Category: Miscellaneous

Knowing the Law

We had some chap in the back yard on Saturday afternoon. Memorial Day weekend Saturday. He’s a surveyor, and the pins on the property he’s trying to survey aren’t there. So he’s getting other pins for reference. But he didn’t want to provide his name or the name of his company. Which … yeah, dodgy. Scott ended up calling the police out, and they claim that surveyors can just wander on your property whenever they want. But the chap said he didn’t actually need to be on our property and took off.

Turns out he actually does work for a survey/engineering company. The prospective buyer who engaged the survey company stopped by to chat a bit. It’s amazing what a little customer service knowledge would get you — providing your name, license number (you know, something we could look up), and a business card with your company’s info is a lot less suspect than “no, I don’t need to give you my name or the company’s name. I can just wander around your property any time I want”. Honey v/s vinegar. At that, why in the world would the company’s policy not be driving up to the neighboring property, ringing the bell, and asking first?! That’s just polite.

Funniest part of the whole thing, though? We looked up the actual laws for Ohio. ORC 163.03 — yes, a surveyor can wander onto your property. 48 hours after they notify you of their intention. They are not, however, allowed to randomly decide to wander around your property on Saturday afternoon with no notice. And, if you want to be a real jerk about it, you could still deny them access and adjudicate whether the pins in question are ‘necessary or proper for the purpose of the agency’.

Just because a law enforcement officer tells you something is the law doesn’t mean it’s the law.

Chili Seasoning Blend

Chili Seasoning Blend

Recipe by LisaCuisine: MexicanDifficulty: Easy

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup chili spice

  • 1 tsp roasted garlic powder

  • 1 tsp onion powder

  • 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

  • 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

  • 2 tsp smoked paprika

  • 1 tsp oregano

  • 1 Tbsp salt

  • 1 Tbsp ground black pepper

Method

  • Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend until powered.

Notes

  • I use this blend in my chili recipe and as the spice for taco/burrito fillings.

Pants?

A friend pointed out that pants offer a little protection for me, but they are a lot of protection for you … So we can all stop wearing pants now, right? And protesting stores that require customers to wear pants! Freedom! Liberty!

Ink Chromatography Experiment

Materials:

  • Glass vessels – glass cup, graduated cylinder, etc
  • Coffee filter
  • Scissors
  • Shish kabob skewers
  • Water
  • Colored markers – ideally include a few black markers from different companies

Process

  1. Cut the coffee filter into strips
  2. About 1” from the bottom of the strip, put a dot using one of the markers
  3. Skewer the strip at the top and hang over a glass of water
  4. Hang the strip over the glass
  5. Carefully fill the glass with water until it just touches the bottom of the coffee filter strip.
  6. It will take a few minutes for the water to move up the strip. Once the water has finished moving up the strip, take the skewer and strip off the glass. Empty the glass of water, then place the strip and skewer back on the glass to dry.
  7. Notice how different inks are made of different color combinations. Notice different inks carry different distances up the filter strip.

 

Biosecurity and a return to normal

I’ve been hearing a lot, lately, about the “return to normal” — what do you most want to do when we return to normal, when do you think we’ll be returning to normal, what changes do you think they’ll need to make before we can return to normal. And the questions strike me as wrong-footed. Especially as Trump and Pompeo talk about SARS-CoV-2 coming from a lab. Now “came from a lab” doesn’t necessitate malicious intent. The fundamental, longstanding problem I’ve had with gain of function research (the reason I wasn’t at all upset when the Obama administration put thought into the cost and benefits of this research and subsequently dropped government funding for this research and I didn’t think it was a stellar idea to resume funding) is that biosecurity is so difficult. And the spread of this virus highlights how vulnerable we were.

Sure, nation-states have forsworn biological warfare … but that’s not everyone. This release was probably accidental. I don’t say that because of any insider knowledge, but if I wanted to release an infectious disease … I’d have done a better job of infecting people. Get some infectious people at the Super Bowl – eating and drinking downtown, riding the public transit system, walking around the stadium. Or send people to ride mass transit in a few major cities – spend a day riding trains through Waterloo station, a day milling around Grand Central. If there are suicide bombers willing to literally blow themselves up for the cause … it seems like they’d be equally willing to inject themselves with some infectious disease. And the border agents can search whatever they want — the easiest thing in the world to ‘smuggle’ into a country is your own bloodstream. No explosive or drug sniffing dog is going to notice, no aeroport scanner will see anything because there’s basically nothing to find. Unless this is malicious intent with the forethought to make it look accidental (or a different actor framing the ‘obvious’ culprit) … it’s accidental.

The fact no one has done it yet is rather amazing. We’ve demonstrated our susceptibility to biological attack. We’re in the middle of demonstrating our unwillingness to take actions to prevent the spread of a disease. I absolutely believe this is an attack vector that will be exploited in the future. So why would we want to return to the previous “normal”?!

Energy Usage – Update

We’ve been tracking the energy draw of our various appliances since getting our geothermal system a few years ago. It was great to see the diminished usage with the geothermal system, but I’d like to reduce our usage farther. Not just to save money on our bill and reduce our impact, but reducing our draw will reduce the number of solar panels we’ll need to support our home.

