12:34 – We’re still moving furniture around downstairs, but the downstairs den is now pretty much the way Barbara wants it in terms of furniture placement. We now have five large bookcases sitting empty that we need to get books transferred onto. Those bookcases, incidentally, could be moved upstairs, where they’d make excellent gabions if push ever comes to shove.
Other than the stuff I’ve mentioned about getting science kit production ramped up, the major item on my to-do list is to get at least a basic off-grid solar setup installed. Before I do that, I need to find out whether our well pump is 120VAC or 240VAC, and find out what the start-up and run currents are. At this point, I’m assuming that a 5KW true sine-wave inverter will do the job. An 800W array, something like this one, should reliably produce maybe 2.4KWh on an average day and more on a good day, which’d require about 180AH of deep-cycle batteries to store a day’s worth of output. This would obviously be a major project in terms of time, effort, and cost, so for the time being we’ll depend on our 7KW generator.
Still no word on what happened in Las Vegas, although I find it suspicious that the authorities have not released the name of the would-be mass murderess. I’m guessing it’ll be a moslem-sounding name. The authorities have been at pains to emphasize that this wasn’t terrorism, which of course makes me think it probably was.
Still no word on what happened in Las Vegas
See my comment on Sunday. A Black lady with a toddler in the back seat.
My little 400W solar array puts out 1.2kWh on a perfect day in the summer. Right now, not having adjusted the angle as I should have, I get ~0.6kWh on a full sun day. If I adjust the angle I might be able to get 0.9kWh. Those are numbers for perfect solar days which don’t happen too often.
I suggest more battery capacity than one day’s max output to buffer those cloudy post-apocalypse days. Lead acid deep cycle batteries also have a longer life span if you don’t cycle them to their full capacity. I have 4 Trojan T105 batteries (6V, 225Ah) wired as 12V giving me 450Ah total. I cycle between 100% and 75% full over one or two day periods. According to the Trojan data sheet using only 25% vs 50% of the capacity more than doubles the life of the batteries.
And still more documents required for the condo purchase.
It never ends with the VA…don’t forget, fuck the Vet!
@JLP – to be clear – are you indicating that keeping them near full and recharging frequently provides longer life than running them down and recharging when needed?
If so, then I can weigh in with experience, as I have many battery-powered devices, and those that I leave on the charger except when needed are consistently reliable units. Those that I use rarely and plug in to charge before use (after sitting on the shelf and, presumably, discharging) need new batteries more frequently. In the area of 2 years instead of 5 years.
She has a history of motor vehicle crimes….
nick
@jimL,
charging, discharging, total life number of cycles, etc are all dependent on battery chemistry.
Small power tools, etc won’t really be a good comparison to deep cycle lead acid batteries.
nick
I think Elon Musk’s “Home Battery” thing uses LiOn or LiPo batteries. Any comment on how those would last compared to lead-acid?
@Nick
I’m dealing with specifically SLA devices. From small timers with batteries that fit in the palm of my hand to display clocks to large RFID-type readers and luggable batteries. That’s why @JLP’s post caught my eye.
Not to be confused with the Lithium ion battery in one device that I am NOT sure about. The manual and christmas tree both tell me I’m charging it right (plug in until tree is lit, then unplug. Top off before use), but the electronics report nearly empty batteries when I’m using it. It still lasts for hours, but it makes me nervous.
Huh, didn’t realize anyone was still using SLA for handheld devices.
I’ve got a couple of audio testers that use them, but they are a decade old….
My understanding is keep them up with a trickle charge, and don’t deep discharge them or sulfates form.
MrAtoz,
For one thing, anything w/ Li in it is much more likely to burst into flame than straight lead acid…or indeed, ANY of the other chemistries.
And at least for LiOn, when they are done, they are REALLY done. No limping along with low charges. Good performance up to the end, then nothing. (both in normal use, and in overall life cycles.)
And LiOn is very expensive compared to lead acid.
One thing that looked like it might be the coming thing was an onsite generator based on a fuel cell that reacts natural gas. I remember the google folks getting behind that for a while, but then heard nothing. It ALMOST is the shipstone technology of Heinlein fame, at least if it decentralized power generation.
nick
LOL:
http://bearingarms.com/cbs-news-badly-misfires-heavily-armed-states-america/?utm_source=badaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
“Here’s some real figures. Florida had 1,463,832 licensed concealed carriers as of March. In addition, they’ve done 978,147 NICS background through November 30 of this year alone, and the state typically averages more than one million background checks per year. There is no registry which tells us how many firearms there are total in Florida, but its likely to be far close to 20 million than 200,000. CBS isn’t just dead wrong in this report, they’re not even in the same planet.”
