Hot and humid, but not as much as Houston. We’ll see how windy it gets on this side of the lake. The wind was nice yesterday, and getting out of the bathwater warm lake got a nice chill with a wet shirt on.
Did most of my errands yesterday, then headed north to join the wife and kids at the rental. It’s a nice little family home. Clearly they spend more time here than they do renting it out. There are family pix and stuff all over the place. They have some locked closets, but there’s still plenty of personal stuff out. And the cabinets are full to bursting, and not with the sort of stuff left over in a vacation rental (although there is some of that too.)
Pretty sure the owner’s use this as as BOL at least casually. Always hard to judge someone by their bookshelf in a place that might have leftover guest books on the shelf, but… classic SciFi, a complete Rudyard Kipling, Ayn Rand, Ursula Le Guin, and James Wesley, Rawles…. some of the PA classics would confirm it, but I’m confident I’d like the person who owns these books. And they are at least some sort of prepper.
Of course it’s my plan too. Make sure any lake house we buy also works to get us out of dodge if need be. This place is only 1 1/2 hours north of Houston, so it’s still a little close, but it looks like a nice lake. It’s much bigger than our first choice, and this side we’re on is down wind and gets a lot of wave action. That is the kind of thing you don’t think to ask about unless someone clues you in. This house is in a quiet little development that has clearly been here for some time. This must be the hillbilly side of the lake. Most of the neighbors look like full time residents and while it is ‘country’ it looks pretty well kept up.
Today’s plan is fish, swim, kick back. Eat. Rinse and repeat. I was reluctant to take the time, but as long as I’m here, I’m going to get with the program.
Think about what you’d do if staying in your neighborhood became untenable. Not your classic bug out road trip, but how would you live your life. Gotta eat. Gotta work.
To make it easier no matter what comes, stack some more stuff.
nick
Pretty sure the owner’s use this as as BOL at least casually. Always hard to judge someone by their bookshelf in a place that might have leftover guest books on the shelf, but… classic SciFi, a complete Rudyard Kipling, Ayn Rand, Ursula Le Guin, and James Wesley, Rawles…. some of the PA classics would confirm it, but I’m confident I’d like the person who owns these books. And they are at least some sort of prepper.
Could be staging. Some of the services can go very narrow with their demo targeting depending on what they have in their warehouse. Never assume with a pricey vacation rental or a Realtor’s “for sale” sign out front.
The idiot husband of my wife’s Prog associate in Vantucky grew up in Cut-n-Shoot. My guess is that he’s Antifa in Portland these days.
Or even across Atlanta when traffic is heavy. Running the AC and trying to get 50 miles may take three hours and drain the batteries.
“electric vehicles that need charging every 100 to 300 miles. Not good if you are driving across Texas for any distance at all.”
Or even across Atlanta when traffic is heavy. Running the AC and trying to get 50 miles may take three hours and drain the batteries.
As I’ve noted before, at the last job, when the office was in an old Bell switch building in Downtown Austin, temps below 40 degrees for daytime highs would engender panic among the EV owners who lived in the far suburbs since there was only one charging port in the faciity’s garage and everyone who needed “topping off” to get home that night would require at least an hour on charge.
Americans have brought what’s coming upon themselves with the hero worship of The Real Life Tony Stark (TM).
Plugs’ goal of EVs being 50% of sales per year is only possible if the new vehicle market shrinks drammatically. EVs account for 2% now so do the math.
Hey has anyone read the Flashman series? This house has about a dozen books in the series. Looks interesting and fun.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00CJDEXF4/?tag=ttgnet-20
n
I’ve read them all. Hope to find time to reread them, but this time in chronological order. Highly recommended.
Classics!
Equally good is his autobiographical account of his time in Burma during WWII, Quartered Safe Out Here. Not for the squeamish.
The only flasher I know about is a creepy guy in a raincoat.
(Not me, to head off any specious accusations.)
I’ve never been a big fan of collective guilt.
I’ll also note that you, Greg, live in (or near) Austin, a conspicuously pretentious and virtue signalling city, and previously in or near at least one other conspicuously pretentious and virtue signalling city. Your perceptions of what most Americans want are likely skewed by what you see every day and by the people you can’t avoid dealing with.
Here, a bit north of Albany NY, I see a very few Teslas and a few other electric cars, tiny commuter vehicles. The only two people I know who drive Teslas are one conspicuously pretentious and virtue signalling jackass and one pretentious Indian immigrant. (She’s a neighbor. Her husband is OK but she and the kids and the teenage “housekeeper” are pieces of shit.)
I’ll also note that you, Greg, live in (or near) Austin, a conspicuously pretentious and virtue signalling city, and previously in or near at least one other conspicuously pretentious and virtue signalling city. Your perceptions of what most Americans want are likely skewed by what you see every day and by the people you can’t avoid dealing with.
Actually, like the rest of Texas, Austin is still mostly about big trucks, even among Progs like the management at my last job. Immediately around me I still see more German grocery getters than Teslas, but we’ll see how that changes when the new Apple campus opens next year. We already get at least one Realtor cold call a day.