The items we’ve audited so far account for 88.46% of our energy usage in the past year — the oven, cook-top, microwave, bathroom exhaust fan/heater, lighting (we installed LED bulbs several years ago), and misc small plug-in devices (tools, small appliances, laptops/tablets, phones) are 11.54% of our usage. While I’ll certainly make improvements wherever possible … I’ll see a bigger savings cutting the septic aerator usage in half than completely eliminating the untracked draw. The biggest savings comes from investigating the top of the list.

HVAC is still our biggest draw. We’ve dropped the temperature rather significantly in winter without seeing much decrease in usage, so just changing the thermostat isn’t a big win. I’ll be building a thermal imaging camera with a MLX90640 IR sensor — it’s a cool toy, and I’d be able to identify thermal leaks. Unfortunately, I picked a really bad time to look for thermal imaging bits. All of the temp checks we’re seeing to identify coronavirus infections? Thermal imaging everything is on backorder. I put my order in, so I’ve got a place in the queue.

The water heater … I’m going to spend more time investigating why our desuperheater doesn’t seem to do much. We’ve seen savings in the winter — when I’d expect to see the least benefit from the desuperheater — and nothing in the summer. I want to research insulating some of the water pipes and installing heat traps. And we’ll finally purchase the “smart” controller that hooks up to the WiFi and lets you drop the set-point on a schedule.

Next largest draw is an old refrigerator — that’s an easy change. We’ve got a newer unit that needs some repair. One year of energy savings will just about pay for the part, so it makes sense to retire the old fridge and bring the broken one back into service.

Those changes, plus fully shutting down the old server, should reduce our power consumption by about 4,500 kWh/year — a 450$ savings, and a significant reduction in solar system sizing.

Item kWh/year
HVAC 4932
Septic 4668
Water heater 2676
White refrigerator (1989) 2250
Car charging 1164
Black refrigerator 1134
New server 1103
Dryer 245
Family Room TV 144
Dishwasher 118
Bedroom air filter 61
Water pump 53
Washing Machine 30
Downstairs bedroom TV 12
Raven charging 7

And, hopefully, we’ll finally hit the ‘efficient neighbors’ line 🙂

Protesting the Protests

There are some people protesting the stay at home orders – I see videos from outside of DeWine’s daily briefings, and several other states seem to have similar problems. Apart from the question of astroturfing, problem is that there’s very little opportunity for counter-protests. When you go to DC, there are PETA people counter-protesting the people looking to fund medical research (animal testing). There are vegans counter-protesting people looking to increase subsidies in the meat industry. I’ve never seen an abortion protest that didn’t have both sides represented.

These ‘liberate us’ protests? These are people who don’t think they should have to stay at home – they should allowed to hang out at bars, eat in restaurants, shop, party, and … oh yeah … crowd together at protests. The people who think the stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders are important to protect their health? Seems like a far smaller portion of them would be willing to hang out in Columbus in a protest. Even if they could find masks and whatnot.

Why drive somewhere nonessential? Your car breaks down, and you’re exposed to others (and exposing them to you). You get into an accident and you’re exposed to others (and exposing them to you). Get injured in the accident and you’re adding to the patient load at hospitals. We’re not just staying at home to avoid large congregations. We’re staying at home to create less load for emergency personnel.

Visualization: Percent of Population Infected with SARS-CoV-2

Updated graph for current infection numbers

And the states kinda like Ohio graph where I still think “distance from NYC” is a pretty significant factor in how many individuals are infected. Ohio, going on a month of kids out of school and entering week three of the shelter-in-place order, isn’t seeing the exponential growth some states with similar population numbers have encountered.

Reopening

I keep hearing Trump talk about his decision to re-open the country (and how it’ll be the biggest decision he’s ever made). Begs the question how. And I don’t mean “what is the plan to resume somewhat normal inter-personal interactions” (although the process question needs to be answered). I mean procedurally how is he going to *open* the country? He’s never closed it! Individual states have enacted various protective measures as they see fit. He really think he can overrule, say, Ohio’s shelter in place order? Issue an executive order mandating we all eat at a restaurant this weekend and … what? The FBI is gonna haul me out of the house if I don’t?

Dandelion Lotion

Anya has been loving collecting dandelion flowers this Spring. A few years ago, I made a dandelion soap that we’re still using. She wants to make more this year since we’re running out. We started the oil infusion for the soap, and she wanted to collect more dandelions. I’ve seen a lot of recipes for dandelion lotion/salve … so we made some. While the oil infusion for the soap is just dandelion heads in coconut oil sitting on the heater vent in a sunny window for a few weeks, I wanted to make the salve today.

We combined the coconut oil and dandelion flowers in a pot and simmered it over low heat for an hour.

Filter the plant material out of the oil and return it to the pot. I added a little bit of beeswax and a few tablespoons of cocoa butter and heated again to melt the additions. This was poured into glass canning jars.

Once it cooled, we have a bright, sunny yellow lotion with a mild cocoa scent. Anya has been using it daily.