Goodbye, energy pig!

So, you were expecting something different from that headline? Thought you missed an impeachment or something? Nope. The big news is that I finally replaced my horrible, 18-year-old SUV of a refrigerator.

To make a long and boring story as short as possible, this refrigerator came with the condo when I moved in almost 9 years ago. It's been costing me $40-$50 per month in electricity, and it took me awhile to figure out it was the refrigerator.

I finally confirmed it when I found this website where you can find out your old refrigerator's energy rating, and it turns out mine used over 1,300 kwh! These days, most refrigerators are in the 400 to 500 kwh range.

The problem was, the previous owner built custom cabinetry around it, and then added a tile floor around it afterwards. It was bricked in, and there was no way to get it out than to demo part of the tile floor. And I couldn't find another refrigerator that fit the space without having to brick it in again. All American refrigerators are more or less the same spec...humongous. My choices were to either brick in a huge machine again, or destroy all my cabinetry and rebuild it.

Finally I started searching the web--isn't it great when you can search the planet from your own apartment? -- and found a Fisher and Paykel fridge that fit the space with room to spare in height, depth, and width. It was short enough for me to build a platform for it to sit on so that it was level with the tile floor....no more bricking it in! So I tracked down an appliance store that sold this model and then bought it. In 10 minutes.

The old one has been hauled away, leaving a pool of slime in its wake. The new one sits shining, clean, and quietly cooling in my kitchen. The shelves are clean and spacious....not like the crowded bacteria pit that I've lived with for 9 years. It even beeps at me if I leave the door open for too long. I can't believe I've finally solved this problem!



new fridge, with energy sticker



old fridge (side by side doors)

Words for dinner...I hope

I am looking forward to -- hopefully! -- eating my words. I've posted two entries in my blog about the transit initiatives that were on the ballot in San Francisco: one to give more money to public transit, and one that would suck the money out of private transit and give it to private developers to create more parking for cars.

I thought it would win, that San Francisco might repeat the debacle of the long-departed, but very well-loved Key Route system in the Bay Area, which was bought by GM in the 1950s and destroyed.

But so far, so good. Early reports say that the transit system is winning and the parking measure is losing. However, I've also heard that -- for reasons I'm unclear about -- it will take a whole month for San Francisco to count the ballots. That's plenty of time for some ballot boxes to disappear into yesterday's oil spill in the Bay...but I hope not!

The disinformation campaign continues

Tuesday is election day. You might recall that I blogged about a pair of confusing ballot initiatives: one which would increase funding for public transportation, the other which would suck money from public transportation and give it to developers to "create more parking spaces." Guess which ballot initiative has more money behind it, and, as a consequence, is mailing 4-color brochures of disinformation to my mailbox every day?

Cloaked under happy-sounding names like "The Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods" and "The Mission Group for Neighborhood Rights" (the Mission is a traditionally working-class neighborhood which intentionally makes this name particularly misleading), the anti-public transit people are sending mailings every day with soul-clutching headlines like "San Francisco Neighborhoods Need REAL Muni reform" and "If They Get Their Way, The Only Means of Transit Will Be Your Two Feet." Of course, this coalition is comprised of republican businesspeople and developers who want the money for public transit to go into their private development projects.

Their argument, which strikes at the heart of every self-interested, short-sighted modern citizen, is that we'll get more parking spaces "at no cost to the taxpayer" if we vote against proposition A and FOR proposition H. The reality is first, that if we used public transit more, we'd have less need for the parking spaces, and second, that we're losing neighborhood street parking all the time because private citizens are refinancing their homes and building garages under them....thus eliminating street parking in front of -- and adjacent to -- their buildings.

The spaces between each garage are seldom large enough to park more than a Smart car in them, if that. In fact, my neighborhood is constantly under construction, and even now, another homeowner is digging a hole in front of his otherwise-rickety building to create a garage for himself (see photo).

As an increasing number of people from the suburbs move here, there's been a tremendous increase in the number of super-sized cars on the streets, it's true. I've seen people move to an apartment building next door to a major Muni Metro station with a Cadillac Escalade parked in front....go figure! That's how I know the disinformation campaign will likely succeed.

People tend to be attracted by shiny objects. As proof, the people in my state elected Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor, throwing out the guy they elected the year before, because a group of people in southern California suddenly started a ballot initiative to take him from Hollywood to the state government in a non-gubernatorial election year.

Here's the scoop, San Franciscans:
YES on A (money for public transit)
NO on H (sucking money from public transit and giving it to private developers)