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Judas Prius Sunday, November 20 2005
After yesterday's annoying antifreeze detour, today I could go back to work in the laboratory on the electronics that will some day control the crucial solar sufficiency relays, freeing me from having to worry about when to turn the solar circulator pump on and off.
Our friends from Eagle's Nest, the photographer couple Y & J, are back from a summer photography expedition to Alaska and today they came over with a friend to walk our dogs with Gretchen (their ancient dog Bowie, the agent through which we met them in the first place, died this summer). I didn't go on the walk, though I did give them all an extensive tour of the solar installation, which (from their perspective) sprang up fully formed in an instant during their absence.
Today I suffered more troubled experiences at the hands of 74XX74 dual-D flipflops, though in the end I figured out a solution: putting resistors between the inverted-Q outputs and the base of the transistor used to drive the relay. (In the laboratory, I don't actually have a relay and I've been using a 12 volt fan as a sample high-voltage load instead.)
This evening Gretchen and I went to Penny and Dave's place (about five miles away to the south) for a dinner of squash and homemade cheese pizza. I don't really like squash but I did my job as a guest and gobbled up the huge hunk of flavorless watery material despite its unpleasant consistency. Only after I'd completely devoured my portion was I told that one is not supposed to eat the skin. This made no sense to me, as the skin was no tougher than that found on an apple. (I usually eat entire shrimp too, though not the tail.)
Also there, for a time, was a couple that had just moved to Rosendale from the City. They'd bought a duplex near the trestle with the goal of making half into a guitar shop and the other into a living space. At this point I feel like Gretchen and I know everyone in Ulster County between the ages of 30 and 50 who has ever sucessfully uttered a complex-compound sentence.
Two forms of energy conservation in one photo: my solar deck and the brand new 2005 Prius.
Note the drawbridge platform coming off the deck to the south (right).
Yes, you saw right. But the Prius doesn't make it easy on either a patriot or a culture jammer; there is no magnetic surface on the back of the car for attaching magnetic ribbons, so I was forced to stick them on the door.
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