Propane powered

If your car will run on gas, it will also run on Propane.

Propane, or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) has a specific energy similar to gasoline. LPG also burns much cleaner than gasoline. Clean enough, in fact, that your engine will last much longer on LPG due to the reduction of combustion byproducts.

LPG is delivered into a sealed system (canister/tank) instead of in open air, and will therefore not contribute to local smog problems due to evaporating gasoline.

LPG has an octane rating of above 110. This can help when your engine uses forced induction (turbo, supercharger) because you can increase the boost pressure above even premium gas levels (octane rating of 92 or so) before you have any pre-detonation problems. This higher boost means more power.

LPG usually costs less than gasoline. The current spot price for LPG is around $1.70, as compared to about $3.80 for regular gas. LPG at the local home depot, though, won't be $1.70. The hard part may be finding a decent price on LPG.

Another benefit is that 80% of the Propane used in the USA is produced right here at home. That means your money isn't going overseas. Gasoline, for instance, exports something like $800 billion a year to foreign countries, most of them hostile to the USA.

One drawback is finding LPG commercially. Unlike gasoline, it's hard to drive up to a LPG station, swipe your card, and fill up. I've read that there are some stations around, though.

Converting a car to run on LPG isn't all that difficult. If your car has a carburetor, it's almost stupid easy. I have a carb, so we'll talk about that. LPG in a tank is a liquid under pressure. LPG actually boils at -44F, so basically it vaporizes when you release it to atmospheric pressure. From the LPG tank, you run it into a vaporizer. The vaporizer does just that: it allows liquid propane in the tank under pressure to become a gas. From the vaporizer it travels to a mixer, which replaces your carburetor. The mixer uses crank case vacuum to generate a variable flow of air and Propane into the intake manifold.

That is about it. Things are a bit more complicated with fuel injection (think LPG injection instead) but not too much.

The mixer runs a few hundred, and the vaporizer probably less than that. If you do all the work yourself it's not that expensive at all.

If you're smart, you'll combine your LPG mixer system with a turbo or supercharger. Because LPG runs at least 20 points higher in octane rating, you can increase the boost pressure, which will increase the amount of air/fuel charge delivered to the cylinders. By increasing the amount of air/fuel delivered to each cylinder, you increase the energy density of the charge delivered. This increases net horsepower.

I doubt I'll run the truck on Propane unless I can find it locally for less than the $3.40 or so a gallon I'm being quoted from the local rental shop, but I may mess around one afternoon with a BBQ bottle of LPG and a vap/mixer setup, and see how the truck runs on that. I think it would be a fun experiment.

Slipstreaming

One problem with an older OS like xp64 (old, meaning 3 years ago) is that if you have new hardware it may not have drivers for it on the original OS disk. For example, chipset drivers, video drivers, sound, usb, etc. Another problem is that you may be installing some big service packs once you're running.

This can be especially frustrating when you do a re-install with the original OS disk. You then find yourself downloading the (I'm not kidding) gigabytes worth of patches more than once.

I tried out a new program today (free) to help with some of that. It's called nLite. nLite does something called 'slipstreaming'. It's a process whereby you copy your original install disk to a directory, update it, then create a bootable iso image. For example, I slipstreamed raid drivers, AHCI drivers, chipset drivers, video drivers, and a service pack onto my original XP64 install disk. Then, I created a new iso and burned it to a cd. When you boot from the new disk and do a new install of XP64, all my drivers are already there. It saves quite a bit of trouble. nLite also gives you options of removing windows components, modifying services, and a few tweaks. You can also include your activation key in the image, which saves some typing.

XP 64 bit

I had an extra drive laying around, so I swapped drives and installed 64 bit xp pro. I had a bunch of licenses laying around anyway. It seems just fine.

Now I can have more than 3.5G of ram or so.

Free beagle

Today he jumped up on the kitchen table and ate a bag of cough drops. This was probably right after he ripped my grill apart to eat some charcoal. Maybe he'll croak.

sydney

1934-2008

Mars Phoenix lander

The mars Phoenix lander made a powered decent to touch down on Mars last night. This is the first sucessful powered decent on Mars since the viking landers in the 1970's.

The lander is expected to operate about 90 days before the sun fades below the north polar horizon.

Left behind

A few years back, Todd's wife died in a car accident.

She was his high school sweetheart, and they had 2 kids together.

Todd remarried about a year ago. The wedding was out east, and I didn't have a job at the time, so I didn't go. I've never met her. The thing is, I don't talk to Todd anymore. I've tried calling a number of times (he lives in Durango CO now) but he never calls back. I figure it's probably because he has a new life now and I remind him of his old life and dead wife.

I guess that is a pretty common occurrence -- making new friends when your spouse dies. That doesn't make it any fun for me, though.

Not a whole lot going on otherwise. I'm working on some house projects over the long weekend. I should probably write an office action tommorrow. My workouts have been going better.

Dating is more tedious then ever.

MN trip

My high school friends Roger and Dave were supposed to fly into Denver last Friday morning from Minneapolis. The plan was to watch the 3 Rockies / twins games over the weekend and bum around Denver and Boulder.

