Elon Musk wants to go to the moon.
He is not just a Mars guy, after all.
Going to the moon first is a great idea. The moon is made mostly of oxygen. If you do nothing else, but mine the oxygen, it will be a big help getting to Mars.
Getting on and off the moon takes a lot less than the Earth. It just makes a lot of sense to me to go there first.
Al Fin: "Cowboy Commentary", aka "Eat your veggies" The Flag banner is posted in order to defy those who would make patriotic symbols illegal or disreputable.
Saturday, July 22, 2017
How hot is it?
Without an a/c, it is hot, real hot.
With some help from my brother, I now have an a/c again. Saved my donkey, or whatever.
With some help from my brother, I now have an a/c again. Saved my donkey, or whatever.
Friday, July 21, 2017
Still fighting the sun
Originally posted, 7.18.17, updated on,
7.21.17:
The fight with the sun just got tougher. The a/c went out yesterday. Last night was tough. It got up to 107 degrees inside the trailer yesterday. It took till midnight for the temperature to drop to 90. At that point, I figured my fifty pounds of ice could take over, and I could get some sleep. This part worked well. But the high temperatures need to come down. ( no kidding )
The trailer is trapping heat, obviously. Last night, I came up with a way to cool it down faster. If you put a box fan in front of the screen door, it will suck in cooler air. That helps.
It may also help to try to manage this thing better. The sun goes south during the day, and strikes the bedroom area first. This gets really hot, then the rest of the trailer follows, as the sun moves back north and west. At the end of the afternoon, say 4 pm,, the sun will head north of the east west line, and the south end catches a break. This is when I need to start working on that end of the trailer. That's because it is the bedroom.
At the end of the day, the north end is getting blasted. I need to finish my work getting some protection against the sun.
As for the a/c, I will have to suck it up for awhile until I figure out what I need to do about that. Yeah, the obvious thing is to buy a new a/c. I'd like to avoid that.
The original post follows:
Been back from Irving for eight weeks now. Each week on Tuesday, the day of the week that I got back, I drain the black and grey water tanks to the trailer. Therefore, it is pretty consistent now that I won't use any more than that much water each week.
So, the water part has been easy. The sun part is tougher. Since I seem to be struggling a bit with the problem, I decided to start making notes on the sun's movement.
It is the later part of the day that is the real butt kicker. Starting at about 2 pm, the sun begins to strike the western side of the building, which is where the trailer is situated. Once that happens, temperatures start to rise quickly inside, unless you want to use a lot of a/c. At 4 pm, the sun is starting to head back to the northern side of the building. From four to eight pm, is when it can really get hot.
Since the overhang that this building has seems to offer some shade, why not try that?
This is a problem that I want to solve without spending a lot. This is over six hours before sundown that is the trouble. After sundown, things start to cool down. But not before it gets to about one hundred degrees in there. Cooling down from that point may take hours. Not good.
On the other hand, I have the freezer that prepares fifty pounds of ice each night for the bedroom area. This is working well.
However, the freezer produces some heat, and that makes the living room hot. If I open some windows, it seems to help, but I think more aggressive action is needed. It so happens I have a small fan, and I can crack open the door and let the fan blow out some air. Will try that tonight. Don't want to have the living room hot because of the freezer.
In short, there seems to be some progress, but for some reason, it is hard to pin down that I actually getting anywhere with this problem. That's because I use the a/c for several hours, and I want to cut back on that. Hopefully down to near zero. The study of the sun may give me some insights on what to do next, if my ideas don't seem to get anywhere. An overhang may be the ticket.
Still fighting it.
7.21.17:
The fight with the sun just got tougher. The a/c went out yesterday. Last night was tough. It got up to 107 degrees inside the trailer yesterday. It took till midnight for the temperature to drop to 90. At that point, I figured my fifty pounds of ice could take over, and I could get some sleep. This part worked well. But the high temperatures need to come down. ( no kidding )
The trailer is trapping heat, obviously. Last night, I came up with a way to cool it down faster. If you put a box fan in front of the screen door, it will suck in cooler air. That helps.
It may also help to try to manage this thing better. The sun goes south during the day, and strikes the bedroom area first. This gets really hot, then the rest of the trailer follows, as the sun moves back north and west. At the end of the afternoon, say 4 pm,, the sun will head north of the east west line, and the south end catches a break. This is when I need to start working on that end of the trailer. That's because it is the bedroom.
At the end of the day, the north end is getting blasted. I need to finish my work getting some protection against the sun.
As for the a/c, I will have to suck it up for awhile until I figure out what I need to do about that. Yeah, the obvious thing is to buy a new a/c. I'd like to avoid that.
