The movie Tron: Ares released recently, and we watched Tron: Legacy in advance to pump ourselves up, then went out to see Ares in theaters. I really liked it, and thought the costumes, music, sets, and action were great. It’s sad to me that Tron movies do so poorly in the box office. Laura and…
New house, new solar installation! I used an Emporia Vue again to get an idea of the baseline consumption and where it’s coming from and how we might upgrade in the future. The data didn’t include my electric car, so I had to rely on consumption data from the other house for a year, but…
When people start stepping through rotted deck boards, you know it’s time do do something. Before I moved in, the previous solution had been to replace deck boards with cedar planks on an individual basis. This was fine for a while, but not a long term solution, and with a party coming up in a…
I have a soft spot for reusable water bottles. I had my Nalgene for 13 years before it died on a marble floor. I could not resuscitate it with heat or adhesives, and had to replace it. So when I was given a water bottle that clearly had a lot of sentimental value but a…
In the endless effort to improve the home’s efficiency and reduce contributions to climate change, I took on replacing the water heater with a heat pump water heater. There were a few reasons for this, and the stars aligned to make it happen. There’s a lot of hype about heat pump water heaters. They’re super…
Yes, I know it’s actually bibimbap, but I’m Bob, so get over it. This dish usually takes me 3o minutes to prepare, but on your first time you should budget an hour. It’s sort of like a salad on rice, so you can choose which goodies to use. In advance (or first thing), I take…
The short answer, as far as I can tell, is no. And the neighborhood seems surprisingly cool and impressed with it. I looked at the city websites to do some diligence, but the closest I could find was a deck or a shed. Decks have certain accessibility requirements that are not possible in a treehouse,…
I mean, it was there, but super hard to see. After a large solar storm, Earth got hit with an unusual number of charged particles that lit up the night sky. When it had reached its peak overhead, I could barely see it and decided to go outside of town to find a less polluted…
As the 2024 solar eclipse dimmed the United States on April 8, 2024, every solar installation in its path experienced a dip in production. For me, the most exciting part of the eclipse wasn’t the actual eclipse, but rather watching the energy output on my solar panels dip and then rise, not only EXACTLY when…
I have a problem. I spend a lot of time on projects, whether it’s house projects, electronics projects, hobbies, cooking, even in preparation for social events. I research the heck out of everything. And I do it because I’m taking care of the multiverse of future Bobs. It’s exhausting, and I need to stop and…