Sunday, December 09, 2007

Stardate 61939.38 - Loren's "Boat"


When we purchased our new Panasonic 42" flat panel plasma HDTV for the new place, it took me a few days to get rid of the box. At some point Loren became interested in the box, and wanted to play in it. I put the bottom part on the floor and told her it "looked like a little boat". She spent the next two days spending all of her time at home in the box, wanted to be read to "on her boat". She didn't even watch a Dora episode for 2 entire days! She wanted to play "in the boat"! Of course, now I have a huge box that I'm not sure how I'm going to get rid of...maybe she'll lose interest soon.




NYC

9 comments:

Trailing Male said...

Wait - you're complaining that your daughter is interested in boats? What will you attempt to dissuade her from next? Star Trek? Reasonable politics?

JamesF said...

Kids love boxes. I'm still considering giving the kids a refrigerator box for Christmas in lieu of a real present.

Anonymous said...

Hey what happened to Curt the responsible energy consumption guy? Plasmas use 3-4X the juice that similar size LCDs do.

Curt Sawyer said...

trailing male: I'm not complaining she likes boats, but that she has fallen in love with a huge box which now has to sit in my living room!

-s: The fact that I only use my car once per week and that Cheryl walks to/from work probably off-sets the difference. Especially since I only watch an hour of TV per day. But the real reason we didn't go with LCD is because of viewing angle. I wanted to be able to see the TV from the kitchen so I can have the news on in the background while we cook dinner, for example.

Curt Sawyer said...

Oh, and I should have added that my electricity comes from wind power anyway, so there is a minimal carbon footprint involved.

Anonymous said...

Depends...they could just be using carbon credits to offset your usage (in which case the answer is maybe yes maybe no). Who's your provider?

Curt Sawyer said...

ConEdison Solutions, Wind Power

From their website, ConEdison Solutions is leading the way in promoting pollution-free electricity by offering WIND and GREEN Power - clean, 100% renewable power. Instead of drawing on traditional power sources, such as nuclear power and fossil fuel sources, GREEN Power is generated from regional wind and low-impact hydropower sources. GREEN Power is composed of 65% run-of-the-river hydro and 35% wind power. WIND Power is composed of electricity exclusively generated from 100% wind power. The benefit of clean energy is that it produces none of the detrimental environmental effects associated with electricity production that results in air emissions.

Anonymous said...

Interesting, thanks. They probably get around most if not all of the problems with wind power (only works when the wind blows, doesn't generally work during peak times, capacity factor of 8.7% or so) with having the bulk of the rate on hydro.

So essentially you're on a hydro rate that gets some nice wind benefits now and then.

(And of course the reserve requirements are met with fossil fuels :) )

(And if we're speaking in the ways of physics, you're paying for it to be put on the grid. The electrons going to your apartment are quite dirty, almost pornographic.)

Curt Sawyer said...

P.S. I took the box to recycling yesterday. I hope she doesn't notice.