Work here in New York is going well. In fact, it’s gone so smoothly that my biggest problem is actually back at the hotel. I think I’ve got it solved, with just a little ingenuity. It worked out so well, I’m presenting my solution here in case anyone else winds up in the same situation.

The Problem:

Apparently, the folks here at the very old and very well known Hotel Beacon in New York have hit on some hard times, energywise. They’ve installed these new thermostats on the air conditioning units. They’ve got a motion detector, of the same type used in alarm systems. The idea is to shut down the air conditioning when you’re not in the room. Unfortunately, the motion detector can’t tell a sleeping (or resting) person from the complete absence of a person, so it shuts the air conditioning down about every ten minutes. My first two nights here were quite comical — I’d wake up sweating, wave my arms around a bit until the fan kicked on, and go back to sleep when the room cooled down. Repeated once per hour, this performance grew old very fast.

Tonight, I need sleep. The idea is that something needs to move, so I don’t have to. First, I tried hanging the drapes out in front of the air conditioning unit, but they’re not quite long enough and didn’t fly very well. I also tried hanging small laundry items there, but they’re too heavy to move well.

The Solution:

I hit upon my idea when I spied a floor lamp in the corner. A hot light bulb … blessed convection! Now all I needed was a suitable turbine to take advantage of the draft. This I fashioned from a strip of stiff cardboard and a very expensive 0.5mm drafting pencil (which I hope will not melt!) The sleeve of the pencil makes a nice bearing and the cardboard (suitably punched and warped into a turbine) rotates freely around it. I then put the lamp in front of the thermostat, so that the “blades” rotate slowly but steadily, waving at the motion sensor.

Yankee Ingenuity is appropriate in New York, the home of the Yankees, I think. My makeshift motion detector spoofer has been working just great for about three hours, allowing me to vegetate in front of the computer or watch TV without waving my arms every ten minutes. When it comes time for sleep, we’ll see how much the light bothers me. If it does, then I am considering using the hotel-supplied clothes iron on a low setting to create some convection. In a pinch, there’s also a hair dryer here that (on its lowest, cool setting) makes very little noise, and I can always replace my natural draft with a forced draft!