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Happy New Year to all those who find their way here, either on the Fediverse or through my website. I'm not sure what this year will bring. I try to be optimistic, because what else can I do? But I'm also kind of anxious. We shall see.

For myself, I have some projects I'm hoping to attack. For one, I'd like to revamp my website – I have my own plans. There's other stuff I'll be looking at as well, which I will post about if I feel so inspired.

In the mean time, be well, and take care of each other.

It's gray and windy out, but lighter. The leaves are mostly gone from the trees, and a bunch are in my yard. It's actually the last pile I'm planning to get rid of. Still nice fall weather I would say.

Today, apart from the leaves, I'll be switching the Halloween lights out for more Christmasy ones. So that should be neat.

Solar

My current hobbyist off-grid system in normal use consists of two 100-watt panels in series, fed into my basement with a 10 AWG extension cord, and charging a 100 Ah AGM battery via an MPPT charge controller. Not much sun these days, due to the clouds and shorter days, but it continues to plug along.

In the spring and summer, and early fall, I use the system to power stuff like my work laptop, coffee grinder, and basically anything I can reasonably run an extension cord to from the system. It's just a matter of the power not going anywhere otherwise, and so it's nice to actually use it.

Now, I still use it for things like charging batteries and my home laptop, but not as much. The goal is to make sure the battery stays charged at the end of the day, in case we get a power outage. So it's nice to have the battery charged just in case.

It's October! This actually tends to be a busy month for me. In addition to Halloween, there are various other milestones I try to hit. Just now, I flushed my furnace pipes (I have single-pipe steam) to get the rust out, later this weekend I'll make sure it lights. Then there's yard work, leaves and such, closing the pool, etc.

And of course I have the orange lights up. I have numerous strands of LEDs on the bushes out front to create a nice orange glow. There are some greens, blues, and purples on another bush for more effect.

This month is also a good excuse to buy candy. I tend to get a few trick-or-treaters, but it can't hurt to stock up, right?

Where I live, a small area is served by the municipal electric service. That is, the town runs it. They maintain the lines, and bill me for power. They are dependent on the local big commercial utility to actually connect to the grid, but they bid on power separately. As a result my electricity is very cheap, around US $0.05/kWh. About once a year they send out a statement listing the sources they buy power from, almost completely nuclear and hydro.

It's reliable, too. The power does flicker now and then, I'd say at least three or four times a year. This is an outage of a couple seconds or more, not long but enough to reset clocks etc. (Regardless of how reliable your electric is, having a UPS for computers and other sensitive stuff is still a good idea.) More rare is an outage lasting a couple hours, but it does happen. We get wind or other storms now and then. One outage of this duration a year might be about right, but it might be more like one every year and a half.

The worst outage I can remember lasted a day and a half, back in 2021. That was the result of a big spring storm. We had snow on the ground, and while it did melt during the day it got cold. I have natural gas for heat, but the controls are electric, and I didn't have an easy way to switch them over to inverter power. I still don't, it's on the list.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this. Sure, it's a small area they serve, but they do a good job. Other town residents seem to be pretty happy with it as well. I just find it interesting, because it's a decent example of government doing something right. There are a lot of factors when you look at it, like it being a smaller town with a more manageable area and engaged residents, and as I mentioned a feed from the local commercial utility. But, my taxes aren't too bad, and electric service tends to be a natural monopoly.

Meanwhile, I've been waiting for a second wired internet option. There's a small company building out fiber, but they haven't reached my area yet. I have cable now, which actually works well, but I'd love the additional upload. Some areas have done municipal broadband, with great success. But then big telecom companies lobby, and all of a sudden the 'government will screw it up' idea looms in the air.

It seems like if people give a damn, and are willing to hold the town's feet to the fire, municipal services like this can work great. Not that there's never a place for private services, but we shouldn't take the idea that municipal=bad as the gospel truth.

It's been a while since I've shouted into this void.

Routine is interesting. It's comforting, stabilizing, reliable. But it's also repetitive, constant, possibly boring. I look forward to it to some degree each day, worry when deviating from it, and look forward to it if I've been away from it. But then again, I also kind of resent it.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than the observation that the weeks just seem to be flying by quicker and quicker. Things in my life have been decent lately, but there's a lot of shit out in the world right now. And I wonder if I should be doing something different.