Category: Blog

Status: Sheltering in place, we have plenty of food and supplies.

Plans:

• 07:00 Coffee and two hard boiled eggs.
• 08:00 Had a long conversation about our “Whiteness”
• 11:00 Charging new batteries
• 12:00 Cleaning
• 13:00 Blogging, take another nap.
• 15:00 Talking about racism with the wife.
• 16:00 Cleaning living room
• 17:00 Storm, shutting down and redistribute power
• 18:00 Pulling wire to pull batteries out of hot garage.
• 19:00 Restore computer to operations

Narrative: I’ve learned lots of new terms over the last several days. One of those terms is “White Fragility”, which is when white people are confronted with the topic of racism they often respond defensively.

https://robindiangelo.com/publications/

White Fragility: We have set on a course of becoming “Less White” so that we can better understand and converse with the people of color. When I read the book shown above I was apprehensive, then denial set in during the first chapter. After reading the entire book I feel I am rather naïve about racism and that I need to pay much more attention to how I say & what I say to people of color.

We still are trying to find our place in this Black Lives Matter movement. It is starting to feel like “Only Black Lives Matter” as they are devouring all the time and resources in all the Government bodies to appease them, leaving important matters that affect a larger population unfinished.

Feelings:

Tomorrow: Sunday, we may watch service in private.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

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: Try and get through the day.

• 08:00 Up and making breakfast.
• 09:00 Took a walk around the block.
• 10:00 Talking with our brothers about BLM.
• 11:00 Lunch, Tuna sandwich.
• 12:00 Testing new batteries.
• 13:00 Nap Time.
• 14:00 Getting organized.
• 15:00 Mow the lawn
• 17:00 Dinner and blogging
• 18:00 Short Nap.
• 19:00 Playing Scrabble
• 20:00 Listening to white Fragility

Narrative:

Feelings:

Tomorrow:

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

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:

• 08:00 Up and sipp’n coffee. Watch instacart shopper.
• 09:00 Watching over our shopper getting our groceries.
• 10:00 Looking over my honey do list.
• 11:00 Wiring a solar charge controller
• 12:00 Nap time
• 14:00 Blogging
• 15:00 Testing 20A controller.
• 16:00 Dinner, fish and a salad
• 17:00 Listening to an audiobook “White Fragility”

Narrative: Wired a new 20Amp solar charge controller today. The previous controller was only good to 10Amp and with six 100W solar panels on the roof I can push a little more than that.

These controllers can be 12V or 24V so you have to connect the battery first to set the bus voltage. Then connect the solar panels. It will assume 12V with no voltage on the battery terminals and there’s no way to force it to 24V.

This is the DC distribution box for the homestead. Technically it’s wired incorrectly with white being +24V. The NEC says that the black wires should be hot and the white wires near ground. However I’ve gotten them reversed too many times and burnt up equipment forgetting black is actually hot. It’s easy label the white wires and to reverse them after I get further along in this project. I used red/black wire for the DC wiring, according to the NEC they are both hot wires.

Feelings: It is just getting crazy out there….

Black Lives Matter Leader: ‘If This Country Doesn’t Give Us What We Want, Then We Will Burn Down This System’

Tomorrow: Thank Goodness it’s Friday.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

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:

• 08:00 Eggs for breakfast
• 09:00 Installed additional wires on 24VDC distribution panel.
• 10:00 Planning…
• 11:00 Blogging
• 12:00 Nap
• 14:00 Planning
• 15:00 Moving power connections to reduce the heat load on the Air Conditioner.
• 16:00 Testing a new battery
• 17:00 Dinner
• 18:00 Getting ready for church and getting an update on Pat.
• 19:00 Prayer time with the brothers
• 21:00 Bed
• 23:00 Updating latitude laptop.

Narrative: Received a replacement battery for my primary UPS for my homestead network. I am not happy that it was separate from the three others that need to be matched pretty closely for this UPS that needs FOUR batteries. (48V)

The handle is different than the four units I bought last month so I am a little worried that the battery is old. (Which will shorten the life expectancy.)

