morrowlife

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Two trying to get a huge steam locomotive stopped in time. Doesn’t look too promising. Part of my famous Machinery series.

No interest in the math/fuel/engine/Jeep discussion yesterday. I guess my Loyal Readers just aren’t ready for the blog to turn into a scientific automotive journal. Which is a good thing, since I have nothing else to say in that direction. At least not right now. Maybe I’ll try again later. I could always look at the economics of hybrids.

Another pretty day – they all are. Except when we’re canoeing. Then there’s a freak lightning storm. The Loyal Readers had people over to swim today, as they have every Wednesday this summer. The water has been at about 82 degrees for a couple of weeks now. That’s chilly when you first get in, but comfortable a few seconds afterward. They’ve been getting plenty of friends to come over, which is nice.

Speaking of the pool, I need this. It’s not too late to send me one for my birthday.

Nothing else new. We’ll make our decision this evening on the October cruise. I don’t think Loyal Reader Number Four is too hot on the idea, so I don’t think we’ll be going. We’ll know within a couple of hours.

Well, the votes are in. It looks like the bizarre lady singing about how much she loves her bathroom is the winner in the Worst Bathroom Song Ever controversy. Or is she the loser? Dunno. I just hope she was paid well for singing that song, which was an advertisement for a plumbing company. The other one was intended for the employees of a gas station chain.

Today’s controversy: I’ve invented a new diet that I think is really going to take off. I’m calling it the Hungry Man diet. The idea is that you eat a simple, healthy breakfast; a small TV dinner for lunch; and a Hungry Man TV dinner for . . . umm . . . dinner. I haven’t done all the math yet, but I think it will work. I’ll be even more famous than that Jared guy. Maybe even Jenny Craig! The controversial question for my Loyal Readers is this: would you try this diet? Better yet, would you buy my upcoming book on this subject?

See you tomorrow.

Here’s one of Thomas Edison’s gadgets. I can’t remember what it does. Any Loyal Readers care to venture a guess? Part of both my Machinery and Workbench series.

Missed the train, drove the Honda. The repairs seem to be great! I can shift into third without grinding! And there’s no new grease on the interior! Amazing.

I listened to a podcast on diesel engines this afternoon. They were interviewing a guy from Bosch, one of the companies that manufactures a lot of diesel components. When they asked him whether it was still worth it to spend the extra money for a diesel vehicle, given the current outrageous price of diesel fuel and the premium prices they charge for the engines, he was vague and talked instead about how great diesel cars are for the earth. Not a good sign.

So I decided to figure it out for myself. I checked out which 2008 cars are available with diesel engines. Turns out there still aren’t too many, but the Jeep Grand Cherokee does have several engines available, including a diesel. They charge a reasonable $1655 for the diesel above their 4.7 liter non-hemi V8 (the diesel’s only available in an upmarket model, which has a standard V8). Their website says the diesel gets 17 MPG in the city, and Yahoo’s auto website told me the V8 version gets 14 city MPG. Assuming gas/diesel fuel remain at $4.50/$5.50 and that you drive 15,000 miles/year, the gas engine will end up costing you $24107 in fuel after 5 years, and the diesel will cost $25919 (including the initial cost of the engine), for a net loss of $1812. It never catches up – at 10 years the difference is $1970 in favor of the gas engine.

Maybe my numbers aren’t reasonable, though. After all, diesel engines are renowned for their great gas mileage, so maybe Jeep’s numbers are just too low. So I created a fictional car with an engine that costs $5000 extra (not out of line for luxury diesel sedans) but gets 22 miles per gallon. After 5 years, the diesel engine saves you $357, given the constraints documented above. At 10 years, the diesel’s advantage is $5714. At the two-year point, though, the diesel owner is $2857 in the hole.

Bottom line: the Jeep diesel is no deal, but if you can find a diesel car that gets substantially better mileage than its gasoline counterpart and you plan to keep the car for an unusually long time (substantially longer than five years), it’s definitely better to spend the extra money on the diesel. For the most part, though, the oil companies are taking all the money. As usual.

Of course, I didn’t look at the differences in resale values, which may or may not give the advantage to the diesel. It depends on the future relative price of fuels, the unpredictable relative reliability of the two engine types (although diesels do have a reputation for durability, 1980’s GM models notwithstanding), and lots of other variables. Feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?

Anyway. Thanks to my Loyal Readers for their insightful comments on the beer commercial controversy. The consensus seems to be that making the commercial was bad for Kirby’s career path. Tsk tsk, Kirb. And do as he says, Loyal Readers, not as he gets paid to pretend to do.

Today’s controversy: want some good advice? Keep your bathrooms clean, men. Why, you ask? Because ladies love clean bathrooms. Controversial question: which song is lamer?

Time to do something else. See you tomorrow.

Here’s another in my famous Machinery series. Very cool. From Fairlane, of course.

Short Shrift tonight. Spent way too much time at work. In a class, mostly. A class I didn’t want to attend. And still don’t. And I have to go back tomorrow. The rest of the time was spent listening to one of my problem employees whine. Sigh.

