solar death ray
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Posted:Oct 19, 2013 5:37 pm
Last Updated:Oct 23, 2013 10:38 am 5937 Views
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i don't know that i have mentioned the horribly failed attempt that i made to corner the market on unwanted projection tv's in chicago, and so it is best unmentioned. however, there was a big old projection tv being thrown out in the alley the other day, and i happened to wonder what the screen is made of enough to take a look at it.
i need plexiglass to make my solar furnaces. i went looking for plexiglass at the box builder store and 4 x 8 sheets are VERY pricey. especially of the thicker stuff. so i saw this tv, and i wondered if i could use the screen for plexiglass. it looked as if it would work, it was like plexiglass, and so i got a screwdriver and butchered it free. there were 2 panels of plastic.
i looked it up on the web, and it turns out that these things are called fresnel lens. they were invented in france and they are like a giant superpower magnifying glass. if you set up one of the lens' from these projection tv's into the sun as you would set up a regular magnifying glass to burn something, they become a solar death ray.
no kidding. they reach burning temperatures right away. there are videos on utube of people burning stuff with them. it is like a death ray. i tried to find out if the power of them could be harnessed in any way, but could not.
what i am thinking, is if i use this for my solar furnace, it is going to REALLY crank up the heat. i mean, i am not trying to start a fire...but from the way i understand this thing works, like a magnifying glass...if i don't position it like a magnifying glass to focus on that pinpoint of sun that gets that hot magnified.
in other words, if it is not far enough away from something, it shouldn't get hot enough to burn? works in theory, but i don't want to test it on my roof.
but if what i am thinking is correct, using it an inch away from the cans will increase the amount of heat created, as opposed to a regular piece of glass, but not enough to be burning anything. the plans call for fire rated caulk and insulating, so they get really hot anyways.
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5
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pot head
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Posted:Oct 18, 2013 9:31 am
Last Updated:Oct 20, 2013 8:49 pm 5948 Views
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my name is rockyg and i am a potaholic. i am doing bongs right now.
i have been a chronic reefer feind for most of my life. i guess i first started around 12, the summer before high school. i peddled to support my habit and done many other things i am not proud of. i probably smoked daily, repeatedly all day every day, since i was 14.
i don't know if i believe there is something inheriently sinful about pot itself, but with the guidance of the friendly ghost i have come to believe that it is sinful for me. the obsessive way in which i need it, and let it come before other more important things in my life is a problem. especially when i was still raising my , it effected our finances and my mental attention span with my . although, sometimes it helped that too.
anyways, with the strength of the lord, i quit smoking pot 8 years ago. it was really hard, and there was never a day when i did not wish i had some. i had quit smoking cigarettes 2 years before that, and pot was harder. much harder. in fact, i had used pot to help me quit smoking cigarettes.
this is all set up to confess that i have started smoking pot again. i usually will smoke a little on my birthday in the summer, which is the only time i fell off the wagon over the 8 years dry. well, this year kind of got out of hand and i bought some. then i kind of just kept buying some more. i have tried to moderate my use, but anyone that is an addict knows what a joke that is.
so here am i right where i was 8 years ago. actually a lot worse. i don't have the anymore, and money isn't really an issue. also, i am a loose cannon and not really accountable to anybody but god.
god has been cool about it so far. i have been praying for strength again, but deep down i don't really have will to do it. i have woken up and quit 100 times, but was smoking by lunch. it doesn't interfere with my life, or with my relationship with god...yet. the only thing is that it is a kind of idol to me and that is really bad.
ok. i feel better getting that out. now don't tell anyone. 
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4
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solar heat
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Posted:Oct 16, 2013 7:36 am
Last Updated:Oct 18, 2013 9:14 am 4989 Views
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i did a paper about homemade solar solutions when i was in college the first time (in the 80s), and i read about a tin can solar heater some farmer used for his barn. i always had that idea in the back of my mind, and i got to thinking that solar heat would work for the garage and the 'addition' so i looked it up on the web. there is a thing now they are calling a solar furnace that is basically pop cans stacked in rows and painted black, that is an updated version of the farmer's barn heater.
i have been saving pop cans for a year or so. i have 3 50 gallon garbage bags of them. i was planning on making a big furnace on the roof because i only have a 3 x 3 hatch to get up there, but i decided to start with a small one that i will fit thru the hatch. that way i can make it in my garage on my own time.
