Hawk’s Babble-Log

I got a cute little water distiller so that I could make my own distilled water. This little guy works great!

[http://a1-water-distiller.com/](http://a1-water-distiller.com/)

I got the “Stainless Top” version, because I don’t like the idea of the steam rolling over plastic.

The first thing I did was clean out the receiving jug. It arrives with a “new plastic” smell. I don’t like this smell too much, and I did not want it in my water. To clean it out, they recommend filling it with warm water and two teaspoons of baking soda (or dish soap). I didn’t have any baking soda, so I used dish soap. I let it soak overnite as recommended. The next morning (today), the “new plastic” smell was indeed gone, but now I had an “L.A. tap water chlorine” smell. Pretty yucky. So I decided that the first few gallons of distilled water that I made would be used for cleaning out the receiving bottle. Distilled water seems to be good at absorbing stuff. In this picture, the thing has been running for a few hours and has the receiving jug almost half full. I started with hot tap water, so this probably shaved off a half an hour from the total time.

I had it hooked up to my Kill-A-Watt so that I could monitor exactly how much energy the thing uses.

Here are the power consumption details:

The unit uses about 550 or 560 Watts of power @ 4.75 Amps. It’s power factor is nearly perfect at 0.99, so the VA (Volt-Amps) is pretty much the same as the Wattage. In about 5.5 hours, it used 3.15 KWh. What does this mean in dollars, you ask? Well…

Over the last two months, my roomie and I have used about 1170 KWh (KiloWatt-Hours), and this cost us about $121 (not including the huge L.A. city taxes). So, if you do some simple math, you’ll find that we pay about $0.104265 / KWh. That’s about ten and a half cents per Kilowatt-Hour. The water distiller consumed 3.15 KWh, so that cost me, can you guess? $0.32843475, or about 33 cents to make one gallon of distilled water. This kicks ass with whatever you could find in a supermarket! Or any other kind of market.

I put a themometer/hydrometer near it and took some readings. I put the remote thermometer up near the top, just above the fan, where it was a toasty 115 F. But this dropped significantly when I raised the thermometer a small distance. In the picture, it’s resting on the coil of the cord, and this lowered the reading down to 104.5 F. The temp sitting on top of the receiving jug ranged from 80.4 to 84.6 F. I did notice that the room got a bit warmer; I even had to open the window. This little sucker is going to be fun in our sweltering Hollywood summers! Aaah, sweat… I’ve almost forgotten what you felt like, suffering through this _bitterly cold_ Hollywood winter (like, it’s down to 70 F outside! _Burrrrrr!_).

Strangely, the humidity _dropped_ around the distiller. Over by the window, I have another thermometer/hydrometer set up, with the remote thermometer positioned outside the window so that I can saunter over to the window and check out the temp outside before actually leaving my protective domain. This one reported 35% humidity. But in the kitchen, near the water distiller, it dropped down below 30%. That’s kinda wierd, I would have thought it’d be the other way around.

By the way, if you were wondering what that little round white thing is between the distiller and the receiving jug, I’ll try and explain: It’s a little white thing which seats perfectly with the wide mouth of the receiving jug and the small output hole comming from the distiller. It contains a small “carbon sack” or “carbon pouch”, or carbon something. I’m not sure if I like it yet, but I’m going to use it for now. I mean, we never had any carbon pouches up in Washington with our big-ass stainless distiller. That ugly sucker only took about an hour to make a gallon. Course, it wasn’t a full gallon; it lost about a fifth of the gallon due to lost steam. Aaah, good times. Anyway…

Here’s what it looked like after it had completed. The unit must have a timer or something because it shut itself off; I didn’t do it. The receiving jug is nearly full, so if there was any loss of steam, I can’t tell! The sides of the distiller were still warm, and the water in the receiving jug was still warm–and stayed warm for quite a while.

I’m very satisfied with this cute little sucker, and I’ll let ya know how it fares in the future.

Speaking of Battlestar Galactica (the new series), I’m now renting the first season via NetFlix. If you’ve read my blog, you’ll know that I’m a satisfied customer of NetFlix. Well, it’s better than Blockbuster Online.

But my opinion of NetFlix is rapidly decreasing. I have less and less respect for them. They used to be my hero, the pioneers of the DVD-by-mail system. When Blockbuster Online came around, I tried ‘em because (at that time) NetFlix had raised their prices and that pissed me off. But as it turns out, Blockbuster Online was really, really bad. You can search my blog for my article on my experience with ‘em. To summarize Blockbuster Online: bad. And this was mainly because they sent me really crappy discs.

Well, tonight, just a few minutes ago, me and my roomie were watching the third episode of the first season of Battlestar Galactica. Six and a half minutes before the end of this episode, the disc craps out. And by this I mean that my high quality Sony DVD player starts skipping around and loosing it’s place. I take out the disc (while cursing) and check out the bottom. This disc has a huge gash near the outside tracks. I’m pissed off. My roomie is pissed off. We’ve got a living room full of pissed-off-ed-ness here, and there is no relief for at least a week, which is probably when NetFlix will get around to sending a replacement disc.

NetFlix used to be my hero, but now it seems that they’re just a crappy as Blockbuster Online. PLUS, I have noticed severe delays in receiving new discs since I dropped my plan level. Can we say THROTTLING? Yes, NetFlix does indeed practice throttling, as is stated in their legalese. What they promise (UNLIMITED RENTALS) is not what they deliver (THROTTLING).

