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Twitter is starting to look interesting again!

I’ll admit, Twitter can be a dumpster full of burning poop. It had become so rancid and flat out hateful that I left the platform.

In the early days, before the Woke mob was allowed to take over and began dictating what could be said and by whom, Twitter was actually a lot of fun.

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It could be a time suck, but not the the extent that FaceBook was. I never had a ton of followers. Followers wasn’t my intent, I had a small group of friends on the platform that knew each other in real life. We “played” on Twitter.

We found the challenge of making our point in 120 characters stimulating. Dirty Haikus, or Limericks were shared among us and we made each other laugh. We were sarcastic, irreverent, and sometimes very blunt. We were friends. Sometimes it takes a real friend to metaphorically, “knock you upside your head,” by calling you out on something stupid you’ve done or are about to do.

In the early days, all of that was permitted and since none of us had thousands of followers, the reach was limited. As the platform grew, more oblique connections were made. Suddenly, someone that you met at a party would feel that they had the right to tell you what a bastard you were based on their reading of an out of context Tweet they read. Then their followers would pile on without knowing anything about the situation at all.

What these people forgot was that the initial small cadre of actual real life friends communicated in person and a snarky comment might have been the result of something that one person actually witnessed the other one doing.

Admittedly most of my followers were guys, and most of their followers were also guys. Guys bust each other’s chops on a regular basis, and the closer they are, the more brutal the teasing, or yanking each other’s chains can be. The small cadre of friends I followed and who followed me were pretty tight, there was a lot of trash talking which was no different on Twitter than if we were face to face.

What we forgot was that Twitter’s algorithm was presenting our engagement with each other on the platform as something of interest to other people that we didn’t know and who we’d probably never meet, much less hang with. Those people could follow us and read our comments.

The difference was that If my friends and I busted each other’s chops in a bar, someone else in the bar might have taken offense, but they had the social context of the bar and our body language as cues that we liked or even loved each other and social decorum prevented a complete stranger from commenting on what was essentially a private conversation between friends. Granted that “private conversation” may have been us yelling at the top of our lungs over loud music.

Twitter effectively removed all of the social cues and context, leaving only the words. We knew what we meant, but to an outside observer what was said could look pretty bad.

It was at this point that the judgement of others began to have a really nasty effect on our goofy conversations. We could say stuff like, “I don’t know how you get a date micro dick.” Where the reply would be, “Your sister liked it well enough and BTW you’re going to be an uncle!”

That joking screwing around would generate a firestorm of comments about hurtful demeaning words, and judgmental comments about irresponsible sex.

Then it got worse. Suddenly, the respondent would be a misogynistic, evil, CIS, privileged, male. Sometimes there’d be a day or two of hate directed at both parties for demeaning women and accusations of intent to rape.

The incessant comments along these lines were coming from complete strangers and any of the other core group of friends who might have commented on the initial exchange were subject to the same vitriol.

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Almost inevitably some outraged SJW would report one or all of us to Twitter for offending them and we’d all be in a Twitter timeout. It progressively got worse. There was always someone searching for something… anything, they could be pissed off about. There’s nothing so dampening of free speech as complete strangers “Judging” every word or phrase. There were people on Twitter who felt it necessary to correct sentence structure and punctuation on Tweets where they were not invited to the conversation, didn’t know any of the participants, and didn’t understand the context.

Who does that? Those same people would take our ignoring them as some kind of victory. Or they’d say we were mean because we didn’t respond to their unsolicited advice. It became a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.

I personally got Twitter Jailed for asking one of these people, “Do we know you? If not butt out!” Apparently, the Twitter censors deemed that “Hate Speech”

So we got in the habit of censoring ourselves publicly and DMing our trash talk to each other. Then we thought, “If we’re having to DM anyway let’s just use text messages.” At that point, the fun group nature of our Twitter interactions died. Replacing it was group texts which made easing out of Twitter easier.

The thing we all miss is that Twitter provided other services. We’d see and share news articles we encountered on Twitter and comment to each other on them. It was great fun over breakfast to discuss the latest Twitter deuce Trump dropped over breakfast.

