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There was a discussion about windmills and old technology and someone made a positive comment about modern wind turbines. Being an EE I have more than a passing knowledge about wind turbines so I let the poster have it (metaphorically speaking). I was so impressed with myself I decided to post it here as well. Hope this isn’t too boring or preachy.

Here is a link to the original discussion:

http://www.beyondthefarhorizon.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1985

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I love the windmill.
Do you have any contact information or resources you can point me to? I’ve been interested for years in sustainable electrical production and a modern windmill sounds really cool.

Modern windmill (wind turbine) generators are very trendy and popular, but in reality they are a complete waste of time and resources. Issues with wind turbine generators include.

They are an uncontrolled, unreliable power source. They generate power when the wind blows, not when we need it. Our power grid is designed based upon generating power as it is consumed. Oil, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric plants all meet this requirement very well. Wind turbines do not. In order to use wind power at all you have to have an equal amount of traditional power generation capacity idling ready to take over any time the wind drops. This extra capacity costs a lot to build and costs a lot to keep on-line.

Wind turbines are unreliable mechanically and require an incredible amount of servicing. The main issue is the low speed the turbines spin at. Bearings work by maintaining a film of lubricant between the moving parts. If the shaft speed drops below a minimum speed (like when the wind is dying out) you get metal to metal contact which wears out the bearings. The only way to get any kind of useful service life is to use extremely high quality (and expensive) bearings and use a pressurized grease system. Pressurized grease systems are expensive, have maintenance issues of their own and consume power. All of this is compounded by the fact that the entire generating system is located at the top of a small, rotating tower. Not the most convenient place to make a service call. Most of the first generation wind turbines ended up burning up like this as their bearings failed and overheated.

Wind turbines kill huge quantities of birds. The best places to put wind turbines are areas that have lots of wind. These areas are also prime migrating paths for birds. A California Condor was very recently killed (as in the last week or so) by a wind turbine. Wind turbines severely threaten the continued survival of a several species of eagles. The only solution to this is to move the wind turbines out of the only places they make sense to use.

http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/releases/wind-farms-to-wipe-out-california-condor.html

Due to the above problems wind turbines are completely hopeless from an economic standpoint. The only way they can even begin to compete with any of the traditional power generation systems is when the government dumps huge subsidies into them. Given the current economic condition these subsidies are highly unlikely to continue. I predict that every major wind turbine generator field will immediately be mothballed as soon as the government subsidies propping them up are removed.

I have nothing against alternative energy sources, except they have to actually work. I think the best hope for the future is going to be a combination of large scale solar power fields in the American Southwest (New Mexico makes the most sense) combined with the widespread use of Magnesium Injection Cycle (Magic) engines. The magnesium injection cycle is a carbon neutral process that uses pure heat (concentrated solar is fine, no need to convert to electricity first) to convert magnesium oxide into elemental powdered magnesium and oxygen. When you need power you react the magnesium powder with water resulting in heat and hydrogen gas being given off. The hydrogen gas can then either be burned for more heat or used in a fuel cell to generate electrical power. The waste product of the MAGIC engine is magnesium oxide powder which would be returned to the solar power plant for recycling into pure magnesium powder at which point the trapped oxygen is released back to the atmosphere.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20060413/116078/

The magnesium injection cycle is essentially a perfect battery that permits refilling a vehicles fuel tank as fast as gasoline and is no more dangerous than gasoline. Magnesium is the 6th most common element in the Earth’s crust so it is readily available to every country (no regional shortages like we have with oil or hydro-electric power). Battery technology is the only limiting factor for alternative energy sources. Basically we need a way to generate power when it is available (the sun is shining) and then use it at some later time when we need it. Electro-chemical batteries will never meet our need for extended range and fast recharge. The Magic system can.

Marriage. A young man asked this question and got a lot of glib answers. I have given this subject some thought and here is how I answered him. After doing so I decided it would make a good blog post so here it is. This is the same advice I would have given my son when the time came.

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This is a serious question and deserves a serious answer. First some questions.

* First how old are each of you? How many relationships have the two of you had? Have either of you been married before? Experience matters in love just like everything else in life. I’m not saying a couple of kids can’t make it work, but the statistics show it is not likely.

* Are either of you trying to get away from a bad situation? If so it is fair to wonder in this case if you are Mr. Right, or Mr. Right now.

* Are either of you compulsive thrill junkies? Do either of you have impulse control issues? If so take a hard look at the last question in the list.

