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It looks like I'm paying less than double the wholesale rate for natural gas, but 3-4 times the wholesale rate for electricity. Can I take advantage of this somehow?
I think that if I get my own high-efficiency natural gas generator I should be able to get my electricity really cheaply. I could even sell it to my neighbors! - Gabe
I recently switched to a gas powered on demand water heater in our house and love it. It takes a little while longer to get hot water to the tap, but it never runs out. On top of that it is more efficient, uses gas vs. electricity and frees up space in my basement because it is on the outside of the house. The downside is that installing it wasn't easy (it was part of a larger remodel) as it involved water, gas and electricity to be routed to its new site. - Joe Beda
I'm thinking a combined-cycle gas turbine with heat recovery steam generator should do the trick. - Gabe
I know where I can get a 250MW model. Does anybody know where I can find a 2.5kW version? - Gabe
I have not been able to find Eggo® waffles in the store. When will they be available again? - http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworl...
"Eggo recently experienced supply constraints caused by flood damage at our bakery in Atlanta. In addition, we've been making significant equipment and technology enhancements at our other waffle bakeries. Unfortunately, these repairs and upgrades are taking longer than anticipated." - Gabe from Bookmarklet
Apparently Lender's stopped making frozen bagels too. I wanted to buy some for Spencer. I got refrigerated ones instead. - Robert Felty
I wonder if it's possible to get on so many catalog mailing lists that you could heat your house with them.
It sounds like you've got a project to do. :) - April Buchheit
I think the trick is that you'd have to get the post office to segregate the junk mail from the mail you actually want (like credit cards with new expiration dates). - Gabe
I lalready can................and I only ordered from one.........and they keep coming even though they say this may be your last one................. - VAL D.
now sort of a thought there Gabe............the post offices should use junk mail to heat the post offices - VAL D.
catalogchoice.org actually works - Peter Chane
Peter: it looks like catalogchoice is the opposite of what I would want. - Gabe
I have a baby toy
It's made out of 100% real baby! - Gabe
Yay! I love my baby toy too :) - Georgia Diehl
Isn't "dry cleaning fluid" an oxymoron?
Nope... - Alex Scoble
What's a dry fluid? - Gabe
Dry cleaning isn't dry. - Rochelle
Then shouldn't it be called "wet cleaning"? - Gabe
It's dry because there's no water involved. - Dave Roth
When do you start brushing your babies' teeth?
As soon as he got them, we started with a non-fluoride toothpaste (recommended until they can learn how not to swallow toothpaste). - Matt Mastracci
It seems like it would be difficult to brush an infant's teeth. It's hard to get her mouth open to insert food, let alone to do something she obviously won't like. - Gabe
Hard, but not impossible :D You just have to be quick and ruthless. - Victor Ganata
For the first few teeth, it's more a ritual than anything. Thankfully the first ones are all in the front. - Matt Mastracci
You can even just use a washcloth instead of a tooth brush, and you don't even have to use toothpaste, either. - Victor Ganata
The most useful tattoo? - http://www.mrjerkface.com/2009...
The most useful tattoo?
"There's a ruler in inches and cm, and sort of free form protractor, (which can also be used to measure pipe diameters, although that's a bit redundant, because it's right next to a ruler) there's also lines for writing and prioritizing notes, and a rudimentary RGB/CMYK color wheel" - Gabe from Bookmarklet
Let's home you never lose or gain significant amounts of weight. This could end up being as accurate as the yard's origin being the length from the center of the chest to the tip of the fingers. - Andy Bakun
I think it might be more useful to have the 0 point at the wrist end rather than the elbow end. - Gabe
Does anybody know how to compute specific humidity?
