Meter reading

Meter reading has the same cadence as Train Spotting, but no one's made a movie about it yet that I know of.

I walked around and read the meters at the start of the year. Here's where we begin:

Van odometer - 311026km
Car odometer - 219540 km
Water meter - 3997
Gas meter - 0366
Electricity meter - 29015

The two odometers show exactly what they mean. If I drive one km, the meter goes up by one km.

All of the other meters use calibration constants. A lot of scientific instruments are like this. The meter goes up by one when you use some of the gas, or water, or electricity, but it isn't necessarily going up by one unit when you use exactly one unit.

There's nothing fishy going on, as long as you trust the utility companies to keep the instruments properly calibrated. We have no control over that. All we can do is take next month's reading, subtract the starting reading, and multiply the difference by the calibration constant. I can read the constant from my bill. When the bill comes I'll give a real-life example.