10:37 – Barbara continues with her annual White Tornado house cleaning. Colin and I have to keep moving constantly to make sure we’re not dusted, cleaned, and polished because we’re mistaken for furniture.
Our weather is going to be gray, drizzly, and warmish for the next couple of days. Starting Wednesday evening, a cold front is to move in. By Friday we’re to have lows in the mid-teens F (~ -10C), with snow and freezing rain.
Dave commented on yesterday’s post:
It’s a shame that there isn’t a more cost effective battery available than the ones Bob mentioned. I’m looking at the same batteries if I get a solar setup. The only difference is I would be getting them from Menard’s instead of Home Depot. This battery on Amazon has more useful capacity than two of the batteries that Bob is looking at. Sadly it costs 50% more. If you drain conventional deep cycle batteries below half of their maximum capacity, their life is dramatically shortened. AGM batteries can put out 80% of their maximum capacity without a shortened life.
That’s a good battery, but in fact one of them is nowhere close to the capacity of two of the Exide Nautilus 31 batteries I mentioned. One of the SLR155 batteries has an Amp-hour rating of 155 Ah (at a 20 hour discharge rate), versus 230 Ah for two of the Exides; a reserve capacity of 350 minutes (at 25 Amps draw, or a total of 145 Amp-hours), versus 410 minutes (total of 171 Amp-hours) for two of the Exides; and a weight of 90 pounds, versus 124 pounds for two of the Exide Nautilus 31 batteries. And one SLR155 costs $310, versus $198 for two of the Nautilus 31s. Dollar for dollar, I could get three of the Nautilus 31s for a bit less than one SLR155, which would give me 345 Ah (versus 155 Ah for the single SLR155), 615 minutes of reserve capacity, or about 255 Ah (versus 145 Ah for one SLR155), and 186 pounds (versus 90 pounds for one SLR155).
As to battery type, AGM (absorbent glass mat) does in fact have some advantages, but it also has disadvantages. I strongly prefer FLA (flooded lead-acid). Yes, FLA requires maintenance, including regular topping off with distilled water and using a hydrometer regularly to keep an eye on battery health, but FLA has enough advantages that I think I’ll stick with it. Barbara is headed down to Winston in the next week or two to run errands, so I think I’ll ask her to pick up a couple of the Nautilus 31s.
A sunny day in the northland so far, with blue skies and no wind, no precip. Waiting for word from Mrs. OFD as to what today’s plan of action is, and otherwise I’m at the usual exciting household chores.
Her “employers” in Mordor took on a third party entity for processing payroll/checks some time ago with the promise of more efficiency and timeliness. Such has not proven to be the case; it’s actually gotten worse, which we didn’t think was possible. She now has two checks outstanding beyond the 30-day limit they set for themselves and this is now routine. She was informed the other day that the checks were “processed” on 12/19 but there was no one to sign them (two siggies required, supposedly) because both parties were on holiday vay-cay, natch. These brilliant minds couldn’t devise a plan to make sure their revenue producers would be paid on time before Christmas and Hanukkah. Humbug!
She now has two checks outstanding beyond the 30-day limit
Still unbelievable that company doesn’t use EFT for their wide spread consultants. I encourage all our consultants to sign up for EFT. The service I use also mails paper checks for the paranoid.
On solar systems:
Do “good” systems have battery monitoring hardware/software to prevent total battery discharge or below a “safe” level? My El Cheapo Harbor Freight doesn’t. I guess you could build something to cut off the battery. There are probably projects out there that do just that.
There are two issues: charging and discharging. On the charge side, it’s the charge controller’s job to keep an eye on battery level and prevent overcharging. A decent charge controller will allow you to set the battery type (AGM/SLA/FLA/Lithium) to help it judge how to charge. Obviously, if you have a bank it assumes that the batteries are identical. On the discharge side, any decent inverter will watch voltage drop and stop drawing from the batteries when it judges they’re discharged sufficiently.
Incidentally, my battery reference book was written by a guy named (IIRC) Vinal, and was published before WWI. Of course it doesn’t deal with SLA, AGM, and other newer technologies, but it’s still authoritative for FLA.
Ah, I see there’s a more recent and latest edition, published in 1955.
https://smile.amazon.com/Storage-Batteries-Chemistry-Engineering-Applications/dp/0471908169
@dave, time to look at factoring your invoices. The threat will either get them off the stick, because factors won’t wait, and have the resources to collect, or you get paid on time by the factor. There is a discount, but it’s probably less than your interest on cards that don’t get paid, late fees, etc.
WRT yesterday’s revelation of more “Princess” drama, everyone lives their own lives in their own way for their own reasons– but– this sounds like a good time to set some boundaries. Setting boundaries is the almost universal recommendation of pretty much any kind of therapist or self help writer. You will have the massed weight of an entire industry behind you. Your current situation looks like addiction and abuse (of you, not BY you) from this side of the screen, and like addiction, won’t change without work.
Since Mrs OFD is the one that needs to be convinced, it’s time to get out the spreadsheet. Build a sheet showing all the money you’ve spent on princess in the last year. List every nickel and dime, every “gift”, every additional expense. Then show the impact that is having on your own tax and retirement situation. With only a few years of working left, you guys need every penny going into either reducing your bills or building your savings. What would hundreds a month extra save on your mortgage over it’s remaining life? What are the tax interest and penalties that could be avoided if you had the money to pay or pre-pay? It’s possible that your wife really doesn’t understand the financial impact on YOU TWO. She has habits of thought and habits of spending that might no longer reflect reality, that she hasn’t examined in a while.
