Status: We’re sheltering in place and have plenty of food and supplies.
Plans: Work our grocery list and get organized for tomorrow. It doesn’t appear that we’re ready to go back out into the crowd just yet.
Narrative: Tying to get my accounts setup with Ameriprise Financial, spent almost all day on it. I am having a go round with the representative to correct the large number of errors.
Ran generator #2 for about 30 minutes, need to check the oil for replacement.
Connected all six solar panels on the roof together and used them to run my priority UPS during the day. They produced over 300Watts of power with 600W of panels.
Feelings:
Tomorrow: Groceries in the morning and prayer hour at 9PM.
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes Did I DMBT be happy? Yes *Did My Best To
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes Did I DMBT be happy? Yes *Did My Best To
Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.
Plans: Get out of the house and take a walk at a local park.
06:00 Up and sipp’n coffee while writing in my Blog.
07:00 Found out car battery is dead, now how do I get a replacement.
08:00 Mounted 2x more solar panels on the roof and adjusted the counter weights.
Narrative: I am still floundering a little, time is opening up and I need to get focused on what’s important.
I temporarily laid two more solar panels on the roof to simulate the six panels mom will have on the sandbox.
My plan for years was to deploy solar panels stored in the garage to protect them. I cannot deploy them in the yard or someone will remove them, possibly with force.
The plan was to use the 20 blocks that are stored in the driveway to hold the solar panels in place and run temporary wires to charge the batteries. I have repurposed three circuits and now have those 12AWG wires to bring the solar from the roof to the batteries.
When I tried holding down the solar panels with the cement blocks. I hadn’t thought of how I was going to attach the straps to the blocks. That the blocks needed a felt underlayment. I also hadn’t realized that the blocks won’t hold the panels unless half of them are on the other side of the crest of the roof. The straps across the crest need to be wide enough not to damage the shingles. (I used 6” wide flashing for my test, but it’s pretty thin to hold an array of 10 panels.)
I was amazed at how much power I could get on a cloudy day.
I also decided to series / parallel the panels into five banks of two solar panels. That keeps the voltage below a real arcing concern and the current is not too outrageous.
I have four panels that face East/West that are paralleled together 2S2P so they produce roughly the same power throughout the day. (Verses having a peak power at noon.)
I was impressed pretty quickly that they were producing 80W on a pretty cloudy day!
Bought mom a fan, emergency radio and some batteries, they will all be there tomorrow.
Golf cart shop called mom today, they’re picking up the golf cart today…. Yea!
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes Did I DMBT be happy? Yes *Did My Best To
Jenn Budenz with her 2-month-old son AJ. (Hayne Palmour IV / UT San Diego 2014)Ashley Edens collapses on the coffin of her 22-year-old husband, Army Spc. Jason K. Edens, as his body arrives in Nashville, Tennessee from service in Afghanistan.
Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.
Plans: Groceries and making plans.
05:00 Up, Sipp’n coffee and wasting time with FB.
07:00 Nap before Groceries, nope didn’t happen…
08:00 Instacart Shopping
09:00 Putting groceries away
10:00 wasting time in FB and writing in my blog.
11:00 Nap
12:00 Lunch and another Nap
14:00 watched dark waters
16:00 mow lawn
17:00 dinner was great, but I ate too much.
18:00 Reading about grieving.
19:00 Wasting time on FB, I need to focus “Too Many Minds”
False ads on FB
Backup Power for mom (Lights, fans, cell phones etc.)
Sandbox backup battery (If we use a picnic table)
Golf Cart Battery
Narrative: Many things in our homestead have backup power on them and are not slaves to the Power Grid. To keep these things running we have multiple layers of Un-interruptible Power Supplies powering them. Occasionally we need to do maintenance on these UPS units and which requires moving the plug from one UPS to the other. On my two most critical circuits I’ve installed a relay that chooses which of two plugs powers supplies power to the equipment.
There is one minor problem if the relay is powered by one of the two plugs using an AC coil. The relay can chatter between the power sources if the power available on the N.O. contacts cannot support the load. I have two of them and have had no issues thus far for maybe a year or more.
Narrative2:
Feelings:
Tomorrow: Tuesday, we’re planning to walk a park tomorrow.
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes Did I DMBT be happy? Yes *Did My Best To
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes Did I DMBT be happy? Yes *Did My Best To
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes Did I DMBT be happy? Yes *Did My Best To
Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.