* How do you and her treat waitstaff at restaurants or shops? This is a very telling question about a persons true nature. Abuse of people in service is a very bad sign. Again look at the last question in the list.

* And the most important question of all, are either of you sociopaths? I am not kidding about this either. If it turns out you are both sociopaths then go for it, should make for an interesting TV movie of the week. Otherwise run fast and run far.

http://depressiond.com/sociopath-soc…lity-disorder/

Here is the deal. As long as the reason why both of you are doing this is because you really want to be with each other for the rest of your lives you can make this work. Understand that the physical infatuation will fade, probably about the time you have your first kid. Do you really like the person you are wanting to marry or does she just give you wood? If it is just wood then understand that other women are just as likely to give you wood (even after you say I Do).

You also have to realize that you are going to have problems and conflicts with anybody you team up with. The only way this can work long term is if you both make the decision that you are going to make this work no matter what. There are obvious exceptions to that: adultery, abandonment, child abuse, murder attempts (of you), etc, but barring anything like that you just get over it and keep loving her because you have made the adult, mature decision to do it.

Mental illness issues aside, The single biggest factor in determining if you will make it is having common goals. If she wants kids and you don’t, or if you want to live a quiet life in the woods and she wants Manhattan then you guys are going to have a very tough row to hoe. Expectations about money, kids, lifestyle all have to be in harmony or you are doomed to an unhappy life. You can’t know if your goals are in harmony if you haven’t had several frank discussions about them. Have the talks before you put a ring on her finger.

The biggest barrier beyond different goals is the childhood expectation of fairness, you know, someone meeting you 50%/50%. To have any chance to make it you need more like a 90%/90% (at least that is what it is going to feel like to each of you if you are doing it right). Fairness in a marriage means making sure the other person knows deep in their guts that you are willing to do anything for them and knowing in your own guts the same thing about them. Trying to keep an even score is just a way of setting yourselves up to fail.

I have been dealing with the aftermath of my son’s death over the last 5 days and have been repeatedly astounded by people’s innate goodness and God’s grace.

If you had told me at the beginning of this ordeal that I would end up feeling more loved or with a more hopeful attitude about the future then I would have cursed you bitterly.

Neighbors and friends have surrounded me in a blanket of concern, consideration and love.

My son’s best friend was with him at home group the night he died. His father is a pastor at a local church and knew my son. This man and his wife have been with us almost continuously over this week feeding both our spirits and our bodies. I am so bless this man has agreed to be my voice at the memorial service today.

An old friend drove from Greenville SC to Columbus OH on Saturday. He spent an hour talking with me and my family. He had obviously given this a tremendous amount of thought on his drive up and he is very much a man after God’s heart. He spoke truths into our hearts that we needed to hear, then got back in his car and drove home. He was willing to drive 1000 miles in order to be able to spend an hour ministering to us.

Someone I only know from an on-line discussion group sent dinner to me and my family from the state of Delaware.

Baskets of delicious food have been left on our doorstep every day. I don’t even know who from most of the time. Thank you all.

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My daughter:

Once I had worked past the shock of my son’s death my concern turned naturally to my 13 year old daughter. She is 5’9” tall and is very mature in her interests (as reflects someone who spends lots of time around an intelligent 19 old brother). As a result she fits in very poorly in school (purple monkey comes to mind). The kids at her school have been very cruel to her and she has had emotional issues in the past including one event involving suicidal threats (she didn’t just say she was going to kill herself, she described how). Her only friend in Ohio is my son. They have been inseparable all of her life. The age gap was great enough that they were never rivals and Martin has always gotten great joy in entertaining her and making her laugh.

My daughter has been in counselling and is more stable and happier now, but her only real friend is now dead of suicide and the summer recess is coming. Both my wife and I work outside of the home which was fine as long as my son was there to be with my daughter, but now we are both very concerned.

All of this led me to the realization that I had to do something about this situation while I still had a daughter. I have very good friends in South Carolina who would welcome me back with open arms, however my family is in Arizona both know and love Amanda.

The only solution that makes sense to me is return home to Arizona. I therefore decided to resign my position effective the end of the school year. I love my job, but compared to my daughter it is less than insignificant.

I stopped by work yesterday morning to inform my boss of my decision to leave and to let him know that I would be willing to do whatever I could to support my current development projects. My boss was wonderful. His response was “how could you do anything else, now how can we help you keep your job?”