Whatever happens, I wish you luck with it. Disagreements over money and differences in the ‘style’ of relating to money are two of the biggest sources of strife in a marriage (and that’s in books, so believe it.) As cliche’d as it is, the New Year is a good time for a new start.
nick
(using software to track every dime is a good way to start. When I was always outspending my income, I started tracking everything, including all cash spending. I was amazed how quickly it adds up, and how my income was reduced by taxes and deductions. When my sister was in financial trouble and couldn’t get her budget right or stick to it, I looked and suggested she budget $20/day in cash spending. She was horrified that I’d even suggest it -because she thought she was living very frugally-, but it turned out that’s where she was bleeding money. If you are out and about, working and commuting every day, you’ll spend $20 just walking out the front door. Point is, track it, so you can actually look at it.)
“Still unbelievable that company doesn’t use EFT for their wide spread consultants.
They do it for themselves and their office staff but not for their independent consultant instructors, i.e., the money-bringers, and the ONLY money-bringers. Plus, what makes it harder, is that we have to pony up in advance for the hotel stays and car rentals and only get reimbursed as part of the pay checks. Many weeks later. While bills and taxes pile up. They all had a big retreat/meeting out in Lost Wages the year before last when the instructors asked for EFT and a few other things and have gotten back since then….crickets. No contract, either. Wife would leave given the choice, but as she says, she has “no exit plan.” And how could she start all over again anew at 62? We’ll be discussing all this shortly.
And excellent suggestions from Mr. Nick. I did start a spreadsheet but then got sidetracked; as you say, this new year is a good time to kick it off again. And in our discussion, I will advise wife on the factoring option. My main point will be that we are not only not getting anywhere with our taxes and stuff we need to do on the house, but we’re being slowly bled and smothered.
Once Princess is done with college, that’s another thousand-plus per month right there. I need to find out what this latest nonsense is about another semester because we can’t keep this up much longer. Even if I get another full-time IT drone job, which will go almost completely for back and current taxes for at least two or three years. By which time I will probably have keeled over. (my next younger brother thinks that’s the idea; wring us out and then bury us).
Well, I woke earlier today to a crashing thunderstorm. Turns out we were under t-storm warnings most of the am. Currently sunny, 66F, with 87%RH. I think the high RH is due to water on the ground as the air feels washed clean and crisp. Slightly more than one inch of rain fell.
Today’s agenda looks like putter around the house, as the kids and wife laze about in pjs, watching movies.
I’ll take that over the frenzy of cleaning, organizing, and throwing stuff out that was yesterday.
nick
And excellent suggestions from Mr. Nick. I did start a spreadsheet but then got sidetracked;
I’d recommend Mint or Personal Capital, but you are probably too paranoid to use them. I’ve used Mint, but dropped it and will try PC which is highly recommended. If you are worried Russian hackers will steal all your dough, the US Gooberment is doing that anyways.
6.5+ inches of snow in the past 24-hours and it is still lightly snowing.
My wife and I have had an “exit plan” (revised regularly) since before the kids were born. Like prepping, it is an activity that is never done. Like addiction, people usually have to hit rock bottom before they admit they have a problem. And as in most things in life, be prepared for most people to criticize whatever you do. Your exit plan is highly individual, just as your prepping plans should be. Sure there are some common boilerplate aspects, but everyone and their situation is unique.
I’m working (from home, as I normally do one or two days per week) because I need the income.
Daughter is, under great protest, working on the report that’s due tomorrow. She’s had a week and a half to do it and has run out of goof-off time. Keeping her working on it is distracting me from the billable work and pissing me off.
Wife spent a couple hours cleaning the basement sewage flood. A circuit breaker tripped, so the plumbing pump wasn’t doing anything, and the houseguests or tenants or whatever they are didn’t notice, so the shower water and outright sewage backed up. I let her deal with that, as she’s the one who picked the calamitously incompetent contractors to finish the basement. And I strongly suggested that she might want to pick up a power failure alarm at the hardware store. They’re required by code for such applications, but with the entire house not being wired to code, I guess no one cared about that.
“She’s had a week and a half to do it and has run out of goof-off time.
Same deal up here for many years; wait until the very last minute and then hysterically demand help doing it. If you exhibit “tough love” you get “You’re trying to ruin my life!”
Still doing mundane and tedious household chores here and after not much sleep last night, tossing and turning to find the least painful position, the ‘ol lower back and sciatica kinda suck today so far. I’ll keep doing what I can, carefully.
I remain cheerful, however, thanks to a rare sunny day w/blue skies, temp around 40, and a new year with a new and improved National Administrator. We hope and pray.
Please, Donald, don’t fuck this up. (I know you will, but try not to fuck up too badly; we can’t take much more).
@steveF, being proved right rarely results in an apology and a pat on the back, as I’m sure you know from experience. More like it gets mumbled curses and ‘why didn’t you convince me’ grumbling, so it’s still your fault.
In a decade and a half, I had ONE client who was humble enough to come back after ignoring our advice and suffering the consequences. Most are too embarrassed to admit you were right.
And that’s the reason I let my wife fix our clothes washing machine. She bought it over my objections, I won’t have anything to do with it when it fails on schedule… fortunately she’s a very technical girl and gets it fixed right up.
nick
(and for money tracking we use Quicken with a Rental Property add on. Been using it for a couple decades. Kinda committed at this point.)
@dave, what shoes did you wear yesterday?? Were they different from what you’ve been wearing??
I’m convinced that more than half of my knee and back problems are footwear related.
n
@steveF,
The puttering will be in between listing new ebay items, taking photos for the next set of listings, and shipping what sold over the weekend. In other words, work.
