Personal

Mon - August 13, 2007 02:28 PM

My entire vast fortune: Gone, in but a single day!

Well, it was fun for a couple days, but my accidental $80 million fortune is now gone.

Right as expected, at 9 AM California time today I got a call from ShoreTel's corporate counsel. She said the first step is to verify that there was, in fact, a mistake, and that she'd get in touch with the transfer agent.

I asked for a logo mug, and she said she'd work on it.

A few hours later, I got a call from an embarrassed-sounding employee of ComputerShare, the stock transfer agent, who verified that there was, in fact, a mistake. All I needed to do was mail the certificates back, and they'd figure out the rest.

So I popped them into an overnight envelope, and off they went.

In the end, I suppose I'm a little disappointed that all I had to do was mail the certificates back. I had been envisioning walking into a mahogany-paneled meeting room with the share certificates in a briefcase handcuffed to my wrist. I would sign about 57 different pieces of paper under the watchful gaze of a half-dozen very distinguished looking lawyers, representing the shadowy venture funds I would be helping out of a very ticklish position.

Then, after all the papers were signed, I would hand the briefcase over, and the lawyers would carefully open it, and verify that all six certificates were inside. They would nod to each other, and the most senior of the lawyers would solemnly open his briefcase, thank me for my very valuable assistance, and formally present me with a logo mug and T-shirt.

As I turn to head out the door, that seniormost lawyer would stop me one last time to say, "You must understand that you've been of immense service to us. We don't easily forget who our friends are. We owe you a favor, a big favor, and if there's anything you ever need, just call. Got that? Anything."

Personally, I blame FedEx for taking all the romance out.

Posted at 02:28 PM | Permalink | |

Sun - August 12, 2007 06:44 PM

Stock Certificates

I've now been worth $80 million for almost 48 hours. I can't say it feels much different than before....though I am surprised I haven't heard back from the company yet. Maybe they decided to consult their lawyers before calling me.

Here's a photo of the stack of stock certificates--click on the thumbnail for a large version where the number of shares on the top certificate (4,477,132) is clearly visible.

I've been asking myself a bunch of questions over the weekend, and while I'm not a securities lawyer, I've come up with at least a few answers:

Are the stock certificates real?
Yes.

Do I really own 5.7 million shares of ShoreTel?
Sort of, maybe. Fifty years ago, if you held the stock certificates then you owned the stock. These days the stock certificates are less important, and the company's share register (the list of stockholders and the number of shares they own) is usually considered the legally binding way to know who owns the stock. Stock certificates nowadays are mainly used to demonstrate ownership and transfer it to someone else.

So if this is a simple printing error (most likely) then these certificates don't actually represent any ownership in the company. On the other hand, if the company's share register got mixed up somehow, then things are much more complicated and I might actually be the legal owner of the stock.

If I own the stock, can I sell it?
Even if it turns out that I'm the legal owner of this stock, there are some legal restrictions because it's all stock issued pre-IPO. Each certificate is stamped "TRANSFER OF THIS STOCK IS RESTRICTED SEE LEGEND ON REVERSE SIDE." The fine print on the back has two main restrictions: first, it can't be sold until 180 days after the IPO (which would be sometime in January). That gives everyone lots of time to sort out the problem without the risk that I would sell the stock first. The other restriction is that the stock needs to be registered with the SEC before being sold (this is called a "144 sale" after the form you have to fill out to sell the stock). That means that selling these shares will create a paper trail a mile wide.

Even assuming that it would be legal and ethical to sell the stock, it would still be very tricky. When you're selling 14% of a company, you don't just log on to your Charles Schwab account and click the "Sell" button. That much stock hitting the market all at once will cause the price to tank, and you won't get as much for it as you should. Instead, you need to work with an institutional stock brokerage to sell the stock in a controlled manner to buyers who are willing to take millions of shares at a time.

So there's pretty much no way to sell the stock quickly, and even if I could, it wouldn't be a quiet anonymous process.

How do I fix this mistake?
The short answer is: contact the company and do whatever they ask me (within reason).

How hard this is to fix will depend on where the mistake happened. If this is just a matter of the printer jamming and misprinting a few certificates, they may just reprint the certificates and ask me to destroy the ones I have.

On the other hand, if they messed up the share register and I actually own these shares, it might get more complicated. I may have to sign the certificates over to the proper owners in order to effect a share transfer, and there may have to be some nominal consideration for my giving up ownership of the stock (I would accept a logo mug or T-shirt from each of the VC funds whose stock I wound up with). The nominal consideration is something some lawyers insist on to make sure it looks like an exchange rather than a gift.

In any event, it's reasonable to expect the company to reimburse me for any direct expenses (for example, legal fees) I incur in helping correct the problem.

Is there any way I could get to keep the stock?
A year or two ago here in Minnesota, the state mistakenly sent a $5 million check to a small contractor, instead of the few thousand she was owed. The woman was convicted of fraud because she deposited it in her bank account and made no effort to try to return the money (she might have also spent some of it, but my memory is fuzzy on the details). The state argued--successfully--that the $5 million check was so obviously an error that the woman should have known it wasn't really hers.

My situation here is pretty much the same, though an order of magnitude bigger. These stock certificates are so obviously a mistake that anything I do to try to cash in on them could be considered fraud.

So my duty is to take whatever reasonable steps I can to rectify the error, which basically means contacting the company right away and asking them what they want me to do (which I've already done).

I've not yet heard back from the company, though, so I don't know what their response might be. It's conceivable (though extremely unlikely, given the sums involved) that the company might insist that there's been no mistake, or even affirmatively declare that the shares really are mine. In that case, there is a point at which I could give up trying to convince them of their mistake and take the company at its word.

As I understand it, the law asks me to make a reasonable effort to rectify this kind of mistake; it does not require that I martyr myself on the cross of insufferable bureaucracy. Given the sums involved, though, even if the company insisted up down and sideways that the stock is mine, I wouldn't make any effort to cash it in without the advice of some very expensive lawyers.

The way I figure it, the odds that the company tells me to keep the stock are about the same as being hit by lightning and winning the lottery. Simultaneously.

If I was dishonest, how could I turn this to my advantage?
Since I'm an honest guy, I'm pretty much resigned to the notion that all I'm going to get out of this bank error in my favor is a fun story to tell the grandkids, and maybe a free lunch or T-shirt.

Ah, but if I was dishonest....

The mind boggles at the possibility. Even though the certificates are basically worthless (and couldn't be sold for months in any event), the paper could make fairly convincing proof of great wealth, proof which would stand up to fairly close scrutiny. It could form the basis of an elaborate con job, one where I used the stock certificates to prove my investing prowess.

The simplest con might be to take them to a large bank (one which handles private banking for wealthy individuals) and ask them to hold the certificates for me, mentioning that I'll probably want their help with a 144 sale after the 180-day lockup expires. Then return a week later and ask for a personal unsecured loan for $5 or $10 million. It's illegal to borrow money using restricted stock as collateral, but it's perfectly legal for the bank to approve an unsecured loan using the stock as proof of my eventual ability to repay. Then, check in hand, I can hop a flight to the nearest third-world country without an extradition treaty.

It's a good thing I'm honest.

UPDATE (8/13/07): My vast fortune is gone!

Posted at 06:44 PM | Permalink | |

Fri - August 10, 2007 09:17 PM

Today, I Am Worth $80 Million.....

.....and by the end of the day Monday, it will almost all be gone.

Here is my tale of how I became an almost-centimillionaire, and how my fortune will disappear like dust in the wind.

The story begins in the middle of the dot-com bubble, when I was working as a research analyst for an investment bank. At the time, like many of my colleagues, I made some personal venture investments in what I thought were promising startups. In retrospect, it turns out to have been a supremely bad time to be making venture investments, and nearly every one of my investments turned out to be worth nothing within a few years.

A couple of companies held on, though, and about a month ago one of them went public. I'd been invested in this company nearly a decade, though boom, bust, bridge loan, cramdown, recap, split, reverse split, and finally IPO. Not much was left of my original investment, and the IPO was at less than half the price I'd originally paid for the shares so long ago. Nevertheless, getting something back is better than nothing.

Because of the IPO and concurrent stock adjustments, all the pre-IPO shares had to be reissued, and everyone would get new stock certificates.

This evening I arrived home late with the family, since we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner (Friday nights are special time with the whole family). There was a FedEx envelope waiting for me from the company handling the stock transfer.

I opened the envelope to find a stack of papers. The top sheet was a shiny new stock certificate made out to me, for a grand total of about 141,000 shares.

"That's odd," I thought, "I was only expecting a couple thousand shares at most. Maybe the enclosed letter explains it."

