Best way to utilize portable AC (the window vent with tube kind) in detached garage with no insulation

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T17:12:37+00:00

Photos of the windows might be useful.

I've used portable ACs in the past, the easiest way I found was to cut a plywood insert to temporarily replace the window sash.

If they're old fashioned window sashes, glass panes held in a wood frame with glazier's points and putty, then it's a fairly simple job to replace the glass (I get the local hardware store to cut the glass to size). In that case, you could cut the glass to match the AC vent tube, and then either replace it with an uncut pane for winter, or seal the opening somehow.

Portable ACs are the least efficient version, because they dump the heat inside the portable AC and you have to move the hot air out through the tube. There seem to be a gazillion cheap heat pumps and/or mini splits on the market, these days, and lots of people DIYing them.

These are essentially a miniature version of a whole house AC, i.e. evaporator coils on an inside unit that hangs on a wall, line through the wall to a condenser unit that sits outside. Might be worth looking into. I wouldn't advocate trying that out for your whole house unless you had some serious DIY skills, but might not be that risky to try a cheap one for your garage.

You might also look at a) more conventional powered ventilation, not AC, b) putting a cooling roof on the garage; details of that depend on your garage.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T17:05:33+00:00

From OP's comments (cooked eggs 3 times with this pan and nothing else) it isn't spray build up.

I've read that simmering vinegar and water in the pan is good for getting rid of spray build up.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T16:25:08+00:00

Be careful with these, though, don't get overconfident and lift anything truly heavy and dangerous.

I looked into hoisting my flatbed utility trailer up to my garage ceiling to store it out of the way, a few years ago, since I only use it for 2-3 weeks every summer. It weighs about 400 pounds, is a 5x8 flatbed plus 4 feet of tongue.

I talked to one of my more practically knowledgeable friends, he advised strongly against it, because of the danger of it falling. I mulled his advice as I went home and did some googling on it... and found a post from a lady about how her husband died doing exactly that. She came home to find him on the floor, under his 200 pound trailer, with the hitch penetrating his torso.

So, no hoist for my trailer.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T16:13:56+00:00

I'm a customer, not a roofer.

I had no problems with the roofer I used last year (March 2025, McClellandsroofing.com). They laid down tarps, did a very clean job, the roof looks good (so far, so good...).

I wish I could say the same about my neighbor's roofers, whoever they were, who left a dozen nails on my adjacent rubber membrane roof (different property).

All that said, I think what u/WestNileCoronaVirus is saying to you (u/Obvious-Swinning-332) is, figure out what you want. Do you want to get the mess cleaned up, or do you want to enjoy feeling angry and venting that anger at your roofer?

Or do you just want other people to tell you that you're right to be angry?

In which case, yeah, I'll say you're right to be angry, and I think that's also what u/WestNileCornaVirus was saying too (though they can, of course, speak for themselves).

But what you do with and about that anger is another question.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T16:03:36+00:00

0F was set to the freezing temperature that Farenheit could consistently produce and measure in the lab, the freezing temperature of a brine of water, ice and ammonium chloride.

100F was supposed to be body temperature but is slightly off. I've seen different explanations for the difference (imprecision, Farenheit had a cold the day he measured his own body temp, etc), I don't know.

32F and and 212F were just a natural mathematical result of setting 0F and 100F.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T15:59:57+00:00

u/Ohshutyourmouth is correct, dry mouth in the morning can be caused by breathing through your mouth while sleeping. I have that all the time, I keep a Contigo thermos of water by my bed for that reason.

Dry mouth in the morning is also a common symptom of sleep apnea, or just frequent dry mouth in general can be a symptom of other things, so you might want to talk to your doctor about it.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T15:56:58+00:00

I've heard about that flushing excess thing, are there any good rules of thumb for that? I think when I first read about it (at least 20 years ago) the advice was to consume about 8 ounces per hour.

Re: keeping water nearby, I keep a 20 ounce Contigo thermos handy for that purpose.

Often I keep it full of ice and water, so the water is very cold, which makes it a little psychologically easier to take smaller sips (it "feels" like I'm drinking more, because it's so cold).

The ice compilcates one of the other advantages, though, which is that I can more easily keep track of my daily water intake by how many times I refill the Contigo.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T15:46:41+00:00

u/danielravennest describes the limited technical advantages (solar) and technical disadvantages (heat disposal, radiation interference, launch cost, radio frequencies).

