I got a fancy bidet toilet seat. It works fairly well and having water for washing is great. But I don’t love some details, see notes below. Mostly I wanted to share how much power the thing uses.

About 80 Watt-hours a day, or an average of 3 watts. Note this is without the seat heater. About ¼ of the power was from using the bidet actively once a day; the rest was just having it plugged in unused.

That’s very little power, like one hour of an old fashioned lightbulb per day. Or about 3 cents a day. Most bidet functions take just a few watts when operating: the pump, the fans. It uses less than a watt on standby. The big power consumption is anything with heat: the water heater, the blow dryer. Those use 200W when active but that’s not very often, the water tank seems well insulated. In theory the device can draw up to 500W but the most I saw was 250W. But then I never used the seat heater.

I don’t like the compromises involved in having the bidet be built into the seat. It’s great for retrofitting an existing toilet but it makes it bulky and the seat is uncomfortable. Having the water supply and bidet sprayer integrated into the toilet bowl must work better. I wish I at least had an elongated toilet; the washlet blocks a fair amount of the bowl.

Toto washlets come in a dizzying array of options; see here for a breakdown. Honestly all I want is warm water and an oscillating spray, the other features don’t seem so important to me. (For awhile I use one of those cheap $30 cold water doodads; it worked pretty well.) I think an instant heater is probably worth the upgrade price though; the C5 tank runs out fast and while it’s well insulated, heating on demand would be better.

I worked at Twitter part-time starting June 2007. I’ve never talked much about this in public. I’m revisiting it because of the complete disaster Elon Musk has made of Twitter. His sabotage of the company has felt personal to me. It hurts to watch him destroy something I helped create. The recent API debacle particularly stings.

Early Twitter was chaotic without enough experienced engineers. I acted as a management advisor. I helped the engineers organize and the executives work better with engineering. I did some good but I’ve always wished I could have done more. In retrospect, I should have committed more time. I did enjoy a long insider relationship with some of the leadership and was of some help that way.

The most useful concrete thing I did was what we called “Nelson’s graphs”. I made some simple measurements of performance like tweet delivery times. Post a tweet to one account and see when it shows up on another account’s timeline.

Google has agreed to settle a gender discrimination suit brought by employees. The $118M headline looks big but it works out to only $7600 per employee. The harm was “the company paid female employees approximately $16,794 less per year”. It’s hardly restoring equity.

I faced a similar tiny settlement amount in the 2010 antitrust suit when it was found that Google, Adobe, Apple, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and eBay were all colluding to not hire each others’ employees to illegally suppress wages. The first settlement “my lawyers” agreed to was so low that the judge threw out the agreement saying they should do better. The final amount was better but still just a few thousand dollars for each employee.

I was mad enough I wrote a tart letter to the court when I opted out of the settlement.

I am unimpressed with my nominated attorneys. The fact that Judge Koh ruled the original settlement was “below the range of reasonableness” suggests my attorneys are poor negotiators and have not represented the plaintiffs effectively. … I’m irritated that they cannot even do class members the courtesy of answering email.

As an unnamed class member I had nothing really to do with the suit. At least when Gilardi & Co saw this letter to the judge they finally answered my email.

Class action lawsuits are the American way of resolving harm to groups of ordinary people. I understand why the lawyers are well paid for them. But they’re seldom a good tool for monetary equity. There is value in getting the company to admit to its bad behavior and make changes.

I learned a few years ago I have a brother. No one knew, my mother gave birth to him in 1959 and immediately gave him up for adoption. My mother died two decades ago so details are hard to come by. My brother worked for years to find us. I’m glad he succeeded! And I feel sad for my mother’s story.

I also feel guilty for my initial reaction. A stranger called me out of the blue and told me he was my brother and in that moment it felt wrong. I went with my gut and told him I thought it was a scam. I still feel bad for my rejection. Fortunately he was persistent and talked to other family members and about a year later I got back in touch and we confirmed with a genetic match. Our first talk felt strange because there’s no normal way to have that conversation.

My mother never told anyone. She was 21 when she had my brother. She married my father five years later. No one knew about her secret child. Not her sister, not her best friends, not my sister or me. I don’t even know if she told my father but I hope she trusted him enough to. Her parents knew but not her grandparents. This secretness makes me so sad for her, she bore this difficult thing without support.

We found a small cache of memorabilia that makes sense now. Mementos from a summer in New York. A letter from Elizabeth Arden (!) saying what a bright young woman my mother was and how nice it was that she visited her health spa in Maine. Just after the birth, I’m curious whether Ms. Arden was a regular host for young women in trouble.

It turns out that unintended pregnancies and complex family trees are way more common than we acknowledge. Ken’s family is full of surprise cousins and grandchildren being raised as children. My mother and her generation treated birth out of wedlock as a source of shame. My generation doesn’t quite know what to think. With genetic testing now keeping things secret is much, much harder. I feel no shame but even here I’m avoiding names, for privacy.

We know who the birth father is but my brother has been cautious about approaching him, disrupting his life. I would love to know more, he was in my mother’s social circle and I would like to imagine young love or at least a summer fling. Instead all I know is the evidence of her shame and suppression.

But now I also know my brother! He’s an interesting and successful man and a pleasant part of my life. I’m glad to know him.

I’ve gotten interested in lowering my carbon footprint lately. That’s led me to do some light research on a couple of consumer power topics.

CleanPowerSF is San Francisco’s green energy program. Basically PG&E operates the grid but CleanPowerSF gets the power from green sources. Surprisingly, there’s no real extra cost for typical users.

