Saturday, October 26, 2013

Who remembers the crack house


For those who remember my Neighbors crack house downtown San Jose, here we go again.
In short they stole $1.4 million from the bank for a 2005 refinance,
paid no property taxes for 5+ years, owe over $50,000 in property taxes, Owe electric $13,000 in utilities, turned a duplex into a 2 story 6 plex crack house. completed over 100,000 drug deals there.
Had the city haul away 160 Cu yards  ( 4 Giant dumpsters ) of trash.
Now their front house was condemned because they owe thousands of $$$$ for the City San Jose water bill...

So they are now camping out in their front yard hoping to pay the water bill &
be allowed to return into their crack house

ANBODY WANNA DONATE ??  

Also I can share with you, that eviction process took 4 cops , 2 city inspectors
& 3 city workers 5 hours to board up their front house
there goes an easy $5,000 in city services.

On top of the $995,000 we already spent on that house in the last 2 years.


GOD BLESS CALIFORNIA





Monday, October 21, 2013

Oregon Man who made a great difference , loses his life walking for his son.


Oregon Father’s Memorial Trek Across Country Ends in a Family’s Second Tragedy

Chris Baxter/The La Grande Observer
Joe Bell, in La Grande, Ore., in March, was walking across the country to tell the story of his gay son, Jadin, 15, who killed himself after being bullied.

National Twitter Logo.
DENVER — As he made his way across the country, Joe Bell walked through rain squalls, slept in ditches and talked to anyone who would listen about how his gay son had killed himself after being taunted and bullied at school.
Mr. Bell’s artificial knees ached and his feet were mapped with blisters, but he told friends and strangers that he was determined to make it on foot from his home in eastern Oregon to New York City, where his son, Jadin, 15, had dreamed of one day working in fashion or photography. “I miss my son Jadin with all my heart and soul,” he wrote on Facebook in late May. “I know you’re with me on this walk.”
But last Wednesday, Mr. Bell’s American journey — one that drew attention from local newspapers and attracted thousands of followers on social media — ended in an instant on a two-lane road in rural eastern Colorado. He was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer whose driver had apparently fallen asleep, the state police said.
For nearly six months, Mr. Bell, 48, had been on the road, sharing his son’s story and trying to salve his own grief. He spoke at motorcycle rallies and college bars, schools, diners and gay-outreach centers, telling people about his sensitive, artistic son who hanged himself from a piece of playground equipment on Jan. 19.
While Jadin had plenty of friends and support — 200 classmates and community members showed up at a vigil while he lingered on life support — he also stood out in his hometown, La Grande, Ore., family friends said. Some students pushed him around at school, or threw things at him on the street, said Bud Hill, a friend of Mr. Bell’s who knew Jadin for most of his life.
“He was very open and very proud,” Mr. Hill said in an interview.
After Jadin died in early February, Mr. Bell lay in bed and wondered what he could have done differently, reproaching himself for missing signs or yelling at his son for smoking days before he hanged himself, his friends said. One day, he decided he needed to get out on the road, joining scores of others who have crossed the country to raise money or promote social causes. For Mr. Bell, the cause would be his son.
“He had to heal himself,” Mr. Hill said.
Mr. Bell mapped out a route and assembled a network of friends who would track his progress from afar. He quit his job at a plywood mill, threw some clothes and a sleeping bag onto his back and loaded up a three-wheeled pushcart with food and gallons of water, then set off on April 20. As he walked east, from Oregon to Idaho to Utah to Colorado, he chronicled his progress in Facebook posts and videos describing the people who fed him chicken dinners, refilled his water jugs and lent him a bed and made small donations to keep his trek going.
He wrote about sleeping under the stars, and described how a sunset in Utah made him miss his family and wish he could be with them. Sometimes, he would meet up with his partner, Lola Lathrop, or one of his three other children when he stopped in a big city. Mostly, he was alone.
He considered how long he would be on the road — two years, at least — and wrestled with the hunger, aches and loneliness that accompanied his trip.
“I’m going through a tough time right now,” he said in a video message posted on Facebook in early October as he headed away from Denver. “I’ll get it straightened out by the time I get to Wichita.”
He met people everywhere, knitting together a diaspora of friends, family and strangers who are now reeling from his death.
Ed the cabdriver helped him when his pack got too heavy. Juliet at the Turkey Crossing Cafe fed him dinner. Jim and Janice gave him a warm bed. In Utah, when his pushcart was stolen and a sinus infection hobbled him, Ann Clark helped him find a place to stay after meeting him on the road, and helped organize meetings in Salt Lake City where Mr. Bell could speak.
“I worried about his safety,” Ms. Clark said. “There were times I said, ‘I wish you’d go home.' ”
When Mr. Bell was alone in the mountains or the desert, he would unfurl his sleeping bag and sleep under a tree or along the side of the road. He spent weeks in larger cities, finding speaking opportunities and a place to sleep and do laundry with members of anti-bullying organizations and suicide-prevention groups.
Many of them offered to drive him down the road, but Mr. Bell always demurred. He would accept rides inside a city or to a particular destination, but once he was back on the road, every inch had to be on foot.
The day he died, Mr. Bell had been trying to log a few more miles before speaking at a Methodist church in Hugo, Colo. A day earlier, he and the sheriff of Lincoln County had started chatting on the side of the road, and bonded quickly as fathers of gay sons. The sheriff, Tom Nestor, set up a talk for Wednesday evening.
Mr. Nestor had been planning to fetch Mr. Bell when he got word that a pedestrian had been hit along Highway 40. He raced to the scene. Mr. Bell’s cart was lying in the road. Medics were already covering his body.
On Thursday, he will be remembered at a memorial service in Oregon.
“I got down on one knee and put my hand on Joe’s head and said a silent prayer,” Sheriff Nestor said in an e-mail.
“I only knew him for a very short time but this man had to of made a huge difference in everyone he met. He made me realize how important basic humanity still is.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/us/oregon-fathers-memorial-trek-across-country-ends-in-a-familys-second-tragedy.html?_r=0