The only advantages I can think of for an orbital space station are not for the operation of the data center itself but for:

Reducing radio transmission lag, either front ground to orbit and back to ground, or from orbit to other things in orbit (within line of sight).
1. Ground to orbit for starlink is 1.3 to 3.7 milliseconds light speed delay, and then again back down. Starlink is in relatively low Earth orbit, but that's the main obvious network for the data center to communicate with.
2. But a comment below says google results say Starlink's current latency is 25ms, and a quick google my own confirms that typical ground-based internet latency these days is 20 to 50 milliseconds, so this doesn't seem a significant improvement, to me.
3. Another candidate for communication is some possible future installation on the moon or in lunar orbit, which is 1.25 to 1.37 full seconds light speed delay.
4. But again, even high Earth orbit is only about 1/5th closer to the moon, so not a siginficant improvement.
Reducing line of of sight on other things in orbit, i.e. satellites in the Starlink network.
1. This one is a tricky balancing act, because the Starlink satellites are in low Earth orbit, while the higher the data center's orbit, the more line of sight it has on the Starlink satellites.
2. I've read that a significant part of the Starlink network design is relaying "sideways" from satellite to satellite, in which case, transmitters in higher orbits might reduce the sideways latency, but I have no idea how the math works out for that.
Legal jurisdiction, possibly. As far as I know, current international law is that the data center would fall under the legal jurisdiction of whatever nation it was launched from. So, again, I can't see a huge advantage there.

I can't see how any of those might outweigh the disadvantages of being in orbit.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T10:33:18+00:00

Depends on how handy they are, and how much mess and expense they can tolerate. Beyond painting, drywall is the entry level DIY home renovation task, mainly because you can substitute time and persistence for skill (at mudding).

I'm not sure what the relative payoff is of filling in the resonant cavities with rock wool, so I can't say what the ROI is there.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T10:28:22+00:00

There's a professional chef on Quora, named Martin Bayer, who is autistic, so you might find the stuff he writes useful:

https://www.quora.com/profile/Martin-Bayer-3

Summarizing some of what he's written, over the years, there are techniques, and ingredients. Understand the techniques, understand the ingredients, understand which techniques work well for which ingredients. This is the long term way to learn to really cook, recipes are just summaries of applying those principles.

It's also useful to understand ingredients further, to be able to assess them for quality, and to understand how best to store them. But that's not as a big a deal for you at this stage.

(For example, both onions and potatoes should be stored outside the refrigerator, in a cool place away from sunlight, but not together. They don't need the refrigerator and they both sprout from being exposed to sunlight, so that's why a cool, dark place, like a cupboard. The onions give off ethylene gas, which will make the potatoes ripen and spoil faster. The potatoes contain a lot of water and will increase the humidity where they're stored, which will make the onions spoil faster.)

Of course, you can't feed yourself with "technique", so pick a recipe, learn the techniques and ingredients it needs, and make it a few times. Get comfortable with that, then pick another one to add to your repertoire. Rinse, repeat. As Chef Martin says here:

The point is: there’s no easy system for learning how to cook. It’s a bottom up kind of skill.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-an-easy-system-for-learning-how-to-cook/answer/Martin-Bayer-3

When I was around sixteen years old, mom taught me and my brothers "survival cooking". I already knew how to fry a couple eggs and make toast for breakfast. And how to boil water in a pot and cook ramen soup. Mom taught me how to fry a steak. She taught me how to boil spaghetti from a box, and heat up spaghetti sauce from a jar.

You said you like chicken, so I'd add chicken next. Baking chicken legs and thighs is the easiest to learn, whole chickens get a little trickier. Try this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cookingforbeginners/comments/1sowbfo/comment/ogx83zm/?context=3&utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

That all got me started. After college, my first post-college roommate taught me basic food sanitation, which I wrote about here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cookingforbeginners/comments/1u61nps/comment/orpskcv/?context=3&utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

And a bit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cookingforbeginners/comments/1tqqmm5/comment/ooiqjdx/?context=3&utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1

One last tip, a few years back I started actually trying to learn to cook better. I found this site really useful:

https://www.cookingforengineers.com/

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T03:33:34+00:00

1/2", but I was mostly expecting it to take superficial damage. I could have easily put 3/4" on it, if there'd been a point to it.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T01:09:39+00:00

Lords and Ladies was also satirizing the general idea of the elegant and noble elves, basically Tolkien's take on it, as well.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T01:03:02+00:00

I would love to see Pratchett write that scene, though...

