Has society become so unpredictable that we can’t be trusted with a spoon or knife without precautions?
Sun.
Over the past couple of years solar farms have been appearing across some of the local landscape in our county. They are especially prevalent around the county buildings near the old county airport.
I’m happy to see this type of growth in our region, as there’s a lot of open space that is being used with this clean energy generation. If Earl and I still lived on the big swath of land we owned back in the early 2000s, I’d probably be pushing for a solar farm of some sort on our land.
While I kind of understand the community resistance to wind farms, I really don’t see why folks have fits about solar farms. Back when the Paris Accord was signed back in 2005, some of the reasoning as to why solar farms are bad for us were baffling. A retired science teacher in North Carolina was concerned that the solar panels would divert the sun away from vegetation. She claimed the solar panels would retard photosynthesis. The vegetation around the solar farms in this area are thriving. Perhaps she just wanted to throw out the word “photosynthesis” to prove to the town council that she was a scientific genius. She also claimed that no one could tell her that these panels didn’t cause cancer. So much for an open mind.
There have also been claims that the panels will suck all of the energy out of the sun and burn it out. My only response to this, “and these people vote”.
There are efforts to build solar roadways elsewhere in the world. Basically, pavement would be replaced with solar panels which can also have LED lighting embedded in them. These panels would be wired to cabling in raceways along the roadway, which in turn would be tied into the local power grid. Imagine, all that asphalt replaced with solar panels. How awesome would that be? No more worries about an eyesore in a nearby field!
Another great idea is the addition of solar canopies to parking lots. In a previous job, when I would visit an office outside of Dallas, Texas, the biggest complaint from the local folks was that the new company building did not have a parking garage. Their vehicles were sitting outside, baking in the August Texas heat. Imagine if a relatively inexpensive parking lot canopy made of solar panels was installed over the area. Cars in the shade and electric power generation in one swoop. This would even benefit us in the northeast. Snow off the car in the winter while providing electric power for the surrounding area.
We can have such a bright future if, as a society, we stop clinging to the past of young, fairly ignorant technology and keep moving innovation forward. Both wind and sun are an unlimited source. Being part of the Paris Climate Accord, no matter how “symbolic” it appeared to be, was a positive step in the right direction.
We need to focus on building a brighter, cleaner future. Stagnant thoughts and ideas will never get us anywhere. We have a future to build. As a world, let’s all build that future together.
Wind.
There’s been a lot of talk over the past 48 hours about Climate Change. I’ve heard also sorts of people debate as to what is happening with Climate Change on a global scale, its impact on the economy, who is responsible for Climate Change and whether the climate is even changing or not. Many believe that Climate Change is part of a cycle and that the Earth will take care of itself. Scientists believe that humans are having a definite negative impact on the climate and we may be mucking it up to the point of very dire events over this century.
Of course, Trump announced yesterday that the United States will be pulling out of the Paris Agreement, an effort initiated on our behalf by the Obama Administration in 2015, because he feels it doesn’t give the United States a fair advantage on the global stage. Sometimes being a leader isn’t a fair game.
Participation in the Paris Agreement is completely voluntary. Canceling the United States’ participation in this agreement is symbolic at best. Hopefully, Trump spent too much of his political capital with this latest distraction stunt to further erase any hopes of him being re-elected for a second term in 2020. Realistically I doubt that he’ll make it to 2018 in the Oval Office, let alone 2020. Though, admittedly I have underestimated the stupidity of the general population and I will probably continue to do so. Optimism and all that.
The Maple Ridge Wind Farm can generate power for about 140,000 homes. With 195 Vesta turbines placed over 75 square miles of land in Lewis County, the wind farm has an installed output of 321 megawatts of power. The wind farm surrounds some farm land of relatives on the paternal side of my family. It’s about 45 miles north of our home. With all the talk about renewable energy this week I went up and parked the Jeep in the Visitors’ Center parking lot, listening to the wind turn the turbine situated closest to the center.
Admittedly, the turbines are large and definitely a part of the landscape. There’s no escaping them, so I understand why folks would be hesitant to live near these fairly recent additions to the Tug Hill Plateau. But looking at the bright side, there’s no smog, no toxins being released into the air and no threat of a nuclear meltdown.
Just the whisper of clean energy being produced by a renewable resource. Somewhere nearby, 140,000 homes were able to light up their evening because of these guys doing their thing with the wind.
And I find that to be absolutely amazing.
