Whatever

Lots of zucchini and yella squash . Between all we’ve harvested probably close to 50 from 5 plants !

 

Starting to get some maters also

 

Had lunch on the lake and took KODA for a swim today.

 

Random

 

Hard to argue ... 'cept how would one know if the brush was comparatively "clean" before storing it for next use?

 

This is all it would take….. I’m easy

 

So jealous!

 

which reminds me...


Story Time with Gritto


Mrs Gritto was a middle school science teacher before she escaped retired.
I had to buy out her last year so she'd get her full pension (she couldn't take it anymore)... butt that's another story.

Anyway, she managed somehow to get a private tour of a solar panel manufacturing facility, and asked me if I wanted to tag along.
This was BP Solar in Frederick, MD, about 20-odd years ago.
Before the subsidy ran out, then poof!... they were gone to China.
Your tax dollars at work

The guy giving the tour was an engineer.
He was very proud of the operation and was happy to give facts and figures.
Like power output, panel longevity, etc.

What I found most interesting was the part of the plant for recovering silicon.
There was a big-ass electric powered crucible and beside it, cubes of silicon about 3 feet or so to a side.
I'd been mostly quiet up to this point, but now I started interrogating the guy.

The defect rate when making monocrystalline solar panels is pretty high, and crystalline silicon is expensive.
Individual wafers are cut from the blocks.
They recycled the silicon from defective wafers on-site in the crucible.

I mean, like a lot more expensive than the glass in your beer bottle.
To reach the needed purity means extra refining.

I bet you know where this is going

I asked: "Tell me again how much is the estimated total power output over the expected life of a panel?"
...and followed up with:
"How much energy input is needed to make a panel?"

He looked at me sideways and gave a complicated fuzz dazzle non-answer.
To this day I don't know, but have my suspicions that the Chinese are burning a lot of coal to make these things.

It ain't "free" energy.


Note: There are also "polycrystalline" and "amorphous" solar panels which are cheaper but also less efficient.
I confess I don't know much about those or how much energy input goes into making them.

 

Yuck

 

This guy:


and I are not at all surprised.
I eagerly await your telling of the other story.

 

Random

 

You mean Mrs Gritto retiring?

Well, discipline had basically become nonexistent.
Administrators did not support teachers.

So it basically came down to doing nothing or calling the cops to take the kid away in handcuffs...
...which became necessary more and more often.
And this was in middle school

I pity anyone who chooses a teaching career these days.

 

Noted

 

If I wasn't on call it would be beer thirty since I just got home from work.

 

When I was working we would have a teams call of an evening to show what we was drinking. Bout once a month