Tim's semi-irregular blog

solar panel - a brief update

2010-04-19T07:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted on this in a while, but I'm going to at least post some preliminary numbers; my solar panel is built (mostly) and placed in the back yard (in a temporary location) and is generating between 80-100 watts of electricity per day, after it passes through the Grid Tie controller. I've calculated that it should generate 180 watts, and indeed, when I measure on the DC side of the Grid Tie Inverter, I am seeing 180 watts, so it appears around 30% of the power is being lost in the conversion to AC. This is a bit annoying to say the least, and drives the price up per watt by quite a bit.

Current expenditures
99.00 - Grid Tie Inverter
21.00 - Wooden frame
245.00 - solar cells
===============
365.00 - Total

peak power production: 120 watts
$3.04
average watts produced per day: 600
time to break even: 16 years

so, at this point, building a solar panel on my own is actually not worth doing, mostly because of the amount of electricity I'm losing in the Grid Tie Inverter. If 30% weren't being lost in conversion, we would be doing ok, but with that happening, the cost per watt is drastically affected. I'm going to check out what is going on there; the equation actually gets better if I add more solar panels, since there is a fixed cost for the Grid Tie Inverter, and I'm wondering if the efficiency will improve a bit with more panels connected.

soldering work station notes

2010-03-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

Hi, today I'm going to make some notes on my workstation area, so anyone trying to follow along at home won't make the same mistakes I did. First, we'll talk about strategy a bit, and prep work; this is important, in order to limit the time the soldering gun is actually on, causing a burn risk in your house.

Wire use strategy
I actually cut out 3"x6" card stock, and taped a bunch of paper tabbing wire to it, in a dry run, and made the following determinations for my 6 cell by 6 cell configuration, there will be 6 cells with positive wires sticking out half an inch, and 6 cells with negative wires sticking out half an inch. That left 24 cells with a 'normal' wiring, so before I laid even one cell on the panel, I would need the following for each panel

6 cells wired on just the negative side, with tabbed wires sticking out just long enough to connect to the bus (roughly 3 3/8 in).
6 cells wired on the positive side with tabbed wires sticking out 1/2 inch, and 'regular length' wires on the negative side. (roughly 2 7/16 in)
24 cells with 'regular length' wires on the positive side. (roughly 6 1/16 in)

I wanted to do both panels at once, so multiply the above number by 2, and pre-cut all my tabs
24x3 3/8" tabbed wires
24x2 7/16" tabbed wires
96x6 1/16" tabbed wires

Once that was done, I set up my work area with a flux pen, solder and the cheapest 30 watt soldering gun that is sold at Radio Shack. The tabbed wire is pre-coated with solder, and over time as my technique got better, I was able to complete the connection without using my roll of solder, but in the beginning, a little solder helped a lot.

MISTAKES I MADE
1. Always use the flux pen, otherwise the wires will pop off really easily.
2. I used a felt-covered table, and cracked a cell pressing down too hard, as the cell flexed inward. I switched to a flat table, covered with a thin cloth to prevent scratches, and that worked really well.

doing all the work of tabbing the cells took about 10 hours, spread across 3 days. All that's left is to attach the cells to each other within the solar panel, which I have yet to modify, since the 3-inch by 6-inch measurement was inaccurate. I plan on doing that tomorrow evening (meeting with the district manager of USSD this evening, on continued plans to become a sensei -- they typically charge $8000 for 'instructor school'), completing the solar panel Friday evening, and actually exposing it to the sun on Saturday..

Here's a link to a nice diy solar website

2010-03-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

Hi. http://www.hotsolarenergyfacts.com/green-energy/simple-steps-to-powering-your-residence-with-home-made-solar-power. This is a nice 'overview' site, that pretty much covers what I'm doing. I think that some pictures would be helpful, but besides that, it's a pretty nice description.

pics of solar panel elements

2010-03-29T16:55:00.001-07:00

I don't have the grid-tie inverter or plexiglass to cover the panels, but here's the rest of the components. Where I thought it was useful, I put a measuring device, such as a ruler or a t-square, so you could see the dimensions of the objects.

Here is the tabbing wire, which I solder to the back of each cell.

Here's the front/back of the same cell, you can see how I have soldered the tabbed wire to 6 points on the back. When they are attached, the wires will go from the back(positive side) of this cell to the front (negative side) of the cell below. They will end up in a grid of 6 by 6, for 36 cells, measuring roughly 19 inches by 38 inches.

