nincehelser

Yep. I'd really like to see someone do a breakdown of that actual cost. Many rechargers I've seen are drawing power even if they aren't being used...at least the transformers are warm so some energy is being lost. I've heard some claims that the ubiquitous transformers (i.e. wall warts and similar devices) are "electrical vampires" and are a significant waste of resources. I'm not sure I buy that claim, but I haven't been motivated enough to check it out for myself. They also have another indirect cost in that they heat the room around them, requiring more air conditioning. Then you have to consider that rechargables self-discharge relatively quickly, further compounding the actual energy loss. George

Sorry. One size doesn't fit all. Your mileage may vary. Rechargables have their place in certain applications, but they are not economical for everyone and all uses. They have no real advantage as far as the environment is concerned, and in some cases they might actually be worse. All I can say is do the *CORRECT* math, study the science, and look at the engineering. There is no moral superiority in spending more money than you have to. Claiming disposable alkalines cost 14 times more than one rechargable, and that one rechargable is equivalent to 2000 disposables isn't realistic and is downright misleading. George

The major flaw in your analysis is that your talking theoretical potentials, and not taking real-life usage into account. You have to consider your past usage patterns and try to predict what your future usage will probably be. If you use 40 cents in batteries a week, it's going to take a long time to recover a $100 investement. It's as simple as that. There's no mercury in modern AAs. As far as I'm concerned, you could probably bury all the AAs I'll use in my lifetime with me in my coffin. I'll probably still have room to roll over. George

Not to nit-pick your analysis too much, but let's do a sanity check here. You conclude that you would "have to buy 26,656 (disposable) batteries". Let's assume you go through 8 batteries per week (as you stated). This means that supply of batteries should last you 3332 weeks, or about 64 years. You also state that it would cost you $1,328 for this supply of batteries. Assuming constant-value dollars, this comes to about $20.75 per year. Further sanity check from another angle...you say you use up to 8 batts per week, which comes out to 416 per year. At your cost of about 5 cents per battery, that's about $20.80 per year, but what's 5 cents between friends? Now, you say you paid 100 bucks for your rechargables and charger. It seems to me it's going to take you about 5 years to recoup your investment. You say you won't have to worry about buying another batt for at least 4 years. I'd say you better hope for 5 to break even. If you get to 8 years, that would mean you'd save 3 years of disposable usage, or about $63. That's *IF* you get to 8 years of usage. Of course, you are saving landfill space. Let's assume an AA is a rectangular volume (kind of like assuming all cows are spherical) at the generous dimensions of 50mm x 15mm x 15 mm, or 11,250 cubic mm. Take 11,250 times 26,656 to get about 300 million cubic mm. The cube root of this would be about 670 mm or about 2.2 feet. A box 2.2 x 2.2 x 2.2 feet will take up about 1/2 of my weekly garbage can pickup, but remember to spread this over 64 years. These are just rough estimates, and who knows if I might have slipped a decimal point or two. Someone might want to double check my figures, because they do seem to be a lot smaller than I initially thought. George

Agreed! I roll my eyes when they make such a big deal over the wind chill. Recently, the media has been reporting wind chills and not so much the actual temperature. I wish just once they would properly explain wind chill instead of letting everybody get overly excited about it. Salvelinus Hardly bogus. It has a very real impact on livestock and other animals, who have a somewhat limited wardrobe. George

-273 degrees C, but I expect the batteries in your GPS receiver won't like it. George

It will work just fine for geocaching. Heck, it's hard to find a hand-held unit today that won't work well for geocaching. However, I played with some color Magellans and Garmins today in the store. Granted, it's not the same as out the lighting outdoors, but I'm still not impressed with the color screens anyone is putting into a hand-held GPS today. I guess it comes down to a power issue compromise. Or maybe it's just my eyes. Those color screens just seem too dim and hard to read. Most laptops and some PDA's seem fine to me, though. Color is cool, but until they get brighter, I wouldn't pay extra for it. George

Bad idea. As was said previously, you'll probably have to keep re-aquiring almanac data, which can take up to 15 minutes. Get alkaline disposables and forget about it. They're cheap if you shop right. You can leave them idle in your receiver for months and still be in good shape when you need them. If you had rechargables, they self-discharge at the rate of 3-5% per day depending on temperature, so even if you take them out of the recevier, they would still continue to "die". George

Look on http://wunderground.com. They keep archives, but you need to do some digging for some areas. George