Assuming I have a weather report (temperature, pressure, and relative humidity), how can I determine the mass of water vapor in some volume of air? - Gabe
Surely somebody on FF knows this! - Gabe
You need to place your request in the form of "DO ANYBODY NO" to get a response. - Louis Gray
Hah! I'm not sure, but you could try asking Chris Baskind. He might be able to hook you up with someone who knows. - Rochelle
chaz2b: Thanks, but neither of them seem to have what I want. The efdl link has variables labeled rh, pa, and Ta. I can infer that they mean rh, pressure, and temp, but it doesn't say what units they're supposed to be. The gorham link tells how to get absolute humidity, not specific humidity. The adsabs link seems to have differential equations, but nothing I can use. - Gabe
I can't see what chaz2b provided. Here's a chart that might be of use: http://www.tis-gdv.de/tis_e... - SuezanneC Baskerville
Greg: that link requires knowing the density of water vapor and air. All I have is a weather report. - Gabe
SuezanneC: your link has absolute humidity (g/m^3), not specific humidity (g/kg). - Gabe
You say that as if that means it doesn't answer your your question, but I"m not sure that is the case. You ask for the mass of water vapor in a volume of air, which seems more closely related to grams per cubic meter than it does to grams per kilogram. Here's another link. http://forum.onlineconversion.com/showthr... . Also, when people take the time to try to solve your problems for zero dollars per hour, a thank you would be appropriate. - SuezanneC Baskerville
Also you might try searching usenet. - SuezanneC Baskerville
Thanks, jamar78, that's basically what I was looking for. - Gabe
SuezanneC: thanks for the help, but I wasn't looking for somebody to do research for me. Google was supplying a bunch of links that didn't answer my question so I just figured that there would be some engineer who would know the answer off the top of their head. - Gabe
If you have a psycometric chart handy, you can read it off that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Clare Dibble
Clare, I was hoping you would just give me an equation. It's hard to write a computer program to read things off a chart. - Gabe
The problem is that you need to know the total amount of water that air will hold at a given temperature and pressure. After you have that, you only need multiply that by the relative humidity to get the specific humidity. Water and air is a very common system, so the saturation pressure and temperature are compiled for a very wide range. It's hard to fit an equation to such a wide range, so people usually look it up in a table or fit an equation to their desired range of temperatures and pressures. - Clare Dibble
Update: if you are near ambient temperatures and pressures, you can assume the ideal gas law and use Antoine's equation to calculate saturation. The coefficients are available here: http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi... - Clare Dibble
You guys are geeks - Becca
Thanks, Clare. I just figured that there was some common equation to tell me specific humidity. I didn't expect that it was so uncommon that it would require derivation and table lookups. You see, I am trying to figure out the heat rate for a gas turbine to compute what it would cost to run. The heat rate is specified at a specific temperature, pressure, and humidity, so I wanted to... more... - Gabe
"AV" - Nerdy T-shirt
"AV" - Nerdy T-shirt
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Dress up as an AV device for Halloween. - Gabe from Bookmarklet
Five little ducks went out one day, over the hill and far away. Mother duck said, "Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!" But only four little ducks came back... - April Buchheit
Did you guys do this?! I love it. - Becca
Make way for ducklings! The idea just popped into my head - so I carved it. - Maggie
I'm pretty sure I had SOMETHING to do with giving you this idea.. I just can't remember. - Alex
9 out of 10 cannibals prefer humans to any other meat
Cost of power in the midwest - http://www.midwestmarket.org/PTP...
Cost of power in the midwest
From Midwest ISO - Gabe from Bookmarklet
It's interesting that it can go negative. You would actually have to pay to generate power! - Gabe
My hotel refrigerator contains 2 bottles of water and 2 candy bars. Do I dare touch them?
Experience tells me that if I had to pay $4 for them, there would be much more. But why would they be free? - Gabe
maybe you should call the front desk and ask - Maggie
Depends.. What kind of candy bars are they? - Alex
There's a Snickers and a 3 Musketeers. - Gabe
yuck - 3 musketeers! - Maggie
I bought a banana at my hotel yesterday. Guess how much it cost.
$3.50 - Jordan Hofker
$1.75. - Akiva Moskovitz
$51.70 - Snipergirl
1000 pesos. - imabonehead
$4.99 - Gary Burd
$6.50 - Eric Logan
$6 - Jason Huebel from iPhone
It was $1, and was one of the smallest bananas I've ever eaten! Of course the receipt was a whole 8.5x11 sheet of paper. In a grocery store you can probably get multiple pounds of bananas for $1. - Gabe
it's 45 cents per pound in my local Wal-Mart... - Philippe
Whole foods actually sells it for $0.60 sometimes... So it is not terribly off :) - Bindu Reddy
Whole Foods sells small bananas for $0.60 each, or they sell bananas for $0.60/lb? - Gabe
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Emma Lee - Gabe
What does "Pop can drive" mean?
Possibly a street name? - Maggie
I saw a sign on my way to the hospital today that said "Pop can drive this weekend". - Gabe
Collecting donated empty soft drink cans for recycling money - it's a fundraising activity, typically used by secondary schools and kids sports teams/social clubs. - Micah Wittman
It means your father is capable of operating a motor vehicle. - MicahBear78
OR... he thinks he can still drive but they never renewed his license. - Micah Wittman
It turns out that Micah is right about this one. - Gabe
Be more specific. - MicahBear78
Gabe, I'll bet you were thrown off by the term "Pop". Check out "What Do You Call a Carbonated Soft Drink? [US regional differences; enlarge map]" http://friendfeed.com/billrom... (and a few more: http://friendfeed.com/monasfe... , http://friendfeed.com/itafrom... ) - Micah Wittman
Where would you go to buy razor blades?
