Christopher Merle

Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, but first I need more coffee.

Author: Christopher (Page 23 of 29)

This is my blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My blog is NOT my best friend. It is NOT my life. I do NOT have to master it as I must master my life. My blog, without me is NOT useless. It simply won't get updated. I must write my blog true, except when it serves my purposes to do otherwise. I must write better than other bloggers who are trying to outblog me. Or not.

Ice Ice Baby

January 16, 2007 /

We had an ice storm here in Tulsa over the weekend. We got mostly sleet. The ground looks like it’s covered with snow, but it ain’t. The residential streets in our neighborhood are solid ice. We only have to drive three treacherous blocks to get to a main street. One of the two streets we have to drive on has ditches on either side instead of curbs. This morning as well pulled out onto our side street we saw ahead of us at the T-intersection not one but two cars in the ditch. It was so cute. They were parrallel to each other with their trunks up in the air. One car has been stuck there for two days. The second got stuck sometime between 5pm and 9am when we left the house.

I hope they’ll both be there when I get home so I can take a picture. You think the second driver would have been clued in to slow the fuck down. As we drove up the street with open ditches we could see a smashed wooden fence but no vehicle. I heard the crash yesterday when I took the dog out for a walk. I happened to be in the empty lot at the corner of the T-intersection. I looked up the street in the direction of the sound but didn’t see anything. I discovered this morning why. My view had been blocked by another fence and some vehicles. I didn’t want to hazard the street because there were fucking idiots driving on the ice.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I found a third vehicle in the ditch or crashed into the other two when I get home. Tulsa drivers for the most part are clueless how to drive under icy conditions. Even if you are capable of driving under such conditions it doesn’t matter because some dipshit will run you off the road or crash into you. Now I’ll leave you with the following: imagine someone driving their SUV on solid ice talking to someone on their cell phone.

Update – They were still there and here they are:

twa cars

Here they are in relationship to the T-intersection.

twa cars closeup

Closeup. Car on the left was the first stuck.

Global BS

January 16, 2007 /

There is indeed hype and bullshit on both sides of the environmental debate. Am I like the doubting atheist who goes to church because the Bible might be right when it comes to environmental alarmism? Do I side with the environmentalists because the alternative is unthinkable? At worst undesirable.

Humans do have a large impact on the Earth’s environment. There is no debate on this issue. The evidence is all around us. Before either side gets in a tizzy, there is one fact and one question to consider. The fact is there are 6.5 billion people in this world. When I first heard of the world population was back in the 70’s and it was around 3.5 billion. That’s pretty amazing that we’ve added 3 billion people and the not have civilization collapse. The question is: Are our activities causing more harm than good?

What did Palast say about Peak Oil? It’s bullshit. Why? Well, oil will peak, but Hubbert worked for the oil companies and the concept of peak oil is good for the bottom line. Make people think we are running out. This’ll raise the price of oil.

So is global warming a conspiracy to get us to buy compact fluorescent light bulbs. They cost 10x as much and are supposed to last 10x as long. They do use only 1/4 as much electricity. Since most electricity is produced by coal. It will reduce the amount of C02 being pumped into the clear blue sky.

There is no argument promoting Peak Coal. We have enough coal in the ground in the US alone to supply our energy needs for 500 years. Yeah, coal will peak all right, long after we are several generations dead. The most asinine thing I’ve heard is to use some kind of coal reformation to produce hydrogen gas. I’m not sure how much hydrogen is in coal because it’s always been my understanding it’s a lump of fucking CARBON!

Now for the unseen villain of this piece to make it’s appearance. Carbon dioxide. The amount in out atmosphere is going up. Are we to blame? Is it bad? Has the earth been warmer in the past without this much C02? Most likely. We think so. Yes.

The earth is a closed system. Not isolated. An open system exchanges matter and energy. Closed only energy. Isolated none. There is an exchange of matter rockets and meteorites but it’s neglible. The explanations of how carbon dioxide warms the Earth are misleading. Calling it a greenhouse gas is a misnomer. It doesn’t trap heat the way a greenhouse does. Greenhouses inhibit convection. Our atmosphere convects. Anyway regardless of the explanation the earth is warmer now and warming. Without global warming we’d be one huge icecube. So but too much of a good thing is bad.

Maybe I have found a religion. Maybe like Christians who choose to believe in an afterlife with Heaven and Hell. I choose to believe in human caused global warming and that if I we do nothing about it we will all die. That is they might be right. Yes, yes, the sky is falling. The boy has cried wolf one too many times. Chicken little has risen from the grave.