A brighter day tomorrow. See you then.

Here’s Henry Ford’s ammeter. Part of my famous machinery series. This one was taken in the Fairlane power house in Dearborn.

Busy weekend. We had stake conference, so I had Saturday meetings at 4:00 and 7:00, and then the Sunday general session at 10:00. Plus, Loyal Reader Number One graduated from Seminary at 3:30.

Loyal Reader Number Two also had a few friends over to swim, play games, eat dinner, and watch a movie Saturday afternoon and evening. They all seem to have had lots of fun.

Oh, and Loyal Readers Numbers Five, Six, and Twelve came over on Saturday afternoon. I saw them for only about half an hour, sadly. Fortunately, they’re coming back again next weekend.

Let’s see, did anything else happen? LRN2 and I worked on the sprinklers a little on Saturday – he had inadvertently hit one with the mower and he needed to learn how to replace them on his own. I think he’s got the skillz now. Yo.

We picked up the truck Saturday morning. The new (and free, of course) brakes and rotors seem fine. I need to tow the trailer soon to confirm they won’t overheat and fade this time.

I also published a brief and relatively uninteresting report of our March trip to Big Sur over on the HRVA. Check it out! If you enjoy brief and uninteresting reports, that is.

There’s still more to publish. We went camping at Caswell State Park in April, so that needs to get on the HRVA. There have also been a few software/hardware projects recently that ought to get on Gardenville. Such as the BMP viewer (Mac software) and LRN1’s Mac/Arduino Morrowlife comment counter. All of them have potential for further expansion, but I think they’re already publishable.

We had another power outage at work late this afternoon. It only lasted a few minutes, but that was plenty to kill some hardware in the lab. I had to leave to catch the train, so I won’t know how bad it was until tomorrow. Cross your fingers, Loyal Readers.

It’s events like that that make me glad I have a laptop. My machine’s display went down, but everything was still normal when the power came back up.

Let’s see, gotta keep the Loyal Readers happy. Is there any controversy I can get involved in? Hmmm . . . can’t think of any. The presidential contest went way beyond ludicrous for me a long time ago. I couldn’t care less whose preacher is an idiot (answer: all of them except for Hillary’s, who has no preacher and indeed no identifiable religious beliefs except when her husband is in trouble again – come to think of it, none of them have any identifiable religious beliefs unless they need a photo op – which makes me wonder what the heck Obama was thinking when he chose his particular vanity church – I can only conclude he has absolutely no sense of what the American people consider to be crazy talk) or how many delegates which candidate has or which grievance group supports who. I also have no interest in the ginned-up-by-the-press economy problems or the imaginary global warming crisis.

No, I guess I just have no controversial opinions to air today.

See you tomorrow.

Here’s an old blockhouse interior at Cape Canaveral. In fact, this blockhouse was used for some of the first launches. The sad part is that it looks very much like the stuff we were using in our blockhouse for years after I joined the Atlas program.

I really need to get out and take some new pictures. I really need to go somewhere interesting where there are pictures to be taken. What kind of attitude is that? Aren’t there many beautiful and interesting things right here at home? Probably. We never appreciate what we have right now.

Two groups of potential buyers have come to see the house. One of them liked it but not enough to buy it. The other liked it very much but has a house to sell before they can offer. The search continues. Fortunately, both of their real estate agents liked the house very much, so we can hope they bring other people over soon.

The listing’s up. Have a look.

The guys came on Saturday to fix the garage door springs. The cost was pretty high, but it was done quickly and well, so I’m not complaining. They guy was very pleasant too. Other competent and polite guys showed up today and put in the drain system we had ordered to correct a drainage problem beside the house. That price was reasonable and the quality of the work looks excellent. We’ll see how it really is next time it rains hard. Now we’re just waiting for the granite countertop installers on Thursday and all the scheduled (and unscheduled) work will be done.

We went to the neighborhood quarry for a tour during their open house on Saturday. We had house visitors, so we needed to get out, and we had been curious about this particular quarry, so it seemed like a good idea. It was a good idea – the place is interesting, the people were very anxious to answer our questions, and we got a free bagel and glass of juice. It’s a pretty big quarry and will get much, much bigger before it’s used up. They’re good neighbors – you can’t see the quarry at all from anywhere other than the air and they don’t really make much noise – but I’m certainly not crazy about all the dump trucks on our local roads. The quarry began operation after our house was built, so it’s pretty new. It was a farm before that. One interesting thing I learned is that they will sell rocks to anybody. I had just assumed they wouldn’t sell less than a dump truck load, but I was wrong. Now if I only needed some rocks.

They found us a place to stay for our temporary housing in Sunnyvale. Actually, it’s in Santa Clara, but that’s close enough. It’s about six miles from work and appears to be in a very nice apartment complex. We also got our flight reservations today. We’re out of here in the morning of Saturday, June third. That’s well under a month now.

Come to our garage sale next Saturday! We’ll have lots of junk for you to buy. I just hope somebody takes some of it off our hands. Please.

It’s after ten o’clock and time for me to go to bed. ‘Night.