SolarMonkey

joined 2 years ago
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[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 hour ago

Exactly why basically that is my goal :)

I’m technically too urban to be entirely off-grid, legally, but I see no reason I can’t minimize my draw with a separate breaker system. Whole place needs to be rewired anyway because it’s ancient. Knot and tube ancient.

But most people aren't willing to go through that, and I cant blame them because there aren't any incentives to doing so, and most people don't realize how much cheaper used solar farm panels are, so it just seems like a really bad deal. And for most, who would have it installed for them, new, maybe thats true. Used with mostly-self-install is much cheaper. Even better if the whole deal needs to be re-wired anyway.

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 hours ago

Why would they want to? Our fate, the fate of the planet even, doesn't concern them. Supporting us just means less high score for them, and they simply cant have that.

The obscenely rich are there because they give no fucks about anyone other than themselves. You need people who care to implement a UBI. Thats hard-won progress at the best of times.

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 hours ago

That was amazing and made me rethink not watching that show.. I have it but had no interest in it. Now I have slightly more than zero! Yay! Positive numbers!

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

This kind of shit is why I refuse to let people talk negatively about their own skills when they try to compare themselves to the more impressive parts of me. Idk how different their lives are than my own was, but there are lots and lots of things that are totally expected of adults that I can’t do because of how fucked up my childhood was. A couple glowing beacons of brilliance in the muck and mire don’t actually make for a well-adjusted person.

I ain't done shit with the smarts I've got. You might not have the capacity to learn three foreign languages (of different roots, because I found that easier) simultaneously, but who cares? I can’t hold down a job (in any language) to save my life. Sure you might not be able to plan out an entire self-sufficient homestead, but I bet you can actually make moves toward your goals, whatever they are! I can’t, I’ve had the same goal for 30 years and have made minimal progress toward it, other than long long long lists of things that I want to do. I can’t even form proper bonds with people because my childhood taught me to trust nobody but myself, so I'm lonely and isolated.

The truth is we are all a series of strengths and weaknesses based on the environments in which we are raised. I struggle daily with left and right, but I’m masterful with learning new highly technical information well enough to teach lay-people. I can’t tell time on analogue clocks, but I’ll bust out calculations for close-enough answers to weird physics questions, because I find it interesting. The best experts in one field are the worst novices in most others.

All this to say: try to be kind to yourself for the places your education and childhood failed you. They weren't your fault, and aren't something you should feel shame about, even if you do make efforts to bring yourself up to speed. There have been various trials of random nonsense bullshit over the years (like the US’ current spiral into illiteracy due to doing away with phonics) that have fucked up generations of people, and those people, just like you, are doing their best with the shit cards they were dealt. We have no control over how we were nurtured, if we even were. And thats ok. It’s part of your story, what makes you the you you are today. You'd be someone totally different if you'd gotten more math and less jesus, and maybe that someone would be better in some ways, but they'd probably be worse in many others.

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 hours ago

I think I might start trying to do this.

I recently met a group of people who are close friends with my close friend, and the majority of them did not identify with the pronouns I'm accustomed to assigning based on sight/presentation. And it was challenging to give the level of respect I wanted to, because habits are strong.

I’ve met transpeople numerous times in the past, but they all identified one way or another, so that was pretty easy to respect. NB/agender is MUCH harder to get used to. So I think thats going to be my new holy grail; treat everyone as a default human until they tell me they prefer something else.

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 hours ago

It depends on the proportional savings. Not to me, I understand how math works, but to most people.

They’ll drive across town to save 5 cents per gallon on fuel, with a vehicle that has a 10 gallon tank (a total savings of half a dollar) but often wont drive the same distance for a product thats $10 lower than wherever they are if the product costs $500 to begin with.

I’ll be gay to save any money. Doesn’t matter to me. You got some other discount I don't have to prove? Sure I’ll say I’m a disease vector for $2. Oh, you have a student discount where I save $1? How handy that I still have my decade-old student ID on me and always do because it doesn't have dates on it. Why yes I did look up the local zip code to save $0.25/person on admission!

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 1 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Yes, thats exactly what they do. No net metering, no discounts or rebates, nothing, but if your power flows back into the grid, they sure will charge for it at the exact same rate as if they created it themselves, and charge you as much as they can get away with to eat into your savings (some utilities around here even make you pay a monthly fee to have your own solar on “their” grid..). No surprise hardly anyone here has solar; it’s generally not worth having unless you can guarantee you use all of the power yourself.

My locality is mostly hydro power, we don't even really have peak/off-peak rates, just pay the same all the time regardless because they can’t easily adapt to demand anyway. And like yay renewables and stuff, I'm super on board with that aspect, but I'm not on board with having a monopoly on the renewables, since my area is not typical of the state.

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 2 points 12 hours ago (4 children)

I want to do something like that but just have the solar circuits entirely disconnected from the grid, running stuff like fridge, freezer, water heater, car charger, etc (depends how many watts my panels can actually manage in practice; I don't have a ton of space). all without being able to draw from the grid at all.

