UPS mods, Tree removal, etc.

Some pretty random stuff here (this isn't a single subject blog by any means)...

UPS modifications continue

I collected another dozen UPS units from the recycling center at work over the past year and converted them to use an external power source.

We gave away 6 of them at the Utah County ARES (UCARES) picnic last night.

They can be used as chargers (about 1 amp max) or maintainers (floats at about 14.0 volts) for almost any sealed lead acid (SLA) battery and also as Uninteruptible Power Supplies (funny huh, since they were originally intended for UPS use!) and as (semi) portable inverters*. Hopefully there will be a few more happy batteries in happy valley. I hope to get more, but never know what the winds of change will bring...

*You do have to know how to turn them on when the AC mains are off. Hold (don't push and release) the power button until it starts beeping. While it is still beeping, release it. It should turn on and, if the battery can provide enough power for the load, it should stay on.

Neighborhood cat killed

Itok killed another cat the other night. We found it lying in the grass the next morning. (I didn't include any pictures for this event.) It was completely intact with no blood showing on the outside. I think this is the third or fourth one now that hasn't survived (at least one did when it made it up a tree and I went out and saved it - at 1:30 in the morning!). He doesn't tear them up or anything, he seems to just play with them. Anything that runs is apparently fair game. I don't know why these cats come into our completely fenced (6 foot high all the way around) back yard, but I guess they just can't help it.

People, don't let your cats run around - they get into my bushes and flower beds and use them as a litter box! If they come in my backyard (as they seem prone to do), they'll probably die.

Tree removal

When we moved into our West facing house 11 years ago, the front lawn was barren, so we planted a tree - a Navajo Globe Willow.



We loved it. It grew fast covered the entire front of our house with shade, gave the kids a place to swing, we hung a hammock from it for a number of years, etc. Unfortunately, Willows are generally considered "trash trees" because they drop a lot of junk in your yard. This one was no exception. Two or three years ago, wind took off a chunk of it and it took quite a while for us to cut it up and haul it away. It didn't seem to hurt the tree much (you couldn't even tell from the road in front because the tree was so big) other than the place on the trunk. Well, Sunday, the wind took off another piece of it and since it has been smelling funny (people tell me they tend to do that when they get old or infected), it was time to take the whole thing out.



It was quite a job and I'm quite sunburned. Luckily, a neighbor around the corner was having a tree removed the same day (for some reason I didn't think they'd be working on Labor Day) and I was able to convince them to let me pay them to haul my mess away and grind the stump down. Since I had felled it and cut it up already, it was a relatively small job for them even though the tree completely filled their 8 ton truck.



I'm glad that's over!

My blog is not People Ready

A page sponsored by Microsoft on Federated Media's web site talks about businesses being what they call "People Ready."

This article on ValleyWag derides the companies for using bloggers (reporters?) in what is basically a Microsoft advertising campaign. They seem to say that it's wrong for the bloggers to appear to be objective when really they're getting paid for writing as they do. Funny, I thought that's how it always worked. They can pay me for writing about it if they want - I have no objections!

PC World got into the act also (see Harry McCracken's post). Like most businesses, they're in it for the money. So now here they are profiting (I found the article by searching for it and it displayed plenty of ads to me) from writing about a controversial subject and saying that their type (journalists) shouldn't "get involved in a project that involved contributing to a marketing campaign." I don't have a problem with it (hey, I have ads on this site), I just think it's funny that it's creating a stir.

Partial Disclosure Notice follows:
["Partial" because I don't feel like writing (and I'm sure you don't feel like reading) everything about me in this silly little blog posting.]

I just wanted to make note that my business is not People Ready mostly because I don't have a business. I was also curious to see what kind of traffic would come to my page because of a simple unsponsored, obscure little blog posting. Gee, I suppose if I get a lot of traffic and someday start a business, I'll have to think about making it a People Ready Business (PRB :) ...

The spelling of Timpooneke

This is just one of my many pet peeves. I shouldn't let it bug me, but it does.

Timpooneke is the name of a campground and a trail in the Mt. Timpanogos area in Utah County, Utah.

