Feds lose Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case

The idea was to defeat Trump, so it doesn't matter that they lost they got what they wanted

It was a political prosecution. It took place during a campaign season, and it was designed to harm the candidacy of President Trump. Why is it that so many people don't seem to get this?

The same is true with everything that these people do. It always has a political angle.

There needs to be some accountability for things like this. Otherwise, they'll keep doing it because it works.

Off-grid post, 4-9-22

 

There are a lot of orders that are coming in for this latest step in the solar panel project. While I am waiting on those, the part that holds it up to the sun has got to be built. So that is what I am doing now.

Evidently, the carpentry skills still have a lot to be desired. I think I know what it takes to get a structure to stand up in the wind around here. Let us hope so, anyway. The structure in place has stood up for several years. There have been cases when I built something that did not hold up for long.

Part of that is that I go pretty cheap. Only what gets me by. To do this in a better way would take more materials, more machinery, and so forth. All of that costs money. Another reason is that I am not that careful. It usually looks like a "Mr. Haney" job ( Green Acres character on sixties sitcom).

At least I am not selling my services to anybody. I don't think they'd be happy. Somebody might not be happy, anyway. Number One would say that it looks "low rent". Okay. I can accept that. I'm not building it to sell it. Everything he makes is made for profit. Not me.

One of these days, he may tell me to take it down because it is so ugly. So far he has put up with it. He is very patient in that way. lol.

One thing that would not be good is if this thing fell down in the wind. So I need to get at least that much right.

I'm hoping to get this much done before the panels arrive. But if not, it is no big deal. It was a long time before I got this one up. Two more is going to give three times the number of watt hours per day potential. Plenty enough to run my swamper. There may be enough to try cooking with my egg cooker. It only takes 300 watts to operate. Given my way, I might be able to cook a lot of things with this little gizmo.

I really do "small-ball" everything. It is like the 1979-80 Houston Astros Baseball team. They won with "small ball". That team probably holds the record for the fewest home runs for a team in Major League history. Small ball is okay, you can win with that. I hope to. I like winning. I hate losing. It may seem otherwise, but I don't like to lose.

Coca cola bread

 Very interesting.

But it defeats the purpose. Isn't the idea to make your own stuff? Why use coca cola?

Too much sugar, too.

Don Surber: Buying Twitter would end its censorship

Don Surber: Buying Twitter would end its censorship: The buzz this morning is about Elon Musk buying 9.2% of Twitter, about a $2.89 billion investment.

   

Update:

Sorry about the sloppy appearance. I took it down briefly to clean it up a bit.

As for the Musk acquisition, Dan Bongino discussed it on his show yesterday. He

seems to think that it will make a big difference. Also, he feels that this

could be the bottoming out of all this swampiness that we've witnessed in the past several years. We'll see.

The original post follows...

comment:

What's the diff between Bezos buying WaPo and this? But Musk is only buy 9.2%. If he

went all out and bought a controlling stake, he could do whatever he wanted with them. ( or at least in theory)

Off-grid post, 4-6-22

 

Small ball again

Seems there's a slight snag in the big-boy plans for the solar project. So, I'm back to the bush leagues. The snag involves my being somewhat tight-fisted and risk-averse. The panels that I thought I'd be able to get for a reasonable price are not brand new, and the cost for delivery is sky high. There might be a way to get it here, but that will take some ground work. In the meantime, I ordered a couple smaller 100 watt panels to upgrade my 12 volt system already in place. It is a nice easy upgrade. The controller can take on the extra amps, and all that is necessary is to find a place for them.

While I am waiting for the panels to arrive, I've been preparing the ground ahead of the small construction project that will acommodate them. The basic idea is to shield the trailer from the sun while providing solar power to aid in climate control. A two-fer that's worth it for this lazy dude to take on. I'll get some shade and some watts, yippee!

The wiring needs to be beefed up a bit too. I've been doing a bit of that also.

There's been a lot of rearranging in here. I've got to juggle a few things, and it would sure be nice if I can get the layout the way I want it. It's going to get even more complicated if I follow through with the big-boy plan. As of now, I have a 12 volt system, an anticipated 24 volt system, and the big-boy might be all the way up to 36 volts. The 36 volt job is going to cost the big-bucks, so I think I need to stay very, very conservative for the time being. It's already more complex than it should be.

The complexity occurred because the piece-meal approach is ad-hoc. There was no grand plan. I had to learn as I went along, piecing the thing together along the way. The result won't be pretty, which is par for the course around here. But I don't care as long as it works right.

I think that brings it up to date.

Off-grid post, 4-3-22

Yesterday I did an experiment to see how much power could be transmitted via the 12-volt inverter to the 24-volt charger, which charges the power-tote. What I found was that the 12 volt battery could only work (at best) for 30 minutes at a time. At that point, the voltage drop was too great to sustain the inverter, and so it had to be shut down so that it could recharge.

This deficiency might be aided somewhat with some parts that I ordered. The RV battery outside will be hooked up with the inverter, which is an upgrade in power available. The solar panel only puts out about 100 watts, so it cannot keep up either. But it won't drain the battery as quickly, and it won't be necessary to shut down so often, or maybe not at all. ( That might be wishful thinking).

For every 30 minutes of charging, it needed 1 hour of recharging. It got to be rather tedious to keep shutting down and restarting. I wouldn't want to have to do it this way.

In the meantime, I did some water filtration with some rainwater obtained recently. This produced one gallon of fairly clean water. ( not potable though)

This effort was a lot of work, and the economic benefit could be measured in pennies. However, out in the desert, which has no power and no running water; these experiments will give valuable insights into how to make that situation work more smoothly and efficiently. So there's a method behind the madness.

With water, you can sustain yourself. With enough water, you can grow food. Combine that with power, and you can not only do all that, but you can be comfortable as well. Or, perhaps not as uncomfortable.

One way to reduce the power requirements may be to adopt the old ways of yesteryear. Recently, I read about salt pork. It is rather simple to prepare. That means even yours truly could do it. To add to that technique, I googled up a video that shows how to pickle ANYTHING. ( according to that author) With these techniques, the need for refrigeration could be greatly diminished. I was also thinking that it would help to keep the refrigerator in the basement area that I am thinking of building out there. If that is cooler than at grade level, then the fridge doesn't have to work as hard, and that would save energy too.

Of course, all of this may seem insane. But what the heck? Nobody is sane anymore, so I might as well join the party.