Greg's Horrible Waste of Internet Bandwidth

Spoiler: The "Family Tower" in Louisiana has partially collapsed. Below are links to some 2018 UAV videos when it was still standing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejGSR2GLaks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8jbxfcGEDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdZl453YveQ 2023 UAV video of the remnants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ir_nqAUtCE The Story Post-COVID 2020 Christmas week, we hitched up the "Cajun Edition" RV to head to Louisiana to visit family. We arrived at mom's house after dark, parked the RV, and mom invited us in, handed me a beer (love that woman). She sat down with me with a serious face, and said "honey, I've got some news". OK, I'm thinking...did someone die? "The tower fell down." I'm shocked. " What?? " I stepped outside to see for myself...of course, it's pitch-dark in her area at night and with no moon I couldn't see a damned thing. And it probably wasn't a good idea to be wandering aro...

Every once in a while someone picks the scab that is "Why did Road Atlanta get rid of The Dip?" and more hilarity ensues. Built in 1969 with its first race in 1970, Road Atlanta is a racetrack just northeast of its eponymous city. It's a rockin' great race track, filled with excellent elevation changes, fast sweeping corners, and is a challenge both technically and emotionally. It's truly one of this country's jewels and is one of my "most favoritest" tracks in the USA (others being similarly-challenging tracks such as VIR, Watkins Glen, and Road America). Its signature bit Back When was "The Dip" or "The Gravity Cavity", a deep drop downhill run into a valley/cavity that suddenly changed to a steep rise, shooting the driver into an off-camber turn under an infield-access bridge at its peak then immediately down the hill's backside to another sweeping turn that shot you down the front straight. It was as breathtaking as that s...

July 2020 was the month that a lot of Connecticut residents noticed a significant increase in their electricity bills. The reason turns out to be that CT's Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) approved (and the governor signed) in September 2019 a requirement that Eversource and United Illuminating - CT's two major power providers - purchase electricity from the financially-torn Millstone Nuclear Power Plant. Governor Lamont Applauds PURA Approval of Millstone Contract Between Dominion, Eversource, and United Illuminating https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2019/09-2019/Governor-Lamont-Applauds-PURA-Approval-of-Millstone-Contract Of course, as soon as everyone saw their monthly bills increase - about 7c/kWh or almost 50% - the screaming started and "investigations" were called for and as of this post it is rumored to get rolled back, at least temporarily: PURA to investigate Eversource Energy rate hikes https://www.wtnh.com...

On "Microsquirting" the Porsche 914 - Part 11, Addendums and Updates Start Here for Part 1!!! ...or... Back to Part 10 Lessons learned and subsequent changes made. Figured I'd create a separate blog for "what I'm learning" and minor stuff. These are updated in reverse  chromological order (latest ones first) so if you come back on occasion the newest ones will be on top. 3/30/26 Update The 914 didn't get driven much in 2025, as I had the 968 diverting my attention. But yesterday was a sunny garage cleaning day and with the 914 sitting out in the driveway catching some rays I decided to take it for a short spin. After cycling the key a couple times to get fuel through the feed/return circuit...it fired right up. and in fact I think it's driving as smooth as it ever has.  What a fantastic ride. 12/01/24 Update I've decided to bail on the TB project...for a couple reasons. One, I just can't dig up the motivation to start it. I got myself into...

Contact Tracing and Exposure Notifications on your phone. Hoo-boy. I'm far less concerned about the privacy aspects as I am about the potential abuse. For example, what stops someone from intentionally answering the app's questions with COVID-positive information and pretending to have the disease? Then they just saunter among large populations, now broadcasting those symptoms via Bluetooth? Say they go to Home Depot, or Walmart, or Shop-Rite, or walk into your local restaurant, or wherever. And now everybody's else's phone will get notitications that they've been exposed to someone who is positive for the disease and notified they need to stay home for 14 days. And then everybody that was exposed to them would get the same notificiation. The result would be a logarythmic increase in the number of people being notified to stay home for 14 days, along with employees of all these facitilities, and (assuming people followed the instructions) society would again be ...

Part 10: The Design Details   Back to Part 9   So your first question will be, "can I do this?" Yes, you can. I did it and I'm not a professional mechanic, though I do have an engineering background and fairly solid mechanical and electrical skills from working on my own cars since high school. Your second question is, "how hard is it?" Well, that depends on that skill level. The majority of the components are bolt-on, such as the sensors - I tried as hard as I could to make it easy - but you'll need three basic abilities: Ability to remove and install the engine. The biggest issue here is access, with the hardest being getting to the back side of the fan housing to install the crank position sensor. I guess theoretically you could remove the front air cooling sheet metal and get to the front of the engine and remove it all while working from the underside. But having the engine sitting on your toolbox or on an engine stand makes the processes soooo much...