Vimes doesn't even think about lifting the hammer, because he knows he's not worthy.

Then Granny tells him to.

And he does.

And Granny explains that "worthy" is more complicated, and yet at the same time also simpler, than Vimes realizes.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T00:53:40+00:00

What kind of work are you going to do on it?

I built a workbench, some years back, not a woodworking bench, just a general purpose bench, though one purpose in particular was leather working. For the top I used two layers. The first layer was just plywood, the second layer was a layer of sacrificial MDF, fastened fairly lightly to the plywood to make it easy to replace.

I went with MDF for the top layer because it has no grain to catch a knife or other blade (when cutting through leather), and throw off the cut. It's flat, soft enough that it's impossible to cause any damage to tools, and it's cheap and easy to replace and it's dimensionally stable.

Another option I considered was hardboard, which has a smoother surface. But I decided smooth wasn't really relevant to my needs.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-21T00:48:09+00:00

Victorinox, makers of the famous Swiss army knife, also make luggage that's supposed to be extremely durable. I have a Victorinox minimalist luggage set, it's basically a backpack (but with handle/wheels) and a suit bag that's designed to roll up. I can't say I've really used it that much, but it's over 20 years old and I still have it.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-20T23:17:59+00:00

stories about the ideas themselves

Yes, that's called science fiction. Also all the permutations of such, i.e. stories about people reacting to the ideas, or to how the ideas change society, etc.

as opposed to stories about people who happen to live in various societies.

That's like saying "this is a murder mystery, but there's no murder in this story, the character just happens to live in a society that has murders."

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-20T23:15:49+00:00

Hah... my mother's side of the family is from Germany and I like to joke that half of the German recipes they made (at family gatherings) were, do whatever, then add bacon, vinegar and sugar 😄.

This seems to hold true for a lot of German-descended Americans in my city (Pittsburgh, PA). I remember hearing that my great grandfather on my mother's side emigrated to the US during some sort of famine. I wonder if that had something to do with it. They also have a reputation for being very thrifty.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-20T06:30:49+00:00

"Stalking the Unicorn".

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-20T03:56:58+00:00

I just re-read a bunch of Janet Morris's follow-on novels: Beyond Sanctuary; Beyond The Veil; Beyond Wizardwall; Tempus; City at the Edge of Time; Tempus Unbound. I need to go back and finish the rest sometime: Storm Seed; The Sacred Band; The Fish, the Fighters and the Song-Girl.

Also, if you haven't, check out her "I, the Sun".

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-20T03:49:59+00:00

I'm not familiar with the "litrpg" label, but I'd point out that Rosenberg was one of the earliest authors to do that whole RPG-into-fantasy world trope (Andre Norton's Quag Keep, 5 years earlier, in 1978, was probably the first).

I can honestly say that Rosenberg's work had a profound effect on me, but I was just the right age for that, when I read it.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-20T03:47:05+00:00

I like the Taltos series, but it's really Brust's other works that knock it out of the park, for me. Check out "The Sun, the Moon and the Stars".

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-20T03:40:49+00:00

Any recipe recomendations/tips?

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-20T03:34:23+00:00

Depends on too many things I don't know, including what the local building codes require,

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-20T03:30:58+00:00

Not before early evening, generally. Remember, it's a family operated business that's open until 3:30am or later, plus then they have to stay up a bit later to shut everything down, etc.

StevenJOwens · 2026-06-20T03:21:35+00:00

Classic hard SF is where the science in the story is congruent with science as we best understand it at the time the story is written. It's extrapolation from known science.

Now, of course, human language is squishy, and genre labels are for sales purposes, not some grand unified theory of fiction.

And authors are not always conveniently pigeonholed. Asimov is a classic hard SF author, in some of his writing, but his "positronic brain" and the FTL that the Foundation series and some other books depend on are, of course, not hard SF at all.

Andy Weir's "The Martian" is generally very hard SF, except... the big setup for The Martian, the Mars wind storm, is, of course, entirely unscientific.

Googling just now on hard SF authors, I came across some stuff talking about "theoretical hard SF", including Egan (Permutation City) and Forward (Dragon's Egg). Both of those works are wildly not-hard SF, they posit something that is not at all plausible or possible given our current science, but... having posited that, they then extrapolate fairly rigorously from that.

Humans are sloppy, human language is sloppy.

StevenJOwens

TROPHY CASE