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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Man o' man getting on the internet has really been working againist me lately. I got the new tv (great). I got the dish for "Cable" tv, and I had my new internet dish installed (Wild Blue). The Wild blue worked for exactly 2 days and quit. I am trying to get it fixed. Hopefully today the guy will be out. I am currently using a WIFI connection down in Binghamton. We can receive 7 hi def stations locally, about 12 analog signals and then we have the dish and the internet connected to the TV via VGA. I am working out the details of how to hook all this stuff up including the subwoofer I installed in the coffee table.

I have been taking a lot of photos lately, stopping the truck on the way to work or whatever. It is worth it. Of course ;-) at this sitting I have almost none of my new pics with me.

I am working on getting my electric car drive train working. I built a test stand and a programming interface for the controller. I bid on a geo tracker with a bad engine on ebay, but I let it go. There will be others. The idea of 4 wheel drive makes sense. I am working on getting a range of 60 miles on the battery power. One of the really nice features about the controller I plan on using is the regenerative charging of the batteries. I will have a pot hooked to the accelerator as well as to the brake pedal. I am using one set of batteries for testing/development and another for the car probably. Fun stuff, pure playtime.

I have been communicating with the guys on the ice as the season starts up and they are trying to get the equipment working. I insist on them sending me photos when they email me or I won't comunicate with them :-) I miss some of the aspects of the work environment.

Of the pics I do have with me at the moment I have Bonnie's jack o'lantern and a view on my ride to work Monday.

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