We do that now in group texts but it’s not quite the same. On Twitter, the news piece was linked in a way that we could view it on the platform and comment. Using group texts we have to pull the piece up on its originating platform and sometimes that doesn’t work quite right.

The group of friends considered and tried other platforms. But those platforms were being inundated with the same people who’d made Twitter simply useless. The same rules applied and everything said was subjected to scrutiny reserved usually for legal documents. We tried Parler and had a brief period of the kind of freedom we had initially with Twitter.

That is until Google, Apple, and Amazon decided that freedom of speech even non-political speech was a bad thing. When Parler was murdered by the big three, group text messaging was cemented as the goto communication method for my small group of buds.

Since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, we’ve become curious. All of us are tech folks, and Twitter is very nice in allowing access to the stream of comments without having to create accounts. We’ve all been watching and reading tweets and have noticed that off color humor is returning. We’ve also noticed that things which could not have been said a mere 9 months ago are not only being said, but are also being promoted in the trends.

We’re asking if perhaps it’s time to create new Twitter accounts and go back to the fun we once enjoyed on the platform. My friends and I haven’t reached consensus yet. But we are sharing some of the funny memes that are reappearing and not being taken down instantly.

It would be fun to be able to share our camaraderie on a single platform without worry again.

The question is, do we want to have to deal with a bunch of assholes that want to be offended and literally search for anything to be pissed off about?

For the moment, we don’t. But the discussion is open.

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Hmmm, Getting the first data about energy production from the Solar Panels.

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Yesterday was the first full day of Solar Panel operation. The panels themselves went online Nov 30th about midday.

The website and the mobile application provide pretty nice insight into the system status. What’s very cool is that I can see individual panel production and therefore can see if a panel is having trouble.

I’m figuring that we’ll run for several months before deciding if the system needs to be tweaked or if adding battery backup would be something useful.

One of the things that was befuddling me when we got into this, was that a solar array of interconnected panels would only produce power skewed to the lowest common denominator. 

In other words, the laziest panel on the roof would drag all the other panels to its level not the other way around. When I was a kid playing with Radio Shack solar panels, this effect really annoyed me. I kept adding panels to a small array but the voltage never increased above the output of my oldest little panel. Oddly and very confusing to my little child brain taking that oldest panel out of the circuit, then measuring I’d see the best output from the next lowest producing panel and so on.

I could see the pattern, but couldn’t explain what I was seeing. I hadn’t really thought about it until we began this project.

I’d seen a similar effect with my portable panels while recharging battery packs, but it was so negligible in that application that I’d just shrugged and moved on to something else I was doing around the house. In that case, either way, the battery pack would be recharged in 3 or 4 hours, so the impact wasn’t a big deal.

When you’re talking about a large array on your roof that’s costing you money and it’s supposed to lower your electric bill you kinda want to know these things. Well, at least I do.

I was really confused on Wednesday, when I got a look inside the “Controller box” mounted on the wall of the house. I was expecting to see a D/C (Direct Current) to A/C (Alternating Current) conversion device, but what I saw instead was more or less standard A/C connections and breakers.

The mystery deepened, I did see a coil of the type that’s used to detect current flowing through wire. In fact it had a single wire running through it. That wire went to a grounding block, the coil itself was connected to a small digital circuit board mounted at the very back of the controller box. This board was in no way going to be capable of handling the kind of power that could be coming from the panels on the roof. Looking at it, I thought, “That much power would turn that board into a burnt green popcorn kernel.”

The mystery deepened. The installer had no information about the details. He was just finalizing the A/C hookup to the house. But I saw inside the Controller Box, a makers logo.

“To the Internet, Boy Blunder!” Yeah, as a kid in the 1960’s I watched “Batman” and I read “Mad Magazine”. What of it?

When I got to the manufacturer’s web site. All was revealed.

Turns out, each panel has its own inverter attached to it. Meaning the D/C to A/C conversion is done at the panel. As I read the specs and dug into the installer side of the website I sat there going, “Duh!!!”

