FDR at War (Digital Boxed Set)
18:40 Sunday, 21 August 2022
Current Wx: Temp: 75.92°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 0mph
Words: 87
Finished this title yesterday. It's three books, The Mantle of Command, Commander in Chief, and War and Peace, by Nigel Hamilton. All three are very recent, 2014, 2016 and 2019, respectively, with the combined ebook dated 2020.
Loved it. It took longer to finish than I'd expected, interrupted by The Making of the Atomic Bomb, the trip to New York and other distractions.
To anyone who's interested in current events, FDR's legacy is still with us and this work offers a great deal of context.
Highly recommended.
✍️ Reply by email12 Seconds of Silence
18:50 Sunday, 21 August 2022
Current Wx: Temp: 75.78°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 0mph
Words: 405
Also finished this title yesterday, the dead tree edition. Also very recent, 2020, by Jamie Holmes.
I recently had a crown placed on one of my front teeth. As part of the preparation for that, I had these molds made of my teeth into which I placed some whitening agent, and I was to wear them for 30 minutes each day for a couple of weeks.
They weren't uncomfortable, but it wasn't an especially pleasant experience. The guidance was to wear them just before going to bed. So it became my practice to read for 30 minutes, from a paper book to avoid the blue light of an LCD interfering with my sleep. I don't know how much effect that had, I never sleep well, but it became a useful prompt to do some reading. One I've been observing even after having the crown installed.
Ostensibly about the creation of the proximity fuse in WW II, it's also the story of the creation of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. This would have been an interesting history to have read early in my navy career. When I was aboard BAINBRIDGE (CGN-25), APL people were coming aboard all the time with various projects. I recall one guy who had a Mac portable before there was such a thing, and it had a plasma display, which I'd never seen before.
Anyway, a good book about an important project that has largely faded from public memory. It could have used a better editor, I think. Holmes sometimes referred to ships as "boats", and made some other errors or artless constructions that a better editor would have caught. But who am I to judge? Hemingway?
The proximity fuse, or variable time fuse, which was a name selected to obscure its technical underpinnings, essentially defeated the V-1 assault on London. It later went on to be used to devastating effect as an anti-personnel munition at the Battle of the Bulge.
As an aside, I also recently watched Operation Crossbow, a movie from 1965 with George Peppard, Sophia Loren and other big names. Don't watch the trailer, the movie's better than the trailer. It deals with the V-weapons, albeit with great liberties; but the sets, production values and plot were good to very good. Some elements of the plot were very true, while others were pure fiction. It was better than I expected based on the trailer.
✍️ Reply by emailNet Power Producer
19:17 Sunday, 21 August 2022
Current Wx: Temp: 75.49°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 93% Wind: 0mph
Words: 394
Having restored communications to the Tesla Gateway, I'm able to see what we're producing and consuming from the rooftop array and the house loads.
With the added Mitsubishi mini-split air conditioner in the garage, we're still a net producer of power. We're less self-sufficient by a small amount, but we produce more power than we use and that surplus goes to the grid and replaces FPL utility-generated power, probably for our next-door neighbor, who still pays FPL for it.
Since installing the interface to the remote off-site fusion reactor that many call "the sun," we've added the plug-in hybrid RAV4 Prime and now the mini-split. The data is pretty clear that on days when production is low due to cloud cover, we're having to use utility power more often. Of the two additional loads, the RAV4 is by far the most significant.
We've had the RAV4 for a year now, so that data is pretty good. We've only had the mini-split for a week, but I can look at average daily loads and it's not significant overall.
I'll take a closer look at the end of the year, but it looks like we've gone from being about 95% self-sufficient to about 93% self-sufficient. That is, 5% of our power came from FPL before, now it may be as much as 7%. But we're sending more power to FPL than we're taking from it. FPL still makes money from us. They used to charge us about $8.95 a month to maintain the grid connection and the reversible meter. Now it's $25 a month, and it's not offset by our power "credit." But we don't really "pay" for the utility power we use.
I'd like to manage the house loads more closely to the system capabilities, thinking of the house as being a ship or space station or something. I think if we were more judicious about when we chose to charge the car, run the dryer, or the oven, and managed parasitic loads more carefully, we could approach 100% self-sufficiency. But the idea, I guess, is to have the convenience of utility power without the carbon footprint. You can just use power without thinking about it.
Which is kind of what got us into this mess.
But, better is the enemy of good enough.
✍️ Reply by emailThinking about TFT
19:35 Sunday, 21 August 2022
Current Wx: Temp: 75.9°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 0mph
Words: 86
Just an aside about "tools for thought," a burgeoning attention-sump in some circles.
I seldom notice mention of the following:
A walk.
A shower.
A good night's sleep.
Introspection and reflection.
I don't know that we understand "thought" well enough to design tools to improve it.
But we do love our cleverness and the artifacts thereof. We can see those, and, more importantly, show them to others! We can talk about them, criticize them, modify them, endlessly.
Stick that in your graph and smoke it.
✍️ Reply by email!Bluebird
Current Wx: Temp: 82.99°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 9.22mphWords: 23
This morning's bird. I took some shots from farther away, unsure if it'd let me get closer. This is straight from the camera.