Let's say that airport security has confiscated your razor blades but you really like your razor and don't want to get a crappy disposable? - Gabe
Get a quality disposable. That's all I use anymore. - Cristo
What is a quality disposable? - Gabe
I bought a massive pack of disposable razors (BumpFighter brand by ASR) on Ebay about 2 years ago. I'm still not out of them. :) - Ha3rvey (Free hugs!)
The one with the most blades. Gillette Mach 7 or something. - Rodfather
I like the Mach 7. I've been using mine for several years. Just buy the disposable blade thingies and you keep the handle. Works great. Nary a knick on my face. - Jason Huebel
Those disposable cartridges cost something like 10 times as much as regular razor blades. And I'm guessing they don't last as long. I can't imagine using up $20 worth of razor blades in a year. How many dollars per week do those fancy cartridges cost? - Gabe
I don't use cartridges, and I'm too lazy to go figure out exactly what I use. I think they're made by Gillette. They have plastic handles and blades built together. I think they pivot and have 3 or 4 blades. I only change to a new one about once a month, if that. I don't spend much time worrying about he cost of razors though. ;) - Cristo
So the consensus is nobody knows where to buy razor blades so you have to use a cheap, crappy disposable or expensive cartridge-type razor instead of the good yet cheap razors. - Gabe
"cheap, crappy disposable" is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. I ended up having to use a two blade airport hotel disposable on a recent trip, and it made the razors I normally use seem like a luxury. Of course, you could always just grow a beard or let your leg hair grow. ;) - Cristo
Does anybody know the difference between code and data?
Different segment? - Paul Buchheit from iPhone
And nobody should if malware writers have their way. Data is code!! Err... - George Burgyan from iPhone
Most software projects have two repositories of information: a code repository and a data repository. The exact same information can be called code or data depending which repository you put it in. By the way, you get more answers on FriendFeed if you write DO ANYBODY NO. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo
code:spaghetti::data:meatball ... (going to have some ravioli for lunch now ;^) - Dan Freeman
Code is always data, and data is sometimes code. - Cristo
Cristo: what sort of data is not code? - Gabe
Gabe, the kind for which there is no current machine or virtual machine to execute it. Of course, the thesis degrades as the definition of code does. If any code that doesn't do anything useful (immediately faults or throws an exception) is deemed to be code, but just bad code, then of course all data is code. Similarly, if an area of memory that holds data is what is being talked about, and there is a way to change that memory to some different data, then of course that data could be loaded with code. - Cristo
To me, data is the result of something -- observation, calculation, measurement etc. Code is the instructional manipulation of data - Shey, Jamaican of FF
what I recall from OS theory class is "different segment" - winterismute
Which segment does Python code run in? - Cristo
Sure, you could say that a text file is clearly data, but isn't it really code instructing the text editor what to display? - Gabe
It depends on the context, and on which definition of "code" you are using. Program code is the instructions - the program itself - while data is anything that gets fed in to / spewed out of the program. Of course, your data can be more program code, or it could be encrypted text (also called "code"), or perhaps a set of dialling prefixes ("codes"), or it could even be a string of... more... - Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane
Gabe, Checkmate. Data is always code (for a text editor). :) - Cristo
*Ahem* I think you'll find that's NOT checkmate. I shall counter with "Code is always data (for a C compiler)". Bishop takes King's rook's pawn, and I think you will find, sir, that there is your checkmate. :-) - Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane
Code is an algorithm and the data is the result of that algorithm. - ashish
Slippy, my response was to Gabe, and code wouldn't be data for a C compiler if it was Python code, unless a bunch of random syntax errors would be the result you were looking for. - Cristo
Yes, I often annoy people by joining in chess games as I pass by and claiming that every move I make is checkmate, despite not even knowing what the little horsey pieces are called. It's the intellectual equivalent of shouting the wrong punchlines at people who are telling jokes. Not that I'm claiming to be intellectual, of course. - Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane
But actually, Python code would still be data to a C compiler - it would be meaningless data that it couldn't compile, but data nonetheless. King's horsey takes Jack's prawn. That, I believe, is a Royal Flush. Game, set and match me, I think. - Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane
Slippy, see my earlier comment about the thesis degrading. - Cristo
in a more esoteric sense, one might entertain a general equivalence between some data and the simplest code which could produce that data (ala Kolmogorov) ... - Dan Freeman
In terms of DNA, RNA, and protein sequences, there isn't really a difference. - Victor Ganata
Cristo: Careful, you are in very real danger of taking me seriously. I am merely stringing words together for fun. - Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane
Slippy, you're doing a good job. ;) - Cristo
My original statement really applied to my thinking of already compiled code that was in memory in the process of being executed. Areas of memory can be used to store code as data, and can be used to execute data as code. In my mind, data that is executed as code which immediately faults or raises exceptions was not intended to be code. Then again, there were people in my CS classes that could probably produce this result also. ;) - Cristo
I heard that Google just switched their mapping dataset to a really crappy one.
