Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Pound the Red Bull

...and climb aboard for the ride of your life. In Europe, they seem to know how to get some summer use out of their Alpine ski runs.

The link takes you to a page with a pair of videos on the Meiders, Austria "Sommerrodelbahn", or Summer Tobaggan Run.

Only it isn't a tobaggan, it's a free-rolling, one-man monorail car you sit in. You have a brake mechanism you are encouraged to use, but the chap making the video never touched the brakes, not once, on the more-than-two-minute run down the mountain, mostly straight down under the gondola-lift, and for you "schussboomers", you KNOW what running the lift grade means.

The other video, marked "off-ride view", gives you some scenes of tourists using the ride, but all are using their brakes, so it looks fairly tame.

It seems that there are about 20 of these rides scattered around the European Alps, but I've never heard of one here. Lawyered out, probably. About 40 miles from me, up on Mt. Hood, one of the ski hills has a water-slide you can ride down part of the ski hill, and up on Willamette Pass, the ski hill there has a mountain bike trail you can scream downhill on.

Seward's Folly, full circle

Do the kids still study the purchase of the Alaska holdings of Imperial Russia in 1867? Today, of course, we have the State of Alaska, aka The Last Frontier, aka Colder than a Witch's Ta-Ta.

Way up North in AK, we have Nome, a small city with no land access to anywhere else. The giant AK storm of last month prevented delivery by barge of a good part of their winter fuel supply. They were going to have to fly fuel in, and that would have raised the cost of gasoline to over $9/gallon.

Here comes Mother Russia to the rescue!

The Russians, of course, are used to dealing with ice, and conduct commerce by sea in all but the worst ice conditions. We have exactly TWO big icebreakers, both ancient, and they have many. They also build icebreaking ships to carry cargo, and one such ship, the Renda, is set to onload fuel in South Korea and bring it to Nome.

Oh, the irony!

Seward's Folly, full circle

Do the kids still study the purchase of the Alaska holdings of Imperial Russia in 1867? Today, of course, we have the State of Alaska, aka The Last Frontier, aka Colder than a Witch's Ta-Ta.

Way up North in AK, we have Nome, a small city with no land access to anywhere else. The giant AK storm of last month prevented delivery by barge of a good part of their winter fuel supply. they were going to have to fly fuel in, and that would have raised the cost of gasoline to over $9/gallon.

Here comes Mother Russia to the rescue!

The Russians, of course, are used to dealing with ice, and conduct commerce by sea in all but the worst ice conditions. We have exactly TWO big icebreakers, both ancient, and they have many. They also build icebreaking ships to carry cargo, and one such ship, the Renda, is set to onload fuel in South Korea and bring it to Nome.

Oh, the irony!

Suitcase Girl

"Just zip me in, Granpa. I've got my travel ear plugs right here. I don't need a ticket to fly, a baggage fee works for me."

Photo by RivrSon...Canon SX120IS, f2.8, FL35mm, pattern mode. Model worked out well, too.

Prepper Report: Building the RPS-01 Portable Power Supply

Yep, finally scratched an itch and put together a portable power supply. Of course I know that they are already built for the purpose as "jump-starters", the better examples of which have built-in inverters and 12-volt outlets on them.

For providing quiet, light-duty power for a variety of purposes, you don't want a "jump-starter", and the reason is obvious: they have flash-type batteries, the type designed to start cars by providing a lot of amps quickly. That design has serious deficiencies for providing power over the long-term, in lesser amounts. for that purpose, you need a Deep Cycle battery as your primary power. Such deep-cycle batteries can give twice the power that an equivalent weight-and-cube Starting Battery can, they just can't crank out the amperes in the hundreds.

So, in creating the "perfect" power supply (yes, I do in fact, have an ego!), I looked for something that wouldn't pull my arm out of it's socket carrying it. Goal accomplished, the RPS-01 weighs 28#, together with it's charger, a light inverter, a "heavy current" transfer system (up to 30 amps), a double 12-volt female adapter. Not in sight in the second photo is a 12-volt extension cord. I have one on my boat and will place it with this kit.

This photo shows the Plano Ammo Box the kit is enclosed in. Note the 12-volt outlet which I installed on the top.

The second photo above shows the box, ready to go. The battery is enclosed and wedged in with closed-cell styrofoam, one piece beside the battery vertically, and another on the bottom of the box under the stowed auxiliary equipment. You can see the 750-milliamp charger in the equipment well.

This photo shows all the equipment that packs into the kit. From left to right: The Battery Tender 750 MA charger, with it's "flat-two" connector system, a 10-foot 110-volt extension cord with triple-tap, a double 12-volt female outlet adapter, a "flat-two" heavy 30-amp adapter, currently fused for only 15 amps until I get proper ring terminals instead of the clips on the adapter now, and a Chicago Electric (from Harbor Freight) cheapo 80-watt inverter with USB-power outlet.