the downside of the concept is that there is really no way to regulate when you get heat and when you don't. for starters, it will only work when the sun is out. the upside is that it is entirely free heat and mostly free to make. the biggest expense is the plexiglass cover, and i am still hunting for some used and cheap. that is the last thing that goes on.
i am hoping that the heat that i do get during the day will reduce the amount of gas heat that i use. i am just going to start with the garage and the back, which doesn't get heat anyways, so anything will be an improvement. i am guessing that keeping that area warm durning the day will keep more heat in the house too, and that things will stay warmer over all during the night.
i hope to build one for the church section of the 'compound.' there is no real heat in there. i have ONE vent that i stole from the house furnace and it pumps a little hot air in. i use an electric heater on the stage, and between the two the church is comfortable. i am thinking that if the church is warmed during the day via a solar heater, that it will be that much easier to keep warm at night. when i open up on a friday night in the winter the place is freezing after having been isolated all week. i don't turn on the electric heater or open the one vent until friday, it doesn't make sense to heat while nobody is there.
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4
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habla chat
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Posted:Oct 12, 2013 4:00 pm
Last Updated:Oct 17, 2013 8:52 am 6373 Views
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well, it has finally come to this. there is nobody in any of the chat rooms except the spanish room. none of you have responded to my desperate plea to come to chat, so let this be on your heads.
i am going to go into spanish chat and just post "si" for a while. when that is no longer fun, i will start posting non-sensical or humorous spanish phrases.
like my old time favorite 'como esta el banyo?' or 'mi appuntos muchos los pantalones.' it is all your fault for not coming to chat in english.
yo no sabe nada
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9
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ghost town chat
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Posted:Oct 10, 2013 10:28 am
Last Updated:Oct 11, 2013 8:08 am 5166 Views
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the chat here is boringer than NPR pledge week.
where are you all? the chatrooms here used to hop more than a six legged rabbit.
blogs are cool to get to know each other on a deeper level, but there is nothing quite like the immediacey of one-dimensional social intercourse.
i met my last wife in the chat rooms here, the princess of one-dimensionality
PLEASE check out the chat rooms, they used to be a lot of fun.
now they are uglier than the jehova witness doctrine.
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2
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buddy jesus
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Posted:Oct 9, 2013 11:10 am
Last Updated:Oct 12, 2013 9:35 am 6208 Views
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this is buddy jesus on the side door. it wouldn't let me post two pictures yesterday for some reason.
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11
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church front door
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Posted:Oct 8, 2013 1:58 pm
Last Updated:Oct 8, 2013 6:25 pm 5198 Views
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this is the front door of the church, and more stencil spraypaint art. the green and yellow background was left over paint from my kitchen.
the glass doors were allready covered in paint. they had been tagged by gangs and painted over dozens of times. since i did this, they haven't tagged me. it has been about 3 months.
what i really want to do, is replace this door assembly (it is all one alluminum frame) with a garage door. i will have to back it up with another door inside. it isn't that much work, or that expensive, it is just another thing i haven't gotten around to yet here.
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dead rockstars
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Posted:Oct 7, 2013 10:22 am
Last Updated:Oct 8, 2013 5:06 pm 5277 Views
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back in the day, i had a sort of memorial altar to dead rockstars in my bed room. i had a big panelled wall, with a sun shaped mirror in the middle of it, and everywhere else was clipped out pictures of dead rockstars. it was a collage that covered the entire wall. i had intended to polyurethane it up there, but hadn't gotten around to it. it probably took me about 2 years to finish, and it was a kind of a hobby.
then i met my first wife, and she moved in before we got married. she INSISTED that i take down all the dead rock stars. they creeped her out. i kept putting her off and didn't take them down, but one day when i was at work she took them all down and cleaned all the tape off the wall.
flashforward to now. i have gotten into making stencils and spraypaint over this last year. charlie was supposedly a street artist and good with spraypaint. when he moved in, he was supposed to start a youth art ministry here, but it never happened. his excuse was that he was too depressed and didn't feel motivated.
i had asked him to put up a piece on the back door of the church, that leads to the smoking area. i even bought spray paint, but he always made excuses. so...i decided to do it to try to motivate him. i painted the door bright blue, with the word 'welcome' in yellow in an arc near the top, and buddy jesus with his thumb up in the middle. it came out really good, and it worked to get charlie motivated again. he sprayed tags all over his bedroom walls, i have to paint over that now.