Below is a stack of 35 cells, so you can see the thickness. the stack behind it only contains 24 cells, but they are all tabbed, increasing the thickness.

Here's the 'raw' panel, which will be changing a bit, but you can see that it's build to hold 3 solar arrays at 6x6 cells, of 37"x19", roughly 37"x61" total.

So that's all but the kill a watt power measuring device, which will be included in the next post, as well as the grid-tie inverter.

Solar Cells +other stuff arrived

2010-03-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, so my solar cells showed up at the end of last week, and the first thing I did was confirm the measurement. Bad news, they are labelled as '3x6 inches', but they aren't. The size is actually 3 and 3/16 by 5 7/8. I actually pre-built the panel to be the correct size, based on an accurate cell size, so needless to say, some re-engineering is taking place. Besides that, everything is going swimmingly; The cells I bought came 'untabbed', meaning no tabbed wire has been attached to them, so I began soldering late on Sunday. After about 5 hours, I'd say I'm half done with the tabbing efforts, and expect to be able to place the cells sometime around the end of the week (after the redesign of the solar panel itself). Also, the cells themselves are super-thin; to give you an idea of how thin, a stack of 40 cells is about 1/2 inch in height. So the math says the cell is each cell is 1/80 of an inch in fractions, or .0125 inches in decimals. Soldering them together is definitely a difficult task, and I'm a little worried that some of them are flawed, as just touching the soldering gun to one caused it to crack from the heat.

I also have been able to mess around with the 'Kill a Watt' power reader ($9.99+shipping and handling on ebay seems to be a typical lower-end price), and came up with some interesting numbers. My laptop takes up about 40 watts of electricity, while the desktop is at around 150 watts. I haven't done the math, but perhaps from an electricity-usage standpoint, laptops could be cheaper than desktops. Some stats from around the house:

Microwave uses 1300 watts
Vacuum uses about 1000-1200, depending on whether the brush is running.
Wife's computer uses about 130 watts.
I can't measure the clothes dryer, as it's a 240 volt appliance, but the heating coil has the number '5400 watts' on the side, which is probably a good clue.

I also took some readings on the various items with standby lights in the house, such as the phone charging stand, the charger for AA and AAA batteries for the kids' various video game controllers. None of the devices with red lights on them took enough power to actually register on my meter, so less than 1 watt. I actually found one that was labelled ( the kids' bathroom led night light), and it said .3 watts. Multiplying that by 24 hours, 30 days, it consumes 216 watts a month. there are around 20 devices with little lights on the front, so assuming they all use this amount, I'm consuming about 2 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month running standby lights. At 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's roughly 40 cents. So that's good to know, and it puts my mind at ease on what power is being consumed by what objects. It's strange, because when I touch the block of a power supply on these items, it's typically hot to the touch, which makes me think 'huge energy use', but it turns out this is just a perception, not a reality.

At this point, it seems that the most efficient thing to do would be to abandon the solar photovoltaic array, and put up a clothesline in the back yard, so that we could stop running the dryer so much. It costs us 54 cents in electricity every time we run the thing for an hour.

Anyway, the next 3 days will be busy, between karate class, work load, and more karate (I got invited to try out the karate teaching school for a couple of hours on Tuesday, which I'm super-pumped about). I'm hopefully going to finish the pre-soldering after karate on these days, and get the panels mounted on Thursday, or at least that's my hope, so there may not be another post until Friday, as there won't be much to add. Maybe I'll do a 'pictures' post tonight, to show the components.

Solar energy -- the math

2010-03-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a link that explains the math, and keeps me from just plagiarizing what is already out there.

greenecon.net

OK, so as my last post revealed, I'm going to attempt to create solar panels from scratch. This is kind of a neat engineering problem, where I have to address the following questions:

1. How do I protect the solar cells while still exposing them to the sky? What about hail? How much reinforcement do I need if 2 feet of snow falls on them?

2. How do I attach them to my roof? Or would ground-level poles be better?

3. How big should the final system be?

4. What is the best wattage/voltage for the panels to run at?

5. how big should the panels be?

6. How much heat are they going to generate, and if I build the panels from wood, will I end up starting a fire on my roof?

7. Is it better to put more panels up, mounted flat to the roof, or to use less panels, and mount them at a sharper angle? What kind of extra reinforcement will I need to deal with wind, if I mount the panels at an angle.

