WEEK 48 2012
Last
Week-
Sun-
Mon- Tue- Wed-
Thur-
Fri- Sat-
Next
Week
Picture of the Week
MAIN
PAGE
First Post,
17 March 2002
|
Ten Years
Ago, This Week, 2002 |
Nine Years
Ago, This Week, 2003 |
Eight Years
Ago, this
week, 2004 |
Seven Years
Ago, this
week, 2005 |
Six Years
Ago, This Week, 2006
|
Five Years
Ago, This Week, 2007
|
Four Years
Ago, This Week, 2008
|
Three Years
Ago, This Week, 2009
|
Two Years
Ago,
This Week, 2010
|
One Year
Ago,
This Week,
2011
|
Saturday - I spent a lot of the morning
going through clothes - I had a lot of stuff, some of which hasn't fit
me for years. T-shirts, shirts, even some nice denim jeans. The last a
friend is going to take, most of the rest I'll donate to Goodwill.
Lunch was at the Thai Cafe in town, then home for some iOS work. This
was made hard to concentrate on by the people playing their music so
loud, two streets down, that I could hear the bass inside my house with
the doors and windows closed and the radio and TV on. That went on all
afternoon, stopping about 6:00.
The fronts are still blowing through, though not with the violence of
yesterday. My trees in front are mostly bare, and so is the lawn. Some
raking and stuff to be done in a few days, but not like the vast piles
of last year.
Friday
- Cool, damp, very very windy. More of a storm than I thought we'd get,
actually. Kind of nice. I started to write "Cold, damp..." but in fact
it's a fairly warm storm. I don't think my heater kicked on, day or
last night. Probably in the 50's outside, and nearly 70 inside.
Picking up inside. I have invited my sister K down from Reno, and she
surprised me by saying that she and her family would be happy to come
down! I was up there last year and wanted to return the invitation.
It's been a long time, perhaps ten years, since they came down this
way. I used to see my brother in law, when he commuted up and down the
state, but these days he mostly flys.
Back in the day I would have them stay on this horrible old hide-a-bed,
long gone now, and I imagine that wasn't pleasant. Now I have new beds,
almost enough for everybody, so there shouldn't be a problem.
And the winds blew over the fish tank.
Around lunchtime I heard this terrible smashing sound and looked out to
see that it had blown off the dolly that I was moving it about in. It
had been right up against the house, next to the patio doors, but the
winds were that strong.
Since the wind was howling and it was sprinkling I decided to wait
until tomorrow to clean things up. Fortunately the cat, spooked by the
noise of the winds, isn't bugging me to go out!
Sadly, despite the winds today and several frosts last week, there are still leaves on the trees in front.
Book #85 was The Apocalypse Codex,
by Charles Stross. You know, if it wasn't for his virulent
anti-Americanism this series would be a lot more fun. As it is I refuse
to buy any more of his stuff, and just read it when it comes to the
library.
Thursday 29 November 2012
Thursday
- Another longish app day, working on the timer stuff. Our apps are
simple, this isn't FPS stuff, but we need something...Overcast and a
bit windy.
My peach tree started losing it's leaves last week, they are gone
today. The other fruit trees are shedding as well. The tomato plants
are dead.
I'm hoping that the storm blows the leaves off the tree in front and
that the leaves don't fall on my lawn. It's in the hands of the gods,
but raking leaves hurts my back, so one can hope!
My brother emailed to say that the water heater at the Martinez house
was flooding the basement. The plumber stood him up on Wednesday - but
was supposed to come out today. I'm not sure that I would hire the guy
for a second chance, but hey, I'm not the one taking cold showers!
I asked him to send a picture of the upper retaining wall that he and
my brother M were going to build, after we finished the lower wall in
May. He had torn a muscle in his leg in July, so he replied that they
hadn't done anything and that he'd thrown a tarp over the earth there,
to keep it from liquefying and pouring down onto the patio and house.
Hopefully it'll be a dry winter...
Wednesday 28 November 2012
Wednesday
- Keeping busy, working on the app. About eight-ten hours today. Things are moving along.
The weather is supposed to change, some big storms heading for northern
California, and probably a few small fronts to move through Lancaster.
I've put the extra fish tank out on the patio, to dry out that last
1/4" of water on the bottom, then it's off to GoodWill or maybe the
animal shelter. I need to bring it back indoors so that it doesn't get more water!
I turned off the water to the swamp cooler - and it's still
leaking a bit at the faucet. Same faucet that I've been avoiding
cutting off and replacing with a nice threaded fitting for the last
five years. No big deal. I am considering taking the swamp cooler down,
taking out the fan and de-rusting it and repainting, but it's a lot of
work. But it would mean fewer little bits of rust and paint blown into
the house every time I use it.
Tuesday
- It looks like I'll be on the road for a few days next week, work down
in Ventura. Good to be back at it. I will have to find my notes on what
we did back in 2009/2010...
I think I've mentioned the solar installation at the nearby school before. Checking online they have a little tracker applet. For yesterday the output looked like this (under a nearly cloudless winter sky):
Solar Output at Nancy Cory School
The panels are being used as sunshades over the cars in the school
parking lot, and yesterday did not actually supply the 24hr needs of the school,
960/1400=69%. More than I thought actually. The weekly, monthly and
yearly plots show more power produced than used: weekend, holidays and
summer vacations are net power producing days!
One issue I have (besides the essential foolishness of buying expensive power with bond money) is that they are barely tilted to the south on the north side, those on the west side actually tilt east.
This is a huge power loss relative to what's possible, power being
essentially the cosine of the angle off the normal to the sun. Using an
online calculator applet from NOAA for local noon we have:
Sun angle efficiency factor
So the achievable power, simply by tilting the panels correctly, would
be almost 2x what they are getting in winter, i.e. 1/0.5665=1.77X. The numbers are somewhat better in summer, but still...
Monday
- Hmmm. Worked on the app. For some reason Xcode is reporting that the
methods for an object aren't found. The object is found, but not the methods.
WTH? How is that even possible?
Insomnia again. Woke up and read for a while.
Book #84 was Queen of Sorcery, The Belgariad Book #2, by David Eddings.
Sunday
- Another nice day. In the 70's in fact.
The day was spent on various chores and errands: laundry, shopping,
cleaning. It's time to clean up the garage again - also to access the
lumber which is stored over the cabinets on the east wall. The ladder
and bicycles are hung in front of it, and I need some 1x6 and
1x8 planks for a couple of projects. I really should get the old table
saw working, I have some old dry wood 8' 1x12's that I could rip if it was. The
garage is better than it was, but still needs a lot of organizing.
The 49'ers game was televised, and they won, which was nice. I was
impressed by Kapernik, he seems like a big, strong and mobile
quarterback, those are always fun to watch. Is he good enough to
justify the benching of Smith, who is a quarterback many teams
would love
to have? I don't know - apparently there are personalities issues
between Smith and some of his teammates, if the announcers insinuations
are correct. I don't follow closely enough to know if that's so. Still,
if you get into the playoffs the difference between a rookie and an old
hand gets more pronounced - interesting times for the coach there.
Reminds me of the glory days when the 49'ers had Joe Montana and Steve Young.
