January 20, 2019 9:18 pm Update

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I can’t decide if I’m feeling more sick or frustrated.

1) I have a bad cold. Not a sinus infection or even much coughing but very achy, runny nose like Niagara Falls. I am cold and hungry, I should take a shower then put on more layers and cook dinner as it’s almost nine o’clock.

2) The new LED driver I built was going well until I decided the headaches of dealing with shorts on the board I didn’t realize was strip not perf board followed by a lot desoldering and resoldering onto proper perf board. I found breaking the tracks on the strip board more of a pain than worth it. Then I got almost entirely wired up on two pieces of perf board (a 12 volt and 3.3 volt board) as it wouldn’t fit on one perf board with the bigger microcontroller and buck converter, and discovered I swapped the source and the drain on all the MOSFET transistors, bridging the drains together intentionally with solder in an ever so brilliant move. More desoldering and cleaning up. Then I reassembled it and then I broke a leg on a transistor. And I don’t have any more.

Maybe it’s time for some dinner, cold medicine and sleep for the next 12 hours or so. No soothing reds or orange light in my bedroom for a while I guess until I get some more logic grade MOSFETs.

East Barrens 1

Blowing Up the Government

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I was listening to Preet Barhara’s podcast the other day, and one of his conclusions was the dangerous nature of so many Americans wanting to “blow the system up” as their reason for voting for President Trump. Indeed, I consider myself one of the people who supports blowing up the system and I thought about voting for Trump, although ultimately ended up voting for Jill Stein in 2016 and Larry Sharpe in 2018.

As Preet Barhara notes, Donald Trump would be a dangerous demagogue if not for the fact that he is clumsy with his power, giving the other power brokers in Washington DC a lot of power to corral the bull in the China shop. Trump says outrageous things on Twitter, but the political institution mostly keep moving on the same direction as they always have. Government is big, slow and bureaucratic, which is both it’s greatest strength and weakness. Institutions and the people who make them up, can always play the waiting game, while politicians have to move fast to get anything done.

Why do so many of us want to blow up our government, voting for dangerous candidates? For one, the revolutionary, independent spirit is in our DNA. Americans have endowed rights in the constitution, one of them is to reject our leaders and institutions when we don’t like what they do. We believe in the absolute to right to criticize our leaders, we believe in the rights of private of citizens to own firearms and defend their homes. We believe government should largely remain out of our business and off our land, except when the most limited of regulation is necessary to protect the public good.

For too many of us, we think the government has gotten too bureucratic, too interested in protecting itself, long established institutions and corporation, and the powerful donors, rather then average people. While life is improving for most Americans, we feel like government still doesn’t care for us, that the interest of the government put ahead of individual. As Phil Ochs once sung, “Tell the Cops About Your Rights as They Drag You to the Ground” Elected officials who blow things up can be agents of change, at least they will break up the established order. We don’t want fascism or expansion of the government state into our lives, but we do want government to better address the big problems society faces and protect individuals from the excesses of large corporations and those who seek to play on unfair.

January 20, 2019 Morning

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Good morning! Happy Snowy Sunday. Snow and 19 degrees in Delmar. ☁ There is a north breeze at 13 mph. 🍃. The current wind chill is 8. There is around a foot of snow on the ground. ☃ ️Not as much the drama queens like myself were hoping for but it’s still snowing. Things will start to thaw out at Wednesday around 11 am. 🌡️ It’s what is called winter.

I dug out Big Red this morning while the muffins were baking on coffee brewing ☕ as I wanted to get a jump start on the snow before more came down. ❄ I’m really not sure how much more snow we will get today, for now it’s mostly sleet pelting down. I might start the truck up later in the day as I noticed the battery voltage is a bit low with the cold and even after cleaning off the solar panel it’s not putting out a lot of voltage.🔋I’ll probably move my truck once the landlord plows the driveway for the second round.

Laying back, watching some videos. I’m going to take a shower in a bit. 🚿 Not planning a big day, just want to finish soldering together the new control module and get it working for my LED bar so I can have a those lights working again. I’ll have to work on the phone app more later on.💻

Today will be sleet before 11am, then snow. Areas of blowing snow after 1pm. 🌨 High of 20 degrees at 10am. 10 degrees below normal. Northwest wind 13 to 16 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. Total daytime snow and sleet accumulation of 2 to 4 inches possible. A year ago, we had partly cloudy in the morning, which became mostly sunny by afternoon. The high last year was 46 degrees. The record high of 53 was set in 2006. 8.7 inches of snow fell back in 1978.❄

The sun will set at 4:53 pm with dusk around 5:24 pm, which is one minute and 14 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for snow 🌨 and temperatures around 20 degrees. The wind chill around sunset will be 5. ☃️ Breezy, 16 mph breeze ⛅ from the north-northwest. Today will have 9 hours and 34 minutes of daytime, an increase of one minute and 54 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a slight chance of snow before 7pm, then a slight chance of snow showers between 7pm and 9pm. Areas of blowing snow before 9pm, then areas of blowing snow after 11pm. Mostly cloudy 🌨, with a low of -4 degrees at 6am. 18 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -26 at 6am; Blustery, with a northwest wind 20 to 22 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2018, we had partly cloudy in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 29 degrees. The record low of -18 occurred back in 1994.

Still have the cold I was starting to get yesterday. 👃I don’t feel all that sick but my nose has been running a bit but it’s a good day to take it easy with my various projects, reading and watching some of the videos I’ve downloaded in recent days at the library.

Looking ahead, there are 7 weeks until Daylight Savings Time 🌆 when the sun will be setting at 6:55 pm with dusk at 7:23 pm (Daylight Savings Time). It will be nice when the time changes for sure. On that day in 2018, we had mostly sunny skies, with some snow showers and temperatures between 38 and 29 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 42 degrees. We hit a record high of 72 back in 1977. I’ll take 72 degrees.

Rock Cut