The package was unopened and the voltage was a full charge when I got the battery. The discharge capacity was within specs and the charge capacity was good as well.

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Feelings: The violence has not diminished as quickly as the police have started to pick their battles, anyone thinking a Revolution is upon us?

Tomorrow: Hopefully a better day

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

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:

• 07:00 Up and sipp’n coffee.
• 08:00 Getting organized and blogging.
  • Scanned Picnic table instructions.
• 09:00 Went for a walk.
• 10:00 Reading the news.
• 11:00 Getting organized.
• 12:00 Eating lunch, slice of Ham.
• 13:00 Drive to Stone Mtn.
• 14:00 Getting organized
• 15:00 wired fuse block for garage.
• 16:00 helped with dinner
• 17:00 Dinner
• 18:00 Installed fuse block in the homestead for 24VDC
• 19:00 Cleaning up
• 20:00 Getting ready for bed

Narrative: Need to clean up homestead DC wiring. I have four different buss voltages, 12VDC, 24VDC, 48VDC and Solar 32-44V. The house distribution is red/black even though I’ve identified the buss voltages by color, red 12V, Orange 24V, Purple 48V and solar is Yellow.

Yesterday I accidently connected the solar to the 12V buss when I repurposed a wire used for the driveway IR illuminator. I lost a couple 12V items because of that. 🙁 Most everything in the house can run on 24, it’s just less electronic noise to run it on 12V. The 12V is “converted” from the 24V buss and has a 10A capability with redundancy. After installing the fuse block I was still short three connections that had to be temporarily patched onto one fuse with cords I was using before.

Feelings: We’ve still not dealt with the 6 blocks in Seattle?

Tomorrow: Church in the evening, grocery order.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

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:

Narrative: We had our morning planning meeting then worked our Instacart shopping. We had to schedule an additional shopper because the last one stole our dozen eggs. (They are 1dz limit, so you can’t just order two on your next order.)

Cleaned off the Livingroom couch of all the stuff we piled on it since I quit work. It took the better part of a day.

The four batteries I pulled from the refrigerator UPS are in great shape, I got worried when the batteries from the primary UPS were well below replacement threshold. Most of the 35AH batteries were purchased between January and March of 2019. I paralleled the two matched batteries to equalize the charge before putting them back in service.

I changed out the primitive solar panel connections that used a standard extension cord to a MC-4 to SB50 connector which connects to the house with a PP45 connector.

Feelings: The rebellious crowd is still destroying property…

Tomorrow:

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

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: Send off three boxes to get mailed to mom.

• 08:00 Omelet for breakfast.
• 09:00 Still trying to navigate Daniel 9:4 confessing the sin of our parishiners.
• 10:00 Church services.
• 12:00 build a couple backup cables for mom and box them.
• 14:00 Handed off the boxes to get mailed on Wednesday, Nap time.
• 16:00 93 Degrees outside, Garage was actually cool until I opened the door.
• 17:00 Dinner
• 18:00 Pulled four batteries off the refrigerator UPS and testing them for capacity.
• 19:00 Break down boxes in the Livingroom.
• 20:00 Cleaning
• 21:00 Bed Time

Narrative: I have had 200W of solar panels on my homestead for a couple years. They don’t generate enough consistent power to do much energy saving efforts. With my efforts to build a solar charger for my mom’s golf cart I have gained appreciation for having solar panels that face East and West. It is a reality at this point that these solar panels will not produce the same KWH/Day as the South facing panels. But they do give me a plus-up in power early morning and late afternoon when the chimney casts a shadow on the south facing panels.

Forfeiting some total power these East/West panels has given me more consistent power throughout the day. They also do a good job when it’s overcast with about 60W on a cloudy day. (Much more than I thought.)

Feelings: I am against changing legendary brand named products because they offend someone. We are a nation, it feels dangerous to yield to complaints of the protesting masses that have taken over this country in the name of racism.

Tomorrow: Monday, most of the work on my mother’s solar golf cart is in the mail.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

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: Big Amazon shipment for mom’s solar project today.

