Carbon Monoxide!?

-
Image
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...
Post a Comment
-

I finally have real broadband access! Through my ham radio connections I managed to get a terrestrial link using a Motorola Canopy solution (5.7 GHz) and a 15 mile (plus) path. Of course, I would have never been able to do this except for I am on a hill that faces the tower in Binghamton. It is a haul. It is safe to say I am at the far fringes. I am working to help expand the system with the installation of a new tower on my property. The dish on the roof is fairly big (nothing like the old c-band TVRO dishes though). I was hoping we were going to get 10 or more Mbps, but I have to settle for speeds just under 5 Mbps. Considering with Wildblue (satellite) I was only getting 600 kbps with 900 ms latencies; I am very pleased.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Do you have that 6' dish in your barn? A feed would be easy enough to make... mount it on the silo!

GM
10:02 PM
Charles said…
GM,

You have to see the feedhorn. It looks like a piece of wood 3 inches wide by 12 inches long. It has ALL the electronics in it. The only cable off the device is outdoor CAT5 with POE (Power Over Ethernet). I probably could use the military solid dish, getting the feed in the sweet spot might take some creativity.
7:55 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
My kayak trip was awesome! So what happens when three restless boys want to do something exciting in Atlanta over the Thanksgiving holiday? Shoot the Hooch. Traverse the Chattahoochee river in grand style. We did it in a combination of couchsurfer, thrillseeker, and urban explorer (mostly Couchsurfer). We met for the first time last week. The participants, one from France (a recent MBA grad from Georgia Tech), one from California (a 20 something Mechanical Engineer) and me. We put in at the Buford Dam at Lake Lanier. We put in illegally since the park was closed. (I mean who would want to use a park on a holiday?) We parked illegally at both ends of the run (not sure of the reasons, but an accumulation of a $50 parking ticket). And, we camped illegally for two nights. So, let's add some danger with two beginner kayakers, and very fast water. It is very dangerous, at least one person has died in the Chattahoochee in the last year from swift water. The risks were fully assessed. This...
Read more
-
Image
The bonfire was a lot of fun. Friends, family and neighbors came over. I felt like a kid. We dragged one of the old geodesic domes on the property to the fire and although everything was still wet from recent rain we got it burning, safely. G. Mills came down and we worked all day Sunday moving the fire around to areas missed and so forth. The picture of the jeep is a fraction of the scrap metal found in the piles. Everything from transmissions to major appliances to pedal cars to weird old farm bits smashed flat was found. Definitely, it was a good time. We don’t often “slow down” to do stuff like this. Slowing down is a weird way to describe it since there was no slowing down at all and there was a bigger utility goal in mind in removing a junk pile. I guess it was just fun and I will leave it at that.
Read more

LavaCon 2025

-
Image
I spoke at the LavaCon this week. My presentation was very well received. There were well over 100 folks who chose to attend my presentation. Afterwards we had a supplier meeting in Cartersville and a hike up Pine Mountain. https://www.lavacon.org/ It was good to enjoy some brief moments with a llama as part of the conference. And it was good to meet up with lots of folks I have got to know over the years.
Read more