So I turned to the next page and discovered another stock certificate, with my name on it, for about 444,000 shares.

Then another stock certificate for a few million shares.

And another, and another. In total, there were about eight stock certificates in the envelope, all in my name, totaling about 5.7 million shares. No letter, no explanation, nothing.

That's about 14% of the entire company. At today's close of $13.99/share, it's worth about $80 million. My guess is that someone screwed up the database of shareholders, and put my name on a whole bunch of certificates which should have gone to other pre-IPO investors.

Sadly, those shares aren't really mine even if the piece of paper says so. As soon as I realized the mistake, I looked up the CFO (I hadn't actually talked to anyone at this company in probably six years) and left him a voicemail. Since it was already 6 PM California time, he'd gone home for the weekend.

I expect that they'll ask me to FedEx the certificates back on Monday. Maybe they'll let me keep a (voided) souvenir copy, or, if I'm a really tough negotiator I might get them to treat me to lunch for my honesty.

But at least for this weekend, I'm worth $80 million on paper. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

P.S. If anyone knows Mike Healy, Chief Financial Officer of ShoreTel, tell him to check his voicemail. I'll be expecting his call.

Posted at 09:17 PM | Permalink | |

Thu - August 2, 2007 10:51 AM

Bridge Collapse

By now, I assume that everyone reading this blog has heard that the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi in downtown Minneapolis collapsed last night during the evening rush hour.

As rescue operations become recovery operations, I'm thankful that the human toll seems to be remarkably low for a disaster of this magnitude. Everyone I know is fine, though my oldest son was worried last night that some of his school friends were hurt (unlikely, as we live about 20 miles from the bridge in question).

It's going to take years before downtown Minneapolis is back to normal. This bridge is one of five major freeway routes into Downtown, and one of only two freeway bridges over the Mississippi in Downtown (there are also several bridges connected to city streets, but they're not capable of handling anywhere near the 160,000 cars/day which used to use the I-35W bridge). The collapse also cut off river traffic and a major rail line.

I used to live about a block from the bridge--you can see my old apartment building in many of the media photos and videos--and I was never that fond of it. Much of the riverfront of Minneapolis has been revitalized in recent decades, but the 35W bridge has remained an eyesore. I hope they replace it with something more attractive.

There will be a thorough investigation, and whatever the final report says will almost certainly have repercussions. These kinds of events usually have a chain of circumstances which ultimately lead to the disaster, so there usually isn't just one cause.

My totally uninformed and unexpert guess is that the final NTSB report will likely cite some combination of these factors:

1) Bridge design which met 1960's standards, but which isn't sufficient by modern standards (possibly related to traffic load and/or vehicle weight significantly above the original design parameters).

2) Structural weakness which was either undetected in recent inspections (possibly undetectable), or underemphasized in the inspectors' reports.

3) A sustained period of hot weather, and/or construction during the hot weather.

4) Vibration from construction contributing to the actual moment of collapse.

5) (Unlikely but possible) accelerated corrosion from the de-icing chemicals used on the bridge deck in recent years.

The wild card is whether the engineers and inspectors working on the bridge were under any pressure to overlook or de-emphasize known problems. Minnesota's budget for road construction and repair has been very tight the past few years--thanks to a gas tax which hasn't been raised in decades and a governor who refuses to even consider the idea--and replacing or overhauling the I-35W bridge would have been a hugely expensive and disruptive project.

While nobody has suggested this yet, I can certainly see how, in an environment of very tight budgets, it would be tempting to overlook problems with the I-35W bridge (which is, after all, only 40 years old) in favor of other pressing projects which would be cheaper and easier.

Posted at 10:51 AM | Permalink | |

Fri - May 11, 2007 09:37 AM

Ham Lake Fire

After last year's Cavity Lake Fire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, I thought I had seen The Big One: the giant forest fire we'd been promised would eventually happen after the 1999 BWCA blowdown.

It turns out I was wrong.

This spring the weather is starting out hotter and drier than last year, and the spring fire season has brought us the Ham Lake Fire. This monster started last weekend near the Gunflint Trail in northeast Minnesota, and is now some unknown size larger than 50 square miles. According to media reports, it may have grown by 20,000 acres yesterday alone. That would make it as big as the Cavity Lake fire last year, but without any hope yet of containment, and no significant precipitation in the forecast.

Worse, where last year's monster fire was mostly within the BWCA itself (where there are no cabins or resorts), this time the fire is right along the Gunflint Trail, a major route into the BWCA and hub of recreational activity. Hundreds of buildings are threatened, and dozens have been destroyed.

Since we have a chunk of land not too far from the Gunflint Trail (but about 30 miles from Ham Lake), I've been trying to track the fire's progress. I've been frustrated by the lack of timely dissemination of information through the Internet: the main information sites (such as MNICS and Inciweb) often are a day or two out of date--and for a fire which has been moving and growing as fast as this one, that's almost hopelessly old.

One alarming event happened late yesterday, when the wind shifted from mostly southerly to more northerly. The fire had been moving mostly towards Canada, but with the change in the weather it is now moving back down the Gunflint Trail towards Grand Marais. Alarmingly, the fire unexpectedly jumped Gunflint Lake late yesterday, which caused the authorities to close the Gunflint Trail at Poplar Lake and evacuate the entire area North and East of that point. Remarkably, and to the credit of everyone, there have been no fatalities or injuries so far.

To put this in context, the old roadblock had been near Gunflint Lake, which is about 3/4 of the way to the end of the Gunflint Trail. Poplar Lake is about ten miles closer to Grand Marais, and only halfway to the end of the Trail. Poplar Lake is also a third of the distance from where the fire started to my own slice of the north woods.

That's starting to get close to home.

As I understand it, the forest in the Arrowhead region of Northern Minnesota typically burns every couple hundred years or so. The last time our property burned was about a century ago, so with the right conditions another fire isn't out of the question. Firefighters on the Ham Lake fire are focusing (as they should) on protecting lives and buildings, since the fire itself is too difficult to contain at this point. The fire is going to pretty much do what it wants until there's a big soaking rain to keep it from spreading more.

Additionally, until there's more moisture, the whole region is a tinderbox. A fire started near Hibbing yesterday and within hours grew to over 170 acres, and any spark (or campfire or lightning) could have a similar effect.

We had been thinking of going camping up north over Memorial Day weekend in two weeks. Now we're not sure what we'll find.

Posted at 09:37 AM | Permalink | |

Wed - March 28, 2007 03:19 PM

Gandalf

I found my first gray hair today. Actually, it was more like transparent white: nothing "intermediate between black and white" about it.

Of course, I immediately plucked it out and showed it to everyone else at the office: "My first gray hair! Cool!"

It looks like I'm destined to inherit my grandfather's full head of pure white hair (and beard).

Posted at 03:19 PM | Permalink | |

Sun - September 10, 2006 12:08 PM

Flying on 9/11

I didn't realize this at the time I booked the tickets, but I have a 7:30 AM flight for the 5th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. I'm going to Seattle for a trade show.

If for no other reason than the symbolism of the date, I expect that all the airports will be on infra-red high alert. If water is the latest "threat," then I won't be surprised if they make all the passengers empty their bladders before going through security.

I am not expecting any real risk. Statistically, even if I had been flying on 9/11/2001, I would have had only a slight chance of dying in a terrorist attack. Tomorrow, I'm far more worried about falling down the dark stairs in my house as I leave before dawn than I am about being the victim of random (or unrandom) violence.

Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the collective paranoia of millions of my fellow Americans--especially those few hundred thousand specifically entrusted to keep the airways safe--will ensure an absolutely miserable flight.

Posted at 12:08 PM | Permalink | |

Sun - September 3, 2006 08:38 AM

Getting set for Winter

It's September now, and we've had a solid week of autumnal weather: cool, and alternating between pleasantly dry and solid days of rain. Temperatures the past week have been right around seasonal--which these days means "slightly on the cool side."

The pile of firewood is gone from the driveway, split and stacked in various places around the garage and yard for the winter. My firewood inventory is something like this:

Garage: Approx. 2 cords of dry cottonwood, and approx. 3 cords of dry oak.

Under the Spruce Tree: Approx. 2-3 cords of dry oak and ash, and approx. 2 cords of pine, birch, and a bit of apple.

Under a Different Spruce Tree: Approx. 1/2 cord of boxelder, not yet split, but reasonably dry.

Near the Pond: Approx. 1/2 cord of greenish boxelder, not yet split.

So, total it all up, and there's something like ten cords of dry firewood, about half of which is heavy dense wood (oak, ash, and apple), and half of which is lighter wood (cottonwood and pine). There's another cord not yet split and not as dry, which is boxelder, a moderately dense wood.

