__Editor’s Note: Did you know that Don has been featuring a notable black American for Black History Month every day in February on our blog?__ “*Take a look!*”:http://blog.smalldog.com

While I was watching the Boston Celtics the other night, I noticed that many of the Celtics were wearing purple sneakers. It took the commentators about 24 hours in back-to-back games to figure out that the sneakers were a special-issue pair from Nike to honor Black History Month.

(I’ll have something purple for you at the end of this tribute to Bill Russell, who turned 80 this week.)

Bill Russell was born in 1934 in Monroe, Louisiana, which was strictly racially segregated. Russell was not a particularly healthy kid and struggled with illness much of his youth. Like most blacks in the segregated south, Bill Russell’s family was subject to racial prejudice and that hatred wore on the family. Charles Russell, Bill’s father, decided to move to Oakland, CA, where he found work at a shipyard.

In Oakland, life for the Russell family turned out to be tough. While Charlie found good work, his wife, Katie, became quite sick with the flu and died in 1946. Bill Russell was grief-stricken by the death of his mother, who’d been his biggest advocate and pushed him to work hard in school. In the wake of her passing, he committed himself to his studies.

Bill started playing basketball at school. He was awkward at first, but by his senior year at McClymonds High School, he was a starter. He was 6’9″, which attracted some attention, and tried our for the University of San Francisco as a walk-on and earned himself a scholarship.

It wasn’t long before the defensively adept Russell proved to be dominating presence, with a scorer’s touch and uncanny ability to rebound. During his three-year varsity career, in which he led the team to consecutive NCAA titles in 1955 and 1956, he averaged 20.7 points per game and 20.3 rebounds. Russell capped his amateur career by leading the U.S. men’s basketball team to the gold medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

That same year, in the NBA draft, the Boston Celtics orchestrated a deal with the St. Louis Hawks and traded for the draft rights to the young center. The team’s coach, Red Auerbach, coveted Russell as the missing piece to what he believed could be a championship roster.

With Russell anchoring the middle of the floor, the Celtics finished with the best record in the league in 1957, and went on to win the title over the Hawks in a tense seven-game series. It was the start of an unprecedented championship run for Russell and the Celtics. Over 12 years, the team played in 11 NBA finals, winning 10 of them. Even against more physically-imposing centers like Wilt Chamberlain, Russell was a defensive and rebounding force. He was named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player five times, and his 21,620 rebounds are second only to Chamberlain’s career mark.

Even as he won on the court, Russell, an outspoken backer of the Civil Rights Movement, experienced his struggles off it. He was never embraced by Boston fans in the way his white teammates were. On the road, it was not uncommon for him to have to sleep in a different hotel from the one the rest of the club used.

Playing in the wake of pioneers like Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper, and Sweetwater Clifton, Russell was the first African American player to achieve superstar status in the NBA. He also served a three season stint (1966–69) as player-coach for the Celtics, becoming the first African American NBA coach. Russell was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2011 for his accomplishments in the Civil Rights Movement both on and off the court.

Russell is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. He was selected into the NBA 25th Anniversary Team in 1971 and the NBA 35th Anniversary Team in 1980, and named as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996 — one of only four players to receive all three honors. In 2007, he was enshrined in the FIBA Hall of Fame. In 2009, the NBA announced that the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player trophy would be named the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award in his honor. Russell attended the final game of the Finals that year to present his newly-christened namesake award to its winner, Kobe Bryant.

__I have an autographed copy of the photo above — Russell holding his eleven NBA Championship rings — hanging in my house!__

*****

*Exclusive Kibbles & Bytes Purple Sneakers special — this week only!*

This bundle consists of a 16GB iPod nano in purple, a Chill Box Bluetooth speakers in Deep Purple, Urbanears Plattan headphones in Grape and of course, a Small Dog pint glass with a purple Small Dog logo — all for only $229.99!

“*Buy Don’s Purple Sneakers Bundle here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001268/don-s-purple-sneakers-special

Long time Kibbles readers and other Small Dog aficionados know that our slogan is “Always By Your Side.” This is, of course, a metaphor that describes our commitment to customer service, not a threat that we are going to follow you around wherever you go. However, now we can literally be “Always In Your Pocket” thanks to our new Consulting app for iOS.

“*Consulting by Small Dog Electronics*”:https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/consulting-by-small-dog-electronics/id796998322?mt=8&at=11lb7k is a free app that gives you an easy way to request assistance on the go. If you are having trouble with your email, can’t figure out how to sync your devices, are experiencing the spinning beach ball of doom, or have any other problem or question help is just a couple of taps away.

When you open the app, you will be asked to describe what we can help you with. Tap “Next” and you will be taken to a page to provide your contact information. We have made this as easy as possible by allowing you to choose a contact card from your Contacts to auto-fill the form or fill in the information manually. Choose whether you would like an emailed copy of your request and tap “Submit.” You can then sit back and relax because a member of our customer service team will be in touch ASAP to help you find the best solution to your problem.

This app is compatible with any iDevice running iOS 6 or later. The current release is Version 1.0, so please let us know if you have any suggestions for improvements or additional features.

One of my longtime hobbies has been building mini power generation systems. Usually these are based on solar, but I’ve also experimented with thermoelectric power generation. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my projects, it’s that power, and specifically electricity, is actually rather difficult to make.

