Day 802 (Daily Post)

Day 802. I woke up this morning a bit earlier than I have been recently and decided to just make my coffee and sit for awhile with my thoughts and see what percolates to the top of my mind. I pretty much do this to some degree each morning but today I decided to wait just a wee bit longer before starting to tediously type out a post. Most of my early morning thinking revolves around my often surreal dreams then it slowly starts running the gambit of the various topics that have captured my interests before turning inexorably towards the things I want to accomplish for the day. All of these thoughts are interspersed with wondering how friends and family are doing along with the inevitable contemplations of the current zeitgeist and more importantly what the hell the compassionate, caring and loving humans of the planet can pragmatically do to shift the course of things towards a better future.

The more shrewd part of my mind often reminds myself that massive well informed intelligent action is the only thing that can alter the current course and it also reminds me not to lose sight that I myself am already doing everything that I can humanly do and to not shoulder the 'problems of humanity' overly much because that is something that humanity itself (or a mass majority of humanity) must jointly shoulder together. I think that it really comes down to taking responsibility for our part in contributing to the problems.

There will always be the convenient scapegoats of corporations, politicians and even religions that folks will invariably blame for humanity's course but what folks often intentionally (or unintentionally) overlook is that those entities are comprised solely of actual human beings and humans can change, they can think, they can evolve, they can gain wisdom, gain understanding and ultimately shift their perspective and even grow in unexpected ways. The real problem is that profit is given a higher value than not just human life but all life and while the faceless entities make for easy targets the root of the problem is the actual consumers that support them by (you guessed it) consuming their products. It is easy for folks to shirk the responsibility and play the 'blame game' without a shadow of that blame reaching themselves.

I sincerely wish that I had solutions to that which ails humanity but I do not and what I do have is simply a different way of looking at the problems which as liberating as that might be it still does not address/change (offer solutions) for the larger problems but it damn sure allows me to make the changes that I can in my own life to the best of my abilities which is probably the best that I can ever hope for. Pondering these thoughts in the early morning tends to remind me that I am at the very least 'doing my part' and by sharing these thoughts perhaps I am contributing to or perhaps encouraging others to do what they can do as well.

The idea that we are powerless to change is absolutely not just delusional but also rather damn negligent and absolutely shameful for a species that at some point in the ancient past crawled from the mud, discovered fire making, built tools, technologies and medicines to improve it's quality of life and ultimately got it together enough to begin exploring space itself. Sure there has been a hell of a lot of strife and suffering along the way but that does not mean the future has to be the same. Just think about it and do whatever you can do and perhaps it will be enough. No matter what though 'doing nothing' should not be an option at this point in things. I often avoid venturing down that particular rabbit warren because I often feel like the proverbial 'broken record' and there are only so many ways that I can say that I am still holding out hope that humanity can get it's collective shit together while there is still enough time to do so.

Anyway it is warming up outside and the sun is making it's trek over the mountain and starting to shine on my solar panels which is always my cue to 'get it together' and start to really plan my day. Yesterday I moved my big solar panel, adjusted the seasonal tilt on it and aimed it a few degrees towards the southwest so that it would get a longer period of direct sun throughout the day and although I already covered all this (in a post that is only viewable by my Patrons on Patreon) I figured I would recap it here. Just adding five degrees of tilt which brought the panel to 34.8 degrees of tilt made a rather noticeable difference in the output and aiming it a bit southwest accommodated it getting really good sunlight until nearly seven o'clock in the evening when the sun was setting.

The electric output was so good yesterday that I was even able to utilize the excess electricity to listen to some loud music (and simultaneously charge three deep cycle batteries and three lithium ion five volt battery packs) while working around the yard. While listening to the music I kept thinking how awesome (and even guiltless) I felt knowing that no fossil fuels were burned nor nuclear waste created in the playing of said music.

I am still considering getting better charge controllers and perhaps more/better batteries so that I don't have the waste/excess electricity problem. I have also been considering connecting the two identical batteries that I have in series to make them into a twenty four volt battery bank which would remove the over-voltage stress from my cheap PWM charge controllers. All of the devices that I have purchased (except my DC to DC netbook charger) are rated for twelve to twenty-four volts so they will all still be compatible on a twenty-four volt system. The reasons that I initially started purchasing multi-voltage devices like that was because they handle the voltage spikes coming off the solar panel rather well and I wanted to be able to use them in 'emergency situations' with my eighteen volt cordless tool batteries. I am still debating about whether to hook up the batteries in a twenty-four volt bank because the only real advantage is relieving the over-voltage stress and although the batteries are the same type/brand/model one is definitely in better shape than the other which means I could just create a lot of inefficiency because the two batteries won't be properly balanced. Once again my 'working with junk' axiom applies and the only way I can truly know the outcome is by experimentation which will hopefully result in more 'trial' rather than 'error' but hey such is life.

Well I have rambled on quite a bit here and should probably call this post 'good enough' and get it all edited and posted. The buffer size in the notepad app I use really struggles to accommodate these longish posts and often the phone becoming sluggish indicates that I have probably typed enough. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a good day/night. Ta ta for now.

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