I will carry other inverters, namely these three in the photo below. You want to suit the inverter to it's load, because the inverter's idle current consumption goes up as the size (output) of the inverter goes up, and that idle current makes it a power hog to use, say, the 400-watt inverter to recharge a cell phone.

From left to right, those are a dependable (old) West Marine Sorcerer 250-watt (no fan, very quiet), surges to almost 400, will carry a 4.0 cu/ft Haier fridge (had that combo on my previous boat); a 400-watt Chicago electric model, surges to 700-watt, with USB, haven't used it other than to test it (fairly quiet fan, though); and a Statpower (Trace) 175-watt inverter, very reliable, but it's cooling fan screams it's not-so-quiet song, can be heard for 50 feet, but it's reliable, has hundred of hours of use powering an former, power-hungry laptop that used 90 watts. All these inverters are out of my stock of preparation materiel. The Chicago Electirc 400 is current ($59 at Harbor Freight), the other two, not current.

So, I have inverters from 80 to 400. I have others, a 750, a 800 and a 1,500 watt, but they won't work well with this size of battery. They work with 2 X Group 27 battery lash-ups, of which I have several sets, but they are a whole different deal, very heavy, you don't move these without a Second Soldier to help you.

The battery itself is the Absorbed Gas Mat (AGM) type, and this model, the Batteries-Plus Werker Model WKDC12-35J, rated at 35 amp-hours. I chose this battery because it fits into the Plano box easily, and is quite common, being the most widely-used mobility-scooter battery.

Work left to do: I want to get one of those digital voltmeters that go into the 12-volt receptacle and carry that and I need to fuse the heavy-current output for 30 amps after I provide proper conduction for that current (ring terminals).

Cost to construct:

Case: the Plano case sold new for $15.00 on sale, $20 not on sale. It is sealed with an o-ring, and is designed to carry this level of weight in shotgun shells. It is the size of a USGI 50-cal ammo box, but it's made of polystyrene, and non-conductive, not affected by any acid fumes.

Battery: It was $80 at Batteries Plus.

80-watt inverter: $20 at Harbor Freight.

Charger: This advanced, 3-stage float charger with polarity reversal protection cost $40 at Batteries Plus. First quality equipment.

The extension cord and double-outlet for 12-volt added up to $15. The "flat-two" adapter was part of the battery charger, no additional charge. Heavy-current fusing (not yet installed), another $20 for holder and two spare fuses.

Total expended for the kit: $150. Labor, maybe 3 hours so far.

Yet to add, a proper fitted "boot" for the positive terminal of the Werker battery. These are hard to find, and I may have to find a specialty jobber. Small money nvolved, maybe $5. The plug-in digital voltmeter, if they are still available, will be no more than $20. A small "ditty bag" to carry the extra inverters and whatever else I want with the kit (have many of those in stock already).

Power stats:

This battery is nominally rated at 35 amp-hours at a 20-hour discharge. So, 35 X 12 X 20/12 = 700 watts deliverable @ 12 VDC to zero capacity. You never want to discharge this type of battery below 50-60%, so that's 350-400 usable watts at 12 volts down to recharge voltage. The only downside to this battery is that it's recommended recharge rate is 1/10th capacity, or 3.5 amps. You can hurry this up a bit if you monitor the battery's temperature (using a non-contact, infra-red thermometer, about $40 at harbor Freight), but since it's a sealed battery, you don't want to have it out-gas during recharging, so it has a max charging temp of 77 degrees ambient. If it's cold, you can bump up the charge rate some, but if it's hot, you have to cut it back. This battery would charge beautifully with a 45-watt solar charger, costs $150 at Harbor Freight.

There you have it: a quiet means of providing power for your electronics so that the zombies don't hear your generator running and flock to the blood it represents, forcing you into a Zombie Apocalypse shootout....

Thursday Thuds #5

Thud the First: Do you fly places due to a business requirement? If so, I feel sorry for you. The rest of us consider flying optional, and with the twin reasons of TSA Security Theater and lack of pilot qualifications to actually FLY the aircraft, vice operating the flight control computers, I don't fly much anymore. "Thud", indeed. I hadn't realized that almost 1,000 people had lost their lives in the past 11 years due to six cases of aircraft computers shutting off, and their pilots being unable to continue controlled flight without them, but the expert in this vid lists the crashes. Scary.

