Carbon Monoxide!?

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Weird. The smoke alarm went off, not incredibly odd when I am using the fireplace, but it wasn't the smoke detector. It was the CO alarm. I was totally surprised. It had never gone off as long as I have had one, over many many years. Yep, after resetting it a few times. It was getting a reading over 200 ppm CO. When I took it downstairs I got a reading near 300 ppm. I started getting light headed at this point. After thinking maybe the furnace heat exchanger failed and puzzling around a bit I figured out what happened. As part of the huge winter storm that recently covered almost half of the US, we lost our electricity. So, being well prepared, I rolled out the generator and started doing what I normally do. The generator (although it was completely outside) was creating CO to get in the house. Using the fireplace draft (and possibly other leaks) the whole house created a vacuum around the seal of the basement garage door. After the CO got into the house the forced air heat...
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The Sunday night science lecture was about the Andrill project. The "Andrillians" have a drill rig on the ice shelf afew miles from staion. They are drilling thru the ice shelf, than after 1200 feet of water they are going to go thru 1500 feet of sea floor. It is a real engineering challenge to get these geological samples. The ice shelf moves (both with tides and laterally), sea currents and all the unknowns oof what the strata is below. I am planning on attending a "briefing" tonight that has a more informal meeting of interested people. One of the things that makes this project a little different is there is grant money for outreach and education. So they have a wbsite and a means to find out a lot more about the project. www.andrill.org

I had my Matttrack and Pisten Bully training. I have been somewhat fascinated by tracked machines. I don't know why. They are just cool. They aren't very smooth or fast. They can go just about anywhere though. The Pisten Bully is very German. It is remarkably similar to my Holder c500 Tractor. I am all checked out and ready to use these machines to get to some of our radio sites.

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