The light woods burn fast and hot, and so are good for early in the season when we don't need the stove going 24/7. They're good for taking a bit of chill out of the house, or those times when someone is around to feed the stove constantly.

The heavy woods have a lot more (2-3x) heat value per volume, so those are good for times like overnight or when nobody's home when the weather is very cold and we want to keep the stove going as much as possible around the clock. The stove loaded with oak will put out a lot of heat for hours.

I don't know if this will be enough for the winter, but we're certainly in a lot better shape firewood-wise than at the beginning of last winter.

In addition, there are some other firewood stocks I can draw upon:

* There's still a little bit of old, rotten logs by the pond. Last fall I couldn't get them out, but after a dry summer the pond is down and I may be able to recover a few more logs. This isn't much, and it isn't very good, but it should be gotten rid of.

* My parents have some firewood stocked at their house, and I plan to cut up some more downed trees for them. If we get low during the winter, I can draw on some of that wood.

* There's a big diseased elm tree which has been cut down and needs to be hauled off a few miles from here. The downside is that the bark needs to be stripped off right away (something of a nuisance) so that the dutch elm disease doesn't spread. Elm is good firewood, though this stuff needs to dry a little more.

It doesn't look like natural gas prices will be as high as they were last summer, though it could still top $1.00/therm for much of the winter. I'm going to follow the same strategy as last year: keep the thermostat turned way down during the week, up a little on the weekends during the day, and use the stove as much as possible to keep the main furnace from kicking in.

I think it is possible, depending on the weather and natural gas prices, to save as much as $2,000 on heat this winter. $1,500 should be well within our reach, given that we saved over $1,000 last year and only had the stove for half the season and lower-quality wood.

Posted at 08:38 AM | Permalink | |

Tue - August 22, 2006 08:09 PM

Cabin Fever

A couple weeks ago, I checked the calendar and realized that the summer--as defined by Scooter's school schedule--was almost over. We hadn't yet had a chance to visit our place near Grand Marais on the North Shore of Lake Superior. So we did some quick organizing, found a cabin available at a nearby resort, and scheduled a last-minute Trip Up North.

Four nights, leaving Saturday and coming back Wednesday (tomorrow, actually--I'll upload this entry when we get home).

After about the first day of the trip, She Who Puts Up With Me and I had a minor epiphany. An epiphanette, if you like. For the past two summers, we've taken the kids on a road trip to Yellowstone. That's four days of driving, a couple of layover days, and three days actually there. Going Up North is only a half-day drive, and we all seem to enjoy it just as much. We get twice as much vacation in our vacation.

This has rekindled talk of building a cabin on our property. Right now, there's nothing there you would reasonably want to stay in: when I was in college, I tried my hand at building a couple small structures (a gazebo and an A-frame cabin), but the gazebo is now falling down, and the A-frame never got finished since I ran out of time. We don't want to camp in tents with two kids who are still toilet-training, so we pretty much have to stay at a hotel or resort.

The cabin we're renting this trip is just the sort of thing I'd like to have: it is basically a house in the woods, with all the amenities like electricity, hot and cold water, a full kitchen, three bathrooms with showers, etc. I don't feel like I have to prove I can live like my ancestors in the woods. Just being among trees and near water is sufficient.

Actually building our cozy little nest in the woods is a different issue. Any construction project is going to have to begin with road improvements: about 3/4 mile of forest road would have to be widened to accommodate construction trucks, and depending on the building site we select, up to an additional half mile of road may have to be built through the forest. We're probably talking $25,000 (minimum!) in road improvements alone. It could easily be more, since I think some of the best building sites are up on a ridge overlooking Lake Superior, a good quarter mile from where the existing road runs.

There's other issues, too. Power will probably have to be off-grid, since we're 3/4 mile from the nearest power line. Being off-grid in the middle of the forest can be challenging, since the trees block solar panels (unless we clear some of the forest around the cabin), and wind power means building a tower considerably higher than the tallest trees. It would be visible for miles, and might not even be allowed as an eyesore in the middle of the woods.

For now, dreams of a cabin are just that--at least until we have the time and money to start making it a reality. Someday, perhaps, this dream will come true.

Posted at 08:09 PM | Permalink | |

Tue - July 18, 2006 03:18 PM

Ready....Aim....

Fire!

Back in 1999, a monster thunderstorm blew down the forest across hundreds of square miles of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and the Superior National Forest. Ever since then, we've been hearing "it's gonna burn."

Over the past seven years, a lot of effort has been made to mitigate the danger of a big wildfire. Area resorts and cabin owners have been given grants to clear brush from near structures and install sprinkler systems to protect buildings. Controlled burns along the Gunflint Trail (the only road through the area) reduced the amount of dead wood along the inhabited areas (by law, nobody lives in the Boundary Waters itself). A handful of wildfires have also helped clear some of the fuel from the forest, but there's only so much that can be done.

After several years of relatively good fire weather (that is, not hot and dry), this summer has brought just the kind of conditions that create big fires.

Last Thursday, July 14th, lightning hit a hillside just south of Cavity Lake, right in the middle of the blowdown area. While there was an effort to douse it with water bombers, the area was too remote and rugged for ground crews to fight the fire. So the Cavity Lake fire grew, consuming over 500 acres on its first day. On July 15th, it grew to 1,500 acres, and on the 16th it hit 6,300 acres.

With continued hot, dry weather and periods of goodly winds (and little or no rain), the fire hit 15,000 acres by the end of the day yesterday, skipping through some of the larger lakes and burning islands on Seagull Lake. It still has plenty of room to grow, with only a few percent of the blowdown area burned so far. While most of the attention has been on the large Cavity Lake fire, there is at least one other large fire burning (the Turtle Lake fire, which had burned about 900 acres as of yesterday, and has been going since July 7th), and recent lightning may have sparked dozens of other small fires which haven't yet been detected in the pall of smoke from Cavity Lake.

This could be the summer that the BWCA burns.

Supposedly, this part of the country burns about once a century or so. The last major fire was in 1910, when about 80 square miles went up in smoke. From 1911 until 1987, all wildfires were suppressed, until a "hands off" policy was adopted. Unfortunately, the 75 years of fire suppression plus the 1999 blowdown have created a situation where huge areas are all primed to burn at once.

My own slice of Northern Minnesota is about 40 miles from the Cavity Lake fire, and is outside the blowdown area (though there's a few trees on my property which got knocked down in the 1999 storm), so there's no immediate threat of fire. Even so, there's still months to go before the snow flies and ends the fire season, and if the dry weather continues, the risk will continue to get greater.

Posted at 03:18 PM | Permalink | |

Wed - July 12, 2006 05:16 PM

Rocketboom Redux

Rocketboom is back, a couple days later than promised. I'll give them a little while to get their feet under before I pass judgement, but my initial impression is that they're trying way too hard to make the new host Just Like Amanda. This is not a good sign. Memo to Andrew Baron: find someone who can both write and act, and let her do her own thing.

In the Frozen North, this soap opera has been ample fodder for speculation and discussion over the past week. Every day brings a new installment, and we just can't help speculating about what's going to happen next.

It has also led to the uttering in our household of the Single Most Dangerous Phrase Ever:

"We could start a video blog!"

Posted at 05:16 PM | Permalink | |

Wed - July 5, 2006 03:19 PM

Amanda Unboomed

Amanda Congdon, the host of the hugely popular video weblog Rocketboom, has left. Here's her farewell message, left on her personal blog rather than on Rocketboom.

Here's what Amanda said in her message:

"Hello, and good Wednesday, July 5th, 2006, I'm Amanda Congdon, and this is...oops, wrong show. Contrary to what has been said, or implied, in the Rocketboom comments section, I'm not on vacation. Not by a long shot. Um, I'm actually here to tell you guys, because I think, you know, it's so important to be transparent with the Rocketboom viewers, kinda what's going on. Um, so here I am, on Unboomed, as I apparently have been unboomed. Um, yeah, apparently my partner, Andrew Baron, is no longer interested in being my partner, and, um, since he owns 51% of Rocketboom and I own 49% of Rocketboom, that's just something I'm going to kinda have to live with, so I'm just kinda accepting it. And, um, yeah, I guess this is my last appearance in front of the map. But, um, you know I'm sure I'll be back, on Unboomed, hosting some crazy crazy stuff soon, and I just wanted to communicate with all of you and tell you that I haven't forgotten about any of you Rocketboom viewers, and I'm gonna be back, and I'll be back on Unboomed, and I hope to see you probably not tomorrow, but sometime soon thereafter. Say hi at unboomed@gmail.com. I miss you. And don't tell me I need a tan, I already know."

Here's the message posted on the official Rocketboom website:

"Amanda Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood.

