Blogs

Feb 1, 2012: Welcome back to another exciting episode of "Complaining-about-something-that-you-can't-do-anything-about-and-will-have-to-get-used-to", also known as "Lousy Weather".

We last left off with December 2011's total, which, surprisingly, wasn't all that bad. I guess there isn't much to complain about this time, either. The chart shows that it was a not-too-bad month for PV production. In fact, if you consider that the average production total for January is somewhat skewed due to first an extreme high in 2009, and then an equally extreme low in 2010, things might have been not-quite "normal" (I always put that word in "quotes", what is "normal" anyway?).

Dec 24, 2012

Nothing like leftover projects from five years ago to keep the winter blahs at bay. After beginning the digitization of my analog music collection (see original post below), I really didn't do too much with the results. It was kind of handy to have the computer with all the music on it available to listen to when I was working on drywall in the house over the years, but I never got around to getting a portable player, so mostly, I just continued to listen to my CD collection in the truck and occasionally while doing housework, etc.

This story was an Email from Alvin Embree, the original owner of Embree Buses:

Bus #60 was a hand made piece of equipment and was used as a test bed for ideas before we (Embree's) gave the final O.K. for the balance of the group.

Continuing in the series, some very recent photos from Michael O, whose tandem axle truck was featured in Rolling Homes. I posted a somewhat more recent photo here, but now we can see more with the snow all melted off.

Cleverly, the truck is painted in desert tones to match the residence, and includes some art-deco accents on the cab doors that mimic the ventilation louvers on the hood. Compare the new look to the original in the PDF file of the This Old House article from April 2005.

Nature photographer Rob Gray, being the consumate tinkerer that he is, and having tossed off the working lifestyle, took to the road in his hand-built WORT (Weird Off-Road Truck) several years back. His web site includes journal entries from his lengthy travels around Australia. Future updates may be sporatic at best, but even those are better than cutting us, his adoring audience, off cold. If you haven't checked out "Wothahellizat" yet, there are nearly 70 diaries of travels Down Under awaiting you here.

The latest update to the site is Issue 69

Wothahelliz Wothahellizat? =

Perhaps I've been guilty of diesel abuse. I couldn't remember the last time I started my bus. I know it wasn't last year, because I was dismayed that the weather had gotten cold so quickly and I hadn't done it (I like to run the bus in hot weather, it means it starts willingly without having to apply ether starting fluid). I can't remember if I started it in 2010 or not.

We've been having a bit of late summer heat, highs in the 85° range, and I decided that I couldn't put it off any longer, else I risk the weather taking a plunge and it being another year before I got around to it.

Four year back, I was pretty excited to mark the passage of being able to create a million watt hours of electrical power in twelve months with my photovoltaic system.

Yesterday I reached another important goal, a total system production of ten million watt hours of production, or "ten megawatthours". Here's the face of the production meter this morning:

That's one-zero-zero-zero-one, or 1001 Kwh.

Three weeks or so back, I was standing outside in the yard admiring the Milky Way in a very clear, jet-black nighttime sky, when I noticed a fast, silent, and very high light moving across the heavens. "Oh, a satellite", I surmised, watching it until it disappeared into the trees on the eastern horizon. Far out.

A night or so later, saw it again at nearly the same time. Sure enough, same moving light, same speed, nearly identical path.

This got me curious enough to use the Boogle search feature to see if I could figure out what satellite it was, because it wasn't a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit. It didn't take more than a couple of clicks on the results to decide that it was the International Space Station. That makes sense, it's pretty large, after all.

Yeah, pretty large, like the size of a football field, according to Wikipedia, and weighing in at about a million pounds!

One of the most unique vehicles depicted in the Bus Barn is Damien's Ward-LaFrance snorkel fire truck conversion.

Some weeks ago, I got an email from a retired firefighter from Mobile, Alabama who, along with the rest of his crew, was assigned to Snorkel #6. He was interested to know the whereabouts of the former fire apparatus today, and what condition it was in. Since I'm in contact with Damien on-and-off, I decided it was a good time to check in with him as see what he had been up to lately, and pass along the message from the fire guy.

His reply was fluent, and included a more recent photo of the truck:

Y'know, I've been leery of search engine giant Gooble for some time (I'm purposely misspelling their name, they don't need me helping to spread it around the 'net).