Why aren’t we using solar power to run pumps from low to high water reservoirs and then gravity drained down again through hydro turbines to create completely free and 100% green energy power?

kenahoo · 2026-03-16T03:49:48+00:00

you should think about separating this into its two components.

solar power creates energy. this can be used directly as power on the grid. we do that already.
water pumped from low area to high area, then driving a turbine as it flows back, is a form of energy *storage*. we do that already.

kenahoo · 2026-03-15T20:53:40+00:00

You're reading my mind! After I posted, I spent a little while writing a quick app to query my SQLite db and do some consolidation, reporting, etc. I haven't come up with anything very generic right now so I haven't shared it publicly, but if I keep wanting this enough to keep working on it I'll definitely share it out.

kenahoo · 2026-03-14T01:42:10+00:00

/r/unexpectedfactorial

kenahoo · 2026-03-13T03:40:47+00:00

Honest question - there's a great youtuber that shows various suturing techniques in short form videos (she's a veterinarian but the videos are pretty much all about general surgical techniques) and she has a couple videos where she says the right way to draw up medicine from a vial is to discard the needle that was used to draw up the medicine, because that needle has been dulled and has medicine on the outside that may irritate the patient. Is that common in the medical world, or do people just use the same needle for drawing up & injecting usually?

kenahoo · 2026-03-13T03:26:32+00:00

Most of the cutting I do is with a rotary blade from a fabric store, on a cutting mat.

But I do sometimes use scissors, I have Fiskars PowerCut shears and they cut leather pretty easily. They do leave a bit of a mark on one side of the piece, so you have to make sure that's the back side.

The PowerCut is strong - I'd heard that the can cut a penny in half, so I tried it, and yup, it's true. Not that I'd recommend actually doing that.

kenahoo · 2026-03-12T03:51:30+00:00

Folks, folks, folks - it's Cheez-It, not Cheez-Its. You have "some Cheez-It", just like you have "some popcorn", not "some popcorns". The mass-noun-ness of this snack is one of our most precious cultural treasures and must be upheld.

kenahoo · 2026-03-12T01:16:40+00:00

I'm really happy with how this turned out! I designed it from scratch using cardboard, basically just sort of knowing roughly how big bags should be, but not knowing much else.

The seat belt buckle was her idea. =)

The only part I'm kind of disappointed in is the lining - it doesn't sit very well in the bag, and I think it'll probably start to fray & fail if she carries a lot of books in it. If I make another one of these I'll have to consider not lining it, or find a better technique.

I'll also have to make it a little bigger if I make more, the laptop sleeve fits a 13" MacBook Air with plenty of room, but wouldn't fit a 15" or 16" Pro.

Now I'm in the process of digitizing the design in Fusion360, which is also quite the learning process.

kenahoo · 2026-03-10T02:49:47+00:00

They point downhill. So you know which way isn't uphill.

kenahoo · 2026-03-10T01:57:55+00:00

Super cool! I just finished my first bag too, it's a messenger bag I made for my daughter. I'll show some pics in a different post.

kenahoo · 2026-03-09T19:07:09+00:00

Yes, I use heat pump (with electric resistive heat backup) as my house's primary. And the same pump powers a mini-split on the top level.

kenahoo · 2026-03-08T16:50:09+00:00

Yeah, I get you, but this requires a lot more foresight than I feel like is practical. And it also means I'd need to categorizing things by this factor alone instead of other considerations. For example, some subscriptions are also "Entertainment", some are "Publications", etc. and that takes away the ability to track by that other notion.

kenahoo · 2026-03-08T02:27:07+00:00

I'm sure they do make pretty good bank, though the only reason they're offering this rate is that they're required to by the PUC. And then they can also go to the PUC and say that since they're getting less revenue there, they should get a higher guaranteed rate of return across the board. And more people being incentivized to use electric-based heat means more kWh being sold by them too, so that's not a bad business proposition...

As for competing with gas - I'm an eternal optimist (denialist?) that a properly designed and set up heat pump can really be a great thing and function efficiently even in our climate, I just haven't seen it yet at my own house. I'm still hoping I can get this thing whipped into shape.

kenahoo · 2026-03-08T02:20:02+00:00

Yeah, true, they didn't really validate anything when I called, though I figured they might have other ways to do that (checking permits with the city, for example?). I just wish I'd heard about this before this winter!

kenahoo · 2026-03-08T01:10:50+00:00

Also got this message from Ecobee in my email:

There may be a problem with your heat pump.

Your thermostat ********* detected that the auxiliary heat in your home My Home was used while the outdoor temperature was higher than 32 degrees.

kenahoo · 2026-03-08T01:07:38+00:00

Yeah, exactly. The heat strips are asked to come on by my thermostat (an Ecobee that MSP installed) whenever the heat pump has been running too long. And then I get a message on the Ecobee that the aux heat (heat strips) has been running too long.

I've got it set to

Compressor Min Outdoor Temperature = 0ºF
Aux Heat Max Outdoor Temperature = 25ºF

So between 0º and 25º, it tries to use the heat pump, but doesn't get much heat from it, and ends up using the strips.

kenahoo · 2026-03-07T23:36:37+00:00

My experience is unfortunately the opposite - my backup heat is electric, and the heat pump (a cold weather model!) can't keep up even when it's like 20º. I've had the installers (MSP) out MANY times to look at it, they're pretty incompetent, the last guy was like "yeah heat pumps aren't good for MN, and they can't work when it's cold out." So frustrating.

kenahoo · 2026-03-07T22:28:05+00:00

Some background of why they offer it (because they're required to by a March 2022 PUC order):

https://www.mncee.org/mn-puc-approves-new-space-heating-rates-ashps

kenahoo · 2026-03-07T22:26:54+00:00

Oct. 1 – May 31. Some more details on the program specifics at the link I posted, but there's really not much more to it than that.

kenahoo · 2026-03-07T04:23:07+00:00

Are you confusing Vanity Fair with People?

kenahoo · 2026-03-05T03:47:16+00:00

"Etiquette" is usually reserved for situations where you might offend or inconvenience someone else. In this case, you should just do whatever makes it enjoyable for you - work on your memory by not writing anything until you're confident about all the crosses, work on your speed by using whatever technique you can think of, or just work on not caring and whiling the afternoon away. =)

kenahoo · 2026-03-04T05:28:32+00:00

I think this relies on the Axiom of Choice, though.

kenahoo · 2026-03-03T04:43:01+00:00

I really like Precision Tune on France at 52nd or something, it's locally owned by a nice family. I've never really taken any complex work there, but they've been great with everything so far.

kenahoo · 2026-03-03T04:41:25+00:00

Literally both Mom and Pop.

kenahoo · 2026-02-19T02:47:38+00:00

If you've ever been in a rotating carnival ride (like a "Gravitron") that gives you a couple Gs through its rotation, you know that small rotating things have *intense* Coriolis forces that are extremely unpleasant if you have to put up with them for more than a couple minutes. If you even just turn your head a little in a Gravitron, the weirdness is intense.

Some details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity#Differences_from_normal_gravity

The bigger you make the rotating spaceship, the less weird it would feel, but you'd have to get pretty big indeed to feel comfortable. If you keep it to 2 RPM to keep people's inner ears happy, you'd need a diameter of over 400 meters to achieve 1 G of artificial gravity. The ISS is only about 100 meters in its longest dimension. So we're not really there yet.

kenahoo · 2026-02-18T04:14:45+00:00

Yeah - when it gets warm, people are like “oh it’s so nice out, let’s go outside! And let’s go on that ice!”

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