If I’m good, I’ll get a repair or two snuck in, or maybe hang another security cam, since the low temps make attic work doable.
n
For money tracking/financial stuff I’m kind of already committed, having entered a bunch of data and gotten it installed on all the Linux machines here, which is to say, all but one machine, lol, to Gnucash. I’ll be hooking it up with our bank in the next couple of weeks accordingly.
@Mr. Nick, and WRT shoes; funny you should bring that up. I was just reading over the cut-and-paste job I did from your earlier posted comments on dealing with back pain and discomfort and simultaneously noticing that my current shoes were starting to split along the bottom of each sole near the toes. I got these a couple of years ago after trying on several pairs at our local shoe store chain up here and the kid swore by them, having had them during his hiking and mountain climbing treks and also advised me to try the Wide sizes (I’d always worn Narrow, like AAA if I could find them, and in recent years developed a bunion and hammer toe on my right foot, amazing it took this long after all the years of humping a Pig and walking foot beats.)
So they have worked out great, but of course I wear them in all kinds of snow and mud and muck and rain and they’ve taken a beating. I’ve been looking at other shoes lately in the Bean and Sportsman’s Guide catalogs and thinking hard about Bean’s “Snow Sneakers 3” which come in Wide sizes. But I also feel like I should buy local and try shoes on again; maybe I’ll head back to that shoe store over in the “city.”
I didn’t list it among my NY resolutions but I share with Mr. Nick the goal of trying to lose 20 pounds, off my gut, preferably. That should take some pressure off my lower back right away. And I need to get out walking and snowshoeing and x-c skiing even if we don’t get much snow down here at lake level; told wife we need to make time to get out this winta during her times at home for that kinda stuff.
An update on my HDTV antenna installation:
http://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=109&cp_id=10901&cs_id=1090101&p_id=15956&seq=1&format=2
It now “sees” 91 channels although many of them don’t register as sending a signal. What does show on the screen are the modern digital HD versions of the traditional OTA, UHF analog channels, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 & 13, of the middle of the last century.
The TV’s settings include one of Cable ON/OFF:
ON: TV assumes signal into threaded, coax, Cat 5?, connector is from the cable box,
OFF: TV assumes input signal is from an antenna.
Although my cable box had been connected via HDMI input, the cable setting was set to ON and I received only the traditional 7, 9, 11 & 13. Resetting it correctly, I now get all those in HD of 720p or 1080i.
Shoes need replacing even if they look ok. EVA soles get worn out, rubber gets stiff, foam degrades, plastics harden.
I’m a cheap skate in many ways, but I’ve almost always owned good shoes. Unfortunately that makes them harder for me to get rid of when I should.
My wife “helped” me a couple days ago, by forcing me to go thru my big pile of shoes and THROW SOME OUT (actually donate as they might be better than what someone else has.) I’ve been lucky lately and found some great shoes cheap, so I had new but didn’t get rid of the old.
One of the hardest to part with was an old friend pair of Doc Martens. They were too tight, and the nubs were worn off the soles. I GOT my use of them… Some expensive italian hiking boots, that I wore for years as work boots, had to go. They have started hurting my feet, and my knees and back hurt the day after wearing them. Still looked good, but the soles were stiff and hard. Gone.
Every manf. has different lasts, which is the form the shoe is assembled over. Find a manf that fits YOUR foot. In that regard, I’ve discovered Keen brand for casual/athletic shoes. They are generally ugly, but have a HUGE toe box, and are very comfortable for someone with a high arch. Well made, nice materials, but boxy and (to me) pretty ugly. I’ve got 2 pairs now, and I wear them every day. (I’ve gained a shoe size in the last 10 years. No idea why.)
nick
ADDED- how does this relate to prepping? Other than general health, and having appropriate footwear for your disaster scenario, some folks are stockpiling things like clothes, shoes, gloves, sunglasses, toothbrushes, razors, etc. If those items have soft plastic, esp the ‘over-molded’ type, or synthetic rubbers, they WILL age out of usefulness. The soft overmold plastic is the worst offender, getting sticky in only a couple years or less if exposed to oils (like body oils.) I’ve had shoe soles completely disintegrate after taking them out of storage, both some high quality Canadian steel toe boots, and high quality US manf hiking boots. I’ve also found that the soles get hard and lose their shock absorption and grip.
The second-rarest thing one can hear from a woman’s mouth is, “I was wrong.” The rarest is, “You were right.”
Rule #1: Men are always wrong; women are always right.
Rule #2: See Rule #1.
I think it’s literally in women’s DNA. Something to do with them missing the Y (AKA, I was wrong, you were right) chromosome. And what’s ironic is that every woman I’ve ever know truly believes that it’s guys who can’t admit to being wrong.
For the question of why someone might want OTA channels when they have cable or dish, your cable or dish channels might be much more compressed than the OTA versions.
Depending on how much bandwidth your cable provider wants to devote to them, the picture can be significantly lower quality than OTA. Also most broadcasters use the ‘additional’ HD and SD channels they were given for stuff that doesn’t make their cable tv channel. Many have music or local programming on their ‘additional’ channels that might be of interest.
nick
“And what’s ironic is that every woman I’ve ever know truly believes that it’s guys who can’t admit to being wrong.”
Long before getting married, I started practicing this in my professional career. It took conscious effort, but like most things, gets easier with practice. It will SHOCK people when you admit you were wrong. I’ve seen them literally ‘double take.’ It’s also an incredibly powerful tool. Once you get used to saying this quickly, and choosing a more correct action, it gets very easy, and you can do it without angst or drama. This improves the whole team effort.