We wanted to meet her request to move production out to L.A., however, we are a small company and have not been able to figure out a way to make it work, financially and in many other ways at this time. So sadly we bid Amanda adieu and wish her all the best.

Rocketboom goes on.

Andrew Baron, the founder and creator of Rocketboom, will stay with the company in New York and will continue to produce and direct the show. We are in the daunting process of recruiting a replacement for Amanda.

While Amanda will be sorely missed, we have big plans for Rocketboom and are determined to make the show better than ever.

After Field Week and a week on hiatus, we know that you are hungry for the news! Rocketboom will be back with a news episode and an interim host this MONDAY, JULY 10. "

Okay, speaking as a longtime Rocketboom fan, all I can say is....wow. Where to begin?

Would it be stating to obvious to point out that the two messages have basically nothing in common? Are they even describing the same event?

I would love to know the real story about what's going on. It really seems a shame that, after spending over a year working on Rocketboom, Amanda gets the boot just as it is really taking off and generating some actual revenue.

Let's face it, for most fans, Rocketboom is Amanda Congdon. She's the main reason I became a fan, and she's one of the few celebrities I've ever wanted to actually meet. She brought a fun, informal quality to the show that felt like this was just something she was doing off the cuff for a few friends--even though Rocketboom had something like 300,000 viewers and clearly took hours to produce each day.

I suspect that there is at least some truth to each of the two different statements about what happened, and I also suspect that the show's recent success (financial and otherwise) had a lot to do with the breakup. Sudden success has a funny way of straining relationships and exposing parts of people that weren't obvious before.

What more can I say?

I'll miss Amanda, and I sure hope she follows through on her promise to find another venue soon.

Posted at 03:19 PM | Permalink | |

Thu - April 27, 2006 02:13 PM

April Gas Usage

Here's an update on our gas usage, since we got another gas bill today. For the month from mid-March to mid-April we used 39 therms of natural gas. Last year our usage (for the same average temperature) would have been 125 therms, so we saved 86 therms at $0.95/therm. The price of natural gas has come down quite a bit since the beginning of the winter; in November we paid $1.35/therm.

So for the season as a whole we've now saved a grand total of $1,023. Not too shabby....If we'd gotten the wood stove back in September instead of December, we probably could have saved an additional 100 to 150 therms of gas, or around $200 at the prices we were paying at the time.

Just for laughs, I added a new column to my spreadsheet to calculate the amount of reduced CO2 emissions from not burning fossil fuels for heat. It came out to just under five tons of CO2 that we didn't add to the atmosphere this winter, or approximately what one of our cars emits in a year's worth of driving. So not only did we save a thousand bucks on heat, but we effective removed one car's equivalent of greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. Not too shabby.

The heating season is now nearly over. Our main furnace has actually been turned off for about three weeks now. We've been lighting the wood stove only intermittently when the mornings are chillier than usual. I expect that we'll still post some small gas savings on our next bill, but unless we get an unseasonable cold snap, we'll probably only show another $10 or $20 of gas savings.

My focus has now shifted to stockpiling firewood for next winter. I have a few sources lined up, and a few cords already put away (some of which is leftover from this year). I figure I need about ten cords stacked before summer begins in earnest so that it will have time to dry by autumn.

Posted at 02:13 PM | Permalink | |

Wed - April 26, 2006 04:31 PM

Disney

I spent the past few days at a Disney World resort without my family.

I was attending a corporate boondoggle (more than just attending, my company was one of the sponsors), and despite the setting it was strictly business for me. I understand why the organizers want to go to a fun resort, but as far as I was concerned it would have been just as good in Des Moines, Iowa. Better, actually: Des Moines would have been a lot more comfortable (it was in the 90s and humid every day) and far far cheaper.

Disney is fascinating, though, in the same way Paris Hilton or a Pixar movie is fascinating: you know that everything you're looking at is fake, but you just can't tear your eyes from the brazen artifice of it all. It's actually more than fake, since you're not looking at a faithful simulation of the real thing, but an idealized representation trying to pass itself off as the real thing. Imagine if a cardboard cutout of Leonard Nimoy started talking and claiming to be an actual native of the planet Vulcan.

I stayed in Disney's Caribbean Resort, designed to look and feel like a tropical island, with buildings names "Aruba," "Trinidad," and so forth. Except that this island paradise has the advantage of having no poor people (none visible, anyway), and a guard checking IDs at the gate to keep out undesirables. Actually, I'm not sure exactly what the guard was checking for, since anyone who showed an ID was allowed in, and it's not like they give out special driver's licenses with TERRORIST stamped in red.

Our Caribbean Resort did have some things in common with the real thing: palm trees, sandy beaches, and water--though perversely, the Disney version is built around an island of water surrounded by land, rather than the other way around. Also, just like a real tropical island, this one stands an excellent chance of getting wiped out by rising sea levels or a major hurricane sometime in the next hundred years.

The conference itself was at Disney's Boardwalk resort, modeled after an idealized version of the Atlantic City, NJ boardwalk from the late 19th century (no poor people here, either). The entire complex, from the water to the shops to the dance hall, was just like the real thing, except with anything that might be remotely unpleasant or undesirable carefully removed or hidden from view.

Not everything is perfect. Travelers are cautioned to lock their cars and stay in well-lit areas at night. But you can rest assured that if you are mugged at Disney World, you will have been victimized by The Happiest Muggers on Earth (TM).

Posted at 04:31 PM | Permalink | |

Mon - March 27, 2006 06:44 PM

March gas usage

In March, we saved 187 therms of natural gas in heating our home thanks to the wood heat and keeping the thermostat turned down. That's a little less than the past couple months, and I'm not sure why. My best guess is that we're down to the bottom of the barrel on firewood (we're now burning mostly green cottonwood), and the stuff we're burning now both doesn't burn as long or as hot as the better quality wood we were using at first.

The price of gas is also at its lowest point of the season, at $1.038/therm. As a result, we "only" saved $195 on our heating bill this month. For the season so far we've saved about $950.

We've now left the peak of the heating season behind us, and it won't be long now before we don't need the gas furnace at all (we've only barely used it this past week, when the highs have been in the 40's with lows around freezing). But we will probably still save a couple hundred more dollars on heat, since the heating season doesn't really end until the average temperature reaches 60-65 degrees. That won't happen until May (on average) in the Twin Cities.

I'm also starting to stockpile wood for next year. I've already scored about a half cord of boxelder (which burns very nicely), and identified several trees in our yard which need to come down. I'll need about ten cords of firewood to use maximum wood heat next season, and I'm not sure where I'll store it all.

Posted at 06:44 PM | Permalink | |

Mon - February 27, 2006 05:31 PM

Gas Savings Update

We got our February gas bill today, covering the period from mid-January to mid-February. During this period, the average temperature was 25 degrees (tied with the December bill for the coldest month of the season), and we burned 2.9 therms/day of gas.

This was also the first full month which reflects our use of the wood stove for heat, and I'm suitable impressed with the savings. Comparing this bill to December's bill (December had the same average temperature, and was the last full month before wood heat), we are burning 4 therms/day less. Last year, correcting for temperature, we burned 10.0 therms/day.

So we're saving 2/3 of our gas bill during the coldest month of the year. We should save even more (proportionally) during the warmer months.

The cost of gas has been dropping, though, so in terms of dollars the savings is going down a bit.

Crunching all the numbers, in February we saved $246 as compared to what we would have spent without the wood heat and keeping the thermostat down. For the season so far, we've saved $759 (readjusting the savings from prior months slightly to use a more precise estimate of our savings).

We still have 3-4 months of heating season left to go, though the last couple months (April and May) are marginal. But I'm guessing that when we add it all up for the season, we will have saved about $1,500 total. That's nearly half the cost of the wood stove insert. Another year of expensive natural gas, and the stove will have paid for itself.

Gas Price Update: The bottom fell out of the natural gas market the past few months as it became clear that the mild weather and expensive energy prices were leading to low consumption this year. So I'm expecting that the price of gas will slip well below $1.00/therm before the end of the heating season.

Posted at 05:31 PM | Permalink | |

Wed - February 15, 2006 09:57 PM

Not what you want to hear on Valentine's Day

...or any other time for that matter:

"I'm worried."

"What are you worried about?"

"My chest hurts. Its been hurting all day."

"Hurts like you want to see the doctor?"

"I think so, yeah."

She Who Puts Up With Me called the nurse line first, and after about a half-hour the nurse said that it wasn't an emergency, and most likely something minor, but that she should go see the doctor within a few days.

This morning the doctor examined her, and determined that the pain was in her ribs--fortunately not her heart, and not the lungs either. We're guessing perhaps a minor injury or motion-related problem. The prescription is to take it easy and consume mass quantities of ibuprofen.

