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Long Range Leaf: driving to Meany Lodge

Can our 2013 Nissan Leaf make it from Seattle to Meany Lodge on a single charge? The distance from our house is 77 miles and the nominal Leaf range is 84 miles. The key factor on this trip is Snoqualmie Pass, and the 3,022 feet we’d have to climb. I figured if I had any range left at the top of the pass, the gain from regenerative braking down the back side would just barely suffice.

At 7AM I pulled up the LEAF app and told the car to warm up the cabin. While still laying in bed. That’s a really nice feature! At 8AM we left Seattle with a toasty warm car and a full charge. I drove in ECO mode with the climate control off and the cruise set at 60 mph. As we passed North Bend, I had about 37 miles to go with a predicted range of 37 miles. That’s also where the climb begins in earnest.

As we climbed the pass, the charge meter dropped rapidly, yielding low battery alerts two miles before the summit. As I crested the pass, I guesstimated 5 miles left (the Leaf stops reporting below 6) plus the 5 miles I’d gain from regen. braking would total 10 miles worth of charge. Since the lodge is 13 miles from the pass, I opted to stop at the Chevron and juice up.

Lucas and I took a 20 minute ice cream break while our Leaf guzzled electrons until it had 10 miles of predicted range. I figured with 10 in the tank plus 5 from braking, I’d have plenty for the climb up to the lodge. We arrived with 8 miles remaining. Without the pit stop, we’d have likely run out a mile or two shy.

At the weekend work party, I took the head off TomCat’s Chevy 292 straight six engine, cut and ground steel plates and pipes, used a MIG welder for the first time (last weld, 25 years ago!), laid culvert, dug water trenches, and pressed apple cider. Lucas had a great time playing with a pack of 8 youngsters whose parents were getting the lodge ready for the ski season.

On Sunday afternoon we left the lodge with a full charge and a predicted range of 81 miles. After climbing 500 feet over the pass, the range crept higher and higher with each mile driven, peaking at 104 miles. As before, the key factor was elevation, and it’s mostly downhill on the return trip. We arrived home with 25 miles of range.

In summary, the Leaf has more than enough range to get home from Meany Lodge, but not quite enough to get there, due primarily to elevation. If we didn’t have another car, we could surely cover the distance by driving slower. With fair weather in daylight, 55 mph should do. If the weather was cold and headlights and/or climate control were needed, it might be possible at 45mph. I wouldn’t consider it fun.

Leftovers make you feel good twice

Leftovers make you feel good twice. First, when you put them away, you feel thrifty and intelligent: “I’m saving food.” Then a month later when blue hair is growing out of the ham, and you throw it away, you feel really intelligent: “I’m saving my life.”— George Carlin

iMac + new SSD = iTunes borked

Replacing the DVD player in my 27″ iMac with an SSD broke iTunes, yielding a -45054 error. I determined it was crying about the iTunes Store authentication, so I signed out, and when attempting to sign back in, received this error:

“there was an error storing your authorization information on this computer”

There’s an article that describes this error in the Apple Support knowledge base. The information in the article helped me figure out that iTunes was broken because the /Users/Shared directory didn’t exist. I manually created it and the problem is solved. Read on for the nitty gritty details.

Continue reading “iMac + new SSD = iTunes borked”

Synology for FreeBSD backups

How I configured a Synology NAS as a backup server, using NFS and AMD on FreeBSD.

In February 2013, a client purchased a Synology NAS. They hired me to set up their mail server to back up to it each night. In addition, I wrote them a restore script. After an email address is specified, it presents a list of available snapshots and provides the ability to restore mailbox contents. It is now September, the solution has been working flawlessly, so I’m sharing a few details.

To fully preserve the permissions, ownership, and metadata, mounting the Synology via NFS was the best option. A potential issue with NFS is that the mail server would be hung if the Synology was unavailable. Because the NAS is only used for backups, I chose to automount the NFS share. That reduces the window for NFS hang exposure to about 20 minutes a day.

To configure automounter, I added this entry to /etc/fstab:

10.10.10.10:/volume1/mail /mnt/synology nfs rw,noauto 0 0

and these entries to /etc/rc.conf:

amd_enable=”YES”
amd_flags=”-a /.amd_mnt -l syslog /mnt/synology /etc/amd.synology”

and this to /etc/amd.synology:

/defaults type:=nfs;opts:=rw,grpid,resvport,vers=3,proto=tcp
* rhost:=synology;rfs:=/volume1/mail/snapshots

Once the automounter (amd) was properly configured, it was a simple matter to install and configure rsnapshot. Each night, the periodic scripts triggers the backup which automounts the NAS. Shortly after the backups conclude, amd disconnects it.

