Quote of the day

"I finally figured it out, Stephen Harper is making a mockumentary about parliament, but to avoid paying scale hasn’t told the other actors."

--From a comment on the Maclean's blog Inkless Wells, related to this series of entries which provide an explanation from Kady O'Malley's Inside the Queensway.

Humidiologist Required

On Saturday I tidied up the basement for our upcoming houseguests, visiting us to enjoy one of the world's largest GLBT Pride events*. One task was "move the winter boots to another spot", and I didn't expect it to be quite so exciting as it was: there was water under them. Not a puddle, or a leak, but some drops of water as if they had just recently been worn in the snow or rain. Except they'd been sitting there for two months. Humidity, we guessed?

On Sunday night I checked and the water droplets were still there, rudely refusing to evaporate. This seemed like more evidence of excess humidity. Since the room stores many books and some artwork, we thought maybe that's not a good situation.

Today, I bought a dehumidifier from Pneu Canadien** and set it up. It has all sorts of lights and indicators and so forth. However, I do not yet find it coherent. It's supposed to have a setting (such as 60%, which is the default), to which it will automatically attempt to adjust the room. When I plugged it in, it said 43% (ostensibly the current humidity -- my ass!). Then I set it to just run nonstop and checked it after an hour. Then it said 58%. Was it humidifying? Rebel scum.

Later I set it to automatically work, and it has displayed numbers like 59%, 48%, and also the unintuitive (and undocumented) "P1". It is creating water, but I chose it for the lights and doodads a bit. If I just wanted dehumidity I could have saved a few bucks!



Vinny's tongue-in-cheek theory was that it was not showing the current humidity, but rather the dehumidity -- how much humidity was not there. But seriously, if I need quadratic equations to make the LCD make sense, I am going back to wiping up water with friggin' paper towels.

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* I search in vain each year for some proof that Toronto is largest, but all I can find is proof by elimination of other competitors. This year though, it looks like we've been eclipsed, but that's OK -- it's still friggin' insane. This year's research (some are for the parade, some for the entire event, all for 2004 or later):

Sao Paulo, Brazil	3,500,000
Toronto, Canada		1,200,000
London, UK		600,000
Vancouver, Canada	380,000
Amsterdam, Netherlands	350,000
Sligo, Ireland		100

** My Dad always calls Canadian Tire that.