It was like God was waiting for me to step out in faith so he he could overwhelm me with his provision and concern. I got home from informing my boss of my decision to leave and that afternoon a USMC sergeant stopped to have me sign some paperwork related to Martin’s death. He explained what would happen next and then totally flabergasted me and my wife when he revealed that my son had signed up for the maximum life insurance possible: $400,000.

That absolutely floored me. I expected some pittance because my son is 19 and has no dependents. This much money is a life changing event. I will now be able to retire and pursue my plans of going into teaching 10 years early. I have long wanted to teach engineering and science classes to undergrads. I now have the freedom to do so. This is a huge blessing to me from my son.

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More grace. In January I had a small stroke. It caused me to lose 25% of my vision (a wedge from 12:00 to 3:00). Since the stroke I have also been experiencing 2 debilitating migraine headaches a week. It is so bad I have been wearing sunglasses pretty much any time I am outside the house.

Yesterday a friend asked me how my migraines have been and in surprise I reported none! I shrugged this off at the time. This morning while I was getting dressed I noticed that I was seeing things up in the dead zone.

If I was a religious man (which I am), then I could say this is a divine healing.

If I was a scientist (which I am), then I would say that the stress and intense emotion of the last 5 days caused the plugged artery in my head to open up.

Either way I am very glad to have one less thing going on to worry about.

A fact about my son’s death became known to me yesterday and I finally comprehended the truth about his motivation last night. I now understand what he was thinking and why he thought he needed to do what he did.

Martin was not an unfeeling person. He was in pain and sought an end to it. Sadly he chose a permanent solution for a temporary problem. I am very proud of everything my son was and did and I will cherish his memory for as long as I live. He died as he lived, with honor.

It has been two days now almost exactly since I found out my son was dead.

I have cried endless, racking tears of despair and loss.

I have questioned every aspect of my life and found it wanting.

At first I was just incredulous. It was literally unbelievable. Martin was poised on the brink of becoming. His body was perfect and beautiful. His mind razor sharp. On his military entrance tests he scored a perfect 99% (the highest possible score in every category). Martin has always been very well mannered and polite. People have complemented his behavior to me on many occasions all throughout his life.

He was successful in the USMC and liked it. He was working diligently on homework and had excellent grades in school. He seemed in all ways to be in the best of spirits, everything was going his way.

Martin did not exhibit any of the signs of an impending suicide. I say that not just as a father, but my wife is mobilizing to go to Afghanistan (she is shipping to Ft Bennings at the end of April) and had just completed a suicide prevention class. Even looking back with hindsight there are no signs we can point to and say, “yes he was depressed, or …”

One curious thing that has happened during the last 48 hours. I didn’t want anyone to miss the chance to say goodbye to Martin so I have directly notified at least 2 dozen people about Martin’s death. Each case followed the exact same pattern.

First is questioning? Are you joking.
Then horrified disbelief as they realize I am serious.
Then even more horrified disbelief when I tell them it was a suicide.
Next come the recriminations and guilt.

Breaking this news to others means that each time it is like I am finding out myself for the first time, over and over again. Each time I am overwhelmed anew with the horror and the bitter grief of it.

And each time I go through this I accept the reality of it more and more. I no longer need to see his body to believe he is dead. I no longer wonder if this is all some elaborate hoax and if he is going to jump out of a closet and say “Surprise!” (no matter how much I fervently pray that this is the truth). I am gradually coming to acceptance of what has happened even as I bitterly regret that it happened.

Some of his school friends came by today. They wanted to visit the lake where he ended himself (200 yards from my home). I met them there and left them to grieve in their own way. Once they had resolved whatever they could there I invited them up to the house. I said “a shared joy is magnified and a shared pain is lightened, so let’s go share some joy.” They played boisterous video games and ate and drank the way teenagers are supposed to do. It felt good to hear laughter sound out inside my house again and to see innocent faces relaxed from the unnatural grief caused by my son’s passing.

Martin burned very brightly in his short life and I am so glad he was a part of my life. Even with all the pain I am in now, I much prefer that pain to never having known him.

Memories:

I remember holding him on one arm and feeding him minutes after he was born.

I remember when he was 1 year old and had problems with gas. He was unable to go to sleep unless I held him in my arms and rocked him back and forth. I stood over his crib and rocked him to sleep every night for over a year.