✍️ Reply by emailFunky
20:57 Monday, 21 August 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 82.99°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 88% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 406
In a funk all day yesterday. Didn't sleep well Saturday night. Surprised at how the death of a fictional character seemed to affect me.
Played with the HP-48SX, working my way through the manual. Didn't require much real thought, other than puzzling out the locations of the various shifted keys. My SX has one column of dead pixels. I've seen worse. Some dumb part of my brain wants to look for a "perfect" one. So far I've managed to squelch that. I can run a "perfect" emulator if I really need to, which I don't.
Wanted something light last night. It seems harder and harder to find anything worth watching as a "new release." John Wick 4? Please. I own 1-3. (Well, kind of "own" them. I guess I have them on sort of "permanent loan" until I die or something, because I'm not passing them along to my heirs, so I guess they're not really "mine" are they?) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I thought they went one too far with 3. Love Keanu, but really.
So I turned to my library of "permanently loaned" movies. Watched The World's End, figured that'd cheer me up. And it did. I'd actually forgotten how it ended, or at least a key element of it. I guess there are some welcome aspects to having less facility with memory as one ages.
Caitie texted me yesterday about the earthquake, she didn't feel it but apparently a lot of her friends in LA did.
Stepped outside this morning and my sunglasses fogged up. The house is at 77°F, so the dew point was above that, and there was no dew on the grass, so the ground never cooled below 78-79°. Felt like a sauna. Yellow flies were numerous and aggressive. Notched another five "kills" on the walk, at the cost of at least two bites. They don't itch very long, but intensely for the brief time that they do. One was so aggressive I assumed I must have killed its sibling and it was seeking revenge.
Was lucky on some bluebird pics, as previously posted. Flickr Uploader seems stuck at the moment. Le sigh.
Got back soggy from the walk. Turned on the ceiling fan in my office to dry me out as I processed the pics. Now I need to shower, as I no longer feel funky, I am funky.
Have a wonderful Monday.
✍️ Reply by emailThis Morning's Moon 8-21-24
06:12 Wednesday, 21 August 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 78.48°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 4.61mphWords: 276
It was cool enough this morning (76°F) to have the dew point below the temperature in the house. Very close (74.6°F), but below 75°F. And since I apparently didn't make a "maximum effort" with the sticks this morning, I had the energy and presence of mind to grab the camera and shoot the moon.
We watched First Man the other day, and it was outstanding. I'd never seen it before, though it's been out for a long time now. Among all the chaos of modernity, "the agony and the ecstasy," Apollo 11 remains, to me anyway, a transcendent achievement.
I heard an Eastern Screech-Owl this morning. To my recollection, it's the first time I've ever heard one. It was very close by, and it was very unnerving. I wasn't sure it was a screech-owl, but it was the only thing I could think of that it might be. So I searched for those and listened to the calls. Apparently it's the sound they make defending a nest. Hopefully everything is all right.
Did the sticks, after two days of decent efforts without them. Not as good as last Friday. 16'51" pace, vs. 16'19" on Friday. Average HR was 135bpm vs. 142bpm. No time in Zone 5. I felt like I was pushing, but maybe not. I was also thinking a lot, and the sticks seem to require some focus or concentration.
Still, a better workout than without them.
Anyway, good seeing in this humid air. Jupiter and Mars are going their separate ways. Only saw one other person and two cars. Only one mosquito bite too.
I'll take it.
✍️ Reply by emailProgress to Date
Current Wx: Temp: 75.04°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 53% Wind: 5.44mphWords: 405
It was a beautiful day today. Still is, I guess. It was 54°F this morning when I went for my walk. Loved, loved, loved it. Took some pics of the fog in the hills and my pals the cows, they're up at Flickr.
Later on I put up the drone to get some aerial shots of the house. We're making good progress, but we're going to have to kind of work around some scheduling conflicts. Ideally, we'd like to have the excavation filled before the concrete is poured; but we need to get the power and water lines run first, and that's dependent on the electrician's schedule. Supposedly he'll be here next week. But they also need to finish getting the waterproofing up on the exterior of the ICF, so that'll keep them busy for a day maybe.
Anyway, it's getting there.
I ordered a Leviton breaker panel. The panel is cheap, it's the breakers that are expensive. Part of that expense is because I'm buying a number of "smart" breakers that'll report power consumption; but also because the new National Electrical Code requires AFCI and GFCI features at the breaker, adding to the cost. And they pretty much have to go everywhere.
I believe in safety, but this seems like overkill. I hope there's data behind all these new codes, because this is another reason why people can't afford homes these days.
Still working on the doctor saying the magic words to the pharmacy on the GLP-1 prescription. I got a note that there was some new communication available in MyChart, so I logged in to see if my results from the sleep study were in, or there was some feedback on the GLP-1 thing.
It was the GLP-1. There was a "new" authorized medication in my chart. I called my pharmacy to see if they had the prescription, but I got the chatbot so I had to drive into Watkins to talk to the pharmacist. The prescription they have on file is from August 6th, and it likely wasn't written in accordance with the Bridge program requirements. The new medication does look like it meets the requirements, but the pharmacy doesn't have that prescription. Maybe it just hasn't made its way to their inbox yet.
We may go over to one of the wineries we haven't visited yet and look at the lake. We'll see.
The beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by email