In Portland, it was the various Subaru SUVs and Toyota hybrids. Still virtue signaling, but unsubsidized, based on real world tech and clever marketing. At least the Subaru choice has a practical upside in the climate even if most of the population never leaves paved roads, where a front-wheel drive vehicle of any kind with decent tires fares well.
(Snow? Fuggedaboudit. Portland deals with snow about as well as Austin did in February, but the lights stay on thanks to coal-fired power plants in Idaho and Canada.)
I don’t believe most Americans really want the limitations of the EVs, but they’ve consoled themselves that if it is the future then Tony Stark will save the day just like he does in the movies.
The weather is too cold in Albany for EVs to be anything but a toy.
@Greg Norton
“Americans have brought what’s coming upon themselves with the hero worship of The Real Life Tony Stark (TM).”
Most Americans don’t have the background to break out of the Groupthink imposed by years of political indoctrination disguised as education and the progressive political non-think reinforced by the MSM.
When virtually all of the professional science society leaderships are in lockstep with “the program” as well as most of the members who do have the background and should know better, it’s a tall expectation to expect another result. The public is so uneducated and malleable that the latest pronouncement that “global warming will cause global cooling” just passes by.
Most of America believes in the recycling koolaid, dutifully puts their blue bins out and pats themselves on the back. Yet the whole thing is uneconomic nonsense without markets for the waste streams, despite the only market being for aluminum cans.
Most of America believes in the recycling koolaid, dutifully puts their blue bins out and pats themselves on the back. Yet the whole thing is uneconomic nonsense without markets for the waste streams, despite the only market being for aluminum cans.
Portland had patrols enforcing recycling, particularly once composting became mandatory near the end of our time there. Get caught with a banana peel in the wrong bin and you faced a fine.
Ironically, fare enforcement on the city’s much-publicized light rail consisted of three people.
@Greg,”Cut-n-Shoot”?
Sometimes this place could use a glossary LOL
Well, sunny and hot here without a breath of wind. Mid 80s so far, but a “feels like” ten degrees hotter.
@greg, there’s no staging here at this house although people leave books behind at rentals all the time, which is why I’m a bit cautious about crediting any particular book to a home owner. We’ve had a ton of contact with the owner during the process. Totally different feel from a house that is mostly a rental but the owner uses it occasionally.
Even I’m thinking about a lake house as an occasional rental to get some money to pay the property taxes. No homestead exemption, and values here have doubled and tripled in 2 years. We have friends on another lake that only rent to known friends and friends of friends and only enough to pay the taxes and upkeep. I’m sure it helps tax wise too.
By the way, rope swing uses a lot of muscles… some that haven’t been used in a while. I feel stiff and sore all over!
n
“Cut-n-Shoot”
–it’s a place name, north of houston, pretty “country” when you get that far out of town. Only been there once for an estate sale, or I wouldn’t know it…..
n
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut_and_Shoot%2C_Texas
This leg brace sucks, as in huge sucks. Very uncomfortable. Hopefully it goes away Monday.
“Cut-n-Shoot”
–it’s a place name, north of houston, pretty “country” when you get that far out of town. Only been there once for an estate sale, or I wouldn’t know it…..
Is it “Cut and Shoot”, “Cut & Shoot”, or “Cut-n-Shoot”. I see multiple spellings doing the search. Like other small Texas towns, they only recently incorporated or re-incorporated as an anti-growth measure.
I only know about the town because of the schtick from the associate’s husband we had to endure once a year when we went to my wife’s office holiday parties in Vantucky.
I think clinic management was concerned about the wife’s ability to deal with the small town setting of the office since she was the spoiled daughter of a rich Houston dentist, and the husband kept emphasizing his own origins as some kind of weird “sell” job that they could get along in a rural environment even though they lived an hour away in the Burnside District in Portland.
The pair were so unpleasant to deal with that the clinic only just put another doctor into the office this year, following seven years of searching.
While we are on unusual town names, I passed through Truth or Consequences, NM. It is on the road from Las Cruces to Albuquerque. I’ll bet others here can think of much stranger names. Challenge?
Virtue signaling by the kind of car one drives? My signal would be OLD, but I don’t care what others think as long as they don’t think I am wealthy and in need of more taxing. 😉
As long as gasoline is available, I will be able to drive most of my cars. Been through lead abatement, oxygenates including MTBE and ethanol, and reformulates that make carburetors difficult to operate in hot weather. Still have two cars that have carbs, and one will be converted to EFI. I will probably keep the other in its factory original condition. Driving in cool weather is OK.
When we are in town, which is almost always, we average about three errand trips a week, which totals less than 50 miles including the inevitable running around. We use our “local” car, which has dual killer AC units for summer. An electric car would have a hard time competing, especially on TCO, but that seems to be changing. In my lifetime? Who knows.
That said, I might like an electric car as a toy. This would be a minimalist design, and I might have to convert something to make it remotely economical. I have mentioned that there is at least one such car around. I would have to give up the AC, because it would use more energy than the propulsion in summer. My friend’s Model 3 can keep the car cool (or warm) without running an engine (or course,) but it really sucks the battery.
