Cameron Stokes’s Blog

I consider myself a very focused and productive person, but over the past couple of weeks I’ve realized that I am much more productive when working from a task list.  The list keeps my mind from wondering to other tasks and I get a great satisfaction in checking tasks off and reviewing the list at the end of the day to see what I have accomplished.  I have some ideas on how to improve my list (and digitize it); let’s see how much more productive I can get!

This week’s task list:

This week's task list

Despite temperatures dipping into single digits only 2 weeks ago and a supposed 6 more weeks of Winter according to Punxsutawney Phil, it really looks and feels like Spring is on the way. The past week has really warmed up and there is new growth on many of the plants in my yard, even some daylilies peaking out of the ground.

Spring is on the way.

Our internet connection at home has been flaking out for the past few days and finally became intolerable today, with over 40% packet loss.  We called Comcast and have a technician scheduled to come out next week.  Usually we’d get by just fine but Rhonda needed some files from work so she could catch up on a few things over the weeken dso we ventured out to the local Taco Mac to take advantage of their free wifi.

Turns out their Wifi service is provided by Wandering Wifi.  The Wandering Wifi service requires you to sign up for an account but Rhonda and I were able to create one account and share it.  The wireless connection seems to drop every 5-10 minutes, I imagine its the microwave being turned on back on the connection.  Out of curiosity I figured out their ISP is Cbeyond.

Anyway, we got our dose of the internet.  I tried two beers I had never had before; Atlanta Brewing Company’s Peachtree Pale Ale and their Blonde Ale.  For whatever reason I’ve never had these before even though they’re brewed in Atlanta (obviously).  They’re quite tasty, though my local favorite is still all the brews from Sweetwater Brewing Company.

I bought a Kill A Watt awhile back, though technically not a Kill A Watt but a Seasonic Power Angel, but since I bought it I haven’t done much with. I’ve mainly used it for quick measurements of my computer or monitor, nothing “scientific.” This past week I decided to figure out how much energy was used in my daily coffee-making ritual.

Seasonic Power Angel

I plugged in the Power Angel on a Saturday morning and alternated plugging in my coffee maker (a Technivorm-Moccamaster KBT) and coffee grinder (a Delonghi I can’t seem to find a link to now) to measure how much energy was used by both. I made 7 cups (that sounds like a lot but is our usual morning amount) and did the same everyday for the next 7 days.

All in all, the week’s worth of coffee making consumed 0.56 killowatt hours (kWh) of power. Given current prices of $0.088 per kWh from Marietta Power, this comes out to $0.04928 for the week or roughly $2.56 for the entire year.

Not having conducted an observation like this before, I’m surprised at the results, I was expecting higher numbers. A nickel a week to make coffee is well worth it.