The design is brilliant. Since the power coming from the panels is already A/C it’s just a matter of connecting the array to the house A/C (with some safety features of course,)

Electricity flows a lot like water. If there’s more electricity coming from the house then it flows back into the grid. This is a gross oversimplification but it’s easy to visualize.

Since the D/C to A/C conversion is done on panel, each panel can produce at its own rate without the other panels affecting it, or it affecting the other panels.

That mystery was solved, so what is this controller doing? 

It’s talking to each of the inverters on the panel, and then sending that data to me, and sending it to the installation company so they can address any warranty issues and they’ll know if a panel needs servicing. It also allows accounting. Since the system knows how much power each panel is producing, and therefore what the array is producing the Electric company can’t get away with “fudging” the numbers about credit owed.

The Controller monitors how much power we use, how much power is produced, simple math calculates the difference. It’s the difference that gets sent back to the electrical grid for the power company to “purchase” from me as an electrical producer.

The Controller also provides for the addition of battery backup, and would manage a switchover if needed due to a power failure.

Another thing I didn’t realize was that if the main power goes off and I don’t have a battery backup, I’ll still be without power. 

I understood that I’d be without power if a power failure happened at night, but I thought if the power was off during the day, I’d still have my fridge and essentials running. That’s not the case.

Thinking about it it makes sense. It’s a safety feature. If I’m generating power at my end and feeding it back into the main electrical grid, then the electrical linemen could never work on the power lines. The lines would always be powered up until each house with solar panels was physically disconnected from the grid.

The Controller box handles that automatically in the configuration I’ve got installed.

I’m thinking that a battery pack is probably in the future.

I don’t want the hassle and noise of a gas powered generator running during a power outage.

When the inspection was finished, the solar guy pulled off the protective plastic on the controller box and voila the manufacturer’s logo is now visible. 

I knew I shoulda peeked under that protective plastic film. I’d have been able to have my questions answered a lot sooner!

Now I just have to wait. A couple of months of runtime data and I’ll be in a better position to decide if I need to add a couple of panels and what size battery pack I’ll need to install. 

I’ll also need to figure out if making those modifications will add to the overall value of the house if I decide to sell it.

I also suspect that if I leave California, where-ever I move to, I’ll be installing Solar probably with batteries because I like the idea of being able to sail through power outages without really noticing them.

I don’t like to be inconvenienced!

Call me a snooty, spoiled, first world person if you like!

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My GOD! I hate Bureaucratic little despots!

The saga of the solar panel installation may be coming to an end.

That’s a good thing. I’m really kinda over it. As in losing my ability to give a shit!

This morning, the final inspection is supposed to take place. The representative from the panel installation company has been out. He’s doing some final tweaks which is a good thing.

But first thing this morning he hands me a clipboard with a a county form on it asking me to sign to attest that I have smoke a CO2 sensors in my house. The paperwork also wanted to verify that the water heater is grounded. It’s natural gas, and the pipes in the house are copper going to ground. So uh yeah! The water heater is freaking grounded!

I ask him what any of this has to do with the dang solar panels on the roof.

He’s not sure, it’s just something The County requires.

I look at the form and tell him I’m going to get my glasses to be able to throughly read the document he’s handing me, so that I know what I’m actually signing.

When I come back, the first thing I notice is that the documents have someone else’s name and address on them. So I ain’t signing shit.

But it got me to thinking.

The invasiveness of regulations has been a royal pain in my ass since this house was rebuilt, and even before then.

When I bought this house, there was a fire suppression system installed. This was mandated by the County when the house was originally built in 1992. For 15 years or so, I paid $300.00 every year to have someone come out and inspect the system. This was to prevent the antifreeze from draining out of the suppression system back into the main water lines.

When the house burned, the fire alarms worked, the fire suppression system didn’t. One of the inspectors had left the dang valves closed so that fancy assed fire suppression system was offline. (That’s what comes from constantly fiddling with something. The possibility of mistakes increases.)

When we rebuilt the house, the county mandated that he have 6 CFB fixtures built into the ceiling of the house (This was more lights than we had total in the house prior to it burning.) Supposedly this was to make the house more energy efficient. I asked the building inspector how having more lights in the house made the house more energy efficient. Those lights still pulled, (at the time 40W). 