Of course, a small-ish motorcycle is still the most economical and fun way to get around in hot weather, as long as I don’t have to carry much. Don’t forget, we have practically no traffic. This would not be for my wife, so another toy. I don’t have a small MC, but could easily get one, and have considered it. Another mouth to feed.
Anyway, I have always been a fan of cars dedicated to limited purposes, something the genpop has never embraced. Yet the typical family has two cars. I have talked to lots of friends about this, and some of them practice what I do, especially the car hobbyists. Some have cars they only take out a couple times a year. A few have two or more cars that can do anything, which seems a waste to me. My ideal minimum is three cars: one for trips, one for local, and one as a backup. I have juggled this for a couple decades, and I get a little nervous when I am working on one of them.
While we are on unusual town names, I passed through Truth or Consequences, NM. It is on the road from Las Cruces to Albuquerque. I’ll bet others here can think of much stranger names. Challenge?
Yeehaw Junction in Florida, which marks a very important crossroads of the Florida Turnpike and SR60 south of Orlando.
Originally, the town was called Jackass Crossing, but the Turnpike Authority didn’t want that on maps and the toll tickets.
The town once consisted of a brothel, the Desert Inn, and a store IIRC but now features several gas stations and restaurants.
The Desert Inn was abandoned for a while and struck by a semi within the last few years. It may be another piece of vanished Florida history by now.
UPDATE: The Desert Inn … or whats left … was still standing six months ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FszZoETtNJE
“Wellington never lost a gun, you know”.
Yes, i’d highly recommend, for the humor and the look at the British Empire in the early 1800s.
Also the autobiographical books.
Zzyzx, a town in California. I remember seeing the signs on the interstate sometime in my past.
I have some of those on my shopping list for small grandchildren this Christmas. They make one that has climbing knots built in, and I think they can hang it from their deck. We had one when I was a kid, with a seat on it, and swung on that until we were grown! My grandfather called it a “monkey swing”. All the neighborhood kids loved it too. He also built us a zip-line (that we called a “trolley”) that ran from a platform on the trunk of a pecan tree (we climbed a ladder to get up to it) in the backyard along the side of the house to the front yard, and was attached to the trunk of the same tree that had the monkey swing on one branch. The tree was a hackberry – short lived, but it held up long enough.
Dildo, Newfoundland, Canada
Went for the obvious.
I can’t forget Hell, Michigan, often joked about by weather folks. “It’s hotter that Hell here today.” That was back in the day when Standards and Practices forbade coarse language on radio and TV. We kids had fun with it, to the chagrin of our proper parents. It is about fifty miles west of Detroit. According to Wikipedia, theories differ on how it got its name.
I am switching all our USB cables for the phones and Kindles, and all chargers, over to Anker ones. More expensive, but rock solid and up to spec. I also have a few Anker battery packs for when I am Ingressing away from the car.
Cheap USB C cables have been known to kill devices they are plugged into.
I note that today would have been Dr. Pournelle’s 88th birthday…
“Slab City” east of the Salton Sea.
“More Open Carry”
https://gunfreezone.net/more-open-carry/
“I have paddle holsters, but never crossed my mind using then like that. Is there a logical reason for this?”
Open carrying a gun is an aggressive posture to take. It should be reserved for those times that you need to open carry. You will know when.
“electric vehicles that need charging every 100 to 300 miles. Not good if you are driving across Texas for any distance at all.”
Or even across Atlanta when traffic is heavy. Running the AC and trying to get 50 miles may take three hours and drain the batteries.
As I’ve noted before, at the last job, when the office was in an old Bell switch building in Downtown Austin, temps below 40 degrees for daytime highs would engender panic among the EV owners who lived in the far suburbs since there was only one charging port in the faciity’s garage and everyone who needed “topping off” to get home that night would require at least an hour on charge.
Americans have brought what’s coming upon themselves with the hero worship of The Real Life Tony Stark (TM).
Plugs’ goal of EVs being 50% of sales per year is only possible if the new vehicle market shrinks drammatically. EVs account for 2% now so do the math.
If you want a new non-electric truck then you better buy one in the next 12 months. I do advise hybrid though, Biden is going to put an awesome carbon tax on us. Somewhere equivalent to $1.50/gallon gasoline to $5.00/gallon gasoline. The puppeteers in the White House are freaking crazy and think that they can do anything that they want. The eviction stay by the CDC is Sterling proof of that. Any sane president would have shut down the CDC months ago.
cheap USB adapters
I am switching all our USB cables for the phones and Kindles, and all chargers, over to Anker ones. More expensive, but rock solid and up to spec. I also have a few Anker battery packs for when I am Ingressing away from the car.
Cheap USB C cables have been known to kill devices they are plugged into.
How do you know that you are buying real Anker cables ? I suspect that half of the Anker stuff for sale on Big River is fake.
I don’t want an all electric car. The range is too short, IMHO. It would work for my daily commute, but for the occasional road trip it just wouldn’t work. I could however see a plug in hybrid vehicle. Even though the all electric range is shorter, it would still be enough for my daily commute. I could accomplish an overnight charge without resorting to installing a 240 volt outlet in the garage. If I got paranoid about charging it indoors, a heavy duty 120 extension cord would almost work to charge it outside. If I wake up to discover the lights were out and it didn’t recharge overnight, I could run it on gasoline. Or if I want to take a road trip with friends, I could do it without worrying about making recharging stops.
