YouTube of the day

[Little Corn Tom]

Kinda like the guy who grows plenty of food. When there is none, I do not want to be that guy.

Exactly!

[Daddy-YO]

Batteries are the keys to success of renewable energy use. The dust has yet to settle on this area of developmental technology. Not that one can't bet mega-bucks on current front-runners. Bur unless you're among the 0.1%, why not wait til the overall economics are truly competitive? It's politics - to be seen as a 'player'.

[bill_bly_ca]

This "Slim Potatohead" If he has even mentioned the origin of the name I have yet to run across it.

He appears to live in the Calgary area but spends 1/2 (or what appears to be 1/2) of the year traveling Canada US and Mexico in his A liner trailer and Jeep Liberty.

He does most of the camping by what is called Boon Docking on either Crown, BLM and No charge nation parks land. This is where you can stay at a certian place for XX days at no charge. In Canada on crown land it is 21 days.

His series is a kinda nice tour of what you can see and stay on a budget.

This kind of travel/camping I find quite appealing.

[bill_bly_ca]

Batteries are the keys to success of renewable energy use.

It Truly is - LA as KWP points out are the natural thing people point at but the newer mixtures are so so much better - The problem with LiFeP04's I will have up here in the other house "Up in da sticks eh" is the lower operating temperature band. For the house up north of the 49th I will have to find a way to get the batteries to the safe operating band before allowing charge or discharge. Not that big of a deal, but complexity is added.

They suggest 70f for these for best operation in the heat. Hence I will need to dig a battery bunker for the Nica house - Issue there will be how to make it water tight when the rains and water table run up.

[Little Corn Tom]

So much for KISS, eh?
Insulate, hydrate, isolate, rotate, bury, balance, monitor, measure, and prayer .....nothin to this battery stuff.
You gotta be kidding .....

[el duende grande]

I don't know if the last couple of days are an omen to the future, but Thursday water was off from 9 am to 4 pm, Movistar service whacko with no connections and mystery messages for past 3 days, and IBW internet continuing with its dropoffs.

Holliday cheer?

Our 120 gal water tank gets us thru the little outages, but if the future holds worse outages we may have to add a second tank to keep the garden and dogs going. Really getting tired of making up for Nicaragua's deficiencies!
May have to do a preemptive solar system for when Disnorte gets worse.

[Little Corn Tom]

You may have to buy a preemptive gun to protect your garden too, as cookshow points out.

[bill_bly_ca]

So much for KISS, eh?
Insulate, hydrate, isolate, rotate, bury, balance, monitor, measure, and prayer .....nothin to this battery stuff.
You gotta be kidding .....

It definitely will need to be babied, but I have to make busy work or I will be bonkers within a month. Now that a house is in process I now have to figure out what to do with it. Like when a dog actually catches a car

[Daddy-YO]

... Thursday water was off from 9 am to 4 pm, Movistar service whacko with no connections

Bummer. Is it Esteli or where you are in the outskirts? Here in Leon we haven't lost water for so long that the owner of these apt's removed the 500 gal tank on a steel tower last year. MoviStar has been good and continuous at this location. And for this 3-day weekend they hooked us bingers on 7GB all day til midnite for 30 cords/d. We share with Huawei hotspot.

We got our first rainfall of this season last nite. Two downpours in the AM. Do you have a collection system at your place? Or doesn't it rain that much in Esteli?

[el duende grande]

Ah, the benefits of civilization. We are in Esteli city limits, 4 blocks from the nearest well. I'm told part of IBWs problem is their antennas don't have backup power, so if power goes out in that neighborhood it shuts down the signal for a bigger area.

Scattered light rains in the area, strange but not unknown for April. Supposed to be an el nino year, so we will see if there is drought.
Rainwater collection doesn't really pencil out in western Nic, the 6 month dry season would require too big of a tank. Some friends did it in Hawaii, but it worked because they got at least some rain every month.

[KeyWestPirate]

We have been getting consistent rain as well. Everything is green and the horses are fat. It hasn't been huge quantities of rain. Thanks to Glibal Warming it's been much cooler the last two years, and never really dried out like it has in the past.

We have the same problem with internet: if the power goes out, there is no MoviStar signal, and no internet.

Water is consistent and arrives under pressure from our spring. It's not enough for serious irrigation so we are looking at a drilled well.

Friend B and his young Nica wife visited yesterday. His internet is IBW on a tall tower in Achuapa. He has 150 acres and runs cattle, but works out of a house in Achuapa vpn' ing to a server he set up in Missoula.

The company he works for is in Chicago, and his $500 monthly internet is a business expense. The house serves a second purpose: when it rains heavily he can't get across the river and back home.

Adventure is where you find it. I like mine with hot water and cold beer these days.

[bill_bly_ca]

Today is some Nica content.

Canal 13 transmission of Baseball games. Typically live and then archived. It is , from my experiance, nutral to the other Morillo DOS BS typically on the channel (It is DOS inc you know)


Quality is pretty good and sometimes watching the comments is just as riveting as the game. This is the game from the 14th

And in an epic glitch of incompetence - This game is about 3h:30m long bet the feed is 5h:51m - with as far as I can tell 3+ hours of dead air at the end.

[Daddy-YO]

... Thanks to Global Warming it's been much cooler the last two years, and never really dried out like it has in the past.

Cooler? Was that a typo, Pirate, or sarcasm? Not that I'm one to necessarily believe what I see in the media, but they're clearly saying the opposite: Central Am coffee production will be hurting cause it's hotter & dryer due to the ominous GW. Here on the ground in Leon, I can't tell a difference. It's as miserably hot & humid as it's ever been here this time a year.

his $500 monthly internet is a business expense . . . when it rains heavily he can't get across the river and back home

Wow, the company doesn't seem concerned about spoiling the internet market in little Nicaragua. Throwing that kind of money around why not build him a pedestrian bridge at least, or get him an Army surplus vehicle pontoon bridge (might cause a raised eyebrow or two)?

[Jonh]

Thanks to the power outages, Esteli’s official temperature monitors don’t get artificially raised as much by the electric heat lamps they put under them. As for coffee production, any excuse to get the prices up.

[KeyWestPirate]

Cooler? Was that a typo, Pirate, or sarcasm? Not that I'm one to necessarily believe what I see in the media, but they're clearly saying the opposite: Central Am coffee production will be hurting cause it's hotter & dryer due to the ominous GW. Here on the ground in Leon, I can't tell a difference. It's as miserably hot & humid as it's ever been here this time a year.


Wow, the company doesn't seem concerned about spoiling the internet market in little Nicaragua. Throwing that kind of money around why not build him a pedestrian bridge at least, or get him an Army surplus vehicle pontoon bridge (might cause a raised eyebrow or two)?

I've never seen more blossoms on the coffee trees before this year. They are loaded.

Problem up here is not global warming,, but lack of financing and the coffee price which is still 30 cents/pound below production cost.

I think that this little girl has it figured out:

http://590kid.com/ocasio-cortez-impe...twitter-video/

“Like, I want to talk about, like, climate change. Because, like, there’s no doubt cow farts are making the climate change,” Martinez says, donning Ocasio-Cortez-inspired glasses and red lipstick.

“Like, in July, the climate was 96 degrees and in February the climate was 36 degrees. OMG, like that’s a huge change in the climate in”—the mini-AOC looks down to count her fingers—“only four months!”




AOK says the world is ending in twelve years, bad idea to have kids.
Jussie Smollett says he was the victim of a horrible assault,, can't sleep nights.

My high school science teacher told me that we were entering a 10,000 year ice age. \
I believe my high school science teacher.

You can believe whomever you want,, it's a free country,, and I respect everyone's truth,, even Jussie Smollett's.
That respect is what bought Al Gore his 9000 square foot low carbon footprint mansion in Malibu, and his low carbon footprint private jet.


Yeah,, B's company doesn't know that he is in Nicaragua,, hence the server in Missoula.
It's a perfect deal,, except they want to see him every 90 days. So he flies back.
I'm surprised more haven't figured this lifestyle out.

B has some nice creds,, his last job was with the World Bank in DC.
Figure the cost of a DC apartment,, $500 /month internet isn't bad.

He's regretting Achuapa,, but says that the internet he has is more consistent than Esteli


When the river floods,, it's 50 feet across, so a bridge would be a major undertaking.
He's had to swim it a couple of times.

He brought a zip line down this last trip (we traveled more or less together,, he was incredibly loaded puling a trailer with a MC,, and got sideways with the Espino aduana with all his shit),,

but hasn't got around to building the towers he needs for his zip line.

He spent 5 days at Espino,, I only did the one overnight,,, had to leave his MC in Honduras.
He brought the MC in this trip,, nice Honda.

That was a strange crowd in Espino this last time,, from Las Manos,, never had so much grief.

