Good morning!!!!

[check]

My mom passed away today about 2:30, I was on my way there but didn’t quite make it. I spent some time with her. Almost 98, 95 of which were perpetual motion. Great life and great mom. Below is mom at 38, and at 90 still working every day in our shop, at her favorite place, behind a sewing machine.
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Randy, I am so sorry for your loss. May she rest in peace.

So glad she had a good, long life.

 

[kenmbz]

Good morning all, 21 going up to .....48, grey and melty. Did not get cold enough for an ice storm last night, very happy.

PopG - Finkles, havn't been in a while, but still there and hasn't changed much since I started coming to this area to hand with my wife's family 20 years ago.
Randy - our condolences and thoughts with you and your family.
Nice find Riptides on the cabinet date.
Drew - when I was in Beijing 2 years ago, flew out to Xian- thick heavy smog for whole flight. So much for coal.

Owl went past me through the yard yesterday, amazing how quiet they are in full flight.

More snow coming, but until then, warm and snow melting to enjoy.

Stay safe and be well.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

34° now. We got .73” of rain last night when it was at 32°, but little froze. Need to get to the office.

 

[rswyan]

18F and cloudy @ 08:30, heading up to a high of 21F. 40% chance of snow, mainly this morning.

Like Rich, snowmageddon was a bust here as well ... maybe got an inch or two since yesterday afternoon.

Unknown how much freezing rain we got ... Woman is parked in front of the tv right now trying to get the 411.

First words out of her mouth this morning were "I really want to hear Besty Kling's explanation for this !" (Betsy Kling being the chief weather babe at our local NBC affiliate ... :laughing

Deer feeder already cleaned out by this morning.

Did make the run to Canal Fulton Provision yesterday ... came home with a couple of ducks (frozen, with one thawing currently), a nice ribeye, a possibly even nicer strip steak, 3 lbs of pork chops (we made a Cajun recipe a few weeks ago that called for 3 lbs of chops which turned out very good, thinking we could do that again), and a pound of their breakfast links which I figured we could give a try.

I cooked up the ribeye last night, with sautéed mushrooms and onions on the side, green beans, and some cubed oven baked potatoes (leftovers) that had been seasoned with Lipton Onion Soup mix. It got The Woman's stamp of approval ... :thumbsup: ... but even so, we couldn't finish the whole thing.

Watched a movie after that.

Only thing really on the menu today is to try and again at noon to schedule the Woman's first appointment for the vaccine. First time (two weeks ago) I tried to load the webpage at exactly 12:00:00 and it wouldn't load initially (but I got to the scheduling page), second time (last week) I waited until 12:00:10 and the initial page loaded but then when into a spinning circular arrow when I tried to load the scheduling page ... :confused2:

Other than, have to see what I can get into ... might give that Texas sheet cake another shot, along with the normal stuff (scheduling bills to be paid, etc.)

Hope everyone has an enjoyable, productive, and safe day ... and all those without power are able to get it back on quickly.

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

Good morning to all! Low of 22, started snowing sometime last night... must have been before 3 am.... that's when I got up. Morning forecast says up to 10" expected throughout the day.

Not going into too much detail, but fell asleep really easy around 10 pm. Found a great position of comfort. Then the crazy dreams, paranoia, anxiety, and severe restlessness kicked in. Up and out of bed 4 times between 11 and 3.... it is really, really is messed up! I need to sleep and rest, but the body / mind says otherwise.

Still amazed that this cold snap so far south has persisted for so long. The storm moving across us now, will be heading into Texas by later tonight..... sorry guys... couldn't get the door closed...

Gonna go try to relax and already going to try to nap....

Everyone have a great day and stay warm!

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Good Morning!!!! 42F @ 5:45AM. Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 61F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.

Condolences, Randy. That's a tough one.

Hydroelectric is probably the most reliable and environmentally friendly of the power technologies, but out here they're removing dams to restore watersheds. And some utilities are abandoning dams because they say it's not economical to maintain them. The demand for electricity is ever increasing, and without sufficient 24/7/365 capacity, the only alternative is rationing via rolling blackouts and the like. Then there's the criminal mismanagement of the distribution system as demonstrated by PG&E and other west coast utilities, requiring blackouts when the wind blows and humidity drops to ease fire danger. Solar helps, but the sun doesn't shine at night, so that means batteries, and lithium battery production is a dirty little secret the green movement hasn't owned up to very well. Wind wouldn't have gotten this far without heavy government subsidies. It's just not very efficient and the hardware is rather fragile still. Not to mention that the wind is pretty fickle in deciding when it wants to blow. Moonbeam unicorn wishful thinking government energy policies will only make matters worse. That said, I'm sure glad I spent the money on solar panels, a big battery, a bigger generator, and an even bigger tank of propane.