So, to help answer these questions, I have looked at a lot of websites, watched a bunch of youtube videos, and really haven't come up with a lot of answers. The main thing is to avoid over-engineering this project, and paying way more than I should. So what I've done is ordered a enough supplies on Ebay to build a single panel, at 129 watts, and 18 volts, along with a simple grid-tie inverter that plugs directly into a wall socket, and a 'kill a watt' power meter to monitor what amount of electricity is generated. The shopping list so far?

$99.99 for a 300 watt grid tie inverter, rated for an input of 14-28 volts
$138 for 72 1.8watt, 0.5 volt solar cells plus miscellaneous parts to attach them to each other
$21.99 for a sheet of plywood to mount the panels to.

So, the math on the solar panels is like this:
I'm building 2 mini-panels of 36 cells connected in parallel, which gives us 18 volts (0.5*36), and 64.8 watts (1.8*36) I can then connect those 2 panels in series, to keep the volts steady, but push the amps up, essentially to stay under the 28 volt limit on the inverter.

I'll add some pics once they arrive, and once the panel is built, so that its construction will become clearer. The construction of the actual panels will probably require about 50 hours of soldering/building time, so I'm imagining getting the panel into operation about mid-April.

solar Cells, how do they work

2010-03-23T07:29:00.001-07:00

OK, I spent days learning about solar cells, to get to the point where they actually made some sense, mostly because I didn't get a basic concept. The cells themselves are all about surface area, and they are about as simple in construction as it is possible to be. The entire front of the cell is the 'positive side' and the entire back of the cell is the 'negative side'. So if I take a solar cell out of its package, drag it into the sunlight, and touch the positive probe from my multimeter to anywhere on the front, and my negative probe to anywhere on the back, I can get the voltage of that cell. The cells that I ordered have 2 parallel stripes down the front, where I can solder the tabbing wire (a special thin, flat wire that will lie flat under the cell), and there are 6 solder points on the back (little squares of pre-applied solder, I believe) 3 on each side line up with the parallel stripe on the front. So if I were to connect 5 cells together, the first cell's positive wire would be connected to nothing (later on, it connects to the positive terminal on whatever we are powering) The negative side will be soldered to the positive on cell 2. The negative side on cell 2 will be soldered to the positive side on cell 3 and so on, until cell 5 where the negative wires will be nothing, to form the negative terminal to whatever we are powering.

So, to design my panels, I had to understand parallel and series wiring. Read below, or visit the wikipedia entry.

The first is wiring in series. If you connect several cells, + to -, then the voltage goes up while the current stays steady. For example, if connect 10 cells together, in series (cell 1 negative terminal connects to cell 2 positive terminal. Cell 2 negative terminal connects to cell 3 positive terminal and so on), and each has a voltage of .5, this means you will get 5 volts (10*.5 volts) out of the cells. I actually tested this out, by taking 6 AA batteries, and lining them up, positive to negative. Each one is rated at 1.2 volts, but in actuality produces 1.4-1.5 volts fully charged (there are electronic rules that tell us that when we place the batteries under 'load' this will drop to 1.2, so this is actually a proper voltage reading). The voltage reading was 7.8, so the 'series' wiring was proven out. This is called wiring in series. Incidentally, this explains why, if you are jump-starting your friend's car, and connect positive to negative, instead of positive to positive, you blow up both your electrical systems. Doing so essentially drops 24 volts through both cars, frying everything in sight.

Second is wiring in parallel. When we do this, the current increases, while voltage stays the same. In this case, we are connecting the leads from positive to positive. in the car battery example, the voltage will end up being 12 volts, while the wattage is the sum of the 2 batteries' wattage.

These 2 concepts are important to understand, because the solar panel has to be of a sufficient voltage and wattage to run the grid tie inverter, which will be explained in a later post.

I'll get through a couple more 'concept' posts, then start posting pictures of what I've done. I'll also post cost information, as well as establish some baseline of what the break-even point is on a photovoltaic system.

Solar array DIY stuff

2010-03-22T08:32:00.000-07:00

Hey, I've started up a new hobby; I'm going to be attempting to create a home-built photovoltaic solar panel system for my home. I've been watching prices for commercial solar installations for years, and the price has never been right. The cheapest system I've seen was $13,000, with about a 25 year payback period, which is just far too long. But then I got the idea to search ebay for the components of a solar array, and found that the price dropped pretty significantly. So I ordered some 'solar cells, similar to this ebay item. The trade-off in building your own photovoltaic system is, number one, the learning curve, and number 2, there is a LOT of soldering work. So my plan is to build a couple of panels as a test case, mount them on my roof, and then share the results. If it's a big failure, I'll post my mistakes here, and whatever I learn, I'll share that as well. Thanks, more posts coming soon.