Five years later someone in the State of California noticed that compact fluorescent bulbs contained mercury vapor. Fluorescent lights have always contained mercury vapor. That’s how they work. OMG! These bulbs if improperly disposed of can be environmentally dangerous! 

A few years after that, someone else realized that as these bulbs age they can emit high levels of UV, which might be hazardous. Again, DUH! It’s not rocket science. Pass a current at a specific frequency through mercury vapor and it emits UV light, coat the inside of a glass tube with a fluorescent material that glows when exposed to UV light and you get visible light.

It’s simple science. Pity we apparently don’t teach Science anymore.

At the time I was laughing because it was another case of unintended consequences due to petty bureaucrats deciding they had a good idea with absolutely zero knowledge of the underpinning science and therefore no understanding of the potential consequences. I also had a good laugh at the sudden plethora of UV sensors that hit the market to make sure you were safe from the evil older CFBs the State demanded you put in your house.

My sensor, was my glasses. Yeah, my Photo-chromic eyeglasses. See, they darken due to UV light so if I suspected that a CFB was aging or the fluorescent coating was getting flaky, I’d hold my eyeglasses near the bulb. If they got dark, I knew it was time to change the bulb.

Again, if you know how things work at a basic level, you can save yourself $29.95! Unfortunately, retrofitting the fixtures to LED costs a lot of money. Although, all of the other lights in the house with standard A26 screw in sockets have been updated to LED and if those lights are on full blast they use less power than the fluorescent fixtures. 

Move forward a couple of years and the County comes through telling us that we have to remove plants at the very edge of our property line from our landscaping because these plants can burn. Uh yeah sure, but the plants in question have been in that position on the property for 20 years. Oh and they survived the actual house fire that burned the house to the ground. Not to mention that ALL plants can burn!

Another expense, due to bureaucrats. I just know one day these morons are going to figure out that native Pine Trees can burn and demand the removal of trees from my property.

FYI, some of these trees have been here since before the house was. I also water them regularly because I happen to like trees. That’s becoming more difficult due to water restrictions in California, however I’ve adapted.

In Winter, I pile the snow up around the trees and in my yard in general. It doesn’t last the whole summer, but the trees are watered by this process throughout the spring and into early summer.

Again, not rocket science, just using the natural elements and conditions to my, (and the trees,) advantage.

It’s really common sense. 

Move forward 10 years after the house was rebuilt, and the fire suppression system FAILS, flooding my living room. Oh, we’d been having it inspected every year like usual. Guess what? While the specialized Fire Suppression contractor was repairing the system, they discovered that the system had been installed incorrectly in the first place and the petty bureaucrat of a building inspector has missed the fault. At this point in time however, I got to pay for the repair and fight with the insurance company about it.

Ahhh, my tax dollars at work!

I probably wouldn’t be so annoyed except that county inspectors kept blowing off their appointments when the house was being rebuilt. It was so frequent that about 3 months got added onto the building cycle and not one of them ever thought to apologize about missing appointments.

So here we are, trying to get the solar panels finished. Once again I’m being held up because of a country inspector who probably doesn’t have a clue about the actual power going through the cables or how the system works in detail. This is the building equivalent of TSA bag checks, or the masking controversy with COVID or half a dozen other examples of hand waving without actually doing something functional.

That’s the sad part of this, we’re trying to “Go Green,” after all. Isn’t that what gruesome Newsome & Sniffy Joe want us to do?  Note the panels have been on the roof since June 2022.

Today the solar panel company sent their guy out and he arrived on time, we’re still waiting for the County Inspector to show up. At this point that county jackass is two hours late after specifying a two hour window. The difference between a business, and bureaucrats feeding on the tax payer dime is striking!

I doubt that the panels will be operational today, and it might not be until Spring of 2023 at this point. I could still be surprised, but I’m not foolish enough to hold my breath.

I’m debating about giving the county jackass a dressing down when they get here. If you’re going to make an appointment, you keep it. If you’re going to be late, you call. It’s just common courtesy.