Normally, we plug stuff into the wall and it just works. We might notice that our MacBook charger is rated to 85 watts, or our iPad needs 10 watts, but what does that mean? Obviously the MacBook requires about 8 times more power than the iPad, but it’s hard for us to conceptually understand how much 85 watts really is.

First, I’ll “science” a little bit and say that a watt is defined as volts x amps. So your typical home wall outlet, supplying 120 volts, would need to draw roughly 0.7 amps to power your 85 watt MacBook. This explains the MacBook’s 85 watts mathematically, but we still don’t really know how hard it is to generate 120 volts, or how the 0.7 amps factors in. Getting a feel for that is difficult because we typically only experience the consumption of power, not the generation of it.

To make things easier, I’ll round up our MacBook to 100 watts. This could also be expressed as 0.1 kilowatts. What would generating that power look like? Well, most people have seen solar panels, so a 100 watt solar panel would be roughly 0.5 square meters of surface area using the densest, most efficient panel available. A 100 watt wind turbine would have blades about 0.5 meters long and would require a sustained wind of about 20mph to produce the full 100 watts.

Hopefully, that helps get you started thinking about what generating 100 watts looks like. It’s not easy. In terms of things we use, 100 watts is a bit on the low side. Things like microwaves, electric stoves, hair dryers, and air conditioners, all easily draw over 1000 watts on average. Lighter appliances like fans, refrigerators, televisions and large desktop computers fall in the 100-750 watt range, while personal electronics including laptops, cell phones, and anything battery-powered fall in the sub-100 watt range.

For what they do, computers (including smartphones and tablets) are actually extremely power efficient. When running on limited battery supplies, they have to be. The most inefficient part tends to be converting the 120 volt AC power from the wall to the 12 volt DC internal components tend to require. The Mac mini is still one of the most power efficient desktops you can buy. The “*newest models consume roughly 10 watts at idle*”:https://www.apple.com/environment/reports/docs/macmini_server_oct2012.pdf, and when power requirements burst, they’re able to ramp up the power quickly and then bring it back down just as quickly. Even my 2007 model only draws 15-20 watts.

If you want to know more about power consumption of devices at home, I highly recommend “*P3 International’s Kill-A-Watt meter*”:http://www.p3international.com/products/p4400.html. In addition to being a watt and watt-hour meter, it can also measure amps, voltage, power factor and more. It’s definitely helped me get a better understanding of how much power my Mac mini consumes, and if I ever want to build a bigger power generation system, I’ll have an idea of exactly how much I’ll need.

Due to the storm on the east coast, UPS and others are experiencing shipping delays. Take a look at their “*website here*”:http://www.ups.com to check location-specific information.

“*Log into your Top Dog account here*”:https://checkout.smalldog.com/topdog/club to check tracking on any recent Small Dog order. We apologize for any inconvenience!

__In Vermont, we’re working on almost 18 inches in the capital city, and more in the mountains! Interesting tidbit: February 14 has__ “*historically been a big snowfall day*”:http://www.scenesofvermont.com/valentinesday_storm.html __in these parts. Happy Valentine’s Day!__

_Dear Friends,_

As a Nor’easter works its way up the coast, Vermonters are hoping for a big dump (probably unlike most of our friends to the east and south). Roger Hill, a meteorologist from WDEV, has coined the term “Nor’incher” to describe this year’s snow falls so far. We have not had much snow up here, and while the ski areas have had great snowmaking conditions, natural snow is way better. “If it’s gonna be winter, it would be nice to have some snow” is a sentence I hear a lot these days.

We smile as our southern neighbors get in a tizzy over a few inches of snow, but we know well just how treacherous driving can be in winter conditions. We have the gear to handle it up here, but even in the north country we have learned to be safe rather than sorry.

Speaking of our favorite radio station WDEV here in central Vermont, you should check out our weekly call-in show, Small Dog Speaks. Emily and I are the regular hosts of the 1-hour show on Thursdays at 1PM where we talk about Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple, PCs, dogs, the weather and just about anything. We are billed by the station as “progressive” radio, so every now and then, I might jump up on the soapbox, too (You Kibbles readers should be used to that!).

Lately, we have had our senior tech and service manager in S. Burlington, Steven Brooks, joining us, too. You can listen live each Thursday by tuning into WDEV in Vermont on FM96.1 or anywhere in the world(!) via the “*online stream here.*”:http://icecast.stretchinternet.com:8000/wdev Give us a call with your questions or comments at (toll-free) 877.291.8255. Previous shows are “*archived here*”:http://www.smalldog.com/sdspeaks-archive/ so you can catch up on what you’ve missed! We also have at least one trivia question giveaway during each show.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovers out there in Kibbles & Bytes land!

*****

*Here’s my exclusive Kibbles & Bytes Red Lovers’ special — this week only.*

This is a red for Valentine’s bundle that includes three great products. First is the
Seagate 1TB USB 3.0 Portable Backup Drive so you will always have those pictures backed up. Then, we add a pair of original red Beats by Dr. Dre Studio Headphones (with noise canceling features) for when you want to listen alone, and cap off the bundle with a pair of Chill Pill Speakers also in red! All three products in red for one low price.

Regular price would $390, but for this week you can grab this *Valentine’s Day bundle for only $299.99!*

“*Buy Don’s Red Lovers’ Special Bundle here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001267/don-s-red-lovers-special