A stingy man's desk

2010-02-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

(reposted partially from facebook)

I have projects ranging from 3 minutes ago to 3 years ago, totally covering the surface of my desk (and the floor of my office, and scrawled on the mirrored surface of the sliding closet doors). My desk is a 3-foot by 5-foot table, the kind you would see at a church potluck, and has a stamp on the bottom, 'Made in Mexico 1987'. I love the way it fits my personal 'green' philosophy (reduce, reuse, recycle as they say). Now if I could just get through some of these old projects, I'd be able to see it's cheap wood-grain veneer again.

My stuff owns me

2010-02-12T06:54:00.001-08:00

Over the course of my adult life, I've ended up with a lot of things, from old picture albums, to old tech items (2 meg DIMM anyone?). I hold onto some of it for sentimental reasons, and some of it for 'just in case' reasons. After all, who knows when I'll need that x486 laptop, that I can't even load an OS on at this point, because the 3.5 inch floppy drive destroys floppy disks, instead of reading them?

A couple months ago, I read a post about how our stuff owns us. How every time we look at an item, and try to decide what to do with it, we use up our precious energy doing so. So I actually followed the column's advice and just threw out a bunch of obsolete computer cables, 40 meg hard drives and sound cards. I didn't really make much of a dent, as a lot of stuff just felt useful to me, but now when I need a part for a computer, I'm much more likely to actually to find it in my box o' parts downstairs.

Then a few days ago, I decided to start weaning myself off of purchased cable television nd shopped around for an s-video cable to connect my computer to the television. The first one I found was 25 feet long, and only 10 dollars, but I though 'nah, I'll drive to the store. It can't be much more expensive there.' After visiting 3 stores, I found a 25 foot cable, but they wanted 45 dollars for it. So I drove home, did another search, and found a similar gold-plated cable for only $2.08. I ordered it, and for a measly $2.99 S&H I'll be receiving that cable in a couple of days.

This was exciting to me, but it wasn't the first time I got a great deal on the internet. I mentioned it to my wife, and she said "That's why the economy is in the toilet". So since I paid about one tenth of what I would have paid in a store for this item, I devastated the economy. But on the other hand, since I got a cable that was most likely either used, or bought in lots after some computer store went bankrupt, it's probably a limited resource that won't be replenished. Had I bought it from the store, I would set in action a chain of events (low inventory, re-order, make cable, ship to cable to store) that would have consumed quite a bit of resources.

It's an understood rule in our society that, if I haul a bunch of stuff out to the curb, and just leave it there, people will scavenge through it, and take what they want, thereby relieving me of stuff that isn't worth storing, but still useful. It's the trite-but-true $15 furniture set nearly every American child gets when they move out of the parents' house.

This reminded me of a 'tool co-op' idea that I had heard about on npr a couple of years ago. Basically, as a man gets older, he slowly collects tools. Hammers, power saws, power washers, miter box etc. Each of these tools usually sees a period of usefulness of about 15 seconds over its life. The idea of a tool co-op is that you would borrow tools from a community tool set, so that they would get more of a use, rather than sit in the garage for years for every minute of actual use. He may think of passing them on to a son when he dies, but the generation gap is usually too big to bother. My dad, for example, is still using his tools, and will be for another 20 years, at which point I'll have a set of tools for myself. Hence, no need to pass it down.

So what is the point of this article? Maybe it's ok to sell stuff on amazon or ebay at a discount, or at a break-even price, in order to just be rid of it. If I ever need that gewgaw again, I can always re-buy it from the community co-op that is ebay, probably for a great discount, especially if we all throw away the concept of owning a full set of tools by the time we die, or of having a box full of computer parts from the early nineties. Reselling these items at a discount will keep someone who needs whatever you're selling from buying a brand new one, and it keeps stuff out of landfills unless it is truly broken.

Of course, re-using stuff, rather than sending it to the landfill, does hurt the consumer economy. Cell phone companies make a lot of money because we all have a drawer full of used phones, that outlived their usefulness to us, but aren't actually broken. People get rid of old cars well before they are actually worn out, buy new cars off the lots, and pay crazy amounts of interest for the 'new car smell'. It seems that we have a lot of disposable income, and we are more than willing to dispose of it. But what if we were to start buying stuff cheap, spending 5 dollars for a 45 dollar cable and such? Would we no longer need to get those big paychecks? Could we cut down on the very size of our houses, so that we could stop making huge mortgage payments, or empty out that 'storage room' downstairs, and rent it out to a college student instead?

