All is not well with my tribe... it's hard to remember to tell everybody everything that's going on, and when you don't, someone is going to feel left out. And so it goes.
I'm processing (composting) most of my own sewage now, so it's very easy to see when I'm going too far off my diet because my Neandershit doesn't come out clean and stink-free as it does when I'm avoiding carbs. Last night at the bar someone offered me pizza, and twice someone bought me a beer... and I was buying plenty myself. The results this morning were predictably bad. This experiment is very reproducible. However, sometimes I can indulge to a certain extent and still have a clean BM. I wish I could always know where the limit is and have the presence of mind to avoid it.
The only centralized services I haven't yet been able to avoid are water and Internet. Until it rains again and I get to see how my cistern works I'll be dependent on Columbus city water, which is free (5 gallons per day) for all residents. And until the Unternet is built out sufficiently, which will take years, I'll still have to beg, borrow, or steal Internet access. As long as I stay here in Columbus, NM, though, I have use of the two free wifi APs I installed at the Patio restaurant and the library.
I've seen webpages, I think on Trevor Marshall's site, dealing with making an amplifying antenna for cellular phones (not on the net as I write this, or I'd provide a link -- google it) and I want to make one and point it to the tower in Palomas so I can use my Mexico cell from my house. Wouldn't that be cool? Eventually I'd like to capture the signaling data and figure out how the damned things work on the bits-and-bytes level so I can provide free cellphone service to City of the Sun. One 80-watt panel is plenty to keep a laptop and cellphone charged, though my battery cannot keep the laptop running all night -- it's not a real storage battery, but still I can't figure out why it drops to 10.5 VDC as soon as the sun goes down. Major suckage.
Well, I quit my regular volunteer stint at the Columbus Village Library, but am still available for emergencies. I haven't been able to quit my programming gig but maybe it's just as well. It keeps me in Guinness after all.
Pet peeve: people who don't set their Reply-To address to a working email account. Customers have been raking us over the coals because they say we don't reply to their emails. I call this the "write-only email" syndrome. Or maybe with all the fucked-up anti-spam "solutions" out there, my replies are going to their spambox. And Luna County government has mostly bogus emails on their website and for their reply-to addresses. Cluestick seriously needed there...
last updated 2013-01-10 20:43:33. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com