Starting the New Year

Belated Happy New Years!  Let's hope for the best.

With that in mind, on Tuesday morning at about 3:30 am, our furnace began making horrible noises.  I investigated in my PJs and turned off the unit, knowing that I could do nothing then except fire up some electric heaters.  Later, I determined that the blower motor had finally bit the dust and obviously needed to be replaced. Not having a service policy, I knew who was going to be doing the work - me.  I removed the blower. 

Then, I dismantled the unit to remove the motor.  Finding a quick replacement I knew would be a challenge.  But, I was pleased by the fellows at Graingers Inc. They identified a perfect replacement and had it to their store in about 22 hours.  This was great, especially since the weather for the day and the next couple of days was to be our coldest yet this season.   I kept the electric heaters on and stoked the wood stove.

This morning, 1/5/12, I reassembled the motor and fans, spliced the wires to the connector and installed the unit. AND, IT WORKED!! (Never really sure about these things until the switch is pulled.) When Mary returns from picking up some groceries, she will be so happy!

The new year is off to a good start.

Thanksgiving

There are so many things for which I am thankful; health, family, and friends, to note the important ones.  While now retired, I am thankful for the many years of traveling through my circuitous career and thankful, as I look forward to the future.  I don't often reflect upon these things as I should but I frequently contemplate the plight of so many others around the world and the world's future which often seems so tenuous.  We must be thankful for the present and hopeful for the future and do what they can to support those around them.

On a slightly more mundane level, I am thankful that today I didn't have to take a swim in my winterized pool.  As I was working on retrieving the cover which had slipped in, my helper, Diva the mighty boxer, stepped on to a section of taut but unsupported cover and of course, took a dive.  She was not a "happy puppy." It was about all I could do to retrieve her by pulling her some three feet up and out while leaning over the edge.  Wading in was the next option. As she was cold and drenched, I took the opportunity to give her a Thanksgiving bath.



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Dealing with water damage

With respect to water damage cause in the past couple of weeks, I can honestly say we have had almost nothing.  Much of that success was due to some preventative steps I took.  However, I was not quite vidulant about one small problem.  It seems that we have a leakage problem that is not typical.  Rather than water coming in from "above", we have one spot in the basement where water comes up from below, through the drain between the floor slab and the foundation/wall.  If I do not periodically, i.e. once every 2-3 years, clean out the mud that accumulates from below, the drain field becomes clogged and some small amount of water seeps into the basement. Such was recently the case.  So, to make things easier, I improved access into the affected area, which is located behind a partition.  Now, in a mater of five minutes I can get to the spot and begin some preventative clean up.  See the video.

Thought for the season

If you liked Irene's flooding, you'll love glacial melting.

Here comes the cavalry - BG$E to the rescue

I have written before in support of BG$E, but I really am amazed at the response I have witnessed here in our neighborhood. Yesterday, the fifth day of the Irene electrical disaster, BG$E  sent in the cavalry, consisting of (ready for this?) 17 vehicles with about 30 men. Ours was not a minor problem, but 17 vehicles!  I don't know where to begin.

The problem was not minor, but on Wednesday when two individuals were placed continually on-site to insure neighborhood safety, and despite numerous phone calls, you would have thought BGE had just realized the extent of the damage - Two trees down taking the high voltage feeder and dropping a transformer to the ground that leaked its potentially PCB contaminated oil on the ground and into a swimming pool.  That same feeder was reported to have been damaged in two other areas.

Back to the cavalry.  While I don't know when they arrived, they were assembled and "working" when I returned home at 4:15 pm.  When I took the above picture, about dozen tree men were working to remove the entangled trees, and everyone else was awaiting their turn to get to work, i.e watching.  About four hours later they were gone and while the trees were moved aside, little of consequence beyond taking contamination samples and securing communications cables and poles was done.  The out-of-town workers had to be transported back to BWI and from there to their night's lodging.

All I can say is that it is a good thing for BG$E that they function like a government with unlimited funds for no contractor I know could withstand the lack of planning that I witnessed.  I recognize that most of the people on site were from other utilities, sent to help deal with the carnage, but SOMEONE needs to be in control. Someone needs to know the scope of the problem(s) and the logical order in which things should be done, if only in a limited geographical area.