The one thing I can’t figure out is why there isn’t a plug in hybrid that starts with a pure electric car with a smaller battery pack and simply adds a generator to recharge the batter when charge dips to a certain level. This would seem to be a lot simpler, and it would mean the gasoline engine could be optimized to run at one speed and drive a generator to recharge the battery.
I finally got around to taking a basic handgun class at a local shooting range with one of my friends. I think all of my shots may have managed to hit the target. I only fired 50 rounds, but I had fun and will be going back sometime soon.
It went much better than my attempt at skeet shooting a few years ago.
Toad Suck AR
Dumas AR (be careful of your pronunciation when you are there)
Y City AR (nothing there but the intersection, any more)
Smackover AR
” @Greg,”Cut-n-Shoot”?
Sometimes this place could use a glossary LOL”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut_and_Shoot,_Texas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_extender
Two examples are the Chevrolet Volt and the BMW i3
Nissan recaptures the mantle of having the lowest price EV in the US with the 2022 Leaf S with an MSRP of $27,400, albeit with a range of (up to) 149 miles. Under $20K after the Federal Tax Credit (which Tony has used up). Lowest price previously was a Mini at 30K.
Definitely will stop by our local Nissan dealer this week and check it out. Could easily replace our second car that I used just for local trips so lesser range wouldn’t be an issue. Plus State tax credit for charger outlet installation.
https://usa.nissannews.com/en-US/releases/release-25819c9aeb4792ebec3d4ddceb020a39-2022-nissan-leaf-goes-on-sale-with-additional-standard-features-and-new-starting-msrp-of-27400
Cheap USB C cables have been known to kill devices they are plugged into.
Sounds like a step backwards from Micro-USB. I looked it up, and it might be the close pin spacing. According to the illustrations in the Wikipedia article, the space between the pins appears to be less than the pin width, a formula for disaster for such a design.
I still use Micro-USB cables for many devices including our cell phones. I have always thought it was a weak design, but at least the cable connector fails instead of the device’s, which is by design. Not looking forward to USB-C, which appear to be the new standard… until the Next Great ThingTM.
I have bought quality Micro-USB cables (though not Anker to my knowledge) and cables from our Dollar Tree store. My wife kills them all about the same by flexing them near the connector, because she uses her phone with it plugged-in. I have resisted adding a strain relief because it might put more stress on her phone, and when its connector fails, the entire phone is junk.
As a former designer of electronics, including selecting some connectors for severe service, I don’t think some modern devices measure up. The fact that some of them are considered not repairable is even less acceptable.
Oh wait, I got curious and looked up our phones, elderly Note 3 models. There are aftermarket repair kits for them for only $5. That’s a relief, although my next big job is to get us new phones. I posted that here a while ago, and got some good suggestions, but we have been out of town and otherwise busy, so it is now starting at me on the top of my list. I agree with Nick, there is always something to keep us busy.
My friend’s Model 3 can keep the car cool (or warm) without running an engine (or course,) but it really sucks the battery.
Electric stuff needs a lot of work to make it workable. We’ve spent over a hundred years optimizing vehicles to make them useful for our needs. Converting the propulsion from high density hydrocarbon liquids to low density batteries is a HUGE change from an engineering standpoint.
In actuality, I would like an electric vehicle with a 100 mile battery and a small gas turbine generator for charging the battery if needful or convenient. And yes, we can build small gas turbines with 35% simple cycle efficiency, just look at helicopter gas turbines.
When is traffic not heavy in Atlanta. Was last there a few years ago when the wife went to see Paul Simon in concert at the Fox Theater. I remember it was the night that Trump claimed the Republican nomination.
Road construction everywhere, which will just bring more cars to fill the available space. No thanks.
Kind of off-topic…
I have five manufacturer’s coupons for Ensure multipacks. Each coupon is for $3 off and all expire on 12/31/2021.
If anyone here can use them please let me know an email address I can reach you at to get your mailing address and I’d be happy to drop them in the mail to you.
I don’t know much about electric car charge outlets because I don’t have one, and I designed and built our house and newer garage. How hard can it be to install a 220 volt outlet in popular garages, especially attached ones. That is often where the electric service enters the building. That means there is a panel nearby, and the wiring could be run in conduit on the surface if desired, so the main cost would materials and labor if it is hired done. Most new houses already have 200 amp service, so that shouldn’t be a limitation.
Parking the car inside may not be advisable, so put the outlet at a location convenient to run an extension cable to where the car is parked. Better, run the cable underground to a bollard outlet or on the side of the building, again in a convenient location. People who have to park on the street will have a harder time.
Or, just skip the whole thing and stay with gasoline. I would bet there were some gasoline fires in the early days of the automobile.
In actuality, I would like an electric vehicle with a 100 mile battery and a small gas turbine generator for charging the battery if needful or convenient. And yes, we can build small gas turbines with 35% simple cycle efficiency, just look at helicopter gas turbines.
