The Quarky Engineer

5 minutes in Monterey and I already saw a Veyron in traffic. Looks to be a good week!

I have my terrible but tuned mobile HF antenna hooked up to my mobile HF rig ready for the impending collapse of the cell phone network here in Bend. At least I will be able to do PSK31 with some random person from Russia.

I drove my GTO today for the first time in I think a year. I like this car. A nice high compression 6.0L V8 with twin turbos is such a great combination. The car is night and day better with the addition of the race logic traction control. I did turn it off once and proceeded to have a nice 1st,2nd,3rd tire destroying experience. You have to live. 😉

I think this graph represents my most significant waste of money over the last 20 years.. and that is saying something given the number of engines I have destroyed.

The cost of cable TV service has outpaced inflation by a significant amount over that timeframe. The service level isn’t the same as the number of channels has grown significantly, however most metrics of quality might not have the same gain.

The trend that Comcast continues to push the price up until you call them to cancel holds true. The large drops in the Comcast areas are all the result of contact and theater. On my last call they dropped the price enough that it was cheaper to keep the television service with the internet than to keep the internet by itself.

The later years of comcast are also slightly polluted by the addition of bundled internet. I subtracted the bundled cost of internet from these figures, so this does represent just the cost of television services.

There is a void between mid 2008 and mid 2011 when I lived in the country where the only television service came over rabbit ears.

Another week, another trip to Minneapolis. It is unusual to be traveling there to escape the heat! The high there for Thursday is predicted to be 66 degrees, while the high here in Portland the same day is currently 108 degrees (with a low of 69). Of course I am flying back Wednesday night, so I’m not really escaping anything. 😉

It wouldn’t be a good Sunday if I didn’t have at least one piece of interesting data to share. My wife claims that when she mentions these graphs to her friends they seem to think I am weird. I think they are just jealous.

Today I have graphs of my power usage (electricity) from early 1996 to today. The right side of the first chart has 4 lines, one for each meter at my current place plus a summation of those meters.

The third graphs shows the effect of the solar system I installed late last summer. I am still on the rising side of the solar output this summer, and it would be cool if I was able to get to 50% of my total power usage via solar. Power pushed back to the grid is also much higher in the summer months as the peak power output during the day is so high.

The fourth graph shows the average cost/kWh I actually paid over time, and compared to inflation. We have some of the cheapest power in the nation, but that price is still outpacing inflation a bit.

It is also interesting that my total power usage so far has been 588 MWh, while the energy equivalent of my total natural gas usage was a surprisingly close 544 MHw. That natural gas however was only $20k, while this electricity was almost $60k.

I did not realize there were this many power generation dams driven by the Columbia river. Nearly half (44%) of the US hydropower comes from these. (picture taken from a NYT article)

Glad to see it passed. 😉

When I took the car to DEQ 2 years ago, the HC was 12, CO 0%, and CO+CO2 14.5%. The difference in CO is negligible, but the difference in HC+CO is a result of the idle AFR being a tad richer now. (~14.2 vs 14.7 before) and the idle timing being a tad lower (I’m using timing idle control). Easy to adjust, but the idle is a bit smoother at 14.2.

Anyone else at Bruno Mars? I’m in suite 12.

It’s Friday, so time for some more data! Today’s topic is car insurance. I have totaled up all of my car insurance bills since 1995.

A few observations – Insurance has gone up in the last two years quite a bit, but over the 20 year period it is pretty stable. Part of that stability is the falling prices with driver ago. (me getting old). I change insurance companies two times in those 20 years, first from State Farm to Allstate, then to Country. The large jump in premium in mid 2001 was the result of the only substantial claim when my now ex-wife hit a car on 26, with a total claim of about $10,000. That causes a significant jump in all cars, and a second jump in the WRX later as a result of the car classification changing. A change to Country insurance brought everything back in order.

The drop in 2011-2012 is the result of getting married, which seems to make a significant difference. Rates have creeped up the last 3 years, especially in Oregon, as the result of more claims and significant increases in health care claim costs. It doesn’t help that the GTR is one of the most expensive cars to insure on average.

I have used far less in claims then I paid in, as it should be in an insurance system. Overall average price per car per month is 33% less than the state average, so pretty good overall.