I don't know why, but many people say (and write) "Timpanooke" instead. I guess it's close, but as far as I know, it's not right. I find it funny that local folks (including the press) have a hard time with this name. I'm not going to look up all the history and stuff behind the name (perhaps there is an explanation for this confusion), but here are a few examples:

1) From the Daily Herald on June 06, 2007, 03:43:04 pm:

A man is stranded on the Timpanooke trail on Mount Timpanogos, and weather is keeping searchers from finding him. Utah County Sheriff's Lt. Yvette Rice said police do not know the man's name. The man's wife went looking for him when he didn't return from a day hike.

To their credit, the Daily Herald constantly updates their articles as more information becomes available and during one of their edits, the spelling was corrected. Here is the current version.

2) From a description page on the TERT web site:

From Aspen Grove Trail Head to Timpooneke Trail Head - go 5.7 miles on 92 and turn off at Timpanooke and go about 0.5 miles.

TERT is a great organization and one in which I have membership. This just shows the extent of the confusion.

3) In the original incarnation of an article about a boy who was killed by a black bear, KSL used the Timpanooke spelling repeatedly. It appears that they corrected it in the current article, now that they also have a picture of the campground sign on their site:



Whatever...

2007 Squaw Peak 50 Mile Trail Run

For several years now, I've been helping out at various aid stations for a couple of Ultra Marathons put on by John Bozung. Last Saturday, for the third year, I went to Windy Pass with a group of Aid Station people as their communications person. This year, I wasn't alone. There was another radio person to help this time which was a huge help! I actually had some time while there at the station to do something other than track in and out times of all the runners (201 passed through our station this year).

Since it was a low water year and the spring where we normally collect water for the runners was running very slowly, we filtered about 15-20 gallons of water with a hand pump so we would have enough for everyone. The other 30 gallons or so were collected directly from the pipe (installed by the Forest Service?) leading from the spring. The water from the spring runs into a trough which did a good job of collecting the water, it just had some pretty nasty looking stuff in it. Without pumping, we would have run out early, so I'm glad I brought my water filter with me (an MSR WaterWorks). The Katadyne Backcountry filter the other people had there was pretty well clogged (and useless) after they had pumped 3-5 gallons. They told me that it was new when they brought it up for this trip (glad I didn't buy that one!). The water itself looked clear (it was just sitting there in the trough - not zipping down a muddy stream or anything), but I had to clean my filter after every 2-3 liters to keep it running fast, so there must have been a lot of stuff suspended in it.

The runners had completed 40 miles when they got to our station and had just climbed 2000 feet up to us (at about 9000 feet) from the last aid station on a hot south facing slope. They were pretty tired. One guy at the end had the worst time of it. The course sweeper stayed with him until he made it to us, and for about 30 minutes alternated between laying down and leaning over a tree puking. He finally was able to drink a little of my still-frozen Powerade that I had stashed and some of an electrolyte drink called Emergency (reference needed) from some of the other aid station people. Although the Utah County Search and Rescue team was already busy on another couple of calls, they did send a team to assist us in case there was a problem. We knew we needed to either get him moving and have the SAR team help us with him if he couldn't make it or just call a helicopter to evacuate him before it got dark. He started feeling a little better and decided to try to get down on his own.

Here he is leaving the aid station. My red shirt looks absolutely huge on him but he sure looks a lot better than he did when he arrived.

After descending some and drinking more of the electrolyte drink, his condition improve quickly and soon he was running down the mountain ahead of the sweep. I believe he even finished the race.

Way to go Phil!

It was a lot of fun and between myself and another aid station person, we got a lot of pictures of the runners. I don't know if we got everyone, but we came close. I hope to be back up there for the Kat'cina Mosa 100K this August.

Yikes! 6 Months!

It looks like I ought to use this a little more. Here's a quick update just to make sure that my blog doesn't get flagged as "inactive" (as if it ever was anything else).

Another Li-Ion recall and a new battery technology announcement

Bad news first: Lenovo and IBM announced a recall of another half million (500,000) Lithium based batteries manufactured by Sony. It seems that after one flamed out at LAX last month, they got the CSPC involved.