• 08:00 Cereal for breakfast and headed out the door for a short walk.
• 09:00 Back from our walk, have to deal with the car we gave away today.
• 10:00 Blogging..
• 11:00 Wasting time on FB.
• 12:00 Nap
• 14:00 Packing tape arrived, boxing up stuff
• 15:00 Figuring out how to ship this stuff.
• 16:00 Gee Wiz, there is so much anger out there…
• 17:00 Mowing lawn
• 18:00 Running Gen#1 and cleaning
• 19:00 Checking Gen, putting things away.
• 20:00 Whites are called to own the sin of systemic racism, ewe!
• 22:00 Bed

Narrative: If the packing tape arrives today (And it is supposed to) I plan on putting all the wiring to charge my mother’s golf cart using solar panels into boxes. Then I need to take them to be shipped.

Feelings: Found an interesting article promoting the idea of “Stop Sanctifying Criminals.” and posed it to my FB page.

Tomorrow: Sunday, not looking forward to it this time.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

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:

• 08:00 Up eating cereal for breakfast and a good cup of coffee.
• 09:00 Planning and going for a walk.
• 10:00 Switch computers to solar power and do some research.
• 11:00 Writing in my blog
• 12:00 Updated my planning chart and blogging.
• 13:00 Cleaning and blogging.
• 14:00 Down for a nap
• 16:00 Getting organized writing in my blog.
• 17:00 Dinner, large salad
• 18:00 Watching “That Girl”
• 19:00 Playing scrabble, I lost
• 21:30 Went to bed.

Accomplishments: Looks like my efforts to FB, Bing and the FTC have paid off. The fake power saving products are not being sold on any public platform I looked at today. (Except Amazon LOL)

Narrative: I realized last night there is a shortfall in my design for mom’s solar. If lightning hit nearby it could possibly travel into their home from the surface of the ground. With 400 feet of distance and insulated wiring we need to ground the golf cart if she is running the inverter AND charging with solar. The current plan is to put an inductor on the solar wires and ground the inverter with a power strip that has two plugs.

Repairs: One of my battery banks has a weak battery. The trouble with having four batteries in series is that the strong ones will kill the weak one over a short amount of time by over discharging it. (Below 10V) Especially in high voltage strings where a 2 volt voltage drop in a single battery will not be noticed. Short term I’ve paralleled a very small battery that will plus-up the capacity to protect the remaining life of the weak battery.

Long term I’m going to build a circuit that will notice when any battery in the string is almost two volts different than the adjacent battery. (maybe less.) I was hoping the battery management device would prevent this from happening, especially when the current draw is only 2-4 amps.

Feelings: We are drowning in all the amplified protesting, time for some serious social media distancing.

Tomorrow: Saturday, huge Amazon shipment day.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Pi News:

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 ship about a hundred pounds of wire to mom.

• 07:00 Up and eating breakfast.
• 08:00 Planning meeting, Instacart Shopping.
• 09:00 Putt’n away the groceries.
• 10:00 Vacuuming the floors.
• 11:00 Finishing up the wiring for the solar charger.
• 12:00 Nap Time.
• 14:00 Package up the wiring to be sent to moms.
• 16:00 Tested solar wiring just to make sure before boxing up the last of it.
• 17:00 Dinner.
• 21:00 nibbling on an ice-cream bar

Narrative: Blog is a bit thin today, I was pretty busy all day.

We spent a great deal of the day talking about limiting the drama that we bring into our relationship. If we get emotional, it’s time to turn off the news. Which is hard since it is everywhere these days.

I never did get to mailing the wiring to mom, I’ll have to do it tomorrow….

I checked Bing tonight, none of the OKOWATT Ads are running anymore. (The complaint to the FTC may have worked.) They have also died down a little on FB, I’ve not seen the three “snake oil” power saving products being advertised for several days.

Feelings: I am discouraged by all the violence and destruction of property. I also do not know what subjects are “Safe” to talk about in mixed company anymore.

Tomorrow: Friday, hopefully I can get back on schedule tomorrow.

Injuries: Arguments: Exercise: Feeling words: Travel: Noteworthy: Accmplishments: Purchases: Project: Theme: Engineering: Repairs: Pi News:

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