I have finally found a reason to want a Wii, and amazingly, it isn’t even a game. It’s the WiiFit. Using the Wii with a special attachment to improve balance and strength … and to exercise. Of course, I don’t need hundreds of dollars worth of electronics to do the exercises I already do, and there really aren’t that many games for the Wii that I feel compelled to play, so I doubt very seriously we will ever get one. Both of us are still pretty happy with the Playstation 2 … and we are massively broke anyway. Being massively broke has a way of keeping us from buying all kinds of bright and shiny things we just have to have.

In other news, if you are a man dressed entirely too nicely for my neighborhood and carrying a notebook and a bunch of papers, and you have a small child wearing a suit (a SUIT) knock on my door, you will find no one home. You are selling something, and that something is most likely god. Well, I already have some god, and I got it for free. Thanks anyway. Move along. These are not the souls you are looking for.

And … we just got our new electric meter. I’m not 100% certain I am thrilled about the new meters. Sure, they will be more accurate than a human being reading numbers and writing them on a piece of paper, since it will all be sent automatically to the main office, and it will be great not to have to deal with grumpy meter readers tromping around my yard anymore, but listed among the “enhanced features” that will be “coming soon” is “energy management” … and I have found no explanation at all what that means. Anything they don’t explain in detail tends to be something they would rather you forget all about.

I know what “energy management” means when Austin Energy is talking about it’s free thermostats. It means they get to decide I don’t need my heat or air conditioning right that minute, because everyone wants their heat or air conditioning right that minute. We had one of those thermostats at the apartment, and I distinctly recall the installer telling me it had “energy management” features. The end result of its energy management was that more often than not, at the hottest time of the day, my air conditioning would turn off for 15-20 minutes without me asking it to do so. In a house, the AC being off for 15-20 minutes when it’s hot outside isn’t a big deal. When you live in a shoebox, the AC being off for 15-20 minutes means your shoebox ends up being as hot as it is outside, and then you use just as much energy as you just saved to get it cooled off again. Please note, we have not had them install one of those thermostats at the house, and when I read something from Austin Energy telling me the fancy new gadget they just attached to my house is going to include “energy management” features in the future, without any further explanation of what that means, it makes me feel a bit of concern.

This new meter is also going to phone home every time it registers a power outage at my house, and that may be a fair trade-off for whatever evil they have planned for the future. I hope the pinging from our house every time there’s anything resembling a rain drop on our street drives them insane. It isn’t a problem on our property. That’s been checked. It’s street level, and all my complaining has done no good at all. They just don’t seem to care. Maybe now they will get the message loud and clear that something is amiss with the electrical system on our street. Or not. Maybe that’s an “energy management” feature too.

I’ve been having problems motivating myself to get up off my butt today. I still haven’t done the dishes, and now that the trash bin is blessedly empty of two weeks worth of refuse, I suppose I should take out the trash and do the stupid dishes. I’ve wasted enough of the day sitting here at the computer doing nothing at all.