On the one hand that might prevent me from getting the panels online, and could subject me to a bunch more County bullshit. On the other hand, if no-one calls jackasses out for being jackasses, they’ll never change except to get worse.

The County person arrived. She was late but didn’t bother to apologize. I kept my mouth shut and went back inside the house. 

A half hour later, the solar guy says the inspection is good, and that the panels are online. 

I guess I could have held my breath! I’m calling this a good day.

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It Begins! A PSA

Microsoft account unusual signin activity

The SCAMMERS are out this Holiday Season!

BEWARE of all emails.

If you don’t recognize something or someone delete the email. Don’t click on any buttons, or links.

This email, shown above, is one I’ve been getting over the past few days. It looks a lot like the incessant email that Microsoft will send you if you happen to have an email account hosted by them.

The Microsoft email looks a lot like this, and because they send their Unusual Sign In emails virtually anytime you change networks, if you’re traveling and sign into your Parents WiFi or use a hotel network, you’re likely to have see the real Microsoft version.

This email is bullshit!

If you click on the “Report The User” Button, the handy “Click Here”, or even your own email listed at the top of the email, you’re directed to some website called techconsulting-pay.com not Microsoft.com.

The Indian assholes running this bullshit are targeting Americans who are scared of Russia so that they can rip you off. It’s probably some bullshit “Protection Scam” where they say they’re from Microsoft selling you some obscenely expensive Anti-Virus or “support” package. These “Support Packages” will often screw your computer up more than they help.

Don’t fall for it!

If you’re concerned about some kind of compromise in your email, ask the source!

You can go to www.microsoft.com, log into your account, then look for account management.

Once you’re there Microsoft will ask to send you a confirmation code. Retrieve the confirmation code and enter that into the requested location. From there you’ll be able to check “Security”.

Microsoft will display all the real “Unusual Activity” and allow you to confirm if it was you or not.

In my case, the only unusual activity was from my recent trip across the country. My parents, my brother’s place, and one point when I was using my phone as a hotspot in a hotel room.

There was no record of Russian login.

As noted above, the IP Address these jackasses are reporting is in Delhi India. If this was a real issue, the IP Address would actually track to Russia and there’d be some record of the activity on the Microsoft site.

How? You might ask did these people get my Microsoft email address? That’s easy! They purchased it from one of the numerous job search sites and are now trying to get a return on their investment. This is one of the MANY reasons I hate job search sites! There’s so much scamming on them they are almost unusable!

I miss the old way, the local newspaper and a real address and phone number that was verifiably local to where you were searching for a new job!

Then again, I’m older than dirt!

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Disadvantage of being out of a city

Well, there are actually remarkably few. The trouble is, when something happens it’s “big” and a royal pain in the butt.

It’s a disadvantage to be so far from shopping centers if you need or want something. Even the nearest Home Depot is 30 minutes away. The Lowes is 45 minutes away.

It’s tough to find people to do work on the house, especially people that know what they’re doing in this particular climate. For their additional knowledge, they’re more expensive. Meh, that’s how capitalism is supposed to work.

The biggest issue, is the septic tank. Sigh, it looks like that’s going to be the Thanksgiving and Christmas expense this year. 

(As an aside, I admire this picture of a septic tank and the model doing her level best to make it look at least a little sexy. Good Job! To the model and the company, thanks for making me smile about it.)

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My septic tank is old. Really old. When the house was rebuilt in 2008, the builder didn’t think about replacing the tank at that time. I guess there was no real need, so why would the lazy jackass do something proactive?

The house was originally built in 1992 presumably that’s when the septic system was installed. At the time the house burned and was rebuilt, the septic system was 16 years old. The system wasn’t in use for a year while the house was rebuilt, but the tank itself is iron and rust never sleeps.

So here we are with a septic system that is 30 years old, and it’s failing. The tank was pumped out about a year and a half ago and at the time the guys said it should be replaced. I decided to wait because I was unemployed and didn’t have 7K to toss at that bill. That decision was at the time against my better judgement because I like to stay out ahead of maintaining things if possible. However given the circumstances it was a viable decision, even if it wasn’t the preferred one.