Thud the Second: "Solyndra". This looked to be a "gotcha" on the Won, but the whole FUBAR was the predictable result of a Government give-away program that GW started, the "green bank". The problem with Government largess is that even after Congress authorizes the money to give away, there is no guarantee it will be done properly (think Fannie, Freddie and Sallie). In the case of this "green bank" that gave Solyndra the money in the first place (before the loan was politically tampered with, that WAS Obama's fault), the Feds running the program were just not up on the cutting-edge industries they were funding. If they had been, they would have seen that China had geared up to hugely over-produce solar-panels, and that the bottom would drop out of pricing of the panels because of oversupply. A REAL bank would have had the market assessed BEFORE making the loans, and would have assessed the prospective borrowers' business plans to see if those plans were capable of dealing with a depressed price point in their product line. So, it turns out that the Solyndra example is not only Chicago Politics gone mad, the whole idea behind a "green bank" was crazy to start with. "Green" must be evaluated for capitalization under the same rules as conventional industries, and this sad story tells us why.

Thud the Third: A crisis of failed expectations is the only thing that will sell the hugely-ballyhooed Amazon "Kindle Fire". You are getting less than half an Apple here, and although it's less than half the price of an I-Pad, the rule is, in technology, you either keep up with ALL the available advancements, or you wait for the next offering. This dud's going to make a loud "thud" when it fails. I have an early smartphone, the Samsung SCH-I760. It does everything the Kindle Fire will do and more. I keep it around as a PIM, and to play silly games on. I can even read on it (with good glasses). The ordinary Kindle is very good for what it does, and very basic, and has a basic price. The Fire does NOT make it as a tablet computer (no 3 or 4G connectivity), and you can get three Kindle Basics for it's price. THUD!

Thud the Fourth: The GOP Presidential race. The Thud is coming from Perry, who is a good 'ol boy, but lacks the sophistication to stay with either Romney INSIDE the political bull-ring, or Cain OUTSIDE of it. I like Cain, even though we tried hiring a Prexy based on his "outsideness" some 35 years ago, and the result was a disaster known as Jimmah.THUD! goes Perry (unless he stops tripping on his dick and suddenly finds a way to out-do both the weasely Romney AND the business-savvy Cain).

Thud the Fifth: My You Tube/Public Access TeeVee series. I had to rip up the script for the big opening segment, "What price Green"?  Download Common Sense Gresham 3 See Thud the Second, above. I'm still writing the series, but now I will have to re-focus this segment as a purely economic one if I want to still do it, and I don't have the chops for that. Not an economist. Nope, got a "C" in that course in collitch.

Thud the Sixth: The Boston Red Sox. What else can be said. Seven and twenty in the last, most important month of the season? The only bright spot: Jacoby Ellsbury: give him a bonus, fire the rest of the team and build a new one around Ellsbury.

Wednesday Washouts

I'm going to be too busy to blog tomorrow, full schedule, so the Thursday Thuds will be replaced by Wednesday Washouts.

1. There were two Special elections yesterday, and the (D)emocrats lost both of them. "Weenie Waving" Weiner's seat went to a Republican, and out in the Wild West of Nevada, a County election went to the GOP in an unexpected landslide. Details here.

The money quote:

"And so as they eye Obama’s reelection a year away, many Democratic leaders are taking an unexpectedly passive line. They’re pinning their hopes on the chance that the Republican Party nominates a figure who will, essentially, defeat him or herself."

Which could happen, if the Stupid Party is up to it's usual form.

2. (first, a FacePalm). When you go to a blog called Snarky Bytes and try to offer reasoned discourse as a FNG, you should expect ass-biting and snark. I got both over at Linoge's place, where the religion of Open Carry is not to be sullied with reasoned discourse, apparently. Figure it out yourself, but isn't it strange that the O/C folks all seem to fall back on "People aren't getting their O/C guns grabbed, and aren't getting shot with the guns that aren't getting grabbed." That's a worthwhile argument normally, but in this case, it suffers from a statistical fallacy right out of "How to lie with Statistics": there isn't enough Open Carry going on, except for cops (who the O/C crowd says, somehow, don't count). If the stat you're asking for can only be derived from a statistically-insignificant sample, the stat is insignificant and can't be used to support logical argument. But, over @ Linoge's you get snark, not science. I should have known better.

3. A would-be Spidey came to grief right here in Stumptown, trying to impress his date with his vertical-climbing prowess, but he fell off a tall incinerator chimney at a local school, and went Splat! on the roof, where he was extracted by the Fire Department and sent to hospital with life-threatening injuries. I would imagine his date was not impressed. I will let you know if this turns into a true Darwin moment.

4. Battle of PeeCee. Cherokee Nation vs. Congressional Black Caucus. Basically, the Cherokee Nation just had a constitutional convention and changed their constitution regarding provisions for tribal membership, stripping tibal member status from some 2,800 descendants of black slaves owned by Cherokee tribesmen before and during the Civil War. In 1866, the victorious Union forced a treaty on the defeated Cherokee which said that those slaves had to be accorded tribal rights. The Cherokee acceded, because they were defeated militarily, and because actual Nation status meant nothing back then. Now the Cherokee have petroleum leases, they have casino money, and being a full member is worth $66,000+ per year direct income. This one will wind up in the Supreme Court, which, I'm betting, will affirm the right of the Cherokee to change their constitution and abrogate that part of the Treaty of 1866. Of course, that may prompt the USA to try to reclaim their tribal lands and all that oil & gas....This story will continue to intrigue, and I'll keep you up on it.

