all over the place blurb

THIS makes me happy.

I was watching my meters all day (off n on) checking to see how my new PV rack performed vs the Roof-mount that I had been using. MUCH BETTER. Heck, even towards the end of the day, when the sun had set but there was still light out, I was seeing 13.4 vdc at the meter. May not have been enough juice to push the electrons INTO the batteries, but there was still some usable juice feeding my ceiling fan (that NEVER gets shut off. Poor thing has been up there running purtmuch non-stop for 6 years. I shut it down only to clean the cobbies off.)

And all of that playing with wires, batteries, panels and other sundry parts of a system, with the current events of a supply chain issues, I was reminded of one of Oblammy-o-boys legacy items to the rest of the free world. Many people don’t recall it, but people like me, that rely on batteries for our daily power, recall it quite well. Oblammy shut down the LAST lead mine in the US. It did far more damage than you can account for to justify some Environmental issues that didn’t exist. Yeah, lead is poisonous to people and many living things. So what; that lead is still there in the ground doing what its been doing since it came to reside there, and it may even leach into ground water from that point. Doesn’t matter. What it did to the industry was force most battery manufacture to CHINA. There are still a handful of US makers, and they rely on battery recycling to compete, which is a good thing since Lead/Acid batteries are 98% recyclable (or better, I don’t recall the actual numbers) Unfortunately those batteries also tend to be priced quite a bit higher than the Chineessium variant. And rightly so, since the latter don’t hold up as well. My Deeps that I paid top dollar for? 6 years of service. The chineesium version I recently picked up (4 months ago) toast; can’t hold a charge over 12.2. They were ran down ONCE, and that set the stage for failure (deep cycle my ass). That the older US versions are holding the line says a lot about the difference in quality. Yeah, i’m kinda pissed about it, but I do know “you get what you pay for”. I did expect a bit more than 4 flipping months at those prices though,,,,

So, while playing with all that stuff yesterday, I pulled those two boat anchors out of line, and set them aside for later replacement. I don’t want them damaging the good units, dragging them into the depths of failure. I haven’t the funds to do a full replacement, yet, but its taken a priority. And it WON’T be with the same. I’ll eat that loss by replacing them with a top notch American brand. In the meantime, I baby the units in place, which means that I will be spending a bit more for fuel to run the genny when I need AC power. (computer time is the majority of that.)(my Honda genny will run 8 hours, wide open, on a gallon. I use the eco feature and I get double that, and my lappy doesn’t mind the difference. My power tools do, but not the ‘puter.)

Now, Yesterday I mentioned DoomnGloomers talking about how the failing narrative of ‘Rona is nothing to get excited about, and how I do not agree with them. I said that said failing narrative is the foundation of growing skepticism across the board. Well, yesterday I was vindicated in my thinking by something overheard at the local foodmart. A older lady, talking about how she forgot how good it feels to not be wearing a danged mask, and how people smile at her more, and that maybe now the supply chains will get busy getting her favorite stuff back on the shelf. She missed the point that GOVERNMENT is to blame, but she does get that all of the many issues were fomented by the whole shutdown thing. That she openly stated she felt good without a mask tells me she has been one of the many brainwashed and is now seeing things ‘a bit differently’. This failing narrative is failing like the house of cards it was. Much faster than I expected.

I am just waiting for the spin up in retaliation from our current Inept FRAUD. What happens next is anyones guess.