When we see their lips moving, the MSM, President, Congress, politicians, banksters, humanities profs, etc., we know they’re lying.
@JimL
I put the solar/battery thing in as a small backup generator in case of power outage or EOTWAWKI. But since I am generating power every day I figure I might as well use it for light and small devices. As a result my %full value (from the charge monitor) goes up and down. Usually only down to ~85%, sometimes down to 75%.
According to the Trojan battery website the lifetime number of cycles (discharge and recharge) is dependent on how deeply you discharge the battery. Discharging to 50% full regularly gives about 1600 cycles, discharging to 75% full regularly gives ~3200 cycle (chart in link below). I think the number of life cycles might be increased with good maintenance (check fluid, regular equilization).
http://www.trojanbattery.com/pdf/datasheets/T105RE_TrojanRE_Data_Sheets.pdf
Every job this week was cancelled this morning, so I am home free for the rest of the year. Literally. Not surprised. It was actually surprising that lawyers would schedule something this week, as none that I know work for the last 2 weeks of the year. Depositions are often used as emotional leverage to get people to settle, rather than go through the trauma of a lawsuit. Cancellations are many in our business; we cannot charge for them, precisely because they are used as leverage to settle.
In TV we worked intensively right up through the day before Xmas Eve, in order to give everybody the week between Xmas and New Year’s off. Of course, when I worked in TV news, there was no week or day off, although half-staffing was common, and we alternated working days depending on how the calendar fell. First job of the New Year was figuring out how we would get through the holidays of the year.
Regarding the LV tragedy, (Al Jaz named the suspect straight-away, BTW–whatever your politics, that’s a fine news organization there), I have always been amazed at how there is zero protection for pedestrians in the US in areas with heavy foot traffic. Europe has solid posts in the ground (Bollards) between the road and pedestrian sidewalk anywhere there is heavy foot traffic. When I lived in Chicago in the ’80’s, something like this happened on Michigan Avenue, and I have ever since wondered why we refuse to put a modicum of protection between pedestrians and traffic.
http://www.transalt.org/sites/default/files/news/magazine/014Fall/14bollard.html
http://safety.transportation.org/htmlguides/peds/ex_images/ex_V-04.jpg
In Vermont peds have the Absolute Right of Way, even when they blithely roll right out in front you wearing all black at night and nowhere near a crosswalk. Hit one at your eternal legal peril.
I’m off the rest of the year, too, being unemployed now for over a year, but it seems my forty-hour weeks here continue anyway, esp. during the Holiday Season Formerly Known As Christmas.
Overcast, dark and breezy today; looks like a late November day instead of late December; sky looks like we could get snow any minute. But the weather liars were saying high fotties all this week. Who to believe? Them or our lying eyes?
Lakeisha Holloway. Chalk up another success for urban black culture: she was a poster child for black success in 2012, getting a position with the forestry service despite dropping out of school. Nonetheless, she apparently couldn’t hold the job, got knocked up, the baby-daddy is no where in sight, and she’s living in a car with her kid.
Motive for mowing down pedestrians? At a guess, she flipped out. Look at all them rich bastards, and she ain’t got nuthin, and it ain’t right, and…
Not sure about the snow, but the jetstream is in an odd position of dipping south over the Rockies, then almost a straight line up to Ottawa, so the cold is to the north of both of us. For some reason, that usually wildly undulating jetstream is not crossing very far south into the eastern section of the country. Could be the El Niño effect; I really don’t know. I would rather have rain than snow and sun than rain. We are getting plenty of rain this year, which was predicted by Cow College (Purdue University Ag School) and sure enough, farmers around me are installing larger field drainage, which Purdue recommended. No tiles anymore; it is miles of rubber tubing. Not sure how the water gets into the tubes without accompanying mud, but ditch witches have been tearing up the fields everywhere around here.
I do feel fortunate in a way, that I can keep working without a fulltime job. There is no one in my former industry who would hire me (I tried diligently when I returned from Germany), as no one my age has a job in that industry anymore. Although there was a time when that career paid ordinary workers well, only the CEO’s and VP’s get middle-class compensation now. As nearly as I can determine from friends around me, it takes 3 jobs to support the family my father raised with one household income. Either one parent in the family has to have 2 jobs, or one of the kids has to have a job and contribute near to 100% for everyone to lead the life many of us did with only 2 jobs (and our parents with 1 job) when our kids were at home.
Robert Reich had a recent column describing how voter disenchantment is forcing longtime ‘professional’ politicians into the cold (where they belong) in favor of guys like Trump, who he intimates are facists offering the protections Mussolini and Hitler did to the electorate.
