Information Echo

On a bit of a whim we took our trailer up to Barrie Ontario for a few nights at the “Splash Canyon” waterpark / camping resort. Normally I probably wouldn’t blog about a kitschy little vacation like this, but I must say that the whole experience was a bit disappointing for a few reasons and perhaps my post can act as a bit of a review for others.

I’ll preface it by saying that we did have fun. The waterpark was fun overall (with exceptions) and we met a great family camping on the site next and ended up having a lot of fun with them both at the waterpark but back at our campsites in the evening as well.

The big issues I had with the park?

1/ On the evening we arrived they shut down the entire waterpark early. When we took issue with it (as we eventually learned our newfound friend neighbors also did) they reason given was “There wasn’t enough people to bother keeping it open, we were loosing too much money”. WTF? Seriously? How about putting a way a few dollars on the summer weekends when you’re making it hand over fist so you can keep the park open no matter how many people are in it on a slow day.

2/ I don’t know if it’s because the season is drawing to a close or what, but overall the water park facilities showed a lack of maintenance.

3/ The wave pool water level was about 2 feet (!!) below where it should be and as such the skimmers were not able to function - this resulted in a lot of crud floating in the water, which in turn ended up causing an early closure of the wave pool again on our second day there due to “water clarity issues”. It’s not surprising there was water clarity issues when there was effectively no surface skimmer filtration.

4/ With some exceptions, many of the staff in some areas really couldn’t seem to give a crap that you were there. Social time with fellow employees or campground friends seemed to trump even basic levels of customer service.

5/ Whoever thought that making walkways surround by (and in some areas, partially built with) loose gravel in a waterpark (where you are in bare feet) should have their head checked. I lost track of the number of times I stepped on rocks EVERYWHERE in the water slide area. Other high traffic areas had nothing at and were sloppy mud which in turned was tracked everywhere else where there were actually paved walkways. Seriously, cement pavers aren’t that expensive that there’s a need to space them 12″ apart and fill the surrounding spaces with gravel while leaving other areas a complete mud puddle.

6/ The campground was rather sterile. Despite being surrounded by beautiful forrest, it’s clear that they clearcut and bulldozed the entire camping area and then planted new trees which are quite small. I often wonder why campground planners do this versus salvaging mature tree cover (and selectively cutting) in order to carve a campground out of the existing mature forest instead. As built, there’s not a lot of privacy and no shade whatsoever - each site is adjacent to at least two others, or three on the inside section. On a positive note, full hookups are standard and were problem free and campground rules were adequately enforced.

7/ Perhaps I’m nitpicking now, but seriously, put a muffler on your service vehicle. You could hear their staff vehicle rumbling through the campground area all day long and it got really annoying as it was obnoxiously loud, especially when they rolled past our campsite in the mornings before we (and I’m guessing, MANY others) were still in bed.

Will we go back? Probably not. It was fun for the 3 days we were there, but with the exception of the fact it had a campground attached there are other (better) waterpark options out there. It think if we hadn’t felt a bit screwed by having the entire park close early on us one day, and partially on another day we might have had a better opinion, but when you have paying customers on your property closing early because your profit margins are not up to your liking, or a pool is dirty and has to be closed due to no fault of the customer (as as the case of the wave pool) the situation becomes inexcusable and certainly won’t make people (including us) come back.

A relative sent me this video a few days ago.

Watch the entire video…well, at least up to the crash, but there are a few telling statements in the latter half of the video as well. Don’t worry, nobody was injured.

So, deconstructing it, I observed the following:

1/ There was a fly-in of some sort (at what appears to be an uncontrolled airport) and the Radio Controlled guys came out to enjoy it as well.

2/ There was someone with a radio (seen in the video) acting as a UNICOM with the ability to communicate with air traffic.

3/ It sounds as if both types of aircraft were being allowed to utilize the runway at the same time since the individual with the handheld radio (in communication with the fullscale traffic) mentions that “He didn’t announce his go around” - to me this presumably means that if he had landed normally there would have been no need to clear the runway…?

4/ There was a lack of communication - “Noise” was blamed.

5/ It appears the fullscale aircraft either didn’t make proper radio calls, wasn’t following proper procedures, or the calls (if made) were not heard and relayed properly.

From an observers standpoint it sure appears to me that there was never any attempt for the fullscale aircraft to land to begin with - at the speed he is travelling at when the collision happens (in the supposed go-around) there was little to no chance he was even in a landing configuration. Was the pilot hot-dogging to show off to the crowd?

The person with the radio is directly in the video moments before the crash and appears to be talking on the radio, but we come back to the noise issue - he doesn’t appear to be wearing an earpiece of any sort and personal experience on both the full-scale and radio controlled side of things tells me that the noise of an RC aircraft could easily drown out a handheld.

The RC Pilot was clearly on the runway - both himself, and the aircraft. Putting a model plane in peril is one thing, but there was absolutely no need for him personally to be on the runway and that should have been handled better.