My life has significantly improved in the last month thanks to a CPAP machine treating my obstructive sleep apnea. If you are tired all the time or think you are having trouble breathing when you sleep, please read this post. Sleep apnea is a dangerous condition that ruins your quality of life and may lead to early death. You might be able to greatly improve your life with simple treatment. If you’re looking for more information, Apnea Board has been helpful to me.

For the past year and a half I’ve been really tired. Sleeping 8 hours a night and a 90 minute nap in the day, still falling asleep in my chair. I chalked it up to Covid lockdown or something and ignored it for awhile. As far as I knew I was sleeping fine; Ken said I was snoring a lot and sometimes struggling for a breath but he didn’t seem concerned. Finally it clicked and I realized it was not normal. Now I’m using a CPAP and I’m sleeping well and am full of energy.

Diagnosis starts with your doctor, who refers you to a sleep specialist, who listens to your story and takes a look at your airway and orders a sleep study. You can do the study at home, you just borrow a small monitoring kit for a night and they collect and analyze the data. It’s very simple, they produce a score called AHI which quantifies any breathign problems. Most insurance will cover the testing.

Before the test I learned a lot myself with a pulse oximeter. that records my blood oxygen every few seconds. It showed me my blood oxygen was dropping very low every 50 seconds, all night. That is not normal. Then I took a video of myself sleeping and saw that basically I was not breathing at all normally, just getting the occasional gasp of air. It’s a wonder I’m still alive. The sleep test confirmed severe OSA.

Treatment comes after diagnosis. There’s a bunch of treatment options; my doctor recommended a CPAP machine. These work by pumping higher pressure air into your mouth and nose; the pressure keeps your airway inflated and lets you breathe. A simple CPAP is not a ventilator, it’s not breathing for you, but it’s similar. You turn on the machine, put on a mask sealed to your nose (and mouth if needed) and sleep.

I’ll he honest: a lot of people have a hard time with CPAP, there’s like a 50% rejection rate from people who hate the idea or find the machine uncomfortable. I was highly motivated and literally from the first night the improvement was so enormous that I’ve taken to it enthusiastically. I sleep fine with it, much better actually. My blood oxygen is now well above 90% all night and I have very few breathing incidents any more. I don’t love the thing; the mask is a nuisance, there’s some mild side effects like more farting. But I dislike suffocating in my sleep a lot more than the hassle.

Benefits for me were immediate and enormous. Literally the first morning I was dancing to music while making coffee. I can read in the afternoon without falling asleep. If I take a nap it’s a 10 minute snooze, not a 90 minute snorefest. My blood pressure is lower. (OSA basically creates panic all night and is a terrible strain on your body.) No luck on weight loss yet, that’s a benefit many OSA sufferers report. More energy to exercise though. One thing I’ve noticed in CPAP users; they tend to get very attached to their machines and can’t imagine going a night without them. I didn’t understand that before. Now I do.

Equipment was a bit of a mystery to me at first and the medical system is not great at advising patients. By far the best CPAP machine for basic OSA is the ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet. The “AutoSet” is key; the machine automatically adjusts to its sensing of your breathing so you don’t have to guess at the right pressure. It’s a really nicely designed piece of equipment. If you’re data-minded be sure to put in an SD Card and get OSCAR to get very detailed second by second info on your breathing while you sleep. The AutoSet goes for about $800 now. Insurance should cover it but they are notoriously a pain in the ass about it. Do not let your insurer bully you into getting inferior equipment. For me it’s the best $800 I’ve ever spent.

The other half of the system is the mask. My first mask was the AirTouch F20, a basic full face mask. It has worked great. After my first month I switched to a smaller AirFit F30i, the way the hose comes out of the top of your head is a big improvement. Note these are both full face masks; if you don’t breathe through your mouth (much) you can probably use a much smaller nasal mask or pillow. A full mask kit is about $150 and again should be covered by insurance.

The medical system wants you to buy all this stuff from a “Durable Medical Equipment supplier” and the quality of those vendors varies enormously. Some are outright scams, including doctor kickbacks. I ended up skipping insurance and buying from CPAP Direct. In theory my insurance will reimburse me but so far that hasn’t worked out. The big pieces require a prescription but you can buy a lot of components and replacement parts, on Amazon without a prescription for much cheaper.

Maintenance is a bit of a hassle. I have to refill the humidifier tank every day. Also clean parts of the mask, other parts need weekly cleaning. The mask is intended to be replaced on a regular schedule; every month for the “pillow” (the part in contact with your face). That’s where ordering cheap replacements on Amazon can save a lot of money, maybe even if you have good insurance.

Conclusion I can’t emphasize enough what an improvement to my life CPAP treatment has been. Obstructive sleep apnea sucks. I encourage anyone reading this who wonders if they have a breathing problem at night to talk to their doctor, or maybe try a pulse oximeter on their own, or address it somehow. CPAP treatment isn’t so hard! It works! I’m enthusiastic enough about it to be writing this blog post and am glad to discuss it privately with anyone who asks.

PS: a special thank you to Obama and the ACA for making it possible to treat and discuss this problem without rendering yourself uninsurable.

My doctor’s office, One Medical, continues to mislead its patients about Covid vaccine availability.

At the end of February One Medical got caught violating vaccine priorities in California and in Washington state (at least). The allegation is they allowed clients to skip the line and get vaccinated before they were eligible. They deny any deliberate wrongdoing but the story has blown up enough there’s a congressional investigation.

The problem for One Medical patients is that states have turned off the vaccine supply to their clinics. And the company’s response to that reality has been terrible. Nowhere on their website can you find a clear statement that they cannot source vaccine for their patients. If you go to the vaccine page they deliberately misinform their patients: