Weekend

First off, I am so ahead of the game: Extruded a new essay on AI on the train yesterday. The growing list of these things is here. _earthshine_, this one’s for you.

On to the plan for the weekend. I can already tell that today will be driven by the rhythm (ever notice how that word has no vowels? weird) of the dishwasher. I need to clean about 100 bottles in order to finish the beer we started two weeks ago. I’m also planning to use up about 18 pounds of red malt extract in a highly experimental batch, testing the limits of malt character available to the homebrewer. We’ll see what happens. I’m aiming for original gravities in the 1.02 range.

Did some reading on solar panels for the house. I’m totally bummed by what I found. It occurred to me that since I spend about $1000 per year on electricity, it might be possible to buy a solar system that produces enough power to take me off the grid, or perhaps even sell power back to the utility. Turns out that the system I would need to cover my average 900kW/h per month consumption costs about $40,000. Plus installation. Now, there’s a tax credit of 15% of the first $15,000 of that … but still. Damn. It’ll pay for itself sometime *after* the mortgage runs out.

For new construction, though, I’m aiming for “off the grid.” I want a well, wind, solar, geothermal, etc. The only solution is to build my fortress atop an active volcano.