Given the fast changing and fluid nature of the stuff I was managing, I was often wrong. Everyone was. And it’s powerful to just say, “when I chose this path, I was wrong, and now we need to do this other thing.”
nick
NB- this applies to western cultures, in a field where results are more important than anything else. Might not be the best choice in other cultures.
If it has commercials, we won’t watch/listen.
Incidentally, I should have mentioned that when I said “every woman I’ve ever known” I was not including Barbara, who reads my posts regularly.
This seller has armor on sale.
https://www.botach.com/battle-steel-emergency-ballistic-armor-package/?utm_source=botach.com&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=BotachBattleSteel-EmergencyArmor-1%2F2%2F17
It is composite plates, not steel as the name implies, but that’s pretty cheap for 2 plates and a carrier. Don’t know anything else about them.
n
Regarding commercials, that’s what Tivo, or another DVR is for.
n
I’m uncomfortable with sweeping statements, but I can’t think of any counterexamples. Rarely I’ll hear a woman in a professional setting say it, usually like pulling teeth. I don’t recall ever hearing a woman say either in a personal setting. (Apply the usual caveats about anecdotes and data.)
To be fair to my wife, I didn’t suggest it until this morning. I’d not previously checked whether there was a power failure alarm because it hadn’t occurred to me that there wouldn’t be, a lapse on my part.
The difference (I hope!) being that my daughter is 9 and yours is well past that. Chronologically, at least.
Dear all,
best wishes for 2017. RBT, please keep up the blog, which I have been reading since 1998. May it continue to be the longest-running one online!
A question for the networking gurus: I would like to replace a few of the D-Link DIR 615 / 635 routers that we have in service around the house. Wi-fi reception is getting spotty, and I suspect the current routers are just too old to be reliable. What brand / unit would anybody recommend these days? I don’t follow the bleeding-edge hardware stuff anymore.
I would like to be able to set them up (as is now the case) such that all appear to the client devices to be a single AP (all using the same network name, SSID etc), in order for everything to be seamless.
Nick wrote:
“…this sounds like a good time to set some boundaries.”
Pointless while the fembots whiteant him.
DH wrote:
“Once Princess is done with college, that’s another thousand-plus per month right there.”
That event is scheduled for well after hell freezes over.
I’m a big optimist when it comes to improving the relations between persons. I think it’s possible and relative easy to do it. It is an education process. Educate the other person about who you are, and learn who he/she is. That’s all – learn about each other, show interest and provoke interest. But this “education” is not like teacher to pupil, is like person to person, a discovery process.
So, for example, Dave H, what would it take to provoke Princess interest to come along with you (and your wife) when you want “to get out walking and snowshoeing and x-c skiing”?. Or show her how much you want to learn Greek, and get her help. Make her stay more at your house than Grandma’s.
I really like the Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It has very useful and working advices regarding human relations. I think it should be mandatory studied in high school. And I should read it again.
SteveF wrote:
“The difference (I hope!) being that my daughter is 9 and yours is well past that. Chronologically, at least.”
She’ll learn. And no, I don’t need to have a daughter to know that.
I would like to replace a few of the D-Link DIR 615 / 635 routers that we have in service around the house.
I picked up six of the ASUS AC-RT1200 for $50 each. Needed something for the church to cover multiple areas. Easy to configure as a WAP. All have the same SSID and transition with no problems. Cheap solution, good range, works. Get one and try it.
WRT footwear, I wore a pair of these yesterday:
http://www.whitesboots.com/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=30301
Fun times for “disaffected youth” and “teens” in France over the New Year’s holiday:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/02/almost-1000-cars-torched-around-france-new-years-eve-government/
But the French authorities, like the Germans, say everything is copacetic, nuttin’ to worry about, mes amis, c’est bon!
Da Nile is a ribbah in Egypt, mes amis.
Pretty much the same deal here; whenever there is a hadji terrorist attack, the gummint does its best to hold off calling that as long as possible and even then won’t call it that. They still call the Fort Hood massacre “workplace violence.” And the Army brass is responsible for that piece of shit being promoted and kept on active duty. Think any Army brass heads have rolled for that? Guess again.
Keep eyes and ears open for stuff to be happening in the next couple of weeks, although I thought there would be lots more between T-Day and New Year’s here. Too cold for the bastards? What will be interesting is whether or not we get that sort of thing happening in the cities here and then whether or not we get “vigilante” activity, too. You don’t particularly wanna nail the morons caving in windshields and setting stuff on fire; you want the directors and producers of these shows.
Agree with Denis above – RBT – Please keep up the blog. I have been a daily reader from pre 2000. The only website I have stayed with consistently over the years!
BTW, I am not a battery expert and don’t have time to research it now but I think there are good reasons not to use deep cycle battery’s for automotive – like the number of recharge cycles maybe?
I think there are good reasons not to use deep cycle battery’s for automotive
One big reason is that deep cycle batteries do not have the typical automotive lugs for connection. The application for deep cycle batteries is typically marine. The main electrical cables for my boat are a tab and connect to a threaded connector on the battery. There are no lugs that would work on a typical car cable.
“The second-rarest thing one can hear from a woman’s mouth is, “I was wrong.” The rarest is, “You were right.””
I hear both of those more often as we get older up here. It came as a shock the first time, believe me. And I have zero trouble admitting when I am wrong (I’m always wrong, amirite?).
“I really like the Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
My parents had that book around the house when I was a kid and I glanced at it back then; I may pick it up again, especially as I’m trying to get out in the world more often and not be such a friggin’ loner. They also had a couple of other books lying around by that guy Napoleon Hill, like “Think and Grow Rich” in which case I’d be a millionaire by now. I see he had another one “Outwit the Devil,” which is a pretty good trick as the Devil is a very slick operator.
