Smarty Pants

I came home this afternoon to find a note attached to the door saying PG&E had installed our new Smart Meter.

There's been a bit of a controversy about the new meters, with people alarmed at how much their bills have gone up since the meters were installed. This, to them, says the meters are inaccurate (the meters have been audited, by the way, and found to be accurate). To me, a crazy change in readings like that says the old analog meters were inaccurate, which is not too surprising. Since the meters were proven accurate, the opponents have been trying to get them removed on some weird claim that they are a health risk because they use radio waves. People. They are so irrational.

Anyway, I've been excited to get one because gas usage is hard to measure and it's one area where I really want to cut down our consumption (step one is going to be installing a solar hot water system). As soon as our results start showing up online I will be there meter-stalking all day long, whenever I use hot water or cook something on the stove. I wish there were little appliance meters for gas, but for probably obvious reasons those are a real fire hazard, so no go. If laws were in my hands they would have to be built into gas appliances, but nobody seems to be into making me dictator.

Speaking of smartness, I finished prepping the walls in the back bedroom today, with the able help of Mr Kitty:

It was only slight drama to get him down from there. As you can see, Dot was very interested in the proceedings, and has already made one clumsy foray up to the third rung.

Now is the time on Sprockets when we prime.

posted by ayse on 09/14/10