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Showing posts from November 27, 2011

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...
From Bloomberg 12-3-11. Try and tell me this isn't scary. We would all be in "occupy wherever" if we could allow ourselves to understand this situation. The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing. The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue. Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of th...
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Eric took a few pics of some property he is looking at today. We had the window open. The open window caused more drag that I thought it would.

My normal routines in Atlanta and NY

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I have been busy at work. It is getting to the end of the year. There are a lot of things to finish up. I am working a lot this weekend. This weekend is the first weekend of the month. My favorite weekend when I am in Atlanta. I have all the regular aviation activities that happen on the first Saturday. I am flying after the EAA 690 pancake breakfast tomorrow. Always a good time. I am going to miss a presentation from a new turbine engine manufacturer and the class down at American Eagles flight school. My leadership class is going well on Thursday nights. I certainly have got to know a bunch of people in the area a lot better and the spiritual context gives me a lot to think about. We had some conversation about Sir Edmund Hillary this week. Our paths crossed in Antarctica, spiritually a couple other times. It looks like I am not traveling that much for a while. I am headed up to Boston after Christmas and I have some trips somewhat emerging for Europe, North America and South ...