I am convinced that the field documentation of the system is wanting.  Why? Because I have too often watched the repair trucks circling the neighborhood trying to find connections, fuses, transformers, etc.  Oh, well.

The trucks just returned over the past hour and I guess by tonight the home generators will be turned off.  (Luckily, I have had power throughout this mess.)


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Long Time Between Posts

It's hard to believe how long it has been since my last blog.  It seems like only yesterday that the US lost its creditworthiness.  Surely something must have happened worth commenting on since then.

Oh, yes. I knew there was something.  According to Bachman and Beck, God is sending us messages in the form of our recent earthquake and hurricane.  (If correct, why start at the east coast. The west coast is in greater need.)  This sounds much like others who said similar things about 9/11 and Katrina! The comments did wonders for their careers.  To add to the fire, Limbaugh, is sure that President Obama was hoping for greater carnage to minimize his political problems.  Are these people nuts?!

In the meantime, electrical power is out all over the state including our neighborhood and the generators are humming. Luckily, we are still 'connected.'   School is back in session and that should make parents happy.

Hope everyone is recovering from their Irene experience, be it significant or modest.  

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S&P - Right this time?

Now, (drum roll please) from the group that brought the investment world such good analysis of all those wonderful banking, investment and insurance firms and their bogus bundling of mortgage investments leading to the recession, comes the downgrading of US notes. Why would anyone believe them? Oh yes, the US doesn't pay them for their analysis. So, maybe it is correct.  (Quite frankly, the slap in the face might be what Congress, et al needs. No solvent company would run its fiances the way the collective US government is trying to operate this ship!)

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Now I am really confused

As I mentioned yesterday, because of Congress' delays in approving the FAA funding, etc. some $390,000,000 in taxes were not collected. That seems to be wrong. Those funds were collected and now sit somewhere in the coffers of the various airlines!  Delta is reported as preparing to refund those collected taxes to its passengers, presumably one check or credit entry at a time. Other airlines are likely to follow suit.  This seems like a lot of wasted work.

I ask only one question - "Why can't they send the money to Washington, were it was headed in the first place?"

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Paid Recess?

Now let me get this straight. - Congress, after wasting most of the past six months, has left for vacation but did not officially call a recess, ostensibly so that the President could not use the period to appoint someone to head up the new Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.  Though needed in Washington and not on 'recess', the members now refuse to return from their vacations to fix the FAA's dysfunction that is costing the Federal Government $30,000,000 a day in uncollected taxes and perhaps creating unsafe conditions for airline passengers.  This has now resulted in $390,000,000's poured down the drain. But hey, when you are used to dealing numbers that end in Billions and Trillions, I guess this is chump change.

How many of us have had our vacations cancelled, or interrupted for far less?  Surely, any of us would have lost our jobs had we not 'risen to the occasion' and supported the home team.  But I guess this is what job security is all about.  Can you believe such foolishness?


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China's new Aircraft Carrier

As you read the following consider these two additional items:
1.  China is about to become the largest English speaking country in the world.
2.  The number A students in China is greater than the number of students in the US.

With the above facts in mind, consider the following email I received recently which is also linked above at Snopes, the truth of which they have yet to determine

China's new aircraft carrier! Wow!

These aircraft carriers look formidable and of ultra-modern design. There are reports the 1st Chinese aircraft carrier is under construction and could enter service around 2015 or earlier. It won't be long before we see the real thing. Defense analysts are waiting; watching anxiously.

This is quantum leap above anything we have on the drawing board. They have thought " outside the box " on this one. Better speed, larger capacity, much more stable, etc. Definitely a " blue-water " long reach vessel.

Plus they can service their nuke sub fleet in-between the twin hulls (sight unseen) or even launch amphibious opps from same. It will be launched in half the time it takes the USA at just one-third the cost. Add the new Chinese stealth fighter bomber (naval version already flight testing ) in the mix and you have the makings of a formidable weapons system indeed..

Also look at that extra ''parking and readiness'' station between both hull structures. And of course the launching and landing capabilities from the utilization of twin flight decks at once

P.S. some thought should be given to advising your grandchildren to learn to speak mandarin (forget Spanish ) my "very, very bright" 15-year old 3rd cousin has already been advised to do so by people who know about such things.