Seems he later had visits from the “spirit world,” etc., etc. and “The Masters.” A loon, in other words. But I remember the Carnegie book as making sense and my dad liked it and he got along great with everybody.
I bought a couple Ubiquiti UniFi units. One in the house, one in the feedshed, same ssid on both. Got rid of a junky wi-fi router that sucked at being used (at all) as a switch/hub with wi-fi (power cycle the thing once a week?), turned the wi-fi off on the router that connects to the ‘net and everything just works now.
Simply works. For a freaking year so far.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HXT8R2O
My dad keeps pushing Cargegie’s books at me. He can’t comprehend that I’ve read them and understood them and rejected them.
VESA mount question.
I’m finally going to mount my 55″ Vizio to the wall. Just so I can get all the electronics out of the bedroom. Including that noisy DirecTv box. With this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GQI36YG
Yes, it’s more than I need. I believe it’s called Over Build Uber Alle. or something like that. Current TV is 200×200 VESA mount. The bolts line up in two places… an inch off. Just planning for the next TV…. Which may be 15 years from now, who knows…. this ain’t a Trintron, it’s all LCD with LED back lighting. I expect this TV to last another 30 years…. after all, I got 15 years out of my 32″ Sony. Sony went away because I bought the Vizio…. nothing wrong with the Sony. And almost 20 years from my 19″ Mitsubishi.
I do know I don’t want to be pushing 75 and remounting the fricking wall mount.
I need the bottom of the current TV about 8″ above the TV stand. To clear the LaserDisc player and the Yamaha receiver and give the receiver a couple of inches of air.
Is there some standard that says how much TV hangs below and above the mounting screws? So I have some faint clue for the far distance day I get an 80″ TV?
I have the strong feeling that it is all a case of you putz around, get it close, and cross your fingers.
@paul, did you see the link for the installation manual down in the Product Information?
If not here it is: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/B1J7nnO0YzS.pdf
I am not aware of any standard regarding how much a TV hangs above or below the mounting screws. With the bracket you linked it looks like you have a lot of options.
@Dad, that’s the directions that came with the thing. Very IKEA.
As for any standard, ok, I suspected as much. But one can hope.
I think my wall studs are on 16″ centers. If they are, this sucker is gonna have 6 lag screws into the studs. I do have an electric outlet centered behind the TV. So, that’s an attachment point. Slide around as need to get at least 4 more bolts into the wall.
An 80″ TV won’t weigh much.
So I have some faint clue for the far distance day I get an 80″ TV
By the time you get an 80″ TV it will weigh nothing as it will be projected in 3D space like the image is floating in the air. I see it all the time on TV shows so it won’t be long until such technology makes it into the home.
Seriously, I do indeed expect within the next 10 years that TV’s will be nothing but a sheet you unroll and stick to the wall using standard adhesive picture hangers. Power and signal transmitted without wire and probably weighing less than a pound. Planning for the future with the state of advances in electronics and display technology is almost impossible.
the LaserDisc player
They still exist?
I feel that way about the Bible. Local fundies can’t quite accept that I’m very familiar with it, read it, studied it in formal setting, and then rejected it.
I’ve read the Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich. Don’t remember much, but it’s still on the bookshelf.
never read the Carnegie.
n
You people with your “televisions” and “mounting points”. Why don’t you join the 21st Century and get retinal implants and radio links in your skulls? Then you can have true “retina”-quality display anywhere you like. No lag screws required.
No lag screws? Don’t you need two in the neck for recharging? I saw that in a movie too.
Carnegie’s books are worth reading, and I don’t mean to imply his points are worthless. Me, for my life and the way I choose to go through it, don’t need to use his approach and techniques. Despite that rejection, it’s useful to have read, in order to spot when people are trying to use them on me.
Movies get everything wrong, dkreck. Sticking out of your neck are supposed to be solid plugs, matching car battery terminals.
@paul, the main driver for the height of the TV should be the height of your eyes when you are sitting in front of it. you can be a bit above or below the centerline, esp if your mount tilts, but you don’t want to be looking up or down at the tv.
And they typically have a restricted viewing angle vertically, before image starts to degrade, so you tilt it until a line normal to the surface passes thru your eye when seated in front of it. This usually helps with reflections on the screen too.
nick
@ray, Hey I’ve got a laserdisc player… commercial quality too. No discs though.
n
added, I remember the first time I saw a laser disc on a rear projection tv. Man that looked good. you could see the fibers in a tweed jacket. Since it must have been no better than S-VHS I guess it’s all what you are used to.
I REALLY like the new 4K ultras, with HDR and 240hz refresh, extended color palette and quantum dots….
n
OFD reads the OT alongside Pope’s translation of the Iliad and Odyssey, and some of the late Christopher Logue’s “translations.” The NT with Dryden’s translation of the Aeneid. I play around with Latin and Greek but why get too deep into it when previous buggers spent practically their whole lives immersed in that stuff and did a damned fine job of it, too.
I guess I’ll read the Carnegie book in the standard Murkan English, though. As a mostly introverted “INTJ,” I could use some tips in dealing decently with other human beans besides angry and bitter combat vets and Mrs. OFD. I dunno WTF happened to me; I was a cop long ago and dealt w/human beans all the time and then a college English instructor and grad skool TA. But in my dotage I seem to have pulled inside an 1830 brick shell with books and guns and radios. Shit. This don’t seem right.