So She Who Puts Up With Me is just fine. Thanks for asking.

Posted at 09:57 PM | Permalink | |

Sat - February 4, 2006 08:13 AM

Gas prices

You are probably sick of reading about our wood stove and how expensive it is to heat this winter. Too bad, because here's another one on the topic....

Gas prices are coming down a bit, thanks to the warm January (though today is getting back to the deep-freeze in Minnesota, so this long warm snap may be at an end). For February the price is set at $1.09/therm, down from $1.22/therm in January, but still 20% above the price last February ($0.91/therm). We never did quite see the $1.50/therm I had been expecting, but then the commodities markets only it that price briefly on a couple of occasions.

Posted at 08:13 AM | Permalink | |

Mon - January 30, 2006 01:16 AM

January gas bill

We got our January gas bill, the first one since our wood stove was installed. This bill covered 35 days, of which about a week was before wood heat.

It has been unusually warm this month, so I'm obligated to correct the gas savings based on the temperature. This past month, we used 3.74 therms/day, as compared to 10 therms/day we would have used without turning down the thermostat or using wood heat (I based the 10 therms/day figure on our gas usage last year as a function of average temperature--it turns out to be an almost linear relationship, as you would expect). So we saved a total of 221 therms this month, at just under $1.20/therm, or $264.35.

While I was at it, I went back and corrected the calculated savings for the past three months for temperature. So far this season, we've saved $542.34, and the heating season is only about half over. We should pass $1,000 in savings by a big margin.

Posted at 01:16 AM | Permalink | |

Mon - January 23, 2006 05:43 PM

Miami

I'm in Miami the first part of this week on a business trip. The most remarkable thing is the contrast from my last visit a couple years ago: the whole city remains visibly scarred from the after-effects of Hurricane Wilma.

I didn't bring my camera on this trip, but I should have. Every high-rise downtown has boarded-up windows (including the hotel I'm in), and some buildings have entire walls of plywood; there are piles of debris--mainly downed trees--in the middle of parks and empty fields; and blue tarps are everywhere.

As an aside, I think that particular shade should be named "FEMA Blue."

Construction and cleanup is going on all around me. The hotel (being a really nice hotel) is trying its best to pretend that nothing happened, but as soon as you take two steps out the door it is unmistakable.

Amazing. Just amazing.

Posted at 05:43 PM | Permalink | |

Fri - January 13, 2006 09:27 AM

January Natural Gas Prices

Minnegasco has set its price for natural gas in January at $1.22/therm. That compares to $1.19 in December and $0.91 last year.

Fortunately, January so far has been unseasonably warm. The Star Tribune had a front-page article this morning about how this was the warmest start to winter every recorded in Minnesota. That's true if you measure it beginning on December 21st, the first official day of winter, but probably isn't true if you measure since the beginning of the heating season since we had that nasty cold snap the first few weeks of December.

I'm expecting that our gas bill this month (due in about a week) will be very low, despite the high gas prices. Thanks to the warm weather and the wood burning stove, we've been running our furnace only modestly the past few weeks. It hasn't been completely turned off (the wood stove isn't that powerful), but the heat has been running far far less than it would have normally.

The biggest issue right now is finding enough small pieces of very dry firewood for getting the stove started. We have to start the stove twice on most days (once in the morning, and again when we get home from work), and the most reliable way to do that is to load it with the smallest, driest pieces of wood we can find. Getting the stove started requires heating the entire 500-pound mass of the stove up to somewhere above 300 degrees. Once hot, the stove is reasonably happy with larger and somewhat damper wood.

When we start the stove twice a day, we go through our supply of tinder very quickly, so I have to keep scouting for more tinder. What I really need to find is someone trying to get rid of a bunch of scrap lumber, like shipping palettes. But I don't have a ready supply at the moment.

Posted at 09:27 AM | Permalink | |

Mon - December 26, 2005 08:08 AM

Getting to Know my Stove

We've had the super-duper-hyper-efficient wood burning fireplace stove insert for almost a week now, and I'm figuring out all about it. Here, in no particular order, are some of the things I've learned so far:

* It puts out a lot of heat. Once it gets going, it will keep the entire house warm with an outside temperature all the way down to about +10F. This week, the weather has not been nearly as cold as it had been, so it has actually been heating the house up to a comfortable 65-70. The main furnace has been running a little, but only a very little (and mainly when we're not home to keep the stove going).

* Using really dry firewood makes a big difference. The drier, the better. Stuff which has been sitting outside should sit indoors for a day, so it can dry off. Even stuff which is in the garage tends to be a little damp, and should sit indoors for at least a few hours before burning. Any moisture in the stove cools it down and makes it burn less effectively.

* But the good news is that stacking the green firewood indoors makes it season really fast. I'm still waiting for the experiment to finish, but it looks like we can get the equivalent of six months of seasoning in just a couple weeks. This is because the humidity indoors is so low, as is usual in Minnesota in the winter. This means that we will probably be able to use all that green firewood we've stockpiled.

* Firewood consumption looks like about 1/2 cord/week, about what I thought it would be. At that rate, we should have just enough to make it through the winter this year, since half the season is already gone. But in future winters, we'd need to stock 10 cords to use maximum wood heat for the entire season. I don't know how practical that is (for starters, where would we put it all?).

* Ashes will need to be emptied every few days. This will be an issue. But the fireplace works much better when the ashes are emptied. Ashes are hot when they're removed, and contain a high percentage of coals. I'm trying to screen out the charcoal for re-use after letting the ashes cool, but I don't know how practical that will be over the long term. Still, I hate to see good fuel go to waste.

* Once it gets properly heated up, there is literally no smoke visible up the chimney. From the outside, you can't tell that the fireplace is running at all. You might get a little steam shortly after loading new firewood in, but even that tends to be just a little (and is minimized if you let the wood sit inside before loading it).

* The heat from the fireplace actually gets fairly well distributed around the house. We haven't felt the need to run the furnace blower yet. It helps that the fireplace is located in a big room which is open to about half the volume of the house. There are only a few rooms which don't get much heat.

* It runs for 3-4 hours on a load of firewood if you let it burn all the way down. But usually you want to put new wood in every hour or so, just to keep it running as hot as possible. The first stage of burning (when the hot wood releases gasses, before it becomes charcoal) doesn't burn as hot or efficiently as the charcoal stage, but it burns a lot faster, allowing more heat to make it into the house. Also, stirring up the coals every hour or so helps keep it hotter.

So far the verdict is: I'm happy. We're dramatically reducing--almost eliminating--our gas heat usage, and saving probably hundreds of bucks a month. Cutting, splitting, and hauling all that firewood isn't for everyone, but I don't mind since it is great exercise and we're saving money big-time.

Posted at 08:08 AM | Permalink | |

Wed - December 21, 2005 04:22 PM

Gas Savings

We got our gas bill for the month ended 12/13/05. For the month, we used an average of 6.9 therms/day, as compared to 8.3 therms/day last year. With 32 days since the last meter reading, that's 44.8 therms less than this period last year, for a savings of about $60 at $1.316/therm.

In reality, the savings are much greater, since we had a big cold snap this year, and (according to the data on the gas bill), this period was eight degrees colder than the same period last year. But I don't have enough data to accurately correct the calculation yet. At the end of the season, I'll figure out the relationship between temperature and gas usage from last year (it should be approximately linear) in order to make a better calculation of our gas savings. (UPDATE: Taking a rough approximation, if it had been as cold last year as this year, we would have used 10.5 therms/day last year. That makes our savings about $150 for the month.)

This is the last gas bill that's entirely pre-wood-heat. So 100% of the savings on this bill are simply from keeping our thermostat turned down. The next bill should reflect the savings from being able to supplement our gas furnace with the wood burning stove.

But using $60 as the savings for this month, that brings our total savings on gas for the season to about $250 (rounding a bit since the numbers are approximate anyway) (about $350 correcting for the temperature). The goal is to save at least $1,000 through a combination of keeping the thermostat turned down and the wood burner cranked up, and I think we'll easily hit that number. Keep in mind that we haven't even gotten to the coldest part of the year yet.

Posted at 04:22 PM | Permalink | |

Tue - December 20, 2005 05:29 PM

Wood heat at last!

Well, it's been a long road, but we are finally warming our house this evening through the power of wood.

The installers came around 9 AM and left around 4 PM, and the beast just barely fits in the space. But it fits. There's one last step, which is to have the city inspector sign off on it, but I spoke with him when he came around 11 AM, and all he needs to do is measure the distance from the edge of the hearth to the front of the insert. Since I verified myself that we have the required 16 inches, there's no reason to expect any problems.