AT&T cramming: Part 2

In 2011, a miscreant abused AT&T’s Wireless Access Protocol payment system and add unauthorized charges to my account. When I noticed the charges, I called AT&T. After getting the initial “we can only refund 3 months” runaround, I escalated the matter  until I got a full refund. I also had AT&T add Purchase Blocker to all 4 of my lines.

Today I logged in to my AT&T account and noticed that, quite helpfully, AT&T now highlights these “billed mobile purchases.” Unfortunately, two new recurring charges were added to my account in January. Jesta, one of the companies behind the crammed charges are self-professed scammers that were fined $1.2M by the FTC in August. As part of the judgement, they are required to refund all charges when customers request it.

AT&T knowingly allows these scammers to bill AT&T customers, which greatly peeves me. I tallied up the charges, called AT&T, and requested a full refund. After getting the same “we can only refund 60 days” runaround, I again escalated the matter and have a full refund being processed. AT&T has no idea why Purchase Blocker got dropped from two of my lines but it has been re-added.

The most interesting part is the email excerpts from Jesta cited in the FTC complaint. Beyond admitting their business is a scam, they discuss ways to keep their return rate below 17%, the rate at which T-Mobile takes away Jesta’s ability to charge customers. AT&T cares even less for their customers and is willing to let scammers reach a 18.5% return rate. Is there any legitimate business with return rates above 10%?

Money and Trust

My first employer had his landscaping business looted by his CPA, who then skipped the country. That incident planted a seed of mistrust in my mind for all financial service professionals (CPA, CFP, CFA, IFP, etc.).

Every time I hear people tell about “this guy” they know that does an outstanding job of managing their money, I can’t help but think of the very long and never ending parade of financial service professionals like this weeks example.

If I recall correctly, it was William Bernstein in The Four Pillars of Investing that, when outlining the perverse incentives that exist within the financial service industry, pointed out that the term service could aptly describe how a bull services a cow.

the ROI on LED

Did you do a break even analysis yet? How long will it take you to recoup the expense?

The way to calculate break even (or Return On Investment) is to know roughly how much each bulb costs to use. To determine that, I built a spreadsheet that listed all 49 light fixtures in my house, the number of bulbs in each fixture, watts per bulb, lumens, and the estimated hours of monthly use. From that list, I picked the 24 most expensive bulbs to operate and replaced them with LEDs, at the cost of $217.

Conclusions:

  • Halogen track lights are horrifically inefficient. Replace immediately.
  • Old transformers are terribly inefficient. Replace immediately.
  • LED track light bulbs are hard to find locally and horrifically expensive. Instead, buy direct from China.
  • Considering their lumen output, 4′ fluorescent bulbs aren’t that bad
  • The ROI is usually less than a year for bulbs used more than an hour a day

For the bulbs in my “top 24” list, the ROI period was less than 12 months, and that was purchasing the bulbs at late 2012 prices. Today I can buy most of those bulbs for about 30% less, so the ROI is even faster. Today at Costco, I purchased 850 lumen dimmable LED bulbs for $8 each.

Also consider that many of the bulbs I replaced were CFL. The savings in going from CFL to LED are much lower than when switching from incandescent, lowering my ROI. But the instant on, dimming, and improved light quality of LED bulbs make the switch worth while.

What LED’s do you recommend?

I recommend whatever LED bulbs cost about $10 for 850 or more lumens. I would buy them only at a local store with a good return policy. Out of 40 bulbs, I’ve had two fail. At $10/ea, they cost just enough that it’s worth taking them back for an exchange.

It’s worth noting that both my bulb failures were on the same power circuit as the 12v track lights, and I suspect the 12v power transformer played a role in their failures.

Did you bypass CFL altogether?

We used many CFL bulbs from 2009-2012. The light quality of the earliest ones was quite awful, so we confined them to areas where that didn’t matter. Price was never an issue, as Seattle City Light subsidizes them: a 6-pack of CFL bulbs has cost $1 for years now. As CFL bulb quality improved, CFL bulbs found their way into more rooms. But unlike LED bulbs, they never became good enough that we liked them.