I suppose this is why the solar panels have been a thorn in my side. They represent an investment that will likely pay off over the next few years or at least break even. (Even though they still haven’t produced one usable KW of energy yet, Thanks Edison!) Even as the other half was wanting to move forward with the panels, I was asking, “What about the septic system?” Warm summer days would have been an opportune time to have that taken care of, in preparation for the Winter.

To be fair, installation of the solar panels had a defined expiration date. If we’d waited any longer, we wouldn’t have be eligible to lock Edison into paying us a fair price for the excess power we generated. The septic system was a ticking time bomb with no precise date of expiration. 

Hey, you put your money on the table and roll the dice! Sometimes you roll a winner, and sometimes you crap out.

(Yes I used that analogy with intent.)

Well, the septic system has, (oh hell I can’t resist,) crapped out. Fortunately, the weather is fairly mild and we have no winter storms in the forecast for at least a week or two. That means that the replacement can go ahead without fighting a foot of snow. Unfortunately, It’s not known due to the supply chain issues and all of that when we can get a new tank put in.

Additionally, with the insanity of gas prices and the cost of diesel, it’s gonna cost more. Yeah, the excessively high diesel prices will affect the cost. Figure it’s gonna cost more for the pump truck to come up the mountain, and the truck to bring a new tank up, the backhoe to dig out the old tank, the long distance transport of the tank from where ever it’s manufactured etc, etc.

This is one of those few times when I wish I lived in a city. If I did, I’d be connected to s sewer system and wouldn’t have to worry about much other than the cost of a plumber to occasionally snake the main pipes that lead to the sewer.

Ah well, we’ll be paying for this for a long assed time. Especially when you consider the interest rates on credit cards. 

These are all the things I was thinking while outside digging a cat hole to bury some waste that had been expelled from the pressure relief pipe at the front of the house. At least the plants next to the hole will be well fertilized come Springtime.

A plumber is coming up today he’s going to see if there’s some blockage. (it’s possible, not likely, but possible). I’ve also got calls in to a couple of different septic tank folks. I’m hoping we can have the existing one pumped out, maybe Wednesday. That should get us through Thanksgiving. Today I’m taking the water softener offline, which will reduce the amount of waste water going into the system. My hope is that we will not have to decamp to a hotel waiting for the tank to be replaced. The dog is the issue there. He freaks out in closed rooms.

Once I get a schedule for the tank being replaced, I’m going to be digging up the sprinkler system. Me & my trenching tool got some work to do. Yes, the sprinkler line crosses the yard in such a way that when the backhoe gets here it’s gonna tear up that line, if I don’t expose it, and remove it. I’m figuring that I’ll cut that section out, set it aside then temporarily cap the loose end. Come Springtime, I’ll finish the repair and reset the line and sprinkler heads.

Nothing living in the mountains is ever easy or straight forward. On the plus side, at least my knees may be completely up to the challenge by then. In a strange way I kinda look forward to being a shirtless redneck with a shovel sweating my ass off in the sun. I do not look forward to being a freezing redneck bundled up in 30° weather digging up the sprinkler line in the coming weeks, but you play the hand left deals ya.

I suppose I could have a portapotty delivered. Now that’s super redneck! Bundling up in the middle of the night to go take a leak really takes me back to my roots. Showers would be a problem in that case, but I suppose I could go out to the truck stop nearby and rent a shower there.

All I can say is Happy Thanksgiving.

Update: Well, it looks like the problem was some kind of blockage going from the house to the septic system. The plumber who is a godsend cleared it in about 10 minutes. There’s a reason we’ve been using this particular plumber for years. He’s on time, (calls with an updated ETA, if he gets stuck on a job,) has fair prices and does great work.

The ticking time bomb of the septic system ticks on, but at least we can plan for that expense instead of having to do it as an emergency.

So that’s what I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving. 

Whew, dodged a bullet for now, here’s hoping that things hold together until Spring. It will just be a lot more convenient to deal with this when it’s warmer.