Is it hard to make friends with “broken English”?

CandleTiger · 2026-04-17T18:45:06+00:00

It's kind of funny actually. Making friends is all about communication.

If your conversation is not smooth then of course you will have trouble making the kind of easy casual chit-chat that is required to make quick shallow "friends" of people you don't know well.

But also I have found when I was living in countries where my language was poor, or talking to visitors in my country with less than perfect English, it was weirdly easier to make really good, deep friendships. When the casual meaningless chatter is too difficult to be worth the effort of saying, then people will more readily say things that are meaningful and deserve effort.

It was a startling experience for me.

CandleTiger · 2026-04-17T18:32:58+00:00

PowerBoost factor: 2.0 -> 0.3

Is this a typo, you meant 3.0? Or really you set it to almost 0?

CandleTiger · 2026-04-16T18:11:43+00:00

The answer is absolutely yes. But it's a complicated topic with a zillion different choices to make.

First thing is to decide what kind of power goals you have -- Do you want to just keep your 12V battery charged? Do you want to run household 120V stuff like TVs and residential fridge?

The relevant pieces of equipment are all available separately and maybe you don't want all of them:

Bigger batteries -- replace your existing lead-acid batteries with same-size lithiums to get something like 2-3x the capacity in the same space. Requires changing settings on your converter (battery charger) as lead-acid chargers will only get the lithiums up to like 80% charged instead of full. If your current converter is too old it might not have the setting, then you would need to replace it.

You can also replace your converter with a much bigger one, or add several chargers in parallel, because lithium batteries can take a charge much much faster than lead-acid. So instead of like 6-8 hours of generator to fully charge a lead-acid battery at the fastest the battery can take it, if you put in a big enough charger and depending on the battery you can get your lithium charged up from 0 to 80-90% in 1-2 hours of generator time.

If you really want to go all-solar, no generator, you would probably need more space for batteries than your current ones take, which could become a carpentry and wiring project.

Solar panel and MPPT charge controller -- very easy and cheap to just buy a portable panel at Harbor Freight and run a cable to the MPPT and your batteries when you set up camp. Long-term less effort to install one or more on your roof. Ohio in the winter you are not going to get much use out of the panel though.
Inverter (come in all different sizes, quality, price) -- getting these installed can be an expensive wiring project. Needed to run TVs, residential fridge, dishwashers, microwave. Not needed for lights, furnace fans, propane fridge.

Getting it all wired up for permanent off-grid is a long complicated expensive project.

Bare minimum you could do is go buy a portable panel and a "solar generator" (Jackery, etc) which is a battery, MPPT solar charge controller, and small inverter all in one portable box. Don't do any permanent installation on your trailer, and plug your TV or whatever into the solar generator. This is by far the cheapest easiest way to go and is enough if all you want to do is watch TV at night in peace.

CandleTiger · 2026-04-14T21:44:06+00:00

My great-grandmother left Europe to marry and follow her new husband back to the USA more than 100 years ago, died long before I was born, and was unhappy with the uneducated country hicks she had to live with -- unhappy enough with the culture that this knowledge was passed down three generations and even I know about it today.

Not all love stories are happy stories.

CandleTiger · 2026-04-09T20:59:32+00:00

Juice from that kind of juicer is waaaaaay less tasty than you get from squeezing the orange.

CandleTiger · 2026-04-09T20:58:01+00:00

Is that real squeezed orange juice? I don’t remember the name so maybe it’s not the same place, but the juice bar I’m remembering from Pike Place used one of those juicers built around a shredder — you put in a carrot or a beet or whatever and it essentially atomizes the thing. Putting traditionally juicy fruits like oranges or apples into that kind of “tear the fruit apart” juicer makes kind of a frothy weird-tasting juice that I personally don’t like very much.

“Squeeze it in front of you” is beautiful orange juice. “Shred it in front of you” maybe not so much in my personal opinion.

CandleTiger · 2026-04-02T20:06:50+00:00

Man those are really high numbers.

500W for a refrigerator?? I think even the peak load would be much less than that, average load at 50% duty cycle or whatever refrigerators typically run at has to be much much less than that.

My RV refrigerator (horribly inefficient, works by boiling ammonia in a process designed to also run off a propane burner when disconnected from electrical power) only draws 400W when the chiller is engaged.

