Now, This Is More Like It

I’ve been wanting to take a small, light car and convert it to an electric plugin/hybrid*, but several factors have made me put off doing so. Now it looks like one roadblock may be falling:

EV batteries demonstrate 180,000-plus mile lifespan

One of the key points critics have leveled at the electric car movement is that any money saved by switching gas stations for the power point will be lost when the battery fades and needs replacing. With battery costs currently still high, this is a valid concern – but how long can a battery pack last? Battery provider Southern California Edison have been testing a lithium-ion battery subpack for two and a half hears now and have demonstrated a life of more than 180,000 miles without significant performance deterioration.

Of course, battery service life is just one of several factors influencing when/if I’ll actually get to such a project, but at least that’s one excuse that may be knocked down. “May be” since the test wasn’t under real life conditions, just a lab simulation.

*”plugin/hybrid”? Yeh, I’d like to be able to tow a generator on trips longer than the battery pack can handle on its own without recharge, and have the gas- or diesel-powered generator feed the batteries/electrical system on demand if necessary. Kinda like this car:

acp_tzero_dsc00467

Although, I do NOT expect to ever do a conversion that can do this:

*heh*


Trackposted to Rosemary’s News and Ideas, , The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, A Newt One/ American Truth Warriors, Political Byline, The World According to Carl, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

The Road Ahead, 1.5

In line with the other “Road Ahead, volume 1” posts, here’s a suggestion: you have (or have access to) a computer or you’d not be reading this. If you’re not already using some sort of personal finance software to budget and plan for the future, get off your a$$… ets and Just Do It. Here are three tightwad-satisfying, cross-platform suggestions (there are certainly others, but these have strong followings):

Buddi

Gnu Cash

Home Bank

Free software to manage your personal finances. Words to warm the cockles of any tightwad’s heart.

(Addendum: For those who may read this but who have only access to someone else’s computer, not one of their own, Gnu Cash is available in a portable version one can carry on a USB flash drive and use on almost any computer that has available USB ports. Two other portable money management softwares are available at the linked site as well.)


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2009 Resolution-Per-Day #5

I do hereby resolve to try to find something good to say about politicians *spit* this year. It’s so easy (“like breathing out and breathing in”) to find things to say about politicians *spit* that are not good that searching for the needle (good) in the haystack (bad) is a chore to make Sisyphus cringe, daunt Hercules and make Diogenes’ search for an honest man look like a walk in the park, but I do resolve to try.

I do not resolve to try to find something good to say about government bureaucraps. That’d just be silly.

“I’m from the government; I’m here to help.” *shudder* Suuuuure you are. (*mhwa* you are)

Drive-By Gas Post

I cropped this pic out of a drive-by (literally) snapshot I took yesterday of the place where I usually buy gas. I’d bought gas the day before for a penny less.

01-02-09-gas

I ought to have had my camera out for another drive-by today. Price jumped a dime since yesterday.


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2009 Resolution-Per-Day #3

Simplify, consolodate, update and rationalize my tech.

I’ve already begun his process. By having all my “reference copies” of Windows consolidated into one physical machine via virtual machines hosted in my Ubuntu Linux box, I’ve eased the clutter and made things simpler to some degree. But what else can I do?

1. Install other OSes I use/need to try out on USB flash drives as portable OSes.
2. Rationalize all my bookmarks, password files, etc. from my browsers and sync ’em up to all instances: physical machine, virtual machines and portable OSes, etc.
3. Set up a file server so that all my media, office documents, etc., are available from one central location; set up a secure VPN connection so I can access my files from offsite.
4. Make a rational schedule for my offsite backups (not satisfied with my current solution, such as it is)
5. Eliminate extra audio equipment (especially old turntable/old tape players-recorders) by converting all old LPs and audio cassetes to digital formats. (A turntable, couple of old amps, several cassette recorders, etc.)
6. Cut out DVD player, and other AV equipment via media server/HTPC setup.
7. Finish telco wiring with Cat6 and expand wired ethernet to few remaining rooms not yet wired.
8. Convet all wireless tech to 802.11n and all ethernet to gigabit.
9. Add wireless/internet surveillance cams (needed for when in basement/back room to catch deliveries, etc. Useful for other stuff too, of course)

I’ve considered more home automation beyond the couple of X-10 modules I have (and mostly do not use right now–mainly because I just have the two of them, frankly), but I’m not sure how much that would “simplify or consolodate” my life/household functions, although it would update and might rationalize some things (I ought to put those X-10 modules on the two lamps that are on timers, but... )

“These are a few of my tech to-do things… ” (Sung to “My Favorite Things”)

2009 Resolution-Per-Day #2

No more Mr. Lardass. Five years ago, by virtue simply of adding 150 caloies of purposeful food and briskly walking one mile to one-and-a-half mile per day, I lost 35 pounds. Briefly 40 pounds. Felt tons better. Slept better, had more energy, etc.