5. Ho-hum, another day another contaminated food source, this time, Colorado cantaloupes. let's see, this year, we've had bad hamburger and ground turkey, bad berries, and now bad melons. I guess it's time to start my Mexican Routine, and dunk everything in Iodine-water.

6. The next TSA indignity: telling aircrews to monitor air passengers' bathroom activity. This is a no-fly for me: I have 40% less colon than most, and tend towards colitis; in one of the gut operations I had 5-6 years ago, my bladder was accidentally compressed during surgery, and so it holds less. Peeing in an airplane cabin, not in the loo, is frowned upon, and if you wear incontinence protection, you get the hassle of your life going through Security.  I guess the few tens of millions of truly incontinent people can't fly anymore, and those approaching that status, like yours truly, probably ought to excuse themselves from airplanes as well. Hey-hey, ho-ho, hope that you don't have to go. Hey-hey, ho-ho, the TSA has got to go...

I'll join the Paulistas on this one...

Strangely enough, Ron Paul Sr stops short of the real objective, which should be axing the TSA entirely.

Want to kill two birds with one stone, Mister President? Give the job of airport security to the National Guard in each state, which is where such security started just after 9-11-01. The Guard would have to expand, all that money stays in those States, and it is an excellent way to do Keynsian "pump-priming", if you must have Keynsian economics at all.

Yep, I support Ron Paul here. I will urge my Representative to co-sponsor Ron Paul's Bill, but I will ONLY vote for a Presidential candidate next year if they promise that their first act, in their first hour in office, will be to stand down the TSA.

If you need the Captain....

Call "Lofoten Girl" on Marine VHF channel 16 as you drive into St. Helens, OR, and I'll whistle up the shoreboat crew to come and get you.

Lofoten Girl is already out on the water, I took her downriver yesterday, but then had to return for RivrDau #3's big deal, her graduation from Residency in Emergency Medicine at oregon Health & Sciences University. The RD3 has, of course, been involved in Higher Ed since 1998, and now she's done with that dish. This officially means that her account at Bank of Dad is closed for disbursement, although her CPA mentioned something to her about forming a business partnership with me...

RD3 is now gainfully (and how!) employed by St. Francis and St. Joseph Hospitals up in Phil's neck of the woods, the South Sound area. She'll doctor up there until Thanksgiving, when she goes overseas to work.

My celebration will continue apace at Sand Island Marine Park, out in the lower Columbia River, just off of the city of St. Helens, OR, the Columbia County seat. St. Helens gets really busy on the Independence Day holiday, since there is a large City fair, and a big fireworks show to conclude things.

I push off via POV for St. Helens in a couple of hours.

Ahoy, Mate. You look a little parched after your long 1/2 mile trip from the City docks. Come aboard Lofoten Girl, where the bar is ALWAYS open, and the Steward will fix you right up! Will you be staying for dinner tonight? No dress code, those swim trunks and flip-flops are just fine. The menu will include Pork tenderloin, and all the chili you can choke down. Beer to wash all that down with, or, if you're feeling frou-frou, we can broach a bottle of bubbly. There'll be poker played tonight over on that big Taiwanese yacht moored just across the fairway, so bring money. The ladies might have a game of their own, as well.

You did bring a fish pole, didn't you? The King Salmon are still in the river, and the water has warmed up enough for bass and walleye to bite, too. Over at yonder lighthouse on Warrior Rock, your Cap'n knows of a back-eddy where both those delicious fish abound.

Should you feel the urge to sport with a firearm, my gun range is but a few minutes drive downriver from here. They'll be having their renowned Range Games tonight, so if you're a trap-type, you might win some prizes AND have fun at the same time.

That strange-looking motorsailer over there where the Cap'n is playing yet another Sturgeon off the fantail? I know that chap, and HIS bar is said to rival mine, and yes, that is a Traeger BBQ grill smoking away alonside his fine yacht, so we might just dingy over there and sample something comestible and something potable.

It's just a lazy weekend on the lower River...nothing to do here, but DON'T move along, please, stop by and do nothing with us!

Is it possible?

...to give the Whatta Maroon! Award to an entire COUNTRY?

That might take some research, but let's do an inferential leap and assume it is.

That country would be Merrie Olde Englande.

This would be one reason, plenty enough to earn the award.

This would be another reason.

If I needed a third reason, it would be all the lost production and the expense to Britons of the "Royal Marriage" farce currently in progress.