I think it’s time I started using GreenCine. They do NOT practice throttling, AND they work on Saturdays! Their prices are higher than NetFlix, but only by a buck or two.

[http://www.greencine.com/](http://www.greencine.com/)

I’ll keep you updated on my experience.

Starring Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, and Tricia Helfer.

This is the re-make of the original Battlestar Galactica by Glen A. Larson, where a small group of ships–the last of mankind–try and make their way to a mythical planet called “Earth”. This 3-hour miniseries show was so well done that it became the “pilot” for the new series on the SciFi channel.

This show is excellent. It progressed along with a good balance of detail and speed. The characters were real and three-dimentional. The acting was excellent, as were the special effects.

I was quite surprised at how good this show is. And now I can’t wait to get going on season one!

I highly recommend it, and I will buy it on DVD.

[http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/](http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/)

Starring Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Jimmy Bennett, Virginia Madsen, and Robert Patrick.

Not a bad thriller. The technical aspects of the computer system and banking system were decent. Kidnapping the family of a bank guy is probably the best way to rob a bank these days, but it’s still tough with all the technology involved.

The story was pretty good, but standard; and it had me captivated, so I did want him to win.

I don’t think I’d buy it, but I did enjoy it. You might just wait for it on rental.

I’ve been a NetFlix customer for many years now, so I was very interested in all the recent news on NetFlix “Throttling”. The action of “throttling” is the system where NetFlix creates delays in sending you your next disc so that the price per rental is greather than $2 per disc.

You can read all about it here:
[http://www.dvd-rent-test.dreamhost.com/](http://www.dvd-rent-test.dreamhost.com/)

and here:
[http://www.manuelsweb.com/netflix.htm](http://www.manuelsweb.com/netflix.htm)

In my humble option, NetFlix should be forthcomming with this information. They should plainly state what their policies are, and what my level is at any particular time, so that I can better understand why certain discs were delayed to me.

One notable example of this was the recent release of all the Aeon Flux animations, four discs as I recall. I added ‘em to the top of my queue as soon as I could. They were released about a week later, but the first one was “Very Long Wait”. So, I could not get that one right away. It seems that I was recycling too many discs for NetFlix. Of course, I do not have proof of this.

The end result: I could rent any of the other Aeon Flux discs, except the first one, for about two weeks.

How much do you wanna bet a brand new subscriber could have gotten the first disc straight away?

It makes me feel like I’ve been cheated when they advertise “UNLIMITED” movie rentals, but then use these sneaky methods to slow down my rate. If they had been upfront about their system, I would have _no problem with it whatsoever_. But they claim “UNLIMTED” movie rentals. Hence, I feel cheated.

Because of this I’ve dropped my plan down from 7-out-at-a-time to 5-out-at-a-time. I don’t think I was a heavy hitter like Manuel linked above, but still, _I would like to know where I stand_. And I’m going to try and keep up my rate. I just checked, and the last 30 days I rented 22 discs.

If I believe Manuel’s [NetFlix Turnaround Prediction Calculator](http://www.manuelsweb.com/netflixcalculator.htm), using 22 for both fields and the 5-at-a-time plan, then this will be a _very tough task_,

We’ll see.

I do a lot of shopping at [ThinkGeek](http://www.thinkgeek.com/).

Recently, I picked up a Mini Forever Flashlight from ThinkGeek. The idea behind it is that it never needs batteries, and never needs to be serviced. And lemme tell ya, this little sucker works great! It has one super-bright LED, one small capacitor, and a sliding magnet assembly which slides through a copper coil. To charge up the capacitor, just shake it back and forth (parallel to the ground) for about 30 seconds to a minute. It’ll give you pretty good light for a good 10 minutes or so (approximately). After that, you’ll need to turn it off and shake it up some more. If you don’t, it will continue to give light, but not a very useful amount. I left it on for a few days just to see how long it would go and it never did seem to die all the way, but just got very dim.

Now that I had some good experience with the Mini, I decided to buy the regular size Forever Flashlight. It’s just a bigger version of the Mini. You shake it to charge the capacitor, then turn it on. It’s one super-bright LED is brighter than the Mini and I think it lasts a bit longer. But not much.

In my latest order, I got the Forever Flashlight Dynamo. This one blew me away. It works so much better than the other two that I’d recommend getting the Dynamo and not even bothering with the other Forever Flashlights. The Dynamo has a hand crank; no shaking necessary. Just crank it for 30 seconds to a minute and you’ve got super bright light for about an hour! And it’s got three LEDs, with two ON modes. You can run it on just one LED, or all three for even more brightness. Naturally, it doesn’t last as long if you run all three LEDs, but this hardly matters when you can crank it for a bit and then continue getting fantastic bright long-lasting light.

Another advantage of the Dynamo is that it doesn’t contain a hi-power magnet, so it’s perfectly safe around your computers ‘n such. Both the regular Forever Flashlight and the Mini Forever Flashlight contain hi-power magets so strong that they’ll stick to my metal bed frame. In fact, if you turn the Mini just right, the magnet will turn the light switch on. It’s kinda wierd.

Anyway… in summary: I recommend skipping both regular Forever Flashlights and go for the Forever Flashlight Dynamo. It’ll never need batteries and the LEDs will last virtually forever. Just go to [ThinkGeek](http://www.thinkgeek.com/) and search for “forever”.