Mrs. OFD is staying with Great-Grandma tonight, who has not been feeling well since after Xmas, apparently, unknown to us, typical. No idea where Princess Marie Kathleen is and her mom was supposed to call her and find out; apparently took my car with friends for the weekend into Ontario just over the Quebec line.
I spent the afternoon outside doing yard work but not interacting with any other human beans and have been talking to the dawg and cats per usual. Also re-organized two of the bookshelves, one of which had toppled over the other night when I walked into the room, all 245 pounds of me. And hauled several boxes of books and other stuff to the attic. I will have my friggin’ work cut out for me up there, what with assembling furniture, shelving, and bringing juice up to it. A winter-long project, with easier stuff to do in the cellar, actually.
Depending on what plans have been engineered for my inconvenience tomorrow I intend to hit the DMV and get the Matrix registered in Vermont finally, and attend a selectboard meeting at the Town Hall. If I don’t make the latter I’ll hit the later one this month and also the “Development” committee meetings this month; ditto the gun club’s monthly when they’re voting for officers and looking for volunteers on half a dozen committees. They’re also selling raffle tickets where the grand prize is a friggin’ Century Arms (located in the next town down from here, Georgia) Zhukov model AK-47, top of the line.
Just heard from the Spousal Unit; tentative plan is I register the Princess car and drive it down to Great-Grandma’s and when Princess shows up at some point tomorrow with MY car, we switch the vehicles. I was also informed that she’s on a “watch list” now and is not supposed to be driving Murkan cars back and forth across the border (because she uses her Canadian passport). So no more of that, and wife is telling her no more of us shuttling her back and forth every friggin’ weekend and she is gonna have to STAY up there and finish her friggin’ year on time. We shall see.
Wife got GG some meds and she’s feeling better they’re both resting/sleeping now. OFD is wrapping up bookshelf organization and watching the first episode of Season 4 of “The Walking Dead.” I continue to chuckle at freshly mown lawns and the endless supply of ammo and the sudden ingenuity of middle-aged women with explosives. Cool.
And just got the US-Cert Vulnerability Assessment Summary and the hot ones this time are Linux kernel and VMware. Make sure your chit is updated and also keep eyes and ears on net and phone performance and access.
That is all.
From the Harsh on Immigration Department:
https://kakistocracyblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/02/20325/
There it is. We. Owe. Them. Nothing.
So WTF is the big deal? Close the borders and coasts, period.
A zombie apocalypse will not slow down the watering, seeding, fertilizing, and mowing and more mowing of the suburban American lawn.
Good point!
Very cynical, too.
I approve!
From the Russo-Murkan History Department:
http://buchanan.org/blog/can-trump-putin-avert-cold-war-ii-126354
The Xmas deal nicely played by Prince Vlad while we look like asinine jerks.
DH, if the car is not registered how can you legally drive it to the DMV to get it registered?
“DH, if the car is not registered how can you legally drive it to the DMV to get it registered?”
Our ways are mysterious indeed to you, Grasshopper. I will attempt to enlighten you: the DMV office is about four miles east of here and they need to ascertain the VIN and odometer anyway, so they give me a pass on the non-registration and expired MA reg; on which our son is still paying the MA excise tax, lol. (son gave the car to his sister (Princess) the year before last, when they moved out to Kalifornia.
And from the Vermont Grid Safety Department:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/vermont-electricity-grid-not-hacked/
Naturally our loon of a lame-duck gov jumped right on this and called Prince Vlad a bad name. We are ruled by cretins. Who control the MSM organs like the WaPo, which is part of a fake-nooz empire which includes the NY Times and Boston Globe. And there’s your East Coast state-propaganda outlets right there, along with the major tee-vee networks (where the phony left is MSNBC and the phony right is Fox, of course).
I’m also bothered by the insurance issues. If the Rav4 or whatever is in your name, you could be liable for damages (or a DUI, say, if that should be an issue).
Cross-border complications make it all worse.
Of course, even supposedly good insurance coverage could still evaporate if the insurance company decides to shaft you.
Here in Oz we have things called “trade plates” that can be used for unregistered vehicles, and switched between vehicles at whim. A family member had his two motorbikes stored in my garage, connected to trickle chargers to keep the batteries good while he and the old lady were working in Korea. A week before they returned to Oz for Christmas he got a mate to come around and pick one up for servicing. As the bike was unregistered he displayed a trade plate to get it to his workshop.
I wish he’d used a trickle charger on their car (stored in my brother’s garage.) The battery is now as dead as a doornail and they can’t unlock it. May have to break a window just to get into it and replace the battery.
The insurance policy covers all three of our vehicles, and Princess won’t be driving them into O Kanada anymore. Two of the three are registered to me, and I do the maintenance and cleanup ops on both of them, after every time one or the other fem drive them. Princess can drive the Matrix when she’s down here and otherwise take the bus back and forth for the remainder of her time up there. If she needs to transport the harp for a legit event, we’ll try to accommodate the cross-border shuttle with one of us.
And we’ll see how this works out in real life, lol.
“Even the pimento loaf would be gone from the deli section…”
Yikes. My mom would sometimes slap a slice of that on white bread with mayo for my bag lunch at skool a million years ago. I ate it, but now? Gag.
That quote comes from the Barry in the Bunker Department:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/01/jack-perry/barry-bunker/
Fucking lunatic assholes trying to set us up for World War IV.
The wife and I have been sick with colds all weekend since Saturday morning. I am getting better, she is lingering. I have been binge watching “Breaking Bad” and the wife and daughter are binge watching “Star Trek Voyager”. I am on my DirecTV mini genie remote DVR and they are using Hulu. Which, I refuse to pay the $4/month extra on Hulu for no commercials. So they cannot fast forward through the commercials but I can. Is that mean or what ?