More expensive cell phones typically come with a 'lock' code on them, so that they can only be used by a certain vendor. Typically though, you can get them 'unlocked', if you can present a case that you are going to use them overseas. I went through the process of unlocking a Treo 650 a couple of years ago, because my cell phone provider wasn't something I could choose at the time. With a couple of google searches, I found someone who would unlock the phone for $300. I kept looking though, and finally found a company that would unlock it for $15. I stopped searching then and bought the unlock code, but I've always wondered; if I had kept searching, would I have found a site that would have done it cheaper? Essentially I 'named my price', what I thought it was worth to unlock the phone, but I don't believe I got the best possible deal. In fact, if I had called the cell company, they probably could have been talked into unlocking it for free, since my employer almost immediately paid for me to get internet access on this phone, for which they paid $39.99 per month.

I'm a little scatterbrained today, so I might come back and edit this article for clarity, but the general idea, "Caleb is a cheapskate" is pretty evident, I think.

Long-overdue update

2010-02-01T15:09:00.000-08:00

I've been invited to become an instructor at United Studios of Self Defense(www.ussd.com), as a part-time job. It's really neat to have the practice and effort I put into it pay off, and what a cool way to spend my spare time. Sensei Mike, who runs the Dojo here in Castle Rock, is a real disciple of the martial arts. He's been through a variety of training in addition to the normal curricula offered by USSD, including wrestling, Mixed Martial arts and such. Additionally, he's just a well-balanced, personable guy. I'm hoping to pick up a bit on his social skills, as he is really great at getting people to come out of their shells.

Also, I'm going through the insanity of refinancing the house. I actually bought a relatively cheap house, compared to my monthly income, and since we can afford it fairly easily, we are thinking of switching from a 30 year mortgage, to a 15 year one. I'm hoping to see some decent numbers on the final paperwork, as it almost seems easier to pay more on the balance each month, rather than go through the hassle of a refinance. Doing the math, I discovered that if I just increase my monthly payment to what the 15 year payment would be, the house would be paid off in 15 years, 8 months, versus 15 years on the refinance. I suppose it's worth doing, but just barely.

The inner geek triumphs

2009-10-05T14:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.phidgets.com/

Awesome! Now, if only I wasn't broke, I would be all over this. I want to revamp the controller on my heater, it's so old it doesn't have separate controls for just running the blower.

Karate update.

2009-07-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

I'm still having a blast at karate. Sensei and I have even arranged a little barter, he is utilizing my Excel knowledge to design a worksheet to really manage his students' learning, and in return, giving me a couple extra private lessons. Normally I wouldn't say much about this, but since I'm 99% sure I'm the only one reading my blog, I think it's safe. The last thing I want to do is get a bunch of students standing at his door, trying to do barter for lessons, instead of paying cash!

Anyway, the ranking belts in this studio go white,yellow,orange,purple,blue,green,brown,black, with some gradations (for example, blue with green stripe rank, between blue and green) When I left, I was blue belt rank, and currently I have caught up to almost all of my orange belt material. I'm hoping to catch up in, say, 3 months, then start getting ready for my blue+stripe test.

oh, and in the last month, I have managed to put on a whopping 3 pounds, putting me at 125. Here's an interesting link regarding weight-gain nutrition:

http://www.active.com/nutrition/Articles/Protein__Pros__Cons_and_Confusion.htm

There is a paragraph near the end that I thought was REALLY interesting:

begin quote here

Question: How much protein should I eat right after I exercise?

Answer: A study with Marines during 54 days of basic training reports those who refueled with 100 calories of a recovery drink that contained only 10 grams (40 calories) of protein not only enhanced muscle protein deposition but also contributed to 33 percent fewer total medical visits, 28 percent fewer visits due to bacterial and viral infections, 37 percent fewer visits due to muscle and joint problems, and 83 percent fewer visits due to heat exhaustion. (Flakoll, Med Sci Sports and Exercise, 2004)

Seems amazing that just 100 calories of a recovery drink could make such a strong impact on health, muscle soreness and hydration, but the message is clear: proper fueling at the right times is worth the effort. Don't underestimate the value of refueling soon after you exercise. Cereal with milk, chocolate milk, fruit yogurt, turkey sandwich and spaghetti with meatballs are just a few suggestions that offer a foundation of carbs accompanied with some protein.