Last week Roger went into ICU with a dissected aorta. He also has an aneurysm on his heart and will need open heart surgery in about 6 weeks.

The dissection extends from the descending aortic arch to the top of his waist, and it's inoperable.
The mostly likely cause is marfan syndrome, which is a genetic condition. www.marfan.org

I flew in to MN Saturday morning to visit the ICU, and came back after midnight last night. My plane landed late enough last night that I had to leave my checked luggage behind in order to catch the last bus out of DIA. I'll have to go back today and get it.

no ebay love

I just love it when I can sell $2000 worth of engineering tools on ebay for $140.

That just makes my day much brighter.

ATT store, ebay, and the IRS

I picked up a samsung blackjack in December at a local ATT store, and it's locking up every day. I thought I'd stop by the ATT store here in Boulder and exchange/replace it. I walked in to an empty store mid morning during the week, only to have the girl hand me a phone number to call so they can do it by phone. What is the point of having a store?

I'm selling stuff on eBay, and it's going for pennies on the dollar. For example, I have a $2,000 microchip emulator that has been bid up to a whole $26 with 5 hours to go.

I talked to the IRS a couple of times today, and the answer is no real answer at all...I just have to wait another 2 months or so and see if they cough up my $4,000 (return + my $600 election year bribe).

Hilary wins support of stupid poor white people everywhere

AP NEWS

Clinton's crushing win in West Virginia on Tuesday highlighted Obama's weakness with working-class white voters, a segment of the electorate that may prove pivotal in November.

Among white voters without a college degree, Clinton defeated Obama by 50 percentage points. Among white voters making less than $30,000 a year, Clinton's margin of victory was more than 60 percentage points.

"Stupid poor white people of America have spoken, and their choice for the next president ain't no black man from Illinois." Hilary proclaimed to a cheering crowd of homeless people in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

"The time has come for us normal white folk to take back our election. The future of America is in your grubby underachieving hands."

Essentials

stardust - the music sounds better with you


Energy 52 - Café del Mar (Three 'N One Remix)


Spiller 'Groovejet'


Moloko Fun For Me (on Disco)

New dog

I picked up a 5yo beagle mix last Sunday, and he's driving me up the fucking wall. Every trash can in the house has been dumped and spread all over the house, every day. Today I grilled some shrimp, and afterwards he ripped my grill apart ran through the house covered in charcoal.

He also chews everything within reach.

IRS update

Well, I talked to my local IRS agent (the one that was supposed to close out my corporate liabilities account last month) and she's still saying that she'll close them out and release the hold on my personal federal refund.

Checking account going south fast

Well, -1,000 this morning on my checking account. Paypal claims they will reverse 2 out of 4 of the charges. I'm not sure what the plan is on the rest of it. All 4 disputes are closed, but I only have info on half of them.

Fun with the IRS

Somewhere in 2005, while firing all my employees and wondering how I would get out of my $75,000 lease in Boulder, I either forgot or didn't have the money to deposit some payroll taxes. Now, after closing the company out last year and getting all my tax forms in, I find out I owe $2800, which includes about a grand in fines and interest.

I was working with a local IRS agent concerning this, and my understanding from our final conversation last month was that the IRS was going to close out those accounts and I could go on my merry way.

Apparently that's not how it's gone so far. I was wondering where my $3400 personal tax return was this year. Apparently the IRS has decided that my corporate liability (which I thought was taken care of) warrants them holding my return. I'll probably never see it.

A call to my local IRS agent so far has gone un-returned.

I'd say this is a real bummer. I had hoped to use most of that money to pay off some bills and start a savings account.

Another day in paradise

Well, I woke up this morning to about $1000 worth of fradulent activity on my paypal account.

I know I'm more than careful. Almost paranoid, really.

I filed a dispute.

Build your own generator

I've been thinking about building my own generator for the house. I think it would be fun.

You can actually buy generator heads for a reasonable price. Even a 30KW head is less than a grand. A rebuilt 1.5L toyota 4 cyl car engine is about $1200. If I converted it to run on natural gas, I'd be golden. The 1.5L toyota engine would run forever.

Much cheaper than the 6-10K you'd have to spend to actually buy a 30KW generator.

A tale of two thermometers

Original data


Adjusted data

An interesting article about interpreting temperature data and global warming.

here

in you go

well, that took maybe 20 minutes. The new processor is in and works fine.

sl6wz pentium m

Well, my processor I ordered on Ebay showed up today. I ordered a sl6wy, but got a sl6wz. The Z is 2.6MHz instead of 2.5, so I'm not complaining. The z is actually hard to find, and runs $150 instead of the $50 I spent.

Sort of like a late birthday present!

Putting a price tag on romance

51 percent of American men spend over $100 monthly on dates, and 29 percent spend over $150, according to an It’s Just Lunch survey. What’s more, 68 percent of men treat on the first date. Nearly 2/3 of U.S. women spend less than $50 a month on dating.

I think I added up about $800 in one month of dating some years ago. Dating is expensive. Of course I was better looking and made more money then. Now I usually just take them to the local soup kitchen for dinner. Those homeless people are so friendly!