Vampires in our midst

October 9, 7:49 AMNew Ipswich Community ExaminerJohn Poltrack

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There was a touch of Halloween in the air on Wednesday. It was very windy and leaves were flying about. In the middle of the night we lost power which unfortunately is not a rare occurrence in New Ipswich. When the power went out, I could hear the plaintive beeps and cries of the smoke detectors as the voltage drained from their capacitors.

The UPS connected to the computer made a valiant attempt to keep the computer alive, but the batteries would eventually drain so I chose to be merciful and shut it down. The house is very quiet when all the power is out. This made me think about all the electrical devices that suck the electrical lifeblood from the grid and take their toll on our power bill.

Fans of vampire movies and television series know that vampires will not cross a threshold unless invited, and it occurred to me that I've willingly taken in all these labor saving and entertainment devices. After the power was restored I wandered through the house armed with my trusty Kill-A-Watt meter which measures the power that a device consumes. Unlike Abraham Van Helsing I had no intention of destroying these power "vampires", I simply wanted to identify them.

One insidious beast is the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD digital recorder that ironically I use to record HBO's vampire series "True Blood". This device which is supposedly turned off has a hard drive and fan draining a continuous 17 to 20 watts of precious electric power around the clock. We also have an iron which has a nasty habit of turning itself on during a power interruption, not a very clever engineering feature. Various "wall wart" transformers are used to power all the computer accessories and rechargeable batteries. These devices are slightly warm to the touch indicating their parasitic nature.

At night the vampires come alive and their eerie glowing green and red LED power indicators bathe the house in a ghastly light. Happy Halloween.