Summer Starting to End on the Farm

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It has been good spending time on the farm. I really had forgotten how quiet and dark it is here. It can actually be a bit unnerving. The leaf doodle bug was put to work in the forest. However, it looks like the car will be going back on the road. We can say it failed field trials,but that would only be partially true. The better utility value at this point is more suited to getting a teenager back and forth from high school. The mycological aspects of the farm did not disappoint. The pics of these shrooms are not photoshopped. The coal stove (very heavy) is loaded on the truck. It will be rebuilt in Georgia if I can save it. Coal stoves are increasingly out of production. When they are gone they are gone. The small wood stove is now in its place. The pic of the red sky in morning was indeed a warning of weather. We had strong storms and tornados in Upstate NY. Although I was travelling much that day in the area, I missed the worst of it.
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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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