Free time.

This semester I am taking it easy with only 4 classes, so naturally I have tons of free time for the next 3 weeks then all the projects and tests will hit. So, what I am I doing with all this free time? I am having fun. One of my favorite topics is alternative fuels and/or EVs (electric vehicles). I started the week looking at EVs and have come to the conclusion that it will take close to $6000 to convert a regular car that has already been aquired to be all electric with all new components. Being a Martin and a person that is not rich, there is a good posibility that I could cut that price down to $3500 by purchasing used parts and other discounted items. To tell you the truth, most EVs only get around 40 miles on a charge. I go more miles on Sundays when I go to church. If I were to have an fuel saving vehicle, I would have to have a electric deisel hybrid that had an batteries powering it most of the time with a diesel generator that would keep the batteries atleast half way charged while I am up and about. Hybrids are very, very expensive creatures. to convert a regulare compact car I would be looking at spending around $9000 if I were to buy everything outright and not buy any discounted stuff. I have seen plenty of kits to build EVs, but no Hybird kits, and definatly no hint of diesel hybryd kits. The reason I am for deisel is because on average, deisel motors last 10 times as long as gasoline engines if properly taken care of. A properly tuned diesel that has a constant load can be adjusted to run very very well at that rpm and load and get better fuel economy than a diesel that has a varied load and rpm, plus the unvaried rpm and load motor will last longer than the motor that is not constant. So, you may ask why is all this so expensive? I will tell you. It is because the oil industry owns many of the key patents to produce key items to make EVs and Hybrids work, or atleast that is what I have read on 3 diffrent websites. It is not that the components are not out there, alot of the parts are already installed and used of fork lifts and electric pallet jacks. RG Le Tourneau used Hybrid like equipment. The way that most of his heavy equipmet worked was by a huge diesel engine ran and powered huge electric motors that were built into the hubs and rims of the equipment. Fun Stuff. If you get a chance to read all about this hybrid stuff, I say go for it althought the stuff will more than you could probably afford. More Later. I am going to bed so that I might get some hw done tomorrow.

What would happen, what would I do?

I was set on playing with my cell phone and maybe going to Tyler to have fun with a few friends. I read an email this morning about a guy on the floor whom I knew was in trouble, but for some reason did not think much of. Why not? I realy do not know. I came up on the floor talking to the friend fro Tyler, texas (not the dorm thankgoodnes) and after hanging up after he had to go, I saw an email posted on the bulleton board. I read it. It was abot the guy on the floor that was hurt. What had happened is that on his way back from Christmas vacation a semi pushed him off the road in some form or fashion and into the ditch. I still do not know the entire story, but I did read the email all the same. the email was composed by his dad. There was much emotion in the email. The guy that was hurt could not talk, he was on a resporator, and was paralized form the neck down. They are suposed to put a halo on him the 17th or 18th after they evaluated how well he could breath on his own. I know what a halo is. I can only imagine haveing one on, but even then my imagination can not grasp how much it hurt. The Lord has provided his family with all sorts of things. He has given the family a car to use, funds, several local church families as suport, and much much more while they are several states away from home. I nor his father have any idea why this happened. After reading the email I knew I had to post something. I have too many questions. What would I do in that situation? What would my parents do? Would I be able to handle it as well as he could? Could my parents and friends be able to handle it? If something of that sort did happen, all I can do is pray that I would remember that everything that happens will happen for the glory of the Lord, even if I can not see it because more often than I would like things happen like this to friends and other believers in Christ that I do not see the end to. It is a sobering email. If you have a chance, sit down and pray for Steak, not only for his recovery, but for his family and all the people that the Lord has provided for his family.

This semester

This semester is promising to be an "easy" one. I am only taking 12 hours and all but one class is retakes. It is suposed to be easier the second time around? So far it has been okay, but I am trying to keep out of the thought process that I have seen this stuff before therefore I do not need to relearn it. Well, I do need to relearn it. Any way, I decided to try something that I have not done in a while, I went down to the gym. While down there I listened to the news because the other 3 tvs had nothing worth watching. It was interesting, they were going over the budget stuff. Of course the Democrats pulled out a chart that said that the US was not in the hole finacially when Clinton was in office and now there is a huge debt that Bush created. I will say that Bush did create a little debt, but not all the debt that they were talking about. I still do not see where they got the idea of a surplus when Clinton was in office. THERE WAS NO SURPLUS. If I understand correctly, the surplus they were talking about was a budget surplus that Clinton created by make a budget that no one could ever spend and would bring the nation into a greater debt, but I could be wrong. That is one of the things that I do not understand, why do you want to be a socialist? I like the idea that if the Lord wants me to that I can go out and work my way to the top and become a millionare. The democrats think that all "rich" people are bad and that the rich people's money should be taken away and given to those whom do not want to work for a living. That is something that I do not like or understand. I must go, homework is calling and I have spent too much time on the net this morning. Later.