I remember his first song. I was changing his diaper one morning (he must have been around 2-1/2. He was laying back in the changing station and was just happy as could be. While I was changing him, he started singing “twinkle twinkle little star” to me. That is a moment I will remember till the day I die.

I remember him doing “dismounts” from his swing. He was always very gifted physically. He would swing as high as he could and twist and turn as he was falling landing with his legs crossed, or one arm up like holding an object. He called his best one “Chinese Dragon Drinking Tea.”

I remember 100’s of workouts as he determinedly turned his body into a true physical specimen.

He was truly beautiful in both body and spirit and all who knew him recognized this and was drawn to it. Martin was honorable and never used his considerable powers of charm and persuasion to take advantage of someone. He could have had any girl he wanted, but I am firmly convinced that he died a virgin, by his own choice. Mostly because his focus on what he was trying to accomplish was so great that he was unwilling to risk doing anything to compromise it. Martin was a truly exceptional individual and I feel both privileged and humbled to have known him.

All that Martin was and ever was going to be is now finished and done. I am going to memorialize my son on Wednesday, at 3:00 PM, March 13 at the Innis Wood Metro Gardens in Westerville OH. Anyone who is able and feels the need is welcome to come.

Peace to you all and may God bless your and your families.

Phil

Martin Spencer Ouellette

Born: September 7, 1993

Always a sweet, happy kid.

Warrior Dash 2011

Senior Prom 2012

Graduation from High School 2012.

Vacation summer of 2012, right before going to boot camp.

Graduated from Marine Corp Recuit Training at Parris Island September 14th 2012 

Graduated from SOI December 7th 2012. Received a meritorious promotion while at SOI.

Started drilling with Lima Company 3/25, 4th Marine division December 8th 2012

Started attending college January 14, 2013. Still kept a sense of whimsy and wonder.

Died by his own hand March 7, 2013

Let them know you love them every day you have them.

I have an infinity of regrets, but being his father is not one of them.

http://www.glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1475917

I was reading one of my favorite gun forums and somebody I respect a lot asked the title question, specifically as related to what you do for a living. A lot of responses were trite, but some of them were interesting. I posted the below personal information and realized it is very easy to drift through life without examining exactly who and what you are. Are you living your dream or just day dreaming? Here is my back story.

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It all started with Heinlein. You can’t read his stories without wanting to be an engineer who can actually make dreams into reality.

I was the typical smart kid that never had to work for grades. Skated through high school without doing any real homework and never learned how to work. Got to college and found out that high intelligence and good test taking skills are not enough. Failed hard and dropped out.

Got a job fixing scales for a living. Dirty and hard work, but at least I had to think. I gradually worked my way into process engineering, then technical support/tech writing. Turned 30 and realized I was never going to do what I wanted without a sheepskin. Took an EE program at night while working days full time. I tested out of every class I could. Employer paid for tuition as long as I got Bs or better. I quickly found out that if I put enough work into a class to get a B then an A took almost no additional work. After two years of straight As I basically made the decision to refuse to give up my perfect GPA. I graduated Summa 4-1/2 years after I started with a 4.0 GPA. Employer offered me the chance to put that degree to work and I never looked back.

Now I design circuit boards (schematic level) and write the firmware to run them. I have a number of patents and love what I am doing. I am respected at work and people from around the world ask me to solve tough problems and answer difficult questions. I have been working in the scale industry for 35 years now and figure I will retire from it. I never got rich, but I am comfortable and get to do interesting work. I am happy with my life.

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How about you? Anybody want to share how you got where you are today?

I am a man without a party.  My beliefs mean that I agree with some of what the progressive liberals espouse and also agree with some of what conservatives believe.  This makes me uncomfortable in any setting that contains strong believers of any persuasion.

For example I am a strong proponent of civil liberties, this includes the right for consenting adults to do pretty much anything they want that doesn’t hurt someone else.  That includes sex, drugs etc.  As you can imagine this makes me unwilling to be too open about my views when around friends who are religious conservatives or cops.

At the same time I am very much against gun control that inhibits the rights of law-abiding citizens to own and carry guns (actually it is exactly the same as my positions on social issues, just applied to guns).  As you can imagine this is not popular with my liberal friends.

