Electricity saving hack

[Buzz McCool]

Electricity prices is my area keep rising. The latest outrage here is
that prices will be much higher during the late afternoon and evening
(i.e. when I'm home from work and it is dark outside and I want to use
electricity.) I've already replaced all the incandescent lights in my
home with LED or compact fluorescent versions and was scratching my head
trying to think of any other potential efficiencies.

Obhack:
Swap the light switch locations in the bathrooms such that the switch to
the single lamp fixture in the ceiling is the first switch you feel (and
flip on) as you walk in the door instead of the three lamp (powder
room), four lamp (guest bathroom), or six lamp (master bathroom)
fixtures above the sink mirrors.

Buzz

[Buzz McCool]

On 10/30/19 5:03 PM, Buzz McCool wrote:
> Electricity prices is [sic] my area keep rising....
(Quick, think of a way to correct the typo.)

Pickle prices *IN* my area also keep rising.

ObHack:
I save the pickle juice and jar after I'm done eating a jar of Claussen
brand dill pickles. Then I buy some carrots, peel them, cut to half size
and then slice into quarters to make thin, pickle jars sized carrot
spears. I pack them back into the jar and top off with some white
vinegar if they are not all covered by the existing juice. I give the
jar a shake, refrigerate, and in a couple of weeks or less I have
delicious pickled carrots. Note I tried this with those small "baby"
carrots and it didn't taste as good as the spears.

Buzz

[Eli the Bearded]

In alt.hackers, Buzz McCool <buzz_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Pickle prices *IN* my area also keep rising.
>
> ObHack:
> I save the pickle juice and jar after I'm done eating a jar of Claussen
> brand dill pickles. Then I buy some carrots, peel them, cut to half size
> and then slice into quarters to make thin, pickle jars sized carrot
> spears. I pack them back into the jar and top off with some white
> vinegar if they are not all covered by the existing juice. I give the
> jar a shake, refrigerate, and in a couple of weeks or less I have
> delicious pickled carrots. Note I tried this with those small "baby"
> carrots and it didn't taste as good as the spears.

Real pickles can be made with just salt and water (and something to
pickle). I do it that way: salt, water, spices, vegetables. I do
typically save some water from the previous batch to add to the new
batch, but that's not necessary.

Here's a recipe I've used a few times:

~ 1.6lb cukes, quartered
~ 1 head garlic peeled, cloves halved
~ 600ml water w/
5 teaspoon grey salt
~ 300ml water from previous pickles
2 teaspoon whole coriander
2 teaspoon whole black pepper
1 teaspoon whole cumin

Put in water-sealed crock, leave for 3 to 4 days, transfer to
mason jar in fridge; eat within a month.

"Grey" salt is basically the raw stuff you get from letting sea water
evaporate. It has sodium chloride and other salts (in the chemical
sense of "salt"). Unlike plain salt or refined sea salt, it looks grey
and it looks damp. I don't think grey salt is strictly necessary, but I
do think it helps.

ObHack:

I wanted to renumber a bunch of sequentially numbered files, but not
all the way back to 0, so that I could add some more in there. So,
reproduced here in psuedo code, I wrote a script to do:

with eachfile in directory:
if eachfile matches /^(\d)(-.*)/ ; then
number = match.capture(1)
rest = match.capture(2)

if number >= startmove ; then
number = number - startmove

tomove[number] = rest
endif
endif

# rename from end back down because some files with consecutive
# numbers do not have uniquely "rest" parts
while number >= 0:
newnumber = number + shiftamount
oldname = join( number , tomove[number] )
newname = join( newnumber , tomove[number] )
rename( oldname, newname )
number = number - 1

The hack is using the numbers, with startmove subtracted, as indexes in
the array, so I could self-sort the array. Which I needed sorted so that
I could avoid clobbering files which have the same name execpt for the
number.

Elijah
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the files are supposed to be in (subjective) complexity order