I prefer to think that the electorate is not stupid and realizes the Lindsay Grahams, Jeb Bushes, and Tea Partiers are nothing but lying hypocrites who do the exact opposite of what they promise. Every Tea Party candidate elected in 2012 promised to vote against Obamacare, but over half caved and voted for it.
As for the film about Nazi’s reigning supreme—remember that is only fiction. There were tyrants long before Hitler and Mussolini, and there will be more as time wears on. But I do have to say that I feel less free and less safe back here in the US than I did in Berlin, and I agree that we are imploding from within. This constant haranguing about higher voting turnouts solving all problems is bullshit. Americans KNOW their votes are not solving any problems, and that is why they don’t keep banging their heads against that wall. Lowest percentage voter turnout in history last month in Tiny Town.
She evidently found it much more important to braid and dye her hair and hang chit off it than to maybe spend that time and money actually studying for a decent shot at a probably guaranteed state job doing nuttin’ but sittin’ on her no doubt ample behind. One wonders, though, if there was ANY kind of link anywhere to hadji stuff in her background…just sayin’….probably not; probably just lost her chit and decided to take out some nasty rayciss white folks, or maybe not even that, just anybody within range.
This will all be put down to her struggles and travails and hardships and all the pressure she was under and maybe some prescription drugs or she just lost control of the vehicle.
Gotta say, though, livin’ large up here in Northwest Retroville, exurban white culture ain’t no day at the beach, either; we just gotta look across the street and see a building full of cock-a-soids with no visible means of support yet they got ciggies, pizza deliveries, decent cars, big-screen tee-vees, iPads, iPhones, etc., etc. They, at least, don’t get into it out on the street or light up the night with small arms fire, but there are some denizens just a couple of miles up the road who make those guys in the “Deliverance” movie look like Methodist or Unitarian Sunday school preachers.
IMHO the Las Vegas leach committed a Hate Crime, based on who she mowed down and statements by the Valet that she left the car with.
She will excused for her minor indiscretion because we all know that only black lives matter (lower case used for a reason and to double my micro-aggression points 😉 ).
I bet she even has a GoFundMe page up and running now.
“…I would rather have rain than snow and sun than rain.”
We’d much rather have the snow and somewhat milder temps than the bitter, bitter cold we had the last two winters up here, and we like to get out on our x-c skis and snowshoes in it.
“… it takes 3 jobs to support the family my father raised with one household income.”
Ditto. And no one seems the least bit surprised or disturbed by this. My dad took care of our mom and five kids with a house and car and we never went hungry and got at least a little something at Xmas and birthdays, on $13,000 a year. Try that shit now.
Of course, I worked my ass off outside skool, shoveling driveways, mowing lawns, and part-time jobs at the local movie theaters, supermarkets and department store. While also doing team sports and scads of illegal activities with classmates between Framingham and Boston during the late Glorious Sixties.
“But I do have to say that I feel less free and less safe back here in the US…”
Ditto. And it’s no accident. We’re moving toward a very polarized society with major flash points in the big cities and it’s anyone’s guess how this will pan out, but something has gotta give in the next few years, with $200 trillion in debt, politicians eagerly welcoming in millions of barbarian thug invaders, and trying to light off World War IV every chance they get. Our borders are a joke and our cyber and old-school infrastructure is wide open to whoever wants to hack away at it.
Mr. Chuck and I are in HUGE agreement here that voting doesn’t do shit for us and hasn’t for a very long time now. Anyone who still believes it does probably still believes in the Tooth Fairy and Santa, too. While they openly laugh at us and treat us like cattle.
They, at least, don’t get into it out on the street or light up the night with small arms fire, but there are some denizens just a couple of miles up the road who make those guys in the “Deliverance” movie look like Methodist or Unitarian Sunday school preachers.
Hater.
More troops lost in Afghanistan. That’s totally on Ofukstik. Why do we have anybody in that God forsaken shit hole?
A suicide bomber drove a motorcycle into a joint convoy of U.S., NATO and Afghan forces on Monday, blowing himself up and killing six Americans, a brutal sign of deteriorating security in a region where Western troops are trying to help locals overtake the Taliban.
The explosion marked the deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan since an October helicopter crash, and the worst attack on Americans since six died in a July 2012 roadside bombing, according to the website iCasualties.
I can’t wait for Cankles to double down because…PUTIN!!!!
She will excused for her minor indiscretion because we all know that only black lives matter (lower case used for a reason and to double my micro-aggression points
She’s the victim, fools! Cause she’s BLAAAAAACK!!! All the WHITEY!’s were axing for it.
And still more documents for the VA loan.