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Update to Xantrex Charge controller & Batteries


          Our wiring is progressing, but more is still coming. So far I like the performance of the Xantrex 60 better then the Outback FlexMax 80 - it seams to put out higher volts of 12.9 vs. 12.6 with the same panels. It seams like there is no end to the wiring, this little bit took about 6 hours to install if I recall correctly. All 4 panels are wired to the lower bus bar & each can be quickly disconnected with a plug or all can be disconnected with 3 different breakers / switches. I installed the system this way in case of a lightning storm, all equipment can be separated or quickly disconnected and after the storm anything broken could be left disconnected or changed out quickly if needed.







The bright yellow plug is a Anderson Powerpole plug
The 2 lower bus bars are for the solar panels + & -
the right breaker is bus bar to charge controller 40 amp
the left breaker is 50 amp CC - to the Battery


Here you can see a 255 watt panel - mid October, laying flat at noon
only producing 129 watts, 13.4 volts @ 9.6A
about 52% of what your paying for





A Very Sad Note - Grandpa Gummi Bear passed away today


Tuesday, October 8, 2013

The Trojans are coming 2 x 12 volt - 225 AH

              Here we go, I just received 2 x 12 volt 225 AH batteries form Trojan. This time they were more affordable about $580 for both batteries & I picked them up directly from the warehouse. The first time around I paid about $880 for my 2 x 6 volt 400 amp hour Surrettee batteries, a large part of the cost 25% - 30% or more was for shipping. Each battery weighs about 128 lbs. These batteries are rated for approx 1,200 cycles at 50% discharge. With my use they should last about 5-6 years or longer. Time will tell.  The trick with Batteries is to never ever let them run dry & to always properly charge them as close to 100% as you possible can.   



   I got my Batteries from Barb & Pat at the solarbiz.com   , both real nice friendly lady's. They have great prices and Barb & Pat fixed it so I could get a local PU just 2 miles from my house. There was a small $30 PU fee , but then the guys there need a little money to run the forklift & load them into my truck.







http://www.thesolarbiz.com/Trojan-J185H-AC-12V-Battery-225-AH




The batteries are in a really heavy duty plastic case





They were even fully charged at over 12.6 volts

Sunday, October 6, 2013

The Xantrex 60 Charge controller

MADE IN CHINA -$500 and just as crappie as the USA made charge controllers. Here again you need to bend the wires 6 inches and around the corner to get them to line up with their slots. The larger the wire is the more difficult the bending process becomes. What is wrong with making it easy so that the wires can just go straight in and without all this bending. It seems so stupid to me that the idiot engineers who designed these systems actually never once try to install one of them. Then they would see what the problem is. The two lower screws also need a 6 - 8" inch extension and would need to be screwed in at a 45° angle in order to allow proper insertion. What a pain in the ass. There is also a Communication Bay, on the right side which area again is way too small. Finally bending all of these wires in place would interfere with the installation of the final main cover. If I didn't know better I would just assume that they were paid extra to make this job a pain in the ass job. The bottom picture is the charge controller with the first set of wires installed, more wires are yet to come.


Wires must be bent 6" to fit into upper slots


The lower screws require a 45 deg angle to install




The lower screws also require a 6-8" extension to install screws


The center plug cannot be moved right or left ?



Rear bed and storage area is being completed

        Slowly I'm making progress, I still have lots to do at work, therefore work on the trailer is slow. The parts that I have ordered seemed to take forever to arrive. The charge controller took almost 2 weeks to get here. The blue lights are exterior LED computer fans. They will provide ventilation for the trailer. You can see the lower hidden compartment which is closed off, this is where the fans sit behind insulation. The large area below the bed will be mostly for storage, but also include a 40 gallon water tank. One of the 200 amp hour batteries will sit here. The area under the bed is approximately 44 inches wide times 76 inches wide times 33 inches high. If you look closely you can see the three layers of blue foam underneath the oak wood strip across the rear door.





Here is the bay before the bed was installed



The door in the center has 2 of the vent fans


Here is the full wood panel - installed over 1.4" of foam



Open fans on the interior


Fans from the exterior