Tag Archives: power

Hurricane Irene: MREs and RACES lessons learned

August 28, 2011

Last night, I participated in a RACES amateur radio net, manning 2 different fire stations over the course of 12 hours (2000 – 0830). This was my first time doing something like this, so I brought what I thought I would need: 2m/440 radio (IC-92AD) 12v AGM battery (just in case) Cellphone with unlimited 3g and tethering Laptop Power strip All of these but the battery proved useful (and the battery is currently useful at home). But, I found my setup [...]

Switching to an energy-efficient desktop computer

February 12, 2011

Since 1990, I’ve had IBM-compatible desktop computers in my life. Before that, I had Tandy computers beginning at age 2. At first, they were the only computers I had, so I did everything with them – gaming, BBS surfing and eventually the internet, word processing, etc. In college, I got really into video encoding and I played all the newest games, which required quite a bit of PC hardware. Since then, I’ve done less and less encoding and gaming, and [...]

Is it time for the Electric Car?

April 29, 2009

A reader asked about the Chevy Volt in comparison to the Honda Civic, which is a wonderful question. The Volt people claim that it can go 40 miles on just batteries, which is perfect for most people’s commutes provided they can plug in at work (or not for the really lucky ones). So, it’s obvious that there is no fuel consumed by the vehicle in these first few miles of driving, but I’m going to look at how much fuel [...]