Or even APU gas turbines. I once met a guy who worked with them, might have been a designer. He said a 75 KVA (?) APU (the whole thing) for a fighter jet fit in less than a cubic foot. They were pretty much maintenance free. I would bet a helo turbine engine would be more than 1000 shaft horsepower.
Wikipedia has it as “Cut and Shoot”
List here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_names_considered_unusual
Including “Fugging, Austria” which until recently was, well you should be able to guess.
3:02 AM to 3:08 AM, Sunday morning before a Monday holiday.
For weird town names, it gets interesting if you count the English translation of those named in foreign languages.
The two best examples I can think of are Red Stick, Louisiana and Body of Christ, Texas. Otherwise known as Baton Rouge and Corpus Christi.
The unclassified rating for each engine on a Blackhawk is 1100shp. They also have a tiny turbine APU. It provides electric and air for starting. The engines have an air start motor that turns the turbine for starting. Ground carts provide electric and air and are turbines, also. Blackhawks have a set of cables/hoses that connect to an electric/air port on the side and can *jump start* another Blackhawk.
Tie a loose overhand knot near the end that goes into the phone. You’ll lose about 4″ of length but gain enormously in tolerance for moving the device around.
Chrysler Turbine Car
In actuality, I would like an electric vehicle with a 100 mile battery and a small gas turbine generator for charging the battery if needful or convenient. And yes, we can build small gas turbines with 35% simple cycle efficiency, just look at helicopter gas turbines.
Or even APU gas turbines. I once met a guy who worked with them, might have been a designer. He said a 75 KVA (?) APU (the whole thing) for a fighter jet fit in less than a cubic foot. They were pretty much maintenance free. I would bet a helo turbine engine would be more than 1000 shaft horsepower.
That is a small gas turbine. The Chinook has two 4,500 hp gas turbines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CH-47_Chinook
a plug in hybrid that starts with a pure electric car with a smaller battery pack and simply adds a generator to recharge the batter when charge dips to a certain level
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_extender
Two examples are the Chevrolet Volt and the BMW i3
Ford has patented a gasoline range extender for the total electric F-150 Lightning. It sits in the bed behind the cab. I have no idea if they are really going to make it.
https://www.motor1.com/news/446705/ford-f150-electric-patent-images/
If you want a new non-electric truck then you better buy one in the next 12 months. I do advise hybrid though, Biden is going to put an awesome carbon tax on us. Somewhere equivalent to $1.50/gallon gasoline to $5.00/gallon gasoline. The puppeteers in the White House are freaking crazy and think that they can do anything that they want. The eviction stay by the CDC is Sterling proof of that. Any sane president would have shut down the CDC months ago.
The VA Governor’s election on Nov. 2 will mark the end of Biden’s time to get things done. After that, fundraising starts for 2022 at holiday parties.
In some places, 2022 has already started. McCain’s daughter left “The View” on Friday, and, later in the day, I received my first panic email from the Mark Kelly campaign soliciting donations.
I’m not sure how I ended up on the Dem’s mailing list.
I note that today would have been Dr. Pournelle’s 88th birthday…
RIP.
Dr. Pournelle and Elon Musk had a friendly but lively debate about SSTO vs. TSTO.
I’m sure Dr. Pournelle would be thrilled at what SpaceX has accomplished but would still pull for Blue Origin to prove that SSTO is possible.
Went up to Bell County Comic Con today. As much as I’m accused of playing fast and loose with the pandemic, I passed on getting into line to venture down to the main show floor, and I waited for my son to get whatever autograph he went there after.
It seemed like every comic nerd in Texas was at the Bell County Expo Center today. There were some obvious Pokemon/Nintendo hustlers working the booths looking for easy scores (not happening), but, for the most part, the crowd seemed like it was mostly comic fans. Lots of cosplay.
The event may well be the last Texas con before the Feds try another lockdown. I’m sure that was on a lot of minds today.
@Lynn – I saw new construction work on the stub of I-14 heading into the I-35 interchange. The beams for the ramps haven’t moved, but someone has been tearing up the median with heavy equipment and barricades were everywhere. I’m not sure what it means.
Beware of Kindle books infested with Malware
It seems you need to connect your Kindle to the internet for a while to download latest firmware.
***
I’m just settling in to watch John Carpenter’s 1980 _The Fog_. As I recall there are two notable things about that movie…
If you want a new non-electric truck then you better buy one in the next 12 months. I do advise hybrid though, Biden is going to put an awesome carbon tax on us. Somewhere equivalent to $1.50/gallon gasoline to $5.00/gallon gasoline. The puppeteers in the White House are freaking crazy and think that they can do anything that they want. The eviction stay by the CDC is Sterling proof of that. Any sane president would have shut down the CDC months ago.
The VA Governor’s election on Nov. 2 will mark the end of Biden’s time to get things done. After that, fundraising starts for 2022 at holiday parties.
The McCain daughter left “The View” on Friday, and, later in the day, I received my first email from the Mark Kelly campaign soliciting donations.
I’m not sure how I ended up on the Dem’s mailing list.
