Grand and Glorious CurmudgeonWe have broken ground on my new house! The date of first dirt moved is 28 April 2022.
As you can see, to put the house where I wanted it, we have to dig out a piece of one hill. Also since the footings need to be about 4 feet down to be below the frostline, they will be moving a lot of dirt.
Expecting concrete footings to be poured next week.
Over the past couple of weeks, I got the Solar Arrays wired and the system hooked up and wired into the overall electrical system. Last year I ordered a 5.28 kWh system with 2 each 48v SimplPhi 3.8KWh Lithium Batteries rated at 150 Amp Hours.
In theory I should be able to pull a continuous 15 Amps over the 10 hours of darkness.
In addition, I have also erected a small wind turbine that is only rated at 160W (at 48V) but has the advantage of running in darkenss/heavily clouded conditions.
Well, the windmill is an initial failure. When I got it wired and installed, whenever I put it into “Run” mode the circuit breaker promptly tripped. We lowered the windmill and took off the head, expecting to find the connections were shorting to the metal pole. The connections were mostly fine, but the short was somewhere in the powerhead. I’m currently waiting for an RMA to send the powerhead back for examination/fixing.
We got a load of gravel put down, will probably get another couple of loads when we get the house built.
We also got a load of topsoil. I got a cubic yard or so to fill up the two raised garden beds.
Over the next week I will get the plants (corn, zucchini, and onions) moved into the beds. I will wrap some more of the fencing around the beds to prevent some of the local wildlife from nibbling. Speaking of local wildlife:
In the summer of 1950, the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi went to lunch with some fellow physicists and asked the central question of the Fermi Paradox – “Where is everybody?”. He was referring of course to the lack of concrete evidence of the existence of alien life. Given the size of the then-known universe and the multi-billion years available there should be evidence of life.
A decade later with the rise of radioastronomy and the term of SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) Dr Frank Drake developed a formula to estimate the number of intelligent species withing the reach of a radio telescope like Green Bank or Arecibo.
The Drake equation is: 
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone); and
R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our Galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
When I first encountered the issue in the mid-60’s the space program was well underway, progress seemed inevitable and flying cars were just around the corner. I considered that our ‘L’ value would continue forever or at least for the next millennia or so.
That was then, and now I’m not so sure.
Take electric cars for one small example. Electric cars: a better name would be battery cars; contain batteries which store the electric energy needed to power them. In the U.S. currently, most energy comes from coal, natural gas, hydroelectric or nuclear power. The first two (and by far the largest) produce CO2 (otherwise known as plant food) that allegedly produces global warming and is double-plus-ungood. Hydroelectric dams are under attack and are being torn down because they impede spawning of salmon and other sacred species of fish. Finally nuclear power is beyond the pale, opposed by all right-thinking environmentalists. The above is a series of confused, unproven or certifiable dumb conclusions that are all embraced by “environmentalists”.
The presumably “adult” governors of several states have mandated the end of sale of internal combustion engines (ICE) by 2030 or so. The “renewable” resources, hydro, wind and solar, over five years (2014-2019), zoomed from 13.4% to 18.2% of U.S. total power. So, in effect, 80% of electric vehicles are actually powered by coal/natural gas, hydro or nuclear power. The chances of increasing the number either hydroelectric dams or nuclear power plants being approximately zero at the current time, coupled with the outright antagonism of the current administration towards fossil fuels, it looks like the future will tend towards poorer and more restrictive.
We have met the Great Filter and it is us. I now tend to think that Elon Musk is right – we need to become a multi-planet species, or we are doomed.
Reports are in the Slava class cruiser Moskva (Moscow) has been struck by a missile, suffered a magazine explosion and the crew has abandoned ship. It was reportedly struck by a Ukranian Neptune cruise missile.
The USNI News report is HERE:
I was watching a YouTube live feed from Starbase, TX the other day and someone in comments mentioned that he we was splitting his time between that feed and a live feed from San Diego where the USS Zumwalt was underway.
I poked around a bit and found THIS, which is a live feed of San Diego harbor which bounces around from several vantage points. It also has an audio feed of VHF Channel 16 but they also insert some appropriate theme music. Yesterday when the Dole container ship got underway we got “DAY-O, Daylight Come and I Wanna Go Home”; today I tuned in as the Holland American Zuiderdam and the Disney Wonder got underway they played the theme from The Love Boat.
My TV can also display YouTube.com so the picture below is what I leave on in the evenings.
I figured out how to capture some pictures and video today (using the Windows-G keys to go into Game Capture Mode). Here are a couple of each below.
And finally, they focused on the sunset, from Cabrillo Monument on the end of Point Loma.
Here you can see the bottom of the sun’s disk it looks compressed. This is probably due to Fata Morgana, a thermal effect since I believe the nearest land to the southwest of San Diego is Hawaii.
It’s only a minute later and they conveniently zoomed in.
If you are still hoping for an island, watch the final clip. I was hoping for a green flash, but I didn’t see it. but you will notice the horizon reappears after the disk goes down.
A late-breaking addition. I finally figured out how to edit the video to trim down to the maximum size (512 MB) and relearned how to embed it.
Below is MV Zuiderdam clearing the harbor.
Below is the spot I picked out for the site where I plan to build the house. Facing the pond is the Master Bedroom, the kitchen/dining room and a back bedroom. What you won’t notice unless you look carefully, is that the photo was taken while standing on a 15′ rise that will need to be carved away.
The reason I want to site the house there is illustrated in the next two pictures. The first photo looks North from where I was standing towards AT’s house across the road.