It was an inside day yesterday, so I switched gears and worked on the power system punch list that's been on the back burner for a while. They still haven't figured out the large voltage sags when the A/C compressor and other large inductive loads start. I got out the recording oscilloscope yesterday, and after pouring through the documentation for a couple hours, finally caught the sag during a compressor start. Seems like it's about a 10% peak-to-peak drop, but the surprising thing is it lasts about ten cycles. Now I'm wrestling with learning how to get OpenOffice to make a nice plot; it's another pretty steep learning curve, and this old dog has trouble these days learning new tricks...


Bundle up, buttercups!

Hope everybody's Tuesday gets off to a better, and warmer (except for our Aussie brethren) start!

 

[rswyan]

Ron,

Nice hairy woodpecker ... had one out back on the suet feeders just a couple of minutes ago.

We know how to make clean power, not enough will power in most countries yet to make it happen, but we are making progress.

If only we could figure out how to safely dispose of nuclear waste. The challenge for us of course is we live on this earth with
many other folks, some who are going their laundry in the same water their cows are using for a toilet.

One just has to look at China to see what happens if we don't pay any attention to our environment and simply allow the lowest cost solution to be maintained.

Whereas look at Iceland where 100 percent of their power is renewable energy, hydro and geothermal. But even they find they need backup petroleum fired generators.

I believe the old adage about not having all one's eggs in one basket sure applies here.

Yup ...

I seem to recall something about newer nuclear reactor designs which are supposedly a lot safer ... and actually consume the nuclear waste that other facilities have been generating. Seems like that would be the cat's meow.

Of course, after TMI and Chernobyl, anything nuclear is a non-starter for some ... :confused3:

 

[Popgadget]

I agree that putting more weight on the box blade won't help when it's on the ground, but a bucket full of rocks will help in that situation. My biggest issue is moving the pallets of firewood up to the garage, which involves a steep grade and a turn. Without rear ballast, the rear wheels will spin, even on concrete, so I keep it in 4WD. That puts the drive line components under stress when I try to turn on the concrete, so it's a no-win situation. So far it's been a pretty mild winter out here, and hopefully I won't get a chance to see if more weight out back solves the issue if this last pallet of firewood gets me through March.

I was missing that you were using it for ballast for the loader. I was thinking interns of pulling a box full of material. Makes perfect sense now.

 

[lostcreekranch]

Yes, they certainly are.

As I understand it, Governor Abbott himself said that some NG and coal generators were frozen out as well as wind. In fact, it seems that most of the facilities that were knocked offline were gas, coal, or nuclear.

I also understand that Texas failed to invest in cold weather packages for their wind turbines, which might have allowed them to continue to operate ? After all, it's always warm there ... right ?

Until it isn't.

Now I don't know if those cold weather packages would necessarily mean that they could operate in whatever conditions are going on down there at the moment, but it seems that someone, somewhere failed to consider a possible worst case scenario.

Something about failing to plan = planning to fail comes to mind.

No idea whether those turbines could be retrofitted with cold weather packages ... or what the cost might be. Could be prohibitively expensive at this point (might be something that needs to be spec'd when the turbine is ordered/before it's actually built)

Might be worthwhile to look to our northern neighbor for some insights and/or advice ... given they probably have extensive experience with cold weather operations.

Wind Energy in Cold Climates - Government of Canada

Also have no idea how much the fact that much of Texas is on its own electrical grid might have played into this, in terms of being able to connect into the rest of the US power grid ... or whether that could have been helpful.

But in what might be the ultimate of ironies, I understand a bill was recently introduced in the TX Leg to secede from the United States. (I thought we settled that question over 150 years ago ... seems some wanna have another go at it however ... )

Two days ago Governor Abbott made a request to the White House for a Federal Emergency Declaration.

Of course, it was granted.

In any event, hope y'all stay safe and warm.

Been through the lack of power/heat and it surely ain't no fun.

You probably shouldn't move .. to Texas then .. if we're that screwed up.

 

[Bird]

-3 degrees this morning or -6 if you use the airport reading 10 miles from here. Supposedly going all the way up to 21 or 22 today. The good news (so far) is that we've had no power outage here at our house . . . YET, although we still expect it to happen. Supposedly over 100,000 without power now, including our grandson in west Texas and our two daughters in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

I think I posted yesterday about our water pressure being down to nearly nothing. It seems that our city's water system has something (unknown exactly what) that resulted in a temporary connection to an adjoining city. So the pressure is barely enough to keep a trickle going to prevent freezing. And the city has posted some instructions:
Do not turn off your dripping faucet.
Do open cabinets to allow internal heat to warm exterior lines.
Do reduce your water usage
- no shower/baths
-don’t wash dishes, or use the dishwasher
-don’t use laundry machines
-don’t flush toilets until necessary