Biden can put a carbon tax in place using an executive order any day of the week that he wants to. And legal too. I have been to several engineering seminars where they have talked about this. The Clean Air Act has a provision for fines that has never been tested in court but should easily pass the Roberts court.
We got another 2 or 3 inches of rain today on top of the 2 or 3 inches of rain we got yesterday. I’ve got three feet of water in the formerly dry ditch out front. This July / August is fairly weird even for living in a swamp.
The unclassified rating for each engine on a Blackhawk is 1100shp.
I was close.
That is a small gas turbine. The Chinook has two 4,500 hp gas turbines.
9,000 hp ought to be enough to charge a vehicle battery. 😉
Chrysler found out that small gas turbines were uneconomical, both to build and to operate. The state of the art has improved since the 1950s, but the fuel economy might still be a challenge. I saw a few Chrysler turbine cars on the street.
Less well known, Ford and GM tried. Ford had a good heavy truck design, where first cost was less of a problem, and higher power was more important than fuel economy. GM had a turbine car prototype that actually drove, but they decided (wisely?) not to pursue it. Back in the day, GM had lots of money to pursue these things, but they were probably smart to drop it. I saw both the Ford truck being driven and the GM car idling. Heady stuff back then.
There were many reasons why some of these things were dropped. One I knew of was that the big three had just spent billions (1950-60s dollars) on upgrades to their engine plants, and wanted to get the return on their investments. The auto industry also used some rather unusual accounting principles back then. No snarky remarks, please; they were deadly serious about money, and made a LOT. Some of their cars seemed great at the time.
I buy them via the Anker store in Amazon, not via a search.
@Lynn
“We have got to stop these market distortions going in the USA and in the world. They are going to end up killing us.”
Hydrogen. Boom, Invisible flame
Lithium batteries. Boom. Can’t put out the fire. No lithium mines.
Ammonia as a refrigerant. Seriously? It was phased out a century ago because it is toxic.
HFC refrigerants. Replaced CFC’s which allegedly destroyed the ozone layer. But HFC’s are greenhouse gases. Whoops! What has DuPont patented lately that we could change to?
Recycling. The blue bins that go out every week have exactly one thing that has a positive cash flow: aluminum cans. Most of the rest doesn’t get recycled at all, since the Chinese quit taking cardboard and the newspaper industry collapsed. Ever looked at your waste bill and figured the cost per cubic foot of trash vs. recycling?
ADDED: Light rail (HT to Greg for reminding me)
“The one thing I can’t figure out is why there isn’t a plug in hybrid that starts with a pure electric car with a smaller battery pack and simply adds a generator to recharge the batter when charge dips to a certain level. This would seem to be a lot simpler, and it would mean the gasoline engine could be optimized to run at one speed and drive a generator to recharge the battery.”
The current Honda drive train for the Hybrid CR-V, HR-V and Fit (Jazz) are principally electric with an efficient ICE motor to charge the battery (it does direct drive at highway speeds for efficiency). Neat design, but not plugin hybrid yet.
@dave B, congrats on getting some range time! I was making do with airguns in the back yard but let that fall off. I haven’t put any lead downrange in 2 years. And that isn’t good.
At the very least I need to get the airgun practice going again.
————
spent some time talking with one of the neighbors here. He’s getting his house ready to sell, so I gave him my number. It’ll probably be too expensive but it’s worth a try.
———– nice day jumping in the lake. I got some bait wet too, but didn’t catch anything.
all in all, nice breeze, nice mostly overcast, warm but tolerable day.
n
Nadim Kobeissi@kaepora·Aug 6
Apple distributed an internal memo today which referred to pushback against its new content surveillance measures as “the screeching voices of the minority.” I have nothing to add.
https://twitter.com/kaepora/status/1423738825369604106
Past time to lock out the pale sweaty billionaires by ignoring their pre-packaged spyware and downloading apps with strong encryption.
“This is how the Democrats will achieve supermajority status in 2022 and an incoherent, drooling Biden wins reelection in 2024”
https://gunfreezone.net/this-is-how-the-democrats-will-achieve-supermajority-status-in-2022-and-an-incoherent-drooling-biden-wins-reelection-in-2024/
“HEADS UP! California’s print from home ballot system better be closely monitored during the up coming recall election.”
Print your own voting ballot from home ! What will they think of next ?
Still used in some industrial applications and on spacecraft where mass and efficiency are paramount.
There was no doubt about CFCs affecting the ozone layer. NASA TR-2 planes (versions of the U-2) sampled the air over the poles and other places and found the CFC breakdown products that produced the holes. Positive confirmation by direct measurement of what the models predicted. A slow recovery is underway and will be complete by the 2040s.
1963 Chrysler Turbine: Ultimate Edition – Jay Leno’s Garage
Don’t forget the “tzero” with it’s tow-along generator.
https://www.acpropulsion.com/index.php/news-media/61-ac-propulsion-tzero-the-godfather-of-modern-evs
Supposedly Tony had a ride in one and that became the inspiration for the Roadster.
