Hot hot hot… it’s like Groundhog Day. Humid too of course. But hey, summer. In Houston. Happens every year. Although it’s been a couple of years since we went this long without rain.
I spent yesterday sorting auction stuff, and doing pickups. I also hit a couple of thrift stores, since I was there. One thing someone handed me while I was in line is an early Dietz No. 0 lantern. I was just going to take it to the BOL and use it, but it’s early enough to be worth a few bucks. There are a couple of things that struck me about it- someone sewed a short piece of cloth to the bottom of the wick, so that they could get just “that much more” use out of the wick; and there is a repair done with baling wire to the lever which raises the globe. Definitely shows the hand of the owner. Imagine being so thrifty that you add a scrap of cloth to the wick. There was/were about 3 inches of cloth, and 2 inches of wick left.
I guess I could add that to a ‘household hints’ article…
Today I have my monthly ‘non-prepping hobby’ meeting, and then I’ll load up the truck and head north. That means I’ll be offline most of the day, and on a thin pipe for the next couple of days. Y’all will have to amuse yourselves…
Think about what you need to avoid having to sew 3 inches to a wick to extend its life…
And stack it.
nick
I had two Newtons from a friend at Apple which I experimented with for a while before handing them to family to try. It is a shame that the software development for the devices was so difficult since they were powerful little machines.
Thanks to the NeXT technology, software targeting the iPhone/iPad was much easier to develop, but for third party compiled binaries to work, the 3GS had to ship on time which meant Steve needed to help the Death Star break the phone company’s union. I don’t think Apple was the same from that point forward.
C programmers still brought bad habits to the iPhone, however, and the apps were mostly garbage until iOS 5 and the compiler introduced Automatic Reference Counting. That’s when the platform really took off into the stratosphere.
During the Feb. 21 freeze, one of the Fancy Lad neighborhoods north of us had their gas supply cut off for several hours by Atmos at the peak of the storm, when the grid couldn’t deal with what they termed an “unusual” demand curve, probably due to generators kicking in when the rolling blackouts started.
Leander. Lots of military retirees up there until recently, but the area has the only build-able land even remotely close to Dell and HPE so Indians not only buy the houses but run development projects as well.
The big downside is that the schools are (were?) lousy. Of course, that demographic knows how to work the systems.
Up and out the door. Got coffee, need donuts.
n
Those Bible Battles trading cards don’t trade themselves, you know!
It may be a keeper: I was looking at buying a couple of modern kerosene lanterns last winter, but the reviews were decidedly mixed. Construction and QC seem pretty bad, not really something you want in a container full of flammables next to an open flame.
Strange, you wouldn’t think it would be possible to poorly make something that simple, but offshore manufacturing: even the threads on my garden hose aren’t correct.
If nothing else, might be valuable as “trade goods” in a grid down situation.
As I suspected, the issue with comments late last night was due to issues accessing the Akismet (comment spam filtering) servers. I believe the problem was on their end.
Enabled it this morning, and access was normal. No delays in comment posting.
Astronomy Club meeting last night.
The scheduled speaker didn’t show up, so the planetarium Director where we meet gave us a rundown of the new equipment that has been arriving.
For the planetarium: new optics, 4k LED, digital. One projection unit was already sent back because it had a piece of lint in the optical train. The other unit (two make up the 360 degree projection) was ok, but they had provisioned it with spinning rust drives (SSDs on the way) that couldn’t keep the data xfer up during complex video so there was a bit of stutter and tearing, but the new visuals were remarkable.
Also, the dome will be cleaned for the first time in 20 years, and there will be all new carpeting and seats (there is a definite “eau de incontinence” about some of the old seating).
Some years ago I got annoyed at the office libtards (approximately 93% of the employees at the time) yammering about how evil Republicans are and whatever other retardation entered their vacuous skulls. In response I made a screensaver image for my laptop: Save the world! Spay or neuter a liberal today!
This caused much butthurt and a request by my department head to take it down. I asked if the hate speech would also be stopped. He hemmed and hawed and said he’d see what he could do.
The plane-arium director?
Yuuup, here we get taxed some more.
Yesterday, news about the settlement for a natural gas leak from underground storage. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-27/so-cal-gas-settles-over-huge-aliso-canyon-gas-leak
Today, news about Joe Plugs taxing us $1.2 Billion to capture carbon dioxide and store it under ground. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/11/politics/direct-air-capture-funding-biden-administration/index.html
Any comments?
@lynn, stock up on the maintenance and consumables. Most standby gennies need service after less than 20 hrs of run time.
I have my generator serviced by Generator Supercenter for $49 per month. They run it monthly and do the annual maintenance for that.
>>I have a whole house generator and I am not afraid to use it.
And what it takes to protect it.
My generator sits on a concrete slab behind the garage. It has a sheet metal case, no protection.
Yesterday, news about the settlement for a natural gas leak from underground storage. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-27/so-cal-gas-settles-over-huge-aliso-canyon-gas-leak
Today, news about Joe Plugs taxing us $1.2 Billion to capture carbon dioxide and store it under ground. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/11/politics/direct-air-capture-funding-biden-administration/index.html
Any comments?
Yeah, these people are nuts. The co2 storage schemes are using old reservoirs. They all leak like sieves. And then how are you going to keep somebody 100 years from now accidently opening it ? It is the nuclear trash problem all over again.
And then there is the co2 collection mechanism. It takes 20 to 25 % of the produced power to collect the co2.