My state is pretty shitty about solar, and I don't particularity want to give the electric company my surplus power for free for them to turn around and profit from, so fuck ‘em, ill figure out how to perfectly balance my use with my capacity and just save the spend.

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 days ago

I don't have 1.6, so no.

I’m sure most of the mods I use would be either available or obsolete, but I’m not interested in doing all the work it would take to upgrade everything, and I don’t really feel like I’m missing out.

Maybe someday I’ll make a whole separate setup for 1.6 and have both, but no time soon.

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I think its supposed to represent those doing resource distribution, rather than strictly guards, which red blood sort of does (oxygen at least, maybe other stuff idk)

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago

I bought two right before stuff jumped too badly. Looked about a week later thinking buying another one might be an ok idea, rofl no way I can justify it now..

So now I'm debating if I really NEED backups.. certainly not of everything.. I still need a video card, and those never did really come back down..

 

I’ve found a 2023 leaf for some $10k, and with selling my ICE car, which is starting to cost more to maintain than it’s worth, it’ll realistically only cost me about $5k, maybe less. It’s got 33k miles on it, or about 10k/yr which is kinda high-average, but meh. The range in it is far enough to go all the places I’d realistically be going. (If not for making regular trips over 100 miles I’d get one of the ultra-cheap 2015 era EVs that can handle 60-80 miles..)

I probably want it even tho I’ve never test driven one. I’d obviously still do that but I think I kinda want it anyway. This one is located about 3 hours away, but it sounds like they may do inter-dealership trades up to this area, so maybe not a concern.

So what do I need to know? Can the tracking modem be disconnected? Do the batteries fail a lot? Does this model have a ton of quirks? Is it just cheap because people don’t want used EVs? Is this a horrible idea?

 

I hatched some quail and made sure they imprinted on me (why not, I was thrilled to watch anyway!) but my cats were also there and the brooder is a 55 gallon aquarium on my living room floor, so I think it’s safe to say my birds see them as the adults of the covey because they do this leg splay thing a lot, and lay on their backs all comfy-like.

I’ve seen owl babies lay down on their tummies but never rolling over like this. And they are a bit over 2 weeks in age, but they’ve been doing it for well over a week already.

I’m super pumped for this behavior, I hope it lasts. I can’t wait to see what weird shit the next generation I hatch picks up!

(Sorry for potato quality, I actually took this with an iPhone… really hard to capture this from across the room without disturbing them..)

 

Curious of the ways you are avoiding buying mass-produced junk as gifts for people this holiday season. Share your ideas and tips, what you make or do, or how you otherwise partake of the joys of togetherness this time of year, without consuming for the sake of consumption.

 

Basically, when the app crashes while commenting, it recovers the text you had written out.. but then dumps you back to the main feed with that just in your clipboard, waiting for you to comment on the next post and go “oh yeah, crap” because you can’t find the post and go back to browsing.

When hide read posts is functioning as intended (which it hasn’t been for a while and may be related to version..? Idk how it works, and that’s not the point of this anyway), you shouldn’t even be able to find the post you would have replied to, and unless it’s from a community you follow, you’ll never find it again.

Maybe this is too much to ask; I’m not a programmer so I don’t know what I’m asking, but it would be super great when the app crashes to not only preserve the text, but maybe provide a link back to the post it was being made under (not necessarily the exact comment, but the parent post would help a ton). I’ve just sort of given up on long comments I spent a lot of time formatting because the app crashed and I couldn’t find the post I was replying to. And that’s really frustrating.

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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net to c/woodworking@lemmy.ca
 

I have very very old power tools. I cannot afford new ones. The problem is, if I’m being totally honest, I’m largely afraid of the tools I have. I’d like to get over this. How does one do that without direct supervision?

More info: I inherited tools from my parents and grandparents. Things I could afford to replace, like drills and drivers, I did. What I have left are big bladed things (chop saw, table saw, tile saw, etc. no lathe sadly :( ) None of the users of these specific tools are still alive. They are all probably 30+ years old, and work fine, probably, but… are just super intimidating (tho my grandfather had a lot of pre-electrification manual tools and I love those - So nice to take a manual plane to a solid door and end up with something that closes properly!). Some of them have plugs that screw together so you can repair them and everything (those I probably won’t use, absolutely terrifying if you fuck up). I’m mid 30s so I remember most of these things being used but I also remember the table saw I have in my garage taking off half my step-dads thumb..

I know power tools today are built to be a lot safer, but I definitely can’t afford those (I wouldn’t even be able to afford these but they were free for me), and I don’t know anyone with power tool skills (last learning I got was in hs shop class almost 20 years back) so how do I get comfortable with them enough to actually use them for the little projects I need them for? I don’t live in a big metro area, so there aren’t clubs afaik.

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