You can make logical and rational arguments for both sides. Reality on the other hand will not be fooled. Humans can be fooled. Science if properly practiced is self-correcting. Feyman recalled a story of a visit to a Buddhist temple and said that knowledge was the key to a door that opened the door to heaven and to hell. How do you choose which is which?

Dollar Coins and Vending Machines

December 13, 2006 /

I like vending machines and I wish they’d take dollar coins. They take dollar bills and that’s good, but have you ever tried to put a crumpled dollar bill into a vending machine. You have to go through all sorts of contortions to flatten it out and feed it in. And then it’ll spit it back out. You’ll try this five or six times until it takes it or not. Sometimes even a new dollar bill won’t feed properly. Or you don’t look at the illustration on which way to feed it until after say the third try. And sometimes they put the wrong illustration. How much easier it would be if they took dollar coins. Plunk, push, kerplunk.

I’ve seen different dollar coins growing up. My mom had a collection of silver liberty dollars. There was a Eisenhower dollar and a JFK half-dollar in circulation. Then there was the Susan B. Anthony and now the Sacajawa dollar. Neither the Susan nor the Sacajewa took off. Was it because we Americans are sexist and racist and wouldn’t use them? Or was it because they didn’t withdraw the paper dollar from circulation. Partly both. Coins can last thirty years in circulation before needing to be withdrawn. Paper doesn’t last so long.

I’ve seen the coins used in the UK, Switzerland and Europe (France, Holland, and Ireland) and they have 1 unit coins, pound, swiss franc, and euro. They even have 2 unit coins. Speaking of which I really miss the 2 dollar bill. It would be nice to have a 2 dollar coin.

Now I read that we are going to issue yet another dollar coin, this time with presidents. That’s great, but they need to pull dollar bills from circulation and encourage vending machines to take the coins. I’d like to see a Jefferson 2 dollar coin. That’d be cool.

Pond Scum

December 13, 2006 /

We have a koi pond in the backyard. It started life as a garden pond, but later owners added koi to it. Koi are a kind of giant goldfish which are a kind of carp. We have only three large abused koi, Red Troll, Black Troll, and Norbert. Norbert is red with black spots. Red Troll is white with red spots and Black Troll is, you guessed it, white with black spots. When Melissa moved into the house she named them trolls because they hung out under the little bridge. The pond is barbell shaped if the barbell was elongated and bent in a curve.

I said they were abused because they do not behave like normal koi. Normal koi are like dogs. They are happy to see you when you come out and feed them. They’ll even eat from your hands. Melissa inherited them when she bought the house. And she’s been taking care of them ever since. I occasionally help out, but, alas, she does most of the dirty work like cleaning out the fish gunk out of the filter barrel. I’ll skim the pond surface and bottom to get leaves and pecans and I’ll even fish out the occasional branch that falls in. I am going someplace with this story and it involves a snowstorm that occurred November 30. We have four inches of snow in the yard. Anyway back to the fish.

The surface of the koi pond froze over. During the day we noticed the water level going down in the pond. Melissa thought there was a tear in the pond liner. And we’d wait until the water level got low enough and thus expose the leak. I had the thought that maybe the pump was leaking and didn’t bother to check it. My bad. Just as it was getting dark I noticed that the water was even lower. Snow covered the yard and there was a bare patch by the pump. If the leak was in the liner then the water level would go down to leak, but if the leak were in the pump then it would pump all the water out.

Thus begins a three hour ordeal to save the fish. While we were out there cleaning and fixing, Mystery, our small black and white dog decided to venture out onto the pond’s ice. This did not make Melissa happy and we put the dog back in the house. The water was flowing out the the of the barrel. We unplugged the pump and began refilling the pond and made sure to put dechlorinator in the water. We then took the pump and barrel system apart to clean and repair it. The sludge hadn’t been cleaned out in a while. It looked like a dark chocolate shake. Yum.

Mel had cleaned the shredded polyvynil and filter and we washed out the barrel. We had to remove it from its raised platform to do that. After hooking it back up the we discovered the water still went over the top. Turns out the barrel wasn’t adjusted quite right. There is a right angle pipe that comes out the top of the barrel and a hose empties into the pond over a rocky grotto-like wall. It was no longer flowing out as fast as it was being pumped out. The opening was angled down and up, so the water had to work hard to get out and the decided to fill up to the top of the barrel. Bad.

I put some cardboard as shims to angle barrel so the right angle opening was down and forward. The water finally levelled off but we didn’t take any chances. We added a hose to the outlet and put it in the pond. When it warms up some more we’ll get some plywood and raise the barrel even more and angle it properly.

I started this post shortly after it happened was going to go into more detail but got lazy and wrote what you got here. Maybe. I’ll rewrite it later. Yeah, right.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 Christopher Merle

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