“”It’s Magical Thinking” – Most Law Degrees Are No Longer Worth The Tuition”
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/its-magical-thinking-most-law-degrees-are-no-longer-worth-tuition
“Ms. Cordell owes $334,000 in federal loans for her time at Miami. She now makes an $80,000 base salary, with a bonus of about $12,000, working at a firm that specializes in insurance. Because her debt load is so high, she said, she can’t afford more than the minimum payment on an income-driven plan, which sets her monthly payments according to her income.”
$334,000 in federal tuition loans for a law degree ? Are you kidding me !
I wonder when the first person to hit a million dollars on their tuition loans will happen ?
1963 Chrysler Turbine: Ultimate Edition – Jay Leno’s Garage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2A5ijU3Ivs
Jay has a motorcycle with a 350 hp Bell Helicopter jet turbine in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFS8pzBZU5c
And I just heard that the NY International Auto Show, usually held in the spring but rescheduled for later this month due to Covid, has now at the last minute been canceled related to the spread of the Delta variant in NYFC. Second year in a row it won’t be held. The focus this year was to have been EVs.
I remember going when I was a teenager, anticipating my driver’s license, taking the subway to the show and lugging home a big stack of car brochures to pore over and dream.
The unclassified rating for each engine on a Blackhawk is 1100shp.
I was close.
That is a small gas turbine. The Chinook has two 4,500 hp gas turbines.
9,000 hp ought to be enough to charge a vehicle battery.
Chrysler found out that small gas turbines were uneconomical, both to build and to operate. The state of the art has improved since the 1950s, but the fuel economy might still be a challenge. I saw a few Chrysler turbine cars on the street.
Less well known, Ford and GM tried. Ford had a good heavy truck design, where first cost was less of a problem, and higher power was more important than fuel economy. GM had a turbine car prototype that actually drove, but they decided (wisely?) not to pursue it. Back in the day, GM had lots of money to pursue these things, but they were probably smart to drop it. I saw both the Ford truck being driven and the GM car idling. Heady stuff back then.
There were many reasons why some of these things were dropped. One I knew of was that the big three had just spent billions (1950-60s dollars) on upgrades to their engine plants, and wanted to get the return on their investments. The auto industry also used some rather unusual accounting principles back then. No snarky remarks, please; they were deadly serious about money, and made a LOT. Some of their cars seemed great at the time.
The first gas turbines were running 900 F flame temperatures to keep the metal combusters from melting. 15% simple cycle efficiency.
Our 1987 85,000 hp, 65 MW GE Frame EA gas turbines were running 1600 F flame temperatures with exotic metals in the combusters and first stage power turbine blades to prevent damage. I went out to inspect the combusters at the first overhaul and saw all the microfractures. 25% simple cycle efficiency.
Today’s 300,000 hp, 240 MW GE Frame 9F gas turbines are running 2600 F flame temperatures with ceramics in the combusters and the power turbine blades to prevent damage. 35% simple cycle efficiency (better than most pure steam plants of 28 to 32%). 60% if you add a heat recovery boiler and a steam turbine but the startup time goes from 15 minutes (hot) to four hours (hot).
@ech
I read Sherwood and Molina’s original paper and the follow-ups. Did a paper for a graduate class on air pollution that looked at that problem in tandem with NOx introduced into the stratosphere by SST’s. The recommendation at the time was reduce CFC use in trivial applications (spray can propellants, for example) and continue to investigate.
It’s true that some measurements were taken confirming breakdown products of CFC’s. Not unexpected, since the breakdown was caused by UV. But the only breakdown product in the chemical cycle of the model was chlorine, and chlorine from CFC’s is indistinguishable from other sources. Surprisingly, no funding for investigating other sources was made available, despite a significant source in the world oceans. In the decades since the reality of stratospheric injection by volcanoes has been confirmed.
There were two major problems with the models:
1 South Pole data were not consistent with the known behavior of atmospheric transport or atmospheric pollutants across the equator.
2 The models did not accurately predict the behavior of the thinning of the ozone layer over the South Pole after the enactment of the Montreal Protocols. Then years later when the mapping of sources of CFC’s from satellite became available, it became obvious that India, China, and Russia continued to manufacture much more R12 and other “banned” CFC’s than they were permitted, making the models even more inaccurate.
@Lynn
Is anyone using thoria composite ceramics in gas turbines?
@Lynn
Is anyone using thoria composite ceramics in gas turbines?
Wow, I don’t even know what that is. I have not ripped into the guts of a gas turbine in 30+ years.
@Lynn
“2600 F flame temperatures with ceramics in the combusters and the power turbine blades to prevent damage”
That’s getting up there. Higher efficiencies leads to higher temperatures and we’re pushing the limits of SiC/SiN.
Thought you might be aware of some next gen materials out there.
Fifty years ago I clipped a sentence that read (approximately):
“If a chemist locked himself in a room and did nothing but read in his field he would be three months behind after a year.”
Which persuaded me at the time that I couldn’t read everything. I don’t know what the basis was for the above statement, but I suspect the “three months” part would be closer to “three years”. I try to keep my journal intake under control.
