October 8, 2003

energy crisis

Vajrapani is run on solar power. It is also a Tibetan Buddhist center. Both of these statements have the implication that computer usage is not highly rated. First of all, running a computer — regular old desktop with normal old monitor — sucks a good amount of juice. Those connected to “the grid” who go outside and look at their power meter right now (with nothing much else on in the house) will say, “but the little wheel is barely turning!” This is true and I used to think, “if the little wheel doesn’t turn to fast we must not be using much electricity.” When you are producing your own power a little usage can seem like a lot.

As for the second statement, the resistance to computers is unbelievable. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with being Tibetan Buddhist and more to do with statement number one and the fact that when you connect to the internet you can only get online at 28k. Regardless of your modem, everyone at Vajrapani can only connect at 28k. Doesn’t make the internet seem all the cool or useful and if it takes you 10 minutes to check email and your computer uses 400 watts of power — you tend to not like computers much.

I’m starting to be converted. I went from working in a building with 700 computers all connected to the internet at a T1 connection. At home I had the computer on all day — regardless if I was even there or not — and constantly connected to the DSL connection. Computers were highly efficient and most of the people I knew relied on them exclusively for tasks like finding a phone number, movie times, or ‘chatting’ with a friend. I’m now surrounded by rolodexes, newspapers and telephones. Vajrapani people claim their [old way] of doing things is faster. Here, they are correct. In most parts of our country they are incorrect.

My step-mom asked me to find out how much of an iMac $400 would buy you on eBay and wanted to know my computer “wish list”. I realized that in the last month, I no longer have a wish list like that. Used to be I’d see an ad for an 80 gig hard drive, 512 MB RAM, G5 processor and I’d just drool. Now I think, “man, that’s expensive and it sucks a lot of juice and fast doesn’t really matter much if you’re only connecting at 28k and if it’s not a laptop I’m not interested. Laptops use considerably less amounts of energy (as do flat screen monitors). I’ve wanted a laptop for years now, but it’s becoming a high priority here, but a G5 is low priority.

You might be thinking to yourself, “your post shows a time of around 7 o’clock in the morning. You’re in California and I know the sun isn’t up at that time. What are you doing on the computer writing out such a long dissertation about computer/energy usage all the while using up valuable resources?!? Are you on crazy pills?!?” The answer is, “no, I’m not crazy.” The fifteen year old batteries that we use to store energy decided that they could no longer store any more energy. So we are now running the generator (diesel powered) 24 hours a day / 7 days a week. It produces more electricity than we can use so, as one person joked, “now is the time to string up the Christmas lights”. For the next few days we can have the computer, TV and stereo all going at the same time and it won’t be too big of a deal. I’m taking this time to let you know that I probably won’t be making regular posts to this site. I’ll post when I can and maybe someday get a laptop so that I can post more. I’d still love to hear your comments, although I probably won’t respond nearly as much as I used to.

posted @ 6:59 AM

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