Within minutes of the time the installers left, I had the first load of wood in and burning. Within about ten minutes the blower kicked on (it's on a thermostat), and it is now merrily pumping heat into our great room. And it does put out a lot of heat. If you stand in front of it, you can feel a major blast of hot air.

Of course, it's too early to know how much of a difference this will make on our heating bills. Our meter reading was just a couple days ago, so the next gas bill will be 100% without wood, and the following bill will be almost 100% with wood heat.

The one problem which I was expecting but didn't happen is that sometimes these stoves are hard to get lit. You have to get the chimney good and warmed up before it'll draw well, and until it draws enough air, it can be hard to keep the fire going.

But fortunately that's not a problem with this unit. It has an extra "starting air" control, which opens some giant air intakes in the back. This makes starting a breeze, but you have to remember to close the starting air once it is hot. Otherwise it can draw too much air and overheat.

So first impression: cool.

UPDATE: The stove has been running about four hours so far, and the temperature of the house has gone up four degrees. That's not bad, considering that the outside temperature is 15. If the stove can heat the house a degree per hour when its +15, then the furnace will still be needed on the coldest nights of the year but not much. Also, I'm burning a mix of dry and green firewood this evening. Burning just the driest wood will make the stove burn hotter, so it has the potential to put out more heat than it is right now.

Finally, according to the manufacturer, it should go full blast for three hours on a load, so if I fill the firebox right before bedtime, it will keep putting out heat for nearly half the night.

Posted at 05:29 PM | Permalink | |

Tue - December 6, 2005 09:30 AM

Kalivala

I recently bought a copy of the CD Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden from Amazon, and I've been listening to it a lot (you can sample some of the tracks on this page).

I had the good fortune to see one of the live performances a number of years ago, and I'm amazed it took me this long to get around to buying the CD (the show isn't currently running, but if they ever do another run and you have the chance to go, go!).

The music is categorized variously as "folk" or "world," and it doesn't fit neatly into the usual classifications. It is sort of Celtic/Finnish but with completely modern instrumentation and very energetic. Anyone willing to experiment with new music should enjoy this CD.

The recording (and the show it comes from) is a setting of a Finnish myth about a young woman who magically transforms herself into a salmon rather than marry against her will. As I understand it (not being an expert in Finnish culture), this story is a big part of Finnish culture, much as the legends of King Arthur are in England.

But all of that is really beside the point. This is great music. Go listen.

Posted at 09:30 AM | Permalink | |

Sun - December 4, 2005 07:48 PM

Random Thoughts in an Airport

I'm leaving for a short (2-day) business trip to Las Vegas. I have an evening flight, but She Who Puts Up With Me is in the Holidazzle parade tonight, so she left with the kids around 4 PM. There wasn't much point staying home, so I'm hanging out in the Northwest Worldclub, taking advantage of the free coffee and WiFi until my flight leaves. I'm going to be pretty high on caffeine by the time my flight leaves, so take these random thoughts with that in mind:

* In Minnesota, we've got plenty of cold in the winter, and plenty of hot in the summer. What we need is a way to store the former for the latter, and the latter for the former.

* Business travel tip: If you're flying somewhere warm, leave your jacket at home, even in the middle of winter. You only need it for the 30 seconds it takes to get from your car to the parking ramp elevator, and nobody freezes to death in 30 seconds. Not even here.

* It is very difficult to fly to anywhere from Minneapolis on an airline which is not bankrupt. Food for thought.

* If you don't like to gamble and you don't want to have sex with someone not your wife, a business trip to Las Vegas might as well be a trip to Phoenix. Except, of course, that there's always someone in the group who wants to gamble or go to a bar.

* I forgot my cellphone charger. I've got enough juice for the two-day trip, but E-mail might be a more reliable way to reach me.

* On the tram in the airport, there was a guy sitting there eating a food court Chinese dinner and riding the tram back and forth. The smell of Kung-Fu Chicken (or whatever the heck it was) was like a physical force, pushing me out of the train as soon as the doors opened.

* We've been having almost nonstop snow flurries for the past week, and it's supposed to be below zero tonight. Brrr. It went straight from October weather to January, with no stops in between. After a week, the flurries finally added up to enough snow to bother shoveling off the driveway. Last year we didn't get shovelable snow until January.

* Some people clean the snow off their driveways every time there's the tiniest dusting of snow. Some of them actually polish the driveway clean. I don't get this. I always wait until the undercarriage of the car drags in the snowdrifts.

* We got new tires for our trusty minivan at Costco yesterday. It took them almost three hours, during which time we were stuck there. As a result, we wound up spending more than we planned on groceries this week. I'm sure this was part of some larger plan.

* There's only so much of Northwest Airlines coffee I can stand. Bleah.

* Our stove installation has been re-scheduled for this coming Friday. This is almost the worst-case scenario (back to the end of the line for an appointment) after their screw-up last week. Unfortunately, it would have been really handy to have wood heat during the current cold snap, and last Monday was the last warm day in sight for a while.

Posted at 07:48 PM | Permalink | |

Mon - November 28, 2005 11:12 AM

Wood heat delayed

The installers showed up for the new fireplace insert today, and discovered that the chimney liner they ordered isn't long enough. Since that's a part which requires some customization (it has to be "ovalized," or squashed into an oval shape), they can't just have a new liner delivered from the warehouse.

Arrgh.

That means that the installation will have to be done some other day. I'll have to rearrange my schedule again, and it will be that much longer before we can start using wood heat.

The especially frustrating part is that everything seemed to be coming together for today: we got the chimney cleaned ahead of schedule, the weather is warm (good because the patio door will have to be wide open while they move stuff in), and it even stopped raining for a few hours. The rest of the week is supposed to be cold and possibly snowy or icy.

The worst case scenario seems to be that I'll have to go back to the end of the line for installations, which means an additional two-week wait.

Posted at 11:12 AM | Permalink | |

Sat - November 19, 2005 08:39 PM

October-November savings

We got our gas bill for the month from mid-October to mid-November.

For the 29 days ending Nov. 11, we used an average of 1.6 therms of gas per day, as compared to 5.4 therms/day last year. It was slightly warmer this year, but most of the savings was because we kept our thermostat turned down.

That saved us about $150 for the month, and a total of $185 for the season so far (and the heating season has only barely begun). We saved about two-thirds of our gas bill this month.

Not bad.

If you subtract the 0.7 therms/day which is our baseline usage (for hot water, cooking, etc.), we burned 0.9 therms/day for heat this month, as compared to 4.7 therms/day for heat last year. In other words, we eliminated about 80% of the heating for our home. And while it has been somewhat uncomfortable, it has been quite manageable.

With the wood stove only a little over a week away, I'm hoping we'll see equally dramatic savings next month, too.

Posted at 08:39 PM | Permalink | |

Wed - November 16, 2005 05:24 PM

We have a date

The critical path item for installing our new wood stove insert had been getting the chimneys cleaned. Local chimney sweeps are scheduling six weeks in advance these days.

But after I got the word that our insert had arrived, I called the chimney sweeps to see if I couldn't get moved up from our Dec. 6th date. By an amazing stroke of good fortune, they just had a cancellation for this coming Monday.

So the chimney sweeps are coming on Monday, 11/21, and the stove insert will be installed the following Monday, 11/28.

Twelve days, and counting (which sure beats the 3+ weeks we would have had to wait otherwise).

The gods of wood heat are smiling on me today, since I also drove past a home about 1/2 mile away where they had just taken down a couple of trees. I asked what they were going to do do with the logs, and they agreed to drop them at my house (which is closer than where they were going to take them).

So I'm getting another cord of wood, maybe two, for free delivered right to my doorstep. Granted, the wood will have to be cut into fireplace-length pieces and split, and it is quite green, but this cuts about 2/3 of the work out of procuring the wood.

Posted at 05:24 PM | Permalink | |

Thu - November 10, 2005 08:44 PM

Splitting Wood

CHUNK! CHUNK! CHUNK! CRACK!

Thoreau once said that firewood warms you twice: once when you cut it, and again when you burn it. That was clearly the case yesterday, when I worked up a nice sweat despite the fierce November wind and temperatures barely getting above the mid-40's.

CHUNK! CHUNK! CRACK!

Splitting firewood by hand looks to the observer like a simply application of brute force: repeatedly hitting the log with a heavy object until it surrenders. And it is possible to split wood that way, though it will take much more effort than it has to. Done properly, splitting firewood is more like a seduction than a battle. You look for the where the wood is ready to split, then apply the right amount of persuasion in just the right place until it yields.

CRACK!