Then, I let it slack off. 20 pounds back and feel like a sack of… well, you get the idea.

So, a mile a day and 110 calories of the same “energy bar” (same food, just different formulation) as my breakfast for the foreseeable future. “But, it’s winter!” Who cares? Was summer and sweltering the last time I dragged these bones out every single day to briskly walk a measly mile. If it’s too tough (tough?!?) I can always stroll, able, loiter the mile at first. *heh*

I (or my heirs–*LOL*) will let you know how it goes.


2009 Resolution-Per-Day

No, not “2009 ResolutionS per day.” That’d just be silly. Although I do engage in goal setting, I just think that since I’ve not made any “New Year’s Resolutions” in some time, perhaps a little taking stock and goal setting of the “New Year’s resolutions” type might be in order. So, herewith my first “New Year’s Resolution” of 2009.

It occurred to me that stuff temds to multiply to fill whatever space is available, and not just in the “nature abhors a vaccuum” kind of way. For example, I had a new 400GB hard drive about six or so months ago. It’s now about half full. Of what? Just–mostly–stuff. Heck, I regularly scissor out and toss several gigs of stuff, and yet still stuff proliferates.

Take my desk. Please. *heh* I try to clean it off every now and then. The last time was about a month ago. But does that help? Nope. It’s crammed, piled high, stuffed with stuff.

Storage shed. Garage. Store rooms. Stuffed with stuff.

A goal for 2009? For every new piece of stuff brought into twc central, TWO pieces of stuff must go–preferably of like stuff. I’m not talking about increasing twc central’s use of the landfill, necessarily (although it may come to that from time to time). Most of the stuff we are plagued with is useful stuff, but might well find a more useful home elsewhere.

So. Yard sales. Donations. Want ads. Friends, neighbors and relatives: all potential new homes for stuff over the course of 2009. For example, how many CD/Radio/cassette tape “boom boxes” do we really need? The kids have stopped using them. I no longer use them (as I once did for ed purposes–amazing the usefulness of those lil items). Sure, some no longer have full functionality, but…

And then there’s my closet. How many boxes of “five-to-seven ‘gold stripe'” silk ties do I need, anyway?

And my techie hoard. Yes, I can and do use all the teeny lil bits and pieces I’ve stripped off of innumerable discarded computers, but how many of those old cases (still left after discarding more than a dozen computers last summer) and power supplies and CDROM drives and etc., do I really need to hang on to? How many can be made into perfectly serviceable hardware firewalls to give away? Well, it pretty much depends on how many spare 100mbit network cards I find I still have and how many people might find they really need a hardware firewall.

And the sheet music, books, magazines, manuscripts, records (both paper and LP), tapes, tools, materials of all kinds that is gathered in both organized and topsy-turvy, ramshackle disorganization–all still in need of digging into, even after the major cleanup of the BIG store room last summer.

Tons (possibly literally tons) of stuff that has simply bred and multiplied in the dank, dark storage places where it’s been consigned must go.

And the same goes for my digital stuff. Boxes and boxes of old floppies, CDRs, old hard drives: sorted, cleaned, recatalogued and either re-stored (this time with a digital library catalog and perhaps even bar coding) and that which is to be discarded either run through a degausser (for the floppies and other magnetic media) or shredded (for the CDRs) or melted (NOT burned). Some of the old hard drives, suitably and securely erased, could well find new homes in file servers, but this stuff must either be used or it must go.

So, that’s “Resolution Number One”–no more wildly proliferating stuff. LESS.

Pondering Tomorrows

In the days running up to Christmas, some chest pains brought Gerald Finzi’s remarkable setting of Shakespearean passages to mind, particularly, “Feare no more the heat of the Sun,”

Feare no more the heate o’ th’ Sun,
Nor the furious Winters rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast don,
Home art gon, and tane thy wages.
Golden Lads, and Girles all must,
As Chimney-Sweepers come to dust.

Ah, when I sang this for my senior recital as a lad, I knew the meaning of the words in a shallow ay, but a few decades later, they ring with a calm assurance they did not have… when I had the voice to sing them properly. *heh*

So think, then: what do your tomorrows promise? Today’s as good a time as any to think that through.