This past weekend, I lost a friend. Not to death but distrust. He's been going through a lot lately. He's hurting and angry. He turned his anger on me. I didn't do anything wrong. When he showed his anger, I tried to assuage it with the truth of the situation as I saw it. I apologized for hurting him unintentionally. I begged him to believe and understand me. I threw myself at his feet. I drove 3 and a half hours to go see him and try to make things right. On the trip, I broke my new car. I took my only free day to see him.
What I received in return was more anger. He screamed an inch from my face. He grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me out of his way. He threatened to take me to the police or to file a complaint. I begged him to give me five minutes, but he told me that he didn't owe me five minutes. The whole confrontation took minutes. At the end, I said, you're on your own.
As I process this situation, I have to recognize that I didn't know this man as I thought I did. I didn't know that he could be so closed off. I didn't know that loving him didn't entitle me to five minutes of his time. He said before, "Come by ANYTIME" but it was a lie, just like everything else. He wanted complete control of the situation. He refused to share any of the responsibility. I would be shocked if I ever heard from him again, since he is so right.
When I am with somebody, as friends or lovers, I have a responsibility to them. To love them, and to hear them, but I should get the same in return. I get to make mistakes. EVEN IF I DON'T PERCEIVE THAT I MADE A MISTAKE. I should get to fumble through life and figure things out. Ask for forgiveness and understand what I did wrong.
And I am OVER people who are unwilling to admit when they are wrong. I am OVER IT. What is it with people who are so damn pig headed that they can't apologize or communicate. TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT. I would LOVE to be a mind reader, but I'm not. I never promised NOT to love people. I never promised not to communicate with people. As a complete aside, I never promised not to love SEX with the people I love.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Solar System
I think I might finally be getting a handle on the battery bank saga.
Our original bank boiled dry after 2.5 years and I figured that the answer would be to essentially double the battery capacity. It's really kinda funny how wrong that can be. :D
Our new battery bank is huge and fancy and less than 2 years old. And going down hill fast.
It's supposed to last at least 7 years. SO I know, from past experience, that it must be the loose nut putting it together that's causing the problem. I ordered the original system from wholesalesolar.com and they bailed on me when I was trying to figure out what I'd done wrong the first time. I discovered that one does not run an equalization charge on maintaince free batteries, and you have to reset the defaults on your system to avoid that.
Lesson learned.
Bank 2 was bought from a solar "guru" in Durango. He was helpful and good to deal with. Unfortunately, I didn't know the right questions to ask so as to garner the right answers.
I was researching today and stumbled upon the user forums at Northern Arizona Wind and Sun. I enrolled and listed out the difficulties I was having. As of this evening I think I have a workable solution and a means to bring it about. It appears that I have oversized the battery bank for the given generation from solar panels that I have. The answer is to add 3 panels and upgrade the charge controller to handle the loads. In the interim I'll run the generator in the mornings and let the bank run absorb charge most of the day. That should bring it back up quite a bit. Also I now have a better plan and understanding for how much absorption time to run. along with a decent equalization schedule.
It's quite nice chatting with folks who just want to help. Now I just have to have someone hit a pole on a Sunday so I can afford the upgrades.......
Our original bank boiled dry after 2.5 years and I figured that the answer would be to essentially double the battery capacity. It's really kinda funny how wrong that can be. :D
Our new battery bank is huge and fancy and less than 2 years old. And going down hill fast.
It's supposed to last at least 7 years. SO I know, from past experience, that it must be the loose nut putting it together that's causing the problem. I ordered the original system from wholesalesolar.com and they bailed on me when I was trying to figure out what I'd done wrong the first time. I discovered that one does not run an equalization charge on maintaince free batteries, and you have to reset the defaults on your system to avoid that.
Lesson learned.
Bank 2 was bought from a solar "guru" in Durango. He was helpful and good to deal with. Unfortunately, I didn't know the right questions to ask so as to garner the right answers.
I was researching today and stumbled upon the user forums at Northern Arizona Wind and Sun. I enrolled and listed out the difficulties I was having. As of this evening I think I have a workable solution and a means to bring it about. It appears that I have oversized the battery bank for the given generation from solar panels that I have. The answer is to add 3 panels and upgrade the charge controller to handle the loads. In the interim I'll run the generator in the mornings and let the bank run absorb charge most of the day. That should bring it back up quite a bit. Also I now have a better plan and understanding for how much absorption time to run. along with a decent equalization schedule.