[el duende grande]

Nic jerking around people on the border is unfortunately contagious to other failed/failing nations, like DipSxxx honduras. And folks on the "poor Nic." mode have no idea how much hatred there is in the neighboring countries for Nic closing the Panam for 2 months. Some people have lives and businesses and the Panam is the economic lifeblood of the isthmus.

Anyway, the weather is patchy. I went on a hike in Sebaco a few weeks ago and it was incredibly dry, as was the scenery on the way to Jinotega. It is a real bad year in some places. This little rain felt great but didn't amount to much depending on where you are.

[bill_bly_ca]

This is "Two Hands and a Radio"

A cheery fellow out of south central Indiana. He buys radios that are (approximately) $20 and below and reviews them either on a pic nick table in a field of from the truck bed cover of his pick up truck.

Always self conscious (out loud) to avoid catch phrases and innuendo to trigger the outrage culture (Yes people even argue over $20 radios on the internet)

He does old radios as well, many of which I own already (Down sizing is a bear - I do have to parse my radio heard before we split time)

[bill_bly_ca]

This is space weather lady Tamitha Skov

She is a NASA consultant who decided to make a space weather channel concentrating on a solar forecast every 4 to 6 days. Does a little ditty for Hams and shortwave propitiation , GPS quality and a forecast of the Northern lights.

[bill_bly_ca]

This is Shawn James - He started a channel , two of them actually, about 3 years back about building in unorganized counties in Ontario (My province) . The my self reliance is typically silence with Shawn doing building / cooking / wilderness "stuff" the Shawn James channel is where he gets into the ware-fore and why, more talking. I'll put that one up another day.

In essence you can build what you want as there are no zoning rules and there is no one to do inspections. While technically you are to adhere to Ontario building codes, but since the definition of a house is sq footage determined.

So it looks like buddy got on the rat race treadmill in his 20's, started some companies, failed, started again, succeeded and sold out at the peak. Now he is doing you tube living in the woods with Da Moose, Da Bears and Da Beavers. He "gots himself" a dog as well (Nice dog too) . He is married with two daughter wh make short appearances over the 3 yrs of the series.

He says he's doing it old school but has a $3,000 yeti power block, has a kick ass snowmobile and drills a log with a brace and a bit.. Anyways - The channel is quite deep in content and he has some good incites on living in the (near) north. As best I can tell he is between the north eastern shore of Lake Huron and the western edge of Algonquin park.

One of the coolest episodes was where he went to a blacksmith shop and had his axe forged. But the blacksmith show was in the middle of Toronto and the blacksmith was in an industrial unit with mechanized forging tools, but still cool.

Once Maria house is done in Masaya then I will build something similar up farther north (But with dimensional lumber and power tools, I far too impatient to be skinning logs and all that s#it)

[bill_bly_ca]

This is JC travel stories.

They are a couple from the Portland area who was a business owner that had his contracts contracts canceled in 2001 - His business folded and they had no backup plan but enough funds to limp from 55 to Medicaid qualification age (not sure what that is). They have a fantastic house that some of his other videos go through the build processes and nuances.

He has good stories and shows real life situation on Lake Chapala Mexico, city of Ajijic . Also an RV'er they spend 6 months of the year trucking around the US in their 40' RV.

Just misc ramblings I like to listen in the background as I fill in spread sheets, send devices for analysis and "Fix what ever has gone wrong today at work"

If I were to try a youtube channel in future it would be such ramblings on BB's Masaya stories of the week :-)

Social blade shows him making 1K to 18K a year from his random mussings. I'm guessing something close to 10K - As Lee Van Cleef would say "Thats a tiedy sum" ... For the effort involved.

[Little Corn Tom]

Nice video....his sincerity is obvious and overwhelming.

[KeyWestPirate]

Nice video....his sincerity is obvious and overwhelming.

Someone needs to do

The Nicaragua Expat Channel

Not me (but I would watch it)

[Jonh]

“Little Corn Today,” with LCT

[Little Corn Tom]

“Little Corn Today,” with LCT

Ya know...Rob did basically that for a couple of years while he was building his house (SHABL) and had a pretty good following. I did not realize it at the time that it could all be monetized on You Tube. I have no idea how much he made, but he had a pretty good following for some guy building a house on an island in the middle of nowhere. I guess his customer base was escapists wanting to leave it all, watching a guy leave it all and living their fantasy for them.

Seems like a lot of work with all the editing to make it interesting and "flow".

Interesting world we live in, eh?

[Jonh]

Or, we can just buy the Florida Lotto Cash for Life tickets twice a week.