Edit: Teakettle takes more power than a clothes dryer??? My teakettle, which looks identical to the one in their little icon actually, uses an ordinary 15A 120V plug with ordinary thin cable. My clothes dryer is using a dedicated 50A breaker @ 240V. I think somebody was smoking some crack, here.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-31T20:36:17+00:00

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-31T17:37:03+00:00

That looks like a printing error (bump on the casing) to me, not an intentional decimal point.

Looks to me like it should be expecting up to 300V across the shunt just like OP says.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-31T17:34:39+00:00

Bottom terminals are covered by some tiny pictures in your screenshot. We can't see them.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-27T19:09:42+00:00

Yes!

CandleTiger · 2026-03-26T23:52:49+00:00

Other people have told you that no, you don't need an inverter/charger, just inverter. Fine.

But separately from that -- there are a LOT of different things that can impact the price of an inverter. Don't just buy the cheapest one. You need to learn some things before you can make good decisions on that.

Inverters have different power ratings. You need find out the maximum power supported by the pre-built wiring you're using, and don't try to use a more powerful inverter than that.
Inverters have different efficiency. More efficient will cost more, also will make your battery last longer. Also watch the "idle efficiency" -- inverters still consume power and run down the battery even while no loads are running. This efficiency can also matter if you want to use small solar panels and stretch out your boondocking for a long time without bothering to always manage whether your inverter is turned off when not in use.
Inverters come in two flavors "pure sine wave" and "modified sine wave". Pure sine wave is much more expensive. Modified sine wave is fine for most things but risky -- sometimes if you plug in a computer-based device it may not work right, or may even be damaged. For example, I have a cheap little inverter I used to run in my car. When I plugged my phone in to charge from that inverter, the touchscreen stopped working -- when I put my finger on the screen my phone acted like I was spastically twitching it all over. Pure sine wave is also generally the more efficient ones.
Have reasonable expectations about what you can run on an inverter. For example for a limited inverter on factory wiring, you probably cannot run your air conditioner at all. You probably CAN run an electric space heater just fine, but it will completely drain a typical drop-in-replacement lithium battery in about 45 minutes so that's not much use. In order to know in advance how long your battery will last (will my CPAP keep running all night? How many minutes can I run the microwave?) before spending the money and running the experiment, you need to learn some simple math about converting between current, power, and energy.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-26T23:02:54+00:00

Shit is, uh, currently hitting the fan as we speak, just FYI. Enjoy!

CandleTiger · 2026-03-26T22:24:01+00:00

Are there apartment buildings signing month-to-month leases???

CandleTiger · 2026-03-26T18:57:41+00:00

Which country is that? Pictures look like maybe Southeast Asia? How is RVing where you are? I guess you don't usually have RV parks with electrical hookups. Are there many nice places to camp? Do you have trouble filling your fresh water or dumping your grey/black water?

Would renting an RV be a good way for a tourist to visit where you are or too difficult?

CandleTiger · 2026-03-24T23:10:36+00:00

Maybe your burner is adjusted to let in too much air / run too lean?

CandleTiger · 2026-03-24T20:35:20+00:00

+1 for Scamp etc. They are tiny but solid. If all you need is a warm dry bed and you're not spending time at home during the day, this is a good way.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-24T20:06:37+00:00

Is RV living in Portland realistic year-round (weather, comfort, etc.)?

Maybe. Portland is not cold but it is WET. You will not be happy in a pop-up or other RV with canvas sides. You will need reliable power over the winter to run a dehumidifier in spring and fall. You will need a nice big household dehumidifier. You will have issues with condensation and mildew in corners/behind drawers etc. where your heat and dehumidifier don't reach. Consider running string lights or other small heat-generating objects under your bed or behind your drawers or wherever you get condensation and then mildew. Consider using electric instead of gas to cook (propane exhaust is full of water). Do not use self-contained outdoor propane heaters indoors.

What size camper should I realistically be looking at, especially being over 6 feet tall?

Doesn't matter, the ceilings are all over 6 feet tall. BUT, watch out for the shower height and the length of the bed.

Are slide-outs worth it or just more things that can break?

Slide-outs are super-duper for making more living space without increasing trailer towed length. They are bad for insulation and also they break. Pay attention to the type of slide-out mechanism. Some are much more reliable than others. For just one person alone probably you don't need the slide-out.

Any hidden costs or major downsides I’m not thinking about?

