Little Cleaning = Brake Lights Working

Today: muffler patch and tape on cracked hoses

Hooray for new projects

Just bought this from Ian and hope to have it purring like a kitten in two/three weeks.

Caffeine Buddy

No! I will not share my organic dark roast Sumatran with you even though you were able to sneak up on me.

Support your local food stand vendors!

Especially if it is delicious. This one was. Fresh. Made to order. Spicy!

Back, but not on a good note

Being back is better, even if it is not on a good note. Right?

I hit a fox this week with my car. It was awful. Best I could tell it was a common gray fox. Something like this:



I did not run it over, but it did catch a part of my bumper as it bolted across "my" side of the highway. It was around 7:15 in the morning with the sun well into the sky. What was it even doing out and about after sunrise? Why couldn't it have been a touch faster? Why didn't I accelerate a little slower at that last light? Why didn't I run the yellow on that last light? Useless questions, I know. But I couldn't shake them all day.

I decided it was fine, even good, that I could not easily shake them. An animal died because of my actions, albeit not malicious. And a beautiful animal at that. Before it got to my side of the highway it had crossed the other side. In my peripheral I had seen something leap up and straight back down between cars. It wasn't until it emerged from the median, trying desperately to get to the field on the other side, that I realized it was a fox, and more interestingly that it had lept maybe 4 feet in the air to make it across the other side of the highway where the traffic was much heavier. Beautiful. Tragic.

I had a professor in college who refused to say "passed away", or any similar version, when it came to death. More demonstrative of him however was that he also would not let you say it around him. This made for some awkward moments. I cannot say I know why he did this but I do have my understanding of it.

Death is a part of our reality, and lest we allow our religion (whatever it is) to become our "opiate" we would do well to recognize the sensation. To take in that something is wrong. To call it death. . .


All this for a silly little fox? A fox that maybe didn't even die. A fox that might only have a small bruise for a few weeks. A fox that may have been weighed down with two chickens he killed the night before and therefore was not fast enough. . . ahhhh more opiates.

I suggest it was not a silly little fox.

War Of The Refrigerator

So with your new found information that refrigerators take the heat out of your food and push that heat out the backside (underside) of the refrigerator, I have a few questions for you:

What happens to your kitchen temperature after you fill the refrigerator with warm soda and close the refrigerator door?


1. The kitchen will stay the same temperature
2. The kitchen will get cooler
3. The kitchen will get warmer




Remember: the soda is getting colder. . .

Too easy? The answer is number three. The soda started out as warm, and within an hour or so the refrigerator makes it cold. As Newton describes when he stated "Energy can neither be created or destroyed," that heat has to go somewhere. As the refrigerator removes the heat from the warm soda (making it cold for your drinking enjoyment) it releases that heat into the kitchen, making the kitchen warmer.


What happens to the kitchen temperature if you leave the refrigerator door open?

1. The room gets colder
2. The room stays the same temperature
3. The room gets warmer




If you guessed that the room would get colder ask yourself: Where is the heat going? Heat cannot be destroyed so it must be going somewhere.

If the refrigerator was perfectly efficient at removing heat from your soda (the inside) the room would stay the same temperature. It would remove heat from the air closest to the walls of the refrigerator and push it out of the coils on the backside. The air would then mix together and go back to the same temperature as before.

But refrigerators are not perfectly efficient. In the process of moving that heat the refrigerator creates some of its own heat. Another way of saying that: as the compressor runs (the thing you hear kick on from time to time) some electricty is wasted (lost) as heat. Same as running any other kind of motor, there is always some loss (friction etc) that shows up as heat.

So, because the motor in your refrigerator gets warm when it runs (on top of moving heat around), any room exposed to an open refrigerator will actually become warmer, and not colder. Don't tell your parents.