Plans: Get groceries and talk to mom.
07:00 put out the recycling, grab a cup of coffee and read the news.
08:00 Assist our Instacart shopper while making plans.
09:00 Wasting time on FB.
10:00 Check on finances, schedule payments.
12:00 Nap
13:00 Wasting time on FB reporting these false ads for power saving devices.
14:00 Delivering some bread
15:00 Salad for Brunch.
16:00 Putting feet on my permanent solar panels.
17:00 Dinner and wasting time on FB.
Narrative: Our Instacart shopper surprised us with paper bags this morning. One of the bags had a thoughtful note written on the side of it.
I bought some furniture feet for my solar panels and finally got around to mounting them today. The solar panels are secured at the top and float on the bottom so that they dissipate the wind load when necessary.
The feet swivel to match the roof and I purchased an additional felt pad that is glued to the foot to reduce the wear on the roof.
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes Did I DMBT be happy? Yes *Did My Best To
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes Did I DMBT be happy? Yes *Did My Best To
Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.
Plans: Groceries in the morning and church in the evening.
05:00 Wasting time on FB drinking Dominican Coffee.
06:00 These fake ads are “Whack-a-Mole” they build another page and repost.
07:00 Breakfast, 4 eggs
08:00 Instacart Shopper is picking out our stuff.
09:00 Packing Instacart away.
10:00 Called mom
11:00 Nap
12:00 Lunch and wasting time on FB.
13:00 Nap2
15:00 Blogging
16:00 Listening to Jacoby.
False Advertising: I have wasted several days on FB trying to pull some “Snake Oil” advertisers off their platform. Although FB does have an automated system that can be engaged, it’s very time consuming and the bad actors just seem to start another storefront every time we close one.
False Advertising, device is actually an incredibly cheap electrical noise filter.
Today I’ve come to the realization it’s THEIR problem and I have insufficient influence because they (FB and the storefront) BOTH make money from advertising these fake products. In the past UL trademark was excellent at verifying the function and safety of a device. Now with the Internet marketing there is rarely certifications offered and even some of those I have found to be fake. We got here because these “Sellers” can be in a country where false advertising is not illegal. It is also difficult to prosecute a business that cost $40 to stand up and the business (AKA storefront) is protected by having an anonymous owner. The owners hire people to monitor, give false testimony, argue and delete negative comments posted on the platform.
The next step is to take all the data and send a complaint to the FTC, especially if the advertising is across state lines.
There is electrical noise on my DC distribution from on or more of these cheap DC lights on the homestead. At night when all the lights are on I have trouble resetting the outside cameras that are near the lights. I have tried putting a small filter at the lights, but that didn’t seem to help as much as I had hoped. Amazon had a common mode choke for a reasonable price that would work well as a filter.
The wiring of this choke is two identical windings that can be connected in such a way to make it either “Differential” or “Common” inductive filter. I gave this some thought and decided to make one that is BOTH to help me find the noise source. I soldered two of them in series, put connectors on the ends of the wires and enclosed them since the wire on these coils has a very thin enamel insulation.
The only advantage of using dual coils like this is that the amount of inductance can be adjusted individually for common mode or differential mode by changing the number of turns on one of the two coils. (If I simply used two coils the differential/common inductance is the same for each lead.)
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes Did I DMBT be happy? Yes *Did My Best To
Status: Sheltering in place until June 12, we have plenty of food and supplies. I am two days from my wedding anniversary and seven days past being retired.
Plans: Try and get a battery connection installed on mom’s golf cart.
07:00 Up, sipp’n my coffee and writing in my blog.
08:00 Wasting time on FB.
09:00 Called Golf Cart place, all set.
10:00 Breaking down boxes and putting them in bags for recycling.
11:00 Lunch and FB scanning.
12:00 Looking for common mode chokes
13:00 Nap time
15:00 Organizing
16:00 Dinner
17:00 Making solar MC-4 connecting cables.
18:00 Watching all the president’s men with the wife
21:00 Calling it a day.
Narrative: Spent a good part of the day breaking down boxes and cleaning up the corner of our Livingroom.
This evening I made an adapter cable from a solar panel to a standard extension cord. This allows me to us a regular extension cord to connect solar panels in the lawn or on the roof.
From the book “Triggers” by Marshall Goldsmith Did I DMBT make my wife feel loved? Yes Did I DMBT help my wife today? Yes Did I DMBT be happy? Yes *Did My Best To
