Category Archives: Other Stuff

My Best Reads of 2018

It’s time for my third annual ‘Best Reads’ of the year post.  Again this year, this is not only my best reads, it’s all my reads.  So your first thought likely is, really?  5 books in a year?  And that surprised me too..  but I don’t really carve out a specific time to read, and I spend a lot of my free ‘relaxing’ time either writing or programming.  Plus.. the Peter the Great book was a big book with very few pictures..   Anyway, without further ado – here are my quick opinions of the books I read this year, in preference order:

1.  Peter the Great: His Life and World

My favorite book I read this year.  I knew nothing of Peter the Great and very little about European history circa 1700, and only decided to read this book because I enjoyed another book written by Robert Massie (Dreadnought).  What I most appreciate about Massie’s writing is he provides great summaries of all the related political landscape and important people throughout the book, providing a great feel for the layout of Northern Europe during Peter’s time.  He also has a way of giving you a feel for the subject of the book, a real persective on the quirkyness and intellect of Peter the Great.  If you have enjoyed any other of Massie’s books, I would definitely recommend this one.  And if you enjoy history, and have not read a book by Robert Massie, you owe yourself to try one out.

2.  The Good Rain: Across Time & Terrain in the Pacific Northwest

 I enjoyed this – it was like a collection of love letters to the Pacific Northwest.  The author obviously has a fondness for the Pacific Northwest, and has collected several short stories around various cultural aspects.  This was written in the early 1990s, so in some sense it is history, though since I lived thru this period and was working in Seattle at the time it brought back some interesting memories (Lesser Seattle anybody?).  He did a great job bringing to live some semi-obscure Pacific Northwest personalities of the time, bringing on a feeling of nostalgia for Seattle before the big Tech boom.

3.  When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation

Since I was planning a trip to Paris this year, I read this prior to going to Paris.  Since I have already visited Paris a few times (and it is one of my favorite cities), I am pretty familiar with the layout and neighborhoods of Paris.  This provided me an interesting time dimension from this book to know the areas of Paris in a different time.  It makes you think about what it would be like to live under the oppression of a victor, something I hope to never experience.  Also an interesting recap of what happened after the war, and the division of the pro and anti-Nazi sympathizers after the Nazis left.  Definitely worth a read if you are interested in WWII history, and either are planning to visit Paris or have recently visited.

4.  Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

I read this book with the hope of getting a good feel for mood, problems and culture in middle America, which I assume to be pretty distant from the relatively liberal Pacific NW.  It was an interesting and easy read, but I don’t feel like it gave me the insight I was looking a far.  It felt more like a limited picture of a hard luck story of one guy, who made it out of a tough childhood situation.  I think my goal would of been better accomplished if I found a book that interviewed many different people with different perspectives.  But an interesting story none the less.

5.  The Wizard of Menlo Park

This is a biography of Thomas Edison covering hist life and works, and I am not sure why this book didn’t resonate with me.  It was an interest period of time about an interesting guy, but I just didn’t get a good feel the person or the period.  I felt the author was kind of negative on Edison, which surprised me a little but I don’t think that impacted my interest.  I think it just seemed like a story told from 30 feet away from the subject, so it wasn’t as immersive as other biographies  I have read.

 

For 2019, Probably another book or two on European history, and probably some more American history subjects.  But when you only read 5 books a year, my challenge is to read history faster than time creates it.

Dispatch From Paris

I just got back from another trip to Paris and outer France, and had a few random observations.

  1.  The view from the states is that Europe is on edge due to the fear of terrorism, but in the various neighborhoods I visited, I saw no evidence of concern.  Parisian cafe’s are as bustling as ever, and the parks are filled with locals enjoying the outdoors.  Maybe it is boiling under the surface, but by my eye, Paris is as vibrant and friendly as ever.  I know Paris has a reputation (“Paris would be great, except for all the Parisians.”) – but I can’t say I buy into that.  Have always enjoyed the atmosphere.
  2. The public market culture in Europe still surprises me.  Throughout Europe, in all the towns (include Paris), there are days where markets appear in the public square where people do their shopping:No big box stores,  every morning the Boulangeries are full of locals buying bread, every town seems to have a butcher to buy meat, and when the market comes to town the townspeople come out.  It seems an anachronism in this day and age, but the model appears to be working.  However, more towns are seeing more supermarket style stores in them, and the crowds in there seem younger, so maybe this style of retail will give way to the central supermarket.  I think that would be a shame.
  3. Cigarette smoking is still very prevalent.  In the US< many states have banned smoking in bars, restaurants, and in public places. It has really seemed to cut down on it.  In Paris, you can only smoke outside - however that takes away from the enjoyment of sitting in an outdoor cafe, where you periodically get buffeted by waves of smoke. Its also concerning that the vast number of smokers were under 30, so its a problem that appears to be getting worse.  I hope the take America's lead on that - I never thought America would make progress in that area.
  4. As always, I try to pay attention to see if the small storefront culture of Europe is healthy.  In previous posts I have mentioned my concern that online shopping may kill the local shops here.  I was pleasantly surprised how few empty storefronts there were in Paris.  I can’t say the shops were full of people, but at least there weren’t many empty retail spots for rent.  Also didn’t see a lot of UPS or FedEx style delivery vans doing retail deliveries.  So in the heart of Paris, the retail apocalypse seen in many areas of the US does not seem to appear here.
  5.  Traffic is worse than ever.  From my youth I remember hearing that Europe was not as much of a car-centric culture as America, but now I don’t believe it.  Even in as big a city of Paris, it seems like more city dwellers own cars then in America.  Maybe because Paris is so sprawling and did not grow around interstate arterials, it is a quagmire of cars.  Also, because the retail environment here is built around small shops and local produce, delivery trucks further clog the roadways in the inner city.  I can see why many European cities are looking at different ways to  restrict inner city traffic, it currently is kind of a mess.
  6. I happened to be in France in the first days of the GDPR – the European data protection regulation.  As a software developer, this is been annoying to have to be involved with all the privacy changes –  but as an internet user, I think its a step in the right direction.  Every site I went to in Europe asked in in clear and consistent language what level of tracking I wanted on the site.  If I opted out of all, some sites would show me all the ad networks it had to contact to get my data un-tracked.  It also got me thinking when I opted out – what benefits are there to being tracked?  OK, the argument would be contextual based ads, but the current ad algorithms are pretty poor at providing useful ads.  At any rate, before my trip to Europe, I may have had the opinion that the GDPR is a waste of time – but after seeing it in use, I think it will raise the visibility to all internet users of all the tracking that is going on.

It’s always refreshing to spend some time outside of the US to get a different perspective on the world.  It is easy to live in the bubble of our daily lives and not see issues other countries have and how other cultures solve problems, so I recommend to anybody occasional travel – to a foreign country or even a distant state, to re-invigorate the mind.

2017 Solar Year in Review

Time for my third annual Solar power progress report.  Overall, I saw in increase in solar production in 2017 over 2016, likely all weather related.  Below is a chart of my 3 years of production by Month:

A long stretch of sunny weather in the summer helped me beat 2016, even though the other seasons seemed cloudier than normal.

Payback Update

I had originally penciled out a 6 year payback when I made the decision to move forward with this plan.  Now that I have a better feel for my annual production, assuming the production credits stay above 40 cents thru 2023, I think I can achieve an 8 year payback, recouping by investment by the end of 2023.  Of course that 40 cent number is probably optimistic, though I am hoping the production incentive credits do get grandfathered for those of us that took the risk early.  And the fact that it seems every year I stretch my estimated payback a year, doesn’t give me a lot of confidence yet in this estimate.   At any rate, I was pleased to see no significant drop in solar power production as the panels aged a year, so that is a promising sign.

Regarding maintenance, I have settled in to a pretty comfortable schedule.  In the spring as the days start to get longer and the weather better  – usually May’ish, I give the panels a good cleaning with a sponge mop and a squeegee.  I may clean them a couple months later if we have a heavy pollen outbreak that coats the panels in pollen.  But for the most part I can occasionally just spray them with a hose from the ground.  The panels are very little maintenance in the winter, as the production is so low it doesnt really matter if they are clean or not, and we get so much heavy rain that it keeps them pretty clean.

Power Use Report

Being the power geek that I am, I also updated my power usage report for the year.  My total household usage for the year was the lowest on record (well… since 2015).  Usage was down 7% after being up 4% in 2016.  A couple theories on why.  I have continued to replace bulbs with LEDs as they burn out, we had a very moderate summer requiring very little air conditioning, and we were also out of town on vacation a few more weeks last year than previous years.  I also added more lights to my Wink Hub, which I think managed my outdoor lights more efficiently.  For 2017, I don’t have as many vacations planned, but I plan to continue adding LED lights, as well as possibly hook up my furnace to the wink hub to better manage when the heat is on.  Overall, I am guessing the vacations had the biggest impact, so I would guess my power usage for 2018 will increase slightly.

My long term plan has always been to upgrade my panels once I have my investment back.  However, if the panels continue to perform, there is likely no reason to.  Interestingly, on Amazon, the price of solar panels has not dropped over the last year, in fact they have gone up slightly.  I would look to see that change in 2018 though as there are more advanced solar panels that should be coming online this year.  On a related note, Consumer Reports did an interesting payback analysis on Tesla’s solar roof – it appeared to be pretty encouraging.

Overall, still happy with my investment, and I still think residential solar / utility scale wind and solar is the power model of the future.

My Best Reads of 2017

It’s time for my second annual ‘Best Reads’ of the year post.  This year, since I didn’t read much, I decided to expand it to all the books I have read this year – so I am exposing how little reading I get accomplished in a given year.  These picks are ranked in favorite order, though I could be talked into the top two being a tie. So without further ado – here are my quick opinions of the books I read this year:

1.  The Pope and Mussolini:  The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe

An interesting book covering the rise of Facist Dictator Mussolini from the 1920’s til his execution during WWII.  Even if you have no interest in or understanding of the Catholic Church, this book provides an interesting look at how the church saw Mussolini as a partner in helping control the populace. A worthy read.  Readers of this blog may recall that last year I promised myself I would stay away from World War II histories, but I don’t count this one, as it covers more pre-war stuff, and more focuses on the rise to power.

2.  Carthage Must Be Destroyed:  The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

I really enjoyed this – it covered a period of time that I knew very little about – Carthage and the Roman expansion in the Mediterranean 0-300BC.  Well written and very understandable (even if everybody was named Hannibal back then..) and it provides a great understanding of the politics of the time.

3. Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates:  The Forgotten War that Changed American History

  A real quick read – a nice break from some of the longer dives into a historical period.  Interesting story about how American forefathers were no strangers to getting involved in foreign war for capitalist reasons.  A nice little intro into the Ottoman empire of the late 1700’s also.  Recommended.

4.  Liars Poker

 I had been meaning to read this book for awhile – a lookback at the Wall Street excesses of the late 20th century.  Found it an interesting look into the culture of Wall Street then.. and likely now..  If investing isn’t your thing, this could bore you. This was the first Michael Lewis book I had read, and his style is very readable, so I will likely try another of his books in the future.

5.  Stranger in a Strange Land

 I decided to do a quick science fiction read before heading back into historical non fiction, so I chose what was considered Heinlein’s best book by a number of reviewers.  In short – this book just didn’t connect with me.  I had a hard time immersing myself in this book.  It may be characters were dated (this was written in 1961, and the characters felt to me kind of caricatures of that time), or it may be Heinlein’s writing style just didn’t agree with me.   The next time I read science fiction, I will probably try a different author, to see if this was a problem with the book or if I have just lost my ability to enjoy reading science fiction.

For 2018, I could see myself sticking exclusively to history this year, and I might sprinkle in a World War II book – old habits die hard. In case you missed last year’s reviews (and if you have read this far you may be interested) – here is my list for 2016.

Malltown America

A few posts ago I mentioned concern about how the transformation of retail might hurt the interesting cultural feel in Europe.  However, after reading this article about how small towns might be the savior for retail, I am a little more optimistic.

There is no question online shopping will further transform the retail shopping model for some time to come.  But maybe small towns give us an early clue to how everything will shake out.   Perhaps retail will just get more focused – not a wide variety of shopping centers spreading a feeling of ‘Generica‘ throughout the country – but a focal retail center in every town, large and small.  Perhaps each collection of retail centers will have a theme or specialty.  Strip malls will disappear, with retail clustered around core centers of small towns or neighborhoods within large cities.

This central core would have more than just retail shops.  Much like you are seeing shopping centers branch out into restaurants, gyms, and other service providers.  I think it would be much more interesting to see neighborhoods within cities have a central core of unique combination of shops, and a place that can be the central gathering place for residents in the neighborhood.  Europe has perfected this model, with the central town market square typically lined with restuarants with outdoor seating, with stores surrounding the central square.  The further you get from the central square, the more it turns residential.   We do see a flavor of this today in some neighborhoods (i.e. Fremont in Seattle) – perhaps the future looks like a lot more small funky neighborhoods and fewer strip malls and big box stores.

As our society becomes more virtually connected and physically isolated, a changing retail model might be the solution to bringing back a feeling of a physical community.   The next waves of technology will be bringing even more social upheaval – perhaps those surviving physical retail stores will evolve and thrive in the coming new world.

 

 

News from the Netherlands

I recently spent a couple weeks on my first trip to the Netherlands, and thought I would share some random observations.  I spent a week in Einhoven,  a couple days in Delft, and a few days in Haarlem, and I feel I got an interesting immersion into Dutch culture.  The Netherlands wasn’t at the tops of my list of places to go, but circumstances happened that I got to spend time here.  As with all my trips to Europe, I enjoy the cultural differences I get when I leave the United States.  So here are some random observations, in no particular order.

  1.  It constantly amazes me how easily Europeans switch between languages.  Often when someone initiated a conversation with me – they would fire off a dutch phrase that to me sounded like garbled German.  I speak a little German, but I had a real hard time understanding Dutch.  At any rate, as soon as I said ‘spreekt oo Engels’ they fire off the same phrase in (usually) flawless English.  As a person who only speaks one language fluently -but as a software developer who can write in many languages, I am always impressed at how their mind can so easily shift gears.
  2. The bike culture in the Netherlands is fantastic.  As an avid American bicyclist, I am jealous at how they have built their infrastructure around biking.  Everywhere I went were bike lanes, and I made a point of renting a bike whenever possible to see the sights.  None of the bikes people use are fancy – just very utilitarian.   Only the occasional bike racers wore helmets, the rest of the people just casually ride without them.
  3. I saw little trace of homelessness.  I think Europe is dealing with the situation much better than the crisis we face in the United States.  There are a lot more public workers doing jobs that you don’t see often in the US – i.e workers repairing bricks in town squares,  street cleaners walking around picking up trash, people wiping down walls and floors throughout the train stations.  Perhaps the US could follow Europe’s lead in helping mobilize some entry level jobs for the surplus of untrained labor.
  4. With the rise in online retailers, I have been paying close attention to the demise of mall traffic in the US.  So I was curious to see how online retailing will impact Europe.  It seems to me that retail in the Netherlands is more scattered  – every small town seems to have a market square, but radiating for blocks around that you still see little shops of clothing and various other retailers.  I don’t see how these little shops will stay in business if Europe is hit with the mass exodus to online shopping like the US.  I saw some delivery trucks making the rounds, but online shopping does not appear to be as pervasive as in the US.  It would be tragic to see these small towns turn into shells half empty shops.
  5. It took me a bit to get used to the public dress code in the Netherlands.  The first day it hit the upper 60’s here in the Netherlands, I put on a pair of shorts and hit the sights.  Umm…. I was the only person in shorts and I stood out like the tourist I am.  Everybody else was wearing jeans and long sleeves and a jacket.  The next day was a little warmer – low 70’s and humid, and I wore long pants and a sweatshirt, and I fit in fine.  Everybody was still wearing leather jackets and jeans ..  and I was overheating.. but looking good.  Part of this could be the mobility issue – we here often throw a jacket in the car for if it cools down later – I guess if you are on a bike it may be just easier to wear it.
  6. I took a lot of trains in my various travels through Dutch towns, and once you get the hang of it it is a pretty efficient way to travel.  Most of my trips required changing trains to get to my destination, but because the network is so laid out and the trains are pretty exact on their schedule, I rarely had problems.  Most rail station had a place where you could rent a bike to continue your travels for the last leg, which makes for an interesting hub and spoke system of travel.

I had many other various observations but will leave it here for now.  It is always enriching to travel to foreign destinations to see how cultures have evolved in different small ways.  Now back in America, it causes me to notice little idiosyncrasies that are uniquely American.   In an increasing globalized world, I hope these cultural differences can remain, and that each culture retains its own unique little ways of doing things.

 

My Best History Reads of 2016

I was in a discussion with a family member who was heading for vacation, and he asked me if I had any reading recommendations.  Most years I rarely get through more than a book or two, but this year for some reason I plowed through a bunch of books.  I typically read histories and biographies, yet sprinkle in a little popular fiction when I want to give my mind a rest.

So since my year has been so productive, I decided I better put together a ‘best of list’ of the stuff I read this year.   Since the fiction I read is just pop culture stuff, and usually pretty old, I didn’t include it.  So I decided to limit it to history this year.

So, without further ado, here is my list of favorite history books I read this year.

 1.  Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival

We all know about Lewis and Clark, and their exploration to the Pacific.  Soon after Lewis and Clark, in the early 1800’s, John Jacob Astor saw the business opportunity of this unexplored land and tried to build a huge monopoly in fur trading.    Even though I have grown up in the Pacific Northwest and traveled extensively around this region, I wasn’t aware of this interesting story.  As I sit here during a dreary December Day, I can only imagine the mental struggles this party went through.  In addition to a great adventure story, an interesting business angle too.

 

2. D Day Through German Eyes

A short book – only 140 pages – so it is a quick about the German soldiers stationed on the French coast on D-Day.  As part of a German propaganda effort the author interviewed a number of soldiers prior to the invasion gathering patriotic stories.  The author then tried to track down a number of these soldiers after the war to hear their story of what happened to them the day of the invasion.  An angle on WW2 you don’t often hear, and you realize how tragic the war was for everybody involved.

 

 My friend and avid history Buff Tony recommended this to me,  and really enjoyed it. This book covers the rise of the Navy post-sailing ships and the politics behind it.  If you enjoy 20th century history, this is a good introduction to where it all got started in the 1880’s.  A time of massive military buildup by Britain and Germany, and a shift in allegiances in Europe that lead to the WWI.
 An account of the US Ambassador to Germany’s posting in Berlin starting in 1933.  Interesting perspective of prewar Germany, though it does get a little soap-opera’ish with the stories of the daughter’s dalliances. It does provide a feel for what it must feel like to see a government steer towards tyranny.
A book recommended by a friend – The Grumpy Geezer.   Didn’t know much about it, but  really enjoyed it.  A true first person account of a pilot in Vietnam in the late 60’s.  The writer is not a professional writer,  but the story he tells of his experiences is engrossing, and give an interesting peek into how the soldiers felt about the war.  Reads like a journal, and I think anybody who is a pilot would especially enjoy it.
If you like my #2 pick Dreadnought, you will want to read this pseudo-sequel.  This picks up the story after World War I with the starting with Paris peace conference and the politics behind the Versailles Treaty.  I was expecting to read more about how the Allies shafted Germany, but most of the focus of the book is on all the other decisions that were made carving up countries.  It makes you realize that much of the decisions made in 1919 are responsible for many of the issues of today.  And if the world was given one historical ‘do-over’ in the 20th century, this period of time might be a good candidate.
For 2017 I have solicited input from several people, and have a large reading list ahead of me. My resolution this year is to try to stay away from WWI or WWII – as I typically gravitate to that era and need to broaden my horizons. There is lots of good history out there – so if you don’t feel like physically travelling anywhere next year, I recommend you travel in the fourth dimension and read some history.