Wood is hardest to split when it is freshly cut. The moist fibers are pliable, and the log just dents instead of splitting. As the wood dries out, it becomes more brittle, and the fibers begin to pull apart of their own accord. Cracks appear in the ends of the log, showing where the internal stresses are highest.

CHUNK! CHUNK! CHUNK! CHUNK! CHUNK! CHUNK! CRACK!

There are two basic tools, the axe and the wedge. The wedge is used for particularly difficult logs, but I consider it cheating. My axe is not sharp. You could not, for example, use it to cut down a tree. Cutting down a tree requires cutting across the grain, but the job of a woodsplitting axe is to force itself between the grain and push the fibers apart.

CHUNK! CHUNK! CRACK!

Each swing of the axe focuses all the force of my body into the point of the axe. I begin with the axe behind me, almost touching my tailbone. I swing it in a high arc over my head, then drive it down into the wood assisted by gravity. Sometimes, when the log is almost split, I will use a more modulated swing to keep the two halves of the log from flying too far away. Sometimes the log will split asymmetrically, sending a small piece of wood flying across the yard and the axe swinging around my body.

CHUNK! CRACK!

Splitting wood is timeless. There is nothing except the periodic swing of the axe, the positioning of the log for the ideal stroke, and the ferrying of split and unsplit wood. It requires just enough thought to keep your mind focused, but not so much that you can't think about other things. It becomes almost meditative. After 30 minutes or an hour of swinging the axe, I look at the pile of freshly split firewood and marvel at how much I accomplished.

Posted at 08:44 PM | Permalink | |

Tue - November 1, 2005 09:08 PM

Persistent Fog

Last night for halloween, I got out a blacklight, fluorescent paint, a couple of "flaming cauldrons" and a fog machine.

We don't usually get many trick-or-treaters (living in a cul-de-sac will do that), but those we get might as well get a show.

Last year was the first year I had the fog machine, and it was a little disappointing. It is one of those small retail units, and I taped the button on to get as close to continuous fog as the machine could manage (which usually means 30 seconds of fog, followed by about two minutes to reheat). There was enough breeze last year to blow away the fog almost as soon as it formed, leaving our front steps mostly fog-free.

Not so this year. This year there was no wind at all, and the atmospheric conditions were right for the fog to persist for a long time. We had a very nice fogbank which covered the entire front of the house and most of the driveway. Atmospheric haze was noticeable three houses down. Every so often a little bit of "cloud" would break off and very slowly drift down the street.

All in all, a very satisfying effect.

Posted at 09:08 PM | Permalink | |

Sat - October 29, 2005 08:56 AM

Why I Love America

Rosa Parks, the woman who sparked massive civil rights protests by her simple act of breaking the law by sitting in the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, has passed away, and will lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol.

To lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol is arguably the greatest honor this country can bestow. It is a greater honor than any of the ribbons or medals the country awards by virtue of how rarely it is bestowed. The last person to lie at the capitol was Ronald Reagan, and even most U.S. Presidents are never so honored by their country

The importance of the honor is also magnified by the fact that it can only be bestowed after one's death, when the importance of one's actions have had time to become apparent (usually), and there is little political advantage to be gained for the honoree.

So back to the title of this article: Why I Love America.

Rosa Parks was, by all accounts, a completely ordinary woman. She was not a politician, general, or a great leader. She was not wealthy or from a noble family.

But fifty years ago, she did something both unremarkable yet amazing: she refused to sit in the back of a city bus, where local law and custom demanded that people with dark skin sit. As a result, she was arrested, and as a result of that, black people throughout the city refused to ride the bus.

It was the beginning of the civil rights movement in America, which led to some of the most profound legal and social changes in our country's history. To be fair, she had been consciously chosen for this role by leaders in the civil rights movement, who felt she would be a suitable symbol for their cause. But chosen or not, she was the pebble which kicked off a landslide.

I was not born at the time, and my parents were still children. But what strikes me about the Rosa Parks story is not the significance of it, but the undeniable pettiness of it. Sitting in the front of the bus is hardly a great privilege or honor, but by denying it to black people, the city of Montgomery was determined to show black people that they were somehow less worthy than white people. Rosa Parks did nothing more--or less--than seize the basic human dignity that we now view as our birthright.

And in America, a completely ordinary person can do an extraordinary thing, and our nation will honor her on the same level as our greatest leaders.

Posted at 08:56 AM | Permalink | |

Fri - October 28, 2005 06:34 AM

Winter Weather Madness

I hear that New England could get snow over the next few days.

Meanwhile, lucky souls who live in Minnesota (and throughout the upper midwest) are enjoying one of the most consistently pleasant autumns in memory. About once a week we get a little rain storm and a fresh shot of cold air. The rest of the time, it has been sunny, cool but not cold, and dry. Highs in the 50's and 60's, lows in the 30's. About what you would expect this time of year, but just not so darned consistent.

The new thermostat plan has engendered some grumbling from She Who Puts Up With Me, mostly around the house being cold in the evenings. Fortunately our house has a small addition off the kitchen with its own furnace, so we can turn on the heat in the addition and close the kitchen doors, and heat just those two rooms. Much cheaper than heating the entire house. The main furnace hasn't actually run since Sunday: the house has approached 55 degrees, but not actually gotten there yet.

I've finished bringing up firewood from our back yard. Everything left by the pond is actually underwater and not readily accessible. I may try to pry it out at some point, but I don't expect I'll get much usable firewood that way. So next it is on to my parents' house, where they have some firewood for me to cut up and haul away.

There's been no word from the fireplace people other than the "end of November" vagueness I got last week. They probably won't know anything more until the insert actually shows up on their doorstep from the manufacturer. Meanwhile, I've scheduled the chimney sweeps (which has to happen before the insert can be installed), and the earliest date I could get is December 6th. So even if the fireplace insert shows up on November 20th, we'll have to wait until the chimney sweeps get their part done to install it. Chimney sweeps also appear to be in demand this year.

Posted at 06:34 AM | Permalink | |

Tue - October 25, 2005 09:40 PM

Natural Gas Savings

We got our first gas bill of the heating season this year. For the 28 days ending October 13th, we used an average of 0.7 therms/day, as compared to 1.7 therms/day last year (1 therm = 100,000 BTU; this is the unit they use for calculating our gas bills).

This year the average temperature during that period was two degrees warmer than last year, so we probably would have used slightly less gas anyway. But we did not turn on the furnace at all during that time (normally we would have been running it occasionally, especially on cooler mornings), and endured a couple of chilly mornings.

So here's roughly how much we've saved:

28 days at 1.0 therms/day less than last year = 28.0 therms saved. At $1.236/therm (this month's rate), we've saved $34.61 on heat as of October 13th. The 0.7 therm/day we used during that month is basically our baseline usage for things like hot water, cooking, etc.

Posted at 09:40 PM | Permalink | |

Sun - October 23, 2005 07:31 PM

The Heat is On

Well, we broke down and turned on the furnace today. The wood burning stove insert won't be here until the end of November (they have just a wee bit of a backlog), and it is getting too chilly to not have the heat on.

But since this winter burning natural gas is a little like sending $10 and $20 bills up the chimney, we're pretty aggressive about programming the thermostat.

On weekends during the day (when we're actually home and awake), the house will be heated to 68 degrees. That's a little cooler than the norm, but only slightly.

But Monday through Friday, the thermostat will be set to 55. That is downright chilly (though the kids don't complain when the house is that cool), but livable at night and for the brief periods of time we're actually home and awake during the week. Electric blankets and footed flannel PJs for the kids make it reasonably cozy at night.

By not heating the house up in the mornings and evenings (which was our thermostat program last year), we should save a lot on the gas bill. That essentially means that the house will stay at only 55 degrees for 75% of the time--many weeks the heat probably won't turn on at all except on weekends.

This time of year, the house stays at or above 55 degrees without any heat at all. Last year, heat in October/November was around $25 to $50 each month. At this year's gas prices, that means $50 to $100. If we don't heat the house at all 5 days out of 7, that means our thermostat program should let us spend only $10 to $20 each month between mid-October and mid-December (when things really start getting cold).

And by then we should have our stove, so we can supplement the furnace with zero-cost wood.

Posted at 07:31 PM | Permalink | |

Mon - October 17, 2005 08:49 PM

Trees of Fire

Some may prefer aspens in the fall, but my favorite tree will always be the sugar maple.

Nothing can quite match the sugar maple for fall color. The yellows, fluorescent oranges, and bright reds which are almost magenta are about the most stunning colors to be found in nature. From beneath the canopy it looks as though the entire forest is burning with a hot flame.

I learned something interesting today: the variation in the colors of the sugar maple leaves (a single tree can produce every shade from yellow to red) is triggered by different amounts of light hitting each leaf. The more sun a leaf gets, the redder the shade in the fall.