I was being facetious earlier with it being 100 documents. It’s only 92 different documents at this point. This is a complete and total joke. Don’t forget, fuck the Vet. We haven’t even got to the closing and VA inspection. Can you image the paperwork we’ll get when this is final. Probably a small forest worth.
OFD, a Polish guy immitating your C17 hero…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-22/polish-professor-jailed-over-plot-to-blow-up-parliament/7047266
“…I can’t wait for Cankles to double down because…”
And she will, too; don’t forget, she’s a bonafide war heroine herself, thanks to having to duck for cover under live fire somewhere or other, I forget, and of course, Benghazi and Tripoli and Syria. Mere enlisted scum and junior officers don’t matter, unless, of course, they’re one of the Protected Grievance Victims.
“Can you image the paperwork we’ll get when this is final. Probably a small forest worth.”
Hey, not just that; watch out for the “gotcha” at the actual closing; we got socked with another couple of grand in costs that pretty much wiped us out for cash that day, and lucky we had it, too. Plus, you guessed it, more paperwork to sign off on in quadruplicate. Plan on several hours of more bullshit, hermano.
“OFD, a Polish guy immitating your C17 hero…”
Is he Roman Catholic??? And he only got a few years??? My guy was gonna get hung, drawn and quartered after a few weeks of savage torture. Hey: got SpellCheck? Haha, just kidding; I make typos all the time. That IS a typo, amirite? LOL.
(they don’t teach English anymore down in Oz, evidently…)
KIDDING, I’m KIDDING!
More troops lost in Afghanistan
I’ve thanked God many times that my son refused to volunteer to go there. What a nightmare!
The Bushes, Obola, Biden and many more should have gone there. And stayed.
OFD, what did I spell wrong? Don’t laugh at me, I never really learned.
99.999% of Poles are idolaters, er I mean Kathliks, so he probably is.
You still interested in ghosting term papers? Perhaps for a small fee you could pre-check my posts for spelling, grammar and style.
All hail Cicero!
And no, I don’t have a spell checker.
@ miles, it was immitating, too many mmmmmmms.
Firefox has a built in spell checker that puts a red squiggly line under questionable words.
It saves me on every single post….
nick
I’ve tried to activate the spell checker on this machine. No worky. Works fine on my other machines.
Yes, I assumed it was that word. I blame the American inspired fad of not drilling spelling that swept through South Australian skools in the late Sixties. Yes, I know I’m old enough to have learned since. Too lazy.
Wow. The mainstream media sure has fumbled the LV story—at least online (I don’t own a teevee). As near as I can tell, CNN did not identify the woman until 19:24, whereas Al Jazeera published her name at 06:34 this morning. NYTimes has yet to identify her, and has no updates whatsoever since the brief, no-details story this morning. In their ‘evening briefing’, that story does not even make it on the list. Steve Harvey’s gaff at the Miss Universe pageant does, though. Obviously that is more important than the LV tragedy.
By now you have surely noticed that every negative news event in the US now has to be analyzed by paid government officials as to whether it is an ‘act of terrorism’ or not. And guess what? There’s not nearly enough stuff happening here for us to be busy with: Nobama just declared killing lions in Africa is now a crime in the US. Geez.
@OFD, here is another person for your list:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fec-chair-who-sought-to-regulate-drudge-slams-colleagues-as-dysfunctional/article/2578893
The list is a long one by now, but we have several levels of priority cases before us when the time comes. I also note, once again and sadly, that certain surnames seem to pop up a lot more than you’d expect from the laws of probability vs. numbers among the general population and they, of all folks, ought to have more functional memories of the last century’s horrors.
And as Mr. Chuck points out, our MSM reporting sucks; even though I take them with very large grains of salt, there is better news (and pics) at AJ and RT, again, sad to say. Drudge is good for the Fox Nooz version of “conservative” political views and Salon online is the neo-Maoist tabloid version.
I read about batteries, since I was working time ago with PBXs and batteries, my only advice (FWIW) is use PB batteries, and if Lorain still lives, glass or plastic containers with replaceable elements, wet cell.
I had a 20 years old battery and you could see the bottom with Pb, clean it and you have 20 years more.They survived without conditioned air, 70 C, dust covered etc.
I love them myself. They don’t take any special care or maintenance – just keep them charged and go. And when they fail (SLA), they fail fairly gracefully, with a little bit of warning. I’ve never had one catch fire, overheat, or explode, with reasonable care.
All y’all are talking about this-n-that regarding BATTERIES, but no one’s been talking about BATTERIES’ most important use: in FLASHLIGHTS.
Now you gone and done it, kemosabe….