The original post follows:
Been back from Irving for eight weeks now. Each week on Tuesday, the day of the week that I got back, I drain the black and grey water tanks to the trailer. Therefore, it is pretty consistent now that I won't use any more than that much water each week.
So, the water part has been easy. The sun part is tougher. Since I seem to be struggling a bit with the problem, I decided to start making notes on the sun's movement.
It is the later part of the day that is the real butt kicker. Starting at about 2 pm, the sun begins to strike the western side of the building, which is where the trailer is situated. Once that happens, temperatures start to rise quickly inside, unless you want to use a lot of a/c. At 4 pm, the sun is starting to head back to the northern side of the building. From four to eight pm, is when it can really get hot.
Since the overhang that this building has seems to offer some shade, why not try that?
This is a problem that I want to solve without spending a lot. This is over six hours before sundown that is the trouble. After sundown, things start to cool down. But not before it gets to about one hundred degrees in there. Cooling down from that point may take hours. Not good.
On the other hand, I have the freezer that prepares fifty pounds of ice each night for the bedroom area. This is working well.
However, the freezer produces some heat, and that makes the living room hot. If I open some windows, it seems to help, but I think more aggressive action is needed. It so happens I have a small fan, and I can crack open the door and let the fan blow out some air. Will try that tonight. Don't want to have the living room hot because of the freezer.
In short, there seems to be some progress, but for some reason, it is hard to pin down that I actually getting anywhere with this problem. That's because I use the a/c for several hours, and I want to cut back on that. Hopefully down to near zero. The study of the sun may give me some insights on what to do next, if my ideas don't seem to get anywhere. An overhang may be the ticket.
Still fighting it.
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Demand the truth!
Says Ann Coulter. Well amen to that.
If you could summarize what is wrong with this civilization, that could come pretty close. It is fake everything. There is no truth to anything. So, the GOP is a fake party. The news is fake. "Insurance" is fake, because it isn't insurance. You could go on and on.
If we had the truth, we may get somewhere. But don't bet the farm on it.
If you could summarize what is wrong with this civilization, that could come pretty close. It is fake everything. There is no truth to anything. So, the GOP is a fake party. The news is fake. "Insurance" is fake, because it isn't insurance. You could go on and on.
If we had the truth, we may get somewhere. But don't bet the farm on it.
Time for Whitey to die
Yeah, all the Republicans who are "climate deniers" are the ones who need to "age out", according to the "Science Guy".
There it is, the suicide of the West in a nutshell. "Age out" with no kids means no more Western Civilization. But the planet will be safe from the white guys.
Time to die, indeed.
There it is, the suicide of the West in a nutshell. "Age out" with no kids means no more Western Civilization. But the planet will be safe from the white guys.
Time to die, indeed.
Sustainability doesn't sustain anything
Stop having babies? But where does the new generation come from? Africa, Asia, or the Middle East?
If you do not sustain your culture, then what difference does it make what the "carbon footprint" is?
Besides, these newcomers won't care. They are worse than we are supposed to be.
This is how the West is letting itself be destroyed. It is over something that isn't even true to begin with, and won't help anything anyhow.
If you do not sustain your culture, then what difference does it make what the "carbon footprint" is?
Besides, these newcomers won't care. They are worse than we are supposed to be.
This is how the West is letting itself be destroyed. It is over something that isn't even true to begin with, and won't help anything anyhow.
Sessions to stay on as AG
How much of this report is leading the reader on?
It says "for now", but I say no explanation for that word use.
Nevertheless, a public criticism like that cannot feel good. I expected that he would want to quit, but reading this article does not give that impression.
All the more reason to doubt everything these days.
It says "for now", but I say no explanation for that word use.
Nevertheless, a public criticism like that cannot feel good. I expected that he would want to quit, but reading this article does not give that impression.
All the more reason to doubt everything these days.
Bentonite lab cleanup continues
Originally posted 10.27.14, updated
7.20.17
The tarp is up, and as usual, it looks like hell. However, the shade did give an interesting result, but not the result I was looking for. During the hot part of the day, the shade feels better outside, than what it feels like in the trailer. Get some wind going, and a shady spot is not bad outside.
But this trailer is still getting hot. I don't think the tarps have helped much. They didn't cost much, either, so the loss is small.
It is tempting to keep working at this. But the temptation is to go buy a lot of stuff, which is what I am trying to avoid. Right now, the idea du jour is to use the misting system combined with this shade, to see if I can make a place to sit in the afternoon. This may sound crazy, but it may be worth trying. If not, the misting system may cool things down for the trailer. Maybe. Also, it uses a lot of water, and I am trying to avoid that, too.
