Foogar says

Here I am where the job took me, Columbus, MS. So far i’d say it’s a nice quiet little place. Everyone I’ve met seems as nice as could be. I haven’t really got out much though. Pretty soon I’ll have the apartment settled and have a bit more free time on my hands.

I finally made it to vacation, in less than an hour I’ll be taking to the skies on my way home. So far I haven’t seen anyone tossing baggage around and no one’s throwing a fit. Even the children seem well behaved while we’re waiting to board. I managed to leave behind my shoes and headphones so I s’pose I’ll be in my work shoes the whole time I’m home. The headphones not being here make for boring flights but don’t matter other that that.

Here’s a pic I took on the way into Orlando this morning too.

This weekend I (or my brother mostly) worked on the car a bit. We got the distributer cap and rotor, spark plugs and wires, and valve cover gasket changed out. If we’d have had more time there’d have been an oil change too but I’m still 1k miles from needing one so we let it go until next time. Plus I don’t think I could have handled being on the concrete floor right now.

I’ve been busy since my last update. I wrecked the car last month and messed up my back. I’m posting a pic of my poor car sitting on the side of the interstate waiting for the wrecker to haul it away. There’s also a pic of my new ride, a Honda CRX. It might look sporty but the thing can barely get out of it’s own way. Maybe a tune-up will help.

This post is also a test post from my phone. I need to see how this app handles pictures and formatting so here ya go.

I’m trying to get most of the people from my wedding party together for our 10 anniversary happening later this summer.  If any of you out there were there you’re welcome to come along.  I won’t promise an open bar but it’d be great to have ya there.  Send me a message or give me a call and let me know.

I’ve read a lot about folks converting their cars to electric and most seem to be limited to around 40 miles per charge.  This is OK for most folks but I happen to drive more than that one way to and from work.  I’d have to find a way to build a hybrid system because with today’s technology all electric just isn’t going to work for me.

The idea hit me while watching Modern Marvels one night.  Very large dump trucks have a massive diesel generator powering electric motors for the wheels.  Why couldn’t a similar system be used to provide power to push a car along?  Running some ideal data through excel shows a system using the Honda EU3000iSA (with no losses mind you, ideal data and all) getting around 350mpg.  This is based on the claim it ”Runs up to 20 hours on 3.4 gals of fuel” and a vehicle traveling @60 mph.  Of course the world isn’t perfect, you’ll have your rolling resistance, wind resistance, losses through the drive train, etc..

The problem comes when you try to find a motor that’ll work on 120VAC and have enough torque to push a car along the road.  There is another generator from Honda, the EU6500iSA, that will output 240VAC but it’s 100lbs heavier and about half as fuel efficient.  There may be other good generators out there but this series is known for being quiet so it wouldn’t make your car sound like a hyperactive two-stroke.

If you have anything to add feel free to post a reply, I’m sure if I can think of this someone else has too and a sharing of ideas could help anyone that’s interested in trying this out.  Share what works as well as what doesn’t, and if you know of a place where this is already being discussed drop a link in here.

I spent lunch looking into building a NAS box for the home theater network.  I know it sounds like I’m flexing my geek to some of you but having the ability to keep music or even HD video on the NAS and access it on any of the other machines in the house would be great for me!  I know I could just use the living room htpc instead of building a separate box but right now I don’t know how well it’d work watching a BluRay or HD DVD disk and serving up media goodness to the rest of the house.

If you’re interested in something like this head over and check out FreeNAS for yourself.

http://www.freenas.org/

A friend of mine sent a link to a few Linux ebooks my way and I thought I’d share them.  If you’re interested in Linux and don’t feel like jumping in head first like a lot of folks did in the early days then arming yourself with a bit of knowledge beforehand won’t hurt.  Pair the information in these books with a good live distro and you’ve got a decent way to get some basics down without ever having to install Linux. 

http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2009/05/10/10-free-linux-ebooks-for-beginners/