Not quite middle aged yet, but near its doorstep. As for arcane computer trivia, I've got tons of it. My first exoposure to EBCDIC was playing "Zork" on a mainframe. Here's the best definition of EBCDIC I've found: EBCDIC /eb's*-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k*-dik/ [NHD] n. [abbr. Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] An alleged character set used on IBM dinosaurs. It exists in at least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such delights as non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of several ASCII punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer languages (exactly which characters are absent varies according to which version of EBCDIC you're looking at). IBM adapted EBCDIC from punched open-systems company, but IBM's own description of the EBCDIC variants and how to convert between them is still internally classified top-secret, burn-before-reading. Hackers blanch at the very name of EBCDIC and consider it a manifestation of purest evil. card code in the early 1960s and promulgated it as a customer-control tactic, spurning the already established ASCII standard. Today, IBM claims to be anopen-systems company, but IBM's own description of the EBCDIC variants and how to convert between them is still internally classified top-secret, burn-before-reading. Hackers blanch at the very name of EBCDIC and consider it a manifestation of purest evil. George

$1600 will buy you a really nice computer. You might want to consider a laptop with a good-size screen, and wireless Internet gear. I did that last spring...it's a *HUGE* laptop which some people might not care for, but it does run circles around most desktop machines, and I can work most anywhere. George

Try putting the receiver out in a very open spot for at least 15 minutes or so. It sounds like it may have to re-aquire the almanac data. George

It's not just Christians. Back in those days, people (the Jewish at least) waited a few days before declaring a body "really" dead. Folks weren't always as "dead" as they appeared, and there are cases where people "revived" after being buried. Things like that still happen today, as with the toddler who recently "drowned" in a pool, was declared dead, then realized to be alive hours later. The "three days" in the Bible is important because it supports the fact that His body was really, really dead, and not just in something like a really deep, temporary coma. George

Just be glad is isn't EBCDIC. George

They've been out there a while. My car had the option, and it's a 2001. I think the cars with the "Onstar" system at least have an embedded GPS. Somehow they know where you are. George

Use epoxy or something similar. You want something that really sticks well to the magnet under fluctuating hot and cold conditions. Something thick works better than something runny for this technique. Don't worry so much about the tupperware. Drill a few small holes in the tupperware where you will glue the magnet. Glue the magent on, and let adhesive flow through the holes in the tuperware, and spread out on the other side. This will essentially create "rivets" that will take the strain off the magnet/tuperware bond. If you use enough adhesive, there should be no problem with the holes letting in water. It might help (or it may be enough) to roughen the surfaces the magnet and tupperware so the adhesive gets a better grip. George

And note they are often a patch....never a quad-helix. George

That's probably an attempt to control the mold/mildew odor. "Irish Spring" is very popular for that use. I use it "de-smell" old papers and photographs. George

Wouldn't it be possible to buy a contiguous block of TBs, and just use the numbers in the minting process? Better yet, just buy the numbers at a reduced price? George

Granted, many animals have a better sense of smell than humas, but they aren't all necessarily attractive. I've never known deoderant soap to be a popular animal bait, for example. In the defense of soaps and some other scented items, they can go along way to reducing the repulsive smell of mold and mildew that plagues some caches. Items that smell food-like are obviously a bad idea, but are all scents really that attractive to animals? Like the smell of "Zest" or "Irish Spring"? Georeg

You got me. I've seen similar differences between Garmin units. I'm guessing it has something to do with the way they are going about computing the "clock" time. A lot of clocks that are controlled by central source only synch to the central source once in a while...maybe once a day, maybe once an hour. The rest of the time they are "free running", and can loose some accuracy during these times. Who knows how often a consumer GPS receiver re-synchs its time? It might be interesting to "reset" both GPS units and see if they are then in agreement. If there's still a difference of 56 seconds, that would be really odd. George

It depends on what you consider to be accurate. Time from NIST and the US Naval Observatory (they control the GPS system) often vary from each other by several nanonseconds. These variances are constantly changing. At one time, GPS time was as much as 11 seconds from Universal Coordinated Time, but that interval difference is pretty constant. I'm not sure if that gap is still the same today. Several years ago there was an issue with the way the GPS system keeps time. I don't recall the details, but it boils down to something of counting the number of blips from a certain point of time. The blip counter needed to "roll-over" and there was a lot of concern it would screw up older GPS receivers...it was something similar to the Year 2000 bug. George

It's not particularly necessary in most cases. It sucks battery life. It typically needs recalibration after a battery change. They often will not function properly unless held a particular way. I have the compass turned off on my Vista. It just isn't worth the hassle most of the time. If I have decent sat lock and I'm moving, which is most of the time, then the compass feature is kind of "pointless". George

...cleaning your mildewed deck. I got one of those big metal pump spray cans, and filled it with a gallon of bleach. I was going to dilute it down with water and liquid dishwashing detergent, but I instead found a bottle of ammonia under the kitchen sink. "Super Cleaner!" I was thinking. A split second after I poured in the ammonia, the chemistry of the situation dawned on me. One of those "uh-oh" moments in your life you never will forget. I leaped off my deck as a 30 foot geyser erupted from the can. The liquid came back down without major damage, but the wood for a 10-foot radius around the can turned so white, no further amount of cleaning could hide that "clean spot". George

GC559A is a half-gallon glass jar in a very rocky area. I'm suprised it has held up as well as it has. George