Could the Bentonite mixture work for adobe bricks? It does make a clayey mixture. Mix up some straw with it, and what would be the results? This is why I tried the experiment in the first place. The downside is that this Bentonite was not cheap. Low concentration mixtures didn't make a rock like hardness. Bentonite was really not for this purpose anyway. It was an idea, that is all. I'd say no, at this point.
7.19.17
There was almost all of the box of Bentonite remaining. So, I decided to make use of it. It does indeed make a clayish mixture. As for the experiment back then, I discovered that it will harden into a rocky kind of stuff that will crumble under pressure.
The thing I did today was to mix it all up with dirt, and then apply it to a bucket that is being used for supporting a tarp. The bucket is secured to the ground with a four foot rebar driven into the ground. The bucket of bentonite mixture is supporting a board that is in it. The board is stapled to the rebar.
On top of the board is another board. This board is supporting a tarp laying over it. I am hoping to get some relief from the ferocious sun. So far so good. However, I don't know how long it will last. my carpentry skills leave much to be desired.
The original post follows:
Actually, the cleanup is at least as interesting as the experiment itself.
What I want from the experiment is some "bricks" that can be used for my drill. I want to know what my drill is capable of before I go out West and do some drilling with it. I want to see if it can go through some pretty tough stuff. That's what the Bentonite was for. It is a type of clay, and clay can be used to make adobe bricks ( along with sand, which I have plenty left over ).
After making the mixture, I am left with a mess, which I clean up with water. This gave me the idea to do another water filtration test. What I have found so far is that with even a little clay in the filter, your filter is screwed. No more filtering water with clay in it. Ever.
So, I tried something else. I put the unfilterable water in a pan and I put the pan on the stove. The heat evaporated the water and left the sandy/clay mixture behind. I gathered that up and, along with some other stuff I got from another pan, and placed them into a cupcake mold. Now I have three potential bricks for my further experimentations.
The water could have been recovered with a dehumidifier. So, there's not very much waste here. The mixture makes bricks, the water and equipment are reused, the "dirt" is recovered to be used again.
This is an object lesson in recycling, in case you don't quite get it.
7.20.17
The tarp is up, and as usual, it looks like hell. However, the shade did give an interesting result, but not the result I was looking for. During the hot part of the day, the shade feels better outside, than what it feels like in the trailer. Get some wind going, and a shady spot is not bad outside.
But this trailer is still getting hot. I don't think the tarps have helped much. They didn't cost much, either, so the loss is small.
It is tempting to keep working at this. But the temptation is to go buy a lot of stuff, which is what I am trying to avoid. Right now, the idea du jour is to use the misting system combined with this shade, to see if I can make a place to sit in the afternoon. This may sound crazy, but it may be worth trying. If not, the misting system may cool things down for the trailer. Maybe. Also, it uses a lot of water, and I am trying to avoid that, too.
Could the Bentonite mixture work for adobe bricks? It does make a clayey mixture. Mix up some straw with it, and what would be the results? This is why I tried the experiment in the first place. The downside is that this Bentonite was not cheap. Low concentration mixtures didn't make a rock like hardness. Bentonite was really not for this purpose anyway. It was an idea, that is all. I'd say no, at this point.
7.19.17
There was almost all of the box of Bentonite remaining. So, I decided to make use of it. It does indeed make a clayish mixture. As for the experiment back then, I discovered that it will harden into a rocky kind of stuff that will crumble under pressure.
The thing I did today was to mix it all up with dirt, and then apply it to a bucket that is being used for supporting a tarp. The bucket is secured to the ground with a four foot rebar driven into the ground. The bucket of bentonite mixture is supporting a board that is in it. The board is stapled to the rebar.
On top of the board is another board. This board is supporting a tarp laying over it. I am hoping to get some relief from the ferocious sun. So far so good. However, I don't know how long it will last. my carpentry skills leave much to be desired.
The original post follows:
Actually, the cleanup is at least as interesting as the experiment itself.
What I want from the experiment is some "bricks" that can be used for my drill. I want to know what my drill is capable of before I go out West and do some drilling with it. I want to see if it can go through some pretty tough stuff. That's what the Bentonite was for. It is a type of clay, and clay can be used to make adobe bricks ( along with sand, which I have plenty left over ).
After making the mixture, I am left with a mess, which I clean up with water. This gave me the idea to do another water filtration test. What I have found so far is that with even a little clay in the filter, your filter is screwed. No more filtering water with clay in it. Ever.
So, I tried something else. I put the unfilterable water in a pan and I put the pan on the stove. The heat evaporated the water and left the sandy/clay mixture behind. I gathered that up and, along with some other stuff I got from another pan, and placed them into a cupcake mold. Now I have three potential bricks for my further experimentations.
The water could have been recovered with a dehumidifier. So, there's not very much waste here. The mixture makes bricks, the water and equipment are reused, the "dirt" is recovered to be used again.