Posted at 08:49 PM | Permalink | |

Wed - October 12, 2005 06:32 PM

More Wood Heat

The fireplace installer was out today to measure our existing fireplace to make sure we can install the new high efficiency insert.

The good news is that it will fit, and we won't have to extend the hearth or do any other expensive additional work. The only bad news is that we'll need a bit of custom fitting, which will add a couple hundred dollars to the price.

The bad news is that the wait from the manufacturer is purported to be 30-60 days to get the insert delivered. That means it could be mid-December before we have this baby up and running. Depending on the weather, that could mean we won't have this for a significant fraction of this year's heating season.

Apparently we're not the only ones planning to heat with wood this year.

On the other hand, if we're blessed with a warm autumn, and the insert gets here in 30 days instead of 60, there's still a chance we can get the wood burner installed before we have to turn on the main furnace.

So far we've managed to keep the heat off, mainly through the judicious use of electric blankets, and the occasional admission to She Who Puts Up With Me (truly she is) that, yes, I'm not being entirely rational when I don't want to turn the furnace on even though the house is 55 degrees.

Fortunately we've only had one brief cold spell so far (down to about 30 degrees outside two nights in a row), and 55 degrees is the chilliest the house has gotten. You can get used to the house being that cold, but it certainly isn't as comfortable as 72. It helps that most of the week we're simply not home and awake, and an electric blanket can make even a very cold house quite pleasant for sleeping.

Since then, the weather has been warmer, and the house has been a fairly constant 65 degrees or so. Later this week, it may actually get up to 70 degrees outside with sunshine, and every warm day is a day closer to when we'll be able to start using wood heat.

Firewood Procurement Update: Right now, I've got somewhere between 1.5 and 2 cords of firewood up by the house, of which about half has been split. At least another cord remains in the backyard near the pond, though much of that is still sitting in the water from our recent torrential rains. My priority right now is moving as much wood from the backyard to near the house, since once the ground freezes I won't be able to move it up the steep hill. I can split it later.

With the late installation date for the fireplace insert, our wood needs will be correspondingly less. So I'm more confident that I'll be able to stock enough firewood for the winter.

Posted at 06:32 PM | Permalink | |

Mon - October 10, 2005 04:19 PM

Sugar Maples

We went to our place Up North this weekend, outside Grand Marais, MN. One of these days we'll build a cabin up there, but for now we have to make do with a hotel in town.

We were hoping to hit the peak of the fall color, which is spectacular. Our property is wooded with mostly mature sugar maples ranging from bright yellow to fluorescent orange and magenta. Unfortunately we got there about a week too late: the leaves were all gone at the top of the ridge on our property, though there was still plenty of color further down the hills and close to the shore of Lake Superior.

Despite missing the color, I did achieve my secondary objective of bringing back several sugar maples to plant in our yard. I brought back seven trees, four for me and three for my mother. I wasn't sure how big a plant I could get away with transplanting, so I brought back a range of sizes from seven-foot saplings to 18-inch seedlings. We'll see what makes it. Several websites I looked at describe sugar maples as "easy to transplant," so I'm fairly optimistic that even the biggest of the plants will survive the move (bigger plants require cutting off more of the root system when transplanting, which is why the smaller ones are more likely to survive).

If this experiment works, I may move some more trees next fall.

Posted at 04:19 PM | Permalink | |

Fri - September 30, 2005 11:36 AM

Wood Heat II

We've made the decision. We're going to go wood heat this winter, and in a big way.

We've put down a deposit on a high-efficiency stove insert for one of our fireplaces, which will cost about $3,300 installed. In two weeks, the installer comes to inspect our layout and give us a final estimate. Then, if all goes well, two weeks after that we'll have our new fireplace installed.

The unit we're buying is the biggest, baddest stove insert we could find. The manufacturer claims that it puts out up to 75,000 BTU/hour, and it is EPA rated at less than 2 g/hour of particulate emissions (aka smoke). In other words, once this baby gets fired up, it will be putting out a significant fraction of the heat our main furnace generates, and with almost nothing visible out the chimney.

Now that we've made the decision to go wood, we're facing some practical issues.

First off, we don't really know how much wood we'll need for the winter. A friend with some experience suggests that we'll probably go through two or three cords. My best guess is that we've got between one and two cords currently in our yard, and much of that is very low quality. There are other trees in our yard we're planning to cut down, but it is too late to harvest trees this fall and have the firewood properly seasoned (dried) in time for burning this winter.

A cord of firewood, by the way, is a stack 4' wide, 4' high, and 8' long, or 128 cubic feet. It could also be called a truck, since a cord is about the maximum amount of firewood you can carry in a heavy-duty pickup truck.

There are a few other places I can draw upon for firewood this winter. My parents may have some extra, and every now and then you can spot people trying to give away excess firewood on Craigslist. With my trusty red pickup, I should be able to pick up a half-cord here and there. With luck I may be able to avoid actually spending money on firewood this winter, but that remains to be determined.

Another practical issue is going to be actually running the fireplace 24x7 in the coldest part of the winter. The manufacturer claims it will run 3-12 hours on a load of wood, but the 12 hours is only achievable at the lowest heat setting. On high, we'll have to reload it every 3 hours at least. In practice, that means that we'll be able to get at most 4 loads of wood (12 hours of burning) on weekdays when we're not home, and 6 loads on weekends (18 hours of burning). That gives us 900,000 BTU/day on weekdays, and 1,350,000 BTU/day on weekends. On the coldest days of the winter, our furnace is probably running about 75% of the time, which equates to something like 2,430,000 BTU/day. So on the coldest days of the winter, at best we may be able to provide half our heat from the fireplace.

Fortunately most of the winter is not as cold as the few days when we get a big cold snap.

I'm also thinking about ash disposal. Burning several cords of firewood--even very efficiently--will generate a significant amount of ash. Once cool, the ash can simply be thrown away in the regular trash, or worked into the vegetable garden (it is used to treat acidic soil). But it can't be put in the trash hot, and we won't be shutting the fireplace down for the 24-48 hours needed for the ash to cool before cleaning. So we'll need to find a fireproof ash container, such as a steel trashcan or bucket.

Steel buckets are astonishingly hard to find these days. Everything is made of plastic.

Now for the good news (good for us, anyway): our local gas company just announced whopping price increases for the month of October (prices are set month to month depending on market prices). The October price is 14% above the September price, and 77% above last October's price. Even at that level, the prices don't reflect all of the spike on the commodities markets, so I assume there's some major hedging going on (in Minnesota, the gas utilities are required to sell the gas at cost to customers; they make their profit on the distribution cost). So we can probably expect additional price increases for the next few months.

That means that the $3,000 cost to heat our home with gas this winter is looking realistic, and possibly even low. So the wood heat really could save us a bundle of money, and paying for the fireplace insert in under two years looks like a good bet.

We'll just hope for warm weather until we get it installed.

Posted at 11:36 AM | Permalink | |

Wed - September 28, 2005 09:49 AM

Wood heat

Between the impact of the hurricanes and the generally high cost of energy this year, the price of natural gas right now is nearly three times what it was a year ago, and about twice what it was at the peak price last winter. I have no idea of this is a short term spike or will be sustained (the futures price right now is about 20% cheaper than the spot price, which means that the market thinks the price will come down fairly quickly), but even if the current price is temporary, we're looking at significantly higher heating costs this winter than in the past.

I went back through our records in Quicken, and found that last winter (2004-2005) we spent about $1,400 to heat our home for the entire winter. I got that by adding up all our gas bills for the heating season, and subtracting our average summer gas bill (about $25/month, which is what we spend for cooking and hot water). The winter before, which was unusually mild, we spent about $960 on heat.

Unless natural gas prices collapse in the next couple months, we're looking at easily over $3,000 on heat this winter (if we have a typical winter). Urk.

In my mind, this means it is time to start thinking about alternatives. Of course we'll be turning down the thermostat, but that only gets you so much. This is Minnesota after all, and you can't let the house freeze.

But we do have three fireplaces and tons of firewood which we really need to do something with. Open fireplaces (which is what we have) are not a useful source of heat, since most of the heat just goes up the chimney. But fireplaces with high efficiency stove inserts are a useful source of heat, and some of the largest models can put out almost as much heat as our furnace. Running the furnace blower (the fan which circulates air throughout the house) should distribute the heat around the house for about $1 to $2 per day.

I don't expect that wood heat is a practical way to replace natural gas in our house 100%. But if it is sufficient to keep the furnace off on all but the coldest days, that will still save us a ton of money. Since stove inserts seem to run around $2,000 to $3,000 installed, buying one cou