end quote here

Karate Week 4

2009-06-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

This is week 4 of my karate at United Studios of Self Defense, and I'm having a blast so far! I practice about 45 minutes to an hour a day, and I am remastering the defensive maneuvers and such that I let go over the last 15 years since I was last in karate. Also, I have been taking protein shakes. For anyone who has seen me, you probably know that I'm freakishly skinny. 5 feet, 11 and 1/2 inches tall, and I weighed roughly 115 pounds. At this point, 3 weeks in, I have reached 122 pounds as of yesterday, and it seems to all be muscle. If anything I look even skinnier though, because every ridge of my muscles are visible under the skin, and they are decidedly unimpressive. hopefully the weight gain continues up to around 160 pounds.

more later, but I'm in the middle of a workday, so I wanted to just be brief, other than to say that it feels really good to be engaged in some self-improvement!

USSD

2009-05-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

I'm getting ready to go into a martial arts class for the first time in 17 years. This could be exciting. We'll see how bad I injure myself on some kick that I remember doing, but overextend myself trying. I'm sure it will be quite disastrous.

What should I talk about?

2009-05-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

Hard to top my last post, I'm rather proud of it. So here's a shite post, so that the standard is set low again. Next post will have far more quality, than this one, or at least I hope so. Can't be lower quality :P

A Silly Mother's day poem

2009-05-12T05:23:00.000-07:00

It appears that the children

may have glued your pans to the wall

It seems that the dog may have puked in the hall

I think that the cats ran rampant

through the steak sauce

It's possible

that the sink overflowed,

and filled the kitchen with soapy water

And the kid are slippin'

and sliding out the door.

The pet fish

is swimming

through the living room

and the cat seems to be trapped

in a soap bubble

the waterfall

is attracting bears,

who are catching trout

that swam upstream

when the water hit the pond.

That Other Thing in the hall?

I'm not sure, but I think

A dimensional hole was ripped

when I tripped on the bear trap

and bounced into the

new digital video antenna.

What's this?

Tiny dinosaurs from the past

sneaking through the rift,

Dining on the steak dinner

For which you especially asked on this special day?

Technology. Who Knew?

This is a day of days

We celebrate it with many hurrays

You bore my sons

You are the best

You deserve this day of rest.

Hmm..... Umm.....

We should go out for dinner, don't you think?

By Timothy Caleb Nordloh

I guess I thought wrong

2009-02-11T09:11:00.000-08:00

I was watching the crazy mortgages for the last few years, and I saw more than one journalist cry wolf. In fact, I read an article about the 'interest only' loans that showed a case where they make sense. An interest-only loan with occasional large payments is meant for someone like a Porsche salesman, who will get huge commissions every few months, with possible long dry spells. This kind of loan is not meant for Single-mom Sally. But here is what I thought was happening. I thought that the corporations making these loans knew what they were doing. I thought they were knowingly selling houses to people who couldn't afford it, with the intention of collecting a payment like a landlord, without having any of the traditional landlord responsibilities. I thought they were using the american dream against the average consumer. Evidently I gave them too much credit. Evidently they thought single-mom Sally could make that house payment that went from $500 to $2000.

Or possibly they are even more evil than we all imagined. They are collecting vast sums of money from Single-mom Sally (and those of us who took normal, prudent home loans, and those of us who rent) in the form of government handouts. They claim that they 'will self-destruct' if we don't hand wads of cash to them, I feel like I'm in New Jack City, listening to Chris Rock's character, Pookie. What we need is Ice-T to come in and kick some institutional ass.

I think these guys are full of crap. Here they are, with people begging to stay in their houses. They can resell it at 50% of its current price and still make a killing, considering the amount of interest they collect on a daily basis. They have people begging to refinance, to continue to 'rent' without getting the benefits of landlord obligations. I don't believe their crocodile tears. Watch them write off billions of dollars this year, and next year, and then earn amazing profits for the next 10 years.

When I send in my mortgage check, and see that 90% of that check goes toward interest, and 10% goes to the principal, and then I hear about how the rate of foreclosures go up to a whopping 2.5%, and hear that this is just killing the super-rich, it makes me want to go ahead and give up my house. At least if I was renting, I wouldn't have to pay to get the dishwasher

Crazy economy

2009-01-22T13:59:00.000-08:00

The economy is going crazy right now, with stock prices plummeting on healthy companies, as quickly as unhealthy ones.

In a lot of ways, the crazy world of subprime mortgages, and the subsequent drop in house prices and then the destruction of the assets associated with the subprime homes has evidently caused the entire economy to fall down. It's puzzling on a number of fronts, because I and everyone I care to ask, got normal, safe loans. What portion of loans out there are truly in the 'at risk' category, and where does my normal, fixed rate, loan fit in?