Was there a NOTAM issued for the airport that indicated this was occuring? Did the pilot read it? If he was hotdogging for the crowd, would it have mattered?

In the end, what’s your opinion on who was at fault?

- One could put the blame on the fullscale pilot for making the pass to begin with. It seems there was no intention to land to begin with based on configuration and speed seen in the video. If it was a legitimate go-around some effort could/should have been made into obtaining a positive rate of climb long before that point on the runway and gaining altitude - he had the airspeed and airspace to do so but instead chose to remain close to the deck at what appears to be a cruise configuration, with what has to be at or near wide open throttle, and carrying a lot of speed.

- One could also put the blame on the RC pilot. Airports are made for fullscale aircraft, not toys, and at any point in time (due to an emergency or NORDO aircraft) the runway could be utilized. However, was a NOTAM in place bringing the playing field equal between the RC and Full-scale? Was everything supposedly arranged ahead of time to allow RC use of the runway will still maintaining decorum? I’m assuming the RC pilot was not a full-scale pilot and as such didn’t understand the intricacies of sharing a runway so he was putting his faith in the organizers and person(s?) with radios to keep him informed.

- Blame the radio operator for not hearing the calls and advising people on the ground? Well, if he was acting in a UNICOM perspective he’s not totally in control of the pilots actions as he can only really act in an advisory nature. Yes, he could have said something to the effect of “immediate turn from runway heading” or “pull up” to advise the pilot at the last second, but this also assumes that the pilot was making the correct radio calls to begin with, and at the speed he was traveling there was only a matter of seconds for this communication to happen and be acted upon.

- Blame the organizers for not ensuring there was multiple fallbacks with radio communication to ensure that a situation like this didn’t happen to begin with, ESPECIALLY when the RC aircraft were utilizing active airspace? Personally, this is where I’m pointing the finger at.

The FAA is involved now and I’m sure eventually it will all come out in the wash, and thankfully nobody was injured.

A few weeks ago I signed up for Google Adwords. I figured I may eventually use it to advertise a few things that could return a few dollars in my pocket on a monthly basis, and I had been told that If I signed up and let my account remain dormant for a period of time Google was apt to provide some free credit for my Adwords account.

For the first few weeks, everything was fine - my account sat dormant, and Google did indeed send me some credit to apply towards it.

Then the phone calls began.

“Hi, this is (name removed) from Google calling regarding your Adwords account!”.

….and the emails.

I am contacting you regarding the AdWords account that was recently set
up. I wanted to introduce myself and my team.

The voice mails continued to pile up seemingly arriving from several different people, and I was sometimes receiving multiple calls per day. Based on how Google seemed to be adamantly wooing me, you might be fooled into believing that Google thought I am the head of some multimillion dollar multinational corporation, yet that couldn’t be further from truth.

Two days ago I sent an email (admittedly rather blunt) to the last person who had contacted me via email more or less telling them to leave me alone. I’ll setup my account when I’m ready, and with all due respect I don’t really need help, but thanks anyways.

I received no response indicating that my email had been received, much less acted upon, but for two days the emails and phone calls stopped.

However, the kicker arrived today in the form of not only one, but TWO nagging AdWords emails from two different Google Adwords reps, as well as yet ANOTHER phone call.

The email I sent today (to both reps, also quoting the third!) was even more short and I advised them that if the contact attempts continued I would be treating them as spam, which to be honest, after several attempts to stop the unsolicited contact attempts, it basically is.

I wonder how much success these reps will have contacting people with Gmail accounts when I start marking all of their own email addresses as spam generators in Gmail itself?

My job takes me over a fairly large geographic area on a daily basis, combined with lots of quick stops at various points.

After having recently seen a few friends posting Foursquare updates on Facebook, I decided that I’d install it on my iPhone and give it a shot. Perhaps adding a level of social networking to my job would make my day go a little faster if nothing else.

I’m still undecided if it’s actually interesting, or completely pointless.

Yes, there are goals - I’ve already become “Mayor” of several locations - the fact that I cover similar geographic areas 5 days a week, often returning to the same customers over and over again makes the “Check In” system ideal for me as I’m guaranteed to be back again after I visit a location. Whereas others covet their Mayorship of their local coffee joint, I’m easily picking up leading roles at many other businesses. Virtual “Badges” are rewarded for completing certain goals so there is some incentive to check-in repeatedly, and if you check in more then anyone else, you become Mayor.

Most locations are valid - businesses, fast food outlets, venues of every sort - but there are an annoying array of junk locations. Sorry, I don’t think that “Nicks Pad” or “Intersection of Simcoe and Taunton roads” really add anything to the system. An local highway exit ramp has it’s own location. Garbage.

In the end it seems much less like social networking and more like a big virtual game. I suppose if you are in a busy urban area, or looking to socialize with others from Foursquare it has potential, but for the average user it seems to be all about the race to become mayor of as many locations as possible (and defend such) as well as collecting badges. It also seems the system is rife with abuse based on observations of certain areas where every single location is held by one mayor.

