Foogar says

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/

I ordered a new set of ear buds for the Zune and they made it in time for my trip.  I got the Sennheiser CXL400’s mostly because I like the way my my big Senn’s sound and they were on sale.  Now I’ll will be able to enjoy my flight home!

I’m sitting here trying to come up with a list of stuff I need to take on my trip home.  Right now I’ve settled for sure on the laptop, zune, and phone.  Other than that I’ll be taking some clothes with me.  For some reason it feels like I’m forgetting something important though.  This is why I start my packing on a monday when I’m not flying until friday.

I woke up this morning and got ready for work as usual.  Today instead of driving in to work with a bit of sunlight I spent my 45 minutes on the road in darkness.  I’ve always thought of daylight savings time as a pain, something unnessesary in the whole of life.   I’m sure the idea was very good for people in the horse drawn, candle lit days but in modern times it is nothing but an annoyance.  If you can think of a single good thing about DST then please let me know by either email or comment. 

I just checked and it looks like a study was done last year that validates my opinion.  I’ll leave you with a link to the article. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-08-daylight-saving-time_N.htm

For anyone interested I slapped a few of the pictures Jessica took after the ice storm we had back home in January on flickr.

http://flickr.com/photos/foogar/3302096684/in/set-72157614312644298/

I just got off the phone with Jessica and everyone in Paducah is ok for the most part.  She said they’re expecting power to be out for a while still.  What she described was a typical post hurricane period for those in hurricane areas.  Trees and power lines are down, there are gas shortages, you know how it is.  Right now they’re in a shelter of sorts because even with gas heat, if you don’t have power for the fan to blow it through the house it’s not going to do any good.

I was going to write up this long review of the Windows 7 experience I’ve had but longer isn’t always better.  For a beta, a Microsoft beta at that, this is a very stable. As a finished product I’d say it has a bit to go though.  The beta does exactly what it was supposed to do, get people talking about Windows in a good way again.  I’d say there isn’t much of a true beta going on, bug hunting and all of that, because I see this as a PR release mostly.

While I’m on the subject I’d lake to let a couple problems I’ve had with the beta out into the open.  Java won’t install, period.  I don’t know if this is a Microsoft problem of a Sun problem but I can’t get Java installed right now.  I have not tried running the installer in compatibility mode yet though.  The other problem I had is Windows Update crashing.  I noticed this after trying to install Java so one may have caused the other but I have no way of knowing for sure.  Updates do work if you let them automatically download and install though so all is not lost.

I do like the interface changes to Media Center specifically.  That and the integration into the start menu (I guess it’s still a start menu) make things a bit faster and easier for me.  Instead of opening Media Center and then selecting to view live TV I can pop into live TV straight away.  Yay for advancement!  Who knew 20 years ago that we’d be able to turn on a TV and it’d show us live TV right then???  Enough of that, this is something I am truly excited about, sarcasm aside.

It’s the first month of a new year, the time I normally look at financial things and try to come up with a plan for the next 11 months or so.  Going over my 401k is almost funny for some reason.  Maybe I’m a bit sadistic, I don’t know, but the whole thing looks like a bad math explosion.  You take what I had 1 year ago, toss in what I can and what the folks at payroll match of that, shake it up and you get less than the beginning balance.  And I’m smiling.

You see, with the market tanked like it has been for a while my investment dollar picks up more shares.  I see it as catching things on sale in a warehouse store.  Once the market evens out and gets back to normal (which could take quite a while) I’ll have a pile of cheap investments going at normal price and be ahead of where I could have planned I’d be 4 years ago.  The thing is I’ve got time to wait for it.

I should also add that a wise man, Victor Willis, once told me that even though the market may be down you’re not out any money until you pull out.