There was a thread on Glock Talk recently that perfectly illustrates my dilemma.  

http://www.glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=19963226&posted=1#post19963226

The title of the thread is “When to give up on people?” and the subject was basically about when do you stop arguing with people and just push your “He’s an idiot” button.  I find this a very interesting subject because I constantly find myself in the situation where I very much want to press that button on people I know are not idiots in general.  I  spent quite a bit of time thinking about this and posted a long, involved comment about how we think and argue.  

This got me thinking that this is a subject that everybody has to deal with at some level and led to me creating this blog.  I hope to expand on this and other subjects in the future and welcome your thoughts and comments on the subject.  

Everybody always seems so sure of themselves and their opinions, but I can’t be the only person struggling with this.  Here is the post I made in answer to the question “When to give up on people”.  Let me know what you think about it.  I have strong beliefs of my own, but I am an engineer and at least like to think that I value facts and have critical thinking skills.  

This post was made on a conservative, gun positive discussion forum so the argument is made from that viewpoint, but please don’t be put off by that.  I honestly want people of all viewpoints to tell me what they think.  Does the underlying issue (attitudes, not guns) resonate with anyone else?

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I don’t try to convert people of different viewpoints. What I try to do is confound their expectations. I want to show them that even through we disagree I am not an unthinking idiot. 

People with strong viewpoints (that includes us) tend to view people with different viewpoints as being unthinking and shallow (as exhibited by the majority of posts in this thread). The truth is very different. Passionate people on all sides of an argument believe very strongly that the facts and logic are on their side and that people with different viewpoints are either stupid, unreasoning or dishonest.

Most people hold beliefs for non-rational reasons. We use reason and logic to explain our beliefs, but reason and logic will very rarely cause us to change them. How our parents thought probably has more to do with how we view the world than the objective facts of the matter.

I just recently saw a study that showed that people use logic in arguments to convince others, but don’t use it when examining facts as related to their own beliefs. I have seen this both in people I disagree with and people I agree with. It seems like a truthful observation to me.

When I get in a discussion with someone of very differing viewpoints I know the odds of either of us convincing the other is about zero. Instead what I try to do is show openness to logic and facts no matter what the source is. I recently had a heated argument with a lib about gun control (a very hot button topic for both of us) and made a point of stating that I think the media is biased about guns. He started to discuss Fox negatively and I agreed that Fox was also biased, just with different biases. That put him back for a second. I think he was expecting me to defend Fox which would then let him attack my critical faculties. The point I was making is that everybody and everything is biased on just about all subjects and you have to listen to a broad spectrum of sources to begin to approach a comprehensive understanding of any subject. That is why I listen to NPR, the BBC and conservative talk radio.

In my observation media bias is more about what is chosen to talk about rather than out and out lying (outright lying tends to be detected eventually and blow up in your face). On the subject of gun control, the mainstream media tends to talk only about the bad things that happen with guns and ignore any positive uses of guns. The conservative media tends to do the opposite. The truth is bad (and crazy) people tend to do bad things with guns much more often than good people do. 

I would like bad people (as defined by unlawful acts) to have a harder time getting guns. Libs agree with this position. Where we differ is on how you can best accomplish this. Libs think that if we make it hard for everybody to get a gun that bad people will be disarmed as well and since some good people do bad things with guns nobody (except the government) can be trusted with guns. Libs think if we can just get rid of every gun then the problem is solved (like that is even possible), this is similar to conservative thinking that if we could just get rid of drugs people wouldn’t be addicts (again like that could ever happen).

I tend to the opposite position which is that bad people are not worried about breaking the law (that is why they are called criminals) and good people try to obey the law (that is why they are called law-abiding people). As a result of these two trends, laws that restrict access to guns for everyone tend to concentrate guns in the hands of criminals. Since I am a good person I want law-abiding citizens to have free access to guns so they are not handicapped in dealing with bad people who are going to have guns, laws or no laws. In addition I don’t trust the government any farther than I can throw them and absolutely refuse to give them a monopoly on the use of lethal force. The only reason our government hasn’t been worse is because they know they don’t have a monopoly on force and if they go too far that we are likely to shoot back.

I think my position on gun control is a rational position in full agreement with the objective facts as we know them. Since rational logic and facts don’t really change peoples beliefs I don’t know if this is because of how I was raised or because I am just an exceptionally open minded person. I hate to say it, but I suspect that if I was raised by libs in a liberal environment I would probably be on the other side of this argument (God that would suck).

We have to give each other respect during an argument and not assume the other is an idiot, just because they ignore facts and logic. We do it too, just on other subjects like the drug war and certain social issues.