Let’s keep the momentum moving forward. Even if we don’t have to do it, let’s want to make our planet, our only home, the cleanest it can be. Let’s not be selfish.
Let’s give more than we take.
Energy Solutions Are Not Easy.
From one of the greatest shows of our generation, “The West Wing”. God I miss intelligent television that still entertained. I’m a not a lowest common denominator.
Truth.
Please take a moment to read the annotations/fact checks against Trump’s speech yesterday when he announced that the United States will be withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.
The man is either a psychopathological liar or he has absolutely no idea of what he is talking about or any grip on reality in the world. He just spews nonsense.
Fact check, people. Fact check.
Trump’s Speech On Paris Climate Agreement Withdrawal, Annotated
h/t to Steve Inskeep from NPR.
Change.
Setting aside the debate of Climate Change and whether it exists or not, can we all agree that leaving the world a better place than we found it is the right thing to do? As humans, the leaders that share this planet with thousands of other species, shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to sustain our home for as long as possible? Our future is best painted when we find the cleanest, least destructive means of sustenance possible. Borders are a human construct. The planet is bigger than any border. We should be using our leaps in technology to find the best way to grow together. The United States should be leading the world in new technologies to generate clean, non-destructive and energy. Raping and pillaging the planet for resources and leaving destruction behind for future generations to contend with is not the right thing to do.
Hillary.
I watched this interview with Hillary Clinton at Codecon live this afternoon. It was refreshing to hear someone with a presidential presence speak articulately and candidly. I’m still with her.
Please set aside an hour or so and watch this interview.
Storage.
Earl and I have been working on cleaning out our storage areas throughout the house in preparation for our move to Chicago later this year. Earl has been leading this charge and every day he is tackling a closet or a cupboard or a long forgotten drawer. This weekend we worked together to disassemble some of my extraneous geek toys in the “server room” in the basement.
We are probably the only house on the block that had a server rack holding two servers and two file servers with plenty of storage space. The two servers were old computers that had been repurposed for server use – one of the computers was date stamped 1996. An IBM Personal Workstation, it was a Pentium II/233 running Linux. Its task was to flip relays to run the clock system collection wired throughout the house. On the wall was a much newer master clock designed specifically for that task but I liked the idea of flipping relays via a program I had written. I relented and moved the control over to the master clock and decommissioned the ancient computer.
The second server was an old point of sale terminal from an auto parts store repurposed to run Linux and provide “gateway access” to the network at the house. With today’s technology there are much better ways to get to our home network, so I decommissioned that server as well.
The two file servers provide backup capabilities for our computers when we are connected to the home network. They also hold the hundreds of hours of flight and other video I’ve taken with the GoPros. All of our music and photos are also backed up on these two file servers. This evening I went around collecting other external drives I had hooked up to various devices in the house and centralized all the storage.
We now have nearly 20 TB of file storage in the house. It’ll take a lot of downloading to fill up that space. The hard drives are divided up between two little file servers designed specifically for this purpose. One day I’d like to take all the hard drives out of their enclosures and install them in a Drobo 5N2 so that everything is completely centralized and redundant.
Earl can live with one little box sitting in the corner of our new home instead of a big server rack sitting in the basement.
My life as an IT guy is never done.
Anger.
I like to think of myself as a responsible citizen. I encourage recycling. I’m respectful in public. I smile at strangers. I try to be a positive influence on the world. I live by my credo of giving more than I take from society. My life is wonderful. I have a wonderful family. I have the ability to pursue my passion of aviation and I have a good career.
But yet I’m angry.
I go onto Twitter and see endless streams of idiocy from the Oval Office, with seemingly rational people normalizing abhorrent behavior that would resulted in fits of rage if the president was black. The news is a constant barrage of pearls clutching, hyperbole and exaggeration. I still don’t know why I maintain a Facebook account, though I do post on there much more than I should. It’s my own damn fault that Facebook frustrates me. I let it frustrate me.
The thing is, when I see friends or family defend the sheer stupidity of the Trump administration I just get angry. The fact that a reality start that ran for the presidency as an attention seeking exercise actually became the leader of the free world through the enormous ignorance of the American people angers me. It angers me a lot.
I’m also frustrated that the search for real estate has been reduced to “here’s a bunch of house you should look at on a website, let us know you’re interested.” The Internet has made so many people so lazy and ignorant. Technology was meant to enhance our lives, not reduce us to zombies without a single independent thought.
Maybe I need to go watch a cat video or something.