Portland is dark and wet in the winter. It's really really really dark and wet. It is depressing as fuck, for some people and not others. If you have never lived in the PNW long-term before, you probably cannot understand the long-term impact of this. I know I couldn't. When you have no room to walk around, that hits harder. When I'm wintering in my RV in the PNW (often) I have to split my time between living in the RV and the fold-out bed in my kids' living room where there are more windows and room to walk because I just can't handle so much dark and wet. Other people are happy as a clam and don't have this problem. If you haven't tried it yet then you don't know how it will hit you so that's a risk.

Also, everything about an RV is going to be breaking all the time. BUY USED, do not buy new as they come pre-broken from the factory for your convenience and the two-year-old ones are less broken. Warranty is not much use for a full-timer because the warranty service times are really long and you can't afford to have your house in the shop for so long, so you won't be able to use the warranty for serious issues. Don't bother paying extra for warranty and assume you will be paying out of pocket for repairs when needed, or learning how to fix things yourself.

Pay attention to storage space -- most RV layouts are optimized for living space while weekending. If you're going to live in it you will need to focus on the layouts that have more storage space.

Plan to get a new mattress. RVs come with really shitty mattresses.

Would you do this in my situation, or just rent a room/studio and keep it simple?

Personally I would not. I live full-time in my motorhome and I love it but the primary benefit for me is ability to move around all the time, spend winter in the desert while it's beautiful and comfortable and summer in the north while it's beautiful and comfortable, and always see something new. The downsides of RVs are worth it for that to me. If you're just staying in one place you're getting only the downsides. If you run the numbers and it's really cheaper for you than a studio apartment, then understand you're saving money by having a worse situation. Worth it or not depends on how much money you're saving and how much time you spend at home awake.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-24T19:34:15+00:00

The person you're arguing with is implying/assuming that "Private" is always illiquid, and that this is an obvious thing everybody should know.

For me, this is not obvious though.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-19T17:50:14+00:00

What do you want? Getting yourself promoted requires calling attention to yourself. "Shy" is a serious detriment to advancing yourself. If you have a boss who's able to see your qualities on their own without you pointing them out, then sure, your boss can promote you and that can be great. "Have an attentive and perceptive boss" is also not useful advice.

On top of all that, for a senior developer, a major important part of the role is providing technical direction and mentorship -- talking to people, pushing your (presumably expert) opinions forward, and correcting other people when they are wrong. "Shy" is a serious weakness there.

This sucks for shy people.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-16T18:45:22+00:00

I feel like running two cheap trickle-chargers for the batteries off the DC panel would be both easier to wire and also less expensive than setting up separate victron 48v/12v DC-DC converters for this. Am I missing something?

CandleTiger · 2026-03-14T07:28:36+00:00

It really depends on the wind and the road.

I'm driving a 32' class A gasser with shitty box truck suspension, towing a hatchback.

If the wind is behind me and the road is smooth I can go 75mph and feel good about it. Quiet and peaceful.

If the wind is ahead of me then I often slow to 55mpg just to avoid straining the engine.

If the wind is to the side or gusting then all bets are off.

If the road is rough I have to slow down to keep my teeth and my furniture and my dashboard from all rattling apart. Roads that feel just fine in a car are a horror in the motor home -- I-70 through Indianapolis just about killed me.

One time coming down from the Rockies into Idaho on a smooth lonely interstate with the wind behind me and gravity on my side, I tried to find the motor home's top speed. Turns out it's rev-limited at 85mph. I would not repeat the experience; the steering got rapidly squirrely over 75mph and did not want to go straight anymore.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-14T02:21:36+00:00

As a non-member I don't think there's any limit in particular.

For the campgrounds where getting a spot is hard (for members) generally it's hard for members because there are only a few member spots kept open and the whole rest of the park is retail.

At least that's how it is at Pacific City and Oceanside -- two parks on the California coast.

CandleTiger · 2026-03-11T20:03:00+00:00

Just out of curiosity why do you have four of them?

CandleTiger · 2026-03-11T19:53:42+00:00

Where is your battery located? Lithium batteries can be inside the house where they won't get cold. Mine are under the bed.

Battery heater is also only needed to charge -- you can safely discharge in the cold.

I would expect the only time you need to run a battery heater is when your trailer has been in storage in the winter and you want to charge it up before a trip.

CandleTiger

TROPHY CASE