I suspect as the weeks wear on I’ll quickly loose interest as I have with many other social networking applications like Waze and Gowalla. Who knows. In the meantime, I’ve got a few Mayorships to defend.

Since most of Ontario recently switched to Time-Of-User electricity rates our previously low rate of around 6c/kwh suddenly skyrocketed to nearly 10c/kwh during the peak daytime rates. Mid peak is in the 7c range, and off peak (9PM to 7AM) is still 5.1c/kwh.

This made for a rather shocking change on our hydro bils and really started to make me think about how we use our electricity.

Our previous bulk-metering system simply measured how much we used in a month with no regard to when we used it…however, now when we use our electricity matters and it has meant a few fundamental changes on how we consume it.

First off, we have beem much more frugal with our usage of our central air conditioning this year. We’ve used it when it’s brutally hot out, but leaned towards doing without on days when it’s supposed to cool off in the evenings even though it might be hot through the day. We have also adjusted our programmable thermostat to let the temperature in the house rise to as high as 26c (79f) through the peak (both in temperature and electricity rates) periods. Off peak, the thermostat cools the house to 24 degrees. Initially, these temperatures seemed high - in summers passed we have typically always set our AC for 22c (72f), however it’s amazing how acclimated we have become to the higher temperatures - when it’s hot, humid, and sticky outside, even 26c (without the humidity courtesy of the AC) feels spectacular. I’m sure re-acclimating to these higher indoor temperatures have helped with out consumption as the AC system now occasionally switches off in the afternoon, something it would never have (EVER!) accomplished before.

We’ve made more effort to use the dishwasher only after the 9PM “Off peak” hour, finally making use of the automatic offset timer that it is equipped with that previously never seemed to get much use. Laundry? It’s amazing how a little planning can shift it to off-peak rates as well.

More directly, I was interested in seeing more detail about our usage. I mistakenly thought that this would be rather easy information to gain access to by interfacing somehow with our brand new electronic interval-meter, however I was stymied - after a week of investigation it appears that the specific make and model of meter installed on our house is simply not easy to interface with, wirelessly or otherwise. Despite the fact that the province is freaking out about peak versus off-peak rates (and now billing accordingly), they specified meters which are apparently NOT consumer friendly should the consumer actually want to see the usage information before the bill arrives.

Instead, I decided to invest in an “Envi”, made by Current Cost.

The kit arrived with all the necessary hardware to interface directly with our electrical panel - two “clamps” are fitted inline with the main (two phases) electrical feed entering our house. These clamps are hooked to a transmitter unit which in turn transmits it’s data every 5 seconds to the display unit pictured.

Additionally, via a serial interface (dated, but aided by a serial-to-USB converter included) the display unit transmits a data stream every few seconds to whatever may be listening - the data includes raw figures on wattage being consumed, temperature, and several other variables.

On my iMac I now run a monitoring package that tracks the data constantly, as well as feeding it to Google Power Meter, a little known Google feature that not only interfaces with hardware like the ENVI, but apparently directly with utility companies who are a little more welcoming to consumers who actually want to KNOW what their house is consuming….Ontario hydro not being amongst such, apparently.

The combination of Google Power Meter and the local monitoring software provides a ton of data right down to how much electricity we are consuming within any 5 second period of time on any day, and it’s archived.

The results have been extremely interesting. I’ve learned the following:

- While unoccupied our house has an “Always-On” consumption of about 300 to 400 watts.

- Through the night, our refrigerator in the kitchen cycles on about every 45 minutes and runs for about 8-10 minutes. I really figured it would be much, much less often.

- The halogen track lighting in our kitchen uses an astounding 500 watts alone.

- Our basement lighting which is on a motion sensor sometimes fails to turn off. The graphing tells all.

- A single element on our flat-top range will create a spike on the graphs in the range of 3000 watts - I will be very curious to see what it does when we have a big dinner one day and all 4 elements and perhaps the oven are on at the same time.

- Our central AC system consumes about 3000 watts, a figure I will admit I was somewhat surprised to see - I really figured it would be more. (Maybe that’s because it’s too small of a system, always seeming to be barely adequate for our house…?)

- Our clothes dryer, despite being a gas model, apparently still uses nearly 900 watts of electricity to simply power the motor that turns the drum. I shouldn’t complain, I’m sure if it was a traditional electric model the figures would be shocking.

As time passes we have become more and more aware of the usage - the display unit sits next to our couch and is always displaying our current usage, updated every 5 seconds - even turning on the light next to the unit is instantly reflected with an updated wattage figure, a new “Per day” and “Per Month” cost figure, as well as a red-light when a certain wattage barrier is surpassed.

A few other experiments are now underway (including use of a timer to shift our chest-freezers main period of electrical consumption to off-peak hours) and I will update as the data rolls in.