This is an object lesson in recycling, in case you don't quite get it.
Monday, July 17, 2017
Globalism is a failure
Globalism was supposed to usher in world peace through trade. Trade was supposed to make everyone too prosperous to want to fight each other.
If that is not what this globalism project is, then why is it so important to US policy?
But what we see is a realignment of world power structures away from Europe and America, and towards China and the Far East.
Something is likely to happen in the near future that will overturn the current system as we have known it. It could be a war, or something else less dramatic. Nonetheless, there will be a black swan event, most likely in the near future.
The news looks ever more insane as each day passes. It is doubtful that the West can reorient itself towards self-preservation, and a future for itself. There is no longer any more time.
America can no longer lead. It isn't even clear that this country can continue to exist. It is likely to degenerate into anarchy, fueled by corruption and incompetence at all levels.
The best one can hope for is that the suffering won't be too bad, or for too long.
Sorry to be so downbeat. But there isn't much out there that is encouraging.
If that is not what this globalism project is, then why is it so important to US policy?
But what we see is a realignment of world power structures away from Europe and America, and towards China and the Far East.
Something is likely to happen in the near future that will overturn the current system as we have known it. It could be a war, or something else less dramatic. Nonetheless, there will be a black swan event, most likely in the near future.
The news looks ever more insane as each day passes. It is doubtful that the West can reorient itself towards self-preservation, and a future for itself. There is no longer any more time.
America can no longer lead. It isn't even clear that this country can continue to exist. It is likely to degenerate into anarchy, fueled by corruption and incompetence at all levels.
The best one can hope for is that the suffering won't be too bad, or for too long.
Sorry to be so downbeat. But there isn't much out there that is encouraging.
Sunday, July 16, 2017
Amarillo by Morning
Some of this video was shot in Houston, where the rodeo is a big deal. Not that I was into that stuff while I was there.
It may seem like I'm a cowboy, but I sure haven't lived that way. Been a city slicker all my life. Well, I am in the country now, and I am starting to feel at home.
As for Houston, some of these antifa crowd want to tear down the Sam Houston statue at Hermann Park. If these people get into charge in this country, then a whole culture will probably be swept away. I suspect the globalists will be quite happy to do this.
Like "Gone With The Wind"? Mebbe.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Don Surber: How Obama wiretapped Trump Tower
Don Surber: How Obama wiretapped Trump Tower: DCWhispers has breaking news: "Loretta Lynch Ordered Illegal Wiretap Against Trump Campaign." The irony of last week's Big L...
Of course Obama spied on Trump. Obama abused his authority on numerous occasions. The IRS was used against political opponents in 2012, for example. This is nothing new with respect to the Obama administration. It is definitely not a reach.
Of course, we still have this unsolved murder of Seth Rich. The WikiLeaks source may well have been Rich, but we cannot talk about that.
Of course Obama spied on Trump. Obama abused his authority on numerous occasions. The IRS was used against political opponents in 2012, for example. This is nothing new with respect to the Obama administration. It is definitely not a reach.
Of course, we still have this unsolved murder of Seth Rich. The WikiLeaks source may well have been Rich, but we cannot talk about that.
What is wrong with a President defending himself?
FDR did it, and it was fine with them. No, the critics will go after anything and everything until they lose all credibility. Here, FDR makes his critics look ridiculous. Well, I wasn't around at the time, but I can imagine that his critics were indeed ridiculous for going after his dog.
Fast forward to today. These attacks with respect to Russia, have long seemed ridiculous to me. If the Dems don't watch out, they are going to go into Fala territory, and they just might get creamed.
Which wouldn't bother me a bit. Not that I am a GOP 'er. Those guys are as bad as the Dems, as far as Trump is concerned.
I looked at his Twittering, and it looks okay to me. In fact, reading it gave me a good feeling. If they keeping obsessing about Twitter, they may be walking into a trap.
Which wouldn't bother me a bit.
It has not been so much what was wrong with Trump, as it is what's wrong with the political system. It still could use a good kick in the pants in order to make them shape up.
Fast forward to today. These attacks with respect to Russia, have long seemed ridiculous to me. If the Dems don't watch out, they are going to go into Fala territory, and they just might get creamed.
Which wouldn't bother me a bit. Not that I am a GOP 'er. Those guys are as bad as the Dems, as far as Trump is concerned.
I looked at his Twittering, and it looks okay to me. In fact, reading it gave me a good feeling. If they keeping obsessing about Twitter, they may be walking into a trap.
Which wouldn't bother me a bit.
It has not been so much what was wrong with Trump, as it is what's wrong with the political system. It still could use a good kick in the pants in order to make them shape up.
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