I can say this: my fixed rate loan was sold by one of the 'failing' companies, and purchased by some small company, hence causing that 'failing' company to become weaker, in my opinion. I'm thinking they, and other companies on the brink of failure, are probably doing this to survive from day-to-day, selling off their best loans but unable to shed the most toxic of their assets.

Seems to me that a lot of people got rich as the housing boom took place, and now another set of people are getting rich off the housing bust. Nice to see that the irrational behavior of the marketplace is transferring a ton of wealth from company to company. Meanwhile, grocery costs seem to have climbed a bit (anecdote: apples were 1.25 per pound and are now 2.25 per pound, ouch).

The question is, can the common person benefit at all from this crazy economy? Typically, the stock market is only available to those who have a certain minimum amount of money to invest, to overcome the cost per transaction of stock purchases. I refer you to zecco.com, where you can buy stocks without any fees (except the penny or 2 charged by the SEC). This could be a way to buy stock in amazingly great companies for 1% of what they used to cost. Example, Fannie Mae, a company with lots of great loans and great assets, has gone from 40 dollars/share to 60 cents. Buy 100 shares for 60 bucks, and maybe in 10 years they could be worth 10 dollars a share, and you can sell them for 1000 bucks. That is totally possible and, involves such a tiny amount of money that anyone above the age of 16 could do it. Why not eh? at that cost, their entire portfolio of assets could drop a ton, and still you stand a good chance of making a good amount of money. There are still assets behind these 'toxic' loans, and unless $200,000 houses start selling for $4,000 , Fannie mae will eventually turn around. If that actually happened, most of us will be more worried about surviving on rats and whatnot than whatever money we put into our portfolios.

promiscuity causes less aids spread:

2009-01-14T13:49:00.000-08:00

I read this interesting article on disease control: Simulation shows promiscuity prevents aids spread
I'll assume you will read it, and not quote it here. What I think is interesting is that, with only a small amount of promiscuity, you are virtually guaranteed to eventually contract a sexually communicable disease. So, if I am loyal to my partner for 20 years, and then pass a beautiful person on the street, one that just can't be resisted (and fit into the stereotype that is the weak-willed male), and end up having sex, chances are that I'm not her "first lover", and also, chances are that, she's a disease-ridden germ factory, spewing death in all directions. That puts things in perspective.

While I was reading the article, they mentioned that, with nightly promiscuous activity, 200 days , in a population of 400, would cause the entire promiscuous world to be infected. Scary freakin' simulator. They mentioned the simulator's ignorance of the fact that most sexual behavior is more strait-laced than random partners every night. Most lovers are semi-loyal to each other, even in a promiscuous relationship. But the problem is the interconnections with each other. I think the 200 days represent a speeded-up simulation, where it would be better to say that 200 couplings where a good percentage of people are not monogamous will virtually guarantee contraction of Aids. I think most of us are safe from this fate regardless of our status. Our greatest fear would be to live long enough to couple with 200 non-monogamous people (repeats would count toward this total, I believe). Since I don't have a very good imagination, I think this would take 1,000 years to manage for all but the most libido-driven person.

I have always found this topic fascinating, because AIDS is REALLY hard to get. You have to find someone with aids who is also willing to 'rub nubbins' with you, and even that isn't always enough. You both have to also be unwilling to take basic contraceptive practices (make sure the rubber DOES meet the road). It's interesting, and scary, that for promiscuous members of society, the only thing that will save them from aids is that old age will get them first. And any monogamous partner of a promiscuous person is also screwed (no pun intended), and didn't even get to have the 'fun' of barhopping and whatnot.

Saturday

2009-01-03T13:28:00.000-08:00

Getting over being sick, hanging out with the kids and listening to npr. The story is about a guy that has made lists of everything he has done since 1955. Phone calls etc.

Anyway, it reminded me that I haven't written anything recently. So there you go.

I have never voted for a winner.

2008-12-03T12:20:00.000-08:00

I have done a small amount of blog reading in the last little while, and it's a little strange. The category that seems most common seems to be a mix of satire and self-righteousness, which leads me into my post.

I have never managed to vote for the winner in any presidential election. My first opportunity to vote involved William Jefferson Clinton, and I decided to vote against him because he was getting sucked off in the oval office, and decided that that wasn't 'sexual relations'. Evidently it's just a mouth hug, as the comedians say. I voted for Bob Dole, because he seemed like a good man, with an honorable military history and a tendency to do the right thing. According to the media, he was too 'wooden', but that just appealed to me, because I'm a bit 'wooden' myself. I'm sure that personal charisma plays some part in running a country, but I don't care for that part. All it gets you is mouth hugs.