Cell Phones and other thoughts

Well, I amde the jump, I went down today and switched to Verizon. I got tired of nobody hearing that they did not know or that I could not do that, so I went to verizon. I was very satisfied with how I was treated (it helped that the guy behind the counter wanted to sell a phone today, not tomorrow or the next day, but today). He told me everything I wanted to know, plus some things that I had only heard rumors on. He was well informed. That was the main selling point for me. There were some added bonuses like the cell phone itself was cheap and that he said I had a 15 day grace period that I could return for a full refund if I was not happy. So far, I have been really happy. Then phone works at my house, and not only in te house, but in the tin covered barn too. Tommorrow I will have to take it up to the big testing site, Holly Lake Ranch. Holly Lake Ranch is where my dad does alot of his buisness and normally cell phones don't work there with out being ontop of a hill and plugged into an external car antenna. We will see.

Well, due to the fact that I was in town and waiting for trafic today, I was able to listen to about 2 hours of Rush Limbaugh's show. This is very good. As usual I am alawys suprised at how stupid people are. The main topic today was compairing the War in Iraq and the tsunami that hit the Cheerleaders of the 911 insident. (I know that I can not spell, but I am in a hurry to get off and got to bed.) Okay, the Democrats think that we should help the tsunami victims, but not the people being killed in Iraq and other mid eastern nations. Why is that? I also do not understand why we shoud be the people that are the main rebuilders and funders for the cheerleaders. Why can't the UN squeeze money out of France or one of the oil countries? They have better governments than we do or they would switch to capitalism too right? Unfortunatly I have to run. I would like to post more, but I am out of time. Later.

Wireless Phones.

I have been researching wireless phones because my 2 year contract is out and everyone is trying to switch over to GSM. Plus, I do not use my cell phone as much as I did before I went to LETU ( have schoolwork and little things of that ort keeping me form having time to use it). For your information, GSM is the newest thing in the US when it comes to wireless signals for cell phones. It allows you to got to webpages, download songs to your phone and all sorts of other expensive stuff. This is still kid stuff. To give you an idea of how far behind we are, in Japan they are installing GSM3 which lets you do more stuff for cheaper. I want to stay with TDMA, also known as digital, because right now it is the most widely used type signal available in the US. Even then, it still has holes larger than 20 miles wide in East Texas where you can not get any sort of signal. If you did not already know, Cingular bought out AT&T. Cingular has decided that they do not want to sell digital phones or wireless plans, so I am pretty much stuck with what I have. I would get rid of the phone all together, but year around if some one needs or wants to get in touch with me, the cell phone is the only way. Between running service calls for dad and doing odd jobs, I hardly come home to sleep much less recive phone messages (providing someone writes them down). I think that I am just going to stay with what I have for now, but if you want to know more about cell phones in East Texas, let me know and I will be glad to share more of my findings. Later.

Christmas Break so far.

It has been fun. For Christams, we did the usual, ate too much and got to talk with family and friends, can't get much better. From 10 minutes after I got home till Christmas day, and since the day after Christams, I have been running around with and for my dad. Mainly, I helped his A/C buisness by running service calls and dad has some lumber cut, so I had to do some of the stuff related to that. For those that have never had lumber cut, here is what you do, cut down about a dozen straight trees, cut them to the longest lenght possible in increments of 23', 19', 17', 15', and so on till about 9'. Basically you are cutting these trees 1' longer than what you actually need out of them. Then you drag the loggs to an open, level are that is easily accessible by a 24' trailer and pickup. the 24' trailer is a saw mill on wheels. The guy that we use cuts the logs up for lumber for about 22 cents per board foot (a board foot is a board that is 1" thick X 12' wide X 12' long). You tell the guy what you need or want. In dad's case, dad wanted the best cut for the log, in other words, what the lumber guy thought was best. After the guy leaves, you stack up the lumber with "stickers" inbetween the boards (Stickers are scrap pieces of boards that are roughly 1" wide X 5/8" thick X the width of your stack of lumber). The Stacking is the most important because with out the stickers and being almost perfectly straight, the boards warp and become hard to work with. My brother and I stacked these boards about 6 feet tall and about 24" wide. Then after the stacking, you have to cover the boards otherwise they will grow mold. We have had problems in the past of people stealing cedar and other boards, so we put 20' freezer panels on top of the lumber. These pannels are what large grocery stores and warehouses use, they only weigh about 100 pounds or so (they were water logged, but dry on the lumber side, fun stuff). Today, I actually had a day off with some friends. We played a little with Half-Life 2. As I dorve my truck around Tyler, my friend had fun scaring people at stop lights while wearing a gas mask (all sorts of fun, DON'T DO TO OLDER LADIES, might run across a few complications). Well, I must go, I have to restart my computer, I finished dowloading a few updates that will "help" my Windows partition, later.