Toots for wanderinghermit@mindly.social account

Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-23 at 21:31

@VeroniqueB99

That's called "being an asshole"

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-23 at 21:26

Acts of kindness: I'm camping way back in the desert. A few minutes ago I heard engine noise, looked out and saw a group of ATVs coming up the road toward my camp spot.

They saw that I was camped here, and turned around and went a different direction so they wouldn't disturb or dust me.

Thank you, nameless off-roaders!

[#]camping #wandering #kindness

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-22 at 03:06

Done. 100W solar panel replaced with 435W panel. 20A PWM controller replaced with 40A MPPT controller. 100Ah battery replaced with 300Ah battery. Soldering at the top of the ladder and crawling around on a sketchy metal roof completed.

We should be good, at least until my spouse decides she wants still more lights, cameras, and sound systems in the horse barn.

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-19 at 16:33

[#]SilentSunday

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-19 at 02:25

And yes, @ai6yr, all connections are soldered. Picture me standing on a ladder, butane soldering iron in hand, roll of solder clamped in my teeth...

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-19 at 02:19

Doing an upgrade on the solar system for the horse barn. Bigger battery, bigger solar controller, bigger solar panel. Got everything done except the panel upgrade, I'm short on sleep and decided that it was not a good idea to climb around with a drill on a metal roof while experiencing brain fog.

Maybe tomorrow.

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-16 at 04:33

I spent 9 of the first 15 days of 2025 camping in the desert. So that's good. A nice start to the new year.

Now I'm in the city for a few days. And grumpy AF, because who wants to be in the city when you could be camping?

With any luck by the end of the week I'll be able to go back to the desert.

[#]camping #wandering

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-14 at 00:33

There are a lot of people hurting out there, and some of them are on here requesting mutual aid.

How does one send money anonymously? I wanna help, but don't really want to put my personal info out there.

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-13 at 19:04

I recently found that many cheap AC chargers for LiFePO4 batteries don't actually trickle or float charge, even if the product listing says they do. They charge the battery to full and then shut themselves off. They must be power cycled to restart charging.

So the instrument attached to the battery (with charger connected) ran until the battery was discharged, then shut down and lost data. This is a scientific instrument in the basement that requires 12VDC even through power outages, and after the last lead acid battery died I switched to LiFePO4.

My tentative solution is to put the charger on a 7-day timer, and once or twice a week turn it on for a few hours.

[#]science #BackupPower

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-06 at 22:24

I think this is McGee Mountain, Arizona version. View from my camp spot.

[#]mountainmonday #camping

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2025-01-03 at 03:50

Dammit.

I bought a refurbished Windows (yuck!) laptop because I needed one for some ham radio stuff that doesn't run on Linux.

I started setting it up, but the keyboard didn't work correctly so I returned it for repair. Due to holidays, it took about a month to get it repaired and returned.

Now I have it back. But because it was a month and because I'm old, I have no idea what password I used. And of course, I didn't make a note.

I'll give it a couple of days, but if I can't remember the password I'll have to wipe it and reinstall windows.

This sucks.

[#]amateurradio #computer

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2024-12-28 at 15:21

2am bobcat doing the kitty stretch

[#]caturday #wildlife

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2024-12-26 at 21:19

Venting about weird computer shit:

I have a Python program which does a lot of signal processing. It takes about a half hour to run for one earthquake, I need to process about 5000.

It has been dying after running minutes to hours. It generates no error message, and when it dies it kills the interpreter back to the command prompt.

I didn't know where it was dying (or even if it was in the same place) so I added a print statement at the start of each function, just something like print('Starting GetPhaseInfo()') Since I added the print statements it has run for days without problem.

WTF??? I don't know whether to be happy that adding print statements fixed the problem, or frustrated that I don't even know what caused the problem. Both, I guess.

I'm mostly just venting, but if any of you have ideas I'm happy to hear them.

[#]python #coding #science

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2024-12-21 at 00:56

Wandering up the canyon.

[#]Hiking #Camping #Wandering

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2024-12-19 at 23:00

The pears seem particularly prickly today.

[#]Hiking #Camping #Wandering

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2024-12-11 at 02:07

Been thinking about installing DIY solar and taking my house off-grid. If I'm going to do that, it seems prudent to order the equipment now before tariffs kick in, even if the stuff sits in my barn for a couple of months.

[#]Solar #OffGrid

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2024-12-10 at 16:35

Seen on the community bulletin board.

[#]horses

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2024-12-09 at 17:10

My friend/colleague/former advisor is giving a named talk at AGU tomorrow, and it will be (I think) featuring a lot of my work. I'm sorry to miss it, but AGU wants $500 for me to be able to stream that one talk, and I just am not going to do that.

So much for member service.

[#]agu24 #geophysics

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2024-12-05 at 02:05

I'm trying to wrap my head around the details of the Winlink system, which the state emergency communications system uses. While I'm a strong believer in using whatever works best, I find it a little disturbing that the system depends on proprietary software running on a proprietary operating system. That seems a bit contrary to the spirit of amateur radio.

And I'm pretty pissed that I have to buy a Windows machine.

[#]AmateurRadio

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Written by Wandering Hermit on 2024-11-29 at 18:19

Looking for ideas from the gardeners out there:

I want to put up a visual screen so I don't see the neighbors; the screen would be about 4-5 ft high and 8-12 ft wide. I'm in a high desert environment (southern NM), and a watering system is available.

I could either put in bushes, or put up a fence and train vines to the fence. What food-bearing plants could I put there that would provide both food and a visual barrier? My first thought is a grape arbor but I'm interested in other ideas. Your thoughts?

[#]garden #gardening

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