updates!

Developments since last time:

1.

The simpler loop pedal is a little irritating, but learning to tap my foot at the right moment is actually an important skill. Still waiting on the bigger looper from the seller, who has been a real pain.

2.

The mystery money is from a 401(k) that I had indeed forgotten about: I suspect either it was an automatic signup, or I got as far as participating because there was an employer match and it was free money? The plan shut down and rolled the money over to an IRA that will be created this week-ish, at which point I can roll them both into my other retirement accounts.

3.

After chatting my electricity-nerd friends, I learned that measuring an electric load can be a little tricky, and long story short, the $10 I saved buying the Belkin Conserve Insight instead of the Kill-A-Watt was more than wasted, in that there's a huge class of what's called "reactive load" which includes the biggest power users like, say, air conditioners, and is harder to measure than a "resistive load" like a light bulb: something about the phase of the motor canceling out the phase of the alternating current it's consuming.

With the correct tool, the rolling air conditioner is revealed to be consuming a much more intuitive 1100ish watts. So...yay!