Author Archives: Commander Zero

Powerwall

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So you guys saw this? Tesla Motors, as a development in their car-battery technology I am assuming, says they are going to be offering a ‘plug-n-play’ battery that will be suitable for home use. Now, you and I both know that ‘home use’ means a few lights, some entertainment devices, and other small-draw items, because you ain’t running your refrigerator, freezer, well-pump, furnace blower, and hot water heater off a battery small enough to hang on your wall. Oh, you could run a household like that off of batteries but it would be a battery (or battery-pack) the size of a cargo container.

Really, this is a brilliant move for Tesla if they pull it off. The car side of their business is obviously heavily invested in battery technology, so if they develop an uber-battery it would only make sense to put out out into other, non-auto markets as well. The market for $200K  $100k electric cars is probably pretty small compared to the market for $3500 batteries that, ideally, work better than any existing backup battery or off-grid-cabin battery.

My own efforts as of late are still in the DIY/beginning-hobbyist stage. I’m planning out a small battery system to maintain a charge off of household current when the power is on, and to be used for DC applications (lights, radio, battery charging, security system) when the power goes out. But thats a much longer post (or, really, couple of posts).

In a happy little world, I’d have something like one of these batteries up at my very-attractive, yet heavily-reinforced concrete off-grid Beta Site. The world would convulse into spasms of chaos, I’d pack up and head to my little quiet bastion of security, and patiently wait for things to calm down…all the while enjoying LED lighting, radio communications, laptop, and security surveillance. Ah, the great American (survivalist’s) dream.

Go read some Heinlein sometime, or just Wiki it, and look up “Shipstone”. In the books, the shipstone was a revolutionary technology that greatly improved batteries. Or, as the book says, “To call a Shipstone an improved storage battery would be to call an atom bomb an improved firecracker.” In the book, shipstones didnt create power, they simply acted as containers for it. And you could stuff a lot of power into one. Every so often someone comes up with some ideas in battery technology that looks similar to Heinlein’s fictional supercapacitor. About eight years ago the big thing was ‘nanowire‘ technology that would, allegedly, increase a lithium-ion batteries output by 10x. Haven’t read much about it since then.

Anyway, if Tesla has made any strides in the battery arena, I think it would be a classic example of a business having a small branch or division that was ancillary to their main business become more profitable than the main business. Serendipity.

Link – The Little Can That Could

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Wonderful post about the history of the jerrycan.

During World War II the United States exported more tons of petroleum products than of all other war matériel combined. The mainstay of the enormous oil-and-gasoline transportation network that fed the war was the oceangoing tanker, supplemented on land by pipelines, railroad tank cars, and trucks. But for combat vehicles on the move, another link was crucial—smaller containers that could be carried and poured by hand and moved around a battle zone by trucks.

I’ve given up on anything other than the ‘NATO/Euro’ style cans for gasoline storage. They are more expensive, and sometimes hard to find, but I believe they are worth it.

Article – School serves 6-year-old meat to TN students

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ROGERSVILLE, Tenn. – Meat dating to the year of President Obama’s first inauguration was served to students in some Hawkins County, Tennessee schools last week.

Hawkins County Commissioner Michael Herrell was alerted after a cafeteria worker sent him a photo of the pork roast they used for school meals was from 2009.

The 6-year-old meat had been frozen and then was thawed for meal preparation, according to WCYB.

Herrell said the photo was taken at Joseph Rogers Primary School where the staff decided not to serve the meat. However, it was served at other schools.

Eating 6-year-old meat is not a big deal if it was stored properly. We routinely eat meat thats been sitting in the deep freeze for a year or two, and the oldest I’ve pulled out and consumed has been around five years old. As long as you packaged it well and kept it frozen, it’s usually just fine. There may be some spots of freezer burn if you didn’t get all the air out of the package, but those don’t affect the nutritional value or the safety of the food.

As an aside, if you’re really upset about the quality of the slop slapped onto your kids lunch tray, either pack ’em a lunch or give ’em five bucks to go get a slice of pizza and a Coke. It’s not .gov’s responsibility to feed your kid. Public government schools already do a crappy job of educating your kid, why would you think they’d do any better job of feeding them?

Range day

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Took someone from CrossFit to the range the other day. Took abut a dozen different guns. Everything from .22 to .45. And, as always seems to be the case, what was the most flat-out enjoyment achieved with? The lowly, inexpensive, .22 LR.

We had been shooting the Remington Subsonic at 50 yards and it was okay, but I switched over to standard velocity CCI, which still managed to be subsonic, and groups tightened considerably. Me and my guest both managed to shoot five-shot groups you could cover with a dime.

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The gun in question was the Savage FS-VR, a rifle I am developing a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for. However, while the AccuTrigger was awesome, the factory stock wasn’t even worthy of putting on an airgun. I swapped it out for the Boyds Tacticool (now called Pro Varmint) and slapped a Nikon P-22 w/ BDC reticle on top of the rail. So, yeah, I sank north of $400 onto a $200 rifle. (Almost a grand if you include the suppressor and paperwork). But, for five shots, we get this…

20150426_144705I need to back it out to 100-yd and see how it shoots. Problem with the subsonic stuff is you get these rainbow trajectories that can make things….tricky. Also, those suppressors really dirty up a barrel….seemed like there was more unburnt powder or debris in the barrel after shooting with the suppressor than without. Still, awesome fun.