My mom would sometimes slap a slice of that on white bread with mayo for my bag lunch at skool a million years ago.
I also ate that as a chile. I remember the tang of the pimento and liked it. Haven’t had it since then, though.
” Is that mean or what ?”
You’re a mean one….Mr. Lynn! (sung to the tune of the Grinch song by the late Boris Karloff).
I’ve seen the pimento or olive loaf lunch “meats” at our local retro supermarket here in Retroville but have so fah resisted the urge to scoop ’em all up. What they do make around this time of year, though, are tourtieres, or Quebecois meat pies. Excellent with chili sauce and pickles.
“…Princess won’t be driving them into O Kanada anymore.”
How come?
As I mentioned in a recent previous post, she’s on the Canadian “watch list,” due to not legally, by Canada’s laws, driving U.S.-owned/registered cars in and out of that country.
Also as I said in that same post, she is stuck up there from now on other than taking the bus back and forth or one of us driving her if she’s got genuine harp performances or classes down here.
I REALLY like the new 4K ultras, with HDR and 240hz refresh, extended color palette and quantum dots….
I’ve got an LG 55 inch 4K tv, the model 55UF6450, that I bought from Sam’s Club for $670 or so last February 2016. The DirecTV looks very good on it even with the upscaling from 1080p to 2160p. Text does not look very good since the upscaling is a little bit wavy on that.
https://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-55UF6450-55-Inch-Ultra/dp/B010Q8ESMG/
I’ve got my 55 inch LG sitting on my two 1965 AR speakers. They make good tv stands. Just about eye height when I am sitting at my desk.
A zombie apocalypse will not slow down the watering, seeding, fertilizing, and mowing and more mowing of the suburban American lawn.
I want to see a walker fill the gas tank on a weed eater. I never could do that without spilling half of the oil-gas mix.
Instead of re-registering her car in Vermont why not register it in Quebec?
The Dale Carnegie’s book, HTWFAIP, can be compared by analogy with what design patterns are for software development: not-obvious solutions for recurring common problems.
Carnegie had done a huge documentation work before writing this book. Someone can superficially consider it as a manipulation manual. But it’s really not that. It’s a manual on how to interact with others, based on the fact (true) that humans are emotional beings not rationale ones, and the fact that, as Carnegie says in the book “ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticize themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it may be.” So what’s the point in you criticizing them? That really came as a shock for me.
The book should be dropped from warplanes all over the world.
Kids can work during college. A friend of mine told his son to get a part-time job starting in his second year of college. He’s been working at the local supermarket since. It doesn’t cover all of his costs, but seeing the alternatives in life has been more valuable than the money he has earned – he doesn’t want to grow up to be a stock boy. He’s going through school as fast as he can, having picked a degree that actually leads to employment.
When it comes to difficult discussions, I am a fan of playing with open cards. Lay out the family finances, warts and all: Here’s what we have, these are our debts, these are our expenses, here are your expenses. Let Princess do the math; see what she proposes. Maybe she needs to take a semester off, flip hamburgers, and save up for that final semester.
– – – – –
Rule #1: Men are always wrong; women are always right.
Rule #2: See Rule #1.
And what’s ironic is that every woman I’ve ever know truly believes that it’s guys who can’t admit to being wrong.
…
Incidentally, I should have mentioned that when I said “every woman I’ve ever known” I was not including Barbara, who reads my posts regularly.
Nice try, but it’s already too late. Your fate is sealed…
– – – – –
Regarding getting along with people. I’m not always the best at this, being a typical introvert who wants people to behave rationally. For me, the book that helped the most was The art of getting your own sweet way, which I read while stuck on a 24 hour alert in the military. The boss let me use the couch in his office, and I found this book on his shelf.
The insight that stayed with me from this book was this: You can try to be “right” or you can try to get things done. If you want to get things done, take your brilliant idea, and lead the other guys round until they come up with it on their own. After all, when it’s their idea, they’ll support it. Praise them for their insight, and get on with the project…
This sounds as manipulative as Carneghie’s stuff, but it’s much the same: People are emotional creatures, and we have to work with that.
There are many systems for reaching agreement and influencing people. Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, has been discussing this wrt the election here. His premise is that people did not evolve to accurately perceive reality. They have a movie in their heads that is different from yours, and doesn’t match objective reality any more than it has to to have the organism survive to reproduce.
This leads to the idea that one can manipulate and influence that ‘movie’ to get the results one wants. This is the basis of “the big lie” among other techniques (tell the big lie, keep repeating until people believe.)
I was trained in a technique for moving groups toward your goal by short cutting group dynamics. It’s called Engineered Leadership ™ and it really works. It works so well, I only used it a couple of times. It really feels like mind control.
SteveF’s idea of becoming familiar with the techniques so you can recognize them is wise and practical. I’m starting with my kids, inocculating them (hopefully) against the grooming techniques used by molesters. We also look at and discuss commercials, and stories with the same idea- what is this trying to make you do/feel/believe.
“The Hidden Persuaders” was about subliminals in advertising, and gets rejected by people for that idea, but it also has good discussion about manipulation in general.
nick
The question is which matters more, the total capacity or the usable capacity?
Yes, the Exide batteries can provide 115 Ah of electric current. If they are called upon to do that repeatedly, they won’t last very long. Discharging them below 50 percent is very bad for battery life. If you want to build a system where the batteries last, I would recommend designing a system around usable capacity instead of total capacity. Where usable capacity is total capacity times maximum depth of discharge.