Good news last: We may be using the acronym ZMP a lot more in the near future. Zinc Matrix Power has announced their Silver-Zinc rechargeable battery that supposedly has twice the energy-to-weight ratio as current Lithium based offerings without the explosive side effects or transport limitations. They have a low enough internal resistance that a relatively low number (16, producing 20 volts) were used to produce 80 amps to MIG weld two pieces of 1/8" steel (article reference).

In other not so interesting news...

• I finally got those surplus UPS units converted and we gave most of them away (along with the power conditioners) at the annual Utah County ARES picnic earlier this month. Hopefully they're all set up with some Sealed Lead Acid batteries that have been neglected for too long. If anyone wants help converting a UPS into an SLA battery maintainer, let me know.
• We were at a wedding reception for my niece a few weeks ago and came out to find a note on our car apologizing for the alterations done to the front bumper. The estimate was $402 so we might not even want to bother the insurance companies.
• Last week, I took the boys to the Orem Rec Center to play racquetball. The next morning, one of us noticed another alteration that had been done to the right rear pillar above the window. We have no idea how it could have happened unless someone dropped something off a truck parked next to us or something. That one will cost more than the deductible; unfortunately, we'll have to get the insurance involved. They won't be thrilled after the bike rack incident earlier this summer...
• We ditched the VoIP phone service we had from ACN Digital. Their equipment didn't work right (QOS was horrible, telephone adapter lockups, etc.) and their customer service was pretty much non-existent. My sister and her family were on it as well and like us, they decided to pay the cancellation fee rather than keep it. If you're going to go with VoIP, choose Vonage, they were good for us - we only switched to ACN to try to help a relative who was making a commission on the sale. We decided to go to cell phones instead (I couldn't bear to go back to a land-line provider).
• On that note, I also switched to a new LG LX-550 Fusic phone (Sprint Review - C|Net Review)from Sprint. I like it, but there are some things from my Motorola V-360 that I'll miss. Best about it is the signal is much stronger at my house because the transmitter is just down the street (there are 3 big "flagpoles" at the Junior High about 2 blocks away) and we can get a signal downstairs. Worst is that the MP3 player is still poorly integrated with the phone operations (I can't make an outgoing call while it's playing, nor does it resume after I finish with an incoming call). All in all, I think it's a slight improvement, but nothing to get too excited about.
  

Talk Like a Pirate Day

International Talk Like a Pirate day is coming on September 19th (just like it does every year). I'm a little early this year, but I didn't want to forget again... I wrote this post last year, but forgot to post it. :)

Arrrr! Welcome to my blauggh. All ye landlubbers have got t' git yer own pirate name:

Fortunately I got a good one:

Red Harry Rackham

Passion is a big part of your life, which makes sense for a pirate. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com

Other pirate resources: talklikeapirate.com

Plastic batteries!

The folks at Brown University have been working on some cool stuff with conductive plastic. I don't know if their numbers are completely accurate (100 times the power of an alkaline battery?), but it's good news anyway. We really need better power storage for just about everything these days.

Engadget picked up on it and there are more comments there on their blog.

Dell & Sony recalling 4 million batteries

Dell (recall notice) and Sony are working together on recalling 4 million laptop batteries (CPSC notice, Breitbart article) that have been prone to burning, venting with flame, exploding, catching on fire, or whatever other terms you want to apply. My other entries here and here told some more of the story.

Hmm, I use quite a few of these Sony 18650 cells which have been removed from surplus (read: non-functioning, dead, bad, defective, etc.) Dell batteries I get from work. I've been careful with them, but I'll be even more so now!

More about Li-Ion batteries from Battery University.

100 MPG in a converted Toyota Prius?

This article talks about supplementing the battery pack of current Hybrid Electric Vehicles by adding your own batteries. The scary part with all the recent talk about exploding Lithium based cells is that at least one company's solution is a 150-pound, 16-inch-by-33-inch box of lithium-ion batteries that fits in place of the spare tire.

That said; I want one! It wouldn't be very practical right now and certainly wouldn't save me any money, but I'd sure have a lot more stuff to play with as I drove and maintained it. Maybe I should just see if any of the DARPA Challenge vehicles are up for sale instead...

How about this electric vehicle from Tesla? They claim 250 miles per charge and 0-60 in 4 seconds for somewhere around $100,000. People are talking after Engadget posted an article this morning .