THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

It's Sunday, and this is a day I experiment on mostly interesting stuff.  First, though, I awake every morning and gaze out over Honolulu.  In a way, it is unfortunate that Kuakini Hospital is right there in the middle.  However, today, the first thing I saw was a rainbow:

In the thirty or so years I have lived here, I have never seen a rainbow that low, essentially over Honolulu Airport.  Yesterday, looking towards Punchbowl, I saw another one:

and over Pearl's sunburst:

Those photos are the GOOD.  Two others are the eight stroke victory of 22-year old Rory McIlroy at the U.S. Open (youngest with Tiger Woods to win a major) last week and the ten stroke win by 22-year old Yani Tseng today for her fourth major (youngest ever).  A kind of BAD, though, is that Rory is from Northern Ireland and Yani is from Taiwan.  Where are the Americans?   Where's Michelle?

A real BAD, though, are those cable boxes, for it turns out they have become an energy liability.  Can  you believe that my Oceanic high definition/DVR box uses 446 kWh/year?  This costs $132 in Honolulu...and I have three of them, so our condominium has a bill of $396/year just for these innocent looking silver boxes.  At most, I must average watching each set an hour/day, so for 23 hours each day they are sucking up electricity for no reason.  If you unplug the box, anytime you want to re-use it, it has to go through the start-up cycle, which could take several minutes, and you never how well this next connection will work, so you can't use a timer.  The Europeans have, actually, solved this problem by  having a deep sleep mode, which only uses 5% normality.  Why, you ask, don't we have this option?    I guess it is because, as in flushing toilets to conserve water (where in much of the world there are at least two flush buttons), we are just plain wasteful.  Apparently, the energy used by the latest refrigerators costs less than this type of cable box.  SO COMPLAIN TO YOUR CABLE SERVER!!!!!

The UGLY?  Easily today, Yoda (above), a 2 pound 14-year old Chinese Crested and Chihuaha poi dog, the victor in the 2011 Ugliest Dog Contest.  Interesting story that when Terry Schumacher found her abandoned behind an apartment building, he thought she was a rat.  Something about the Chinese Chrested, for it was the winner in 2008, and this same CCC combination, named Elwood (below) claimed dominance in 2007.  Wow, Elwood is BAAAD, too.

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