P.P.S. six of these vessels (two Pacific, two Atlantic, one Indian ocean
and one Med Sea) would be a pretty good diplomatic " big stick ".

Note: the Chinese are already drilling for oil off Cuba. Brazil and Venezuela.
Can they build a fleet of these things???

A few facts: the Chinese have completed the world's biggest dam (Three Gorges ),
the world's longest over-water bridge (65 times as much steel as in the Eiffel tower ).
Constructed a 15.000 ' high railroad into Tibet (all considered major engineering feats).

They are the only nation other than Russia that can launch men into outer space (our capability ends with the last space shuttle launch this month).

They have also shot down a surveillance satellite ( one of their own ) from the ground. Plus they "own us" in the international debt game.

China's new a/c carrier could be twice as fast as anything we have, plus the stability of a catamaran type hull will greatly reduce the pitching, yawing and swaying common to our present designs.

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If you liked Friday’s air conditioning cycling, you’ll LOVE tomorrow’s wind power.

Friday’s (7/22) heat wave was a wake-up call for many BGE customers in the Baltimore area.  It was then that we learned what is meant by “cycling” the electricity to our Air Conditioners. Unlike ‘rolling brownouts or blackouts’, a somewhat cyclical idea, to BGE, cycling simply means: ‘We’ll turn it off until such time as we feel we can turn it on. We will do this in order to get the maximum decrease in electrical demand in order to get the largest savings possible.”  In looking at what other electrical utilities did on the mid-east coast system controlled by the PJM Interconnection, BGE shed more demand than any of the rest, accounting for some 40% of the total! (Hancock – The Baltimore Sun, 7/26/11) Why so much?  Because they get paid for cutting back, money which in turn is used to offset the Peak Rewards program.

While I did not suffer dramatically, others did and I must admit, I too made the invalid assumption I mentioned above.  I assumed that large chucks of the distribution system would be put into an “A/C lockdown” while others would be left alone and that in a rather short period of time, i.e. 1-3 hours, the shutdown would be moved to another area and the first area reinstated.  Why not?  After all, it uses all of the newest ‘radio controlled’ technologies.  While this would obviously not have saved as much electricity, maximum savings should not necessarily be the goal. And speaking of technology, it seems that with 440,000 participants in the Peak Rewards program, receiving the intended signals presented some problems too.  But that’s OK, for in the near future we will have ‘smart meters’ which will be controlled via the WWW and I am sure there won’t be any communications problems there.

In all fairness to BGE, they were also experiencing a major substation problem in the midst of all this and it is likely that this potential failure precluded an earlier ending of the “cycle.” It would have been good to hear the full extent of BGE’s operational decisions during the day via local radio and TV news.  But, they were too busy repeating the same “health and heat alerts” ad nauseam. Additionally, it was reported that while some homes, mine included, had contracted for the 100% outage rewards program; those homes were moved to the 50% plan once the public outcry was blasting forth.  But nevertheless, it was a rude awakening to those of us who have been enjoying the rebates for some time and not suffering the consequences.

This brings me to the larger issue.  Friday was a one-in-several year’s event.  What will things be like when all those various planned wind farms are brought on-line? Charles Campbell, a retired senior vice president of Gulf Oil Corporation had a column in the Commentary section of The Baltimore Sun yesterday, 7/24/11.  He rather concisely expressed my thoughts about the whole thing and it is worth the read.  Fundamentally as I see it, we can rock the baby when the wind blows, but when it stops, home owners will be faced with one of three scenarios - 1)  resort to their own battery back-up, which typically do not exist accept in truly ‘off the grid’ homes  2) accept electricity from older, i.e. dirtier, more polluting, generators left partially on-line for such frequent (?) occurrences, or 3) be part of a demand cycling program, similar to, though hopefully better than the above.