And then, co2 is an acid gas. If you put water in it, it will absolutely rip out a carbon steel assembly in a year. If you use stainless steel, the installed cost goes up 4X. And the assembly is huge so the install expense is huge.
This is all pie in the sky nonsense.
Back home, loading up the truck now.
Good meeting.
Nice to see people.
@EdH, I worked on one planetarium sorta tangentially. They are definitely a “roll your own” group. We had warping and blending in the projectors, world leading at that, and they didn’t want to use it. They warped the source material and used physical flags for blending, even in 2008. I hope they are using better tools now.
I did a simulator project where the screen was provided by a company (possibly “the” company) that makes planetarium screens. Very interesting to see how niche markets evolved and solved their own issues.
n
It is someone’s soup bowl, however. Six of the ten wealthiest counties in the US are near DC.
The Fredericksburg Extension of the reversible tolled express lanes on I-95 out of DC open next week. I’ll bet VDOT eventually sells the median down to Norfolk to the Australians to build more of those lanes.
No surprise, I expected Lynn to agree with me.
I have always loved planetariums. Our local museum has one, a small portable one that is only set up for occasions. That said, it provides really good viewing for about 20 people. I don’t know how it works, but it is modern, about five years old.
I also remember going to large planetariums in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and other major cities. I would prefer a good planetarium show to an Imax movie, mostly because of the subject matter. I would say the stars on the screen are better. 😉
I would be interested in knowing the location of the one you mentioned.
Wait….maybe I was wrong.
Hunter Bitter was technically smart enough to earn $50,000 a month on thr Ukaranian Natural Gas Co. Board of Dirctors. Definitely able to make it a success for his daddy Plugsee.
You’re looking at it wrong. You’re looking at it like an engineer with a problem to solve. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
$1.2B will be collected to build collectors and pump stations and what-not. Some (large) fraction of that money will be for “overhead” and “expenses”, and some fraction of that fraction will find its way back to politicians or their family members or their connected friends. When world CO2 levels fail to go down, whether because of cavern leakage or because the Indians and Chinese are burning hydrocarbons at an ever-increasing rate, that’ll be proof that we need to double our efforts. Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money!
It may be a keeper:
– if it’s collectable, then I’ll sell it. I’ve got solid great condition dietz lanterns in a couple of different sizes. I’ve been using the mini one while sitting on the dock at night. I usually use candles but the wind was blowing them out. The flame doesn’t seem to attract as many bugs.
n
And it’s 103F in the driveway…
So I’m off to the BOL.
n
@JimB: The planetarium is the SAGE Planetarium in Palmdale.
https://www.palmdalesd.org/domain/57
It is, I think, a 40’ dome.
The big retrofit is in December/January I think, though the new projectors are already semi-installed.
ERCOT set another record demand today, 84,619 MW. Previous peak was 83,500 MW. ERCOT is doing a great job !
Dad and I went to see the Oppenheimer movie today in Victoria. The theater was half full, maybe 100 people.
Great movie, I did not know that Robert Downey Jr was in the movie. If the movie is true then Oppenheimer was made a martyr.
When “Oppenheimer” is in black and white, the movie is relaying facts. Color footage indicates dramatic license taken with the source material.
If you want to give the Japanese equal time, “The Wind Rises” will be in theaters later this month on a Fathom special event. The main character is Jiro Horikoshi,
Horikoshi’s most notable achievement was the Mitsubishi Zero.
“The Wind Rises” is still a beautiful film with some profound things to say about engineering careers.
Fathom will present both dubbed and subtitled versions. I prefer the subtitled version, but John Lasseter oversaw the dubbing.
Whew, it’s still hot up here. Was 104F in the part sun area of the deck when I got here, currently 92F and slowly falling. It’s a bit cooler down by the water but the thermometer batteries exploded so I don’t know just how much.
A/C was not running when I arrived and house was 8F above the setpoint. I found the condensate drain line was plugged, and the safety switch was keeping the system from running. About ½ hour of poking with wire, then a hose and compressed air finally cleared it. The system hasn’t quite caught up but temp is dropping. Saved a truck roll and service call, $150 minimum. It pays to know things.
n
Gah, my coffee maker is entirely infested with red ants. They made a nest in it. I’m spraying them with bleach cleaner, and they are dying but there are a bunch of them.
Super disturbing.
n
Thanks, EdH. Looks like a nice place. I will look for their schedule. We go shopping in Palmdale and Lancaster about twice a year. It would be a nice stop.
Power washer to blast them out of the little crevices?
Tonight’s dinner is sausage I made with my dad 11 years ago. It’s been in the deep freeze, vac sealed, and tastes like home and holidays.
Amazing to have found it and grabbed it by accident. Thought I was grabbing the neighbor’s home made pig and deer sausage.
Thanks Dad.
n
@Nick
“Gah, my coffee maker is entirely infested with red ants. They made a nest in it. I’m spraying them with bleach cleaner, and they are dying but there are a bunch of them.
Super disturbing.”
Missed a chance to embrace the eating if bugs.
Now I’m going to have a smoke. A good one. Because if you save them for a special occasion, and no occasion is special enough, you’ll end up with a box of unsmoked smokes.
Every day is special. Smoke ‘em if you got ’em. Don’t miss your chance.
n
>> Fathom will present both dubbed and subtitled versions. I prefer the subtitled version, but John Lasseter oversaw the dubbing.
Worst are things on streaming that are dubbed and the dubbing doesn’t match the captions.
Rich Men North of Richmond
Good song. I can see why even Rolling Stone hates it. One big FU to the federal goobermint. All politicians suck dead bunnies.