A Talk Show of My Own...

"Right, sir and then we'll need you to email us a picture of yourself" - CNN correspondent in a request for an interview.

Pfft...yeah right, get knotted.

For fun, I've sent in a few "opinions" to CNN's iReport regarding my EV and my views on the latest crop of foo- er, I mean candidates. Someone at CNN thought my views were worth airing (sincerely or for entertainment, I'll never know which) so I received a call on my cell phone. He had me right up to the point where he asked for a photo of myself. I declined, stating that I'm not the one running for President and that I love my anonymity too much. I'm not posting my picture for all the world to see, while the media twists my words into something humorous or that supports some journo's point of view. I'm pretty opinionated. My supervisor routinely suggests that I start my own "Imus in the morning" type of talk show. I'm as offensive as Imus so that's probably not too good of an idea.

My mileage has increased over the last month or so. I'm driving 15 miles per day, 5 days a week with 40 miles on 3 weekends, and 100 miles during a drill weekend. That's 520 miles per month. I'm up to 3100 miles on the new pack so far. I've been very careful to keep the batteries clean, connections tight, and keep them well watered. My fancy new hydrometer shows the electrolyte to be clear and clean and all cells in good health.

Checking individual cells is kind of a pain and I'm glad it's infrequent maintenance. You have to pop the caps off of all the batteries and stick this "turkey baster with a gauge" down into each cell. Your check how far the float rises and note the reading. An 8 volt battery has 4 cells. If one of them is dead, then the battery is out of balance with all the others. I have a total of 64 cells to check. It takes me about 20 minutes, but that's because I have to crawl around and remove the engine lid to get at the last four batteries comfortably.

You can't place a volt meter on an individual cell, so this is a way of checking the voltage chemically. It's something easy that anyone can learn in a few minutes.

The paint on my motor was flaking off so I cleaned and re-painted it with Hi-Temp black BBQ grill spray. The motor's heat cured the paint and made a durable finish. Once the weather cools, I'll place the belly pan back on the car to protect the motor and controller from the winter road salt.

Election Fatigue

I'm too disgusted to start off with the usual entry quote.

We've got 60-odd days until Voting Day and I'm already tired. The issues are being defined by the criteria of whichever one makes the best weapon against a campaign opponent, not whether it's a national problem or not.

I think that neither of the current presidential candidates (or their running mates) are at all a good choice but I'll make a public statement...a bet if you will, that Barack Obama will end up being the next President. When I think of how I've spent 18 years of my life in the military supporting and defending this mess we call the "United States", I just wince.

Oh, and my favorite time of year is here- Hurricane season. It's fun to watch oil and gas prices rock 'n roll to the unpredictable pathways that these storms take. We've set our critical national infrastructure up in what is essentially a lane in a bowling alley and we've put what was one of our larger cities in basically a large soup bowl. Sweet.