I am not suggesting that such a demand cycling program would be as barbaric or crude, cutting time into hour-long bits.  By the time the wind and solar farms are constructed in large enough numbers to contribute any significant capacity, the Smart Meters will have been installed.  So what?  The answer to that is that homes will be increasingly equipped with computer controlled appliances that will integrate with the smart meter and through that integration one’s electrical demand may be tailored to a “supply” value.  What is a “supply” value?  It is simply my words for the opposite of a “demand” value which is how our electrical system currently works.  Now, unless you are an industrial/commercial site, you can simply draw as much electricity from the system as you want. It’s like sucking water from the ocean through a straw – take what you want. No fuss, no muss. There is plenty, you are encouraged to use it and there is no charge for taking too much because the utility is in the business of selling electricity. 

With a “supply” value based system, it is likely that you will contract with the utility for a specific MAXIMUM number of kWh over some period, i.e. an hour, a day, etc. because it then will cost the utility more money to fire up the backup systems then they can actually get from your added consumption. Let’s face it.  The “sun don’t shine” 24/7 nor does the wind blow continually.

When all of this comes together, it will be up to you, your smart meter and your computer controlled and web interfacing appliances to keep your electrical usage below that “supply” value. You and your technology will be in charge. Exceeding that agreed upon supply value will result in the same kind of thing industrial facilities experience now, a large penalty.

We shall see if this is correct in the not so distant future.

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Unemployment - the state of the future?

While the thoughts expressed by Ron Smith in his column in today's The Baltimore Sun is not new, his expression is concise and to the point.

"I mention that more work is being doen with few workers.  This is one big reason that increased joblessness is now thought by many economists (and futurists) to be structural, not cyclical.

The New York Times reports that companies are investing in equipment, not in workers, because workers are getting more expensive, while equipment (i.e. technology) is getting cheaper.

"Firms are responding to incentives," says economist Dean Maki, "and capital has gotten much cheaper relative to labor."

So what's to happen to all the surplus people as this situation worsens? I don't have the answer to that, and I'd bet a whole lot that our leaders are similarly clueless."   (Parentheses added.)

Mr. Smith's above conclusions follow his discussion of the expansion of the world's population and related issues of shortages of various sorts, all leading to the eventual catastrophes we often hear about.

But for the moment let's think just about unemployment.  On the international scale, the results of unemployment are leading to great unrest and discontent, especially of uneducated men who see little if any future prospects for prosperity, whatever that is on a relative level. (See Fred Pearce's book noted earlier in this blog.)  


Here in the US we are seeing increasing unemployment and certainly underemployment of our newly educated population. Yet, we read statements like the above, that corporations don't need people as per-employee output is constantly increasing.  To make things worse, our aging population including me often wants or needs to work and is refusing to "go gentle into that good night" per some Federal timetable.  They are still available and seeking employment, adding to the overflowing pool of job applicants.


It is apparent that Business' output, growth and prosperity is based upon the fulfillment of it's customer's needs. There is a closed loop of players -  Society's existence and Economy (1) needs money and growth which Business (2) provides based upon income earned from the Customers (3) it supplies.  Until most recently, the relationship, i.e. pay, between Business and Customers was enough to keep the loop merrily rolling along for the most part.


Now, Society, a.k.a State and Federal governments, are paying Customers increasingly more and more to help maintain this momentum.  But the loop is in jeopardy.  As the older population expands, and as unemployment increases this governmental support can only expand or the loop will be broken.  How far can it expand? (That's what the question is in Washington today.)

We have a Consumer Based Economy and we all know this. Soon, however, less customers, i.e. poorer workers, will so negatively affect business, that they too will have to participated in paying customers! Sales and coupons can only go so far. Eventually, when enough customers will stop purchasing because they are broke, business will recognize that they need to employ their Customers in order to sell to them and to therefore exist.  Then what?  Less or no benefits, part time hours for employees?  Will that actually help?   Where will the loop be then?  (Sometimes it is good to be old.)

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Discovery's Flight Deck - Take a tour

Here is something worth the couple of minutes to view. It is reported to be a 360 degree panoramic view of the Discovery flight deck.  You can manipulate the view with your mouse to explore the equipment, etc.  Very interesting indeed.  Click on the title above to get going.


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Preparing for Higher Education

I can add nothing to this Doonesbury cartoon from today's paper.

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Playing with fire

I was reminded of the Federal Government's leadership today as I read an article in the Baltimore Sun.  It seems that a man and women were seriously burned when she fell asleep while both smoking and breathing her medical oxygen. (I do feel sorry for the couple.)

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