It's quite nice chatting with folks who just want to help. Now I just have to have someone hit a pole on a Sunday so I can afford the upgrades.......
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Day one.
Today has been a quite pleasant day. We chilled out, internetted in bed for a bit, prepped the house for company that's coming in late tomorrow, I even installed a timer on our well pump to help preserve our batteries through the really cold months. Today started out filled with snow and cold, moved into some lovely sunshine and now there are soft clouds drifting across the mountains just to the west. I have to work tomorrow but it should be pretty calm, Crys* is off till Monday. The deck has dried off nicely on the south side, but the north side is still frozen and chilly looking. We've been sipping some nice fancy booze today. Started out with some of the Pyrat Cask 1623 that Crys* gave me for Christmas and followed that with some Stranahan's Mt. Bierstadt Snowflake limited edition whiskey. We'll finish with a sipper of some Hyland Park 18 year in front of the TV tonight.
It's a rough life, but we try to manage.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
So now we have a new car. It's odd after so many years of driving old junkers. :D We'll put the 1988 Honda wagon on the block and keep driving the 1990 Honda. The '90 is in really good shape and is pretty darned reliable, plus it gets about 40 MPG (like the new car) so it makes no sense to part with that fine auto.
This spring we've planned a nice long trip up through Canada to Maine, then down through Maryland and back through Oklahoma to see our wide spread family.
But for now we're just celebrating.
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Bonus day
Today was supposed to be a work day. A nice fat double time work day. I was headed up the 75 mile drive to Salida, CO to build powerlines at 6 AM. At 6:30 the foreman from up there, Clint, called to let me know that because of the snow we couldn't work on the highway due to CDOT restrictions on the job.
My response was, "Oh? I have to turn around, get 2 hours of double-time for nothing and go crawl back into bed with a hottie?" His reply was that he was feeling the same thing :D. We spent 10 hours beating poles into the colichi the day before. That's spelled wrong but it's what we call the combo of dirt and big donies (rocks) you gotta backhoe through to set poles. I'm sure some of my co-workers are all bummed about it. Why am I not?
I'm 54 years old and I've been doing powerline work since I was 18. I've been through a goodly bit of difficulties in my life and when the world grants me a "bonus day" like today? I smile, thank my goodness, and enjoy it for all it's worth. At this age? I feel good, my mind works as well as it ever did, and I'm settled into a happy home with a delightful partner and even pets that bring me joy. As they say, no one ever wished they'd worked more when on their death-bed. I'm (hopefully) no where near my death bed for some time to come, so this is the time to enjoy the life and love I've got.
We've spent the day decorating for the holiday, attempting to make ice cream in a new appliance (dubious success) and chilling out at home. At the moment we're sampling a sugar maple porter beer that we made not long ago. The wood stove is going merrily, we even have a couple windows open just a bit to keep it temperate. The big outside winter projects are done, family is coming for the holiday and life is good.
Hope yours is too.
My response was, "Oh? I have to turn around, get 2 hours of double-time for nothing and go crawl back into bed with a hottie?" His reply was that he was feeling the same thing :D. We spent 10 hours beating poles into the colichi the day before. That's spelled wrong but it's what we call the combo of dirt and big donies (rocks) you gotta backhoe through to set poles. I'm sure some of my co-workers are all bummed about it. Why am I not?
I'm 54 years old and I've been doing powerline work since I was 18. I've been through a goodly bit of difficulties in my life and when the world grants me a "bonus day" like today? I smile, thank my goodness, and enjoy it for all it's worth. At this age? I feel good, my mind works as well as it ever did, and I'm settled into a happy home with a delightful partner and even pets that bring me joy. As they say, no one ever wished they'd worked more when on their death-bed. I'm (hopefully) no where near my death bed for some time to come, so this is the time to enjoy the life and love I've got.
We've spent the day decorating for the holiday, attempting to make ice cream in a new appliance (dubious success) and chilling out at home. At the moment we're sampling a sugar maple porter beer that we made not long ago. The wood stove is going merrily, we even have a couple windows open just a bit to keep it temperate. The big outside winter projects are done, family is coming for the holiday and life is good.
Hope yours is too.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
End of my long break.
I'm watching a beautiful orange sunset on the last unstructured day of my nice long fall vacation. I'm reminded of just how very lucky I am to get to even have time off. Many of my friends don't get that.
I'm calling this one: the long fall vacation filled with invisible projects. That's because I spent the better part of a week trenching in underground secondary wire to serve various projects that we want to accomplish over time around here. A good trench job looks like you were never there when you get it done, hence: invisible. It's great to get it done. We've had a really dry fall, and pretty warm. Most years it would have been impossible to do anything like this in late November/early December. But it's done.