And don’t forget this ‘turbine powered’ car…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRoeTzvuI14
@Lynn
“2600 F flame temperatures with ceramics in the combusters and the power turbine blades to prevent damage”
That’s getting up there. Higher efficiencies leads to higher temperatures and we’re pushing the limits of SiC/SiN.
Thought you might be aware of some next gen materials out there.
Fifty years ago I clipped a sentence that read (approximately):
“If a chemist locked himself in a room and did nothing but read in his field he would be three months behind after a year.”
Which persuaded me at the time that I couldn’t read everything. I don’t know what the basis was for the above statement, but I suspect the “three months” part would be closer to “three years”. I try to keep my journal intake under control.
I don’t read many journals. I skim through Chemical Engineering Progress (down to 80 pages this month) and Mechanical Engineering Magazine. I save my reading time for crazy blogs and speculative fiction.
My real engineering interest is in thermodynamics. I am always thinking about how to model stuff since that is what I do for a living. Both from the mechanical aspects and the thermodynamic aspects, mostly temperatures and chemistry, trying to force our methods into simulating something accurately.
A term that makes perfect sense:
“range per hour”
Could it be that we don’t hear it mentioned because it is so easy to understand and reveals so eloquently that the emperor has no clothes?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/08/07/9382173/
$334,000 in federal tuition loans for a law degree ? Are you kidding me !
I wonder when the first person to hit a million dollars on their tuition loans will happen ?
Please. That happened a long time ago. The last number I saw was that Navient has 200 people making payments on $1 million or more. Dental school is a big one for that kind of debt, but friends whose nephew is at Emory say that his tuition and expenses are $70k/year for *undergrad*.
Student loans were nationalized under Obamacare to fund the program and provide the figleaf of making the scheme revenue neutral for passage under reconciliation after Uncle Ted assumed room temperature. Any paper written after ~ 2009 comes from the government with banks collecting an admin fee for handling the payments and the Treasury pocketing the interest.
(We had to pass the bill to find out what was in it. The upside is that Plugs can’t easily wipe out the student loans with a stroke of a pen like many argue for him to do. That would mean monetizing the Obamacare debt which would open a huge legal can of worms.)
My wife paid on $200k in loans under the old Sallie Mae, and that was not living large while in school.
The in-laws did nothing to help. Their choice, but it is a two way street.
Getting ready for bed. Read this little tidbit in the DM article about the army enforcing travel restrictions in Australia
Um, what do you call it when a country won’t let it’s own citizens leave??
Yeah. The world order is changing. Gonna be a different place in a few years.
n
Vehicles – give me a good SUV any day, over a truck. We use the flexibility a lot: haul a bunch of stuff one day, passengers the next, and in between (most of the time) the dogs. Being able to re-configure the inside – and have a lot of space when you do – is huge.
For us, an EV will definitely be the way to go. With rooftop solar, the fuel will be basically free. Maintenance should be seriously reduced. Switzerland is small, so range will rarely be an issue. Just waiting for the model we want…
Dunno how they’ll work out in the US. Y’all are used to it, but when we last visited, it really struck me how far apart everything is. My cousin lives in an area of huge plots, north of DFW, and drives 45 minutes to go shopping. It’s a very different world.
Same here. But owning a car is actually expensive, if you add up all the costs. We’ve always taken the opposite approach: one car, and the few times we really need a second car, it’s cheaper to take a taxi or do a short-term car rental.
Our neighbors have *four* vehicles for the two of them (and they aren’t rich). Seems like a huge waste of money…
I’m sad to say that Fucking, Austria is no more. They got fed up with all the nonsense and renamed their town to Fugging.
Right. You should have seen the reactions on places like Slashdot. Also organizations like the EFF. I have yet to see one, single positive comment about this. Whoever cooked up the idea lives in a very strange bubble.
Or, more likely: Apple is under massive pressure by the government. If a private company searches your stuff, they don’t need a warrant, because you clicked “agree” on the ToS. Overzealous law enforcement and wannabe totalitarian regimes (but I repeat myself) are drooling at the possibilities. Likely, this tech already exists, because it is required in places like China – they just want to introduce it everywhere.
It took basically no time at all: I have already seen the suggestion by a journalist (Ars, I think it was) to expand this to search for “terrorist” content, i.e., wrongthink.
But owning a car is actually expensive, if you add up all the costs.
Of course it is, but it doesn’t have to be. I have some cars that cost nothing per year other than the storage space they take up in my garage. They didn’t cost much when I bought them used. They are insured, but the annual premium is just over $100 for two of them. I have owned them for a long time, and will eventually get both of them back in service. One is a project that will get a more modern engine-transmission, and the other is an all-original car of special interest – I don’t like terms such as collector car or, horror, classic, and antique doesn’t fit. Yup, I am a car nut, and don’t get me started on motorcycles, another hobby.
Many hobbies are expensive – just ask me. I have had several over the years, and enjoyed all of them until I didn’t. I do like collecting just for the feeling it gives me. I also like working with my hands. Gives satisfaction.
Even today, it is possible to get a good older car for a lot less than a new plastic-mobile. A good find will need no major work beyond the things all of us do to our finds. Both new and old have their places. The new ones can be driven to avoid wear and tear of the old special ones, which are pampered.