Craigslist wishful thinking

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Someday Im gonna have one of these.

1972 Toyota FJ 40 Landcruiser , orig. 6 cyl. , 3 speed manual trans. , new leaf springs and shocks with grease-able shackles front and rear , power steering , Warn hubs , new water pump , new thermostat , new master cyl. , rebuilt radiator , newer soft top in excellent condition ! Original toolkit and jack , new wheels with BFG All Terrain tires and spare , custom heavy duty front and rear bumpers , this is a very clean FJ 40 ! Also comes with a 4 speed manual trans. , orig. steering wheel , Summer top and a few other parts . Come and take a look , you wont be disappointed ! $ 13,500 obo – call

Article – Missing sisters survive 2 weeks in woods on Girl Scout Cookies, cheese puffs

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LUCE COUNTY, MI — Two sisters who were missing for nearly two weeks in a remote area of the Upper Peninsula survived on Girl Scout Cookies and cheese puffs.

Lee Wright, 56, and Leslie Roy, 52, were weak but otherwise seemed to be in good condition when a state police helicopter rescued them Friday from a two-track road in northern Luce County where their Ford Explorer became stuck in deep snow on April 11. The women stayed with the vehicle, which had died earlier this week.

Stayed with the vehicle and survived. This is almost, but not always, the case.  However, it is the outcome often enough that staying with the vehicle should be the preferred choice.

Simple lighting project

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This post on arfcom caught my eye. Rather than buy a 12v lamp for use with a battery, this fella converted a regular household AC lamp to run an LED ‘bulb’ off his 12v battery.

This sort of thing intrigued me and I decided to try it. While we have several options for lighting around here, I’d like to have something that doesn’t look like the kind emergency lighting youd find in a stairwell. Something very subtle and ‘normal looking’.

A quick trip to Amazon for the necessary parts:

The next step was to pick up a lamp to experiment on. As it turns out, I found a lamp that already ran on DC (it used a transformer to run off AC house current) and was LED. Since that was 2/3 of the battle right there, I figured I’d start with that.

20150419_164135Reading the details on the made-in-China transformer said, if they can be believed, that power draw was something like .33 amps. 20150419_164052Conveniently, they labeled the wires as to +/-. Simple matter to cut the transformer off and connect the wires for the cigarette plug to the lamp wires…keeping the polarity the same.

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Once the transformer had been removed and replaced with the 12v plug, I plugged it into my old ConSci battery pack to test.

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20150420_224627Unsurprisingly, it works. I’ll tuck it away with the battery box and leave it for the next time I need lighting when there’s no available electricity.

Of course, the bigger plan is to use it in conjunction with the larger battery backup system I’m planning. Nothing fancy..a couple big deep cycle batteries, a smart charger, and a bunch of outlets and wiring to allow me to run emergency lighting and communications for a week or so on battery power. Thats the bigger post Im working on. Gonna be a little while on it, though, since it’s going to take a while to scratch up the cash for the batteries. But…when it’s moved from ‘theory’ to ‘in progress’ there’ll be plenty of posting on it.

 

 

 

Generator run day

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Nice day outside. Time to set out the generator and run it for a while to make sure everything is working for when we need it.

20150419_145545I keep a copy of the startup/shutdown instructions attached to the generator so there’s no doubt about doing things the right way. Sure, I commit as much of it to memory as I can but you never know when someone else may be needed to start/stop it and this way they can have all the proper info right there.

In a crisis the only thing I really need the generator for is to keep the freezer/fridge cool and maybe run the furnace blower. In the winter any food can simply go outside and the generator will be mostly for just running the blower and charging batteries.

Household emergency lighting will be mostly LED lights run off a couple deep-cycle batteries. Thats a project I’m kinda working on at the moment.

 

Canned meats

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Canned meats are something that, no matter how objective I try to be, always elicit a shudder and a mental “Ewwww”. I mean, just about every form of canned meat, when opened, whether it is Spam, chicken, beef, hash, whatever, smells and looks like cat food.

It was only with great trepidation and great surprise that I was willing to try the CostCo canned roast beef and discover that, once you fry it up, it’s really quite good. In fact, it was so good we have added it as a regular inventory item to our spreadsheet of stored food.

Up until now, most canned meats are pretty basic: canned chicken, canned pork, canned salmon, etc. But things are starting to get a little more ‘niche’. An example was this that I found in WalMart:

Canned beef fajita strips and canned meatballs. Part of me was quite curious about this stuff and another part of me was slightly nauseous contemplating how badly these things could turn out. Yes, I was a coward and took a pass on these…mostly on the strength of WalMart being known for ‘low prices’ and me not wanting to know where the corners were cut on these cuts of meat. BUT…it is interesting to to think that with some stored pasta, a jar of spaghetti sauce, and a couple cans of meatballs, you could have a hearty comfort-food meal with a shelf life measured by election cycles.

Interesting the things you see when you start mindlessly examining everything on the ‘canned meats’ shelf at WallyWorld.