since then, i made a dozen or so stencils of angels playing guitar and sprayed them up on the glass front doors of the church. they came out really well. it turned out that i am really good at stencils. not only am i good at cutting them out, but i am really good at graphics (was my job for 20 years) and i can print out really good designs directly onto manilla folders that make good stencils.
i don't remember what gave me the idea, but i started doing dead rockstars again. i have some other dead rockstar art that i have done too, but that was a long time ago. i have 2 white brick walls in a corner in my basement where i have a foosball table. the upper half of the walls are done in a sort of pepsi carton collage, but the lower half are white brick.
i started spray painting stencils of rockstars on them in black, and making all the new stencils i could. so far, it is about 1/2 filled and it looks great. this is a cool hobby. all i need is ideas. and it is a nice backdrop for my 'rec room.'
i am planning on trying to putt some major peices up on the outside of my brick building too. i want to make an artistic rendering of the first chapter of revelation on the side of the building as big as 6' x 6'. revelation is really rich in images. i have been thinking about it and i think i can put it together out of smaller stencils. i can design the whole thing to size on a computer and then print it out in pieces.
i was always interested in art, but i kind of went down the music and writen word path most of my life. now that i am retired, i think this is another good outlet for me. maybe i will get famous.
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3
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acceptable degree of racism
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Posted:Oct 4, 2013 9:20 am
Last Updated:Oct 8, 2013 1:52 pm 6747 Views
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I have to call out the elephant in the room. ANY degree of racism is too much racism. There seems to be a bigchurch-wide acceptance that it is ok to just generally bash obamma and his policies without offering any really intelligent and godly reason.
OK, I understand that much of it is just the partisan politics thing. The democrats cry just as much when there is a republican in the white house. However, I think the current phenomenon goes way beyond simple partisanship. I think that the underlying problem in this case IS racism.
people are trying to UNDO things that have been (very contestedly) been voted into law. people are trying to find ways around legal (and godly) procedures by filing official legal whining to the supreme court and/or 'defunding' things. that is not business as usual, that is not fair or impartial. it is racism straight up.
yes, you are right; is just a teemsy little bit of racism. I mean, most of the people concerned will tell you they have black friends and have listened to hip hop music and are not racist at all. Not even a little bit. Unfortunately, the black ‘friends’ people have tend to be someone they knew in high school and haven’t seen since.
We are talking about white people that live comfortably in comfortable white neighborhoods and generally live comfortably completely separate from the black community. These are the white people that say they are not racist at all and yet have a cow if a black man asks their out on a date, or get irrationally angry or aggressive when a black man moves next door...or is elected president. It makes them irrationally uncomfortable.
I have to admit, I would be similarly uncomfortable with a female president. I mean, I don’t think that women are not capable, or that they are not equal in every way...and yet...I considered it searchingly and had to admit it would bug me on some level to have hillary in the white house. I would likely find fault with everything about her that I could, especially any policies that affected me, because I was really uncomfortable with her being president in the first place.
That is the attitude that a majority of you have towards obamma. You are miffed somewhere in your whitebread hearts that a black man is president and you pick every nit that you can. I did not vote for obamma. I am not sure if I even like him and his policies or not. I have often been derided as a liberal around here, but the truth is that I am more conservative than not. Liberal is NOT a bad word, the bible is more liberal than not. I think that we need to draw thicker lines between helping people to learn to fish and supplying them with endless free fish.
Whatever your politics, examine your own uncomfortableness with our president and be true to yourself about what is causing it.
and then shut the front door, please.
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7
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long way from home
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Posted:Oct 3, 2013 12:37 pm
Last Updated:Oct 7, 2013 1:33 pm 6653 Views
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back in the day, i set out on my way,
now i'm a long, long way from home.
if i had my way i wouldn't have stayed away,
but i stopped a lot along the way
and i got lost
i didn't mean to go astray,
it don't pay to stay away from home
now i'm a long, long way
a long, long long ass way from home.
i put it all up for sale,
for some cocktails and some tail,
and i headed down that trail
away from home.
i ended up in jail,
and my best freind made my bail,
i had a check was in the mail,
but the mail's at home.
and my friend broke down and cried and said
"you know, its never to late to hightail it home"
but i'm a long, long way,
a long, long long ass way from home.
a man work hard every day,
he gotta make some time to play,
but i always get carried away
when i get stoned.
if i could go back yesterday,
i would give it all away.
i would have made more time to pray
and stayed at home.
but when my best friend got betrayed
there was nothing more i could say,
i just wanna go home.
but i'm a long, long way,
a long, long long ass way from home.
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7
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