The Exide battery you linked to usable capacity is 115 Ah times 50% or 57.5 Ah.
The battery I linked to has a usable capacity of 155 Ah times 80% or 124 Ah.
Assuming those figures are accurate, that still means you’d be paying three times the price for twice the usable capacity. And you’d want at least two batteries of whichever type. In reality, I’d want four because our well pump would pull about 100 Amps running. The number of Ah deliverable falls quickly with increasing Amps drawn, although the battery you favor does have a much flatter curve than most. Your battery delivers 155 Ah at a 20-hour rate (i.e., drawing 7.75 A) and 146 Ah at a 25 Amp draw (i.e. 5 hours and 50 minutes at that draw). That’s a lot flatter curve than most batteries, for which available Ah decline very rapidly with increasing Amperage. But still, pulling 100 Amps out of one of those batteries will drain it very quickly. Actually, I’d need considerably more than 100 Amps once I take into account inverter losses and so on. So one of these $300 batteries just isn’t going to do it. I’d need at least two. For that money, I could buy six of the Exides and run them in parallel.
“Instead of re-registering her car in Vermont why not register it in Quebec?”
Sounds like common sense, amirite? We looked into that a while back; it’s hideously expensive. And we’re not paying that kind of money for just her last semester. She will have to manage on her own and buckle down on school instead of gallivanting with her friends all over New England and Canada.
“Let Princess do the math; see what she proposes. Maybe she needs to take a semester off, flip hamburgers, and save up for that final semester.”
That would mean getting into extended and tedious arguments over every aspect of the situation, with her trying to tell us where we need to cut OUR expenses, of course, and manage OUR money better. Which she’s already mentioned a few times, i.e., accusing us of what SHE’s doing or not doing. And this is her last semester; she needs to finish up and get to work somewhere, period. Even wife has had it by now.
Besides manipulating peeps face-to-face there is the misuse and manipulation of language, which has been going on a very long time. For our own language you can’t do much better than “Politics and the English Language”
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/
I remember this discussion on batteries time ago, since I used batteries for PBX time ago, a lot, the best one I tried were Lorain, wet cell battery , they have been without AC on temperatures up to 45 Centigrades (forgive me the use of civilized units) and down to – 10.
For the use that are you planning, think on the olds PBX batteries, this is the most approximate use, they are low technology, the simpler, the better
The were with a transparent plastic box, so you could see the Pb on the bottom, and, better, you could change plate by plate.
“because our well pump would pull about 100 Amps running. ”
My well is about 220 deep with the pump set at 180 feet. I don’t know why, that’s just what the previous owner told me. We’ve been here since ’92, no problems other than ants in the pressure switch a couple of times.
That problem always shows when it is my soapy ass in the shower. At least it happens in the summer.
The pump is on a 220V 30 amp breaker. I suspect it could get by with a 15 amp breaker… simply because I never have any light dimming when the pump kicks on…. unlike the big window unit A/C (RIP) or the central heat pump.
I’m not understanding your pump using 100 amps. There are houses around here and that’s the size of the transformer on the pole feeding their house and they have a well.
100 Amps @ 12VDC
Still, that’s some big ass cables. Jumper cable sized. That seems crazy high….
n
Way bigger than typical jumper cables. At least #2. #0 is better, and #00 or #000 better still. They have to carry very high Amps from the batteries to the inverter input, so they don’t need to be very long.
I’ll bet with inverter loss, that you are more like 150 amps @ 12 VDC.
All my experience is with 480 volt three phase inverters with over 1,000 deep cycle batteries. I cannot remember if the inverter efficiency was 60% or 80%. Clear battery cases so that we could see the level of fluid in them and fill them weekly. A well ventilated area also.
We also had a DC motor connected to a 480 volt three phase AC generator as a backup to the inverter. I cannot remember the size of the AC generator, maybe 100 or 200 hp.
This equipment was built in the 1960s though. The inverter was huge, 8 ft tall, 6 ft wide, 2 or 3 ft deep.
Yeah, probably so, especially since I bought a 2.5/5 kW modified sine wave inverter, which just arrived today.
Well, heck, that’s no problem. Computers of that era were about the same size, so if we apply a similar scaling factor, today’s inverters are one cubic inch and 1000X the capacity.
Yeah, probably so, especially since I bought a 2.5/5 kW modified sine wave inverter, which just arrived today.
Does that provide its own excitation and frequency (off-grid) or is it on-grid ? I suspect off-grid. Or, is it both conditions, on or off grid ?
This equipment was built in the 1960s though. The inverter was huge, 8 ft tall, 6 ft wide, 2 or 3 ft deep.
Well, heck, that’s no problem. Computers of that era were about the same size, so if we apply a similar scaling factor, today’s inverters are one cubic inch and 1000X the capacity.
You applied the capacity as a multiplier. It should be a divider as todays computers need about 1/1000th of the power.
If I remember correctly, that inverter provided its own excitation and frequency, 480 volt three phase power at up to 400 ? 600 ? 1,000 ? amps. We could run all of our cooling water pumps off it, except for the two 4,160 volt pumps. And our steam turbine lube oil pump, and our generator hydrogen seal oil pump (very important !). And did until we melted the 4,160 volt, three phase copper bus bar completely through one fine morning. All three copper bars. Nothing like a back surge of a few thousand megawatts for 2 or 3 seconds. The auxiliary transformer went to the ground.
Off-grid only.
” And did until we melted the 4,160 volt, three phase copper bus bar completely through one fine morning.”
YIKES!
I bet that left a mark.
n