ethernet port I could change over to.  The modem and the router were simply just history.  On Thursday, I went over to the cable company and picked up a free cable modem.  I had a fall back router of less capability, but that would have to do until I could buy a new router.  A few years back, I had moved my electrical service, but had yet to move the cable drop to the same location.  Bad on me, as the cable ground was, well, missing.  Had the earth ground been in place or I had moved the cable to the same corner as the new service with a better ground, then I wouldn’t be posting this to the world right now.  I guess I better get moving on that cable line.

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DDG-116 and DDG-1001

On April 7th 2018, Bath Iron Works, BIW, was hosting family day at the Bath Maine facility.  Not that I expected anything special, after all it was my Birthday – yeah, thanks BIW and US Navy folks!  Well, the real event included the opportunity to tour two new ships that were pier side – the USS Thomas Hudner DDG-116 and the USS Michael Monsoor DDG-1001.  Here my wife Lisa and I are aboard the USS Thomas Hudner on the left, and the USS Michael Monsoor on the right taking a photo op near the end of each ship’s tour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is such a privileged to be able to tour these ships and to see what remarkable products that BIW has built for the US Navy.  Obviously some areas of each ship was off limits, but the tour through the ship was simply amazing none-the-less.  It is reassuring to see that our Navy has some of the best damned equipment, and knowing that they will have these assets when called upon to use them.