It's much the same thing with yesterday's gutter prep project. We're having a local fella put up seamless gutters. Wouldn't you know it? Our soffit board was rotted for 40' on one side. SO for a day I took off all the metal, replaced the bad board and put the metal back up. When I was done? It looked exactly the same as it did before I started. OK, perhaps a little bit more straight and tight, but to nearly everyone that sees it? Exactly the same.
It was the same with the battery maintenance I did. Being off grid means that a few times a year you open up the giant battery box filled with thousands of bucks worth of flooded lead-acid batteries and top up the distilled water in them. It's kinda tedious and not much fun but now I don't have to worry for the rest of the cold-to-come part of the winter.
Now my invisible projects are done. The batteries are maintained, the soffits are ready for the gutter man, and I can finish the above ground part of my wiring project a few minutes at a time, at my leisure.
You really can't put a price on that.
Along the way? I kept the house clean, took care of our chickens, alpaca and llamas, and cooked a good bit. We made a trip to La Junta in there, I went to Denver for an E-board meeting with the hall, and stayed up all night to get some Stranahan's limited edition Snowflake, Mt. Bierstadt whiskey.
I go back to work on Thursday. Tomorrow we run to Pueblo. I gotta see a doc and we'll look at some cars (we're about to get a new one before I retire) and perhaps we'll get to do some holiday shopping. It'll be a nice end to a long respite from work.
I wish everyone got the same thing.
I'm calling this one: the long fall vacation filled with invisible projects. That's because I spent the better part of a week trenching in underground secondary wire to serve various projects that we want to accomplish over time around here. A good trench job looks like you were never there when you get it done, hence: invisible. It's great to get it done. We've had a really dry fall, and pretty warm. Most years it would have been impossible to do anything like this in late November/early December. But it's done.
It's much the same thing with yesterday's gutter prep project. We're having a local fella put up seamless gutters. Wouldn't you know it? Our soffit board was rotted for 40' on one side. SO for a day I took off all the metal, replaced the bad board and put the metal back up. When I was done? It looked exactly the same as it did before I started. OK, perhaps a little bit more straight and tight, but to nearly everyone that sees it? Exactly the same.
It was the same with the battery maintenance I did. Being off grid means that a few times a year you open up the giant battery box filled with thousands of bucks worth of flooded lead-acid batteries and top up the distilled water in them. It's kinda tedious and not much fun but now I don't have to worry for the rest of the cold-to-come part of the winter.
Now my invisible projects are done. The batteries are maintained, the soffits are ready for the gutter man, and I can finish the above ground part of my wiring project a few minutes at a time, at my leisure.
You really can't put a price on that.
Along the way? I kept the house clean, took care of our chickens, alpaca and llamas, and cooked a good bit. We made a trip to La Junta in there, I went to Denver for an E-board meeting with the hall, and stayed up all night to get some Stranahan's limited edition Snowflake, Mt. Bierstadt whiskey.
I go back to work on Thursday. Tomorrow we run to Pueblo. I gotta see a doc and we'll look at some cars (we're about to get a new one before I retire) and perhaps we'll get to do some holiday shopping. It'll be a nice end to a long respite from work.
I wish everyone got the same thing.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Power to the chickens!
For the last 3 days I've been working on a little wiring project. It involves running a couple different sizes of underground secondary a total of 400 feet. It comes outta the house, under the foundation, then heads both south and west. South is to a plug for the Christmas tree, one for the tractor and then it heads through the pound yard into the chicken coop. To the west it feeds Crys* 5th wheel fiber studio and then on to a duplex RV plug.
I borrowed a trencher. Never borrow a trencher. Rent one. Rent a good one.
Monday and Tuesday I spent all day trenching. I finished up the initial digging Tuesday night about 5:30. Today I returned the lovely trencher, got some material and started making up and back filling. This was an early day, I finished up around 4 PM. Tomorrow I'll work on getting the power out the the chickens so we can quit using an inadequate set of extension cords to keep the waterer thawed.
Man, I was totally beat Monday and Tuesday night. Yesterday afternoon while I was hauling out a boulder with a digging bar I fell and just laid there for a while convincing myself that it was worth getting up and getting back to it. :D I must be getting old.
The good news is that now that is done. There are plenty of horsing the trencher stories, but for now I think I'll just enjoy this beer I have opened to celebrate.
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