Interesting – Page 13 – Aren Cambre's Blog

Energy Bill Relief

Remember my A/C blower motor fiasco from a few weeks ago? Frost on the indoor part (evaporator) strongly suggested the outside unit (condenser) ran for days straight. This is the power-gulping part of an A/C system.

I calculated that I burned through $190 of electricity.

I got my electricity bill today. It is $143.39, a very normal August bill!

When you normally run an A/C, the compressor fights against the heat that the evaporator (the indoor part) absorbs from the indoor air. With no indoor fan running, there is no air blowing across the evaporator, no heat being put into the refrigerant, and hence no load on the system. The compressor does the equivalent of freewheeling.

That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it!

Lesson learned: Aren would be an awful meter reader.

Central Texas Musuem of Automotive History

The Central Texas Museum of Automotive History is bar none the most awesome auto museum I’ve ever visited. It’s a hidden gem just north of Rosanky, TX on TX 304. I estimate it to have at least 130 cars of many vintages. It also has all sorts of automotive memorabilia.

Typical view down one of the rows:

All these cars are in superb condition.

Stanley Steamer:

Stanley Steamer engine:

1949 Diamond T Pickup:

Oldsmobile Delta 88:

Some goofy Euro-like battery powered car:

Corvette:

Rolls Royce limo:

After touring, I asked the guy at front about a Boy Scout plaque I had seen last time I was there (around 1995?). It turns out that the museum director, Dick Burdick, is an International Commissioner for the Boy Scouts of America and has the Silver Beaver, Silver Antelope, and Silver Buffalo awards:

He is heading the committee planning the 2010 Jamboree.

The plaque I remembered was the 1989 Jamboree plaque, which is at top center:

It used to be in his front office.

Driving up on it, you would have no idea how magnificent the inside is:

I highly recommend this museum to anyone even slightly interested in automotive history.

Amazing office window view

(This entry is dedicated to Pat Gary. Earlier today he whined that I haven’t updated my blog recently enough.)

I’ve worked in the same building for four years. Only recently did I realize an incredible part of the view out my cube window.

Here’s the overall view of the horizon:

The two vertical bars are fake slats in the window to maintain the Collegiate Georgian architecture.

To the left of the right slat is a building with two peaks. Just to the left of that building is Texas Stadium:

This picture is a crop with my camera zoomed in to its full 10X zoom. You can see the stadium’s distinctive roof hole. I figured this out shortly after moving into this building.

Here’s the amazing thing.

Guess what this is?

In the top picture, it’s just to the right of the rectangular building (Bob Hope Theater) left of center of the picture.

That’s downtown Fort Worth, over 30 miles away! Compare that view to Boston Radio’s Ft. Worth skyline picture.

That blew me away. Fort Worth is over 30 miles away!

My coworker looked up the Dallas-Ft. Worth area aerial maps and found that there is a lot of green space in the line of sight between my office and Ft. Worth:

Ft. Worth has 278.7 feet more elevation than Dallas, helping counteract the earth’s curvature.

Some day I’ll bring a higher zoom lens and see what I can get.

Stupid products

Items sold in “real” hardware stores, like Home Depot or Lowe’s, should be reasonable quality, right? The truth is often “no.”

These stores now carry doors with encased plastic blinds. Yes, “encased.” You never have to clean them because they are encased in the door.

I knew they were a pending disaster the first time I saw them. Plastic blinds are disposable, and, consequently, they break easily.

What’s the logic in encasing cheap blinds inside a door?

Apparently, little. Here’s a demo product at my local Lowe’s:

See any problems?

Camera Fun

On Wednesday, Sept. 28, a thunderstorm rolled through my area. The storm knocked the power to a lot of east Dallas out after it rolled through, and the outage lasted for 3 hours.

Since the power was out, I went outside and played with the camera. I am amazed at the kinds of shots I was able to create.

This is looking down my street at, get this, 8:42 PM at night. The sun had set around an hour ago. I got this much light with a 16 second exposure time and ISO-400 equivalent sensitivity. (I can automatically change the emulated film type on this camera.) Part of the brightness is lightning in the distance. It was all cloud lightning.

The clouds are breaking, and stars are showing through. Stunning. Same settings as above.

A neighbor’s car passes down a nearby street.

A few nights earlier, I got this shot of my son playing with one of those green lights. This was given to us by some of my neighbor’s family evacuated Hurricane Rita from Houston.

This is a 5 second exposure with a flash at the end.