The Machine Stopped

A while back, I saw a tweet from Elon Musk recommending the reading of the book ‘The Machine Stopped’, and was curious as I thought I was somewhat up on historical science fiction.  You can access a public domain copy of the book here:

http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html

Considering this book was written in 1909, the vision of the future by the author is pretty good.  Television, public air travel, the internet(?) all pretty well envisioned.  This is definitely worth a quick skim.

 

 

 

 

Make Art Not War

I know America doesn’t have the money to waste on art projects (we need to keep adding to that defense budget) – but Iceland is providing a great example of alternative ways of spending money other than on a bloated defense budget.

Take an existing eyesore, add some ingenuity, and you get a piece of art:

icelandart

 

A great overview of the project here – the Choi+Shine architecture firm is responsible for this – but give Iceland kudos for spending a little more money on this project to provide something special.

My Solar Year in Review

I had chance to pull the stats from the solar panels I installed in mid-January 2015  (more details here) – and there is some good news and bad news.

  1.  The good news:  My total power production for the year (from mid-January on)   was 4005.5 kilowatts.  We had a pretty optimal year for solar – lots of sunny days in the summer long days, and a rainy winter when solar production is pretty much a non-issue.   My solar contractor who installed the system gave me a solar power production prediction before the install, and they estimated first year power production of 3886 kilowatts – which I beat by 3.1%.  So they were pretty darn accurate.
  2. The bad news:  Solar power incentives will be dropping in 2016.  Much of my payback analysis was based on the Washington State incentive structure providing 54 cents per kilowatt – the projected 2016 incentives as shown here  show a much lower incentive rate.  This will stretch out my payback – and it will be interesting to see what impact this will have for the expansion of solar in the Northwest.  At the predicted incentive rates, new installations would have a much increased payback period.  Having said that, I don’t regret the decision.  Much of the cost of the system install was for the production meter installation – setting me up for future expansion of panels or replacement of existing panels with more efficient ones.  I still envision the day when panels will be low cost, but the cost of retrofitting houses to produce power will not be going down.

If you are planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest – further proof that summer is the time to visit.  Surprisingly, we had a nice June in 2015 – combine that with the summer solstice and June was my best month for Production:

 

Day Kilowatts
06/16/2015 25.4
06/20/2015 24.88
05/30/2015 24.86
06/13/2015 24.60
06/23/2015 24.44
06/17/2015 24.31
06/11/2015 24.14
06/14/2015 24.11
06/10/2015 24.06
06/22/2015 24.00

I would of expected some July days to be in there in normal years – but we had an exceptionally nice June.  As far as my worst days – December 2015 was the 2nd rainiest month in Seattle history, and my numbers reflect that:

Day Kilowatts
12/07/2015 0.29
12/08/2015 0.35
12/05/2015 0.44
12/12/2015 0.48
12/21/2015 0.49
01/17/2015 0.70
12/27/2015 0.72
01/23/2015 0.73
12/03/2015 0.75
12/17/2015 0.90

To be fair I do have some tree issues which greatly reduce my production in winter – but if you are planning on visiting in December you can likely leave the sunscreen at home (My top power day in December was 3.55 kilowatts on 12/31).

My total power consumption for the year was 8055 kilowatts, so I produced approximately 50% of the electricity I used for the year.  I will be watching this trend over the years- in theory as lighting gets more efficient and panels get more efficient – I should be able to raise that percentage.

So my first year is in the books and I consider it a moderate success.  If you are planning on a solar install in the Pacific Northwest – and have any questions or comments – please feel free to add a comment below.