At my next opportunity, it was Gore Vs. Bush, and I decided that George Bush wasn't wooden enough. In fact, he struck me as a garrulous father with a hickory stick behind his back.

Third time isn't the charm. After the events of 9/11, along with the inability to find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and the fact that we were essentially spending billions of dollars to ship soldiers within range of 50 dollar roadside bombs, I had had enough of the war. Although John Kerry bugged me a lot, I had to vote for him. Either George Bush misled the American people into the war with Iraq, or he was duped into it by his staff. Either way, he deserved to lose his job.

In 2008, I went to the polling booth and put my mark in for John McCain, for very similar reasons to why I voted for Bob Dole. I think I will always tend to lend support to a military man over anyone else. I'm not sad that Barack won, but I didn't really keep good track of the presidential candidates this year. I voted for John McCain, because I really wished I had the chance in 2000, and I wasn't going to miss it now.

I wonder if it would have really made a difference. If we had elected Bob Dole, and Clinton would have been kicked out early, would we have remained on track to pay off the deficit? Clinton was actually a kickass president, if you can discount his one small character flaw.

What would have happened, if Al Gore had become president in place of George Bush? I think we can agree that our planes would probably still be doing patrols through a no-fly-zone over Iraq, and Saddam would still be taunting us. There would be no need of a national monument commemorating the dead in the Iraq war, but we would probably still have the unalterable reality of the skyline changes in New York.

I don't want to think about what would have happened with John Kerry in charge of the United States, but let's face it, a lot of contractors would have lost their jobs in Iraq as we pulled out, probably causing a massive economic slump. oh wait... that happened anyway. Maybe it would have been ok.

Well, I think I got a little self-righteous in there, but I didn't master the satire portion. Better luck to me next time.

Semi-irregular post, welcome to guests!

2008-12-02T16:27:00.000-08:00

Well, with the advent of telling my wife about my blog (2 weeks ago), and through word of mouth a few other people now finding out about it, I am changing the bent of this blog a bit. Rather than the tight-eyed nod, and insincere welcome in first post to those who could only have found it by googling my name, I should give a sincere welcome to people who got here through the 'word of mouth generated by my spouth', (does a lisp count as a rhyme?) so here it is:

WELCOME!!!!!

ok, that's done.

In the interest of the original, somewhat unstated purpose of this blog (Allow me to feel less guilty about googling even the most casual acquaintance) I will try to say something personal that is somewhere between sincere and cautious, as befits the crazy permanence of the web, and its potential audience of anyone with access to google, including past lovers, future employers, my neighbor's dog, special investigators or fellow employees.

I think the above paragraph reveals quite enough about me. Suspicious, hostile, and probably for no reason since the only people who visit this blog are my wife and me. Take what you will from that, and once again.....

WELCOME!!!!!

Tim? Caleb? Who am I?

2008-11-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me that my name is probably confusing. In my very first blog entry, I managed to put 'Tim' in the title, while the author name reads 'Caleb'. My full name is Timothy Caleb Nordloh. My mom called me Caleb, and most of my family and friends call me Caleb. Since I don't want to appear to be a picky person in the workplace, I don't mention my second name, so they call me Tim. I'm not the type of person who associates the name to the heroic, but bloody biblical history of Caleb, or the pious biblical history of Timothy, so the connotations of either are lost on me, other than as anecdotes and and incomplete references, as seen at the beginning of this sentence. I do find it ironic that in both cases, they were essentially sidekicks, like me.

Anyway, it's pretty strange to be known by an alias, like some sort of criminal, but in my case it's just a non-aggressive personality trait, where I don't insist on one or the other with either my family or work. I truly don't have a preference at this point except that, if my mom was alive, I would hope that she always calls me Caleb, like she did when I was a child.

Clothespin art?

2008-11-21T08:15:00.000-08:00

My wife is making little Christmas Fairies from clothespins, not the ones with the springs, but the old-fashioned ones that are a single piece of wood. She is making white ones, hawaiian ones, chinese ones etc. I'm kind of upset,she appears to not want to cover my favorite demographic, the 'alien' ones. Little green ones with antennas, to honor our future alien overlords would be good. Of course, I'm more of a suckup than she is, so of course she only makes the human clothespin fairies.

You can check out other artwork by her at http://trcreations.com/