Why would they do something silly like that? - Gabe
Because they hate you - Becca
Or they hate their users: "Take the exit onto I-80 W toward Lowa. Take exit 151A on the left to merge onto I-57 S toward Memohis". I'm pretty sure Illinois's highways signs don't actually point to Lowa and Memohis. - Gabe
I wouldn't be surprised if they do Gabe. I know that there are plenty of signs on I-94 in Michigan which say either Detroit or Chicago. - Robert Felty
Rob: I'm going to guess that all of the signs around to Chicago point to actual places like Iowa (rather than Lowa) and Memphis (rather than Memohis). - Gabe
I thought you had made those typos. Now I see what you mean. - Robert Felty
Here's the putative trip: http://maps.google.com/maps... - Gabe
Yes, but you can crowd source the corrections. ;) - Cristo
Gmail has decided that Facebook friend request emails are now spam. I'm not sure if this is good or bad.
I turn them off anyway. Why do you need them? - Cristo
I need them so that I can confirm the request in a timely manner. People seem to get upset if you wait a week to confirm their friendship. - Gabe
There must be a lot of people upset with me. - Cristo
So if you only log into Facebook every six months or so... hmm. - Matt Cutts
Happened to Twitter emails for me. - Josh Haley
I log into Facebook whenever I remember to. Sometimes it's multiple times per day, other times it's every few weeks. - Gabe
Sometimes I log into Facebook several times a second. And then I poke some people and leave very quickly. - Cristo
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Hazel went shopping for pumpkins for her first Halloween today. - Gabe
Hazel is amazingly cute!! - Robert Felty
Rob: She's not really that cute in real life. The camera adds 15 pounds of cuteness. - Gabe
I love her coat! - April Buchheit
The coat was actually a gift from my boss (really his wife). I'll tell him that you like it. In case you want one of your own, it came from http://www.hannaandersson.com/ - Gabe
What I learned tonight:
The Sun is not a mass of incandescent gas. It is actually a miasma of incandescent plasma. - Gabe
It’s a Fork, It’s a Spoon, It’s a ... Weapon? - http://www.nytimes.com/2009...
It’s a Fork, It’s a Spoon, It’s a ... Weapon?
"Zachary’s offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the district’s reform school." - Gabe from Bookmarklet
The great thing about zero tolerance is that it eliminates discrimination. Apparently the answer to black kids getting suspended more often than white kids is to suspend the white kids more often, rather than suspend the black kids less often. - Gabe
“It just seems unfair,” Zachary said :) - François Dongier
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Love it! I bought that skeleton outfit too! so so cute! - Rachel Lea Fox
Hazel has lots of cute outfits. Be sure to look at the whole set! - Gabe
The skeleton outfit is a great idea. Too funny. Dig the tiger too. - Louis Gray
So cute. :) - Ayşe E.
Wait a sec, Rachel. I don't think that skeleton outfit would fit you. - Gabe
Tiger costumes? I thought those were for weddings ;) - Clare Dibble
The tiger costume was a garage sale buy that my mom made. It just barely its her now, so there's no way it would make it to Halloween. I bought the pumpkin costume for her and then I found the skeleton costume at Target (which I couldn't resist). - Maggie
What is it with Gabe taking pictures of the women in his life with their tongues sticking out? (look at picture 100_6511 http://www.flickr.com/photos...) - Robert Felty
Rob: Clare got me started! - Gabe
sweet baby - Mehmet Fatih YILDIZ
Does anybody know of a file manager with a GUI for creating hard links?
How many of you knew that both George Clooney and Mary McDonnell were on "E/R"? - http://www.imdb.com/title...
How many of you knew that both George Clooney and Mary McDonnell were on "E/R"?
I was sure surprised to find out! - Gabe
I guess you don't watch ER much... - Maggie
1959 Chevy vs. 2009 Chevy - guess who wins - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
1959 Chevy vs. 2009 Chevy - guess who wins
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The 59 Bel Air is about 18" and maybe 180lbs bigger than the 2009 Malibu - Gabe from Bookmarklet
Here are some before-and-after photos: http://www.autoblog.com/gallery... - Gabe
Aw, they wasted a 59 Chevy? - Andrew C
Andrew, it was an unrestored '59 Chevy with 74k miles on the broken odometer. It didn't even have a V8. Not much was wasted. - Gabe
Ha you're so geeky - Becca
Hey, I didn't come up with that. - Gabe
We feel fortunate that Spencer doesn't really seem to cry just cause he feels like it. Sometimes it can take a little guessing as to what he wants, but there is usually a solution. - Robert Felty
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