The next picture is the same as the one above but taken down the slope.by the red line nearest the lake.
Note the red arrow pointing to the telephone pole in AT’s front yard. This is clearly where I want the house to be sited. The only problem is that I will need to gnaw down the front of the hill. as shown below.
Comments are certainly welcome.
Below is a reminder that time flies like the wind (the rejoinder of course is “but fruit flies like the bananas”). It is from the “Prickly City” cartoon. It references the Osbourne1, a “portable” computer, seen HERE. The Osbourne Computer Corporation was also known for the Osbourne Effect, wherein a poorly timed notice of an improved product cannibalizes existing sales which, if is late arriving, can lead to sales revenue drying up to the point of causing bankruptcy.
It is nostalgic for me because in the early 1980’s I purchased a Kaypro Computer, a much better engineered competitor of the Osbourne 1 (primarily, with a larger screen size). I even personally upgraded it to have an actual hard drive (a 5MB; no, not Terabye, but 5 Megabytes). It was the computer that I used at SOAC (Submarine Officers Advanced Course) in 1985 to exchange e-mails with Lindsay, who stayed in Silverdale. It is one of two antique computers that I moved from Portland, when I get the house built, I will probably set it up in the office. The other one is the venerable IMSAI-8080 that I build from a kit in San Diego.
As noted in the final panel, it was also at a time when inflation was rampant, so what was old is new again. Also, thanks to Joe Biden, Jimmy Carter is no longer considered as the worst president ever.
With the warming weather, some of the projects are moving along. At the top of the list is getting the solar power system up.
Starting up the second row of panels; these will be at a much flatter angle to face the summer sun. The ones against the wall are about 20-30 degrees from the vertical, while the second row is 60-70 deg from the vertical,
The other two panels will be facing SE and SW to face the rising and setting sun. Rather than being in fixed mounting like the first two they will be in portable racks fixed at 45-degree angles. The reason for this is that I plan to move them down to the homesite later this summer to be used down there.
Another project underway is replacing the steep stairs into the trailer with a ramp. This will make it much more accessible to my sisters and others with bad knees; as well for me in the future. Fortunately, AT had a ramp 3’x10′ that he no longer needed.
Ramp would run forward and just clear the storage hatch above. That leaves a single step into the trailer but also clears the light that illuminates the patform.
The finished ramp below. Still needs a coat of paint and non-skid down the ramp.
Finally, Spring has definitely sprung in central Wyoming. Below is the iPhone Weather App.
The Sunday and Monday forecasts are great but look for snow Friday night. AT says we should get one or two more snowstorms before spring is truly here.
Finally, even though it’s April 1st, the below picture was taken last night in Wyoming. The Aurora Borealis was visible last night (I slept through it).
More pictures are available HERE.
Meanwhile, looking at current projects, I have started assembling the parts to the solar power system. The first four (of a total of 16) panels are shown below.
The plan is to install the second group of panels in front of the first four, at a 45-degree angle (the back row is about 20-deg). If they are about 5 feet in front of the back row, they will not shadow them at all. The last two sets of panels will be on the ground also but facing East and West to optimize collections in morning and evening.
Below is a mock-up of the mounting of the second row.
One of the reasons I decided to do it this way is that when I build the house and install a solar system down there, I can move one or two of the panel sections down there, since the load on the trailer will go down.
Speaking of the house, below is what I am planning. It is out of the Menard’s catalog which includes engineering and a complete set of plans.
The garage should be rotated 90-deg to line up with the semi-road coming in. I’ll be putting a deck off the dining room sliding door to look over the pond. Also, since I won’t have a basement, the stairs will be converted to a pantry. Your comments are more than welcome.
Since I don’t see the current rounds of inflation being halted anytime soon, I have decided to push ahead with the septic system this spring & the house immediately after.
I think I finally have a way forward for fresh water. The well came in with the following water analysis:
. The key figure is the third line, Total Dissolved Solids at 4042. That falls into the category of “brackish water”, the level for most potable water systems is about 150. I finally got in contact with RainDance Water Systems. They called after receiving the lab report and we discussed my water needs, both for household use and potential garden watering. The system they recommended is a larger size reverse-osmosis system. In order to deal with that level of TDS you wind up with a system that could provide 2-3000 gallons per day. The good news is that it’s a system that provides a back-flush system that flushes the R-O system on shutdown so I shouldn’t need to replace the R-O membranes like smaller systems. The system was pricy, but still less that what it would cost to hook up to city water. The good news is that it would provide freshwater hookups to a number of homesites.
Things continue to move slowly but painfully in Ukraine. What amazes me is that the lines are moving ever so slowly around Kyiv, but recently the tanks have dug in; when a tank is in a fixed position it becomes a sink for various anti-tank weapons. Also interesting is the city of Mariupol which has been surrounded for over a week, but although hospitals and theatres are being shelled, Russians still haven’t taken and occupied the city.
I continue to believe that we should give Ukraine the weapons (including the Switchblade 600 anti-tank weapon) but avoid direct warfare with Russia. Between sanctions and steadily increasing body count let him struggle, just like Russia did in Afghanistan from 1979-1989. We happily supplied Stinger missiles but didn’t feel the need to directly intervene.
The only thing that will save Putin if he can involve NATO in direct warfare. Then he can portray himself as defending Russia against the western devils. If we deny him this, we (both NATO and the US) need to back off and let him continue to struggle against Ukraine. It’s like being in Afghanistan, but with a highly educated, technically savvy, and well supplied population who hate your guts.